Random Thinking

Experts said this is going to be a very busy hurricane season. To which FEMA said, ‘Not for us.’
—Jay Leno

The International Herald Tribune published an article yesterday that makes me wonder if insanity runs rampant through the Bush administration.

U.S. government fights to keep meatpackers from testing all slaughtered cattle for mad cow

Yes, you read that correctly. A beef producer in Kansas called Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows to make sure that none of them have Mad Cow Disease before they send them for slaughtering. You might think that a supporter of capitalism would support the innovation of this company in finding a way to make their beef stand out from the crowd. You might think that the president would support a company wishing to insure that the product they sell to the public is safe. You would be wrong on both counts. The Bush administration is supporting the big beef producing companies who don’t want to test because it would be too expensive and they are afraid that if one company does it then they would all have to do it. So the Agriculture Department sued to stop them but a judge threw out the case back in March. The ruling was just about to take effect when the Agriculture Department appealed. In other words, they know they don’t have a case but are trying to delay the ruling as long as possible. This is how George Bush protects the American public.

Mad Cow Disease has killed 150 people worldwide including three Americans. Since it takes years for symptoms to develop, there is no way to know how many Americans are infected.

Every day, I am just happier and happier that Beth convinced me to be a vegetarian.

Murder She Wrote (Season 1)

My daughter and I watch this show at midnight every Saturday night. It is our opportunity to bond as together we make fun of what is one the worst television shows I have ever watched. Yes, I know I am going to be stomped on by the many fans of this horror but I can’t lie. I wasn’t a big television watcher back in the 80’s so if this is an example of great TV from then, I can only assume that TV was awful (or should I say offal).

The DVD set includes the pilot. How did this show ever get past the pilot? The inane plot, the overacting of Bert Convy and Arthur Hill, the underacting of Brian Keith, the lame attempts at comedy, and the incredibly doltish ending. It also creates a conundrum for the script writers as J.B. Fletcher gets her start when her nephew (who has a recurring role in the series) secretly sends her first manuscript off to the publishers. Future episodes, however, make J.B. out to be a modern day Agatha Christie with a boatload of novels and new ones on the way all the time (although how she finds the time to write a novel with all the murders going on around her is beyond me). And speaking about all the murders, how could one person possibly know so many murder victims? It’s frightening how often murders occur around this woman. If I found out that J.B. Fletcher was visiting my town, I would certainly head off on a vacation immediately!

It’s hard to pick out the worst episode of the actual first season but probably the last one, Funeral at Fifty-Mile could qualify although Murder to a Jazz Beat could give it a run for its money. As to the least worst, Death Takes a Curtain Call with William Conrad playing a major in the Russian army wasn’t bad. And there was actually one good episode in the season. Footnote to Murder with Paul Sand was actually quite funny and the mystery itself wasn’t bad. Sand does a great job playing the drunken poet Horace Lynchfield. But these are the exceptions. The typical episode features a confused plot performed by actors who once were famous (Cesar Romero, Jose Ferrer, Herschel Bernardi), who were never famous, or were on the D-List at the time. The best part of the episodes is the opening credits when you can play “try to recognize the name”. The worst part is the usually incredibly stupid joke that is inserted at the end of most episodes. They are generally not funny but more the type of joke that makes you roll your eyes in disbelief.

OK, I am willing to admit that Angela Lansbury is probably the reason that this show was on for so long. She generally plays the character of J.B. Fletcher quite well in spite of the terrible scripts that she must endure. Lansbury is a fine actor and she deserved much better than the words she is forced to regurgitate but she does a good job nonetheless. In fact, Lansbury keeps this from being a one-star rating, as tempted as I am to give it only one star.

Anyway, in spite of all this, I can recommend this show as a guilty pleasure. It is so bad that it is good (well, sometimes).

Helen and Andy and their three beautiful children came over to our house to visit last night at about 7PM (actually I picked them up from the train station). They are, of course, friends from Nottingham, England who we met through downsyn.com. The kids (AND the adults) were all tired after a long day of sightseeing and although Kenneth’s mom, Maureen, invited us over, it was a little too late and everyone was tuckered out.

We got to have a nice chat with them, though. Rachel is a charming little girl, Matt is very sweet, and Hannah is a little darling. Matt was quite taken by our fish tank. Mikey was not in the best form, unfortunately. At first he was very sweet and seemed to fall in love with Rachel. He signed “girl” which usually means Beth but when Beth tried to go with him he just pushed her out of the way and went to Rachel. So Rachel and Mikey sat on the couch together. Mikey offered her some yogurt (which she didn’t want) and then some cheese crackers which she did want. At first he was a little gentleman but as he got over-stimulated with all the new faces he started pushing and becoming aggressive. Part of it was that it was approaching his bedtime and it had been a long day for him (he fell asleep in 15 minutes when I brought him up) and part of it was all the new people.

Rachel and I were the first ones up this morning so we had a nice chat about school and dogs and what she likes to watch on the telly. Everyone got up a little after that and the kids went for a swing with Andy. Mikey had to get ready for school and catch the bus so he wasn’t able to play on the swings. We got them off to the train station for the 10:30 AM train without any problems. Except that they forgot their camera! Yikes!!! So Michel is going to take the train into Manhattan later and give them their camera. What a good egg Michel is!!!

Anyway, their trip to the USA is rapidly coming to an end with their flight back from Philadelphia tomorrow. I hope that they had a great time in the US. It was fantastic meeting them and we hope to see them again not too far in the future.

Beth had been looking forward to this concert for weeks. Some of her favorite Indie groups including Nightmare of You and I am the Avalanche (along with four other groups) were playing at a temple in Merrick! Tickets were only $12 per person for four hours of music at a place where there are no bad seats… well, there weren’t any seats at all to be specific. It was like seeing all these bands at a club.

Beth and her buddy hung out right by the stage while I stayed off in the background. They happened to find themselves right by the door where the groups went on and off stage so they got to talk to a lot of the band members. The guy above (Brandon from Nightmare of You) was very nice to them and gave them each a hug and signed his autograph. Beth’s friend asked him what group he was in and he replied, the group whose t-shirt you are wearing!!!

Staying in the back, while Beth met the lead singer of the group, I got to meet his grandmother! How appropriate is that? Anyway, she was very nice and was really proud of her grandson. And even though the bands were EXTREMELY loud, they were actually all pretty good and everyone had a great time. Beth wants me to bring her to another concert June 9th at the same place.

Maureen Dowd’s column in Sunday’s NY Times is about Bush’s arguing that we must stay in Iraq because of Al Queda. But Bush is lying to us and his lies start with Al Queda. Back in 2002, Bush told us this about Osama bin Laden:

We haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run.

The man who is the leader of the organization that organized the worst attack on American soil isn’t someone that Bush is concerned about. And today, nearly six years after the attack, he still is alive and free. But Bush tells us that we invaded Iraq because of Al Queda. At the Coast Guard Academy graduation, Bush said:

Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people we must fight the terrorists where they live so they don’t have to fight them where we live.

So why did we invade Iraq? Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Al Queda had no bases in Iraq. They were and still are in Afghanistan. Is Al Queda in Iraq today? To some extent they are, but Iraq is a secular nation and once we are gone and their civil war is over, Al Queda will not be welcome there. The people of Iraq ultimately want peace but in order to get peace their civil war must come to an end. We need to also keep in mind that Al Queda isn’t a tightly controlled organization and isn’t suing people for using their name. Many of the groups fighting us in Iraq call themselves Al Queda because they know that name is scary to us.

So on this Memorial Day, let us keep in mind that when we ask our soldiers to make the ultimate sacrifice, that it is important that we have clear goals and objectives and that those goals are worth the lives of our soldiers. Let us be able to say that those who died gave their lives for the betterment of our nation and the world.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer

I received this book as a gift from a friend (thanks Map) and knew nothing about it when it arrived. The front of the book has a red hand with the name of the book and the author’s name along with the words “a novel”. The back of the book has two reviews. The inside front jacket has another short blurb and a summary of the book. The inside back jacket has the required picture of the author and a brief biography. Now take my advice. Don’t read the blurb… it gives too much away. This book is best read as a blank slate. That is how I read it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although maybe enjoyed isn’t the right word. Wait. This doesn’t seem like much of a review. Let me start again.

This book is about autism, and the World Trade Center, and family, and the bombing of Dresden, and learning to live with loss, and learning to forgive. The book is about people who have been broken… broken by their experiences in a cruel world full of fear and hatred. But they learn to cope with their pain by searching for meaning in their loss. That is what Foer uses as the basis to build this amazing story. The first chapter of the book starts with the words, “What about a teakettle?” By the end of the first chapter I was hooked. I turn to a random page and find these words:

I thought, I’m the one who’s supposed to be crying.”Don’t cry,” I told her. “Why not?” she asked. “Because,” I told her. “Because what?” she asked. Since I didn’t know why she was crying, I couldn’t think of a reason.

And these:

At first I thought I’d walked into a tree, but then that tree became a person, who was also recovering on the ground, and then I saw that it was her and she saw that it was me…

It is so well written and although the story is really a fairy tale more than a novel, the characters are so real and so believable in their pain that the whole thing holds together beautifully. This is a book that I treasure having read.

I am reading the book, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and there was a little part that I wanted to share…

The narrator of the story is a young boy named Oskar. Oskar has gone upstairs to visit the old man who lives in the apartment above him. The man, who is over 100 years old, was a newspaper correspondent and tells Oskar this story…

“I once went to report on a village in Russia, a community of artists who were forced to flee the cities! I’d heard that paintings hung everywhere! I heard you couldn’t see the walls through all of the paintings! They’d painted the ceilings, the plates, the windows, the lampshades! Was it an act of rebellion! An act of expression! Were the paintings good or was that beside the point! I needed to see it for myself, and I needed to tell the world about it! I used to live for reporting like that! Stalin found out about the community and sent his thugs in, just a few days before I got there, to break all of their arms! That was worse than killing them! It was a horrible sight, Oskar: their arms in crude splints, straight in front of them like zombies! They couldn’t feed themselves, because they couldn’t get their hands to their mouths! So you know what they did!”

“They starved?”

“They fed each other! That’s the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!”

John Brandrick, a 62 year old British man, was suffering from severe stomach pains back in February 2005. Mr. Brandrick went off to the Royal Cornwall Hospital where an ultrasound was done to see what was going on inside of him. The results came back and it was bad news for Mr. Brandrick. He had pancreatic cancer and had less than six months to live.

Mr. Brandrick decided to make the most of his last few months on earth. First he quit his job and gave away all his winter clothes since he wouldn’t be seeing another winter. Then he took his savings and spent it on vacations and fancy dining. As his six months came to an end, all Mr. Brandrick had left was his house and a suit to be buried in and not much else. But he didn’t die. So off he went back to the hospital where after a bunch of more tests they realized that Mr. Brandrick didn’t actually have cancer. All he had was a little pancreatic inflammation. Mr. Brandrick was, of course, happy to be given a second chance but rather annoyed that he had spent all his money. But he is being a good sport about it. He doesn’t want to sue the hospital but he does think they should give him something back.

The hospital’s response:

“Whilst we do sympathize with Mr. Brandrick’s position, clinical review of his case has not revealed that any different diagnosis would have been made at the time based on the same evidence.”

So the hospital is saying that they intend on continuing to tell people with inflammation that they have 6 months to live? Is it really standard practice to write off your patients based on one test? I can’t believe that this could possibly be considered good quality care. So I hope Mr. Brandrick does get something from the hospital and I hope he has a long and happy life.

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