March 18, 2011 archive

from firefly 18.3.11

Don’t Watch This Video

If you’ve eaten in the past few years…

Dreaming a Better Me



Scarlet Letter

Since I turn 63 in 16 days, I have found myself reflecting on my past history.  This essay has grown out of that.

As a young lad I was very unhappy.  I didn’t know totally why that was so, but there were conditions that I knew contributed to it.  My parents never seemed happy with their lives.  Even times where celebration was the expected, like Christmas, turned into times of strife.  In later years I have wondered if my father didn’t suffer from some sort of PTSD, having been a B-17 bombadier during WW II.

Whatever.  I guess I turned to my dream life to escape the unhappiness.  I mean, it wasn’t an intentional choice, but I discovered that I really never wanted to wake up in the morning…to cease being who I was in my dreams and resume being the me who was so dismal.

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

And these articles-

Along with Translator’s weekly feature Popular Culture.

Special live blogging of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Fallout has reached Southern California! UPDATE!

UPDATE:  “Japan raised the nuclear alert level from a four to a five, on par with Three Mile Island. This decision has shocked many nuclear experts who thought it should be higher.”  Please see my Comment below:  “Thanks, RiaD!”

(cross-posted at firefly-dreaming.com)

From the AP:  Diplomat says minuscule fallout reaches Calif.

– 1 hr 50 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – Government experts in the United States are keeping a close eye on any radioactive particles that could travel from Japan, and they may already be seeing trace amounts.

A diplomat who has access to radiation tracking by the U.N.’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization told The Associated Press in Vienna that initial readings show tiny amounts of radiation have reached California. But it’s not dangerous in any way – “about a billion times beneath levels that would be health threatening,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the organization does not make its findings public.

U.S. government experts also insist there’s no threat to public health from the plume, but they are still closely monitoring the situation with detection monitors deployed along the West Coast. . . . (emphasis mine)

Obama also sought to reassure the nation:

Obama’s statement came as he tried to reassure a worried nation that “harmful levels” of radiation from the Japanese nuclear disaster are not expected to reach the U.S., even as other officials conceded it could take weeks to bring the crippled nuclear complex under control. . . .

I went to NukeFree.Org, which has on-going updates of the whole situation.  I noted the following — and while I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the content and I confess utter ignorance in the premises, I do know there are always attempts to downplay bad situations.    

Visions of Oppenheimer’s Afterlife

From this plane in The Afterlife it’s impossible for me to know where my essence hovers; whether it is hell or heaven…or just an in-between place I have created from my imagination.  I sense, more than see the local Universe; the tug of force from black holes almost causes a sensation at the back of my head…or what might have been my head.  The sounds that emanate from stars almost unimaginable distances away resonate inside me, providing diversion at times from the over-arching images that dwell within me like live beings.

This molten mushroom from hell, growing and expanding from the initial hoops of light energy, then folding in on itself, boiling, roiling…Prometheus unbound; in our intellectual hubris, did we create this in defiance of the gods?  What will be our punishment, and will all mankind share our resultant penalty for all eternity?

I can mind- link to that day at Trinity and the man that I was then, and remember him thinking, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…”  Our glasses were not enough; we threw up our hands against the flash, protecting our eyes as we might thrust crosses toward vampires, sneaking peeks until the first flash resolved into the steaming organic shape it became as it grew and morphed into a vegetable gone mad.



(by permission of Anthony Freda, www.anthonyfreda.com)

Dear Mike,

I miss you so much I cannot begin to describe it. Hours drag like eons, yet days pass in a blink. I guess because the hours all seem part of the same day, last Friday when you left us.

I can’t go back and do the show yet, babe. I KNOW, I know, you don’t have to look over your glasses at me like I’m an idiot. You TOLD me I had to keep doing them, that it would make you feel doubly worse if you took that away from me too. You told me you didn’t want to live out your last days like we were all just on death-watch while you were alive. Besides, you really wanted to watch basketball.

We talked about this so much, how I had to buck up and make a life, and I will. But of course, I wish I had been in the room, not just found you. I mean, I ate dinner with you after the show, and you wanted to nap out. Then I went back to the jam room to listen to the show, and fuck around online, and checked like I always did every 15 minutes. You were gone. You told me “not today” damn you… or was that the day before? You asked me in the morning, “Do you really, really love me?” something crazy but so full of genuine childlike need of reassurance, I held you and rocked you for an hour and told you over and over how much I did. That alone should have told me it was going to be the day. But your mind was getting fuzzy from the cancer. And later, you were just normal again.

I miss everything about you, baby. Everything. Ok, stop looking at me like that – not the fucking paperwork pack rat thing, but everything else. Heh. Dick. Look, you’re not even here and you’re making me laugh at myself. I was ready for the mountain of hell financial clusterfuck, I was prepared for the horror of the calling it in process, though I’m still kinda pissed you didn’t get the DNR order in order BEFORE you left. What I wasn’t ready for is the slow agonizing empty empty empty missing you. Evenings are so bad. I’m driving people crazy keeping them on the phone about anything at all, not to fall into the void of despair that the lonely for you made.

Do me a favor, keep visiting Jake in his dreams like you have, just normal stuff, normal conversations. He likes it. My parents pop into mine all the time. We just talk about the daily stuff for a while. I dig that I told you to and you are. Me, on the other hand, I’m not ready. I wouldn’t want to wake up and would be awful upon waking from the brutal reality. Give me time, babe.

At least you still listen when I write, and I can see and hear you now. Ok, tell them not literally, I get it already. But imagining what you would say helps. I think they’ll understand.

Oh, and hey! It was 70 yesterday and I painted my toenails for you just like we joked about for months. You’d have laughed your ass off.

I have my girls all coming to spend the night all the way from Redford; Gwen, Marie, Kerri and maybe Amy to have a yahtzee tournament with Linda and I to help me get through the first Friday. You’d have flirted and loved your harem for an hour, then bolted like the estrogen-overdosed man you were for the other room and basketball. IOW, you ain’t missing nothing tonite…. but we will be missing you.

Love,

Diane

Glowing Radioactive Troll

From David Edwards at RawStory:

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter joined Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Thursday night to discuss her new piece titled “A Glowing Report on Radiation.”

“At some level-much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government – radiation is good for you,” she told O’Reilly.

This video is from Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, broadcast March 17, 2011.

Reflections: Memoirs of my Father:

Hi, RiaD.  I crossposted this essay from firefly-dreaming.com.  

Ten years ago, on January 18th, 2001, my beloved father passed away after a long illness (He’d been sick for a year and a half) prior to his death, his funeral, and the big celebration of his life as an exceptionally great person, a fantastic freelance photojournalist, a great conversationalist, and a big jazz buff.  He was also a great tennis player, but a horrible punster, yet,  he had a wonderful sense of humor, which often helped pull people through.

My dad was always an exuberant, vigorous man, who enjoyed life to the fullest, showed a true curiosity and interest in what made people tick,  always walked tall, and had a twinkle in his eye.  Although his work as a freelance photojournalist often took him to various parts of the country, he was always there for the rest of the family, through thick and thin.  

Six In The Morning

‘Everyone at the power plant is battling on, without running away’



Glenda Kwek

March 18, 2011 – 3:54PM


“Please dad come back alive,” the tweet read.

As foreigners boarded charter flights to leave Tokyo amid radiation fears from a troubled nuclear power plant in Japan’s north, 180 workers toiled tirelessly at the facility in a race to stop a full meltdown.

Messages from the Fukushima Fifty – named because they work in shifts of 50 people – are emerging a week after the massive earthquake and tsunami damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The workers have been battling to keep fuel rods in the plant’s reactors from overheating and melting down by pumping seawater manually into the cores.

Biden & Solis: ‘We Need Collective Bargaining’

Last night at 6pm est the AFL-CIO along with the SEIU, the National Education Association (NEA), Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the Teamsters held a virtual town hall meeting for some forty five minutes.

I was hoping to catch it so to archive, no luck with the program I have while live. Then was hoping the Unions would and have it posted up, no luck as to the whole call in Town Hall at least so far, nothing on any of the sites except a quick writeup.

Low and behold the Huff post did catch the comments by Vice President Biden. This first part is what I posted on my site, the taped comments were just added, all below the fold:

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

–Saul Bellow



Stylish 4

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