Case in point, last night it was raining, cloudy and the wind was gusting 20+ MPH. Last night was Wednesday. Today, Hamburger Thursday, the windsock looks as if it was carved from granite and not made of lightweight nylon. But hey, at least there’s a little cloud cover… ugh!

Vayu (Hindu), Anemoi (Greek), Venti (Roman) , Fujin (Japanese), Njord (Norse), Stribog (Slavic), you Gods of the wind, why do you torment me so!?

That is, you don’t realize you’re doing these things until you’ve got a broken toe on the foot you’re doing them with. THEN you notice, oh my yes, you do notice then. Not only do you notice but anyone within fifty or so feet is going to notice too… or at least hear about it.

Okay, he had a couple fairly cool custom motorcycle specials on the Discovery Channel. Granted it was amusing to hear him touted as ‘one of the last fabricators to use an English wheel’ (a device to bend and stretch sheet metal). Until we started seeing other custom bike and car builders at work and surprisingly just about all of ‘em had an English wheel. Woops! Then his bikes were eclipsed by the flash and fugly bikes of the popular American Chopper. I think a lot of that had to do with the moronic fights the family got into more than anything.

Then he had Monster Garage. Which was a pretty cool show, until they decided that working within the show’s set build budget wasn’t getting them the ‘woo-hoo’ factor they wanted so they started allowing ‘donations’. When I saw an engine valued at twice the build budget ‘donated’ to the episode I gave up.

He did a shot on Celebrity Apprentice, a show I wouldn’t let coma victims watch it’s so horrible. I hear he did badly, I wouldn’t know.

NOW he’s got his new show Jesse James Is a Dead Man where he goes out and does stuff other people have been doing for years, decades even, but he’s ‘famous’ so now it’s special. Racing the Baja 500. Driving a monster truck. Running from the police (damn, Jesse, you can see that nightly on the news in CA!). Sidecar motorcycle racing… is there anything you won’t do that hasn’t been done better, Jes?

Seriously are you that desperate to get your mug on TV? Is your West Coast Choppers business suffering? I don’t see your sponsorship in the NHRA anymore and I see fewer and fewer people wearing your shirts and hats.

Go back to doing what you do best, building kick ass, custom bikes that DON’T look like fire trucks, lawn mowers or other stupid shit. Do something in copper again, that tank you built on one of your specials was gorgeous.

I completely understand that during severe weather things happen but I’m not talking about such situations. A few weeks ago I was sitting here in the den around 4:00 AM when the lights went up and down, browning not blacking out several time. Then the power went out for several hours. The weather was clear. I went outside and didn’t hear any emergency vehicles responding to anything for miles around so I doubt someone knocked over a pole. I didn’t hear any transformers explode. We just sat in the dark for hours.

Several nights ago once again the lights browned out multiple times before once again we lost power on yet another clear and stormless night. This time it was only out for a couple hours. Your automated system woke me up half an hour after the power came back on to confirm the power was back on… joy.

I still haven’t forgiven you, FPL, for what you did in 2004. After the first hurricane you had our power back on within twelve hours. We were impressed… Until you snuck, SNUCK, a repair truck into the neighborhood at 3:00 AM and instead of replacing the faulty transformer you turned our power BACK off for several weeks. You have no idea how it felt sitting in this small section of Palm Bay you deliberately blacked out. Watching the houses across the street with their TVs on and hearing their air conditioners humming. You have no idea what it was like having the street light 20 feet away mocking you night after night. I may never forgive you for that blunder. You had a truck here, you should have fixed it. It only took 30 minutes when they finally got around to coming back out here.

FPL, why can’t you keep the power on?

“If you like playing video games you should explore the exciting world of creating them!”

What?

I like steak, does that mean I should take up butchery?

I like baseball AND corn, should I buy a farm and try to recreate ‘Field of Dreams’? “If you build it they will foreclose…”

I like thunderstorms, should I… ok, I got nothing.

I like playing video games. I’ve seen what coding does to ‘normal’ people and I think I’m weird enough as it is without going pro at it.

The story; the SETI project at the Arecibo radio telescope, after being sold off to the Japanese, pays off. Strange, intriguing, even beautiful singing is coming from Alpha Centauri. The discovery is first shared among friends of the technician on duty one of which is a Jesuit priest. In secret The Jesuit Society puts together and launches an ill fated mission to meet the singers.

Ok, let me just say the books is well written. I’d have given up on it without finishing had it not been so well written. Unfortunately the story pushes several of my pet peeve buttons.

Firstly, non linear story telling. We jump from present to past to present over and over. It may, in this case, have helped unfurl the story slowly but I just dislike this mode of story telling. A little foreshadowing is fine, chapters of it are just weird.

Secondly, the science. The expedition uses a hollowed out left over from mining asteroid already fitted with engines that fuse the silica to generate thrust. These, apparently, abound in Earth orbit. We’re supposed to believe that aster…missles, with high powered, highly maneuverable engine systems are just left in orbit and no one’s ever thought or tried to use one as a weapon? I don’t buy it. I also don’t buy the Earth governments allowing these things to just sit out there waiting to rain down upon us.

Early in the story, which starts off around 2019, one character wonders if another ‘even remembers television’. Ten years from now? Maybe in 2019 we’ll have 3D holographic mist projectors instead of flat screen HDTVs but they’ll still be television. People will still be watching video based entertainment calling it television and collecting old shows. Just like we do now. Within ten years we’ll have completely forgotten the medium? I just don’t buy it.

Personally I felt the novel dealt too much with the main character’s religious beliefs and his Crisis of Faith and not enough to the science fiction side of the story. Even the reader’s very first encounter with the aliens is a glossed over “Hi, how are ya? Sure we’ll travel to the big city with you.”

Even now I can’t honestly tell you if I liked the book or not. I read it, finished it, the writing itself was well done but I don’t think I’d ever re-read it (something I do quite often with my favorite books). In the end I’d have to say give it a try, check it out from the library instead of buying it. You might like it. You might not. I’m still not sure.

I once waited, while being part of a state run program, two and a half YEARS for a dental appointment and when I finally did get to see a dentist I was forced to undergo an extraction instead of a filling because “we don’t do fillings anymore…” even though the paperwork I got the DAY of my visit says they do. They also refused to write anything for the pain or infection I was suffering from. The dentist also cracked the tooth next to the one she pulled but no option to fix her mistake was ever offered.

…some people wait up to a year for vital surgeries.

Years ago when I had health insurance I was told both my hands needed Carpel Tunnel surgery, this would be my right hand’s third surgery, and that I probably needed surgery on my right elbow and shoulder. My health insurance ran out. It’s been ten years, I’m still waiting for ‘vital’ surgery I can’t afford.

…many drugs and treatments are not available.

When you don’t have health insurance and can’t afford to see doctors and specialist NO drugs and treatments are available.

Of course we couldn’t learn from the mistakes of other countries, could we? No, the commercial says we shouldn’t let the Govt. come between you and your doctor. Those people with insurance (and all the righteous bastards sponsoring the commercial) probably won’t even notice a health care plan aimed at those people with NO health care at all.

A while ago I went out the front door *BOOM!* when some lady for the dozenth time let her dog take a leak on our mailbox post. “HEY! You, yeah, you! *I* don’t piss in your yard do I? I’m sick of your damn dog pissing on my mailbox. I’m sick of dancing around the puddle and smelling dog piss when I go to get my mail!”

Then she GLARED at me! As if I was in the wrong to chastise her about her dog using my damn mailbox post as a toilet. She does now, however, cross the street when she walks by with the mutt but she still glares at the house and twice her husband, while walking the dog, has flipped me off.

I’ve seriously considered getting a couple vinyl signs printed up; “I don’t crap in YOUR yard. Your dogs shouldn’t crap in MINE!” and putting them up along the sidewalk…

Once, while at the beach, I looked into the sky and a seagull shit into my mouth… THAT tasted better than this horrible drink. It tastes like there’s menthol in it but I can’t see it listed in the nearly unreadable ingredients, like sucking on a tube of Ben-Gay. This stuff bites in a bad way. Anyone want the other bottle?