on my radar: The Return of the King

Sorry USA, the gig is up, your election process is so flawed that the UN should be present to count the votes! Oh wait, that only happens in inferior, 3rd world or unstable countries, perish the thought it could happen here (again). I feel like Michelle Obama!

Perhaps it's just voter fatigue or depression over a lame return of "The Hills" or the "LOST" 5 week hiatus; whatever the cause, it just seems like this election process has been going on forever with: nothing resolved (LOST), more bitching and whining with no results (Spencer and Heidi) and everyone slowly losing interest (presidential election/primaries)in whatever it was that has been dragging on for more than 2 seasons. How long has the primary season been going? "Arrested Development" didn't last as long as this election season, and it was funny!

With only a couple hundred years as evidence, maybe the US republic might not be the best form of government (technically, it's one of the youngest and least proven to last...think on that!). For all the inspiration and hope that emerges from our election process (JFK) you get a nutball (like Sally Kern) balancing it out. And for all the high hopes that one has at the start of each new election season, the general weariness from the endless deluge of speeches, debates, soundbites, scandals, and commercials in prime time, just leaves me wishing it was already over...next thing ya know, McCain is our president (and who in their right mind would EVER have wagered 6 months ago that any Republican would have a chance in hell to succeed Bush in office??).

Maybe we need to go back to a monarchy? We can pick a Brit since we came from them: perhaps Beckham could run the country, he seems to have a benevolent British spirit to him, or Eddie Izzard, nothing like a witty cross-dresser to make Islamic nations stand up and take us seriously! Or, maybe even Madonna, she's done everything else and she has "nailed" that accent. I am open to other suggestions, but just please make this selection process smooth and easy and over soon, like the Oscars before they were televised!

on my radar: Flo-rida

Proposed Florida license plate:

"Florida, fucking up the US, one election at a time"

It came as quite a surprise, and delight, that last week it appeared that Florida, the state that will not be ignored (unless you happen to be a hanging chad or Democratic voter), had finally figured out a way to redo the Democratic primary election- the one that the Republican governor so graciously moved up on the calendar and consequently caused the votes to be discredited. Thanks Gov. Crist, it's not like there isn't a history with problematic elections, in your state, to begin with! An end to the impasse was at hand, or so it seemed, until this week.

It's now back to square one; unhappy Floridians, and no votes to show for them (maybe Elian knew this would be his fate if he stayed?). And that's too bad, I was certain that once they figured out how to redo the votes they would also figure out how to create an "HG Wellian time machine" and go way back to the time when blackberries were still most commonly perceived as berries that could be picked and put into a pie and "Hannah Montana" was a mere glimmer in the "oops I did it again," Britney Spear's eye. Golly, 2000 seems so far away! And while back there, they could correct the first national election they screwed up!

Katherine Harris could go back in the time machine as well, let a MAC counter girl fix her make-up and image, and reemerge as a pop singer in a female band, "Ballot Spice" and we would never have to hear from her again (save a 2008 reunion tour). One can dare to dream.

Given the first Florida mistake gave us a president who went to war, it should come as no surprise that the latest fiasco is creating another war, although this one is internal to the democratic party. Rebulicans must be hating this!

Before the excuse was to blame Canada for anything, now it's blame Florida!

beautiful disaster

The tornado over Atlanta. See saga below...

on my radar: F-2

So the tornado that blew through Atlanta on Friday kindly decided to stop blocks prior to my loft complex-phew!! I knew there was a reason I didn't buy the condo where Dorothy Gale lives! If you drew a line from the start of the tornado and followed it to the end of its path (6 miles long, cutting a swath 200 yards wide, rated an F-2 on the EF scale, about 130 mph winds) you would have stopped less than 2blocks from my humble abode.

I live in the historic Cabbage Town district, the one that got ripped by the storms that passed through the past few days. There's debris everywhere and gawkers galore- I'm not sure which is more annoying. Fortunately, my complex is intact, save for the aforementioned debris from the Cotton Mill lofts (that's the building getting all the press where portions of it just collapsed), which are just down the street. The restaurant one block south lost its roof- I think I found it in our parking lot. Not to make light of that damage, but the restaurant was so terribly smokie, this should help air it out!

It's amazing no one got hurt, but given that it was a Friday night, what sensible Atlantan would be caught at home so early (9.45pm) in the evening? I believe it's our good sense for partying, and a crappy ball game by MSU (the Alabama vs. Mississippi State SEC basketball game went into overtime; police say that the extended ball game kept thousands off the street when the tornado hit) that saved everybody. There were only 8 minutes between the warning and the touchdown. Come to think of it, Luke Perry had a bullriding movie called "8 seconds", how ironic is that two disasters could sound so close!

So the cleanup is now well underway and people are telling their stories about the "new night the lights went out in Georgia", or about their property that's gone with the wind...and contrary to many assertions, I must be a good witch!

Here's where the story ends...or begins

The buzzing noises of insects, and neighbors mowing their lawns, filled the evening air with a sense of familiarity; these weren't the sounds Grace would typically hear in the city, these were the sounds of the suburbs. Of course, the slight "clinking" noise of house keys being thrown into medium-sized Pyrex bowls and neighbors preparing for the monthly spouse-swap was not meant to be overheard by any of the non-participating spouses, silence was the preferred norm- ice storms rarely are ushered in with much clatter. Only later, when the reverberations from husbands and wives wanton actions broke families apart, were the bombastic explosions heard. Grace had just assumed the noise was from her ice cubes melting in her glass of Diet Dr. Pepper; it's easy to mistake the two when you don't know to be listening for a difference.

Grace finally made her way to the front door porch to fetch the evening paper, a not-long-for-this-world tradition, that she clung to dearly. Grace just didn't get the Internet and Facebook and Twitter; she was from the generation (okay, she pretended she was) of ink and paper; she enjoyed her Scrabble played on a board, not online, she only did the crosswords printed in the papers, and scandals could only be enjoyed (and properly gossiped about) if they were screamed across the front page. She knew of Perez Hilton, but figured she was a "Red Roof Inn" type of gal and wouldn't support "that" family, or "their" type of news, anyways.

Plopping herself down into her overstuffed, and slightly ragged, but still most comfortable arm chair, Grace tucked her left leg (which was the less preferred of the two, but considering the right ankle was still slightly swollen from "the incident", doing it the other way around wasn't an option) under herself and began her evening ritual of reading the paper. Unfolding the paper onto her lap, "The Vatican Revisits Sin" read the paper's headline. "Well, great, and just in the nick of time," Grace thought, "what will they have to say about Eliot Spitzer (client #9) and the mess he's gotten himself into?" She doubted that dying poodles pink to create awareness for breast cancer month, or power-washing a tantrum-throwing two years old, would have gained the attention of the Holy See and thus not make the new list of sins, but she was hoping that at least...

on my radar: The Drip Defense?

"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way," said the glass of tap water.

Move over Jessica Rabbit, because Britta's about to make the same statement about your water! Holy pharmaceuticals Aquaman, what have you been swimming in?

The AP reports that there are trace elements of chemicals and drugs in tap water, showing up in cities across the US, which makes me wonder if I need to take medication with water, or the other way around. Or is it an oxymoron? Research is showing that our Prozac nation is seeping into our water supply; all those drugs that are ingested, but not fully digested, by millions of Americans daily (not to mention what is simply flushed down the toilet), are finding their way back into our drinking water- think of it as a "Finding Nemo" saga, only more toxic, and with a little purple pill as the lead.

The amounts in the water are so very small there's nothing to worry about (to be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe), but hey, what's to stop an idiot, like a Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, or Rogers Clemens from crying afoul and attempting to use this information as an excuse for their drug-test failures? Who's to say what's been in their drinking water? Could any of us claim "the water made me do it?" Maybe my mood swings have more to do with the fact I'm on the pill and don't even know it, while also dealing with acetaminophen and ibuprofen withdraw. Golly, could it have been the water that killed Heath Ledger?

I guess there's a good reason to start upping the old liquor intake- at least I know whats in my vodka! Lock up the faucets and open the liquor cabinets! Or to riff on the Capital One commercial, one might start wondering, "what's in your water?" Or, maybe the Senate will go back and revisit the debate about how dangerous it is to waterboard a terrorist- no more need to pour it on them, just make them drink it!

Makes ya rethink the whole "bottle vs. tap" question.

on my radar: satellite burn out

Well paint me boondoggled and put me to bed hungry ( I love to mix metaphors about as much as Tara Reid mixes drinks; I think her calling, besides "Happy Hour Ho" is as a barista)!

There was so much craziness in the world this past week (and I am not referring to the primaries) that I was seriously thinking I was a character on LOST and direly needed to find my "constant" before my brain exploded!

What's up with NASA aiming a rocket at a dead satellite? They claim they hit the mark (for a paltry $60M)but I would challenge that assertion because Larry King is still on the air (and looking as dead as ever). Given that Larry was attempting to bust-a-move with Janet Jackson the other night, it is obvious Janet must still be paying some form of penance for the Timberlake/SuperBowl fiasco. Larry King dances like..., never mind, he can't dance, end of story! At first I thought Larry was a suspender-clad Zombie-guy in the "Thriller" video, he was so stiff, but then I realized it was Janet, not Michael, on the show; Larry was still a suspender-clad stiff on the CNN studio dance floor.

Why didn't NASA just hire those natural born killers, Hell's Angels, to take out the satellite and save the $60M (who's paying for that I wonder?)? Oh, that's right, because they couldn't even complete the hit job on "let's spend the night together," Mick Jaegger, that they attempted back in 1969. Apparently, when it comes to follow through and marksmanship, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray are more reliable- go figure! Bet that makes the Angels feel like sissies- no wonder it took 40 years for the story to come to light. I wonder if the guys who failed in this attempt had to give up their hogs and ride in the sidecart for a year?

I'm not one to mock death (usually), but the strange and tragic demise of Katoucha Niane, the former supermodel whose body was found in the Seine River, answered the age old (or at least as old as Janice Dickinson) question, "if a model falls in a river, does she make a sound?" Apparently not. Of course, this got me wondering if maybe the Hells Angels were behind this.

So the lesson here are it's ok to piss of the hells Angels, they won't kill you, but piss off the FCC and you're stuck dancing with a stiff on CNN (not Dancing with the Star, or dead satellites). And as Casey Kasem used to say, keep your feet on the ground (stay off boats my dear models) and keep reaching for the non-falling objects in space!