my favorite birthday card

from my 83-year-old mother-in-law (I have the coolest in-laws):

Over a brush painting of a mountain and some plum blossoms growing from the side of a cliff, A Birthday Haiku

Getting older sucks.
Yes, it really, really sucks.
It sure does suck bad.

the duckies are coming!

Back in 1992, a violent storm tossed 20 containers of rubber duckies off the back of a cargo ship halfway between China and Seattle, and they were quickly presumed lost at sea. Instead, it appears the castaways embarked on an epic 11-year swim across three oceans and half the globe. Somehow, they stayed afloat through all magnitude of wind and wave, weathering several winters likely frozen in an arctic ice floe and enduring so many days of exposure their once bright yellow skin has been bleached white as bone.

And now their voyage may have brought them to the East Coast.

Remnants of the lost armada of bath toys, which also includes frogs, beavers and turtles -- nearly 29,000 in all -- are thought to be streaming down the New England seaboard right now. Although there are no confirmed sightings in the Atlantic yet, oceanographers who have documented the movement of flotsam and ice from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean are confident some of the ducks ended up over here. A breakaway flotilla of ducks is expected to make landfall in Britain soon as well.

A faded beaver from the doomed shipment was discovered in July after it washed up on Kruzof Island in Alaska.

Anyone who finds one of the three-inch refugees on the East Coast of the United States or Canada or on Iceland earns a $100 U.S. savings bond from the First Years Inc., the company that originally commissioned the toys from a Chinese manufacturer. Spokeswoman Darlene Hollywood said First Years has received a number of ducks since offering the reward in July, but they've all been the wrong kind.

...

And plastic waterfowl enthusiasts aren't the only ones intrigued by the Voyage of the Lost Tub Toys. Using a global network of beachcombers and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration computer model, oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham have tracked the ducks from the beginning of the voyage in an effort to better understand the behavior of surface currents.

...

People have contacted him with reports of duck sightings in Maine, Florida and Scotland, but none of those toys have been sent to Ebbesmeyer for authentication. A woman in Maine told Ebbesmeyer she is sure she found one of the ducks in July, but she was unaware of the lost toys at the time so she did not keep it.

How to recognize a true survivor if you come across an orphaned duck, frog, turtle or beaver on the beach?

One of the globe-swimming tub toys will have "First Years" and the company's logo embossed on it, it'll fit in the palm of the hand and its coat will have faded dramatically, probably appearing more white than yellow, blue, green or red.

And, of course, it'll be smiling.


They apparently crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into an ice floe.

Go duckies.

Other international flotsam the two oceanographers are tracking:

more than 30,000 Nike running shoes, 34,000 hockey gloves, 5 million lost Legos, and a number of onions.

heh.

The Style Invitational brings us one line Washington Post readers would like to be snuck onto the teleprompter at the next State of the Union speech. A selection:

Second Runner-Up: Like most college men, I did "experiment" with homosexuality . . (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

And the winner of the dartboard from the "Keen Eddie" TV show: "Green Dodge Caravan, Virginia plates, your lights are on." (Craig A. Zimmerman, Manassas)

Honorable Mentions:

Some have asked if my tie is too tight, others have questioned my amphetamine psychosis . . .

(Don Jernigan, Shreveport, La.)

I think of Hillary at the strangest times.

(Don Duggan, Bethesda)

I shall make it my duty to eat a kitten for breakfast every day.

(Marc Leibert, New York)

If I felt that even one American was dissatisfied with the way I am running this country, I would resign immediately.

(Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.)

Global warming can be reversed if everyone just turned his air conditioner around.

(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

Anyone who disagrees is welcome to come up here now and speak his piece.

(Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.)

But you didn't come here to listen to me blather about security and slowly take away all of your freedoms in the name of protecting them.

(Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.)

Nod your head and look serious, then smile before saying the next sentence.

(Larry Phillips, Falls Church)

Senator Kennedy, is something funny? Perhaps you'd like to share it with the rest of the room.

(Brendan Beary, Great Mills)

damn, maybe they will bring back the draft

so future Bush children will have a place to spend the war (I think we all agree that this is not their fathers' national guard).


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has all but decided to remove the U.S. Coast Guard from participation in future wars, a prospect that is devastating morale in the maritime service because of its pride at having taken part in most of the nation's armed conflicts over the past 200 years, defense sources said.

Coast Guard officials are trying to get Rumsfeld to reconsider the matter, arguing that they have unique capabilities in guarding U.S. Navy warships in overseas theaters of battle. Ten Coast Guard cutters played that "force protection" role earlier this year during the Iraq war.

"Coast Guard officials are slack-jawed over this," said one defense source knowledgeable about the Pentagon debate on the matter. "This is a moment in Coast Guard history, one that is breaking their hearts."

...

In its lobbying efforts in Washington, the Coast Guard has also proudly promoted its cutters' service in the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War. Earlier this year, in the largest Coast Guard military deployment since Vietnam, it sent 1,250 personnel to serve in the Iraq war. Its cutters protected U.S. Navy ships, guarded Iraqi oil terminals in the gulf and escorted humanitarian deliveries at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.


Or maybe it's about this:


Any action by Rumsfeld reducing the Coast Guard's military role could raise questions about one of its top priorities in Washington -- its $17 billion Deepwater program, which is set to deliver new ships, planes and helicopters to the service over the next 20 years. The project -- drawn up with the expectation that the Coast Guard would remain a war fighter -- has come under heavy budget pressures.

did I mention that Clinton got a blowjob?

Representative Bill Janklow, charged with second-degree manslaughter after a traffic accident that resulted in the death of another man, has no plans to resign his seat in Congress, a South Dakota paper reported today.

Amid speculation that Mr. Janklow might resign, his son, A. Russell Janklow, told The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., that his father had no plans to do so.

"He plans to go back to Washington and resume his Congressional duties, but he won't know for sure when until he goes to the doctor next week," Russell Janklow said of his father, a Republican and ally of President Bush. "He has no intention of resigning."


...because killing some kid in the course of systematic ongoing lawbreaking in no way makes him more unfit to serve the people of South Dakota than he was before.

Let me just remind you of my favorite Janklow quote:

Bill Janklow speeds when he drives - shouldn't, but he does," Mr. Janklow said. "When he gets the ticket, he pays it, but if someone told me I was going to jail for two days for speeding, my driving habits would change."

Maybe ten years in prison, $10,000 and a nice civil lawsuit would at least make him slow down at intersections.

monitors across America short out under a nationwide shower of spat-out beverages (possibly nasally

Livejournal Mood Ring

jmhm is emotionally distant.

I bet no one's surprised that you never post your current mood. In fact, I bet most of your friends are so sick of you locking them out of your life that they hate you behind your back. Shame.

brought to you by interim32. wanna know your livejournal's mood ring color? enter your username and hit the button.

take two tablets and call the AP

Alabama's chief justice appreciates the gesture from Gaston County [NC], but Roy Moore plans to keep his monument of the Ten Commandments close by while he fights in court.

Gaston commissioners this past week voted to offer to haul the monument to Gastonia and display it on the county courthouse grounds.

The monument, which Moore installed in the Alabama Judicial Building two years ago, was moved to a private area Wednesday to comply with a court order that found it violated a constitutional ban on government promotion of religious doctrine.

A spokeswoman for Moore said Friday that he wants to keep the 2 1/2-ton monument and eventually get it back in the building's rotunda.

Gaston's offer is "very sweet and kind," said Jessica Atteberry, a spokeswoman for Moore through the Foundation for Moral Law, which oversees his legal defense fund. "But he owns the monument. Once it came down from the rotunda it became under his full ownership. And he wants to see it restored to its rightful place."


Why the state should be paying to fight for the right to keep Moore's personal mementos on display on state property is still an open question.

Especially when politicians from other equally financially straitened localities are willing to take on the burden of free campaign publicity ajudicating this important moral issue on behalf of their states. (I'm sure they fed all the children first. And gave them medical coverage and decent schools. And picked up that covered prescription for grandma. Not that God is nearly as concerned about that).


Other offers to store the monument are coming in, she said, including one from Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and his Republican challenger, Haley Barbour.

The Ten Commandments are already displayed on a Gaston courthouse wall in the rear of the commission's board room, and in front of the Gastonia City Hall. Gaston officials said the courthouse plaque, purchased several years ago by former commissioner David Ward, has never been challenged.

sigh.

I Had A Nice Day I accidentally got out of the right side of the bed and had a reasonably good morning, followed by an unexceptionable afternoon and a pleasant evening. I've been on autodial trying to get God on the phone ever since to ask why.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Anne Lamott

Aug. 31, 2003 | I was sitting at the breakfast table not drinking or doing drugs with my son Sam, who (despite a bit of stubborn smegma and a carbuncle on his ass where his underwear rubbed him while we were out walking on the beach when I got a sudden urge to pray and got him in a headlock and made him kneel on the shale for an hour and a half asking God for guidance, and He sent a guy who knew where there was a public restroom, which just goes to show, although by then Sam had gone off behind a bush, but I really needed to hear what God had to say about that) seemed less sullen than usual when I realized that nothing deeply traumatic had happened to me so far that day.

We immediately jumped in the car, my dreadlocks aquiver with foreboding, and raced to my church where the heart-warming elderly people of color were sitting making deep soul touching praying noises with the faith and love and conviction which convinced me once again that these people were put on earth by God because he knew some day I would need a good metaphor. We were held up a bit when I had to stop the car across both lanes of the coast highway to ask God for help with directions, but then we arrived.

Once I got past the line of eighty-year-old women on welfare who were waiting to give me the money they earned returning cans they picked up on the highway to help support my family (I feel somehow that they know that I'm doing OK financially and they're doing this to send a signal from God that he's looking out for me, if not them) I made my way to Ermintrude, a sweet frail old woman who is awaiting six transplants if she can find the transplant center what with the cataracts and the broken hips, and asked her to pray for me to be able to comprehend what God's plan is for me that would make him elevate my mood to the point that I might not be able to spend the day thinking bad thoughts about my mother (who is with barely-sublimated hostility continuing to exist even though she impacts on my serenity) which would cause Jesus to sharpen a hypodermic on a brick and inject drain cleaner into his thighs, which was what I had scheduled, along with some tennis.

"Oh, lord, lord" she said, rocking back and forth on the pew shaking her head, which I took to mean she understood...

Healthy Penis and Phil the Sore hit the street

( to talk about safe sex and syphilis and testing )

Heeeee's back... and he's gone again

His vacation's over (has it been a month already?), so Our Fearless Leader is hitting the road to try and save his job.

The nation celebrates Labor Day this year with an estimated 9 million Americans on the unemployment rolls - 700,000 more than on this holiday last year, when President Bush went to a union workers picnic and said he was encouraged about job growth, but "not satisfied."

This year, the president is marking Labor Day in Richfield, Ohio, where he will address members of the International Union of Operating Engineers and their families. Later in the week, Bush is to give economic speeches in Kansas City, Mo., and Indianapolis.

In north-central Ohio, the president planned to push his agenda to create jobs.

The nation's unemployment rate hit a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in June but then edged down to 6.2 percent in July, a possible signal that the economy may be on a comeback. That improvement, however, partly reflected the fact that 500,000 discouraged workers gave up looking for a job and left the labor market...


It's kind of sweet. If americans can't work, Bush won't either.