The Airing of Grievances

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."

- Neil Armstrong

The blog is green for Earth Day, which is either today, tomorrow or yesterday depending on when you are reading. That's about all I'm doing, since I don't have any lamps in the place where I can put in those squiggly bulbs. I'm already running low-flow shower heads and my car is a PZEV (Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicle), so I think I'm maxed out.

There's a meteor shower on Sunday night. The Lyrid one. 18 per hour, they say. I'm not all that worked-up, unless one of them slips through and hits my car.

I know I shouldn't torture myself, but I was tuned into Fox News today, and they had some sort of round-table discussion of the media's coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, and whether or not the TV news got a little carried away. Surprise. The people on TV thought that the news coverage was fair and not at all overboard. Sure. That discussion followed Brian Williams' declaration that "the Virginia Tech campus will forever be known as the place where the biggest mass shooting in America's history took place." For now, yes. Until the next one, when some attention-starved jackass sets out to kill more than 32 people. Don't think it will happen? You're not paying attention.

The discussion was preceded by them showing a letter that some VT students had written as an open letter to the media, asking them to please get off the campus and allow them to heal. Then, they showed a picture of about a hundred big white trucks with the big satellite dishes. They probably don't get that many TV trucks on campus for football games.

My peaceful afternoon was disrupted by my new downstairs neighbor who decided to power wash the outside of his condo. It made so much noise, I thought a meteor crashed in the parking lot. Dude, it's a condo. We don't do outside stuff. That's what the massive condo fee is for. Jackass. It shaved another week off my cat's life, too, I think.

When I got home from the grocery store, I flipped on the TV and the NASCAR race on Fox. Some kid was singing the National Anthem, and he didn't fail to disappoint me with (1) his pace, which made it sound like a dirge rather than what it is - an old English drinking tune, and (2) the mispronunciation of per-o-liss, which sometimes comes in as par-a-liss. It's perilous. Peril. lous. As is typical, when he got to ...the land of the free ... (which was more like la-and and faree) the F-16 flyover occurred. As though fighter jets equals freedom. I'm a little sick of that, too.

I bought a new key chain. I know. It has a little bottle opener, which comes in handy if I'm driving around and the beer isn't one of those twist-off ones. Be prepared.

That's what the NASCAR commentators were saying about Kevin Harvick. The race started late, and goes into the night-time hours. He was wearing a clear face shield on his helmet instead of the tinted one he usually uses. The guys in the booth made it sound like he discovered Plutonium when they said that he discussed it with his crew, and they decided that the sun was going down, and he should be prepared. Gets late. Sun go down. Got it.

Rocket science meets NASCAR. I bet they'll be looking for the meteors on Sunday night.

Here's a hint for them: Look up and take off your sunglasses.

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