Poem: A raindrop's life

A raindrop is born
In a cloud
And returns like a salmon

How it got there is another story
A droplet latches onto a nuclei
Of smoke salt or dust

And bumps into other droplets
Over and over and over
Coalescing a million times

Gravity pulls the raindrop down
To strike water or earth
And one day it evaporates

A raindrop is born
In a cloud
And returns like a salmon.
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Word Verification Sucks

I keep running hot and cold with word verification. I turned it on in the fall, when blogs were just beginning to be hammered by the splogs, or spamming blogs. As soon as I posted an article, the spammers arrived. Then things start to quiet down. I turn verification off. And the spammers sneak in, and not just to new posts, but reaching back into comments a year old, they add their new ones.

Shoes. Increased semen production. Cars cheap! Boner enhancers. "you have a great blog. You're really making things happen. Check out my blog at...." People selling acreage on the moon. Jewelry. Books. Oxycontin and Vicoden over the internet! (hmmm!). Teddy bears. Steaks Fed-exed! Sex pictures of M.I.L.F.s in action! Real estate! Nekkid girls! Nekkid boys! Horse sex!

I turn it off and get complacent again. Until the post I just created about something (reasonably) serious is spammed with another Exciting Offer! And I turn it on again. It's a war of attrition. I want people to comment, and they, like me, find word verification irritating. . .especially if you're a marginal typist and it takes at least two (or more!) tries to pass the word verification challenge. . .
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State of the Union Satire worth a look

Check out this excellent impression of President Bush and his upcoming State of the Union speech performed by James Adomian. It goes over the top, but there are a lot of gems in there.
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President Bush: "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton"

[click images to enlarge]


According to Reuters, President George W. Bush says Bill Clinton has become so close to his father he's almost one of the family. Between their disaster relief work, fund raising, attending funerals, and the like, the two former POTUSes are thick as thieves. In fact President George W. Bush joked that Bill Clinton was "my new brother."

"Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton," President George W. Bush joked, referring to how Bill Clinton had followed his father, and Hillary Clinton could follow him.

"That's a good relationship. It's a fun relationship to watch," Bush said in an interview with CBS News broadcast yesterday. "It was fun to see the interplay between dad and Clinton. One of these days, I'll be a member of the ex-president's club. ... I'll be looking for something to do."



The President said he checked in with Clinton occasionally. "And you know, he says things that makes it obvious -- that makes it obvious to me that we're kind of, you know, on the same wavelength about the job of the presidency. "
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The Onion on The West Wing's cancellation

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44832



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Alien Lore 62 - two encounters between President Ronald Reagan and UFOs

[click all images to enlarge for viewing and readability]

1. Steve Allen took one of Ronald Reagan's UFO sightings public on his WNEW-AM radio show in New York. Allen related a story that "a well-known personality in the entertainment industry" had confided to him years ago.

For years, the story had made the rounds in the press-politico rumor mill and everyone knew Allen was talking about Governor Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The Reagans were expected at a dinner party with Hollywood friends. The guests had arrived except for the Reagans. Ron and Nancy showed up thirty minutes late and were very upset because, they said, they had seen a UFO coming down the coast.

2. Another sighting happened in 1974 while Reagan was still Governor. The future President related the story to Norman C. Millar, who was Washington Bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal: "I was in a plane last week when I looked out the window and saw this white light. It was zigzagging around."

"I went up to the pilot and said, Have you seen anything like that before? He was shocked and said, Nope. And I said to him: Let's follow it! We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light."

"We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement, it went straight up into the heavens."

"When we got off the plane, I told Nancy all about it." Reagan, in his discussion with Millar added that he had told Nancy about the UFO he had seen, and that they had done personal research on UFOs. This research had uncovered the facts that there were references to UFOs in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The reporter suddenly realized that Reagan actually believed in UFOs. "Are you telling me that you saw a UFO?"

Suddenly, according to Millar, Reagan realized that he was talking to the press. "This look crossed his face," recalled Millar, "and he said let's just say that I'm an agnostic."

The speech draft reprinted above shows that UFOs were never far from the President's mind. He mentioned UFOs and aliens publicly numerous times during his Presidency, most famously in a speech at the United Nations.

No wonder that, toward the end of his administration, the British tabloid, The Sun, published a huge headline

"Reagan will end his presidency by adding several planets as states."

Links to selected earlier posts on President Ronald Reagan in All This Is That:

http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/11/president-ronald-reagan-glances-out.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/11/alien-lore-no-39-presidents-and-near.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/07/president-ronald-reagan-on-war-and.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/03/potus-40-pres-ronald-dutch-reagan-b.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2004/12/three-by-ronald-reagan.html
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It was twenty years ago today that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded

Twenty years ago (1-28-1986), the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was watched by almost every schoolkid in the country, because one of the crew was a teacher--37 year old Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to travel into space. She didn't make it.

Seventy-three seconds after the launch, the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire as family and friends watched, along with millions watching live television. No one on board survived.

President Ronald Reagan appointed a commission to find out what went wrong. The investigation found the explosion was caused by the failure of an "O-ring" seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. This rapidly triggered a chain of events that resulted in a massive explosion.

It's not nearly so well remembered as the Challenger, but just three years ago, on February 1, 2003, another space-shuttle tragedy occurred when the Columbia shuttle disintegrated entering Earth's atmosphere.

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Ann Coulter: Justice John Paul Stevens Should Be Poisoned

Ann Coulter "joked" during a Thursday speech that liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark. "That's just a joke, for you in the media."



















She made other tasteless jokes about liberal Supreme Court justices that made the audience "squeal," according to an article today in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Coulter was booed, however, after she stopped two black men during questions, telling them, "I'm not gonna be lectured to," according to the newspaper account. She also was booed when she said that the crack cocaine epidemic "has pretty much gone away."

Blacks "are the most loyal group for Democrats and you ought to be getting a little more out of them by giving them competition through the Republicans," Coulter said.

Afterward, black students stood around "lashing" back at Coulter's "rhetoric," the newspaper said. One sophomore girl said: "We need someone on the Democratic side who is just as outspoken as she is."

The college president, Walter Kimbrough, told the audience that inviting Coulter to speak at the black school made sense because like hip hoppers she is "raw, outspoken, uncensored." He also called her the "conservative answer to rapper Lil' Kim -- [both] attractive and sexy, long-haired blondes. ..." Coulter said it was "the best introduction" she'd ever had. It's hard to believe Walter Kimbrough was able to compare Ann to Lil Kim with a straight face, but he somehow did.
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ChatFu: cartoonify your chats and other texts

click cartoon/poem to enlarge


click cartoon/poem to enlarge

This site cartoonifies any text you upload to it. I tried it with a couple of short poems of mine. ChatFu is located at: http://chatfu.com/
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The Brannock Device

Ever since I was four years old, I've wanted to own a Brannock Device. They are are an design masterpiece: elegant, rugged, graphically interesting, and absolutely functional. They have barely changed in 75 years. If you've ever been to a shoe store, you know they're cool.

Charles F. Brannock (1903-1992) began fiddling with foot-measuring devices in college. After a trial by fire in his father’s shoe store, Brannock's device soon gained favor over other systems because it measured foot length and width at the same time. His early drawing to the right shows most of the details of the final device—just like the Brannock devices used in shoe stores today. Brannock obtained a patent in 1928, and it's been The Shoe Size Thing ever since.

You can buy them new for $75 or so. . .but I found one on Ebay for $5 (see photo below), and it now sits in my office, in the traditional spot, right in front of a chair.


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My Grandma's tavern in Carnation, Wash.

Click photograph to enlarge. . .

Not long ago, I wrote here about my Great Uncle Guy Huber, his visits to Kent, Washington, and, of course, his wooden leg. I also wrote about my Grandpa Dell, last year, and how I teethed on his hook arm when I was a baby...

Grandma Vera Galvin was Uncle Guy's sister, and Grandpa Dell was my Grandma's third, and final, husband. Alas, I don't have many tales to tell of my Grandma. She died in either 1961 or 1962. My mother is not all that forthcoming about her exploits, and wouldn't answer several questions I posed (or said "please don't write about that"), sticking mainly to the bare biographical facts. This was much different than when I pumped her for information on Uncle Guy. In fact, I don't have a lot of memories of her either.

Grandma Galvin is pictured in this photograph at a bar she owned in Carnation, Washington. Carnation was a small village in 1949, when she bought the bar on the town's main street. She owned it for about ten years. Also in the picture, with his one hand on the register, is Grandpa Dell Galvin. They must have been about my age in the photo.

All my life, I've been fascinated by her owing a bar. When I was a kid, women seemed to rarely even go to bars, let alone own one. But then again, most grandmothers didn't get married three times either, or drink beer. There must have been some vein of iconoclasm in the family, since my mom ended up being a Rosie The Riveter during WW II, and eventually a U.S. Marine.

The bar is a little spooky. . .but that's mainly the taxidermy I think. . .there is definitely a stuffed owl, and I'm not sure if the other birds are pheasants or wild turkeys. . .or what? They look too small for grouse. Aanother critter at the left end of the bar could be a porcupine, a marmot, a wild baby boar?

When I knew her, Grandma drove a grey 1948 Plymouth. I remember several occasions sitting next to her driving somewhere. I also remember there was a "church key" for opening beer cans on her dashboard. I don't remember ever seeing her without a can of beer wrapped in a paper bag. She lived in a cottage (my mom calls it a shack) in Carnation.

She started the coal stove every morning--fat lumps of greasy coal kindled with tissues. The house had plumbing; I well remember the houses that didn't--and the cold treks to a fantastically rank outhouse. One of my only other memories of visiting her in Carnation was having breakfast with one of Del's daughters, who also lived in Carnation. She gave me half a grapefruit. I don't think I'd ever seen one before. I know I hadn't eaten one. They squirted. I liked it.

Dell died of a brain tumor in the late '50s, and Grandma sold her bar. Or maybe she went broke. Grandma Galvin was now retired, and was just about to move in with my family in Kent, when she went into a diabetic coma and died in about 1961. I remember my dad telling me one morning that she had passed away.

It was years before I could really tell the difference between passing away and passing out. Passing out from drink was not unheard of in my circles and yet even then, at say, the age of nine, I could smell a whiff of it--you sense the people passing out are treading an tenuous chasm between being numb and being gone.
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Portrait of President Bush five years and six days into his presidency

Click image to enlarge
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