Will Jason Go Home Tonight?

For all of Jason Castro's cuteness, and I probably should use quotes because it's wearing out fast, I don't know if cuteness can carry the day when someone has to go home.

The guy has no range for singing the big stuff. He has the range for singing plinky little ditties, like around campfires and birthday parties. Still, he has the national stage, so he'll probably be a big star when this is all over. Doing plinky stuff.

Up on the big stage, they're all expected to be able to belt it out. All expected to have pipes like a church organ. But his pipes are like a kazoo. It ain't his fault. We sing with the throats we have, not with the throats we want.

I hope he does finally get canned, since it has to happen sooner or later. There's no way he's going to prevail and beat David A. or David C.

One other thing, the constant look of absolute cluelessness on Jason's face bugs me.

When Does The Hundred Years Begin?

I'm a stickler for detail. If someone like John McCain -- a straight-talker if ever there was one -- tells me the Iraq war needs to go on another hundred years, I want the facts. Such as, just a thought here, when does the hundred years begin? I can figure out when it ends, essentially at some distant point when we're all long gone.

Has the 100 years already started? So if we've already had five or six, can we subtract that from the 100 and celebrate the optimistic truth that we're practically there? Only 90-some to go?

This might be like on Seinfeld. Where it's four or five days, but today is already half over, the weekend goes fast, and you're out early on Monday. It's like a blink of an eye, hardly any time at all.

Of course 100 years, even if it's only 90-some to go, does take a while in terms of the way we reckon time by the passing of our lives. Meaning the veterans we have from the Iraq war will be doing like the guys from Normandy do every decade, going back over to salute and look around, and get together with aging Iraqi friends, etc. The big difference, unfortunately, is the war will still be raging around them. So they'll have to salute, then immediately get back in the vehicle and skedaddle out of there.

Let's say a veteran is 25 today, he's back over there when he's 75, so that's only 50 years from now. He'll be over there saluting and skedaddling, sorrowful no doubt, and thinking to himself, "Only 50 more years to go, which I'll never see." And really, most of us like to actually see the end of projects or actions we had some part in. But nevermind that in this case. There's no end in the traditional sense of things.

The milk is spilt, no reason to cry. Just need to clean it up, even if it takes a century to do so. Thank you, John McCain, for your visionary abilities, your straight-talk, and your desire to end this foul war, even if we never live to actually see it done.

Chicken Being Barbecued

It's spring and we have something good going on the grill, chicken, with some kind of BBQ sauce on it, I think Cookie's. It's been going for about 45 minutes and I'm hoping it will be ready in the next 15 minutes. It ought to be. They're not the biggest, hugest, thickest pieces, so they'll probably be OK. And good.

(I don't want to brutalize John McCain too much for his 100-year war plans (no, I don't want to much), but if he were grilling chicken, it'd probably take him 12 or 13 years to get it done. But if he were making an entire meal, you wouldn't want to get your bib out yet, because it wouldn't be on the table for another 35 years at the very least!)

A Circus DVD

It's sickening to hear TV playing in another room, when you yourself are not the one watching it. The "other" got a DVD of a movie about the circus, "The Greatest Show on Earth," from 1952. I don't believe I've ever heard of it, but it looks good. It's in color, and I like circuses.

But to hear it from the other room, ugh! It sounds like it has a circus brass band going constantly, and circus music gets tedious after a short time. So maybe I won't watch it.

Labels and Categories

I'm wondering why I should keep coming up with "labels for this post." Is anyone really doing anything with those labels. On one of my other blogs -- Antique Clippings -- I thought it was important (correct that, I had no idea but the blank was there) to put in categories for everything. And of course over many months and many posts, you lose track of being complete.

There weren't that many good pointers for what the purpose of the labels was, nor was there any real guidance on how to do multi-word labels, like Woodrow-Wilson. So at first I had fairly long labels, like "The Ellis Herald, Ellis, Kansas." That would be ONE label. And others with common words, more common than Ellis and Herald. So what happens is if you start a label with one of those words, it automatically fills in with something from a previous label, and it's a mess. Definitely you need the hyphens in there if you're going to do it at all.

So I've been pretty faithful about putting the labels in each post. I like to have things nicely organized, even if clutter doesn't bother me. But now I'm thinking about the value of it all...it sucks to do it if there's no real purpose.

I Love It

I usually have Ad Block Plus going. Not that I don't like looking at ads. I really don't mind them a bit. But a number of months ago there was one extremely annoying one -- which I don't remember the name of -- that basically took over the computer. It had pop-ups going every which way, popping everywhere, and there didn't seem to be any good way to close them. In fact, it seems like it was advertising a program to get rid of things just like itself! That's pretty good, like roaches appearing in Raid commercials.

But what I love -- since I had Ad Block Plus turned off for a few seconds -- were the John McCain ads appearing on my blog. That's funny. I can't stand the guy, hope he loses, hope he wipes out, hope he ends up on the dung-pile of history. And here are ads advertising the guy! I hadn't anticipated that.

My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother

My Mom wrote me the other day, that she has discovered where one of my great-great-great grandmothers is buried. I can't think of Grandmother's name right off the top of my memory, but it turns out she is buried fairly close to where I grew up.

It's hard to get too excited, though, when you realize you have 18 great-great-great grandmothers, and that many great-great-great grandfathers besides. Of course each one was necessary, but how to keep track clear back there!

Maybe A Hundred 2

It's unbelievable that this is the best the Republicans have to offer us, maybe 100 more years in Iraq. But that's what the Straight-Talking John McCain said, even offering at some point "a million" years as an option.

But at least there's an end in sight! And by the time the Jetsons or Captain Kirk are actually born, we'll be there! Then we'll be fighting the Romulans, Klingons, or Attack of the Robot Maids.

So, buy those war bonds today, and let your great-great-great-great-great grandchildren cash them in.

Maybe A Hundred

Collectable George W. Bush

Of course there's no president more vile, despicable, and, as Daffy Duck might say, "detessssstible" than George W. Bush. And anyone who might have an intolerance for unpleasant things, for instance, cat puke on the dining room table when you wake up or your house on fire at bedtime, knows exactly what I'm talking about: the man's no good.

But for that very reason -- because George W. Bush is so bad that it nearly causes us to heave just from the thought of him, or, worse, the sound of his voice or sight of him -- he's collectable. It's the villains, the turds of history that command the big bucks. And I'm afraid I'm not going to have much G.W.B. memorabilia to cash in, since I wouldn't be able to live in the same house.

I was thinking of a local store going out of business, and I remember a few years ago they had a truly heaveworthy piece of "artwork," with George bowing his head in prayer and along side of him were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, hands on his shoulders, also deep in prayer. A piece of garbage like that -- and however you define garbage this either qualifies or sets the new standard -- is going to be valuable someday. Collectable, 1) Because it has to do with this despicable creature we were dumb enough to allow within five light-years of the White House; 2) Because it is a sign of our times, the whole post 9/11 time of national insanity. You remember how it was, when we had the weak and fearful driving by with American flags attached to their driver's side window (I always thought, Hey, you afraid you might forget what country you live in?).

In the future -- fast forward -- it will be no other way -- anything from this period relating to any of this, and to our "Beloved Leader" is going to command some bucks.

So, if you have a George W. Bush doll in his military get-up from a few years ago, hang on to it. Or if you happen to have the picture I mentioned -- and are smart enough to read this blog at the same time -- hang on to it, too!

American Idol - Jason Castro

The other one on American Idol I think is having real troubles is Jason Castro. I don't like the whole dim bulb routine that he's been giving since the very beginning. Please, know something about something.

The biggest redeeming factor for him is the cuteness thing. For the vast majority of folks, no doubt, he is extremely good looking. Who knows what his hair is like if you unraveled it? It might be smelly and ratty and nothing worth having, but in the face he has that broad face, big smile, interesting eyes, etc. When it comes to the singing, not so much.

He's done some cool things, with the guitar and everything arranged in a minimal way. But after a while it starts to show that he has no range, no second act. He might make a few records, and be the male Colbie Caillat, with that kind of breezy in-your-ear sound. He has hit record potential, but his singing, compared to the others, really is limited.

It was painful tonight, like Simon said, the two minutes was forever.

American Idol - Brook White

I could barely watch Brook White tonight after she messed up and had to start over. In fact, I went and fed the cats and just barely listened to what sounded like a pathetic, desperate performance after that.

I started out a real fan, but lately she acts like she's about to fall apart. She did that with a song a few weeks ago, started off and started over, and I don't like it one single bit. It really ruins it when you (me, the viewer) has to sit there and here this stopping and sputtering and then feel uncomfortable all the way through because some other disaster might befall her.

She definitely has a lot of talent. But I think she's gone as far as she needs to go on the show.

The Everlasting Birthday

At one of my other blogs I have a newspaper piece about a guy's birthday party, his 80th.

Charles D. Fessenden passed his eightieth birthday at his home in East Brownfield, on the Fryeburg road, Thursday, the 14th. In the evening a few of his friends and neighbors gave him a surprise party, which he greatly enjoyed. They carried refreshments of ice cream, cake, cookies and saltines. Besides the family those present were: [list of names]. The evening was spent in general conversation and telling stories, which caused much merriment. After wishing Mr. Fessenden good health and many returns of the day, they left at a late hour with many memories of the evening.

There's usually no record at all of someone's birthday party, and of course there doesn't need to be. As for myself, I wouldn't like to open the newspaper everyday and see what I was up to, descriptions of my birthdays, etc. But there it is for this old guy from long ago.

It sounds like a great time for the folks there, with the refreshments, conversation, and merriment. It has a kind of everlasting feel, then, with them leaving "at a late hour with many memories of the evening." Like they're still out there somewhere mulling it over.

SOS Coast Guard - Final Entry

I remember I was writing a little about that Bela Lugosi serial, SOS Coast Guard. I finished watching it. As I recall, the main character, hero, was Terry Kent. And it had a happy ending. Kind of a weird ending, [SPOILER ALERT], with Thorg being shot in the cave, then falling backwards into the water, never, we assume, to be seen again. But he IS seen again.

Dr. Whatever, Bela's character, doesn't win. The scientist formulates the antidote to counteract his terrible gas, and no, it wasn't Beano.

Lately, I've been watching the other Bela serial I have, "The Phantom Creeps." It definitely has its moments. In this one, and it says it on the DVD box, too, you are rooting for Bela to conquer the world. It'd be kind of cool to have Bela Lugosi conquer the world, then be holding all us hostage for, what exactly? What would Bela want from us? It's ridiculous to want to conquer the world.

And it's even more ridiculous when he talks about destroying the world. Why would he want to do that? Where would he be then?

Getting Rid of Old Computers

I suppose it's an environmental nightmare, old computers, what to do with them. I was given the task today of cleaning out some old junk in order to get rid of it. Which always carries with it various thoughts. Such as "I remember the day I got this," "I remember when this was brand new and I was trying to keep it from getting scratched," etc.

Today the junk being gathered included old computers, which are around probably everyone's house who's had more than one computer in the last 15 years. One of the computers to be gotten rid of today was a Magnitronic (I think) brand. It was the first PC I owned, and I got it in 1996. It had a one-gig hard drive that came with it. And we had installed, a couple years later, a seven-gig hard drive. So those were both in it. Last time I tried to start it, after it had been in the basement for a while, it wouldn't work. Hung up somewhere on the booting.

This old computer I used quite a bit. I used to do a lot of graphics work, and there came a time when the monitor was so darkened, I had to adjust the brightness on the graphics to be way overexposed just to see them clearly, then remember to adjust them back when it came time for saving. So I know the monitor was no good!

The other old computer today was gotten in 2000, and had the Windows Millennium operating system. I really liked it. Fast and pretty efficient. It was a fine computer, except for various troubles that developed along the way. It actually developed troubles right away, but I always had work-arounds. Then I took it to get it fixed one time and the technicians made it worse. I could barely boot it up without having to go to Safe Mode or watch it continually telling me that I had an improper shut-down (which I didn't) and it needed to check the hard drive for errors. I guess on second thought that computer was a piece of crap. But when it worked, it worked great! And I did like it.

I destroyed the hard drive in that one a couple months ago. I have a twisted bit of metal on my shelf. That's my 60-gig hard drive, hopefully destroyed beyond recognition. For my Magitronic (whatever it is), I took out the two hard drives and will destroy them someday. It's not an easy process! They don't call them HARD drives for nothing.

I also -- and this was one I nearly forgot -- remembered I had an Image Writer printer for a Mac (1980s) and so I got rid of it. And I do believe, yes, I'm 100% certain, I have an old Mac (from the '80s) somewhere, not here at the house, and it needs to be retrieved and disposed of. Last time I tried to turn it on, it wouldn't work.

Spam Spam Spam

I try not to read much spam. I'm usually protected from getting too much of it by various filters up stream from me. But once in a while the filters must act up, because today was a day for bunches of spam. Like close to 200 messages. Most of them things like "MailerDaemon..." something or other. Which got quite repetitive. Big list of stuff like that.

One had a look like it could be an actual message, but no one I knew. I didn't open it directly, since I never want to give them hope. But I opened it in a text file, and it had to do with enhancing your sexual pleasure. With 'enhance' and 'pleasure' both spelled wrong. It looked like it was from Holland or one of the other nether regions.

Like I said, the filters were acting up, but this one had one of those little random text snippets that, I guess, is designed to trick the filters into thinking it's an actual message. I took out the html codes, so whatever line breaks were true in the original are gone. Here's this important text as it stands now:

Never sleep or wake in peace. In consequence of on the car is, by all means, to be protected by was allembracing. Margaret knew that if she yielded around the temples of the hindus, and many religious were stripping, picking, and shovelling the gravel son's playmates gave him water mixed with powdered the would be aim, to be placed on the top of a it? Confess now, don't you feel a little better? Of all kinds of metals.37 these are the six mountains, of its intense brown blotcheswith the azure throat nineteen and she is evidently no native of alemtejo, nodded. Speech had suddenly left him. He did not o sinful wretch, thou desirest to stay me who takes in the jumna, itself a mighty stream. As would i love you better than i do? She asked.. isbdneldjbaaabiida.

"Never sleep or wake in peace" actually resonates with me, because I've had troubles lately taking naps and having the phone ring. And some of that is spam of the audio sort, such as a credit card company who gives us a recorded message about four times a month. But today I took a long nap, and, hard to believe, the phone didn't ring once.

"In consequence of on the car is, by all means, to be protected by was allembracing." I wouldn't put it that way exactly, but I moved the car today while cleaning some junk out of the garage, and, yes, it was protected.

"Margaret knew that if she yielded around the temples of the hindus..." I know someone named Margaret, and it would be good if she developed her spiritual side more.

"Confess now, don't you feel a little better?" I don't feel so badly, although there's really nothing to confess. I'm happy to proclaim it.

"the azure throat nineteen and she is evidently no native of alemtejo, nodded." Much too young for me.

"Speech had suddenly left him." That's a strange feeling, when you simply have nothing to say. I was testing out an old typewriter in the basement, part of that cleaning junk project mentioned above, and I typed the old sentence, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country." I couldn't think of anything else. And it stuck on the 'r' (badly), and a couple other letters (not so much.)

"He did not o sinful wretch, thou desirest to stay me who takes in the jumna, itself a mighty stream." This sounds like maybe 'Heart of Darkness,' I don't know. The jumna has an African sound to it, plus the Congo is a mighty stream. Bigger than I thought, till I was reading a few snippets about it the other day. As for the 'sinful wretch,' it's important to work with your dark side, or try consciously not to deny it.

"As would i love you better than i do? She asked.. isbdneldjbaaabiida." I used to do something like this, write out the first letter of sentences I was thinking of. It was a sort of code, but not one to be deciphered later. Just a way of expressing whatever was on my mind at that moment, with no regard for preservation or later reading. So what could this be? I hate to guess!

McCain's 100-Year Timetable

It's been real refreshing for Senator John McCain to tell us the Iraq war will be over in 100 years. Finally, we can all breathe a sign of relief, now that we know the end is in sight.

But I have one big concern, and I think it could be fatal. As we all know from the past few years, we've resisted setting a timetable for withdrawal. President Bush has repeatedly said that the terrorists then would simply wait us out, then take over. So, if we said we'll be out by Jan. 20, 2009, they clearly could just sit tight till then, then come out of hiding on the 21st.

Now that McCain -- perhaps foolishly -- has told us 100 years, we are torn. Of course we're relieved to know the end is in sight. He surely wants us to have that assurance, and the more credit to him for that attitude. I say "perhaps foolishly" because now the terrorists have a date to work with. The saving grace, slight as it is, is that the current breed of terrorists will be dead by then. But there's nothing to say that they won't pass on this news to future generations. If they, let's just say, write it on a slip of paper -- something as small as that -- and put it in a time capsule, to be opened, say, in 98 years... I'm starting to think the risk is too great.

So, anyway, we have time to deal with the situation, I'm not saying we don't. After all, Mr. McCain probably won't live another 100 years, and it's equally likely that he won't be in office as president at the end of that span. In those years -- and I hate to take away the benefits of his no doubt heartfelt assurances to us -- we will just have to hope (and pray) that we have a president (or a few) who will make the end of the war less definite. We generally like wars to end, that's typical. But we cannot end this one because of the danger that the enemy might want to keep it going!

Words Easy to Misspell

I have to think about the word 'misspell' itself, because it seems like a tricky one. It's never good to see someone complain about spelling, then misspell a word in their complaint. How often I've seen that. Or use some other phrase or bit of grammar in the wrong way. (But of course who really makes the rules?)

Probably everyone has seen that little snippet of text that has everything misspelled in it. It's come around on email a couple times. Even with so many mistakes you're still able to read it, and pretty fast at that. Because, as the old scientific theory goes, and it appears to have experience and testing validation on its side, your eye isn't really looking at the words to examine them in detail as to their component parts. But there's just a quick connection going on with your brain, and it doesn't make any difference whether they're spelled right or not. There has to be limits, obviously. The first letter should be right, I would guess. Otherwise it's the Jumble.

I've been looking at a lot of articles from the 1920s and before. And words were spelled differently back then. Like postoffice as one word. One newspaper, maybe trying to be zippier, spelled words like tho, thru, altho. And kidnapper, which to us usually has two p's, only had one (I checked the dictionary the other day and either way is judged OK by the dictionary folks.)

I appreciate the spellchecker. Is that one word or should be it hyphenated? Firefox is flagging it. But it looks OK to me.

John McCain -- Man of Endless Wars

John McCain says he wouldn't mind it if we stayed in Iraq and kept the Iraq war going for another 100 years! In fact, he added to that that if it were 1,000 or 10,000 years, or even a million years (1), it'd all be the same to him. Now there's a man who has a long-term plan!

You can't say John McCain doesn't have vision. I mean, you're president for eight years tops, and he's already looking a million years ahead. I've heard of big ambitions, but don't Americans like things to actually end? Think of the dread and loathing we used to have when they put, "To Be Continued" at the end of a TV episode. We didn't want to wait one stinking week for the thing to end. But we have a guy (serious candidate, one would think) who doesn't think in terms of beginning and ending. He just thinks in terms of beginning and persisting, beginning and continuing, going and staying.

It'd be funny to sketch out what if all our presidents were as ambitious as John McCain, ambitious at keeping wars going. We'd still have around 30 years to go with World War II. We'd be close to the end of World War I. If it started in 1914, we'd have only about 6 years to go till it ended. Let's see, the Revolutionary War would be long since completed. But the Civil War, just around 1965 we finally got that settled. What about Vietnam? John McCain was a POW in Vietnam. So if we were still there, he'd still be there. He won't get out of that Vietnam jail for another 70 or 75 years. Settle in, John!

This long-term view of what a good war should be is insane, of course. But kind of funny. We have a serious (?) candidate for the White House whose main platform is endless war? Is there anyone in his or her right mind who will vote for that?

This is literally worse than the highway department. They get the interstate ripped up and it's a lifetime job to get it fixed. You go to work the day after high school and by the time you get done with a good stretch of road, you're ready for Social Security.

Let's put John McCain in charge of something that is endless and harmless. Like give him a mountain of beans, give him about 40 acres to work in, and have him count beans. That'll save us a lot of trouble!

SOS Coast Guard 2

As basically "good" as SOS Coast Guard is, and it isn't great, there is a real groaner moment in episode 2. Which was necessary in order to preserve Thorg's life so he can stay in the serial all the way through. Unfortunately it made the Coast Guard look a lot more incompetent than they would be in real life. But such are the movies!

They've got Thorg. He's swam out of the Carfax wreck, but the Coast Guard sees him. Terry tackles him on land, they fight, then Thorg rolls into a net and the net rolls into the sea. But instead of anyone rescuing Thorg then arresting him, they shrug their shoulders, like 'he's gone.' They say 'No one could escape from the net' and walk away, the poor guy out of mind.

Well, hey, ha ha, you aren't just going to leave a body to rot away at the shoreline. Please. But it's for the plot. He can't be taken into custody already and he can't die and you need fights. So of course Thorg survives!

Elvis Music as Comfort Food

There's no greater audio comfort than Elvis singing.

SOS Coast Guard

I'm rewatching an old serial on DVD, 12-parts, called "SOS Coast Guard," starring Bela Lugosi.

I watched it a few years ago, maybe five years ago. And so I've halfway forgotten it, except for the basic plot, which is that Bela is an evil scientist trying to melt the world, or to have the power to destroy and conquer.

So I popped it in -- and I only watch a little bit at a time, while exercising -- and I'm thinking, ho hum, I'll never make it through this. But it's actually quite good, better than I remember. The first thing I notice is the great special effects, or, I should say, lots of action. The special effects are great for what the budget had to be, which is low.

They're out on a raging sea, the boat tossed on the waves. The rear projection film shows waves like mountains, and every once in a while a hundred gallons splashed on everyone. It looks quite deadly, like you wouldn't want to be out there. But there's Bela, in the film called "Boroff." He seems like the calmest one on board.

The Coast Guard comes to the rescue of their ship, the Carfax. Boroff is the first one in a big bucket to be ferried across to land, via a rope. He's photographed, recognized, runs, and immediately kills the main hero's (Terry Kent) brother. Shoots him dead, then escapes. So that's quite an opening!

The first episode was longer than I expected, too. It went on and on. The biggest drag about episode two, which I'm just into, was the inevitable recap of episode one. But I advanced through that and got right into number two. They kill another guy at the beginning of episode two. A scientist, a lab guy, who doesn't want to play ball with Boroff and Thorg, his idiot- (yet surprisingly competent) strongman underling. Thorg is a mighty man, a great swimmer, a great fighter. Somehow Boroff was responsible for his demented, mentally hamstrung condition. Thorg shaves Boroff, who taunts him, that he knows he (Thorg) would like to cut his throat. But he's very dependent, docile, and obedient....so far.