My Sick Mind

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – Key ships stationed over BP's crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to evacuate Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie , and engineers have grown so confident in the leaky cap fixed to the well head that they will leave it closed while they are gone. Tropical Storm Bonnie,, which blossomed over the Bahamas and was to enter the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend, could delay by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud and cement, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and BP officials conceded. Even if it's not a direct hit, the rough weather will push back efforts to kill the well by at least a week. "While this is not a hurricane, it's a storm that will have probably some significant impacts, we're taking appropriate cautions," Allen said in Mobile, Alabama. Significant impacts? You betcha. What are high winds and storm surges going to do with all that oil floating on the surface of the Gulf? I don...

I don't read as much as I write. I read the newspaper every day, but rarely indulge in a book or anything longer than a magazine article. I suppose it's my child of the 60s-induced short attention span that limits my interest to anything shorter than an average television program, whose length has grown shorter over the years as well. I recently purchased the first season DVDs of Newhart , the Bob Newhart sitcom where he owns an Inn in Vermont. I watched a few episodes (before becoming interested in something else) and noticed that the commercial-free programs were between 24 and 26 minutes long. By contrast, DVD episodes of last season's Parks and Recreation are around 21 minutes long. Both programs occupied a half-hour of network air time, but have gotten 5 minutes shorter over the span of 22 years. How long will it be before the program is shorter than the commercial breaks? By those standards, it will take 44 years. Lucky teen aged readers have that to look forward t...

“We’re going to be wearing a bulls eye . But that’s what you play for,” Dwayne Wade said. “We enjoy the bulls eye. Plus, there’s going to be times when we lose 2-3 games in a row, and it seems like the world has crashed down. You all (media) are going to make it seem like the World Trade is coming down again, but it’s not going to be nothing but a couple basketball games. Dwayne Wade apologized for that remark. Why? Because it was seen (or heard) as being offensive to people who remember the events of September 11, 2001. We call it Nine-eleven around here. "In an interview yesterday , I attempted to explain how some people may view the Miami Heat losing a few basketball games in a row during the upcoming season. It appears that my reference to the World Trade Center has been either inaccurately reported or taken completely out of context. I was simply trying to say that losing a few basketball games should not be compared to a real catastrophe. "While it was certainly not m...