So InvertedMind walked into a bar…you’d think he would have seen it.
Now that the ice has been broken with one of my famously bad jokes, I’d like to say hello to the four faithful people who have hounded me about getting something new posted. You’ve done nothing to get me back to the keyboard any quicker, but I thank you for bugging me, nonetheless. It’s good to know you care enough to check whether or not I’m still breathing.
Where has InvertedMind been? Why, all over the place! That’s precisely what has kept me from my appointed rounds. Starting with Halloween, I drove roughly 6,000 miles in a two-month span, between various destinations in Pennsylvania, Delaware and here at home in N.C. Combining that with nagging pain in my left knee that eventaully required an MRI, as well as the day-to-day things in life, exhausted me to new levels. I had a creative itch, but no energy to scratch it.
Nothing has changed aside from the fact that I’m too opinionated to keep quiet any longer than I have. And, with that, I present the Rdrs. Dgst. (the abbreviated version of the abbreviated version, get it?) tale of InvertedMind’s Last Two and a Half Months.
The Youngster Grows Up
Taking a ride at Boomer's Family Fun Center
Not long before I departed temporarily for non-verbal pastures, Her Cuteness started preschool. You already knew that. What you may not all know is that she is now almost entirely potty trained, knows her colors and can count to 10 (not just reciting the numbers, but actively counting). She can carry on full conversations with you. And, I swear, she’s learning new ways to be “Almost Three” every day. But, she’s still so adorable that it makes other parents sick. Some nights I just sit next to her bed for a few minutes and watch her sleep while I count my blessings.
The bad news here is that I didn’t do her do the day the picture to the right was taken. I’m as inept as ever at styling hair. I don’t have much practice; the only reason my hair doesn’t look like Ronald McDonald after electroshock therapy is because I keep it short and bully it into cooperating with me. Every time I try to do her hair, the Emergency Broadcast System revs up, FEMA goes on standby and some moron in Washington starts rounding up federal relief money. He must be digging in the couch cushions in the Senate lounge, because we don’t have any money left elsewhere.
Three Pigs Just Flew Past a Blue Moon
Contrary to popular belief, it DOES snow in the south.
It’s snowing in North Carolina. And, yes, I just skipped two months. Why? Because it’s been a blur of driving and Christmas shopping. Nothing of note happened between Halloween and New Year’s Eve with the exception of a nice visit from a northern friend in December, and a Christmas show and concert with one of my best friends.
But let’s get back to the original point, here. There is snow…falling from the sky…in Raleigh, North Carolina. Even though I had been told that this happens about two out of every three years here, I had no reason to believe it. After all, aside from a two-week cold snap in December in 2007, last winter felt like fall just jumped right into spring without stopping to freeze for a few months. We got, as I sarcastically called it here, “the dusting of the century.”
But this time, it’s real. The snow is real, and so is the measurement: over five inches since midnight. Sure, that’s considered shorts weather where I lived as a young child, but around here it was enough to shut down the state capitol before a flake landed. It’s still coming down good, and should continue to do so for another hour or more. We’ll be lucky to hit the freezing point today, and that’s fine by me. Hopefully, I’ll be feeling well enough after Kaylee’s nap to take her outside for a little while to play in the back yard.
Innaugurating Our Next Hopeless Leader
Barack Obama has just been innaugurated as the 44th President of the United States.
You can like it, you can hate it. Your opinion will do nothing to change mine. And from where I stand, things don’t look good. We’ve just sworn in one of the men principly responsible for the housing crisis we are currently in, along with cronies like Christopher Dodd and Nancy Pelosi.
Why do I finger them, specifically? Because they are three of the biggest recipients of campaign funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two entities that essentially triggered the whole mess. Funds are generally traded for favors, particularly when it comes to wealthy people. A lot of people got rich off of Freddie and Fannie since Bill Clinton “encouraged” them to offer loans to people who weren’t even remotely worthy of said lending. Those people then gave money to politicans who they assumed would be most likely to keep them rich. While that doesn’t directly implicate them, this does: the Democratic party blocked no fewer than 15 different attempts by (now former) president George W. Bush to more tightly regulate the two orgainizations.
Now, as a result of that — and the banking mess that was created not by George W. Bush’s policies, but rather by Bill Clinton’s sweeping deregulation of the banking industry in 1999, with full support of his party — we find ourselves chest-deep in a pile of political manure that our incoming president has vowed to clean up. Now, answer me this: if your plumber screwed up your plumbing to the point that it backed up and flooded your house with a neighborhood worth of excrement, wouldn’t you hire a new plumber to fix the problem? Why, then, do we keep re-electing — and promoting, as is the case with Obama — the same people who created the mess in the first place?
That is why this post’s title includes “fall of civilization.” We are no longer an intelligent, civilized nation; we are, instead, a population of lemmings, blindly following the same leaders ever closer to the cliff. George W. Bush may have made a lot of mistakes in the last eight years — every president does — but his biggest attempts at preventing the current crisis were blatantly ignored. He shoulders the blame, while the people actually responsible for it get off scott-free.
Does that sound to you like a nation smart enough to survive another decade? It sure doesn’t sound good to me.
Oh, and in case you have been living under a rock for the last 48 hours, the Steelers are going to their seventh Super Bowl, and as seven-point favorites no less. Party at my house on Super Bowl Sunday. Details to follow.
