Brian’s Morning Newsletter for July 1st 2009

Good morning!
All kinds of good things happening on our forum. I like this link view recent posts Let’s see, what is happening this morning, besides the fact that I have been awake since 4:00? Amazingly nothing. I had a great day at work yesterday, which lately for me means three straightforward jobs and I was out of there by 4:30. Didn’t get rained on, blown off the ladder, except for the fact that it was pretty hot, it was what I hope every work day will be. I’m still waiting to hear about my turbocharger rebuild guy. I can only worry about the fact that I haven’t heard anything. I’m even more afraid to write the guy and bug him. So, I’m taking the no news ought to be good news approach.

Today, Jackson and I will head back in the woods again and work on making some more firewood. Although it did threaten to rain last time we were back there it didn’t, about like yesterday I suppose. From the look of the ground when I got home yesterday it sprinkled, maybe today it’ll throw down some real rain. Jack has a new home care giver after Alternative Home Health went out of business last month. Fernando is a friend of Brittany’s, and has a nursing certificate. He is one of the people we have heard of the demise of Alta Vista. Being a nurse he can’t get work, so he is doing this care giver bit, which from what I gather he likes just fine.

Some things happening around us seem to create a better feeling at least for me lately. One is US troops are finally getting out of Iraq. Another is this home care giver program. I’m not sure if I’m using the proper name, but the gist is that the government sends a person out to disabled peoples’ homes to help them with chores and pretty much whatever. In Jackson’s case he needs help getting firewood, he asked and they said absolutely the care giver can do that. I think this says a lot of good things about this country. Apparently we do care about our disabled citizens. I asked Jack when they started this program, as it didn’t sound like something the Bush administration would do, but he said it has been available for a while.

So, my cynicism is in remission. Maybe we will be alright after all. We are never to old to learn, and I take it that things can change and some of the things are better. Yeah I have a rosy disposition this morning. About time you say. It sucks not having any money, and it was getting worse for a while there. Knock on wood, it just might be getting better, if not at least my attitude is improving.  Brian Rodgers

The Man in the Mirror

By James Howard Kunstler
on June 29, 2009 6:01 AM

       As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of collective consciousness.  Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.
     Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program — another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the economy’s bilges — since it is our established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called "money" at gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a life-preserver).  Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to resume.  Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn’t seem to affect his credibility as a borrower.  When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.
     Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn’t recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them.  In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century.  A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.
      He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity — and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out masturbation fantasies.  America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob tube.
       More than once the authorities tried to pin charges of child molestation on him for suspicious activities at his boy-trap, Neverland Ranch, with its carnival rides, private zoo, video game galleries, and inexhaustible supplies of sugary treats. The first time he settled with the alleged victim’s family for $22-million.  They just walked away with the loot and happily shut up.  The second time, he moonwalked out of a court-of-law while weeks later jurors mysteriously went on TV to say, well, they did kind of think after-the-fact that he really did those things he was accused of, but, you know…. The defendant himself behaved as though his trial were a TV celebrity challenge show on another planet, arriving on one occasion twenty minutes late in pajamas with some lame excuse about a backache.  He spent the last years of his life wandering a few steps ahead of his creditors, gulling concert promoters into "comeback" schemes (with walking-around money up front), and with three bought-and-paid-for children, obviously not his own, for consolation. 
      When he dropped dead last week, the nation’s morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a genius the equal of Mozart.  That’s a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt.  A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background.  The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf.  The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love.  America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2009 July 1

Explanation: This intriguing trio of galaxies is sometimes called the Draco Group, located in the northern constellation of (you guessed it) Draco. From left to right are edge-on spiral NGC 5981, elliptical galaxy NGC 5982, and face-on spiral NGC 5985 — all within this single telescopic field of view spanning a little more than half the width of the full moon. While the group is far too small to be a galaxy cluster and has not been cataloged compact group, these galaxies all do lie roughly 100 million light-years from planet Earth. On close examination with spectrographs, the bright core of the striking face-on spiral NGC 5985 shows prominent emission in specific wavelengths of light, prompting astronomers to classify it as a Seyfert, a type of active galaxy. Not as well known as other tight groupings of galaxies, the contrast in visual appearance makes this triplet an attractive subject for astrophotographers. This impressively deep exposure of the region also reveals faint and even more distant background galaxies.

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