The Obvious
Monday. A good get together at DnA's yesterday. There was enough food for four or five times our number, the day warm in San Jose, but not overly warm and it became quite cool as we got into the evening. I always think in terms of unremitting heat when I think of San Jose and we talked about that a bit, many of the others living east of the hills where it's often really warm through the entire night. More talk about the weather. I got in before eleven in the evening, went right to bed, slept like a rock, up this morning to breakfast after nine, home having caught up on the email and writing deathless prose now as the noon hour arrives. A veritable rocket existence for an old coot, don't you think?
A friend here, who still works at the old shipping company, is heading to China at the end of the week to visit her family, transferring flights in Hong Kong just about the time everyone else is arriving in Hong Kong on their way to Beijing and the Olympics. She's not going to Beijing, but I suspect the crowds and the travel connections, whether you're going to Beijing or not, will be interesting to say the least. Better, I think, to watch the Olympics here on television. Be an interesting place, though, to be with a camera. If I were younger. Maybe.
Later. Back from a walk down the way through the Lake Shore Avenue area, lunch consisting of a pizza bagel and coffee outside at a table at the local Noah's Bagel shop - probably not the best lunch to have, but what the hell, bagels are small and life is short - back now listening to the last half of the News Hour on public television. I'm afraid I'm getting to the point I don't trust public television anymore. More so certainly than the propaganda arms of the government like Fox, more than NBC, ABC and CBS, but not enough to avoid being fidgety as I listen. What are they leaving out? Do old guys become political crazies once they find they have time on their hands? Do we start voting for the Ralph Naders on the ballot? Why couldn't anyone tell me this? I could have skipped out on all that television news crap when I was a kid and they were trying to convince me to soldier in Vietnam.
Some people say they occasionally reported the truth in those days.
It's been a long time since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Anyone really think they'd do it again on a Republican or a Democratic watch?
Are we bitter?
Nah. I'm just cooling off after my walk. That and every time I watch the News Hour I have to listen to an oil company and Archer Daniels Midland tell me what great conservationists they are, how the oil company spent a whole .00001% of their income this year looking for new sources of energy that won't eradicate entire species (including ours) and an agribusiness conglomerate that suggests you don't have to worry about their public television endorsed Franken-Food products anymore now that they've found Christ and bought the Congress. I was hoping, as I got older and further along in falling apart, this stuff would put me to sleep, not rev me up.
You are bitter.
No, again: I've merely allowed my defenses to drag after a walk along the lake and begun babbling the obvious.
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