Thursday, January 27, 2011

State of the Union

The State of the Union is cold, dark, hungry, powerless and alone on night two after a brief spasm of heavy snow, nursing a scotch, sealed in four layers of synthetic and wool, babying 44 percent power on the iPad, listening to a fading radio signal of the Mark Levin Show, and contemplating the New Year in earnest. The family has been sent off to the warm confines of nearby relations. Most of the neighbors have abandoned their homes for hotels or the couches of generous neighbors on the other side of that invisible line that separates electrical jurisdictions. Listserv denizens contemplate class action suits against the power and cable companies for the inexcusable civil crime of leaving them . . . uncomfortable. Others fret about their pipes. More advice swooshes through the intertubes. It's 53 degrees in the den and 30 degrees on the porch. The emails roll in every five minutes. Who has heard what about the power, about the pipes, about the traffic, about the schools, about the garbage pickup, about the Metro, about the arborists?

But I want for nothing. All this drama and inconvenience and frustration with utilities and kivetching and kavalling is just so much soft suburban weakness. Two or three nights of dark, unrelenting cold IS GOOD FOR YOU! I don't want any information. I want the dark, the cold, the quiet, and the snow for a few nights. And the scotch. I really want the scotch.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sunday, January 9, 2011

God Bless Them!

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/3365.aspx

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.
From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night

Well, it's only day 4 of the new year and already signs of the apocalypse have revealed themselves. I speak of the birds. The Arkansas birds. The three or four or five thousand red winged black birds which fell from the night sky. The coroner - the coroner! - blames blunt force trauma. All sorts of theories - weather, human agency, extraterrestrial shenanigans. Still waiting for global warming to be added to the list. But none of that matters. It doesn't matter who or what is responsible. Five thousand black birds baked in a pie. Will all the black birds in Oklahoma or Texas fall from the sky, too? Can this mystery be solved before robins and sparrows and bluejays, oh my, begin dropping like flies?

Oh, but wait, not all the blackbirds in Arkansas fell from the sky. Five thousand did. Yep, a big number. Imagine them all flying over your cars and park benches and Minute Men statues. Well, five thousand must be half the population of black birds in Arkansas, or maybe ten percent. Not even close.

According to a census of bird species that I am too lazy to link to, in 2007, there were approximately - drum roll - 6,300,000 red winged black birds plaguing or blessing the Arkansas landscape, depending on your viewpoint.

So, the aliens exterminated approximately .0008 percent of the Arkansas blackbird population.

It's the End Times.

Saturday, January 1, 2011