Friday, January 23, 2004

Weather: Day-um it's starting to snow again! We were planning to drive to Misssoula tomorrow too.
Let's see -- 3 hours, driving slow, starting at 8AM gets us there at 11 AM -- three hours of shopping -- 2 PM -- heading home, if the snow doesn't get worse, will get us back around 5PM. Yuck! Maybe we should just lock the cats in, give 'em extra food & cat litter, and stay over until Sunday.

Wildlife: A miniature owl and a Sharp-shinned Hawk were spotted around the bird feeders!

Charity Alert: The Breast Cancer Site : Fund Mammograms for Free

Media watch: It's the Howard Dean Show -- Yeeeeaaaahhhhh! He not only looks like "Bob" (without the pipe), but he was caught ranting like a SubGenius last Monday after his defeat in Iowa. USATODAY.com - Televised tirade in Iowa dogs Dean after caucuses
What's a SubGenius? The Church of the SubGenius
Mr. and Mrs. Dean were on ABC last night, facing accusations-thinly-disguised-as-questions from former Republican staffer Diane Sawyer. Dr. Dean (the male) sneaked in about 40 seconds of talk on issues, instead of the campaign "horse race."
Dr. Dean (the female) seemed like a nice lady, who likes her job treating patients in Vermont.
ABCNEWS.com : Transcript: Howard and Judy Dean
I'm not exactly sold on Dean's candidacy, but he HAS shown some guts.

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Weather: Warmer and clearing a little -- the sun came out for an hour at Noon!

Wildlife: Got to get some more cracked corn for the pheasants and doves. Yeah, the deer family will glean a little -- so what?

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site : Give Food for Free to Hungry People in the World

Media Watch: Indian movies for me! They last for three hours and more -- thank goodness for sub-titles. Last night I saw parts of two comedies -- one was a slapsick farce, and the other a black-comedy satire on the whole "Bollywood" genre of musical fantasies.
While eating dinner, I peeped in to The Temptations movie on VH1. I always wondered why Paul Williams did what he did, and what was up with Kendricks and Ruffin. A movie is rarely the whole truth, but the outline of this one resembles the few facts I happen to know.

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Weather: Regular snow, morning fogs, the official drought may be declared over soon.

Wildlife: There's nothing left but a few feathers of the goose that died on the Lake. Two eagles haunted the carcass, and the neighborhood dogs did the rest. The regular gang is visiting our feeders -- flickers, magpies, chickadees, finches, and a huge flock of doves. Our cat Merry Gold is killing some of the latter birds -- there's more than usual this year, and they're swarming around the neighbor's feeder too.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site : Feed an Animal in Need

Media Watch:
NFL Football has been fun. The physically-damaged Green Bay and Philadelphia squads finally lost to younger, healthier teams. The Super Bowl ought to be a slugfest between New England and Carolina this Sunday.

I wasn't feeling very good last night, so I just sat and watched all of the chapters of "Barbarians" on the History Channel. The sameness of the production got boring, but I was more annoyed with the shallowness of the stories they told.
I know it's rare when stories of the Goths and Huns are told at all on TV -- but leaving out characters like Stilicho and Genseric makes history sound like "The barbarians came. saw, and looted," without any variety or color.

FYI -- After it's general Stilicho was executed around 408 AD, the Western Empire had no standing army. Flavius Aetius, the last Roman military leader of any consequence, was still a youth, and was likely living as a diplomatic hostage with the Huns. The Visigoth king had no effective opposition to his gang of raiders when he marched on Rome. How the sack of Rome in 410 AD came to pass is a very human story that could have/should have been told at least as well as they told their stories about Attila the Hun.
In 455, two years after Attila's death, Geiseric led the Vandals into Rome, devastated the place, and installed a puppet government which substituted as a sad shadow of the Western Empire for one more generation.
His nation's march around the Western Mediterranian, and their decades-long domination of the region did more to degrade agriculture and commerce, and initiate the "Dark Ages," than any other phenomenon.
Pope Leo's diplomacy with Attila, which might be a legend anyway, has very little relevance when compared to the effects of Geiseric's conquests. If the legend is true, the Vandals just had more to loot when they attacked Rome, but they were coming anyway, no matter what the Pope did!

No, I didn't watch the state of the union address -- i didn't tune in to the Sci-Fi nework at all!

My wife and I have been indulging ourselves in Indian movies for some good times (more later).