obliterati

120,000 still without power in Dallas area
08:02 AM CDT on Friday, June 12, 2009
By EMILY TSAO / The Dallas Morning News
etsao@dallasnews.com

About 120,000 customers remain without power from storms that walloped Dallas-Fort Worth the past two days, Oncor said this morning.

Severe thunderstorms that arrived Wednesday evening and continued to pound North Texas most of Thursday caused more than 500,000 customers to lose power, making it one of the three worst storms in Oncor history, said company spokeswoman Jeamy Molina.

Crews from other utilities in Louisiana, Alabama and Missouri have arrived in Texas to assist and restoration efforts are expected to last through the weekend, she said.

The National Weather Service is forecasting temperature highs to reach 96 degrees today, and Molina is encouraging affected customers to seek alternative shelters.

Dallas and surrounding counties remain under river flood warnings today, and flash flooding may occur if storms develop again this afternoon or evening, said Dennis Cavanaugh, a weather service meteorologist.

Much of North Texas received a soaking Thursday. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport received a total of 3.6 inches of rain during the storms. On Thursday, the airport recorded 2.7 inches of rain, breaking a previous June 11 rainfall record of 1.19 inches set in 1945. One rainfall gauge at Sargent Road at Morrell Avenue in South Dallas recorded 8.15 inches during the storms, Cavanaugh said.

Clouds blocked out the sun and kept temperatures below normal Thursday with the high reaching 85 degrees at Dallas/Fort Worth airport. But 80-degree temperatures are not going to last.

The weather service said temperature highs will reach 96 Saturday and begin a slow climb toward 100 degrees by Friday.

“It will be hot,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s hard to say if we will hit 100. But it will be close.”

The last time Dallas/Fort Worth airport recorded 100 degrees was Aug. 14, 2008, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-weather4-2009jun04,0,896789.story

Freak storms pummel Southern California
By Carol J. Williams
June 4, 2009

Thunder rumbled through the Southland and freak storms pelted the region with hail, lightning and unseasonable rain, killing two women in San Bernardino County, bedeviling aviation and touching off more than a dozen brush fires on the parched mountain slopes ringing Los Angeles County.

The first of the fatalities occurred when lightning snapped off a tree limb that crashed onto a vehicle traveling through a residential neighborhood near Big Bear Lake, crushing driver Elena Martinez, 31, to death about 11 a.m.

Two hours later, a 35-year-old woman was killed by lightning that struck near a tree in the frontyard of her Fontana home.

The Fontana victim was not immediately identified.

In Cabazon, a woman shopping at the outlet mall just off Interstate 10 suffered moderate injuries from a near-miss lightning strike as she walked across the parking lot just after noon, said Riverside County Fire Department spokeswoman Jody Hagemann. The woman was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.

A Southwest Airlines plane bound for Burbank was struck by lightning more than half an hour into its flight, forcing the pilot to return to Oakland with the 53 passengers on board. There were no injuries or damage to the aircraft, and travelers were put on later flights. The plane returned to service after a safety inspection.

Lightning was blamed for more than a dozen brush fires in the Cleveland, Angeles and San Bernardino national forests. In the largest, called the McKinley fire, 150 acres burned before firefighters could extinguish it, said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Norma Bailey.

The electrical storms that swept inland areas also were suspected as the cause of a small blaze above the San Dimas Canyon Golf Course in eastern Los Angeles County.

Temperatures were about 10 degrees below normal in the area, with downtown Los Angeles registering 67 degrees at 2 p.m. Rain is so rare at this time of year that records were broken in Palmdale, Sandberg and Camarillo, where there had been zero precipitation on any June 3 in the years that the National Weather Service has been keeping records, the Oxnard office reported.

Small hailstones drummed at least four beachfront communities in San Diego County, as well as Murrieta in Riverside County, another oddity in late spring, according to the weather service.

Thunderstorms and light rain are forecast to continue through Friday or Saturday as a low-pressure system slowly makes its way inland from the coast, the weather service said.

http://www.turnto23.com/news/19651075/detail.html

Witnesses said after Simmons was hit by the lightning he walked all the way around the corner and back to his house where paramedics were called.

ABC23 spoke with the boy's older brother who said he is doing OK.

“They say he is doing good. All they have to do is check the blood. There’s no brain damage, lung damage or anything like that,” said Stephen Corcoran.

According to the National Weather Service the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 700,000.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/local/060309_dc_area_storms

Storms Bring Hail,
Lightning to Area
Updated: Thursday, 04 Jun 2009, 12:50 AM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 03 Jun 2009, 9:40 PM EDT
By MYFOXDC STAFF/myfoxdc

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Strong storms moved through much of the D.C. area on Wednesday evening, producing heavy rains, hail and even possible funnel clouds.

FOX 5 received reports of hail, some of it being golf ball-sized, in areas including Fredericksburg, Virginia, where some of the strongest weather was felt.

Heavy lightning was reported in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and two 12-year-old boys were hit by lightning at a baseball field in Fredericksburg. One of those boys died of his injuries.

At Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, officials say a female security guard was also struck by lightning. It happened at Gate A. Airport spokesman Jonathan Dean was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

In the District, a number of trees were down due to the weather, leaving some streets blocked to traffic. Trees were reported down at 15th Street NE and Independence Avenue NE, as well as along Massachusetts Avenue NE near Stanton Square.

http://www.sbsun.com/breakingnews/ci_12514940

Lightning jolts six people near fence in San Bernardino

By Andrew Edwards
Posted: 06/03/2009 07:58:16 PM PDT

Six people received a jolt after lightning struck a metal fence they were leaning against in a north San Bernardino neighborhood.

Emergency personnel responded to the call about 6 p.m. today near Electric Avenue and 40th Street.

Witness Aaron Sallis said he and the others were hanging out when the lightning bolt hit.

Sallis said all six young men seemed to have experienced electrical burns, but were conscious.

Firefighters treated four people at a nearby convenience store, and Sallis said the other two left the area.

Additional details from the San Bernardino City Fire Department were not immediately available.

http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0609/628812.html

A Lightning Strike Sparks Conway Fireposted 06/04/09 8:52 am

Conway - A Conway Day Spa was seriously damaged Wednesday afternoon in a fire that Conway Fire Department investigators and employees believe was started by lightning.

Gathering Day Spa Employee Alicia Mauldin said she was standing by a window when the lightning strike "shook the building" and knocked her down. Mauldin said she thought she may have been electrocuted by the bolt, but didn¹t think she had been seriously hurt.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/03/bn03storms095642/?metro&zIndex=110258

Storms bring lightning strikes across county
By Debbi Baker, Union-Tribune Staff Writer, Jose Luis Jiménez, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
Originally published 9:56 a.m. June 3, 2009, updated 11:34 a.m., June 3, 2009

Nearly 100 lightning strikes were reported Wednesday morning in North County as a band of showers and thunderstorms moved across the county, officials with the National Weather Service said.

The late-season Pacific storm also brought pea-sized hail to Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach about 9 a.m., said forecaster Stan Wasowski. The hail fell for about 3 minutes, he said.

The storm, fueled by an upper-level low-pressure mass several hundred miles off the coast, moved into the county near the Orange County border about 1:30 a.m., Wasowski said.

The storm is hovering over the area and slowly moving to the north, but the unstable air is producing isolated pockets of thunder and lightning in some other parts of San Diego, Wasowski said.

Firefighters quickly extinguished a small brush fire near the intersection of Highland Valley Road and Archie Moore Road near Ramona, according to a Cal Fire spokeswoman. The cause of that fire is under investigation.

Kenneth the Page read the bible in science class huh?

Before the Fall, Man was absolute wisdom, and was the circumference of everything. Nothing then existed outside Albion: sun moon, stars, the center of the earth and the depth of the sea, were all within his mind and body, a body fully conscious of being alive, not only in its brain but in all parts of itself down to the feet. Hence "opening a centre", as described above, is the imagination's way of reversing the fallen perspective of the world, and uniting an individual imagination with the universal one. This union is completed when in our vision the recurrent throb of existence which we know as time becomes the pulsating heart of a sleeping Man, and the revolving globes of the sky, seen as within instead of outside a human mind and body, becomes the corpuscles in a human bloodstream which is also the fourfold river of Paradise. That is what Blake means when he says that time is a pulsation of the artery, and space a globule of blood. In eternity all the homes of the soul, the body, the palace, the city and the garden, are one; and the eternal community of men is also the real presence of a divine body, whose blood is the new wine created from the water of nature.

Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye, pg 350-351

Sabotage at multiple ethanol plants by unknown parties is certainly not out of the question by the way. So many ethanol plants making subgrade stuff, it doesn't seem possible considering the hundreds of millions of dollars put into these places. Also Ed Wallace should seriously consider the cost-effectiveness of oxygen deprivation and the flooding of the continents.

The Great Ethanol Scam
Not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers
By Ed Wallace

"Does the average citizen understand what this means? In from 10 to 20 years this country will be dependent entirely upon outside sources for a supply of liquid fuels … paying out vast sums yearly in order to obtain supplies of crude oil from Mexico, Russia, and Persia."—Yale Professor Harold Hibbert, ethanol promoter, 1925

More than one major transportation-based industry in America besides Detroit is on the ropes. For the fourth time in our history the ethanol industry has come undone and is quickly failing nationally. Of course it's one thing when Detroit collapsed with the economy; after all, that is a truly free-market enterprise and the economy hasn't been good. But the fact that the ethanol industry is going bankrupt, when the only reason we use this additive is a massive government mandate, is outrageous at best.

Then again, the ethanol lobby and refiners have a solution to ethanol's failure in America: Hire retired General Wesley Clark as your point man and lobby the government to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel to 15%. The problems with that proposition are real—unlike ethanol's benefits.

Where's the Logic?

First, the primary job of the Environmental Protection Agency is, dare it be said, to protect our environment. Yet using ethanol actually creates more smog than using regular gas, and the EPA's own attorneys had to admit that fact in front of the justices presiding over the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995 (API v. EPA).

Second, truly independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it.

Third, all fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle's fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA's fuel mileage standards (fueleconomy.gov) or those of the Dept. of Energy.

Fourth, forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline. Just these issues should have kept ethanol from being brought back for its fourth run in American history.

Don't let anybody mislead you: The new push to get a 15% ethanol mandate out of Washington is simply to restore profitability to a failed industry. Only this time around those promoting more ethanol in our gas say there's no scientific proof that adding more ethanol will damage vehicles or small gas-powered engines. With that statement they've gone from shilling the public to outright falsehoods, because ethanol-laced gasoline is already destroying engines across the country in ever larger numbers.

Got a Spare $1,000?

Last July was bad enough for motorists on a budget—gasoline prices had shot up to more than $4 a gallon. But for some the pain in the pocketbook was about to get worse. At City Garage in Euless, Tex., for example, the first of numerous future customers brought in an automobile whose fuel pump was shot. A quick diagnosis determined that that particular car had close to 18% ethanol in the fuel. For that unlucky owner, the repairs came to nearly $900. The ethanol fun was just beginning.

City Garage manager Eric Greathouse has found that adding ethanol to the nation's gasoline supply may be a foolish government mandate, but it has an upside he'd rather not deal with. It's supplying his shop with a slow but steady stream of customers whose plastic fuel intakes have been dissolved by the blending of ethanol into our gasoline, or their fuel pumps destroyed. The average cost of repairs is just shy of $1,000.

It gets better.

Scott Morrison is the owner of the City Garage chain in North Texas and he related the story of his technical director's run-in with ethanol; in December he filled up his E85 Flex Fuel Chevy Suburban at the Exxon station in Ovilla, just south of Dallas. His Suburban died on the spot, because even an E85-equipped vehicle will not run on the 100% pure ethanol that Exxon station was pumping that day. In that case it was not Exxon's fault but a mistake at the distribution center, and Exxon (XOM) quickly made good for the cost of repairs.

On Jan. 16 of this year, Lexus ordered a massive recall of certain 2006 to 2008 models, including the GS Series, IS and LS sedans. According to the recall notice, the problem is that "Ethanol fuels with low moisture content will corrode the internal surface of the fuel rails." In layman's terms, ethanol causes pinpoint leaks in the fuel system; when leaking fuel catches your engine on fire, that's an exciting way to have your insurance company buy your Lexus. Using ethanol will cost Toyota (TM) untold millions.

An Unpublicized Trend

Though the media is ignoring it, one can easily find many stories on BMW (BMWG.DE) blogs relating similar problems with fuel systems damaged by the use of ethanol. Certainly that was the case with Christi Jordan and her 2007 Mini. For weeks it was difficult to start; Moritz BMW in Arlington, Tex., inspected it and found severe carbon buildup inside the engine. On her second trip to the mechanics they decided to test the ethanol content of Christi's fuel and found it was much higher than the federally mandated limit of 10%. This time the fuel pump had been destroyed by the ethanol. The repair bill came to $1,200: As in all cases where vehicles are damaged by ethanol, legally the factory warranty no longer applied.

Jim Keppler, Moritz's fixed operations director, said he's had at least 10 other cases of ethanol poisoning in Minis over the past six months. Christi was one of the lucky ones; Moritz covered her repairs. But there's no telling how many motorists across the nation have had to pay for fuel pumps, or fuel systems, that ethanol damaged. Most were probably unaware of the real culprit behind the breakdown, because virtually no repair shop tests the level of ethanol in the gasoline when these fuel system problems occur.

And there are active lawsuits from boat owners; ethanol broke down the resins in their fiberglass gas tanks, destroying their marine engines. Additionally, those who deal in small gas engines for lawnmowers, edgers, and weedeaters have quickly learned that, as Briggs & Stratton's (BGG) Web site warns, "Ethanol-blended gasoline can attract moisture, which leads to separation and formation of acids during storage. Acidic gasoline can damage the fuel system of an engine while in storage. B&S strongly recommends removing ethanol-blended fuels from engine during storage."

Like motorists, if landscaping tool owners put gasoline with more than 10% ethanol in their small engines, that immediately voids any factory warranties. In the case of the Lexus recall, using just a 10% ethanol blend was found to be destroying many of these engines also.
Another Government-Mandated Mistake

It now appears that in just a few years since the government forced ethanol use on the country, engine and fuel system failures caused by ethanol are causing major damage to more and more new and used vehicles. This means the hapless owners are not only paying for snake oil in lower fuel efficiency and more smog, but pay again when it damages their vehicles and lawn mowers.

We seem to have forgotten, but the promise of turning over farmland for fuel production was to reduce our nation's demand for imported crude.

But until this massive economic slowdown, as Gusher of Lies (PublicAffairs, 2008) author Robert Bryce pointed out, even while the ethanol mandate was being ramped up we were increasing our imports of foreign oil.

Translation: The entire politically stated purpose of using ethanol had already been proven to be a false one before the program even got fully under way.

No surprise there. The premise that ethanol could give America the freedom to one day stop importing oil has always been fraudulent. Another fun fact: If we outlawed gasoline and diesel, thereby removing every last car, truck and SUV from our highways—no vehicles anywhere on any road in the country—America would still have to import oil because we would still use more crude than domestic production can supply.

Why is that? Crude oil is also used to make fertilizers, aviation fuel, home heating oil, and many other products. Not to mention polyester suits for car salesmen.
Comment Now, Public!

Pushed into it by the corn growers' and ethanol refiners' lobbying organizations, today the EPA is starting to go through the public comment phase on increasing the level of ethanol in our gasoline from 10% to 15%. Time and time again we have heard from these groups, who now claim that there is zero scientific evidence that a 15% blend of ethanol would do any damage whatsoever if the mandate for ethanol were raised. As with all statements made by vested interests, few outsiders have actually taken the time to look and find out whether this statement was true.

In fact, it's false.

Not one mechanic I've spoken with said they would be comfortable with a 15% blend of ethanol in their personal car. However, most suggest that if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15%, it will be the dawn of a new golden age for auto mechanics' income.

One last thought: Most individuals who have had to repair their fuel systems in recent years never had the gasoline tested to see if the ethanol percentage might be the problem. Today most repair shops and new-car dealers are still not testing for ethanol blends. They're simply repairing the vehicles and sending their unhappy and less wealthy customers on their way. But, where dealer and repair shops are testing the gasoline, ethanol is becoming one of the leading culprits for the damage.

Sadly, when a truly bad idea is exposed today, Washington's answer is to double-down on the bet, mandate more of the same, and make the problem worse. Only this time around motorists will be able to gauge the real cost of ethanol when it comes time to fix their personal cars.

* * * * *

Ed Wallace is a recipient of the the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the G. and R. Loeb Foundation, and is a member of the American Historical Society. His column leads the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's "Sunday Drive" section. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four's Good Day, contributes articles to BusinessWeek Online, and hosts the top-rated talk show Wheels Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on 570 KLIF.

I did not go and see Night at the Museum originally, because I lived in a cardboard box at the time, and did not like Ben Stiller for purely irrational reasons that would stand up to no reasonable test whatsoever. I guess I read that he played a night time security guard in that movie, and although I had some friends who were late night security guards, I could think of at least one late night security guard from several years ago who was a real pain in my ass and who made me not want to see a movie about anything that tangentally reminded me of that.

But B said that maybe she would like to see the new one, Battle of the Smithsonian, and we were going to try and see it at OMSI, which would break yet another barrier in that I never go to OMSI because of a bad time I once had there, with a visit back in December being my first trip back in many many years. But then it turns out it was no longer playing at OMSI, so we went to a normal theater like normal people and got to see the adventures of Larry Dailey firsthand.

I would like to note that the happy ending involves Mr. Dailey meeting and chatting with the nice girl, and not doing anything else, just hello and a little conversation.

What does it mean that the late night security guards would rush to hide me with the other superheroes before daybreak? Why is his son named Nick? Why is the name Akmenra so obvious?

Why do no proceeds go to my legal fund and why am I supposed to be happy about having my life constantly raided when your movies don't even make her like me again?

Anyway. It feels weird saying this about a children's movie, but I liked it.

Flash flooding, winds whip Australia's northeast
Thu May 21

SYDNEY (AFP) – Tens of thousands of homes were without power and hundreds of schools closed on Thursday as a wild storm front lashed Australia's northeast coast.

A state of emergency was declared overnight in Queensland state, which was pounded by gale-force winds exceeding 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour and torrential rains.

A 46-year-old was killed when freak winds ripped a sheet of metal from a building on the Gold Coast tourist strip and it smashed through his office window, police said.

Up to 75,000 homes and businesses suffered blackouts as gusting winds felled trees and power lines, and the region received one-third of its annual rainfall in a single day, sparking landslides and causing roads to collapse.

Enough rain fell over 48 hours in Brisbane, the state's capital, to supply drinking water for more than a year.

Massive ocean swells up of up to 15 metres (50 feet) hammered the coastline, with waves at Currmbin so powerful a car was swept from a beach carpark into the surf.

The state's premier Anna Bligh said it was likely to be among the highest damage bills Queensland had ever seen, with the worst flooding since 1974.

"We are certainly not out of the woods yet, all the weather reports are indicating there is certainly more to come," Bligh said.
"There's a very high chance that what's coming will be as bad, if not worse, as some of what we've seen."

Almost 250 schools were closed and hundreds of homes were evacuated in the neighbouring state of New South Wales (NSW), where emergency services said they were bracing for flash-flooding and severe winds.

"This (storm) system will bring very heavy rain, high winds and large waves to northeast NSW over the next few days before weakening and moving away later Saturday," the weather bureau said.

"Destructive wind gusts exceeding 125 kilometres (78 miles) an hour are possible along the coastal fringe during the next few days."
More than 300 millimetres (12 inches) of rain was likely to fall, with low-lying coastal areas expected to be swamped by tides exceeding the year's highest mark, it said.

Floods unleashed by cyclonic rains in February saw much of Queensland declared a disaster area, with more than one million square kilometres (385,000 square miles) deluged and 3,000 homes damaged.

Further floods hammered the region last month, washing a number of motorists to their death and claiming the life of a 12-year-old girl who was swimming in a swollen weir.

"The first noteworthy piece of real estate they destroyed was Edwards Air Force Base."
And to this very day, wing-nuts and data reduction clerks alike
Speak in reverent whispers about that fateful night
When test stand number one and the rocket sled itself got lunched,
I said lunched,
By a famous mountain and his small wooden wife."

Air Force jet crashes near Edwards AFB in Calif.
Thu May 21

CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. – A military jet on a training mission crashed north of Edwards Air Force base in the desert on Thursday, authorities said. The fate of the two crew members aboard was not immediately known.

The T-38 Talon went down at 1:15 p.m. nine miles north of the base, Senior Airman Julius Delos Reyes said in a statement. Base officials had no immediate information on the cause of the crash.

It was the second crash of an aircraft from Edwards in less than two months. On March 25, an Air Force F-22A Raptor went down about 35 miles north of the base, killing a test pilot for prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.

The T-38 Talon is a twin-engine, high-altitude, supersonic jet trainer used primarily for pilot training.

Test pilots and flight test engineers are trained in T-38s at Edwards, while Air Force Materiel Command uses the jet to test experimental equipment such as electrical and weapon systems. NASA uses T-38s as trainers for astronauts. The Navy and other air forces around the world also use them.

The jets are a little more than 46 feet long and have wingspans of about 25 feet.

The Talon, built by Northrop Corp., first flew in 1959. The Air Force acquired more than 1,100 before production ended in 1972. More than half are still flying, according to the manufacturer, now Northrop Grumman.

The company said that the average T-38 has flown 15,000 hours and about 75,000 pilots have trained in them.
In April, the 50th anniversary of the first Talon flight was celebrated at a Northrop Grumman facility in El Segundo, Calif.

Man rescued from hole on Seattle waterfront
by The Associated Press
Thursday May 21, 2009

SEATTLE -- Firefighters have rescued a man who fell into a 10-foot hole when a sidewalk collapsed on the Seattle waterfront this morning.

Fire Department spokeswoman Dana Vander Houwen says the man was not seriously injured in the accident about 8 a.m. on Alaska Way near South Washington Street.

-- The Associated Press

Portland cyclists honor those killed on public streets
Thursday, May 21, 2009
By MIKE BENNER, Kgw.com

PORTLAND, Ore. -- More than three dozen cyclists honored fellow riders who were killed or injured on public roads Wednesday night during the fourth annual Ride of Silence in Portland.

The ride meant a great deal to Jim Parsons, who was hit by a car while bike riding in October 2007. His leg was broken in two places but he survived.

“If you don't have a motor you still have a right to the road. It's a public right of way and it's sad that so many people get killed every year,” he said.

Parsons has become an activist for bicycling since the accident.

“You hit an activist and you've only hit the activation button. I went from being a little involved to -- I'm reawakened and the fire is relit,” he said.

The group cycled past the corner of NE 69th Avenue and Fremont, where a drunk driver hit cyclist Eric Davidson.

Davidson suffered brain damage in the collision.

The cyclists also rode past the intersection of NE 57th Ave. and Prescott St., where cyclist Sandy Bass was killed last week when he rode in front of an oncoming car.

Parsons said he “understood” that cyclists had been found responsible in the last few deaths the community had endured.

“The last couple of people killed weren't in the right, but still, a simple mistake cost somebody their life,” he said.

Cyclists asked that everyone practice courtesy and safety, regardless of how many wheels you travel on.

Go out the door, wanting some coffee
Look for the signs, what shows up first?
Cop drives by
That is normal, the story is crawling with cops
Green car nods his head driving through the alley
Hi green car
Go around the corner, nothing unusual
Little Volvo at the red light has my old boss in it
Hey Tres!
"Hey man! How you doing?"
Just getting some coffee.
Light turns green and he turns right and drives away smiling
At the store
Got the coffee
On way out check the paper
I'm on the front page again.

Gone, but Not Forgotten 29

There was one more thing I wanted to do in Ilium. I wanted to get a photograph of the old man's tomb. So I went back to my room, found Sandra gone, picked up my camera, hired a cab.

Sleet was still coming down, acid and gray. I thought the old man's tombstone in all that sleet might photograph pretty well, might even make a good picture for the jacket of _The Day the World Ended_.

The custodian at the cemetery gate told me how to find the Hoenikker burial plot. "Can't miss it," he said. "It's got the biggest marker in the place."

He did not lie. The marker was an alabaster phallus twenty feet high and three feet thick. It was plastered with sleet.

"By God," I exclaimed, getting out of the cab with my camera, "how's that for a suitable memorial to a father of the atom bomb?" I laughed.

I asked the driver if he'd mind standing by the monument in order to give some idea of scale. And then I asked him to wipe away some of the sleet so the name of the deceased would show.

He did so.

And there on the shaft in letters six inches high, so help me God, was the word:

MOTHER

Only Sleeping 30

"Mother?" asked the driver, incredulously.

I wiped away more sleet and uncovered this poem:

Mother, Mother, how I pray
For you to guard us every day.
--Angela Hoenikker

And under this poem was yet another;

You are not dead,
But only sleeping.
We should smile,
And stop our weeping.
--Franklin Hoenikker

And underneath this, inset in the shaft, was a square of cement bearing the imprint of an infant's hand. Beneath the imprint were the words:

Baby Newt.

"If that's Mother," said the driver, "what in hell could they have raised over Father?" He made an obscene suggestion as to what the appropriate marker might be.

We found Father close by. His memorial--as specified in his will, I later discovered--was a marble cube forty centimeters on each side.

"FATHER," it said.



Another Breed 31

As we were leaving the cemetery the driver of the cab worried about the condition of his own mother's grave. He asked if I would mind taking a short detour to look at it.

It was a pathetic little stone that marked his mother-- not that it mattered.

And the driver asked me if I would mind another brief detour, this time to a tombstone salesroom across the street from the cemetery.

I wasn't a Bokononist then, so I agreed with some peevishness. As a Bokononist, of course, I would have agreed gaily to go anywhere anyone suggested. As Bokonon says: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

The name of the tombstone establishment was Avram Breed and Sons. As the driver talked to the salesman I wandered among the monuments--blank monuments, monuments in memory of nothing so far.

I found a little institutional joke in the showroom: over a stone angel hung mistletoe. Cedar boughs were heaped on her pedestal, and around her marble throat was a necklace of Christmas tree lamps.

"How much for her?" I asked the salesman.

"Not for sale. She's a hundred years old. My greatgrandfather, Avram Breed, carved her."

"This business is that old?"

"That's right."

"And you're a Breed?"

"The fourth generation in this location."

"Any relation to Dr. Asa Breed, the director of the Research Laboratory?"

"His brother." He said his name was Marvin Breed.

"It's a small world," I observed.

"When you put it in a cemetery, it is." Marvin Breed was a sleek and vulgar, a smart and sentimental man.



Dynamite Money 32

"I just came from your brother's office. I'm a writer. I was interviewing him about Dr. Hoenikker," I said to Marvin Breed.

"There was one queer son of a bitch. Not my brother; I mean Hoenikker."

"Did you sell him that monument for his wife?"

"I sold his kids that. He didn't have anything to do with it. He never got around to putting any kind of marker on her grave. And then, after she'd been dead for a year or more, Hoenikker's three kids came in here--the big tall girl, the boy, and the little baby. They wanted the biggest stone money could buy, and the two older ones had poems they'd written. They wanted the poems on the stone.

"You can laugh at that stone, if you want to," said Marvin Breed, "but those kids got more consolation out of that than anything else money could have bought. They used to come and look at it and put flowers on it I-don't-know-how-many-times a year."

"It must have cost a lot."

"Nobel Prize money bought it. Two things that money bought: a cottage on Cape Cod and that monument."

"Dynamite money," I marveled, thinking of the violence of dynamite and the absolute repose of a tombstone and a summer home.

"What?"

"Nobel invented dynamite."

"Well, I guess it takes all kinds . . ."

Had I been a Bokononist then, pondering the miraculously intricate chain of events that had brought dynamite money to that particular tombstone company, I might have whispered, "Busy, busy, busy."

_Busy, busy, busy_, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

But all I could say as a Christian then was, "Life is sure funny sometimes."

"And sometimes it isn't," said Marvin Breed.



An Ungrateful Man 33

I asked Marvin Breed if he'd known Emily Hoenikker, the wife of Felix; the mother of Angela, Frank, and Newt; the woman under that monstrous shaft.

"Know her?" His voice turned tragic. "Did I _know_ her, mister? Sure, I knew her. I knew Emily. We went to Ilium High together. We were co-chairmen of the Class Colors Committee then. Her father owned the Ilium Music Store. She could play every musical instrument there was. I fell so hard for her I gave up football and tried to play the violin. And then my big brother Asa came home for spring vacation from M.I.T., and I made the mistake of introducing him to my best girl." Marvin Breed' snapped his fingers. "He took her away from me just like that. I smashed up my seventy-five-dollar violin on a big brass knob at the foot of my bed, and I went down to a florist shop and got the kind of box they put a dozen roses in, and I put the busted fiddle in the box, and I sent it to her by Western Union messenger boy."

"Pretty, was she?"

"Pretty?" he echoed. "Mister, when I see my first lady angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, it'll be her wings and not her face that'll make my mouth fall open. I've already seen the prettiest face that ever could be. There wasn't a man in Ilium County who wasn't in love with her, secretly or otherwise. She could have had any man she wanted." He spit on his own floor. "And she had to go and marry that little Dutch son of a bitch! She was engaged to my brother, and then that sneaky little bastard hit town." Marvin Breed snapped his fingers again. "He took her away from my big brother like that.

"I suppose it's high treason and ungrateful and ignorant and backward and anti-intellectual to call a dead man as famous as Felix Hoenikker a son of a bitch. I know all about how harmless and gentle and dreamy he was supposed to be, how he'd never hurt a fly, how he didn't care about money and power and fancy clothes and automobiles and things, how he wasn't like the rest of us, how he was better than the rest of us, how he was so innocent he was practically a Jesus--except for the Son of God part. .

Marvin Breed felt it was unnecessary to complete his thought. I had to ask him to do it.

"But what?" he said. "But what?" He went to a window looking out at the cemetery gate. "But what," he murmured at the gate and the sleet and the Hoenikker shaft that could be dimly seen.

"But," he said, "but how the hell innocent is a man who helps make a thing like an atomic bomb? And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn't even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding . . ."

He shuddered, "Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead."



Vin-dit 34

It was in the tombstone salesroom that I had my first _vin-dit_, a Bokononist word meaning a sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism, in the direction of believing that God Almighty knew all about me, after all, that God Almighty had some pretty elaborate plans for me.

The _vin-dit_ had to do with the stone angel under the mistletoe. The cab driver had gotten it into his head that he had to have that angel for his mother's grave at any price. He was standing in front of it with tears in his eyes.

Marvin Breed was still staring out the window at the cemetery gate, having just said his piece about Felix Hoenikker. "The little Dutch son of a bitch may have been a modern holy man," he added, "But Goddamn if he ever did anything he didn't want to, and Goddamn if he didn't get everything he ever wanted.

"Music," he said.

"Pardon me?" I asked.

"That's why she married him. She said his mind was tuned to the biggest music there was, the music of the stars." He shook his head. "Crap."

And then the gate reminded him of the last time he'd seen Frank Hoenikker, the model-maker, the tormentor of bugs in jars. "Frank," he said.

"What about him?"

"The last I saw of that poor, queer kid was when he came out through that cemetery gate. His father's funeral was still going on. The old man wasn't underground yet, and out through the gate came Frank. He raised his thumb at the first car that came by. It was a new Pontiac with a Florida license plate. It stopped. Frank got in it, and that was the last anybody in Ilium ever saw of him."

"I hear he's wanted by the police."

"That was an accident, a freak. Frank wasn't any criminal. He didn't have that kind of nerve. The only work he was any good at was model-making. The only job he ever held onto was at Jack's Hobby Shop, selling models, making models, giving people advice on how to make models. When he cleared out of here, went to Florida, he got a job in a model shop in Sarasota. Turned out the model shop was a front for a ring that stole Cadillacs, ran 'em straight on board old L.S.T.'s and shipped 'em to Cuba. That's how Frank got balled up in all that. I expect the reason the cops haven't found him is he's dead. He just heard too much while he was sticking turrets on the battleship _Missouri_ with Duco Cement."

"Where's Newt now, do you know?"

"Guess he's with his sister in Indianapolis. Last I heard was he got mixed up with that Russian midget and flunked out of pre-med at Cornell. Can you imagine a midget trying to become a doctor? And, in that same miserable family, there's that great big, gawky girl, over six feet tall. That man, who's so famous for having a great mind, he pulled that girl out of high school in her sophomore year so he could go on having some woman take care of him. All she had going for her was the clarinet she'd played in the Ilium High School band, the Marching Hundred.

"After she left school," said Breed, "nobody ever asked her out. She didn't have any friends, and the old man never even thought to give her any money to go anywhere. You know what she used to do?"

"Nope."

"Every so often at night she'd lock herself in her room and she'd play records, and she'd play along with the records on her clarinet. The miracle of this age, as far as I'm concerned, is that that woman ever got herself a husband."

"How much do you want for this angel?" asked the cab driver.

"I've told you, it's not for sale."

"I don't suppose there's anybody around who can do that kind of stone cutting any more," I observed.

"I've got a nephew who can," said Breed. "Asa's boy. He was all set to be a heap-big _re_-search scientist, and then they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and the kid quit, and he got drunk, and he came out here, and he told me he wanted to go to work cutting stone."

"He works here now?"

"He's a sculptor in Rome."

"If somebody offered you enough," said the driver, "you'd take it, wouldn't you?"

"Might. But it would take a lot of money."

"Where would you put the name on a thing like that?" asked the driver.

"There's already a name on it--on the pedestal." We couldn't see the name, because of the boughs banked against the pedestal.

"It was never called for?" I wanted to know.

"It was never _paid_ for. The way the story goes: this German immigrant was on his way West with his wife, and she died of smallpox here in Ilium. So he ordered this angel to be put up over her, and he showed my great-grandfather he had the cash to pay for it. But then he was robbed. Somebody took practically every cent he had. All he had left in this world was some land he'd bought in Indiana, land he'd never seen. So he moved on--said he'd be back later to pay for the angel."

"But he never came back?" I asked.

"Nope." Marvin Breed nudged some of the boughs aside with his toe so that we could see the raised letters on the pedestal. There was a last name written there. "There's a screwy name for you," he said. "If that immigrant had any descendants, I expect they Americanized the name. They're probably Jones or Black or Thompson now."

"There you're wrong," I murmured.

The room seemed to tip, and its walls and ceiling and floor were transformed momentarily into the mouths of many tunnels--tunnels leading in all directions through time. I had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind, all wandering children.

"There you're wrong," I said, when the vision was gone.

"You know some people by that name?"

"Yes."

The name was my last name, too.

NYC closing schools for another swine flu outbreak
By SARA KUGLER and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writers



NEW YORK – New York City has closed three schools in response to a swine flu outbreak that has left an assistant principal in critical condition and sent hundreds of kids home with flu symptoms, in a flare-up of the virus that sent shock waves through the world last month.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that four students and the assistant principal have documented cases of swine flu at a Queens middle school. More than 50 students have gone home sick with flulike symptoms at the school, he said. At another middle school in Queens, 241 students were absent Thursday. Dozens more were sick at an elementary school.

The Health Department said the assistant principal from the Susan B. Anthony middle school is on a ventilator, marking the most severe illness in the city from swine flu to date. The students who have fallen ill in this latest surge of illness appear to be experiencing mild symptoms, similar to routine flu.

The assistant principal, identified by colleagues as Mitch Weiner, may have had pre-existing health problems, the mayor said. In many other swine flu cases that turned critical, patients had pre-existing conditions.

The mayor said that the sick assistant principal may have had pre-existing health problems. In many other swine flu cases that turned critical, patients had pre-existing conditions.

Bloomberg said that three schools — with more than 4,000 students altogether — would be closed for at least a week because "there are an unusually high level of flulike illnesses at those schools."

"There are documented cases of H1N1 flu at one of them," the mayor said, using the formal name for swine flu.

New York City's first known cases of swine flu appeared in late April, when hundreds of teenagers at a Roman Catholic high school in Queens began falling ill following the return of several students from vacations in Mexico, where the outbreak began.

At first, the virus appeared to be moving at breakneck speed. An estimated 1,000 students, their relatives and staff at the St. Francis Preparatory School fell ill in a matter of days. A limited number of kids had confirmed cases of swine flu because the Health Department tested only a small amount of students.

City health officials became aware of the outbreak on April 24. The school closed and health officials began bracing for more illnesses throughout the city.

But the outbreak then seemed to subside. Additional sporadic cases continued to be diagnosed, but the symptoms were nearly all mild. The sick children recovered in short order. St. Francis reopened after being closed for a week.

The middle school with the confirmed cases is two miles from St. Francis.

People at the school said students started going home sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, alarming parents.

"I'm worried," said Dino Dilchande, whose sixth-grade son goes to the school. "The city should have taken more precautions. We should have been notified earlier."

At the Susan B. Anthony, administrators posted a sign on the door from the Health Department informing students and teachers that the school would be closed for a week. The school is in the Hollis section of Queens, a neighborhood known for producing several rappers including the group Run-DMC.

A knock on the door of an address for a Mitch Weiner in the neighborhood of the school went unanswered.

Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a deputy commissioner of the health department, said investigators are trying to learn more about why the disease has spread erratically, moving quickly through a few schools but slowly everywhere else.

"We're trying to answer some of those questions," he said.

Schools are a good incubator for illness in general, he said, because space is tight and youngsters often don't practice the best hygiene.
Across the country, most of the people getting the illness have been young. Some experts have speculated that older people might have some immunity to the virus because of genetic similarities to more common types of flu.

At the start of the flu outbreak in the United States, government health officials recommended that schools shut down for two weeks if there were students with swine flu. But when the virus turned out to be milder than initially feared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped that advice but urged parents to keep children with flu symptoms home for a week.

So far, the virus has not proved to be more infectious or deadly than the seasonal flu.

CDC officials said schools may decide to close if there is a cluster that's affecting attendance and staffing.

___

Associated Press Writer David B. Caruso contributed to this report.

This prank is almost six years old, but we just heard about it and had to share it:

In 2002, Dylan Reiff and Joe Korsmo began tracking the internet activities of Kolin, aka V. Gnome, an 18-year old computer gamer. They monitored and recorded Kolin’s AOL instant messages and gathered information about his friends and family from other sources on the net. Blending this data with scenarios from videogames and sci-fi films, they developed a mythology in which Kolin is “singled out as the savior of the human race.” The story is told in Gem Missile: A Tribute to V. Gnome, a 40-page book that incorporates photographs of Kolin and excerpts from his personal correspondence. In August 2003, Reiff and Korsmo showed up on Kolin’s parent’s doorstep in Chicago. Reiff introduced himself as “Z. Figiam,” Kolin’s “mentor from the future,” presented him with the book, and left without further explanation.

The plot thickened several days later with Kolin posted a detailed description of the encounter to an on-line gaming forum, along with digital photos of every page in the book. Members of the forum quickly added their own theories and responses, which ranged from close readings of the text and speculations about the gender of its authors, to admissions of jealousy and accusations that Kolin had invented the story in order to get a high rating for his thread (which in a few weeks had received over 40,000 hits).

A year passed after this initial contact. In August 2004, Reiff and Korsmo mailed Kolin a package containing a photograph of their meeting a year earlier, along with a note, a certificate, and a plane ticket to Minneapolis. Kolin was met at the airport by a man in a beat up Lincoln Town Car who identified himself as “The Gatekeeper.” For two days, Kolin was lead around the city in search of robots, buried treasure and information needed to save the future. Reiff and Korsmo involved numerous actors and another on-line gamer who, equally baffled, was driven with Kolin to a forest and abandoned there. At some point, Kolin noticed that his new friend had mysteriously disappeared. “I stood there alone in the woods, in Minnesota, with a shovel and a large black locked box, more confused then I have ever been in my life.” Kolin survived the trip and posted a detailed account of his adventure, concluding, “it was a great experience, and I would not hesitate to save the future again, if the chance ever arose.”

It’s an epic tale and one best read from the perspective of Kolin, the “victim” of this awesome prank. It’s a long read, but it’s worth it: Future Shock: A Three Year Cross Country Adventure to Save the World

http://chrisambridge.livejournal.com/1643.html

60-year-old is oldest Army soldier killed in Iraq
By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press Writer – Thu May 14

PHOENIX – A 60-year-old Vietnam War veteran killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq has become the oldest Army soldier to die in that conflict, the military said Thursday.

Maj. Steven Hutchison, of Scottsdale, Ariz., served in Vietnam and wanted to re-enlist immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks, but that his wife was against it, his brother said.

Richard Hutchison told The Associated Press on Thursday that when she died, "a part of him died" so he signed up in July 2007.
"He was very devoted to the service and to his country," Richard Hutchison said.

He described him as a great big brother and friend. "I didn't want him to go," he said through tears, adding that he loved his brother "so much."

The Pentagon said Steven Hutchison was killed in Iraq on Sunday. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks said Thursday that Hutchison was the oldest Army soldier killed in Iraq.

An Associated Press database of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that Hutchison is the oldest member of any service branch killed since the wars broke out.

Hutchison served in Afghanistan for a year before deploying to Iraq in October, heading a 12-soldier team that trained the Iraqi military, his brother said. Later, he was assigned to help secure Iraq's southern border.

Hutchinson, who grew up in California, taught psychology at two state colleges then worked at a health care corporation in Arizona before retiring and re-entering the service, his brother said.

He was part of the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kan.
___
On the Net:
Department of Defense: http://www.defenselink.mil

Ten years since the Springtime of Broken Chairs, ten whole years. So unbelievable. I never thought I'd ever get out of that place, and sure I've gone back a few times, but there is no arguing about ten years, no one thought that was possible and I was definitely one of them. Sam Coomes on roxicord, so excellent. He lasted too, I just saw him play a few weeks ago. I get chills again listening to this.

Broken Chairs your body conforms to
Out beyond the quieted garden
You can bring the man form into trust
Through the holes in my everyday-ness
Lends sustenance
Where starvation's necessary
Cause my head's a dictionary
Of long spring days and the speech of crows
Who themselves are mirrors of apprehension
In the fallen sun

Where starvation's necessary
Cause my head's a dictionary
Of long spring days and the speech of crows
Who themselves are mirrors of apprehension
In the fallen sun

Well alright
You can make it stay

Well alright
Well alright
Well alright
You can make it stay

Well alright
Alright
Alright
Alright.

I'm coming through it, there are landmarks, there are street signs and picket fences, it's a normal neighborhood, it's one of those return to Kansas type moments, or I'm some dude in 1973 coming home from the war, people were happy already but they're slightly happier because I've come out the other side and am now in a red convertible going down their street because I came back from wherever, which was a cloud somewhere, I rematerialized going at high speed down the road, I don't remember this place or think I've ever been here but it was designed to be comforting and it's basically working out, the people were built to be friendly and the circumstances were designed to assist toward victory unless I broke the rules somehow by lying to the waiter or trying to cheat the system.

They have varsity coats like in the 50's, and the cars and the ridiculous hair products, all the women are pale with dark features and have wide apple shaped faces. They wear clothes with dots and interesting patterns. Where did I come from? What am I supposed to be remembering here? This is important, where was the last place before here? I am totally not remembering. White metal walls and a humming sound. Tall thick windows.

I'm too far gone dudes, I can't.

When you came back I should have figured it out because you had Natalie Portman there and it should have been a dead giveaway but instead I was all drunk and rude. You could have learned a lot from her, seriously, she knows all these languages and stuff. YOU SHOULD HAVE BRUSHED YOUR TEETH AT LEAST ONCE ALL YEAR.

This is all my fault.

You know what, when that girl lied to you about her Mom's imaginary brain tumor you should have just told her to fuck off. What a little pig. I've learned all about this, there are lots of little pigs around.

I'm sorry that guy threw out the ivy plant. One of the greatest disasters ever.

A guy went in front of Congress several months ago and said if we don't stop the coal burning plants it would be the apocalypse. Not long later some brand new coal burning plants were supposed to go into operation but I don't know what happened with them because I got distracted with other stories. Pretty much it's the apocalypse all over and coal is just a small part of it and I was directing my attention to gasoline, but I'll try to get back on track. Coal is what bad children get for Christmas, everyone knows that right?

But this guy said the only reason he wasn't chaining himself to the doors of newly built coal burning plants was because he was still needed as a scientist and as someone respectable enough to be able to go to Congress and explain how the apocalypse works.

So who got coal for Christmas this year? You see Knoxville recently? This is what 5.4 million pounds of coal sludge looks like:


So that was Monday. But then last night, Obama was without electricity for 11 hours when the coal-powered electric grid went down on Oahu due to massive lightning storm. They hurried to install three new generators and wound up rejecting a fourth, and Ban Labolt says he spent the night in the dark on purpose. My experience with electrical blackouts is pretty specific, and in circumstances like these they're supposed to imply a specific message but I wasn't sure how that applied to Obama. I'm supposed to be able to explain these things, and I was halfway through The Day The Earth Stood Still this afternoon and realized my friend was right this morning, it's all about the coal, the lightning was pretty pissed off about the coal.

They're replaying the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on NBC at the moment and it's funny in hindsight to see Bush and Putin in the stands conferring and totally ignoring the show, because you know, those pesky Georgians!

Okay pay no attention to this, the whole problem is friggin Space Ghost, which is not a problem, it's all really funny actually.