Frogs and Ravens

Freaked

Gas is up to $2.99/gallon for regular at the local BP, and up to $3.09 at the Speedway, and they are predicting that we'll be seeing at least $3.50 before the week is out -- if the stations don't run out of gas. One smaller company in the area apparently already has. I thought I was being paranoid when I went out and filled up not only my gas tank but also the emergency gas container (previously limited to desert camping trip use) -- but after surfing around the blogs and reading about the magnitude of what's going on down along the Gulf Coast, I don't think so anymore.

The more I read about the disaster in general, and the inadequacy of the responses to it, the more I feel that we've entered into the realm of the unreal. We are careening off a cliff as a nation, and there's no one at the helm, and I am more frightened of the future than I have been to date. My filling the emergency gas container will mark the moment for me when my paranoia and cynicism became reasonable, having affected my actions as well as my thoughts.

I pray that there will be no more such moments.

Fiddling While Rome Drowns

I wasn't going to write much about Hurricane Katrina, because I figured that the important things were already being said, and that in terms of specific information there were better sources than myself. But I find myself in the position I seem not infrequently to land in, which is reacting to the reactions of others to the event and tragedy in question.

There are three reactions I have seen, out wandering in the blogosphere, that, to be honest, really annoy me. It's not like I'm going to be able to change the viewpoints of all those who have them, but at least I can express my irritation and even anger with them.

Hurricane Disaster Relief

Some links if you want to help out.

Red Cross

Network for Good has a lot of links to a wide range of other charities and relief organizations, too.

(The Network is set up so you can donate through the site, but you may want to follow the links to the original websites of the organizations they list. I don't know enough about the Network to endorse it, though it appears to be a legitimate enterprise; it's supported by both Yahoo! and AOL.)

Badger

The rain makes me happy. But this does not.

Happy Rain

It's raining outside. For some reason, this makes me happy.

I Guess I'm Safe, Then!

It would take 546.00 cups of Green Tea or 8,190.00 Hershey's Kisses to do me in.

Hat tip to yami.

Top 100 Meme

There's been this new meme going around lately, in which you look up the Top 100 hits from the year you graduated high school. (First seen at Creek Running North, last seen at Feministe.) You're then supposed to do something like note which ones you liked, or which ones you still like, or which ones you hate, or whatever. I don't entirely know, since I was planning to give the whole thing a miss, since I know that when it comes to knowing anything about popular music, I am a complete and total loser dork. But I was curious... how much of a loser dork am I? Well, here you go. This list, below, is a list of the songs I recognized from the 1988 top hits list. Not liked, not hated, merely recognized.

Observations - August 29th

I am slowly learning to distinguish different leaves and tree-shapes in the great mass of greenery that lines most of the roads around here. When I first arrived, all I could see was leafy sameness. Now I can see where one bush ends and a tree begins -- though I still do not know what bush nor tree it might be.

Speaking of trees, something that amuses me mightily is how they deal with large trees that overhang the road. Simply put, they chop off anything that would hit a car or truck as it travels along the road, leaving the rest of the tree alone. The effect is comical; there will be a splendid large tree (oh, how I am getting tired of typing "tree" - I want to be able to give them names!) near a road, and most of it will be forming its lovely treeish shape -- a globe, a tall tower, a spreading -- and then there will be this straight-sided bite out of one side of it. Also amusing are the trimmings that happen to let power lines through.

A number of people around here have large, rolling lawns surrounding their homes adjacent to the county roads and highways. For the most part they are unfenced, and I keep mistaking them for golf courses. One difference is that each seems mandated to have a Decorative Object. There will be the lawn, and maybe a few bushes and trees, and then, often rather far from the house, something serving as the D.O. A lone boulder perhaps, or maybe a concrete basket. One person had a clump of sunflowers pretending to be a bush. Others have rings of bricks surrounding flowers. Or a little scene enacted by concrete geese and a lawn jockey. But there's never more than one D.O. (That would be tacky.)

Driving back from South City one night, the roads were shrouded in fog. Car headlights shone up into it like rising suns when they approached a hill, and an illuminated billboard seemed to hang suspended in the mist like a moon.

Friday Random Ten - August 26th Edition

Father Brian Mac Dermot Roe - Carol Thompson - The Enchanted Isles

Peugeot - Peter Lehndorff - Car Talk Car Tunes, Volume 1

Now I Am Asleep - Chris Norman - The Celtic Lullaby

You Never Wanted Me - Fairport Convention - Heyday

The Old Man - Judith Pindar - Changes Like the Moon

Port Na bPúcaí - Nóirín Ní Riain - Celtic Voices

Mars Needs Women: Space Is A Lonely Place - Bela Fleck - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

Mélancolie - Tony Murena, Gus Viseur and Emile Carrara - Swing de Musette

Diamond for a Dime - Oyster Band - Deserters

Reynardine - John Renbourne Group - A Maid in Bedlam

Nerd/Geek/Dork Quiz

c/o Scrivenings. I especially liked Question 58. I was also interested to note that I probably would have had even greater nerditude had I taken this test while in grad school, or even while I was still actively on the job market. Now, not so much. (I also should probably get more geek points for re-writing the html for the quiz results, and more nerd points for noting that 69% is not "pure" anything.)

Pure Nerd
69 % Nerd, 30% Geek, 13% Dork