Ghosts

I read Gilbert's "Nuremberg Diaries" back-to-back with Speer's "Spandau Diaries" six or seven years ago. I wish I'd gone back to them in 2003 to be reminded of this gem from the Nazi who cheated the hangman (a.k.a. Hermann Goering):

"...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Excepting the hard-core Republican Guard, my gut says that Joe Sixpack has largely arrived at the same conclusion.

As Dearest and I were on the road last week, I wondered aloud whether the Democratic Party (and any moderate Republicans who haven't been driven out for the heresy of using the padding between their ears) had dropped the proverbial ball on scrutizing the book-cooking for the Iraq War...or whether the case for impeachment was being built with quiet, but devastating thoroughness, leaving no 'i' undotted nor 't' uncrossed.

As much as I want to see a trial that would make Nuremberg look like traffic court, the thought of how much damage Dick "Mr. Potter" Cheney (avec eminence grise Karl "the Kingmaker" Rove whispering in his ear) could do before January 2009 nearly gives me a facial tic.

(Granted, it's not much to choose from, between malice and stupidity. But stupidity may be, ever so slightly, the lesser of the twin evils.)
...

There will be another, more personal post later in the week. I've let finals and other obligations drive my priorities these past few weeks. Including the "priority" of distilling some very convoluted emotions into words.

Another drive-by blogging

Just ran across this during the (belated) news-cruise: http://www.physorg.com/news97953648.html It's just mind-blowing to think that anything as perishable as cloth could survive for going-on-three millennia. History's flotsam can be so boggling...

A random act of violets

Our freaky Spring played hob with the lilacs, but the lovely white violets with their purple centers turned out in droves for it. Alas, the lawn (desperately) needed mowing, so I figured that picking them to digitally memorialize their beauty was better than the alternative dismembering.

A banal composition, but I'm still in "finals" mode. Enjoy.

A science "quickie"

The next week will be as ugly as the past few have been, but after that, there will be time for things other than duty.

In the meantime, here's a tardy dose of kewlness: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070423/sc_livescience/ancientrainforestrevealedincoalmine

Bee-bothered in Canada

(Actually, in the UK, too.) But the Toronto Star had two bee-related articles within two days, so I thought that I would pass them one, though I'm late to the party in doing so:

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/203524

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/203818

And in the little microcosm of critterhood that Dearest and I call home, it's not been a good day. Fortunately, the bees seem to be doing fine. (Although we had to install a birdbath to keep The Ladykins from drinking from the neighbor's birdbath the neighbor is honest-to-Pete allergic to stings.)

In this case, it was our third cat with a blocked bladder. We were scheduled to go out of town today, so if he hadn't made his troubles known, he'd probably be somewhere en route to dead right now, instead of being tranq'd and catheterized at the vet's.

Not long after arriving home, we discovered that one of the finches (Bella) has gone blind. That's a definitely a new one in nine years of keeping birds. At the moment, we're not convinced that blindness is her only problem. Regardless, she's in her own cage right now, and we're closely monitoring whether she's eating/drinking. Hopefully she can find her way around (particularly to the food and water dishes) in the small cage, something she may not have been doing so well in the big aviary.

I pretty much grew up having cats and assorted other critters around, but I am trying to harden myself against the assumption that I will always have them. It's not so much the ball-and-chain of the awesome responsibility that they place on one. It's mainly the cognitive dissonance of spending that much money on Science Diet, vet. bills, etc. when so many arguably better contributions to the planet-at-large could be made for the same money.

Okay, now where were we?

So. The peanut butter's been spread a little thin these last few weeks, but that's winding down for a week or so. There's less than a month to go until the dreaded final at school. I'm taking two days off from work to study for it, if that gives you any idea of how bad I think it's going to be.

No getting together with family this past Easter. (None of us professes to be Christian, but there's always the tyranny of tradition...) Which was just as well, as I had a fight to pick with Mom. When we did get on the same wire, the fight fizzled out before it started, mainly because I couldn't prove that she was snowing me. So Dearest and I hosted a friend "orphaned" by the fact that his wife and daughter were out of town with relatives. And that was wonderfully low-key. Would that all holidays were so relaxing.

A few minutes ago, NPR aired a feature on the Lebanese wine industry, which made me do a double-take. Makes me want to run down to the Food Coop right now and scan the wine aisle for a Lebanese vintage, just to support the cause. The gentleman who sells us the bulk of our wine kits told Dearest his anecdote of shipping wine- and beer-making supplies to a certain Muslim theocracy, by dint of labelling the wine kit "grape juice" and the malt and grains "horse feed". Feh. Talk about screwy priorities in this world. Th'way I see it, religion should be the controlled substance, not wine.

Feeling somewhat vindicated

Not being of a generation that can remember WWI and WWII, I've always thought that Daylight Savings Time was an incredibly stupid idea. Even stupider this year, when it was pushed back even further. As usual, the gits who gave us this piece of annoyance didn't bother to listen to anyone resembling an expert on the matter. And as a result the inconvenience (particularly for those of us in software) was for naught, as this article from Reuters documents. But the Flying Spaghetti Monster forfend that we put the conservation screws to the energy companies and auto manufacturers when everyone else can be jerked around instead.

If I had to pick a legislative brainchild that captures the essence of the George W. Bush era's band-aid-on-a-gangrenous knee contributions to law-making, this would be a viable candidate. Certainly not as splashy as the Patriot Act or the war authorization. Just the era in microcosm.

On a lighter note, I was flattered to be on the same page--figuratively speaking--with the wits who produce The Onion's "American Voices," particularly the first one in this series.