birthdays

so it was iris' 86th birthday last saturday---i picked them up about 11 and drove down to mike's place at lake jackson, which i had never seen----it was all goodness and light, and a good time had by all, even if i did eat barbecued pig while i was there, the first animal flesh that i have consumed in several months---i ate it for ma, ok?---


junior was, of course, the center of all our attentions----


and speaking of birthdays, yesterday cousin carol turned 123 years old, or something like that---

main street

hotel palomar

construction has begun, but not as originally planned---rather than 26-story, hotel/condo, it's now gonna be 20-story hotel only----they tore down a nice building from the 1940s, right across from academy of medicine, w. peachtree and sixth---

just kill me please

how can someone be so profoundly ignorant? "is the world flat?" and she doesn't know the answer? jesus god

big sky

robert gets the full view when storms roll through---

humberto

the breastplate of righteousness

Social conservatives who try to have extremely discreet and anonymous sex or drugs or whatever are not, perhaps, hypocrites as such. They recognize vice, do not deny it, see it in themselves, understand that some of it is simply irrepressible, and do not see their public moralizing as in conflict with it. Think Bill Bennett or Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or David Vitter: all involved in various personal vices (often compulsively) - and arguably more socially conservative because of them.

truthiness

"The truth is incontrovertible: malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." - Winston Churchill.

main street

still have a long way to go, but there's a new roof and gutters, the portico has been repaired (rather shittily, if you look too close), and the exterior repainted (also rather shittily if you look too close).

rilla state

another financial debacle brought on by hubris and greed and shysters with absolutely no morals of any kind whatsoever---poor kevin---i hope he hasn't been caught up in all of this but i wouldn't be surprised if he has---at one point he had two properties in ft. lauderdale and something wierd going on with a 400k house in vegas----last i heard he still had the duplex in lauderdale, but i'm not even sure of where he's living right now except he's still in vegas---he sold the house he was in when i was out there three or four years ago----i'm still glad that i sold sinclair when i did---not quite as glad that i bought 1308 when i did, although still plenty glad---

Sept. 10, 2007 issue - Walking through the gated community of Black Mountain Vista on a hill in Henderson, Nev., Thomas Blanchard offers a guided tour of real-estate woe. A row of stucco duplexes that recently sold for as much as $500,000 sit empty. "That's a repo," the real-estate agent says as he stands in front of 678 Solitude Point Avenue. Then he points to the adjacent houses, where yellow patches blot the spartan lawns and phone books lie on front porches, their covers bleached from weeks under the desert sun. "No. 680, repo; 684, repo. Those two at the end, repo."

Three years ago, this Las Vegas suburb was teeming with modern-day prospectors armed with low-interest mortgages, all hoping to strike it rich in real estate. Now, what started with the subprime-mortgage mess and subsequent credit crunch are turning communities like Black Mountain Vista into luxury ghost towns. Buyers who got in over their heads are being forced to abandon their homes, leaving behind empty McMansions on the California coast and see-through condominium towers on Miami Beach. Real estate is turning into a money pit, sapping the fortunes of home buyers, hedge-fund managers and house painters alike. The really bad news? This is only the beginning.

and fauna

flora

it's always nice to make things look different---robert and i have been slowly narrowing our respective collections of plants----i took some cacti and the giant (7' plus the pot) euphorbia trigona and finally shed myself of the palms, both of which required constant attention to even begin to keep the mealy bugs under control----i like the structural forms of cacti and succulents, especially here----i put my grandma hart's big ol' rhipsalis cereuscula in my office---it's by far my oldest plant----probably 80 years at least----

these modrun times

This wasn't as much a problem in the old days, of course. Some of us remember having only three channels on TV. That's right. Three. We're talking about the '80s here. So there was something unifying in the way we all sat down to watch the same news, all of it coming from the same point of view. Even if the point of view was retarded and wrong, even if some stories went criminally unreported, we at least all shared it.

That's over. There effectively is no "mass media" anymore so, where before we disagreed because we saw the same news and interpreted it differently, now we disagree because we're seeing completely different freaking news. When we can't even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable. That constant feeling of being at bitter odds with the rest of the world brings with it a tension that just builds and builds.

We humans used to have lots of natural ways to release that kind of angst. But these days....

last night at robert's

elitists

please tell me that these people (who, judging from their furnishing of their balcony, are clearly straight) are not going to leave a plastic plant out there---- unfortunately, i'm sure there is no condo rule against plastic plants, simply because no one ever contemplated the possibility that peope-who-keep-plastic-plants might want to live here----

ex-sen.craig

excellent point about the priorities evident in this whole mess:

Given the constant, daily harassment women endure ... -- harassment that makes us compress our daily activities into daylight hours, that circumscribes where we go, who we go with, and even what we wear; intrusive harassment, ruin-your-day, make-you-feel-powerless/angry/depressed harassment -- the overzealous prosecution of the toe-tapper really pisses me off. It's like those sophomore discussions one has of human trafficking, in which someone invariably says "but what about the men?", and then the rest of the discussion, in some form or another, is overwhelmingly preoccupied with those minority cases. Heaven forfend we don't keep men front and center....

Look: if there'd been groping, a physical risk, or even just a persistent advance in the face of a single "no" (which doesn't seem to have ever been uttered), I'd be supportive regardless of the gender base-rates involved. But "he tapped his foot and looked at me funny"? Please! Men! Grow a pair!

However.

In much the same way that it's a shame the OJ case involved framing a guilty man, it's unfortunate that they're unjustly smearing a guy who so richly deserves to be taken down.

I derive comfort from the way the cop's meticulous narrative continues: "he exited the cubicle...without flushing."

If they want to arrest, sentence, and bring him up on Ethics charges on that basis, I'm cool with it.