From My Corner of the World

WHEW: thank God we're going to have another go at the Rapture in October. I missed it last week, but I think that the people in Joplin believe it happened in their neighborhood. All those fanatics who gave away their life savings could have better spent their funds helping out those in the path of the tornadoes in Mississippi.

Watching Hines in his drum major costume toss around his dance partner, Kim, in her cheerleader costume was akin to watching a weird adult porn movie without the porn. Imagine my surprise when they scored such high marks because I totally thought they both missed the mark completely.

Nice to hear on Sirius that the rest of the world is catching up with me in thinking that the live-in household staff is on the hook for her role of the 'negger scandal, as well as acknowledging that Arnold is now, and always has been, a poon dawg. Just as Tiger's entourage of high-priced hookers had their day in the media glare, so will the Govenator's side dish, Patty, and perhaps her fellow slumber party-goers, who are out there and praying that no one connects them to this scandal. The media will find Patty, one way or another, and it's going to get ugly when the spotlight focuses on her, beginning with, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??"

And someone must have read son's blog about PEDs because yesterday, on the Barbara Walters Sirius radio program, Bill echoed my son's thoughts: who cares? Everyone is using them, so everyone has the same opportunity to benefit from performance enhancing drugs, so what is the problem? He also echoed son's sentiment that a person who's going to hit the ball out of the park while using steroids could also hit it out of the park without using PEDs, but the person who isn't able to hit the ball out of the park won't hit it out of the park no matter what he takes. They are performance enhancing drugs, not performance inducing drugs.

Akin to this issue is the reason why students cheat: because everyone else is cheating. If they don't cheat, too, they end up with lower grades than the cheaters, and if everyone is doing it, everyone wants to be doing it! Same with sexual experimentation, drugs, horrendous fights with the parents, running away, on-line instant friendships: everyone's doing it, so I'm going to do it too because I want to be an everyone, NOT a nobody.

Ditto: flash mobs. Makes a great YouTube video, which, for some people, becomes their only claim to fame: yeah, I was in that mob. Wow, that was totally awesome. Uh, I'm not sure which one of the thousand people is me, but I was there, dude! I was there! Herd mentality used to be something we tried to avoid, not emulate. It was better to be an outstanding individual than a faceless member of a huge crowd caught up in the moment.

Over the weekend, I cleaned up the backyard, repainted the sand-damaged furniture, washed off the layers of grit from every conceivable surface, put up the sun shades, and finished just in time for the gale winds to blow again. I love sitting outside, especially in the early morning, but it's still not doable in the desert due to the constant high winds. Yeah, I'll be complaining when it's in triple digits and not a breath of wind to be found, but the opposite end of the spectrum is just as frustrating in my corner of the world.