Nostradamus is still the #1 query. It’s more than doubled the query after it. If you add all the synonyms, it probably has more queries than the rest of the top 10 combined. It boggles the mind.
Category: current events
It’s in the darkest times
To that end, I’m going to try not to say anything more about the current situation. I hope and pray that survivors will be found in both the Pentagon and Trade Centers. I hope and pray that whoever did this is brought to justice and survives to stand trial.
Now is not the time for chest-thumping and vows of revenge. It is time for calm heads and still hands to make sure that rescues are undertaken safely and speedily; that investigations are conducted correctly and effectively; and that everyone try to heal, recover and put things back together as much as possible.
What impressed me most yesterday were the reactions of people. To me, the most impressive public figure yesterday was Mayor Giuliani. In the face of thousands of casualties and horrific damage, he looked steeled, calm and business-like. It was an amazing thing to watch every time they showed him. It was a striking contrast to some of the other inflamed rhetoric shown.
Ok, that’s it. It may be quiet here for a couple days. Good luck and take it easy.
Trade Secrets
This may get me fired, but I don’t care. Do you know what the #1 query on AOL Search is so far today? It’s Nostradamus in a landslide. It’s not Red Cross or World Trade Center. It’s Nostradamus. I constantly find reasons to lose faith in humanity.
There is one comforting fact though, porn queries are still way up there. I guess the libido doesn’t stop for tragedy.
Undone
I am undone. I’ve felt tears well up several times today, yet none come. I am angry. I am sad. I am tired. I want to do something. My brain won’t shut off, and I keep trying to shut it up. I hope I can go to work tomorrow, because I can’t take another day of watching CNN and watching the video anymore.
I looked at my son today, his beautiful face. He’s not even two. He ran around today like nothing was wrong. He babbled and played and was a little pill while the rest of the world was falling apart around my little family. We will continue. The world will slowly return to normal. The pain for the observers, the survivors and the families of the victims will fade over time. Maybe a lot of time. It’ll be OK…. I hope.
It Becomes
Unless you live in a cave, or don’t have a radio in your car, you know that there have now been four apparent terrorist attacks on American soil. I’m listening to KCRW streaming through my headphones, delivering the carnage straight to my ears. Everyone here at AOL is running up to the newsroom to watch it. I can’t. I don’t need to see it to know it’s happening, and I’m sure we’ll see enough as this things becomes clearer, body counts come out and the source of the pain is ferreted out.
I have no idea who is responsible, and I’m trying to keep an open mind. After the Oklahoma City bombing, everyone assumed it was an Muslim extremist. It turned out to be a small group of angry white men who felt their government had let them down.
Now, all the airports in the country have been shut down. They’re evacuating federal buildings, but it worries me that now the roads will be clogged and if anything else happens, emergency personnel and equipment won’t be able to reach the problem areas.
Ok, that’s enough… I have nothing else to say. I want to run home, grab my little family and hide.
This Modern World is brilliant
This Modern World is brilliant today. Bill Clinton was the source of a comedy boom. Bush is single-handedly killing satire, because he is one! The man scares the living crap out of me.
This is the stupidest thing
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. When do comedians have to apologize for their jokes? I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read in a comic strip that Georgie has the lowest IQ of any previous president. That’s funny. It’s scary that it might be true, and he’s not doing anything I can see to make that joke not funny. Why apologize?
I’ve decided that when I retire, I’m going to run for Congress. It may not be a serious bid, but I’m going to do it. I may start small and run for city council or the school board, but I’m running. I hear more and more every day about how corrupted everything’s become by the two-party system, and it just bothers me. My latest point of ire? Redistricting. We don’t pay a lot of attention to it because it happens once a decade, but here’s how it works:
- The census is taken and numbers counted. In the 10 years since the last census people have moved around, and populations shift. This means it’s time to move voting districts and reallocate representatives.
- State legislatures have the responsibility for redistricting, and if you think the national legislature is bad, get a load of your state houses. They’re snake pits of people not bright enough to make it to the national level. They’re the ones who decide how to draw up the lines.
- Whichever party is in power in the house at the time of redistricting gets to draw up the lines. As long as they don’t get too crazy, they can draw them up however they want, giving them advantages over the other party whereever possible.
- There have been several public cases of abuse, mostly in the South and California. If you get caught goofing with the lines too much, it’s called gerrymandering, which is my new favorite word.
Doesn’t that piss you off? Couldn’t the lines be drawn by computer simulation? I’m no genius, but I think I could write that in Tcl over a weekend. I’m tired of everything in government being a vast winged (left or right, take your pick) conspiracy. The work of government should be apolitical for the most part. Legislation I completely understand as being a point of much contention, but the daily work of government and even the courts has become rife with political machinations. It makes me want to become a conspiracy theorist, but I just don’t drink that much coffee…
Accidental Tourism
Hey kiddies and welcome to Monday here at LawverLand. Today, in an effort to combat boredom and the residual anger of layoffs, I’m wearing an amazing Hawaiian shirt. It’s leaves and tropical flowers in four or five outrageous shades of blue. I can’t take myself seriously in it, and I hope no one else does.
If we’re not actually going to do any work, why not pretend we’re on vacation? If my sister weren’t borrowing the camera, I’d post a picture, honest I would.
On a serious note, there was a fantastic article in the Washington Post Magazine this weekend. It’s funny that ~25 miles from where I live, there exists a world that’s completely foreign to me. I’ve been to downtown DC before, but it was many years ago, and it scared the crap out of me. I hear it’s better, and that good things are happening, but hey, I just don’t have a reason to go. The story is about Redemption Ministries, a non-denominational church in Southeast that is doing great things for people who have no other hope.
I envy the call that Reverend Motley has. He’s felt something, and continues to draw on a passion to help people. It must be so rewarding to see his people grow and make more of themselves than they would have. Great story…
It takes all kinds… This
It takes all kinds… This halfwit in the North Carolina legislature forwarded an e-mail to all the members of that hallowed body stating, “Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity.” Ok, nice thoughts there, my man. Way to bring people together. And, the lunacy continues: “Who came to this country first – the white man, didn’t he? That’s who made this country great.'”
It makes me wonder how far we’ve really come. We like to think we’re enlightened and progressive. We think maybe we’ve got this race-relations thing handled and everyone’s happy. Still, every day, we see people like that moron slapping us in the face with the fact that change moves slowly.
It’s taken over 150 years for evolution to become mainstream, and for it to be grasped as a viable scientific theory. It took several hundred years for people to come to terms with the earth not being the center of the universe, and then a couple more to grasp the shape of it. It’s been 35+ years since the beginning of the civil rights movement, and 134 years since the 14th amendment was ratified.
How can we expect everyone to come to the realization that we’re all equal, and probably all related a lot closer than we ever thought? How can we, when people like the “honorable” Mr. Davis refuse to open their eyes?
It’s frustrating, and it gets worse the more I think about it. Real change takes generations, not laws. It takes slowly tweaking society and ideas over decades and sometimes centuries. I honestly think we’ll get to a place where color does/doesn’t matter and people are treated equally at least in the eyes of the law. I’m just not holding my breath.
Vast right-wing conspiracy, redux (from
Vast right-wing conspiracy, redux (from Salon). This is my favorite part about Politics. Everyone gets self-righteous when they’re on the chopping block. The Dems are all pissed off at the Republicans for trying to bring them down now that they’re on top in the Senate. The Republicans are barking about confirmation of appointees being delayed when there were people appointed by Clinton in his FIRST term who were never confirmed. And the funniest part is that the public buys it. They keep crying and whining and expect us to forget about all the other stuff, even RECENT stuff like the impeachment. Unfortunately, not enough people pay attention, and well, it works. Their blustering gets a soundbite, and well, that’s what people remember.
Oh how I long for a dictatorship. One voice is so much easier to listen to than a hundred blowhards and party wonks in their wondrous spin machines. (before anyone e-mails me, I’m just kidding)