09 | April | 2011 | Existential Ennui

Tags

budget, corporate America, economy, fundamentalism, History, Middle East, slavery, space travel

It’s Saturday. Did you know that?

It’s cloudy, and gonna get really warm and not too much chance of any rainstorms. I’ve been up since the crack of dawn.

Crack of dawn. What exactly is a crack of dawn? Does that mean when the first itsy bitsy sliver of the sun crosses the horizon? If so, then I wasn’t. I have a hill to the east of me, so at best I can say that it was grey outside, lightening.

Okay, that doesn’t matter. I got a lot done already. Did a load of wash, folded and put away, changed the sheets, did dishes, and made 23 ( i do hate uneven numbers) crab rangoons which are freezing in the freezer (what else?).

I’ll let you know about the recipe when I fry up some in a week or so for some stir-fry. If they are good that is. I’m thinking I might try spring rolls next. The problem is, there are tons of this stuff in the freezer section of the supermarket, but so far the crab rangoon in every variety just sucks, and the spring rolls aren’t much better. So thus, the doing them at home. I shall, keep you posted.

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I was going to link up with a number of stories from Infidel753, but after reading down his roundup list, heck just go see them all. There are at least about eight that I would like to go read in full. He does an excellent job and you should have him on your reader anyway. He covers an extraordinary amount of material of all persuasions.

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Don’t know if you saw it, but Jon Stewart had Mikey the Huck on the other night, and grilled him rather well on his endorsement of pseudo-historian David Barton. According to the Huckster, Barton, documents all his claims, so of course they must be true. Huck apparently isn’t aware that most any thing in the world can be documented. The trick is in how much validity you can give the source, and moreover whether you are taking sentences out of context (something that Barton does to excess).

Barton is all about the business of justifying a theocratic rule in this country, and at least PoliticusUSA suggests that he wouldn’t be opposed to a return to slavery. Barton’s colleagues endorse a form of slavery known as biblical slavery, and it is just as vicious as that perpetrated in this country pre-Civil War. A good read.

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Everybody’s got an opinion on the deal struck by the Congress over the budget. Most think the Dems got the worst, but I’m not sure. Others suggest that Obama masterfully got the better of the deal, protecting the EPA and PPH and NPR from proposed cuts. I’m not sure where I come out on all this yet.

I’m similarly distressed with the Middle East. We must agree, it seems to me, that we have failed in Iraq, failed in Afghanistan and frankly, we aren’t doing anything much right in the rest. Bahrain and Syrian continue to kill protestors, Egypt is in turmoil as the military tries to control the revolution. There is no end in sight in Yemen or Libya. Some days I think we should just come home and realize that whatever these people want to do, they must do it.

But then I reflect, that we may well not be us, had not the French helped us out in the Revolution.

I’m just so tired of strife and war and some days I just want to lament: “Can’t we all just get along?”

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A very interesting post at Eurozine about Yuri Gargarin, the first human to enter outer space. Believe it or not, on April 12, it will be fifty-years since that momentous event. This article traces Gargarin’s life and death, and how the Russian space mission has changed over the years, and how Gargarin has faded from memory.

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Roger Ebert weighs in on the one-percenters, those lucky few in America who have all the money, while the middle class merges into the working class, and those in the poverty column continue to grow. Worth a look at for sure.

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What’s on the stove: hamburgers, french fries, and coleslaw. It’s Saturday!