Karbowski's blog always is an inspiration to share random details of my life with the lovely readers (4 of you, thanks!) of this fine bbbblog.

Last weekend was fun: my brother and I dressed up in mouse costumes and plotted to take over the world. Booyeah. Actually, I flew to the greatest American city, Chicago, so Kristin could house me and feed me and drive me to Grand Rapids for a wedding between high school pal John and his nice now-wife Rebecca. John looks different; certainly moreso than when he used to call me "kid" at the Y when we played floor hockey on Friday nights. Eric was in rare form as well, on two occasions just completely stopping his stories, telling me I didn't care and that he wasn't being interesting, and suggesting we go to the dance floor. He tried to dance with the apparent one single girl there while I played wingman with April, but I guess that didn't go so well. April was nice enough, except that she refused to feed the conversation, and I was thus stuck asking weird awkward questions about why she was there until I ran out and hoped that Eric was getting nowhere with Jamey so I could move onto checking the Michigan score, getting more wine, or remigrating to the greatness of Table 5.

The wedding was swell, and the cake, personally crafted by Rebecca The Bride, was marvelous. Congrats to the one guy we didn't think would get married this soon.

Kristin was a machine Saturday night, driving all the way from GR to Chicago while attempting to see how long she could go without blowing air from her mouth or nose (17 seconds). I don't recall time in a car ever passing so quickly; perhaps it was the kitchen-cleaning Mr. Brightside. Midwestern University is a nice enough school, and the perfect place to spend some time if you're studying goose droppings.

So: thanks to KO, congrats again to the newlyweds, props to Eric, hello Shaun and Maggie and Ryan, and it's now back to Dawson's Creek.

Salisbury Hill

climbing up on salisbury hill
I could see the city lights

It's been too long since climbing a hill.

Frick's Summer Survey

had a party: it's always a party at Tropicana Party...I mean Field
gone to a party: 74, 7 to go
smoked: I smoked Carl Crawford in a footrace from 1st to 2nd
drank: and then sang O.A.R.
spent the night with someone: Holly
Laughed until your stomach hurt: no one I know in Florida is funny
gone on vacation: when you can drive to DisneyWorld in 90 minutes, does it qualify as a vacation?
went camping: the plan is to camp on the beach in December
swam: the pool. a lot. and the Gulf.
went to the movies: Hitchhiker's Guide. Wedding Crashers. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Batman Begins.
gone shopping: ohmigod I love to shop!
had a job: more like a lifestyle
got sun burnt: on the back
made a bon fire: burnt down the Yankees
been outside during a lightning storm: I don't know what the outside looks like
been to another state: not really. well, Michigan. and various airports. but I'm not sure they count.
been to another country: to Machnackistan
changed something about your appearance: my hair grew. now I look like Che. not really.
been to the hospital with an injury: I visited the Rays' mascot. She broke her arm.
commited a crime/broken the law: downloaded music
gone on a road trip: not the good kind
kissed someone: I am still working on holding hands with Holly
been to a concert: O.A.R. O.A.R. O.A.R.
been in trouble with the parents: they were like, why does your baseball team suck so much
had a memorable moment: bases loaded, down by 3, 3-2, 2 out, bottom of the 9th. that ball is gone.
had a horrible moment: last night's Yankee game qualifies.
made new friends: I don't really like anybody I know in Florida very much.
missed a friend: Jen
slept under the stars: nope but I did make out under them on a romantic motorcycle ride through the the country side at midnight. you can all gag now. WAIT. That was Frick's answer.
thought about school: sing of Alma Mater
been to the beach: beach?
thought about a special someone: I think about Katie Holmes a lot
spent the most time with: my lovely Devil Rays cohorts. it's depressing to think about, for real.
taken a summer class: that would be lame.
had a crush: Katie Holmes
where are you going to school: The Academy of How Not To Operate A Baseball Team
bought a new car: the Focus is hot
lesson learned: YANKEES SUCK!

The Conundrum

Stenny blogged about this article in the LATimes; the jist is that despite our lovely president's complete and total failures in things like budgeting, going to war, and responding to a disaster, he's still in office and will be in office until 2008 (shrieks).

Some people find this very comforting. Some of these people think we should round up handfuls of Katrina refugees and "have them shot." (I work with very compassionate human beings.)

I've determined that there's no bridge. It's a chasm. The size of Montana. With hungry crocodiles at the bottom. Who read Proust.

I, for example, absolutely cannot grasp, as hard as I try, how anyone can watch/listen to Bill O'Reilly and find him in any way convincing. I think he is a hippocritic tool who would fit right in with the crocodiles. But on the same token, the people who watch him can't grasp how anyone could even stomach CNN and its apparently liberal bias.

And I don't know why this is. Ideology? Stubborness? The "stick to your guns" mentality? The human inability to ever admit your might have been misled or wrong? I just cannot comprehend how, after scanning headlines, taking stock of this country, and absorbing policies and tactics including nuclear preemption, less trade with China, FCC blocks, continued environmental degredation, ever-decreasing support abroad for the U.S., and of course, the war, the deficit, and the response, that anyone might find it in their heart to stick with this administration any longer.

But they do. Why, I ask. Why?

RantShmant

I've become inclined to thinking that the working world contains two types of people:

1. The ones who think you should only do what you get paid for...

2. And the ones who, whether through strength of character, a simple compulsion to do what's best for their organization, or a desire to get ahead, go above and beyond their job descriptions...

Just about everyone probably thinks they fall into category 2, if only because they attend a meeting or stay at the office an hour later than usual...but at the same time, a lot of these people don't do these things because their hearts are in it. They do it to not get in trouble or to simply to tell themselves they're riding over the fence and are thus "better" than their fellow coworkers.

These people suck.

Stop complaining! Do a little more! Give a little bit! Stop acting like you are a fiefdom and try to make life a little easier for everyone around you. If this involves five minutes of your time that you'd otherwise spend watching M.A.S.H., well, get the DVD and watch it at home. We're all in this together.

Indeed, I'm so sick of people existing in their own little bubbles...thinking and assuming that the world owes them something, when most of the time, it's they who owe the world a lot, whether through some simple compassion for their fellow man or something more, like volunteering at a hospital. Especially in this industry...you find a lot of people who are convinced they are the best at what they do, that everybody but them makes mistakes, that if only people saw things their way the whole world would be in balance.

These people suck. They are the people who fall into the aforementioned Category 1. Give a little bit more than what's called for. It goes so far.

BOOO

Terrible idea: Putting Alma's Homecoming on the same weekend as the Michigan/MSU game.

On a more personal level, that is also the Rays' final weekend of baseball in 2005, as well as the Bucs/Lions game.

Thus, I'm missing my chance to see the Lions in Florida, the Scots at Homecoming, plus the Mitten Tussle on TV. I'd like to now thank the people at MLB who scheduled a Rays/Orioles series for an October weekend. Everyone there must truly understand just how vital those games will be.

Props

Colleen is awesome. Colleen leaves comments. Visit her blog at

http://www.colleenpetterson.com/journal

In honor of yesterday's college football

In the interest of college football fans everywhere, Michigan State and Alma should play a game every year...call it the 27 Tussle. Why not?

Fallout

"As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before."

Seems worth pointing out.

"Not acceptable"

Not acceptable? Not acceptable? Are you fing kidding me? Are you the 4th grade teacher, handing out report cards to your classroom? Not acceptable? One year after 9/11, I remember giving this lovely administration a pass, saying it needed some time to create a gigantic new bureaucracy in the name of keeping our country safe. Now our Useless commander in chief calls our whole mess "not acceptable," begging the question...what in the name of all that is holy have you been doing for the last four years?!!? Chopping wood? Watching Keanu Reeves movies? We couldn't stop terrorists from moving into our country. We couldn't find a reason to invade Iraq, so we sorta kinda made some things up. We have no means to exit Iraq. I haven't really been hearing positive reports out of Afghanistan. Reporters go to jail.

SO WHAT IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DOING?? I will grant that we have not seen any sort of significant terrorist attack since 9/11, and that may be because of the great Department of Homeland Security. But incomes are stagnant. The cost of living continues to rise. Getting a good, real job is harder than it's been in (probably) the last 15 years. Health care need not be mentioned. And how many parents want to send their kids to public schools?

It's mind-boggling that people even continue to support this man, his administration, and his slow-of-foot bureaucratic heads who can't seem to get any kind of organization going on in New Orleans and the Gulf.

NYTimes editorial 09/01/05

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.