It's a rainy day

The weather here in southern California has been a tad chilly and wet of late. I’m guessing that it’s probably an early effect of global warming; even though it seems counterintuitive to have colder winters as a result of it. Still, it’s about par for the course as we start the wind-up for the end of the world, what with bad weather, worse politics and an economic crash coming. But it’s a reasonably good excuse to stay indoors and blog the day away.

The stuff you read here isn’t all that original. You didn’t read it here first, mainly. As with most blog authors, I cherry-pick the news sites and the opinion sites and basically throw stuff together, mostly to fill space until this project starts to jell, or I begin to have some original thoughts. In the meantime, what I have gleaned and thrown into this stew are factoids and opinions that reflect my own jaundiced view of the world.

The Internet is a fascinating place; just about every side of every question is out there and with a quick Google, Mamma, Yahoo, etc etc meta search you can reference just about anything, and I mean anything, quickly hyper-linking article to site to blog. It’s a far cry from my first fanzine, banged out on a used Underwood typewriter on Ditto mimeograph waxes and caretakingly illustrated with my own drawings. One mistake and the whole wax page was ruined. I bought the Underwood for $35, saved from my earnings as a soda jerk at Priscilla’s Tea Room, a real soda fountain in Nashua, New Hampshire, the shop itself dating from the Thirties and looking like a Hollywood movie set version of itself. I was 14 and eager to bring my ravings to the waiting world. It’s a long way away now, both in time and space. Today I can see my published results in minutes (and in glorious color) instead of the days that it used to take, what with lugging pounds of Ditto pages to the printer and back, then the post office to send my scribblings out into the void. Amazing, really.

Well, it's stopped raining and the world hasn't ended yet. I think I'll go for a walk on the beach. Later.

Later: The news just keeps sucking me back to the typewriter: "We call it a war on terrorism, but Muslims in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration. This is not simply a religious revival, however, but also a renewal of the Muslim World itself." --Defence Science Board

Kos and others are reporting that a Department of Defence Science Board white paper is very much at odds with the Busho take on the wonderful world of terrorism. Not that any sane person wouldn't have figured out the state of the world with just a few rational moments contemplating our foreign policy. Still, it is somewhat refreshing that somebody in our over-priced government has an inkling of the truth.

Now, if Bushboy would just read what people write for him. Also, while the mainstream media mainly avoided this story (the report was released in late September) the NY Times did mention it, although they too have failed miserably in follow-through.