The Yellowstone Bomb

Have caught some recent news posts about the recent upswing in seismic activity in the park.... A fantastic and astonishingly beautiful place that has, underneath it, the potential to do a massive and permanent alteration of the world as we know it should the caldera pop its cork on anything like the scale that it did some 65-70 thousand years ago.
Saw a graphic of volcanic ejecta from various historic events and the potential effects are astounding in scope. In my lifetime I remember Mt Saint Helen unloading..... the estimate was approximately one cubic kilometer of volcanic ejecta from that event and I remember all of the news footage from various locales in the path of that as it fell to earth. The estimate from the geologic record from the last Yellowstone event is 1000 cubic kilometers of ejecta! You want to talk ruination of the planetary ecosystem along with the subsequent destruction of human civilization as we know it today.....All of our vaunted technological progress would vanish within the amount of time the ash/vapor cloud took to circle the planet. Jet travel would cease (jet turbines being unfriendly to particulates), cropland would be buried under feet of volcanic ash bringing on global starvation and, even if there would still be arable land, there would be seriously reduced sunlight to grow any crops. Ashfall would pollute watersheds reducing available water for human consumption and other industrial uses..... The list of effects cascades on down through pretty much everything we humans do.
Maybe Mama Nature will finally get pissed enough at this planetary rash called homo sapiens and thin things out, like it or not.

DetroitBDead

And I grew up there! I have watched that entire industry and culture go from a world leader to the decayed hulk it is today in less than fifty years. Throwing government (read taxpayer financed bonds sold to China) money at it is pretty much a disaster. Time to bite the bullet and bankrupt the whole damn thing. It will make a horrific mess in the short term but the potential for a rational reorganization of our domestic auto industry in the long term may well be worth it. The UAW, the supply chain and the dealership structure all need to go away as they are outdated and are all contributing factors to the current situation and a structured bankruptcy is the only way to break the back of the entrenched guardians of an outmoded way of doing business.
My grandparents are probably being thankful that they are long gone, they went through the big one in the 30's and told me stories as a kid..... Maybe my turn to get old and live on stone soup?

wow

The country is just that much further ahead now. We have collectively kicked the mortal dogshit out of Dubbya and his wretched cronies who did their level best to destroy everything that is righteous and kind about America.
Time to start over, boys and girls!
Let's do it right this time.

Halloween

A well and truly appropriate story for today:
I had to get up before dawn on Wednesday for work so I took my little el-cheapo digital alarm clock and set it for 5:05 am. Worked just fine, got up, turned the noisy fucker off, took it with me to the living room and set it down and consumed my coffee prior to departing for work. No big deal, the clock did its job and I was satisfied.
Now, move the time frame to Friday, 31 October. I didn't have to be to work until 11:00 am or so and had no reason whatsoever to set or even use that clock but, at 5:05 am, the damn thing started its beeping and woke me from a sound sleep, had to stagger out of bed, stumble into the living room, find the source of the noise in the dark, turn it off and collapse back into bed.
The kicker to this whole thing finally got through to me while I was drinking my coffee around 7:30 am..... it was the one year anniversary of the death of my friend Richard Eugene Mahanes, Jr. I am rather smirky and have been sort of cussing him for being so....... Rick. After a long battle, cancer got him at about 5:05 am, 31 October 2007 and I was there with him for the last week of his life. Leave it to whatever ghost of Rick to reach out from the great beyond to move a little switch on my candy-ass alarm clock just to fuck with my head because he can.
Miss Ya, Bro!

Just a tad.....

Am still adrift in a strange world, only hoping I can hold fast to the memory of those who have crossed the divide before me.

Scrofulous

Scrofulous

A word I have always carried about in the back of my mind for a moment of need.
Went wandering on the 'net for a definition & found this on Answers.com:

adj.
Morally degenerate; corrupt "a scrofulous, grim, darkly funny burlesque on art, celebrity, and love"
(Stephen Schiff)

An appropriate word to use in commentary regarding the current state of our less than polite presidential campaign.

Probley don't meen squat ta nobody en pertikler, but ah jest had my Satrdey made.
That dude on NPR, ya know that Garrison feller on Prarie Home Cmpeneyon, opndeded his raddeo show in Tulsa wit nun udder dan ELVIN BISHOP!!!!!

2strange2btru.....

A work in progress

All new to me, will have to figure out just how to use this site. Have plenty to say but, the how is still to come......