Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I just lost an entry that I had been typing for a half hour this morning... well, I guess it wasn't meant to be.
I'm not going to try to reproduce it. I woke up, ranted, saw THIS then froze, my eyes welled up and I almost had a break down induced by the weight of the evil in this world...

Yao, und soweiter- seltsam und unglaublich das c. schon weg ist, und auch viel seltsamer und unglaublicher das die nadine kommt so bald. was genau passieren wird -weis ich noch gar nicht. mein ohren, auchen und hertz sind breit und offen... offen fuer alles. alles was gut ist.

I almost killed c.'s fish (whom I'm guppie-sitting). Walking home with "Mr. Fin" aka "Fishface" I was in QFC getting some dinner with the bowl in an Apple computer store bag, bumped ever so gently into a large metal vegetable cart and heard a strange loud *SNAP*. When I got home there was a HOLE in the side of the fishbowl (dont' worry, Fishface was in a bag inside the bowl) but man- wheew, I totally emptied Endless Fun Bunny's little bowl and made it comfy for fishface. The little bowl is now nestled in Francoises' terrarium, I was even going to have tehm swim together, but mabe she;d try to eat him... however, she's so slow, not much of a hunter, and he's a quick little mo-fo, so maybe it'd work. Supervised swim session ahoy!

"Care for all little animals... Calm, fitter, happier, more produtive."

Note: I noticed... well, before, but again yesterday that women call their friends "girlfriends" but men do not call their friends "boyfriends" which... if you think about it for a second, is wierd...

Jody Wood's b-day was tonight, which was so so nice. Longest bikeride I've had in awhile (to and from the 9lb. Hammer in Georgetown) her friends had made a Kansas cake (she and Jon are going to Kansas for her Grad schooling) complete with barn, tornado, ammonia truck, farm animals, green frosting field and gray frosting gravel road... after we ate half of it it was very post-tornado looking.'

Jon said that something like 45 out of 60-something counties in Kansas are dry,. DRY... jeezus, what a nightmare.
I'm curious.

Greak bike ride to Georgetown, though. (through the guts of industry and rotting brick "Cold Storage" facilities now turned into art loft spaces, hardly anything for a long strech, then a few bars plopped in the middle of an industrial wasteland, very happening, though. Listened to LIFESAVAS all teh way there and back- must be a couple miles past the port/ railroad junctions nd truck parks, the guts!)

I saw a group of businessmen with baby-faces (not literally). Suits. Ties. Gray hair, well fed, well off... what's the point?
Speaking of suits RUINING HUMAN EXISTENCE TO MAKE A BUCK-
I emailed with Michelle New this morning and yesterday regarding the flooding in the D.C. Area, and I wouldn't usually straight-up cut and paste an entire email dialogue, but this is of some interest, here's a transcript:

Subject:
water water everywhere
Paul Thomas to new.michelle:
you drowning over there?
Cuz of the Worldcup I've been tootally oblivious- just found out about the rains this morning- craaaazy.
-p

michelle to me:

ya, we pretty much are... everything is flooding, the metro had 4 feet of standing water on the track on Monday morning, you can imagine the commute. Bunch of people got flooded, they were even having to rescue people in boats, like New Orleans!! They are saying the Potomac is expected to reach its flood point of 10 feet by today, if we get another downpour. that should be interesting...!

me to Michelle:

shoot- lame!
you have damage? Nicole said her basement is totally flooded, (and it
is a live-in basement!)
-p

michelle to me:

it was kind of like the armageddon or something, it just kept storming! no, i live in an apt. on the 4th floor of a high rise. the water came in the building on the ground floor in the lobby areas - they had a bunch of industrial fans around to dry out the carpets. nothing weird with State Dept. a bunch of other government buildings were slammed though. a friend who works at bolling afb near the river said he had to wait 5 hours to get on base - once you get to a certain point on the highway, there's no way to turn around, you just basically have to go to the gate. guess it was crazy. then of course the building he works in had no connectivity when he got there - can't do much of anything without the internet these days, y'know. anyhoo, we're drying out now. i can't believe pat robertson didn't make a statement about how we are being punished for our iraq policy or something. btw, did you see that nonsense about how he leg pressed a thousand pounds and now he's trying to sell some protein shake. LMFAO!! :)
how's the NW faring?

fyi
ARTICLE
"Downpour Uproots History"
White House Elm Still Stands on $20 Bill
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 29, 2006; Page C01
For the most visible symbol of the damage wrought by the Big Downpour of '06, look no farther than the back of a $20 bill.

See that lovely tree bracketing the right side of the White House, its leafy tendrils appearing to reach into the bedrooms of the first family?
It's not there anymore.

The storms that drenched the area this week toppled a stately American elm that had flanked the president's home since the Roosevelt administration -- that would be the Teddy Roosevelt administration. The tree, believed to be the same one on the twenty, was planted between 1902 and 1906, according to the National Park Service.

The elm that fell Sunday night was sick and old (American elms usually live about 85 years), said Bill Line of the National Park Service, which is responsible for the White House grounds. Efforts to save the tree by pruning it in recent years only delayed the inevitable, he said. Fortunately, it fell away from the building, so no one was hurt and nothing besides the tree was damaged.

Line didn't know what disease the tree had, but it clearly had some junk in its trunk, judging by the hollowed-out pieces that lay stacked on a truck bed yesterday outside the Executive Mansion. Its root ball, a gnarly dirt clot as big as a boulder, stood beside a backhoe. There was yellow tape around the site, as if it were a crime scene.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which produces the nation's currency, couldn't say for sure whether the late tree was the same one immortalized on the $20. The White House shown on the bill was an artistic composite based on photos of the building, said Claudia Dickens, a bureau spokeswoman.

The note's designer, the now-retired V. Jack Ruther, isn't exactly sure himself. The photos he worked from to produce the bill's 1998 redesign were taken over many decades and he no longer has them, he said. As a general matter, the engraving isn't photo-realistic. The grand fountain in front of the White House, for example, was removed from his final model ("I thought it was cool but someone in charge didn't"), and such distracting features as the security huts on the roof were never included.

That raises a philosophical question: If a tree falls at the White House and it's not the one on the $20 bill, would the news media still do stories about it?

Ruther offers an obvious answer: "My suggestion is to walk in front of the White House, stand by the gate and look at the bill. If the tree that's down looks like the one on the bill, I think it's safe to say it's the same tree."

And it most certainly appears to be. If you stand directly in front of the White House, at the approximate distance depicted on the bill, it's clear that the tree occupied the spot you'd expect by looking at the portrait. What's more, another huge elm stands to the left of the building, exactly as shown on the currency. Clearly, the two trees were bookends, giving the White House -- and the engraving on the twenty -- a nice arboreal symmetry.

Now, with one twin gone, the whole thing looks out of whack, as if a tooth had been knocked out of a perfect set of choppers.

The Park Service's Line says the tree will be replaced but that it will be years before its successor is as grand.

As for the remains of the fallen, no calls for souvenirs or raw material for dining room tables, please. The Park Service isn't selling. It plans to mulch the remains and spread them around the grounds.
END OF ARTICLE

ME to Michelle:

Shoot- poor tree! Well, that's what they get for redesigning the $20 bill to look like complete pukey sh*t, I KNOW god IS punishing someone for that...
Effing global warming, yo. fo' reals! Weather patterns will be very very erratic and dangerous, I'd guess... in the coming years. still haven't seent hat Al Gore movie, don't know if I want to.
Hey, do you work in the main State Dept. Blding, or are there dozens? my friend works there now, she's great.
NW is HOT (unusually so) so, yea. Crazy times. hitting up Vancouver for the 4 day weekend, and art art art, etc. life has been good finally, basically ever since I turned 26 things have gotten waaaaay better, super busy with art and freelance projects, seeing a great girl, and biking all over like a bat outta hell, LOVE IT,
so- yea, still gotta but a ticket to Chris' wedding, you're going, ja?>

Michelle to me

hehe - you're funny!
i don't know if i believe in global warming. i heard a scientist talk lately and he said the warming trend is a natural result of the "wobble" of the earth on its axis, it is supposed to happen every thousands or whatever number of years. like the ice age, etc. anyway, al gore is a goober and i'm not going to his facking movie!!

Me to Michelle

hm, welllll when people say they don't believe in global warming I just say "it's better to be safe than sorry" (or extinct) y'know? besides, clean air and water will run out anyhow if something isn't done...
anyhow, its a big argument I'm not going to bother with just now,
Al Gore IS a goober.

Michelle to me:

oh, you're absolutely right, we need to be better stewards of the environment and i truly believe we should be doing MORE to limit carbon emmissions and not do crazy things like turn to COAL because oil prices are so high, etc.... and i'm pretty sure we put that gigantic hole in the ozone layer over australia. who knows what the long term effects of THAT will be. i'm just not about the idiocy of perpetuating a "theory" that is scientifically debatable as fact.

END OF CORREPONDENCE
--
o'LE-O-LE-O-LE-O-LE!-o!leeee, Oleeeee!
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