FROM THE HEADLINES

President tells New Orleans "Better days are ahead"
Are you kidding, two years after Katrina and he has the balls
to say something like that AFTER his administration fucked
up when they really had a chance to help!!

Yeah, better days are ahead...soon as you leave office!

And on a lighter note: Rabies survivor is starting college,
3 years after a bat bite she survived without vaccinations.

Yeah, but watch out when she gets PMS!!

ST AUGUSTINE (THE SAINT NOT THE CITY)

Apparently today is his day, and rumor has it he is the patron

saint of brewers.

 But, besides that,he was also a supremely intelligent man. 

Augustine took the view that the Biblical text should not be

interpreted literally if it contradicts what we know from science

and our  God-given reason. Pretty damn smart for someone

who lived between 354-430 A.D. And obviously a whole lot smarter

than many of today's 'Christians', who must have been in the wrong

line when God was handing out reason...

 

And he may very well have enjoyed beer...so that's two for our side!!

 

LAST 6 BOOKS READ

1) Water For Elephants by Sara Green: Wow - what a great book! My friend Jenny loaned it to me because it sounded interesting. Think depression era circus life mixed with murder and
a great plot twist at the end! Most of the events in the book were based on true stories &
events from real circus performers...and apparently, if someone tells you the worked
at the circus carrying water for elephants...they're full of shit!

2) Beauty & the Beast by Ed McBain: Another Matthew Hope Calusa,FL novel. Did the Beast
kill Beauty? I'll never tell.

3) New Destinies vol.IV Summer`88 by Jim Baen, ed: SF & Non-SF stories and articles about women warriors & nuclear winter, among others. This series was an attempt to publish a
magazine format in a paperback book size.

4) Deadlock by Sara Paretsky: A V.I. Warshawski novel about a female P.I. This series novel
was the book the movie 'V.I.Warshawski' was based on, though Kathleen Turner didn't
seem to fit the character the way she was written in the book. But the book involves the
death (was it murder or an industrial accident?) of V.I.'s cousin 'Boom-Boom', the retired hockey player.

5) Booknotes by Brian Lamb: Based on the C-SPAN show of the same name, the book
features non-fiction authors, both well and little-known discussing how they came
to write a/the book they are known for.

6) Blind Voices by Tom Reamy: Evelyn falls for the Magic Boy in the second circus book
in this half-dozen. What's the secret of the Minotaur,the Gorgon, the Mermaid, & the
Snake Goddess? You'll never guess. (Very odd the way there's 2 circus books in this lot,
not sure how that happened, probably the only circus fiction I've ever read...
player.

SNIGGLEFRITZ

Say what?Well, when I was young, that's what my Dad woulf
call me every so often. And I actually hadn't remembered that
until this morning when I was reading my All About Beer magazine.
(Great beer magazine - check them out at www.allaboutbeer.com )

But anyway, there was an article about songs and beer, and the author
mentioned a German children's ditty-turned drinking song called the
Schnitzelbank Song that had some sort of rhyming pairs of words. Well,
one of the rhyming words was Schnickel Fritz (or Schnickelfritz)
which apparently is a slang-ish term for 'mischievous child'

And I'm sure Dad picked it up from 'Uncle' Helmut who was a business
associate in Germany who helped with my adoption (and for some reason
I remember visiting his house and playing with his son Wolfgang in their
empty built in swimming pool!)

Go figure the items our brains retain and dredge up at the strangest times...

IRONY STRIKES

Well, this has got to be the ironic item of the week.

3 years ago a major hurricane hit Cozumel Mexico and pretty

much flattened the major cruise line destination. So the cruise

lines got together and built a cruise port in the middle of the jungle

coast - Costa Maya. So this morning, another major hurricane hits

Mexico and comes ashore in...

...Costa Maya.

Do hurricanes suck or what? (No actually they blow,big time)

DREAM WEAVER

So I woke up this morning with a snippet of dream still

in my mind. I was talking to Phyllis and telling her "look, there's

no zeppelin on the back of this $5 bill". Which was a normal looking

U.S. $5 bill on the front, but apparently not on the back. Oddly enough,

I'm pretty sure that the picture of the zeppelin was the iconic

Hindenburg picture taken when it went up in flames in New Jersey!

Aren't dreams funny though; I still remember having a dream when

I was in Jr or Sr High School. I woke up sure that I had found

a $10 in the pocket of my pants, and went through all the

pants I had hanging in the closet looking for it!

I wonder if the $10 bill would have had a zeppelin on it also...

ADIOS KARL ROVE

And good riddance...
but what's Dubya going to do without a brain?

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as President
of these United States. And I remember being thrilled
by it, because we all knew he was no good, and it was
nice to be proven right. While at UConn I worked as
a volunteer for Gene McCarthy, even though I wasn't
a citizen at the time. What a heartbreak when he was
crushed in the election.

But we were right after all, and when Tricky Dick
resigned, we thought it would make all the difference
in the world.

Unfortunately, it didn't...

LAST 6 BOOKS READ

1) Miss Marple:The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie: The little old English lady who solved most crimes sitting at home and chatting with friends. Good stuff, and back then it was original.

2) The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum: Another spy thriller by one of the masters.

3) Rules Of Prey by John Sandford: Lucas Davenport, the rich police detective, goes after
a serial killer. Not bad

4) Tinker,Tailor,Soldier,Spy by John LeCarre: A George Smiley novel by another master of the genre. What happens when spies can't trust their own spymasters?

5) Allan Quatermain by H Rider Haggard: Back to Africa with the hero from King Solomon's Mines.

6) The Gods Of War created by Christopher Stasheff: A pointless round robin story of the new
god of war 'Tek' (technology-get it?) and his learning of all the old gods of war, Thor, Ares, etc
for no particular reason. First of a series; you'll never see the second one on this list!

GRAMMAR SCHOOL FLASHBACK

Does anybody remember this little ditty?:

"Great big globs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
mutilated monkey meat,
chopped up chicken feet.
One port pan of all-purpose porpoise pus,
swimming around in pink lemonade...
(...and me without a spoon)"

Don't ask me why that popped into
my head, but thought I'd share it with
you since it did. Something we used
to sing in grammar school for some reason.
Probably because it was grammar school!

RYLEY EDWARD ELLIOTT - HI EVERYBODY!

Hi, I'm Ryley, and the other handsome fellow
is my grandpa, you may know him as
Heathcliff. See my big feet, you know what that means, don't you?
Well, I don't, I'm still too young...

I was born on 7/28/07, and I weighed
9 lbs,1 oz and was 20-3/4 inches long.
That's why I was born by Caesarian, just
like that Julius fellow they named it after.











That's me and my dad. I'm only


15 minutes old, pretty cool, huh?

See me sleeping, but not for long!

(Aren't I handsome...I come from a long

line of handsome guys)