Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Another rough day at the White House, Part 98—Tony Snow's cancer has returned


Tony Snow, the White House Press Secretary who beat colon cancer two years ago, revealed Tuesday that the cancer has returned and spread to his liver, delivering another jackhammer blow to family and friends, and of course, to a White House already staggering from a stunning barrage of bad news.

Tony Snow's cancer was the latest in a never-ending torrent of bad news for The President: the conviction of a former White House aide, a guilty plea by another former official, mass defections from within his own poltical party, resignations of other functionaries, and a shotgun blast of revelations of lying and skullduggery that now jeopardize the attorney general's job.

Studying the odds, it is bizarre that so much has bad luck has befallen this White House. But, alas, The President seems unable to catch a break. His house of cards is about to hit the deck.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Poem: Changes 48/The Well



Water above wood below
Water below wood above
The bucket goes into the earth

To bring up water
From the well
From which the water is drawn

At the bottom of the darkness
Runs a clear cold living spring
The well is the symbol

Of the social structure
Evolved by humankind in meeting
Our most primitive needs

Back when we gathered in villages
And still remembered how
To help each other survive.
---o0o---

Jim Webb's aide arrested for packing the Senator's heater

According to the Associated Press, an aide to Sen. Jim Webb was arrested yesterday when he entered the Russel Senate Office Building with a loaded pistol belonging to the senator.

The aide—Phillip Thompson, an old friend and employee of Webb—was caught by an X-ray as he attempted to enter the Senate building. "A congressional official briefed on the incident said Webb gave the gun to Thompson when the assistant drove him to an airport earlier in the day. Thompson, upon entering the Senate building, forgot he was carrying the weapon. "

Editorial comment: We agree that Thompson probably forgot he was packing heat. Only the developmentally challenged would believe they could slip through the X-ray machines. Take my word for it: I can't even sneak my stainless steel hip through the scanners.

Are you as shocked as I am to know that Senator Webb, an anti-war candidate, routinely walks around with a fully-loaded pistol? And two more loaded clips? He's not only loaded for bear, he's ready for a herd of bears (technically, a sleuth of bears).

I understand why a high profile Senator might be skittish about security. I even understand why he expects trouble. But a fully loaded gun, and two more clips? This guy is not just looking to defend himself; he's looking for a firefight. He's expecting serious trouble, and needing to reload two times? I don't know, but if it ever comes to that at my job, I think I'll find another line of work.

What about the Washington gun control laws? Washington, D.C., law says it is illegal for anyone to own a handgun unless he or she is a police officer or has owned a gun registered prior to 1976. And even those allowed to possess a gun must keep it unloaded. I guess Webb may have been a gun owner for thirty years, but I don't really believe that. Why is he allowed to flout the law in The District?

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Giuliani: The Candidate For 9/11—See The Onion

Giuliani To Run For President Of 9/11

The Onion

Giuliani To Run For President Of 9/11

NEW YORK—Supporters of the former mayor praised Giuliani for his "early and unwavering commitment" to 9/11

With Rudy, it's all about numbers. Six marriages, nine/eleven. The soaring numbers in his checking account, as he ruthlessly exploits his expertise in being attacked. If the measure of a hero is how many photo opportunities you race around to in the middle of a disaster, Rudy Giuliani is a hero.

Rudy is poised to be the Republican McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis, all rolled into one. Heh heh.

---o0o---

Scientists create a sheep that's 15% human: when this stuff hits the market, we'll need to repeal the standing cannibalism laws

According to Claudia Joseph in The Daily Mail scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera, with the body of a sheep and sheep-human organ hybrids.


These sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells. Clearly, their evolution raises the prospects of even more animal organs being transplanted into humans. Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, spent seven years and 7 million dollars perfecting the technique of injecting adult human cells into sheep's fetuses.
---o0o---

Three more photographs of LBJ


click to enlarge these photographs




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A picture of Del and Colum Brummet circa 1994


Click the boys to enlarge...
This picture was shot by David Grosten. . .a one-time professional photographer. And it shows....
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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Happy Birthday 352nd Birthday Titan!



Saturn's largest moon—Titan—was discovered on March 25, 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, and was the first satellite in the Solar System to be discovered after the Galilean moons of Jupiter. So, I guess it's not really its 352nd birthday after all, but the 352nd anniversary of its discovery. On the other hand, stars, planets, and moons don't really get a chance to celebrate their birthdays, so we'll give this one to Titan.






Titan has a lot of brothers and sisters too: Saturn has 34 known moons. Titan is one of the few moons in our solar system with its own atmosphere.

Titan itself is bigger than the planets Mercury and Pluto (in fact, didn't Pluto just get defrocked with the advent of the 10th planet?). The photograph above is, naturally, from the Cassini voyager.


Other recent All This Is That articles on the solar system:



The tenth planet a/k/a 2003 UB313
Poem: The Tenth Planet (Or An Incredible Facsimile?)

Fantastic new photos of Saturn from the Cassini-Huygens mission
N.S.A. bans photos of Saturn creatures - to avert a run on Depends incontinence products
Photograph Of Mimas, A Moon Of Saturn
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Index of Jack Brummet's Changes Poems


These poems are loosely based on the Book of Changes a/k/a I Ching. Numbers 29 - 47 are new since the last index (January 20th, 2007). There are about 17 left to write.


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Index of Jack Brummet poems on All This Is That

This index includes all the poems published here, except the Changes poems, which are indexed here. Only the top five poems are new since January 20, 2007. The other poems written since January 20 were all in the Changes Series.

Poem: Truism 1
Poem and Photograph/Collage: The Grey Convoy Flies Over the UFO Crash Site
Poem: Dual Mortality
Poem: Ephemeral Communications
Poem: toast
Poem: 3 A.M.
I'm agnostic about atheism
Snow Day In Kirkland, Washington
Squirrel poem
Going Mad Might Be Like A Bad Eight Track Tape Deck
Fall Haiku
Jericho & How Joshua Caused The Walls To Come Tumbling Down
The Orgy In The Pantry (starring Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker, Pilsbury Dough Boy, Aunt Jemima, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and more)
Poem:With Or Without The Words
Hello. . .My poem is. . .
You Gather Your Friends
The Way We Were
Scarred for life
The White Flag
The Cover-up
The Good German
Dream Of The Grey
Torches & Pitchforks
The Red Flag
Don't look back
The Tenth Planet (Or An Incredible Facsimile?)
Anger management is a slippery slope
the vault
The Moon's In Tune
Another politician resigns in disrace
Rub-a-dub
Tendrils
The Candidate
Reds Making Room
The revolt in heaven
Found Poem: The Richmond Hill Oracle
The Robot Wars
Ten ways of looking at lies
The Broken Chord
With our heads in the sand during the transit and eclipse
the sun plays its red song
Litany
Poem: The Developers
A raindrop's life
The mystery of the first amendment to the Ten Commandments
The Bay Of Delusion
Mad Song
Reasons To Keep On
Conspiracy Theory
The Moon Race
Mr. Flue's Grave In Hillcrest Cemetary, Kent, Wash.
The World Seems Especially Calming And Verisimilitudinous Today
Kent, Washington
Rollover
[It's the Lee Harvey Oswald smile]
Zombie Breakdown
Heaven
The Variations
You Rehearse Dying
Sonnet For Hari
Defensive Daydreaming
The Dream
Dogpaddling
The Prostethic Head & The Absence Of Blood
Tetuan - "No Paranoia, My Friend"
The Grey Ambassador
The Bad Movie
The Bucket
The Man In The Mirror
Liftoff
Optimism
Perspective
A Flight Of Swallows
Audioblog - The Prevaricator
Weather Report
Your Wooden Leg
The Revelations Sermon At The First Church Of The Mojo Apocalypse
Dosvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch
The Late Excavation
Jack Kerouac, Meet John Barleycorn

The Gideon Bible In My Nightstand
At The Acropolis
When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King
The sous-chef is a sociopath
James Wright
Falling
[Life Is Not A Hardy Novel]
Seven
Coyote Comes Home Like A Salmon
Shorts For Jerry Melin ca. about 1988
Bird
Monism
The Golden Rule
The Countdown
When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King
AT HILLCREST CEMETARY IN KENT, WASHINGTON, I WALK BY THE GRAVE OF SAM THE GRASSEATER
Notes On Flying
Daybreak
Explosions
Not Past Tense Yet
the glass is not half-full
It's Getting Crowded Here
Li Po In Disgrace
The Clock
A Love Song Bad Timing
The Killer
The Absence of Footprints
Growing Up
Gone Fishing
The M.D.s
Acrylic
The Marriage
Driving Home To Seattle, We Watch Deer Drinking from the Skookumchuck River
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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Poem: Changes 47/Exhaustion




1
You can't get up
You will get up
You can't get up

2
The lake is dry
Adversity is the reverse
Of success but leads to success

When you meet adversity
Your cheer is the source
Of later success

If adversity only bends you
It creates in you a power
To straighten up in time

3
Staring into a gloomy valley
You are oppressed by bonds
That can be loosened

You sit under a bare tree
And wait
For the lake to fill.
---o0o---

Those Actually Were UFOs Over Phoenix in 1997 Says Former Governor Symington



Former Gov. Fife Symington says now that those strange lights that appeared over Phoenix a decade ago were from another world and he admitted having a close encounter with an alien craft on March 13, 1997. At the time, however, he publicly mocked the very idea at a press conference. The Arizona Daily Star has an interesting article about his new revelations.

Symington, who was in his second term as governor of Arizona during the Phoenix Lights incident, recently told a UFO investigator making a documentary that he had kept quiet about his personal close encounter because he didn't want to panic the populace.

Symington repeated his story Thursday on CNN, saying the craft he saw was "enormous. It just felt other-worldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was other-worldly."
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