Twilight Landing...

... in El-Eh.

While watching this vid it occurred to me that about the ONLY thang I miss about air travel... which I did a lot of back in Former Happy Days... is the spectacular nighttime city views one gets during a night landing.  My favorite night landing was always Dee-troit but that was more a function of coming home than the view itself.  The view was pretty good, however, given that Dee-troit is essentially flatter than flat and spread out over a VERY large area, compared to other cities.  And then there's Noo Yawk, of course, and London, and a plethora of other cities.  They are all spectacular from the air on a clear night.

But the most amazing night landing I ever experienced was at the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong (at right)... and it was ALL about the terror, mainly because one gets the feeling your pilot is setting you down on some boulevard rather than an actual airport.  You could actually SEE people walking around inside their high-rise apartments as you were on final into Kai Tak.  THAT, Gentle Reader, is a most unnerving feeling.  I can only imagine how the residents of those apartments felt about having a 747 whistle... or roar... by their windows every two minutes or so.  I'm thinkin' those people were sure glad when Kai Tak shut down.  Me?  I was glad to have survived the landing, which was a close encounter of the disconcerting sort.

Right Now

I'm watching the Army-Navy Groundpounders-Squids game, which is to say the also-rans playin' for second place, seein' as how the Air Force Academy has already won the CinC's Trophy.  That said (and you know I just HAD to say it),  it's a pretty entertaining game, all things considered.  Army tied it up with seconds left in the first half, despite the two Army turnovers that gave Navy their touchdowns.  So we're at the half and the game is tied, 14-14.

President Obama is milkin' the game for all it's worth, and then some... what with performing the coin-toss and then spending about five minutes with the CBS broadcast team.  That's all well and good and I'll cut him some slack today, mainly coz he's giving the Cadets and the Midshipmen their due and is sayin' all the right thangs.  Good on him for that.

I love this game, not so much for the football but for the tradition, the rivalry, the Spirit Messages, and all the shining faces of those ossifers-to-be.  This really is "America's Game."

So.  Halftime.  Time to pour another beer and consider putting a match to a ceegar.  We're still into that Sammy Adams "Winter Classics" 12-pack and there's some damned fine beer in that thang.  We might buy another one of those.

Unique

I've mentioned in the past (there's your understatement for the day!) that I'm a great fan of PBS.  I'm NOT a great fan of "pledge week," which has morphed into "pledge-ten-days-or-more" of late.  But I tolerate... barely... pledge week; it's a necessary evil.  A minor digression: I lost access to KENW, Portales' PBS station (run by Eastern New Mexico U) when I switched my teevee provider from Comcrap cable to Dish Network.  I now get KACV out of Amarillo, TX, and I suppose that makes sense to the Corporate Suits at Dish but it doesn't make sense to me.  That bugs me for a number of reasons... no real "local content" is one... but another is KENW held its semi-annual begging down to a very low level.  KACV, OTOH, is in constant beg-mode, or so it seems.

But!  I've watched MUCH more of this begging than I usually would, mainly for the unusual and captivating regional Panhandle accent, which I find amazing.  Here's an example I recorded earlier this evening, pay particular attention to the lady as she speaks, her accent just cracks me up (in a good way).  You'll have to turn your sound WAY up... I apologize for the audio quality.  I thought the MinoHD would pick up the teevee better than it did.

Ain't that sumthin'?  The weird thang is I don't hear much of that accent here in P-Ville.  There's some, to be sure, but not a whole lot.

Seventy Years Ago Today

My Pearl Harbor Day post, parts of which I've published every year since 2006.

Pearl Harbor Day

Sixty-eight years ago today... "a date which will live in infamy"... the nation was shocked out of its complacency and determination to stay out of the conflict engulfing the rest of the civilized world by the horrific Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.  Here's an excerpt from President Roosevelt's speech to congress on the following day:

The men who fought back at Pearl Harbor formed the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association about ten years after the war and they used to hold a reunion in Hawaii every five years... until 2006, when they held their last reunion there.  I published this post to mark that occasion (note that the link to the news article is dead now):

Pearl Harbor Day

The USS Arizona - Then and Now (U.S. Navy photographs)

It’s said — quite often and by many, many people — that 9/11/2001 “changed everything.” And it is indeed true for the current generations of Americans. But I’ll submit that 12/07/1941 “changed everything” to a degree it is impossible for us who were not alive and going about our business on that Sunday in December, 1941 to realize. Those of us whose parents were members of The Greatest Generation understand my point. A smaller subset, those of us whose parents fought in World War II, understand the point a little bit better, perhaps. We have the benefit of hearing the first-person narratives of that day in December 1941, and stories from the long, long days that followed…from the dark and despair of the war’s first year to the signing of the Japanese surrender on the decks of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay not quite four years later. And a lot in between.

They are leaving us. The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association is holding their last meeting (dead link) today.

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.

This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends. This, they say, will be their final farewell.

"This will be one to remember," said Mal Middlesworth, president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. "It's going to be something that we'll cherish forever."

The survivors have met here every five years for four decades, but they're now in their 80s or 90s and are not counting on a 70th reunion. They have made every effort to report for one final roll call.

Their last meeting. I know All Things Must Pass, but it saddens me so. We owe them so much, and our thank-yous seem inadequate compared to the sacrifices they made.

But: We shall continue, we shall honor their sacrifices, we will remember, and we shall rededicate ourselves to the task that faces this generation…the one that began on 9/11/2001. The Greatest Generation expects it from us.

The 2006 news article may not be available any longer, but the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association is still alive and kicking.  They are few now, but thank God some of those heroes are still around.  It won't be too much longer until they're all gone and as I said above: "It saddens me so."

Generic 24-Hour Newscast

Sigh... this is the danged truth, ain't it?

Your Feel Good Moment o' the Day

The entire back-story is here, and a most remarkable story it is, indeed.  You do good work, Loralee!

Happy Thanksgiving

For the fifth year in a row...  If the Wall Street Journal has been running the same piece since 1961 I figure I can get by with re-runs, too. I'm not quite as good as they are, though. But seriously: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, Gentle Reader. I’m going to be lazy today and re-run what I said last year (in part...there was more), mainly coz (a) it’s all true and (b) I’m fresh out of original i-deers. So…from Turkey-Day-2006:

Of all the things I’m thankful for on this day…family, friends, reasonable health… I thank God most of all for making me an American. Most all of the good things in my life begin and end with that one single fact.

You could do much worse today than read the editorial the WSJ has published every Thanksgiving since 1961.  An excerpt:

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

As true today as it was back in 1961.

The images come from Thanksgiving Corner, which has a great collection of Thanksgiving wallpaper. Normally I'd only post a single topical image, but I was so taken with the second image that I had to post it. Shades of Ben Franklin, and all that.

RIP

We knew it was coming, but still... what a terrible thing to read first thing in the morning.  The NYT eulogy is here, the Beeb's take is here.

RIP Mr. Jobs, and thanks for EVERYTHING.

Toon from the usual source.

I Feel Like This

Lifted from the Shoebox blog.  I plan to leave my teevee off this entire weekend, except for Saturday's football games.  That's really not an unusual occurrence, it usually stays off on the weekends.  This weekend, tho?  It's an imperative. 

Thievery

I saw this over at Lex's place last evening and had to re-post it...

What an amazing story.

Labor Day

What's become my traditional Labor Day post... a re-run from two years ago:

Labor Day

Today is the day we celebrate "Labor Day" which, in times past, was a true celebration of American Labor.  And by that I mean the people who manipulate the "means of production"… the guys and gals who go out and get their hands dirty making this country work, day in and day out.  But "Labor" as both term and concept has become perverted over the past few years.  Actually… Labor has become politicized and has only a shadow of the meaning it used to carry, back in the day.  Who among us doesn't think of unions when one says or hears the word "Labor" today?  Not many of us, I would wager.

I will resist the temptation to turn this post into an anti-union screed, and said temptation is strong indeed, Gentle Reader.  But let me just say this about that… I'm of the opinion that labor unions are the root of all most evil in our post-industrial society.  I'll grant you labor unions have a glorious history and were responsible for righting numerous wrongs in the early 20^th century (you can begin reading here if you're not up on the good unions accomplished during that time).  But like the buggy whip, their time has passed.  What we get from our unions today are things like "card check" —a decidedly UN-American renunciation of free elections in the workplace— and outright political intimidation (can you spell S-E-I-U?  Sure you can…).  I'm not seeing much good in that… and neither are most other Americans, as Ed Morrissey notes in this Hot Air post.  But let us not digress further; I'm sure you get my point.

I'm thinking an appropriate manner in which to observe Labor Day would be to spend a few hours watching re-runs of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs."  About which... the Discovery Channel is running an all-day marathon of "Dirty Jobs" episodes... or you could watch the DVDs.  If you don't have access to either the Discovery Channel or the "Dirty Jobs" DVDs, you might want to watch his (Rowe's) 20-minute lecture on"Dirty Jobs" at TED.com.  Mr. Rowe celebrates "labor" as it used to be… manual labor as an honorable pursuit infused with dignity.  As it should be.  And that's what I'm on about here, Gentle Reader. 

Or perhaps today might be spent reading a book like "Shopcraft as Soulcraft."  The NYT published a review of this book earlier this year, which starts out pretty well but descends rapidly into a typical NYT snarky book review (on subjects of this nature, of course.  Not all of their book reviews are worthless, just some.  Or most… depending on your POV.).  Here's the best part of the review:

It’s especially appealing when you add that Mr. Crawford has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow — he had an office next to the novelist J. M. Coetzee’s — on the school’s Committee on Social Thought. Mr. Crawford is an intellectual who can probably take you in a bar fight.

Many of the ideas in “Shop Class as Soulcraft” are deeply resonant. Mr. Crawford mourns that shop classes were largely eliminated from American high schools in the 1990s because they are expensive to run, and sometimes dangerous. He takes this as a symptom of a larger problem: We have, as a people, lost our fundamental manual competence. We can no longer fix our own stuff, and we are increasingly steering our kids “toward the most ghostly kinds of work.”

His book, he writes, “advances a nestled set of arguments on behalf of work that is meaningful because it is genuinely useful. It also explores what we might call the ethics of maintenance and repair.”

Mr. Crawford builds his framework by walking us through the soul-killing nature of too much white-collar work; he surveys the “rising sea of clerkdom” that surrounds us. He considers the work of Marx, Heidegger and Iris Murdoch, among other philosophers. He points out, accurately enough, that “when things get really hairy, you want an experienced human being in control.” He connects the current mortgage crisis to the depersonalization of white-collar work.

This is not “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” Part 2. Mr. Crawford isn’t particularly interested in the nonrational mind. “I want to avoid the kind of mysticism that gets attached to ‘craftsmanship,’ ” he writes, “while doing justice to the very real satisfactions it offers.”

You would be forgiven, Gentle Reader, if you didn't chase the link and read the rest of the piece, which is in the end dismissive at best or borders on character assassination, at worst.  I'd rather you spent that time watching the little piece below (from last Friday's "News Hour with Jim Lehrer"), where Mr. Crawford speaks his mind on what we're on about here.  It's great good stuff.





Seven minutes ain't that much time to waste, is it?

And… Happy Labor Day… Drink beer, barbeque, and have a great time!

I added this subject-appropriate tune last year and it ain't a bad ideer to do this year, too:

I've known that girl.  Loved her, too.

What She Said

"She" bein' Peggy Noonan, writing in Saturday's WSJ.  Here's a piece-part:

Pretty much everyone over 50 in America feels on some level like a refugee. That's because they were born in one place—the old America—and live now in another. We're like immigrants, whether we literally are or not. One of the reasons America has always celebrated immigrants is a natural, shared knowledge that they left behind everything they knew to enter a place that was different—different language, different ways and manners, different food and habits, different tempo. This took courage. They missed the old country. There's a line in a Bernard Shaw play, "Mrs. Warren's Profession": "I kept myself lonely for you!" That is the unspoken sentence of all immigrants toward their children—I made myself long for an old world so you could have a better one. 

But everyone over 50 in America feels a certain cultural longing now. They hear the new culture out of the radio, the TV, the billboard, the movie, the talk show. It is so violent, so sexualized, so politicized, so rough. They miss the old America they were born into, 50 to 70 years ago. And they fear, deep down, that this new culture, the one their children live in, isn't going to make it. Because it is, in essence, an assaultive culture, from the pop music coming out of the rental car radio to the TSA agent with her hands on your kids' buttocks. We are increasingly strangers here, and we fear for the future. There are, by the way, 100 million Americans over 50. A third of the nation. That's a lot of displaced people. They are part of the wrong-track numbers. 

So is this. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because being a parent is hard, and not everyone has the ability or even the desire. But in the old America you knew it wasn't so bad, because the culture could bring the kids up. Inadequate parents could sort of say, "Go outside and play in the culture," and the culture—relatively innocent, and boring—could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Popular songs, the messages in movies—all of it was pretty hopeful, and, to use a corny old word, wholesome. Grown-ups now know you can't send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed. And there isn't less bad parenting now than there used to be. There may be more. 

There is so much unease and yearning and sadness in America. So much good, too, so much energy and genius. But it isn't a country anyone should be playing games with, and adding to the general sense of loss.

This goes a long way to explaining all the GOML stuff we see these days, a lot of which is posted in these pages.  Ms. Noonan went off on a tangent here, given the principal thrust of her column ("This Is No Time for Games") was about the debt-ceiling shenanigans, but this was a tangent that's both good and true.  I have a lot o' fun with my "Get Off My Lawn!" (you were wonderin' about the acronym, weren't ya?) bullshit, but a lot of it ISN'T bullshit.  Like Ms. Noonan I really AM beginning to believe things were better 20 or 30 years ago, but I'm also of the same mind that produced that last paragraph, above.  All isn't lost, yet.

I'd give ya a link to the full article, Gentle Reader, and encourage ya to RTWT as is my wont... but I can't, as Mr. Murdoch & Co. have seen fit to sequester Ms. Noonan behind their pay wall.  Sorry.

In My Future?

All these folks seem to be having a good time (especially the two in the closet, before the credits begin to run), even though they also seem to be alcohol-deprived.  A word to my sons: I have certain priorities when it comes time for you choose MY home.  Just sayin'.

And yes... I HAVE been spending way too much time on the Viral Vids site today.  Why do you ask?

Fireworks

We sat outside in the backyard (or what passes for a backyard, anyhoo) earlier this evening and watched the P-Ville municipal fireworks show, which happens on the grounds of ENMU's athletic fields... about 500 yards behind Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park.  So we have a ringside seat, as it were.  We took pictures, of course, and feel compelled to burden you with them.  Without further ado...

I need a wider angle lens for this sorta stuff.  All of these were shot with my Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens, locked down at 28mm, focus set to infinity, f-stops varying between f-11 and f-8, and various exposure times set between one and eight seconds.  Timing is everything when shooting fireworks and these eight shots are the best of the 140 photos I took tonight (I got a lot of black screen pics, due to bein' late on the draw).  Ergo, my success ratio is less than impressive.  All shots are as they came out of the camera, except for being re-sized (all) and cropped (in some cases).

America The Beautiful

As played by Keb Mo:

Two things: (1) there isn't a more appropriate day for this tune than today and (2)  there are few things in this life more sublime than the sound of a well-played National guitar.

h/t:  Blog-Bud Kris.

Independence Day

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Botany

So... there I was, cruisin' around on this gardening site earlier this evening (it might have been Better Homes & Gardens or Southern Living, or neither, or both, or sumthin') when I came across these pics:

WTF?  Is she growin' what I think she's growin'? And what happened to her bathing suit in that first picture?  Call me, Darlin'... we need to talk! 

I think the lady took Neil and Willie to heart here...



But what would I know?

That Kinda Day

I mentioned below that I'm havin' that sorta day... which is to say uninspired and unmotivated in the blogging space.  I don't have much to say and life hasn't delivered any surprises... pleasant or otherwise... over the last couple o' few.  In other words, we've been low and slow.  Which ain't all that bad.

But there is this...  I saw my first-ever WWFF guy (in P-Ville, not EVER) as I was leavin' Wally-World this morning.  He looked to be about my age (mid-60s) and was standing at the exit of the WW parking lot with his standard-issue cardboard sign and hang-dog look.  I smiled and waved at him as I pulled out of the lot but that was it... I don't have any spare change for your bucket, sir.  I might be short on compassion or mebbe I've turned into an unfeelin' SOB in my old age but there's this:

Monthly unemployment numbers in Curry and Roosevelt counties dipped to rates that haven’t been seen in two years and officials are crediting expanding industries as the reason.

The most current data available from the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions shows in April, Curry County’s unemployment dropped to 4.2 percent and Roosevelt County’s to 4.3 percent.

[...]

“It seems like that everybody’s attitude has changed and everybody’s feeling better about the economy,” said Chase Gentry, director of the Clovis Industrial Development Corp. “The spin-off of retail and sales usually drives employment.”

I've seen a LOT of "Now Hiring" signs in the general area of late but I suppose it's easier to stand out in the hot sun and beg.  You may publish your tut-tuts concerning my lack of sympathy in comments, should you have any.

―:☺:―

Speakin' o' Wally-World... I got the "bong-bong-bong" electronic shoplifter alert as I was strolling out with my purchases today and I fuckin' HATE it when that happens.  Everyone within 50 feet turns around and stares at you while the attendant rifles through your purchases, checks your receipt, and de-pilfers whatever wasn't properly de-pilfered when you checked out.  I think shoppers should be given an automatic ten dollar credit when they're falsely accused in that manner... just to defray all the accusatory looks.

Yeah... Get OFF My Lawn!

Saved By Zero E-Mail

I was originally gonna put sumthin' up titled "Monday Blahs" or some such, mainly coz it's that kinda day.  But my Occasional Correspondents came thru to save me, yet again.  There's this bit of amazing whimsy from Occasional Correspondent Lin, to begin with:

I can just imagine the conversation at the Winter Palace... "Well, your Fabergé egg IS precious, dahling, but have you seen my TWO singin' bird pistols?  Such an amazing little divertissement!"  They are pretty cool, I have to admit.  A veritable mechanical marvel... but are they worth $5.8 million?  Not around here.

From the sublime to the ridiculous...  Occasional Correspondent (Seattle) Andy sends along this link with the subject line "Your Soul Mate."  Here's a pic from the oh-so-brief article:

I'm beginning to feel blog-bud (Loosy-Anna) Andy's pain where pink dark mauve is concerned.  It's a kinda-sorta related pain, innit?

To close this loop and just in case the post title is sumthin' of a mystery...

I likes me some Fixx.