An Island in the Storm 07/23/10

Tags

atheism, botany, Desmond Tutu, evolution, Glenn Beck, language, religion, Zoology

I am interested in purchasing water futures. Iowa seems poised to have a good deal more water than she needs. Since this is the upside day, we are not going to grouse about rain, but rather, focus on heavenly stuff. I know there are states that are rather desperate for water, and I figure we should get involved in exporting the stuff. Oelwein, which is northwest of here abouts, got nearly ten inches of the wet stuff yesterday.

The Wapsipinicon, the usual tepid river that flows through the hamlet of Troy Mills, is raging, and frankly flooding may be in its future. Amazing to contemplate in late July for sure. So, I’m just sayin’, if you are water challenged, send me some dough and I’ll be sure to send some H2O your way. Just make the check out to me. I’ll be sure it gets deposited to the water consortium. Oh yes I will.

I ran into this funny post this morning about atheism. Not a rant, but actually funny. So you might want to stop by and read How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Atheists. 

Probably the most prestigious religious teaching facility in the USA is the Union Theological Seminary in NYC. It’s president, Rev. Dr. Serena Jones, sent this letter to Glenn Beck. I thought it was a hoot. Hope you like it. With thanks to Telling Secrets.

I’m guessing, but that’s good enough for me, that humans separated from other life forms most specially because we yack all the time. We are wordy people. We can communicate with precision because we can move beyond grunts, cackles, screeches, and gestures. Where would we be without words? How would we think? Well at least one person thinks words inhibit us. See if you agree or not.

You can hurry on over and see the top 10 new species of 2009. Fanfare! Lights! Red carpet! Here they come down the runway. Ewwww, yuck, ugly, creepy. I think they should have remained undiscovered. I guess we have already found all the cute critters. All that’s left are the butt ugly ones.

Just thinking about Desmond Tutu brings a smile to my face. The fact that he has announced his retirement from public life is sad, but understandable. What a lovely man.

I was just thinking. What is your favorite comfort food? The one you can eat almost endlessly? For reasons that defy explanation, I realized that mine is creamy mashed taters with a big fat pat of butter melting in the well. It’s simply glorious, always, every time. The Contrarian thinks it’s sacriledge of course not to have G R A V Y with said smushed potatoes, but I think that’s gilding the lily, destroying  the fine fabric of the carbohydrative smooth silky essense of the tuber. The faint tatoey delicate flavor is lost in a crecendo of meat derived goop. I stick with buddah, none of that oleo crap either. There are no bad ways to fix taters I don’t think. ( Well maybe German pototo salad–that is ugly crap!) But this is the best.

I don’t know about you, but I do follow the blog 1,000 Awesome Things. He wrote a book now, and is rich no doubt. I skim the posts but I’m not so impressed. Makes me wonder why some blogs take off and others don’t. Makes me want to start a blog called 1,000 Shitty Things. I think I can think of 1,000. But that’s the kind of optimistic person that I am. Hope you caught the irony there. And chuckled. But I’m looking forward to the new TV show with William Shatner called “S&#T My Dad Says–from the Twitter account. That dude got seriously rich. I’m not rich. I wonder about that. And about this. And why not.

Have a smashingly wonderful and glorious lovely weekend.