New Orleans greets the president

Our town may be beaten and scarred
But we will not be taken off guard.
You have broken your vow,
Mr. Bush, and so, now,
The Big Easy is taking that hard.

New Orleans storm-ready, feds say; some not so sure
The Plain Dealer, 8/28/08

War on a lie

[Now there's a scary title]

The current Iraqi morass
Raises scares that no film could surpass.
When King George gets sincere
It increases our fear
Of political snakes in the grass!

Finish What Job?
President Bush's simplistic rhetoric could be used
to justify open-ended commitment in Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2006

Enough is enough!

I've had it with this motherf***n' hype
in the motherf***n' media!

Take a concept that’s purely inane,
Then hype it ‘til fans go insane;
And what should be a bomb
Will become a phenom.
Could the sequel be Sharks on a Train ?

'Snakes on a Plane' can't lose
Two stars out of four
By Michael Phillips The Chicago Tribune, 8/18/06

Byron's and Tiger's and Bear's; oh my!

Without any "what ifs" or "shoulds,"
This guy can deliver the goods.
Now that he’s on his game
His opponents seem tame.
Beware; Tiger is out of the woods!

Tiger Finds Way To Exclusive Club
By Michael Wilbon, The Washington Post, 8/21/06

Small wonder

Many hope that there will come a day
Of justice for poor JonBenet;
But who measures the cost
In innocence lost
While such children are put on display?



Suspect Held in Ramsey Slaying
Man, 41, Arrested In Thailand
By T.R. Reid and Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post, 8/17/06

My "L" word is Laughter

My views on the news that apply
Are to laugh long and hard, lest you cry.
This NeoCon climate
Makes clear what a crime it’s
Sans humor in Liberal supply.

Carnival of the Liberals #19: The Parody Poetry Edition
One Flew East, 8/15/06

Planetary lost and found?

Poor Pluto was fast losing ground
‘Til the IAU chose to expound
On what is a planet.
Don’t take nine for granite
With a dozen about to come round.

Round and Orbity? Must Be a Planet
By John Johnson Jr.
The Los Angeles Times, 8/16/06

Political kiss of death

Some advice for politicians

At constituents’ views, never scoff,
If you feed at the government trough
Or you might go amiss
Just like Joe and "The Kiss,"
While the voters are kissing you off.



But it worked for Madonna!

Lieberman pays a price for Iraq stance
San Jose Mercury News, 8/10/06

War is hard; peace is simple

There simply can be no excuse
For these countries to not reach a truce.
Either see eye-to-eye
Or let innocents die!
Is the answer that hard to deduce?

Sixty-one years and we still have not learned one of the key lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See Cowntown Pattie's excellent post for more on that subject.

Israeli Jets Kill 30; No Letup in Militia Attacks
Arab League Ministers Call for Cease-Fire,
But Israel Signals Expansion of Offensive
By Edward Cody and Molly Moore
The Washington Post, 8/8/06

My last post

To those of you applauding: No, I didn't mean it like that!

I reread it and started to doze;
It was wordy by half, heaven knows.
The Savant can be terse
When writing in verse
But he tends to run on and on and on, with seemingly endless explication, often including parenthetical asides, (this man could really use an editor) (and isn't it annoying when he refers to himself in the third person?!!) and taking forever to make, what is usually not all that interesting, a point, whenever he sits down and puts pen to paper (or, more appropriately, bit to chip, since the handwritten word, long ago, went the way of the dot matrix printer) to endeavor to express his thoughts, however trivial, slight or downright meaningless, in the form of prose.

Hot off the presses

'Til it's gone, we don't know what we've got,
Nor pay notice 'til something is not;
But you might be surprised
That I just realized
That, for days, it's been gawdawful hot!

This is a total fabrication, of course. Not that it's been hot but that I just noticed. In fact, I have been following the study increase (with only a couple days reprieve) of above normal temperatures in Cleveland for the past three weeks like Philip Marlowe on the trail of a murderous heiress. I just didn't think it was worth mentioning until there was a break in the case, so to speak.

So now that I spent half of last Sunday, one of the hottest so far, installing a window air conditioner in the bedroom that serves as an office; we are finally getting some relief. We have been able to survive the Cleveland summers with the help of ceiling fans for years, enduring the odd, exceptionally hot, day here and there. I finally broke down and bought a bedroom air conditioner a few years ago after a sleepless week brought on by a heat wave. And that seemed to do the trick until mid July of this year.

Now after a couple weeks of really uncomfortable weather and Rene trying to write her book and me hoping to attain a modicum of tranquility by organizing the office, we were faced with the question of how to create a workspace livable for someone other than the firemen in the Titantic's engine room. Whole house AC is out because we have steam heat and a retrofit would be far too expensive. On the other hand, a second window unit raised worries about tripping breakers in a house with wiring that Edison would have found antiquated. Never the less we opted to take the chance, figuring we could always alternate operation of the ACs since work and sleep hours don't overlap.

I found a bargain on a nice unit small enough to be easy on the amps, though it took considerable tinkering to get the right fit in our windows. By late afternoon, with sweat burning my eyes, I was able to tap the remote until a lovely glowing red 75 appeared on the digital display and cool air gushed forth from the cheap plastic grate. Within hours, the formidable "88" on the display had sunk all the way down to a tolerable "82," so baked in was the heat to walls and ceiling.

Now, 5 days later, I sit in the comfort of a still cluttered but much cooler office awaiting tomorrow's break in temperature but confident in my ability to thwart the heat demons at the touch of a button should they return. I am only troubled by the worry that now that I am able to go from "temperature controlled" house to car to work to car to house to car, etcetera, etcetera; my brief encounters with the typical Cleveland summer environment will become more intolerable and I shall hardly ever want to breathe what passes for fresh air here again. Well, at least I may finally organize the office.

Weather Cooling, But More Rain on Way
WCPN, 8/3/06

Remembering the cost

It’s a year, and one tear can revive
All the grief for a parent deprived
Of the life of a son.
That war’s never done
For survivors of 3/25.

In Ohio, Marines' Deaths Still Felt
Joe Milicia, The Wahington Post, 8/3/06

My name is Mel and I’m an __________

a. Actor
b. Alcoholic
c. Angry a*hole
d. Anti-Semite
e. All of the above

In ever cynical Hollywood, the response to Mr. Gibson’s latest embarrassment was something less than outrage. One imagines the memo from his agent:

Stop drinking! I’m telling you, Mel.
You know we have movies to sell.
When acting the critic,
Who’s anti-Semitic,
Your Passion has not served you well.

Gibson Arrest Probe Centers on Why Information Was Withheld
Civilian watchdog is investigating whether the actor got special treatment.
After the star was booked, a deputy drove him to his car.
By Richard Winton, Andrew Blankstein and Megan Garvey,
The Los Angeles Times, 8/2/06