I published my first blog entry on Valentine’s Day 2007 (mainly because my lady-wife Robyn was tired of me bitching about stuff in the paper). I found it a fun and creative if sometimes frustrating outlet to express my opinions on any and every topic that interested me. Today marks the advent of Year Number Three and I hope many more blogs will follow. As always I will try to entertain and amuse you but most of all make you think.
-
I chose an Arabic Square image for my first post: it was relative to absolutely nothing but I thought the image was pretty. It was the start of an annual tradition to use “Arabic Squares” for anniversary posts. For this year’s anniversary post I have chosen Arabic Square 89. Now you can sit back and enjoy my “year in blogging” review.
-
If there was a theme for this year in my I suppose I could call it “the Year of Waiting.” Those of you (most of my readers) know that it began with Robyn’s father falling on February 2 and being taken him his home to a hospital in San Diego. The injury combined with his caner was enough to begin the long, slow decline with ended with his death in October. The waiting was hard for Robyn and the disposition of the estate is nothing short of a torturous process I learned a lot about patience and being supportive from this and a little about grief.
-
This was also the year of waiting to move: Robyn’s boss had been threatening to move inland for three years--this year it finally happened. Word came down in mid-June and we were gone from the O.C. by early August. To be completely honest I really wasn’t looking forward to it but I have found life in the I.E. to be much more pleasant than I’d anticipated. ("Ah Corona! Where the air, like my dearest-darling Genevieve, always smells vaguely of horse crap.") Yes, it gets hotter AND colder here than it ever did on the Coast but we have all the shopping (generally staffed by nicer and more helpful clerks) and much less traffic. We still miss seeing our good friends and our church family in Huntington Beach but that’s about all I regret about losing in the move. (I never thought I'd admit it but we "upped" or quality of life!) We’re also not that far from the O.C. so we pretty much see them as often as we used to (and I find that a bit surprising: I thought we'd never see them again).
-
It still amazes me how (relatively) close I moved but how far I have come and how different things are in the I.E. Here in the I.E. there are about as many Indian Casinos as there are Starbucks. (There is one on every other corner--or so it seems.) Indian “issues” get the big press out here rather than the Vietnamese issues (but at least we don't have Indians trying to shut down Indian-owned newspapers). The restaurant reviews in our local paper tend to cover delis, steak houses and smaller eateries where the average personal can actually afford to eat! We used to get reviews for nouvelle cuisine and “fusion” restaurants where the bill would be well over $100 for two (not including booze!) I was also amazed that the paper spent nearly a solid month covering complaints from people living on golf courses getting broken windows. (Never once heard about that in the OC.)
-
This was also the year of waiting for the election. I was waiting to see how many time John McCain could shoot himself in the foot (first by his ongoing support for the Iraq War then choosing Sarah Palin as his running men to insisting there was “nothing wrong with the economy” as the Stock Market was going into the toilet and companies began folding right and left) and still keep standing. (At least he was gracious in defeat, unlike the conservative pundits--but I'll be writing a post on that later.) It seems that California is more ready to have a black man in the White House than to allow same-sex couples the right to marry. (Wish I could say that surprised me but it didn’t…) The absolutely saddest consequence of the election was a rise in gun sales as certain sections of society prepared for the worst (which at least so far hasn’t materialized.)
-
Speaking of the War in Iraq--we’ll be approaching YEAR SIX (that’s two years longer than both World Wars!) with no end in sight. President Obama has promised that our troops will be out in sixteen months (so we can concentrate on Aphganistan) The crazies from al-Qida and still as crazy as they ever were. As time goes on I become more and more convinced that the only way we’re ever going to get out of this mess is to walk away from the entire Middle East and let them settle it themselves (and they won’t do THAT until they are fighting with sticks and rocks.)
-
America’s “Weasel” Mike Carona finally got his day in court and skated on most of the charges. His only conviction for Witness Tampering while avoiding everything else made me wonder if the Jury suffered from improctocephaly but I wasn’t sitting in the courtroom every day. Still, this “gentleman” (and I use the term VERY loosely) will end his life as a convicted felon and at least everyone finally got a chance to see what a sleaze bucket he truly was. Now he’ll go back to the obscurity he so richly deserves. If I could thing to the disgraced former Sherriff it would be this: if you lie down with dogs why did you act surprised when you got up with fleas? (This was also the year that “Haidlgate” finally closed as Greg Haidl finally got out of jail. Now there’s only the civil suit filed by the victim to get through…)
-
Robyn and I joined the rest of the world celebrating “Earth Hour” back on March 29 and vowed we’d be having an “Earth Hour” each and every Saturday. That lasted about a week but I'm not going to talk about why…
-
Duane “Dog The Bounty Hunter” Chapman lost his reality show after tapes of him using racial slurs surfaced but he got it back several months later. Folks still haven’t forgiven Don Imus for his “oops” in 2007. Makes me wonder what the difference between these two are…
-
Eliot Spitzer should be on his knees thanking God for (now former) Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (sp?) who crashed and burned over a scandal where he was accused of trying to sell the former Senate Seat of Barak Obama. I refrained from commentary on that story because I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “Legoyabitch” was obviously negatively-affected by all the hair product he used on his helmet head…
-
This has been an “interesting” year for movies, some surprisingly good that I didn’t expect to enjoy (Sex And The City) some big budget disappointments (Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Star Wars: the Clone War and Speed Racer). Some were just plain good no matter what the genre (Kung Fu Panda) and some were just plain raunchy fun (Forgetting Sarah Marshal, Zack And Miri Make A Porno). At least one movie was a bit overblown for my taste (Batman Returns) and there was one movie that I liked but not many others did (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian). And this was also the year of the three most horrifying words in the annals of movie making--PIERCE BROSNAN SINGING (Mama Mia.) This year also saw The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (a movie I didn‘t enjoy all that much) get nominated for thirteen Academy Awards (more than any other film) so obviously I don’t know squat about the movies.
-
This year I learned there are crazed Elmo and Patsy fans (well at least Elmo fans) as one of them took major exception to comments I made in the most annoying Christmas songs.) Who’d have thought anyone cared enough to comment?
-
Heath and Deborah Campbell of Holland Township New Jersey made national news and lit up the photosphere when a local supermarket refused to make a birthday cake for their son Adolph Hitler. Since then these “worthies” have lost custody of little Adolph and his two sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Hanszlynn Himler Jeannie. I wonder why…
-
I ended up doing half a dozen things on the list of “43 Things I Could Be Doing Instead Of Watching The Super Bowl” only not the one thing I thought I would.
-
Michael Phelps got suspended from Swimming Competition for three months, lost his Kellogg’s endorsement deal and got dropped by a speaker’s bureau since pictures of him taking a hit from a bong. What I’m wondering is why we’re all making such a big fuss in the first place, I guess only time will tell how many more “Lives” this guy has in the media or if he’ll take the train to obscurity.
-
“Octo-Mom” Nadja Suleman is out of the hospital and still in hiding. (She AND her Publicist have been getting death threats--which is crazy in and of itself.) The more this story unfolds the worse it looks for her. She has no job and her family is cracking under the pressure. She denies taking Welfare but we know she’s already gotten food stamps and other federal benefits for her kids. She denies having had plasitic surgery but it looks like she has--and she claims to be getting support from her Church but said church claims they hardly know her. This train wreck just becomes more epic with each passing week! Turns out that the fertility specialist she used has a lousy track record for IVF success: what a time for his luck to change. She’s also started her own begging web site since she has no visible means of support and no prospects on the horizon. The more that comes out the more the public turns against her.
-
So what will next year hold? I don’t know. Guess you’ll have to stay tuned and read all about it in my upcoming blogs…
-
‘nuff said.
-
I chose an Arabic Square image for my first post: it was relative to absolutely nothing but I thought the image was pretty. It was the start of an annual tradition to use “Arabic Squares” for anniversary posts. For this year’s anniversary post I have chosen Arabic Square 89. Now you can sit back and enjoy my “year in blogging” review.
-
If there was a theme for this year in my I suppose I could call it “the Year of Waiting.” Those of you (most of my readers) know that it began with Robyn’s father falling on February 2 and being taken him his home to a hospital in San Diego. The injury combined with his caner was enough to begin the long, slow decline with ended with his death in October. The waiting was hard for Robyn and the disposition of the estate is nothing short of a torturous process I learned a lot about patience and being supportive from this and a little about grief.
-
This was also the year of waiting to move: Robyn’s boss had been threatening to move inland for three years--this year it finally happened. Word came down in mid-June and we were gone from the O.C. by early August. To be completely honest I really wasn’t looking forward to it but I have found life in the I.E. to be much more pleasant than I’d anticipated. ("Ah Corona! Where the air, like my dearest-darling Genevieve, always smells vaguely of horse crap.") Yes, it gets hotter AND colder here than it ever did on the Coast but we have all the shopping (generally staffed by nicer and more helpful clerks) and much less traffic. We still miss seeing our good friends and our church family in Huntington Beach but that’s about all I regret about losing in the move. (I never thought I'd admit it but we "upped" or quality of life!) We’re also not that far from the O.C. so we pretty much see them as often as we used to (and I find that a bit surprising: I thought we'd never see them again).
-
It still amazes me how (relatively) close I moved but how far I have come and how different things are in the I.E. Here in the I.E. there are about as many Indian Casinos as there are Starbucks. (There is one on every other corner--or so it seems.) Indian “issues” get the big press out here rather than the Vietnamese issues (but at least we don't have Indians trying to shut down Indian-owned newspapers). The restaurant reviews in our local paper tend to cover delis, steak houses and smaller eateries where the average personal can actually afford to eat! We used to get reviews for nouvelle cuisine and “fusion” restaurants where the bill would be well over $100 for two (not including booze!) I was also amazed that the paper spent nearly a solid month covering complaints from people living on golf courses getting broken windows. (Never once heard about that in the OC.)
-
This was also the year of waiting for the election. I was waiting to see how many time John McCain could shoot himself in the foot (first by his ongoing support for the Iraq War then choosing Sarah Palin as his running men to insisting there was “nothing wrong with the economy” as the Stock Market was going into the toilet and companies began folding right and left) and still keep standing. (At least he was gracious in defeat, unlike the conservative pundits--but I'll be writing a post on that later.) It seems that California is more ready to have a black man in the White House than to allow same-sex couples the right to marry. (Wish I could say that surprised me but it didn’t…) The absolutely saddest consequence of the election was a rise in gun sales as certain sections of society prepared for the worst (which at least so far hasn’t materialized.)
-
Speaking of the War in Iraq--we’ll be approaching YEAR SIX (that’s two years longer than both World Wars!) with no end in sight. President Obama has promised that our troops will be out in sixteen months (so we can concentrate on Aphganistan) The crazies from al-Qida and still as crazy as they ever were. As time goes on I become more and more convinced that the only way we’re ever going to get out of this mess is to walk away from the entire Middle East and let them settle it themselves (and they won’t do THAT until they are fighting with sticks and rocks.)
-
America’s “Weasel” Mike Carona finally got his day in court and skated on most of the charges. His only conviction for Witness Tampering while avoiding everything else made me wonder if the Jury suffered from improctocephaly but I wasn’t sitting in the courtroom every day. Still, this “gentleman” (and I use the term VERY loosely) will end his life as a convicted felon and at least everyone finally got a chance to see what a sleaze bucket he truly was. Now he’ll go back to the obscurity he so richly deserves. If I could thing to the disgraced former Sherriff it would be this: if you lie down with dogs why did you act surprised when you got up with fleas? (This was also the year that “Haidlgate” finally closed as Greg Haidl finally got out of jail. Now there’s only the civil suit filed by the victim to get through…)
-
Robyn and I joined the rest of the world celebrating “Earth Hour” back on March 29 and vowed we’d be having an “Earth Hour” each and every Saturday. That lasted about a week but I'm not going to talk about why…
-
Duane “Dog The Bounty Hunter” Chapman lost his reality show after tapes of him using racial slurs surfaced but he got it back several months later. Folks still haven’t forgiven Don Imus for his “oops” in 2007. Makes me wonder what the difference between these two are…
-
Eliot Spitzer should be on his knees thanking God for (now former) Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (sp?) who crashed and burned over a scandal where he was accused of trying to sell the former Senate Seat of Barak Obama. I refrained from commentary on that story because I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “Legoyabitch” was obviously negatively-affected by all the hair product he used on his helmet head…
-
This has been an “interesting” year for movies, some surprisingly good that I didn’t expect to enjoy (Sex And The City) some big budget disappointments (Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Star Wars: the Clone War and Speed Racer). Some were just plain good no matter what the genre (Kung Fu Panda) and some were just plain raunchy fun (Forgetting Sarah Marshal, Zack And Miri Make A Porno). At least one movie was a bit overblown for my taste (Batman Returns) and there was one movie that I liked but not many others did (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian). And this was also the year of the three most horrifying words in the annals of movie making--PIERCE BROSNAN SINGING (Mama Mia.) This year also saw The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (a movie I didn‘t enjoy all that much) get nominated for thirteen Academy Awards (more than any other film) so obviously I don’t know squat about the movies.
-
This year I learned there are crazed Elmo and Patsy fans (well at least Elmo fans) as one of them took major exception to comments I made in the most annoying Christmas songs.) Who’d have thought anyone cared enough to comment?
-
Heath and Deborah Campbell of Holland Township New Jersey made national news and lit up the photosphere when a local supermarket refused to make a birthday cake for their son Adolph Hitler. Since then these “worthies” have lost custody of little Adolph and his two sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Hanszlynn Himler Jeannie. I wonder why…
-
I ended up doing half a dozen things on the list of “43 Things I Could Be Doing Instead Of Watching The Super Bowl” only not the one thing I thought I would.
-
Michael Phelps got suspended from Swimming Competition for three months, lost his Kellogg’s endorsement deal and got dropped by a speaker’s bureau since pictures of him taking a hit from a bong. What I’m wondering is why we’re all making such a big fuss in the first place, I guess only time will tell how many more “Lives” this guy has in the media or if he’ll take the train to obscurity.
-
“Octo-Mom” Nadja Suleman is out of the hospital and still in hiding. (She AND her Publicist have been getting death threats--which is crazy in and of itself.) The more this story unfolds the worse it looks for her. She has no job and her family is cracking under the pressure. She denies taking Welfare but we know she’s already gotten food stamps and other federal benefits for her kids. She denies having had plasitic surgery but it looks like she has--and she claims to be getting support from her Church but said church claims they hardly know her. This train wreck just becomes more epic with each passing week! Turns out that the fertility specialist she used has a lousy track record for IVF success: what a time for his luck to change. She’s also started her own begging web site since she has no visible means of support and no prospects on the horizon. The more that comes out the more the public turns against her.
-
So what will next year hold? I don’t know. Guess you’ll have to stay tuned and read all about it in my upcoming blogs…
-
‘nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment