Mike

For Pops, but I'll share with the class

Sometime in the early 80's I made the mistake of bad-mouthing Ronald Reagan about something or other while talking to my mother on the phone.  She quickly snapped back, "At least Reagan is finally doing something for rich people and your father and I are rich!"  I've voted Republican in every Presidential election since then.

Call Homeland Security!

The FUDs, which I now know are terrorist Muscovy ducks, are back.

They disappeared in October and I was hoping that they had become a pre-hibernation appetizer for the alligators, but evidently not.

And then there were two

John Edwards bailed without endorsing anyone.  Scuttlebutt has it that he's trying to negotiate the best possible deal he can get from the Obama and Clinton campaigns in exchange for his endorsement.  A VP nod again?  A promised cabinet position?  (Hey, he's a class-action plaintiff's lawyer.  He's not going to walk away without his cut of the settlement.)

Logic says that the Edwards' campaign, such that is was, was more aligned with the insurgent Obama campaign than with the establishment-creature Clinton campaign, but when did logic become a term in the election equation?  All too often politics trumps principle.

Before you ask, yes, I've become that cynical.

Still Alive

The longer you put something off, the harder it gets to do it!  I have finally collected pictures from everyone (since I left the camera battery in Charleston and just got it back) and I now I can post!

Where to start... where to start?

Meet my crew!!!  From L to R:
Me, Julie, Chelsea (my roomie), Jess, & Lisa

This was our first night out as a group!  We went to the Orientation Week (O-Week) Toga Party!!!

A few nights later we went to the Masquerade Mixer and hung out with a few new friends we'd met that week!

Meet Jonathan & Ben!  They're brothers!  They're from Sydney!
There are a few more key players (Jack, Max, Stu, and more) that I don't have pictures of yet, but I'm sure you'll meet them later, so enough about that...

Let me show you some of my campus!

Beautiful, isn't it?

Anyhow.  There is so much more to show, but it will have to wait!!!

-- Justine

I'll always wonder what happened to Philip and his grandmother

Ever since I moved from the outer burb of Summerville to Charleston and switched my phone service over from Bell South to my cable company I get 5 or 6 wrong number calls a week.  When I ask what number the caller is trying to reach, it turns out to be nothing close to my number.  Except for the drunk guy looking for Sheila, most callers say "Sorry to have bothered you" when I tell them that they have the wrong number.  The others just hang up.  Until yesterday.

When I answered the phone (caller ID said it was a local number so what the hell), an elderly woman asked:

Is Philip there?

I'm sorry but you must have the wrong number.

Are you sure?

Yes, I'm pretty sure.  There's no Philip here.

He left me this number.

What number is that?

873-xxxx

That's my number but there's no Philip here.  He must have written the number down wrong.

He wrote it down twice.  Are you sure that Philip isn't there?

Yes mam, I'm sure.

Well if he gets there will you tell him to call his grandmother?

She phoned back 30 minutes later and the conversation went about the same as before.

The phone rang again 30 minutes after that.  I recognized the number so I decided to let the machine get it.

Philip, this is your grandmother.  Please phone me.  It's very important.

She never phoned after that.

Overheard

Have you ever overheard a snatch of a conversation and wondered what the context was, or what it could have been?

"I know you said that we should see other people but I want to see you again."

Champ and I heard that during our walk this morning.  A man my age or a bit younger was standing in his garage, with the garage door open, talking on his cell phone.  We pretended that we didn't hear it.

A writer could turn that into the opening line of a comedy or one of the last lines in a very sad story.

Politics are so yesterday

We now resume our regular postings.

Post primary rant

Several months ago I said that I’d start blogging about politics again since it’s been so much fun in the past.  Since then, zilch.  That’s mostly because I’ve been so disgusted with the political process in this election cycle that words have failed me.  The South Carolina Democratic primary ignited a spark, just a spark, in me so I’ll cut loose with one last rant before sheathing my pen (or is that pixels?) until October, if then.  Before I start you need to know my demographics if you don't already know.  I’m a 59-year old, white, single dad, pragmatic libertarian (not loony Libertarian) who mostly votes Republican.

<rant>

Saturday was just the second time I’ve voted in a Democratic presidential primary.  The first was in 1992.  I voted for Paul Tsongas, hoping to help derail Bill Clinton.  I like to think that I was one of the first to realize that Clinton had no moral center.  The only reason he wanted to be President was because he wanted to be President and that he’d do and say anything to win.  You and I never entered his mind.  His goals since then have been just as self-centered - win re-election, win a Nobel Peace Prize (sorry Bill, Al got that), and now help Hillary win so that he, not necessarily she, can be back in the White House.

This year I opted not to vote in the Republican primary (partly due to lack of interest) and instead voted for Barack Obama in the Democratic primary, hoping to help derail Hillary Clinton.  Do you see a pattern here?  Before anyone can comment, I have no problem voting for a woman for President.  Just not Hillary.  She has all of Bill’s faults.  Witness her attempt to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations after the DNC said that they wouldn't be.  Does Howard Dean have the balls to stand up to the Clinton machine?  I doubt it.

An aside.  While watching the returns come in I switched often between the three news channels to see what they had to say.  All three - MSNBC, CNN, and Fox - had a bevy* of news anchors and political analysts chiming in.  I was struck by how may of them (black, white, left, right) on MSNBC and CNN (channels often accused to tilting left) slammed the Clintons (notice how often it’s been the Clintons plural and not Hillary singular) for their sleazy tactics before the primary, how many slammed Bill Clinton for his last-minute comparison of Obama’s expected victory in SC to Jesse Jackson’s wins in ’84 and ’88 (code for ‘it’s just a black thing”), and how may questioned Hillary’s ability to be the chief executive if she has to rely on Bill to win.  The odd thing is that I heard nothing of that from the talking heads on Fox (often accused of tilting very right and not being “fair and balanced”.)  Does Fox think that Hillary will be a bigger target for Republicans than Barack would be in November?

Another aside.  Because Champ usually wakes me up before sunrise does I tend to watch the BBC World News on BBC America every morning while I’m having my first two cups of tea.  It covers news that happened around the world the night before and not just news about Britney, Lindsey, Hillary, Barack, Mitt, or John (either John).  During a commercial break the other day I flipped channels (I have a short attention span) and caught the beginning of an interview on Fox with Kinky Friedman, everyone’s favorite Texas Jewboy.  He said two things that I couldn’t agree with more.  He said that we need candidates that are willing to put principle before party and that we need statespeople (he said statesmen but I’m being PC) who think of the next generation and not politicians who think of the next election.  I doubt that I will live long enough to see that.

The good news in Charleston today, other than it’s bright, warm, and cloudless, is that the circus has finally left town.  No more robo-calls, direct mailings, or local TV and radio ads, at least until the fall.  Roadside signs are now just litter that the city, and not the campaigns, will probably have to pick up and take to the landfill.

I’m Mike and I approved this message.

</rant>

*I’ll send a book of my choice from my extensive collection (trust me, shelves cover many walls in my house and I have books in boxes in the storage unit) to anyone who can come up with a more descriptive and entertaining collective noun for TV’s talking heads than “bevy”.  There's no deadline and I'm the sole judge.

Australia here I come. I hope that you are ready for me.

✓  Passport
✓  Flight
✓  Visa
✓  Hotel (Ocean view!)
✓  Rental Car

Charleston to Atlanta on April 18.  Atlanta to Los Angeles.  LA to Auckland, NZ.  By the time I stagger off the flight from Auckland to the Gold Coast (OOL), it will be 31 hours later (a bunch more is you count the time change).

Home again on May 4. Gold Coast to Auckland, Auckland to LA, the redeye from LA to Dulles, Dulles to Charleston.

This is the most expensive vacation that I’ve ever taken.  I hope that Justine is worth it.  LOL.  (Of course she is!)

Maybe I’ll  get lucky on one of the flights.

If you are wondering, there's a reason why I deleted the post about the wedding.

Sometimes things get complicated.  Don't worry.  The wedding is still on.  (Not mine, in case you were worried.)

Yikes!

I got the bill for my home owner's insurance yesterday.  I don't have a mortgage so I have to pay it all at once.  The good news is that the premium didn't go up this year.  The bad news is that it didn't go down despite the slump in house prices.  Hugo hit in 1989.  Will the insurance companies never let us forgot it?

Please God, make them stop

Because I'm a hermit I rarely get calls from anyone other than the kids on the house phone.  Over the last three days I've gotten so many calls that caller ID has overrun its 40-call memory.  (Four in the last hour.)  A few are from unknown number and a few are from area code 000.  The rest are from out-of-state area codes.  I feel sure that all of them are from someone's campaign.  Several are from 703-961-1077, which has already been outed as calls from Common Sense Issues, a group that push-polls for Huckabee and slams the closest target - in this case it's Fred Thompson.

The Republicans vote tomorrow which would normally put an end to the robo-calls.  Unfortunately the Democrats don't vote until next Saturday.

Feline Friday

This is the best screen shot that I could get

Justine has rapidly adjusted to life in Australia.  She's joined a campus club called B.A.S.I.C.

Beer Appreciation and Social Intercourse Club.

That's my girl!

I've always said that clowns are evil

Hospitals that decorate their children's wards with paintings of clowns scare the crap out of the kids.

In related news, Hillary scares the crap out of half of all adults.

Rudy scares the crap out of the other half.

Sure, his name is Mike but is he as nice as I am?

Is Mike Bloomberg running for President?  Will I vote for him or just blog about it?  Stay tuned.

This is so fucking cool!

Before Justine left for Australia she set me up with an iChat account because she knows computers and I don't.  We hooked up this morning and it was like seeing and talking with her as if she was in the next room.  I was expecting some sort of satellite delay but we talked realtime.

A screen shot:

BTW, my head isn't that big.  It just looks that way on TV.

Where's Justine?

Her room is empty and her bed is stripped.  She's supposed to be here.

The only "near libertarian" candidate has left the building

Bill Richardson calls it quits.

That's $100 down the drain.

For the Geezer

My simple pork tenderloin rub:

1/2 t salt
1/2 t ground sage
1/4 t freshly ground pepper
1/4 t minced bay leaf
1 minced garlic clove
a dash of allspice

Rub it in 24 hr before you grill it.

If I had my way...

There whould be an extra circle in Hell for people who cross-post their "tweets" to their blogs.

Trust me, your lives aren't that interesting.

I didn't do it

You didn't see me do it.  You can't prove anything.

A last goodbye

In all of the panic yesterday to get Justine on her flight to Chicago, I forgot to post this.

I hope that Brian's happy

Snow flurries in Berkeley County.

Nothing but sunny skies and a few fluffy clouds here West of the Ashley.

Somewhere over the Pacific in a 747

So far Justine has made it from Charleston to Chicago and Chicago to San Francisco.  She's now on her way to Sydney.  She should arrive about 3:30 this afternoon (7:30 AM tomorrow, Sydney time).  About three hours later she'll fly to Cairns, near the Great Barrier Reef, for an orientation meeting for all new international students.  Sunday afternoon (her time) she'll fly to Brisbane and then make her way to the university in Robina.

Justine says goodbye to Champ

She won't see him again until next December.