I’m sure everyone was as sad as I am to hear that Michelle Bachmann will not be seeking reelection to her House seat next year. Aw. Michelle isn’t ruling out another presidential run, but my guess is she took a look at the Sarah Palin gravy train and decided there’s a heckuva lotta money to be made as a teabagger darling (and no pesky ethics considerations). So long, Michelle. I’d say we’re gonna miss you, but I suspect we’ll be seeing even more of you after you’re out of office than we do now. And that’s a damn shame. Thank goodness we still have guys like this around:

I mention those two examples of male pulchritude (Chuck Grassley and Yertel the McConnell) because they are two of the many Republicans who are all up in arms because Obama is attempting to pack the courts with his godless communist judicial appointees (assuming you define “packing” as trying to fill vacancies).

Things have been a little cool and rainy around here, but that’s supposed to change as things become hot and rainy today – and supposedly up into the 90s tomorrow. Maybe we’ll actually get into the pool one of these days.

Happy 96th birthday to JFK.

I guess today is meant to officially honor those who died while serving in the military, but I like to think of it as a day to remember the people I cared about who are no longer with us. Notice I said “think” about them, as I don’t actually go around planting flowers or flags or anything like that. I haven’t even visited my parents’ grave in a long time, now that I don’t live very close to where they’re buried. But I don’t really think of them as being there, anyway. Whatever’s there, it isn’t what made them, them. But I think of them all the time, and not just one day a year. There’s also a long list of dogs that I think about, too. Mostly, though, it’s nice to just have a day off (though technically I’m on call support duty – there’s a technical difference between on call and support; if I was on call, they’d have to pay me – and could have to respond to a web emergency), and I even have tomorrow off, which is nice as well.

It’s been kind of chilly around here this weekend. It wouldn’t have been bad but for the wind, which has been kind of annoying. Still, I did get a fair amount of stuff done. The grass is cut, I did a lot of weed whacking, and even cleaned the gutters (which means I was up and down a ladder and squatting on the roof so my foot was bothering my quite a bit last night and is hurting a bit today). And today SU returns to its rightful place – namely, playing for the NCAA Lacrosse National Championship. They haven’t been in the finals since 2009, and today they’re going for their 12th National Championship.

Another local team – Lemoyne – has already won the Division II National Championship, and the local Community College just won its fifth consecutive Junior College Championship by winning its 70th game in a row (which is a record for any level of college lacrosse). Plus my old high school won the sectional tournament and is now heading into the state championship tournament.

So now SU just has to do its part and win.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the video of intrepid reporter and former U-Boat commander Wolf Blitzer asking Moore, OK resident Rebecca Vitsmun if she was thanking “the lord” for having escaped death in this week’s mega-tornado. Vitsmun, of course, politely (and genially) responded that she’s an atheist, so, like, no. I’d have liked to have seen Wolf ask other survivors if they were blaming “the lord” for having wiped their town off the map. Or asking parents if they were angry at “the lord” for having sent a tornado to a school and killing their kids. It’s always “the lord” or “the angels” were on my side when you escape disaster, but they never claim responsibility for putting you in these shitty positions in the first place, other than maybe the vague “it’s God’s will” or “‘the lord’ works in mysterious ways.” If Wolf had asked me if I was thanking “the lord,” I’d have told him: “Fuck no, Wolf. If there is a God, I wanna know why the hell He just destroyed my (literally) goddamned house!”

I’m sure everybody’s read the story about the brutal attack in London where a British soldier was hacked to death. British PM David Cameron called it an “act of terror.” So I’m now waiting for Darryl Issa and Fox News to condemn him for not calling it a “terrorist attack,” which of course is something completely different.

On the list of places I’m glad I don’t live, Arkansas is definitely in the top ten, I think (there’s actually a tie between lots of places for that number 10 spot). Why? Well, for example, Arkansas wingnut Tom Cotton attempted to introduce an amendment to the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act of 2013, which seeks to penalize anyone who violates human rights, engages in censorship, or commits other abuses associated with the Iranian government. That doesn’t go far enough for Uncle Tom, though.

Cotton also seeks to punish any family member of those people, “to include a spouse and any relative to the third degree,” including, “parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids,” Cotton said.

“There would be no investigation,” Cotton said during Wednesday’s markup hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “If the prime malefactor of the family is identified as on the list for sanctions, then everyone within their family would automatically come within the sanctions regime as well. It’d be very hard to demonstrate and investigate to conclusive proof.”

So, like, if your Uncle does something bad, bam – you’re going to jail for 20 years, no questions asked. You didn’t have to even know about it and since it would be hard to prove, we just won’t require any proof.

It’s kind of like what happens to the families of Chinese or North Korean dissidents who mysteriously disappear.

After it was brought to Tom’s attention that this was actually unconstitutional, he reluctantly withdrew his amendment. Oh, that pesky constitution. Better luck next time, Tom.

Getting out of the shower this morning, I slammed my toe on the metal ridge where the shower doors used to slide (before I took them out and put up a regular shower curtain). Slammed it so hard, it bled, even. And it was the bad toe on the bad foot, so it really hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. Then I smacked my knee getting into the car to go to work, and that still hurts. And, just now, I yawned so hard I pulled my trapezius muscle. I have a feeling this is gonna be a sucky day.

So I just calculated my biorhythms, and the bad news is that I’m on a downward trend for physical, intellectual, and emotional – and I’m not even bottomed out yet. Things look pretty bad for Memorial Day weekend. Fortunately, the weather is gonna suck, too. Well, not suck, really. But it’s gonna be pretty cool, so I don’t think there will be any swimming going on. But maybe I can get some shit done – assuming my body doesn’t completely fall apart, in which case I’ll just sit out in the sun and read.

But first, I gotta get through today.

My, my, my. “The Press” has certainly gotten its collective panties in a bunch over the rather aggressive DOJ investigation into “leaks.” This outrage was expressed today in a NY Times editorial entitled “Another Chilling Leak Investigation.”

“With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible ‘co-conspirator’ in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”
[…]
Obama administration officials often talk about the balance between protecting secrets and protecting the constitutional rights of a free press. Accusing a reporter of being a “co-conspirator,” on top of other zealous and secretive investigations, shows a heavy tilt toward secrecy and insufficient concern about a free press.

In other words, it was fine when you and Dubya were spying on everybody else, but now that you’re doing it to us, we’re pissed!

Of course, all your basic liberal media (and not so liberal media) are falling all over each other in condemning Obama. So I guess this is what it takes to get them to wake the fuck up.

A few weeks ago I got new tires for my car. Hated to spend the money, but they were pretty awful, so I figured I’d better bite the bullet and just do it. I actually did the whole thing online. Well, the purchase and payment part – I of course had to go to the place to have them mounted and all that. Anyhow, part of the deal was a “buy 3 get 1 free” (by rebate) deal.

I’m notoriously horrible about doing the whole rebate thing with the mailing in the receipts and forms and shit, but there was an option to do it online. Online I can do, so that was no problem. Unfortunately, instead of sending a check, they sent a prepaid debit card for the amount due (not that a check is much better, because I’m also notoriously bad at depositing checks in the bank – why can’t they just use Pay Pal?).

I’ve had these prepaid card things before, and I find them a pain to use because you never know how much is left on them, and then to use the remaining balance you have to like split the payment for whatever you’re buying and that involves talking to the cashier and then suffering the wrath of everybody behind you in line. So it usually means the thing expires with a balance still left on it (which I assume is why they do it that way, ‘cuz they know the average person will get screwed out of at least part of the money).

This time, though, I had an epiphany. I went to Amazon and bought myself an Amazon gift card for the full amount of the rebate card. Poof, zero balance. Then I applied the gift card to my Amazon account, and now I have a credit. Seeing as I buy all kinds of shit from Amazon, I’m good to go.

So I guess I’d better start shopping.

Glad to see that OKat and family are okay. The pictures and video from Oklahoma City are just incredible. I’m really glad we don’t get that kind of thing around here. An occasional small tornado isn’t totally unheard of around these parts, but they’re extremely rare. Too many hills around to break them up, I guess. I hope Oklahoma gets a break from these tornadoes, but as we experience the effects of climate change, I’m afraid this stuff is just gonna get more frequent. It’ll be interesting to see what Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn push for to “offset” any disaster relief funding that goes to OKC. Maybe they can eliminate the Global Change Research Program.

I traded with somebody so that I’d work from home yesterday and my late day would be today. That was really nice yesterday. Today, not so much. The only good thing is that I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, so I guess going in late isn’t so bad. Having to work until five sucks, though.

But I guess I better start getting ready.

First, the bad news. I did not win the $590 million PowerBall drawing last night. I blame it on my wife, to whom I gave both two dollars (courtesy of the Nielsen folks) and fairly simple instructions: buy a winning ticket. Not only did we not win, we didn’t even get one number (I was hoping there was a prize for getting nothing right, but I guess that’s some other game, like Keno or something). I’m very sad about this, as I really don’t want to go to work anymore. Oh well.

Other than the crushing disappointment of being a lottery loser, yesterday was a fairly productive day, as I accomplished all of my weekend goals (though, to be fair, I typically set my sights pretty low). I did a bunch of weed whacking (had to order a second battery for the new weed whacker, as I only get about a half hour of whacking time before I need to recharge (and, at my age, it takes me way more than 30 minutes to whack), mounted my new bench grinder on my bench, and got the grass cut. As if that wasn’t enough, we even set up the new 10′ x 20′ canopy that my wife bought on the pool deck.

This leaves me with little left to do today, other than admire the persistence of the dandelions who were all cut down yesterday but are miraculously back up already. Oh, I did my weekly shopping tis morning, and I need to do some laundry, but that’s about all I have planned (unless I’m somehow attacked by a fit of ambition or something. I really should rest my foot anyway.

Last night’s Realtime wasn’t the worst show he’s ever had, but it was kind of disappointing in light of the fact that both Michael Moore and Zach Galifianakis were on. I was mostly annoyed by some MSNBC chick who is apparently a right winger. She was rather impassioned about the whole gun thing who seems to think that requiring a background check and/or registration to buy a gun is tantamount to being considered guilty until proven innocent. A rather specious argument, IMHO. As somebody tried to point out (only to be shouted down because that’s about the only thing these wingnuts can manage to do to “refute” opposing arguments), having to register your car (or license you dog) doesn’t mean anybody is accusing you (let alone convicting you) of a crime. Her other tactic was the tried and true, “I know you are but what am I” defense when the subject of how come all of a sudden right wingers are so upset with the government getting reporters’ phone records now that Obama is preznit, when they were all gung-ho when Dubya was in office. Her response, “where’s the outrage from liberals now?”

I’ve heard tons of outrage over this – and lots of other shit – directed at Obama from “liberals.” Most of us are none too happy about his expansion of the use of drones to assassinate people, or the expansion of warrantless wiretapping, or loading up the Treasury Department with Wall Street people, or his appointment of a cable and wireless industry lobbyist to head the FCC, among many other things. Liberals don’t walk in lock step the way these wing nuts do, so don’t try to tell me that we’re not calling bullshit on Obama when he deserves it.

At least last night’s episode of Maron was pretty good. It was nice to see them introduce Judd Hirsch as the father character (vastly different from Marc’s actual father – for one thing, they named him “Larry”). And I don’t recall Marc’s dad losing his medical license or showing up at his house in a Winnebago. It’ll be interesting to see if he becomes a recurring character.

Glad to see Vernon got a copy of Maron’s book. I was thinking of getting it myself, but I got a copy of Jerusalem Syndrome and haven’t read it yet, so I figured I’d save my money (who knows – if I wait long enough, maybe I can get it for a buck and half like I did first one). I keep hoping he’ll have Sue Ellicott on WTF (I want to hear how those “field reports” are coming along.

Oh well, the day’s a-wasting. I better go find something to do.

I got an e-mail from a guy I used to work with this morning. Apparently I was behind him on the way in to work. We work at the same place, except in different locations, but we live in the same general vicinity, and there aren’t a helluva lot of different ways to come in from the sticks to the big city, so I’m surprised we never came into contact before. So we had an e-mail reminiscence of my past life as a refrigeration mechanic, remembering the good old days of working in the anatomy cooler, squeezing between the cadavers hanging from their ears with their giblet juice dripping on the floor. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell it.

Let me tell ya, one place you really don’t want to be when the refrigeration isn’t working is inside the anatomy cooler. Unless you somehow enjoy the smell of hot formaldehyde (actually, they’re embalmed with formalin – basically formaldehyde and water with a little menthol thrown in – but preserved in phenol, which leaks out into the bottom of the clear plastic bags they hang them in, and of course the bags leak a bit). Whatever it was, it was nasty stinky, that’s for sure.

Ah, those were the days.

I probably didn’t notice my buddy in front of me because I was bust trying to figure out why I was listening to this Bob and Tom show again. I have to say, it just isn’t funny. And the one bit of music they played this morning was some “gag” song about never trust a puppet or something that had people laughing hysterically but was just plain not funny.

I dunno. The things I do to avoid hearing the news.

I tried plugging in my mp3 player (yesterday motivated me to load up a bunch of Steve Earle and Robert Earl Keen), but I couldn’t listen to it because the output is very low compared to the radio and the volume knob on the car stereo doesn’t really work, but I have a remote that I usually use, but I guess the batteries are beat ‘cuz it didn’t work, so I couldn’t hear the damn thing.

But at least it’s Thursday, which means I can work from home tomorrow, which is a lot better than coming in to the office. And it’s supposed to be a decent weekend, weather-wise, which means I can hobble around trying to get some stuff done. I got my new cordless weed whacker yesterday, so I can play around with that, I guess.

But first, I guess I better get through today.

So I was listening to my old time radio in the wee hours of the morning (as I often do, since I don’t actually seem to sleep). It was some show from the early fifties, and for some reason they were comparing the US bombing run on the Romanian oil refineries in PloieÅŸti in August 1943 (operation “Tidal Wave”) to a football team being down by fifty points with time running out (the idea being, I guess, that the loser team keeps on playing instead of leaving the field).

Apparently three of the B-24 “Liberator” bombers blew up on takeoff, they had navigation problems along the way, were counting on the element of surprise, but met heavy fighter and anti aircraft artillery, were only partially successful in hitting their targets, and lost 2/3 of the bombers (53 airplanes and 660 crewmen – the worst loss ever suffered US Army Air Force in a single mission).

So, yeah, that’s like losing a football game.

Anyhow, the reason this captured my attention was because the bombers took off from their base in Benghazi, Libya. Damn, I just can’t get away from this shit.

In my continuing (though unsuccessful) effort to avoid hearing anything about Benghazi, the IRS, or the AP, I kept my radio tuned into “The Rebel” classic rock station on the drive in this morning. They apparently run the “Bob and Tom” show (which I assume is some nationally syndicated thing – dunno, never heard it before), so I was treated to 30 some minutes of yacking and commercials, and one actual song (a song by Tom Snider called “Beer Run”). I had to look up the lyrics when I got to work, because to me it sounded like he was singing

B double E double R You Ann Meara

But apparently he was actually saying

B double E double R U N beer run

That might sound kind of dumb, but it’s actually a pretty good song, IMHO. I mean, any song that starts out with

A couple of frat guys from Abilene
Drove out all night to see Robert Earl Keen

can’t be all bad.

It’s stupid meeting day, but we already had our stupid meeting cancelled yesterday, so I’m off the hook for that. Unfortunately, I have a different stupid meeting at 8:00. I don’t know what it is with these people and their stupid meetings, but at least we’re getting it out of the way early.

Guess I better print some shit out (maybe a Sudoku or something) so it looks like I’m prepared, engaged, and attentive.