Race Report - AutoClub 500

Before I jump into this race report let me just say in a way that is in no means condescending or proprietary that I am extremely proud of Dale Jr.’s conduct with his crew today. Perhaps I should phrase that as his conduct today made me proud to be a fan of his. Despite a difficult weekend overall and numerous difficulties on the track, Dale did not lash out at anyone, point fingers anywhere (at least not during the race) and managed to intellectually make something positive out of it, even if emotionally he was extremely disappointed and frustrated.

Details follow.

A couple months ago I met up with another NASCAR fan at the local dog park my dogs and I frequent. A Robbie Gordon fan, she invited me along to tailgate with her group of friends. So after making a huge salad and getting only 3 hours of sleep the night prior, I woke up before dawn to drive to her place and then caravanning from there out to Fontana. When we reached the outskirts, it was a beautiful drive as the heavy mists obscured all but the tops of the trees and veiled the horse paddocks along the freeway. (I don’t know about you, but whenever I drive by horses I have the irrepressible urge to say “Pone-NIES!”. I guess my inner child is about four.) We managed to gather the cars together in the lot off turn 4 and set up shop in between them. Breakfast was served as the various friends stopped by. While the core of the group was Robbie fans, through friendly association they had collected three Dale Jr. fans, two Kurt Busch fans and Jeff Gordon fan in a pear tree.

I blitz-shopped to grab a scanner, program and new (Bud) lanyard (I collect them, I’m stringing the ticket holders from each race I attend together like dance cards) before the crowds got really hairy. Which was a good thing, when I decided to take a wander n’ ‘splore later it took me close to an hour just to wander down the entire line of trailers and back only making one short stop. Which was a bummer, because the Army had a climbing wall set up and the times during the DeWalt Pit Crew Challenge were truly appalling. (27.3 seconds? >:D Ha!) Nor have I had a chance to try out the simulators in the Nextel shack.

We packed up and everyone headed to their spot. My seat was right up against the fence in turn four. My neighbors weren’t as sociable as they were the last time I was there, but it was fun to observe the various (lighthearted) exchange of obscene gestures and smack between various fan groups below me. Tony, Dale Jr., and Jeffey were the primary groups with a couple loud Rusty Wallace fans that kept the fun rolling. I will say that while booing various drivers is de’ riguer, I don’t think flipping them off during driver introductions is necessary. And I do wish the teenagers right behind hadn’t smoked quite so much pot. I thought the two stoner kids on the pitsonline.com were charicatures. I was wrong. “Dude he like smacked the wall, that’s so cool!” “Dude is that engine sound like, coming from the loudspeakers, or what?”

Nice prayer, average anthem and a good effort for “Gentlemen, start your engines” and we were off. The crowd stood for the green flag...and then remained standing for about the next 15 laps. Uh...folks, it a long race, you can sit down if you want. Really. :D I spent pretty much the entire time listening to the 8 car. I had Mark Martin ad Elliott Sadler programmed in, but whenever I switched over, they were quiet, so I pretty much stuck with the 8. Dale was struggling with his set up in the beginning, "free in the middle of the turns and loose off" if I remember correctly (he did give a good solid minute or so of detailed feedback, I wish I could remember it) and he was having some trouble with his spotter. After a couple pit stops, they managed to get it about right. He began picking his way up through the pack when suddenly he disappeared along the back stretch. Blown tire. Now, rental scanners are not the sharpest and clearest, and Pete is so low key vocally it was hard for me to hear that side of the conversation. Dale had broken a support bar in his fender, either the tire blowing did it or it broke some other way and it was rubbing the tire. (I’ll find that out tomorrow. At one point Pete said “I dunno how that happened.” and Dale replied “I know what happened” Pete: “What happened?” Two minutes of quiet. Pete: “10-4” - ???) So they went through a couple tires and several pits stops trying to fix it. Then the primary ignition box went out stalling him on pit road.

Here’s where Dale gained my admiration (yet agian). Last year, a day like this would have Dale turning the airwaves blue with profanity aimed specifically at his crew. This time the profanity was there, but not the vindictiveness. You could hear he was struggling with his fustration, but he really stepped up to leadership plate and rather than making the situation worse, he made the best of it. Several laps down Dale made the call to just treat the remaining laps as a test run for Vegas. He said “I have the car to race with Tony, but I don’t want to screw him up just to race…” (paraphrasing). He also praised the crew for getting the set up in good shape before things went to hell and proceeded to spend the rest of the race trying to figure out how to make the tire pressures work with the set up, even to the point of relating some experience from his late model stock days. That's leadership.

I am not sying this as some psuedo-superior/mature person, truthfully I don't know if I could have handled the situation that well. But it was truly gratifying to see it in Dale.

As a fan, you don’t want to see your driver give up. But as a smart fan, you want to see him use common sense and choose his battles. Between this and the respect he extended to his crew, I was cheering for him every lap he came around. And so were some other folks. No matter how far down he was, as the Bud car passed , scattered here and there through the crowd someone with a red shirt would stand and holler or simply raise their arms up to show the Bud red. Props to those guys. It’s easy to cheer for a driver when they’re winning, but they need to hear it when they are having a bad day.

But for those that watched the race, we all know Dale wasn’t the only one having a bad day. Yet another engine went south under Mikey while he was having a good/great run. (“At this rate, I’ll lose my job!”), and so did Jeffey, Vickers and Robbie. Dave Blaney smacked the wall, again, though the impact was minor considering how badly he lost it. Good driving for him and great driving for the guys trying to get around him. And it was another frustrating day for Twinkie/Kasey (his bridesmaid days are numbered tho’). Elliott had an o.k. run, nothing spectacular, Mark Martin had a good run staying in or near the top five until he got shuffled back at towards the end, and Greg Biffle won the race with Kurt and Mini-me duking it out for third and second.

I split the stands as soon as the burn out was done and went to return my scanner, (encountering a...lively inebriated woman loudly explaining into all her friends how all drivers except Dale Jr. were “whiney bitches”. Her friends were wise enough not to argue with her.) I was so proud of Dale I could have just bust. Had I the cash, I would have run up to his hauler and bought one of everything. Instead my car has been branded with an “8” decal. :D The Speed Channel was setting up to do a post race broadcast (“Victory Lane” I imagine), but the crowd crossing the overpass was so insane I decided to skip to get back to my group. And when I mean insane, I mean truly insane. Not even at rock concerts have I been packed so tightly into such a slow moving herd. When I got halfway up the steps I turned around and looked out over a solid crowd of heads at least 300 yards from the overpass. But everyone had a sense of humor about it, so it wasn’t too bad.

When we all got back to the cars we fixed dinner and compared notes. Robbie was apparently turning the airwaves quite blue long before his engine went out due to some bad calls in the pits. Calls apparently he made. People thought that Kurt had been swearing at his pit crew at the end of the race, but that wasn’t the case according to the folks I was with. He started swearing at Jimmie Johnson when Johnson passed him. He was nothing but civil with his pit crew all day. ;) This was really cool hanging out with race fans of all loyalties, being able to get a more complete picture of the race from so many vantage points, and everyone was so mellow, from the folks who’d been watching racing when Petty and Allison were still driving to the young bucks in their twenties. We hung out sipping beers and chatting, watching the kids playing and the haulers rolling out and making some plans for Irwindale until the sun went down and it got too chilly for native southern Califorians hang out.

So after aloooong round about drive home, here I am and here is my race report. :) Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Swleepy now. Go sleep. Nigh' night.

Week end and weekend.

Been slogging through on-line traffic school (*rasserfrassem*405 at 8 am on a Sunday*%&*^*&^#@!*) so this weeks been a bit thin.

First of all, The Smith (Click the PDF link for the full article) has an interesting human interest article on what the Iranian people are really like as opposed to their government. Perhaps a necessary read in the middle of “Iranian Nuclear Terrorist” ramping up in the media right now, if only to remind one that the Iranian people are human beings just like ourselves.

"I struggle to make a living,” a Tehran engineer told me. “The government stifles us, and they want us to believe it is America’s fault. I’m not a fool.”

Amir, who is 30, feels the same way. “In my school, the teachers gathered us in the playground and told us to chant ‘Death to America.’ It was a chore. Naturally, it became boring. Our government has failed to deliver what we want: a normal life, with good jobs and basic freedoms. So I stopped listening to them. America is not the problem. They are.” It’s increasingly apparent that Iran’s young are tuning out a preachy government for an alternative world of personal Web logs (Persian is the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese), private parties, movies, study, and dreams of emigrating to the West. These disenchanted “children of the revolution” make up the bulk
of Iran’s population, 70 percent of which is under 30.

The article goes on to sketch out Iran’s turbulent history throughout the 20th century how all those events have played out into making Iran what it is today (one of the interviewees was one of the kidnappers from the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980). How Iranians today see what were good ideas and what were mistakes.

“During the Constitutional Revolution, we talked about the separation of religion and state, without really knowing what that means,” historian Kaveh Bayat told me in his book-filled Tehran study. “Our understanding today is much deeper. Now we know that it is neither in our interests nor the clergy’s interest to rule the state.” Or, as a physician in Tehran put it to me: “The mullahs, by failing, did what Ataturk could not even do in Turkey: secularize the populace thoroughly. Nobody wants to experiment with religion and politics anymore.”

The article speaks of Iran “being at a crossroads” and from what I have read here and heard in my class (we discussed Iran this last week) I would agree. It seems to me that in ten years or so, Iran will take care of itself. Offensive action against it would simply alienate its people.

“Hossein, like many Iranians who served in the war, resents America for supporting Iraq in the conflict: Washington provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with satellite images of Iranian troop movements and cities, looked the other way as Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and, in 1983, sent then businessman Donald Rumsfeld as a presidential envoy to Iraq, where he greeted Saddam Hussein with a handshake. But Hossein, who served as a frontline soldier, said he’s willing to forgive and forget “as long as America does not attack Iran.”

Not to mention that an invasion of the unified Iran (they are a single ethnic group) would be 100 times more difficult than it was in the fragmented Iraq.

This issue also has a historical perspective of Winston Churchill as well as a spread on the fur seal crisis.

On a more amusing note: Finding The A-Team: A Stuffo (howstuffworks.com) Experiment Can the Golf Ball Liberation Front be not far behind?

I have tickets to both the BGN (Busch Grand National) and Cup races this Sat. and Sun, respectively. I don’t know if I can make it out to the races on Saturday (too much on my plate since I no longer have my evenings free), but Sunday I will definitely be tailgating all day and will have a race report for everyone on Monday.

Someday I really want to go to see a truck race, but they scheduled this one for Friday. Hey NASCAR guys! Can’t you guys squeeze it into a weekend somehow?

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great weekend with fun and safe races these three days and best of luck to the 8, 6 and 38 teams! Especially the 8 team for whom tracks like Fontana are the trail by fire. Kick-ass guys!

Note to Sushi re: NASCAR Illustrated. Trust me, I know exactly how you feel. Being female and a member of the “Jr. Nation” it always takes work to be taken seriously as a racing fan rather than a fangirl.

And I don’t despise Kurt as much as everyone seems to either. *shhhh!*

"No, No, No, No. I did not crash the airplane, I simply relocated it with extreme predjudice..."

The Daytona 500 & Being Purple in a Red World.

So some friends of a friend of mine gathered at a pizza joint to watch the Daytona 500 on Sunday. An interesting experience for an interesting race.

Dale Jr. was in high dramatic form as usual (many things you can say about the driver, but he’s never boring) as his car went to hell and he dropped back in the field due to a burnt plug wire and a poor set-up. He dropped back to 24th. But he and Rondaeu both handled things very calmly and very well for Dale to make a hard charge for the lead in almost-explosive last laps of the race. Desipte all the troubles (including conclusive proof that the only way to avoid “The Big One” is to be in front of it) he finished 3rd. Props to both Dale and Pete for a great job! *applause*

I also was questioning Dale's decision to ditch Tony so fast, but after reading the radio transcript and his comments after the race I can see why he moved up.

Mark Martin had a solid run finishing 6th, but just not strong enough to win. I understand his teamamte had something to do with that, but I’m beginning to wonder if the rumors that he’s getting the second best equipment & personnel in that shop are true.

Still, it’s a good start for both teams.

Elliott ran a solid race with some damn fine driving (and luck ;) ) avoiding all the wrecks at the end. He started from the back after breaking his transmission Friday and finished 11th, not too shabby. :D Mikey was running at the front, leading next to the most laps of the race but went out near the end due blown engine, the first in well over a year for Dale Earnhardt Inc,‘s engine department (at least in their cup program). :( DJ also had troubles but scraped up a 15th place finish.

As a race the middle part was pretty boring, all the cars strung out all over the field. The new gear rule and spoiler cut hasn’t done squat to “level the playing field” and only cost teams more money in R&D. But once the field bunched up from the cautions at the end of the race, then things got interesting/hairy. It’s not safe for the drivers, I readily admit that, but it sure as hell was fun for the fans. Wimmer's Pirouette (given that he walked away from the wreck) was an especially elegant touch.

Watching the race in a pizza parlor surrounded by folks talking I missed most of the audio of the race. I have it on tape to watch more closely at a later date.

Can someone make sense of this for me? One of the guys brought his little girls to the event and they were quite well behaved really, so no problem. And given the youthfulness of the pitchers, I did curb my language. However, when “Damn!” did slip out, the little 7 year old immediately ran to her father, “Daddy she said a bad word!”.

This would be the same little 7 year old her father was teaching how to draw up a betting pool when I arrived.

;) O.k. I’m glad she will not swear at her bookie when she gets older but I’m still a bit mystified at where the priorities are here. *chuckle*

There was also a tense moment when one of the guys I was sharing a pitcher with was telling a story about how Clint Eastwood publicly threatened to kill Michael Moore at an award ceremony. He leaned across the table and repeated Clint’s words three times like he was savoring a great moment in history. “You’re a dead man….

Now Clint is a staunch Republican supporter, but he is also an artist and understands freedom of expression and free speech. Nor is it likely that Clint, who consistently brings his incredible films in on time and under budget to Hollywood and has quietly retied from politics since he was mayor of Carmel, CA, will ever be the topic of a Michael Moore documentary. Moore is interested in things more pertinent to society. Nor is Clint likely to put his personal freedom at risk by making a public death threat, which is against the law. (Besides, if Moore thought he was serious, we wouldn’t be hearing the end of it anytime soon.) The comment was made as a joke. However this person I was drinking with reveled in the fact that someone made a public death threat against Michael Moore.

Of course what they didn’t think about what that says about their opinion of Freedom of Speech, which seems to be shared by so many of the neo-conservative camp. Anyone who does not feel as they do should be shot or thrown in jail or have their career destroyed or any number of horrible things they would be utterly appalled if you suggested it happen to Bill O’Reily. My sister refers to it as the “Drink the Kool-Aid Mentality”: you’re either with them or against them in their decent straight to hell. Even if you are a moderate, if you think the Bush administration is corrupt and incompetent, you are labeled a “liberal” and marginalized. It also reflects their perception of the world. In their world, it’s o.k. to threaten someone with death for a disagreement of opinion just as it’s o.k. to occupy foreign countries in order to “spread democracy”.

Let me tell you all where I stand: I have some liberal beliefs (environment, affordable child care and pro-choice) and I have some conservative ones (2nd Amendment, death penalty for serial killers, put American citizens first on the priority list and if you come to this country you'd better damn well learn english), economically I'm dead in the middle: Capitalism is great, the most successful, stable and socially permeable of economic systems, but uncontrolled capitalism is what led to the greatest depressions this country has ever seen. I lean more to the left, but I'm hardly the socialist hippie that the neo-cons like to paint their opposing side. I believe that both liberal and conservative viewpoints are necessary to keep America great. The liberal/progressive side keeps America moving forward with the times, pushes America to keep up with the world, while the conservatives make sure that America is not moving too far, too fast, destabilizing and losing it’s identity. They are both necessary. I have no truck with Republicans like McCain. I don’t agree with some of his points of view but understand where they are coming from and recognize their validity.

But neo-conservatism, the mindset of the current administration, is an extremist point of view that has nothing to do with the well-being of the country, but rather with private agendas of a few insanely wealthy people using demagoguery to enlist the support of the insecurity, fear and chest thumping egotism of half the country.

Sunday I stopped the rant by pointing out that Moore was propaganda just as Coulter, O’Reiley & Hannity were. Not a pleasing sentiment to my table-mate, but an undeniable one. After a tense few moments grumbling about the liberal media we got back to the race, which we both enjoyed and the guy even refused my ten to help pay for the pitchers.

NASCAR, the great uniter. ;)

Wow!

Outside Magazine continues to rule.

One of the largest problems of the environmental movement is the way we have marginalized ourselves and polarized the environmental issue. We marginalize ourselves through our extremist and elitist attitudes (especially towards the hunting community, who have the same interests in saving ecosystems as we) and we marginalize ourselves through our seemingly esoteric arguments. Let’s face it, the public’s and therefore the congressional attention is fixed firmly in their wallets. When Big Business holds up jobs and revenue in front our “the dying frog population will throw the entire ecosystem out of whack, eventually affecting us”, the choice in the public’s mind is pretty damn clear.

But it’s not so clear. This months Outside has an article containing information that could revolutionize the environmental movement, making it much more successful than it has ever been in the past. In “As a Matter of Fact, Money Does Grow on Trees” author Bruce Barcott reveals that economic studies have been done that show the preserved wildernesses & eco-tourism can not only exceed the revenue and incomes provided by logging or drilling for oil or natural gas, but the benefit provided by the natural air and water filtration leave clear cutting and derricks in the dust.

"They answered it by extrapolating from real-world examples. In 1989, for instance, EPA officials ordered the City of New York to build a water-filtration plant that would cost $8 billion to construct and $300 million a year to operate. Instead, the city spent $2 billion to restore and protect its Catskill Mountains watershed, letting a healthy 2,000-square-mile forest do the work of an $8 billion industrial plant. Estimated value of water filtration provided by the watershed: $6 billion and counting."

And on the employment side…

“Rasker compared data from the four years prior to the (Grand Staircase–Escalante National) monument's (Kane Co, Utah) creation (1992–1996) with data from the four years after. During the latter period, the unemployment rate in Kane County dropped by more than half, while labor income rose faster than it had in the pre-monument period. Per-job earnings, which fell 7 percent before the monument, rose 13 percent after it was created. Property values rose significantly, too. "People in Kane County worried that all they'd get were low-wage tourism jobs," Rasker told me. "In fact, the average wage per job went up."

What accounted for the turnaround? "Word got out," says Rasker. "People read about Grand Staircase–Escalante. Some started visiting; others moved their businesses to Kanab or decided to retire in Kane County."

Those new retirees spurred growth in health-care jobs. Recreation boomed. Since the monument was created, hotel-room revenue has increased on average about 20 percent.”

I chose these quotes from the article because they are illustrative examples, but the economic studies around the country show that they are not isolated developments. A community does not give up family and civic income in order to keep their countryside. In short, yes, you can eat the view. The article speaks for itself. A MUST READ!

The trick at this stage, and it’s spoken of in the Magazine, is for the environmentalists not to beat their opponents over the head with this. This is not a “we’re right, you’re wrong” argument, but a completely new way of looking at the issue that creates a path to a common ground for both sides to create a truly viable economic policy that will benefit this country’s flora, fauna and families.

WhooHoo!

I will be filling out my college application *yeek* and reading “Black Elk Speaks” (and my misnomer there for a few hours just goes to show what sleep deprivation will do for ya...sorry) for my History of Religion class this weekend. I was kinda disappointed that my History of the Middle East course only covers the modern era after WWI, but I am compensated by the fact that the instructor is a Persian woman. We should be getting some very interesting perspectives (I just hope she gets herself a little better organized). I’ve had my History of Modern Civ professor before for U.S. History, and we’re starting by covering the Renaissance, so I’m cool there.

I have really been enjoying getting more “involved” in the fandom of NASCAR. As a historian and academic, I am committed to viewing all evidence and coming to my conclusions objectively. I’m a Leo with a Pieces Moon, so this does not come naturally. My Aquarian Ascendant and Virgo Mercury are working on overdrive. *chuckle* But in sports I can be biased as I wanna be! I still don’t want to jump to false conclusions and I don’t have anything personal against drivers like Jimmy Johnson and Kevin Harvick but I just found out that Mark Martin lost his primary Daytona car in yesterday’s JJ/Happy imbroglio. Grrr! I don’t give a rats ass who’s fault it was, now I’m pissed and would very much like to clunk both their prima dona heads together. >:D

Daytona 500 is this weekend (I’ll be at a Pizza Party with a bunch of Robbie Gordon fans in mourning) and a couple more dramatis personae that will come up in conversation:

Elliott Sadler
Drives #38 yellow M&M car.
Elliott’s on the verge of really shining, not to mention just being a nwice gwuy, so I’ve got my eye on him.

Dale Jarrett (DJ)
Drives the white & brown 88 UPS car.
Dale is one of those talented veterans who gets out there and kicks some ass. In a sport that beginning to get focused solely on the Young and the Marketable, wily veterans like DJ will soon be a thing of the past. Appreciate it while you got it.

Michael Waltrip (Mikey, Schillmiester)
Drives #15 blue Napa car.
I like Mikey, he’s so adorable. In an earlier age, he would have been a carny barker or an MC for a burlesque show but I admit I’m charmed. I just wanna squeeze the stuffin’ out of him whenever I see him. And his charity efforts are near legend (shameless self promotion helps. ;) ) Mikey is a good cup driver, but hasn’t had great performances the last couple years so this might be his last season with DEI. Keeping my fingers crossed for him. However his troubled relationship with his teammate Dale Jr. sometimes gives me a teeny-tiny hint of what a child of divorce must feel like. "Please don't fight, I like you both..."

Brian France
The France family created and molded NASCAR into what you see today. They own NASCAR, their “other” company International Speedway Corp. owns over half the tracks. Are you scared yet? Be even more frightened, here is solid proof that as in all monarchies you can never avoid the idiot heir….

Bill France = John D. Rockfeller
Bill France Jr. = Henry Ford
Current President Brain France = Urkel & Satan’s love child.*

The problem with Brian is that he’s an "idea man" who doesn’t know when to quit. Last year NASCAR changed major sponsors, realigned it’s race schedule cutting out historic tracks, changed how the championship points were tallied and changed some of the major racing rules. No businessman in his right mind would not have pissed of his customer base by tackling all those changes in one year and Brain continues to tinker with things, losing what support in the fanbase he had for some of the decisions that may have actually been good.

I’ll give my opinion on the other drivers/teams as we encounter them throughout the year, but in the meantime:

Best of Luck to Dale Jr. and Mark this Sunday!!! And everyone have a great, safe race!

And have a great holiday weekend everyone!

*Preception highly influenced by Douglas Ladd's protrayal on ThePitsOnline.com

Racing, racing, racing...

This time is what is referred to as "Speedweeks", the series of racing events leading up to NASCAR's Big Whammy, the Daytona 500. The Gatorate Twin....sorry the Gatorade Duels were today and I missed ‘em. Damn this working thing! Such an annoyance! (Though I am quite happy to be employed where I am, so I’m just kidding Gods) Michael Waltrip won the first over Dale by a hair, dispelling all the talk of the “downfall of DEI” in a heartbeat, and Tony Stewart won the second. Way to go Mikey and Smoke! *Applause*

The biggest news of the day was Happy Harvick and one of the Borg, Jimmy Johnson, got into it and took out a few cars during the second race. And of course in ancient NASCAR tradition they proceeded to bitch and whine afterwards which got them yanked into “The Red Hauler” (the truck used by the NASCAR officials) where they were told to kiss and make up or else. (Uh-huh…sure…I think they have a better chance if they tossed the two into a hauler and told them to duke it out, hell they could probably sell tickets.) I have not seen the incident, but from what I have read, it sounds like it was a racin’ deal: Jimmy got loose in the corner and tried to brake check people behind him and Kevin couldn’t slow down fast enough. The problem for drivers like Tony, Robbie and Kevin is in mutual fault incidents like these, I think many other drivers take advantage of their reputations to shift the blame off themselves.

I should explain the Borg. The Borg is Hendrick Motorsports.

The cars are top notch, their drivers are brilliant, but bland, clones and the crew chiefs communicate via internet chat and e-mail during the race. The Hendricks cars are the #24 DuPont of Jeff (Wonder Boy, Jeffey Pop) Gordon, the #48 Lowes of Jimmie (Mini-Me, JJ) Johnson, The #25 GMAC of Brian Vickers. Vickers is still being assimilated, but Jeffey not only owns the #48; he and JJ are neighbors, they go on vacation together, they’re even getting the same male pattern baldness.

Resistance is futile.

Not that I can detract from the group’s accomplishments. Gordon, of course, was the little punk that came along and swept 4 championships out from under the veterans. (He’s been driving since the age of 5, if it is revealed that he is the result of an automotive eugenics experiment, I would not be surprised in the slightest.) Johnson came in with a schload of off-road honors under his belt and has been a consistent top contender since he appeared on the Busch circuit. (Though like Gordon & his old Crew Chief Ray Evernham, I have to ask how much of Johnson’s success is due to his Crew Chief Chad Knauss. As with Jeffey, time will tell.) But when a group of drivers have it that tightly wrapped they’re just begging to be mocked.

On an interesting Note, Hendricks just hired Kyle Busch (#5 Kellogs), younger brother of Kurt. Kyle has already been ejected from a Las Vegas track for being an arrogant ass, so I am very interested to see how the Hendrick colony will assimilate him or even if they can.

On another note….

Does anyone but me think it’s just a a little obnoxious that the commercial for V-Cast, a service that transmits videos to one’s cell phone, uses the Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star” as its background music?

I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you.
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through.
Oh-a oh
….
And now we meet in an abandoned studio.
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago.
And you remember the jingles used to go.
Oh-a oh
You were the first one.
Oh-a oh
You were the last one.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone too far
Oh-a-aho oh,
Oh-a-aho oh
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone to far.
Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR.
You are a radio star.
You are a radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star...”

Granted, bubble gum pop and studio manufactured pop music stars have been around almost as long as bubble gum has but the MTV/image focused development of the music industry over the last 10 years has spread this trend to an extreme. I mean, let’s be real, would Areosmith be able to get a recording contract in today’s music world? How about Queen? Can you image a record exec trying to give Billy Joel a “marketable image” (I mean before Christy)?

I’m forced to wonder how many good musicians the public is missing because they don’t have “the look”?

Despite the Israeli/Palestinian Peace Talks, is the Middle East going to hell? Bush tells Syria to stop using the military to influence another country’s government and Syria and Iran get the hook up.

So much for “stabilizing the region”. *Oi!*

It's a Good Thing...

First and foremost, the best good thing going on right now is the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. Boo YAH! I have to say I am very surprised given Sharon’s history of militant Zionism that he has come this far. Very, very pleasantly surprised. Even more surprised by the offer to remove illegal Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip, *Bravo!* though he will not give up the illegal settlements on the West Bank *Boo!* Palestine will be regaining control of the region. *Yay!*

Right now the big risk is the extremists on both sides of the fence. Zionist graffiti is comparing Sharon to Hitler (they always do that to anyone who gets the silly idea that driving Palestinians for their homes and lots of killing is a bad thing, look what happened to Rabin) and Palestinian PM Abbas is meeting with Hamas to bring them on board.

Let’s all pray that both sets of militants/extremists can see the light of reason and peace an these people in charge can come to a settlement about the West Bank.

I started classes last night. History of Religion promises to be very interesting if approached with a truly open and objective mind. Even if the Professor is so obviously a leftover hippie, he started by breaking stuff down in to concepts that seem laughingly simple, yet by doing so he sort of wiped the slate clean(er) and gave us some very basic blocks to work with. (Either that or he thinks he’s teaching a room for full of chimps, I’ll give him and us the benefit of the doubt on that) And of the 6 religious books he wanted us to have, I already had all but the main textbook. *scheeeewt* But through convoluted academic weirdness, I will have to take three classes this semester at two different colleges. This is going to be fun (hopefully not in the Chinese curse kind of way). So on top of History of Religion and History of the Middle East, I will have History of Modern Civilization. Wheee! Shoot me now!

But the best good thing to happen today is the internet release of the trailer for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was wondering where Zaphods other head was... They seem to some departures from the radio scripts/books but Gawd knows Douglas Adams wasn't above revising things as he saw fit. Hopefully they have caught the spirit of the thing. I'm looking forward to it.

NASCAR - The Bad Boys

Auto racing in general, but especially stockcar racing, is essentially 3 to 4 hours of tightly controlled road rage. They spend 4 hours in a 120+ degree cab trying to get to the finish line in front of 42 other cars at (depending on the track) anywhere from 120 to 190 mph. It wears on ya. I don’t think there’s a driver out there that hasn't bashed bumpers or hucked equipment at a competitor that has pissed them off. Most of the time the incidents that spark these displays are “accidental” and fall under the bailiwick of “racin’ deals”, the rift being completely settled by the following weekend. But there are problem children that seem to find themselves in the middle of these drama’s pretty often.

Love ‘em, hate ‘em. All these drivers are very talented, all of them very aggressive and all these guys are the ones that really keep things interesting.

Tony Stewart (Smoke, TS)
Drives the #20 Orange & Black Home Depot car.
Is 33 Years old, has been racing "professionally" since the age of 7.
Drives for: Joe Gibbs Racing (Yes, that Joe Gibbs)
Teammates: #18 Bobby LaBonte, #11 Jason Leffler
Crew Chief: Greg “Zippy” Zipadelli
Driving style: Damn good, can drive anything with a wheel, but stay the hell outta his way!
The Polite Term is "Moody": Oh Tony, Tony, Tony. Aggressive and unpredictable (and with a great sense of humor too), what will having Tony slugging drivers one week will have him hugging them the next. (In context in can make sense…sometimes.) Yet, somehow despite it all, everyone loves Smoke.

Robbie Gordon
Drives the #7 Jim Beam car.
Is 36 years old, has been racing "professionally" since the age of…well he came to sportscars from off-road in 1990, but I can’t find when he started in off road.Obviously, he’s been at this for quite a while
Drives for: Himeslf
Other Teammates: Nobody
Crew Chief: Bob Temple
Driving style: Like Tony, Robbie is one of those guys that just needs a wheel. He can drive anything, but he takes getting his way very personal.
Not a Choir Boy: When Tony gets mad, he flips people off and slugs them after the race. When Robbie gets mad, he can take out half the field during the race seeking retailiation.

Kurt Busch (Elfboy, Rubberhead)
Drives the #97 Black Rubbermaid/Sharpie car.
Is 27 years old, has been racing "professionally" since the age of 15.
Drives for: Roush Racing
Other Teammates: #17 Matt Kennseth, #6 Mark Martin, #16 Greg Biffle
Crew Chief: Jimmy Fennig
Driving style: Short track genius, which means short track dirty tricks.
Our 2004 Champion Ladies and Gentlemen!: Probably the single most despised man in motorsports, Kurt Busch just seems to rub everyone the wrong way. Arrogant with a tendancy to either trip over his own tongue or flat out stick his foot in his mouth, not even after getting decked by the well-known-to-be-volitile Jimmy Spencer could he win the crowd to his side. (But you have to give the guy props for standing up and being booed at every week by tens of thousands of people and not disintegrating into a gelatenous blob of insecurity. I know I would.)

Kevin Harvick (Happy Harvick)
Drives the #29 Black and Silver Goodwrench car.
Is 29 years old, has been racing "professionally" since the age of 7.
Drives for Richard Childress Racing (RCR)
Other Teammates: #07 Dave Blaney, #31 Jeff Burton, (occasionally) #33 Kerry Earnhardt (yes, one of those Earnhardts)
Crew Chief: Todd Barrier
Driving style: Bumper cars. The Goodwrench car used to be driven by a certain someone nicknamed “The Intimidator”, Harvick seems to be trying to imitate what he thinks that style is. He’s not only not been around long enough to pull it off, I don’t think he really gets what it was.
Oi!: Famous for managing to piss off mellow Matt Kennesth enough for the two of them to play bumper cars in the middle of a race last year and jumping on another driver’s hood (that’s tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage right there) in pit road post-race the year prior, after Happy Harvick retires from racing, he has a bright future in the WWF. ;)

Quote of the Day: From Fark.com ~

"The only thing more embarrassing than being arrested for indecent exposure is being released for insufficient evidence." ~ Phibb TF

Playing Catch Up

Sorry I was offline for while there folks, work was nuts (Say it like never-poke-a-squirrel, “NnnnUTZ!”) and there’s a lot going on the home front too.

In the “Well, it wasn’t all bad” department: Tsunami reveals ruins of Ancient Capital of India

COOOOOOOOL!

*pardon me, I think I’m drooling….*

Start classes up again tomorrow night: History of Religion and History of the Middle East. Looking forward to both, esp. concurrently. Especially looking forward to re-engaging my brain. I think it’s beginning to melt.

I don’t have much for today, but as the “Pre-game show” for the NASCAR season, The Budweiser Shootout, was this last Saturday, I thought I might take a few moments each day this week to give a brief description of some of the names that will pop up in my racing posts from here on out until November. From thems that don’t know. ;)

First of all, the two guys I am routing for~

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Dale, Dale Jr., “Junior” when referring to media figure)
Drives the #8 Red Budweiser Car.
Is 30 Years old, has been racing "professionally" (I'm not sure how you would classify it, "got really serious about it.."?) since the age of 17.
Drives for: Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI)
Other Teammates: #15 Michael Waltrip
Crew Chief: Pete Rondeau (of Saco, ME. Whooo!)
Driving style: Both smooth and assertive punctuated by moments of either brilliant aggressiveness or occasionally, just a boneheaded move. ;) *chuckle*
And now for something completely different: After spending six years screaming at and being screamed at by his Uncle and cousin every weekend for 40 weeks a year, Dale Jr. made the decision to try something a little different and swapped crews with his teammate Michael “Schillmiester” Waltrip. So this team is going to be spending at least the first 5 months of the season under the fan and media microscope.

Mark Martin (MM, Mark)
Drives the #6 Blue and Black Viagra Car
Is 45 years old, has been racing "professionally" since the age of 15.
Drives For: Roush Racing
Other Teammates: #17 Matt Kennseth, #97 Kurt Busch, #16 Greg Biffle
Crew Chief: Pat Tryson
Driving Style: Sneak attack. Nobody ever thinks of MM and then *boom*, there he is in the top five.
Sentimental Favorite: This is Mark’s last year in Cup racing after coming in second for the championship four times throughout his Cup career he’s known as “the best driver never to have won the championship”. Quiet, down to earth (no really down to earth, forget the frou-fra, this guys is here to race), self-depreciating, a natural pessimist pleasantly surprised by good results, pretty much everybody is quietly rooting for Mark.

I also recently finished Deep-Sea Detectives: Maritime Mysteries and Forensic Science by Peter Limburg. While disappointing on the true forensics/science side, it does give an interesting overview of the bureaucratic side of handling shipwrecks in the modern era.

And in honor of the Day (since I'm not a red satin and chocolates kind of woman)...

"I Remember
By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color — no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine."

~Anne Sexton

Few Days Late and A Few Dollars Short: The State of The Union Address

State of the Union Address Text

“the men and women of our new Homeland Security Department are patrolling our coasts and borders.” – Lie. Bush cut 800 Million dollars worth of funding to the states for the Homeland Security. He is also taking credit for a program that he opposed, he delayed funding for the Homeland Security Office until 2004. The Office isn’t even fully functioning yet, let alone “patrolling our borders” Think Tank gives Bush a “D” on Homeland security Report Card.

“Inside the United States, where the war began, we must continue to give homeland security and law enforcement personnel every tool they need to defend us. And one of those essential tools is the Patriot Act, which allows Federal law enforcement to better share information, to track terrorists, to disrupt their cells, and to seize their assets. “ - Lie. I cannot find evidence that The Patriot Act has contributed to the capture of any terrorists. The capture of the terrorists Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Hambali that Bush alludes to in the next paragraph were joint efforts of international intelligence and police communities. Spying on Americans did not contribute to their capture.

(No one has ever been able to explain to me how the FBI reading my pelvic exam results helps capture terrorists.)

But nice to see Bush giving the useless and invasive Patriot Act a plug while he cut funding to “first responders”: The local Police and Fire Departments. Apparently he's done it again with the new proposed budget.

“Having broken the Baathist regime, we face a remnant of violent Saddam supporters.” - Lie. The Insurgents of Iraq are comprised of many groups, the dienfracnhised Ba-athist are only a protion of them. Newsweek Article “Unmasking the Insurgents”

“The work of building a new Iraq is hard, and it is right. And America has always been willing to do what it takes for what is right.” – Except in Liberia. And Dafur. And not sending in the Army Corps of Engineers to actually get reliable power, water and sewage in any area of Iraq. And then there the missing oil.

“Our closest allies have been unwavering.” - Funny, Canada who contributed to most troops to the invasion Afghanistan (2,500) troops to the invasion of Afghanistan dropped out, as the #2 Afghan contributor Germany.

Now the real figures on the “Coalition of the Willing”: Britain has 45,000 troops in it’s prior-colony Iraq and the next biggest contributor is Australia with 2,000 troops. For all the countries “involved” only Albania (70 troops), The Netherlands (350) have contributed combat troops. Lets-Not-Forget-Poland has contributed 200 non-combatant troops and Bulgaria, Romania and the Ukraine have collectively contributed 928 WMD decontamination specialists.

So basically “our closest allies” are the U.K. and Oz.

“Many of our troops are listening tonight. And I want you and your families to know: America is proud of you. And my Administration, and this Congress, will give you the resources you need to fight and win the war on terror.” – Gee, nice of him to do it now, after our troops spent a year plus scrounging through rubble for steel to amour their vehicles with. I guess they’ll finally get that ceramic armour Bush and Cheny have been promising for 2 years?

“I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all. They view terrorism more as a crime -- a problem to be solved mainly with law enforcement and indictments. “ Strawman, no one has ever argued this, only the effectiveness of military invasion as a means of fighting it, which is inefficient and incites more rage at the U.S.

“We are seeking all the facts -- already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.” – LIE! By reports from the U.N. inspector Hans Blix Iraq "probably" had destroyed most of their stockpiles and were complying with the UN terms. We have found no evidence of any WMD programs ongoing or in start up phases, captured only one nuclear specialist. Bush ignored a set of evidence to continue with his own agenda to invade Iraq.

“Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with victims -- terrified and innocent.” – No, they fill our torture chambers now. Well, ours and the Brits.

“The killing fields of Iraq -- where hundreds of thousands of men, and women, and children vanished into the sands -- would still be known only to the killers.” – How many have we killed since we got there? 3,274

“America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.” – Our country was NOT AT RISK from Iraq! Their army was ill equipped, they had no long range air force capability, no navy, their launch capability was 94 miles and they evidence that they had WMD was dubious at best. Jeezus!

“We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East, where freedom is rare. Yet it is mistaken, and condescending, to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-government.” Another Strawman. No one has said this; only that trying to force a nation to be democratic is not effective in the long term.

“So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friends.” & “will send you a proposal to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy, and to focus its new work on the development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and free labor unions in the Middle East.” – I’m sure the Saudi Royal family will just love hearing that.

“To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, the Voice of America and other broadcast services are expanding their programming in Arabic and Persian -- and soon, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region.” – The Voice of America is a government agency. Can you say “Pravda” boys and girls? I knew you could!

“We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace -- a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great Republic will lead the cause of freedom.” – From the same people who brought you the Patriot Act, tried to institute Star Chamber Justice for suspected terrorists and disenfranchised black voters in Florida Ladies and Gentlemen! Someone needs to look up the word “Dichotomy”.

O.K. Bush then goes onto take credit for the “No Child Left Behind Act” (which he slashed funding for), babble on about training people for future jobs (without explaining where these people are supposed to work when our fastest export right now is jobs), discuss his brilliant immigration proposal which I have discussed before and completely misrepresent his Senior Drug Plan, make a stupid statement to the athletic world about steroids (duh!) and try to recreate a SexEd program that frightens kids to death rather than teach them anything about sex (like we all know how well that works) and another pitch for DOMA.

In one of the most disturbing aspects of the speech, he also makes yet another strawman argument against the separation of Church and State.

“It is also important to strengthen our communities by unleashing the compassion of America's religious institutions. Religious charities of every creed are doing some of the most vital work in our country -- mentoring children, feeding the hungry, taking the hand of the lonely. Yet government has often denied social service grants and contracts to these groups, just because they have a cross or a Star of David or a crescent on the wall. By Executive Order, I have opened billions of dollars in grant money to competition that includes faith-based charities. Tonight I ask you to codify this into law, so people of faith can know that the law will never discriminate against them again.” Oh those poor religious institutions, with their tax-exempt status and their millions of dollars in grants every year. Poor, poor babies.

(Actually, I think the Salvation Army rules. Of all the chartible organizations out there, the S.A. has the lowest adminstrative overhead. Meaning their head of the Salvation army makes around 40K a year, as opposed to the 200+K a year the head of the Red Cross makes which equals more bang for your charitable buck. I was just pulling this out to show that religious institutions do get federal funding, quite a bit in fact.)

Despite what the neocon pundits scream daily they are not being discriminated against”, not even by the ACLU and quite frankly, the “Faith Based Initiative Executive Order” is a violation of Federal Law that requires such grants to be approved by congress.

What happening here is that the Christian Right, part of the largest, most wealthy religious institution in the western world, is simply clamoring for more power, more influence over government and the Christian Right whines like babies, "Wah! We’re being discriminated against! Wah!” whenever they aren’t getting their way. Native and Jewish American’s laugh in their general direction of the cries of "Discrimination!", but many of us in the “alternative religions” get a little nervous when there’s a “True Believer” making policy in the White House.

About the only good thing was his encouragement to “make American less dependant on foreign sources of energy”, by drilling for 6 months worth of oil in the ANWR I guess. At least, that’s the only thing he has done as for as “alternate energy sources” is concerned. Yeah, like that’s really going to help us long term. And as we all now know what the neocon “good steward(ship) of taxpayer dollars” looks like (and from CNN) Even the Republicans aren’t are not happy with it.

There was one good program he proposed and that the Job Re-Entry program for Prisoners. That is a great idea! Though where the 300 million is going to come from I don’t know.

So that’s that. On with the show…

Time Out

I spent a couple hours this morning going over GWB’s State of The Union address point by point. I only got ½-way before my sense of outrage imploded from overwork. So I’m listening to Elliot Sadler’s radio station and reconciling billing.

Which I must say it is a eccentric and fun collection. Alabama, Alison Krauss, Evenascence, the Beastie Boys & 3 Doors Down all on the same station.

Kewl.

The outrage will return next week, same bat time, same bat channel. ;)

Frailty, Thy Name is Entertainment

Fark.com has put up this article from the BBC that suggests that maybe, just maybe, Shakespeare was less than fair to Macbeth. This is not surprising as the entertainment industry from the Euripides to Michael Moore has always served agendas and sensationalism.

The Lion in Winter and the Robin Hood legends paint King John as an incompetent hoodlum, but the truth of the matter was that John actually took more after his famous father Henry II than his elder brother Richard I had done, being far more interested in England, the Law and governmental administration. While popular history paint’s John tax collecting as personal greed the fact was when John came to the throne the country had been almost completely bankrupted by Richard I, first by his raising funds to go on Crusade and then by the funds raised for his ransom. While John was a very dangerous man to be friends with, violently personally vindictive, a poor battle commander and a great maneuver-er & manipulator in the corridors of power (all of which damaged him irrevocably in the eyes of the Chivalric nobility), as a ruler of the English people was actually rather smart and fairly just.

Richard III probably suffered the most cruelly at popular history’s hands. Shakespeare drew material for his famous tragedy from Sir Thomas Moore’s history who had drawn his information from John Morton, Bishop of Ely and long time constant foe of the Yorks (ala War of the Roses), histories. Morton had actually fled the country to support Henry of Lancaster’s, later Henry VII, French supported invasion. Henry later promoted him to Archbishop of Canterbury.

Actual record shows Richard to have been a very just and popular king. There is no evidence that he had anything to do with the deaths of his brothers or wife and there is even evidence to suggest that the Princes in the Tower were still alive into the reign of Henry VII. When Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth, the city of York (which Richard had long ruled as Duke of Gloucester) recorded in it’s ledger…

"...bring tidings from the same unto the City, that King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us, was, through great treason of the Duke of Norfolk and many others that had turned against him, with many other lords and nobility of these northern cities, was piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this City ... " [extract from the records of the City of York, resolved the day after Bosworth by the council members - August 23, 1485]

For a great fictionalization of the unraveling of the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time (from the phrase, “truth is the daughter of time”) is quick and very enjoyable.

And the physical deformities? Crap. Almost wholesale crap. Contemporary record from a visiting german dignitary observes that Richard's shoulders were uneven from a ill-healing fall from a horse he took as a youngster. But it would be very hard to imagine a fighter of Richard's prowess (he led the van in several engagements during his brothers fight for the throne) weilding a battle ax (his favored weapon) with the list of malformities Shakespeare gave him.

And I am quite sure there are many more unjustly maligned throughout history.

On a side note; I am reading Robert Fagles translation of the Iliad which is very readable and supplies a great deal of excellent support information. But I was thinking of the relationship between Agamemnon and Achilles, or rather their roles. It’s sort of similar to kings and war leaders, which were quite different jobs in Saxon cultures. Will have to do a little more research on that one. Or maybe my free associative memory is in overdrive... ;)

Commentary on State of The Union Address to follow.

P.S. I just wandered into the lunch room to use the microwave and was audience to a riveting, in-depth group discussion about mayonase and the benfits of Miricle Whip(tm). (And these were gals in their 20's and 30's!) If I ever get that boring, someone shoot me.

Tom Lehrer: Mathematician, Musician, Satirist, Inventor of Jello-Shots.

“It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.” ~ Tom Lehrer

When discussing influential humor in the 20th century, many people would rattle off a list from the Marx Brothers to Chris Rock. But as soon as one mentions “Tom Lehrer”, one’s audience either smacks the head in self chastisement and begins singing any one of his famous/infamous ditties or their face screws up in confusion. Yet few artists have had such an impact on American humor as this Harvard Math Professor.

We’ve all heard him. If you watched the Electric Company growing up he was the voice behind the catchy “L-Y”. But what many of the “Gen X”-ers and most of the “Twixters” (Times’s new name for “Gen Y”) don’t realize is that the guy who penned “Silent E” also penned some of the most politically biting and socially depraved satire American has ever seen.

Tom Lehrer started out writing his humorous tunes for himself and his friends for frat parties while a student at Harvard in the 1940’s and, later for faculty cocktail parties while a professor there. Eventually he self published a long playing album “Songs by Tom Lehrer” for the locals who came to see him perform at Boston clubs but with tunes like “Fight Fiercely Harvard”, “The Old Dope Peddler”, “Lobachevsky” & “My Hometown” (a song that humorously peels back the thin veneer of "Rockwellian America" before David Lynch was even born), it swiftly became the first recording to sell over 100,000 copies by word of mouth advertising alone (the disc would eventually sell 370,000 copies, my parents still have theirs).

After serving a stint in the Army (wherein, so the story goes, he invented Vodka Jello to get around the liquor restrictions in secure areas), he returned with “More of Tom Lehrer” which contained the infamous “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, the lesser known “Masochism Tango”, “The Elements" (Must have Flash to see animation), “Be Prepared” and the sunny look at Nuclear Holocaust “We’ll All Go Together When We Go”. He then wrapped them all up in “An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer.”

But the epoch of his work didn’t arrive until he was brought on to write songs for the NBC show “That Was the Week That Was” in 1963. A show of social satire in the turbulent 1960’s, many of the songs Lehrer penned for the show never made it past the censors and had to be released on the album “That Was The Year That Was”, which contains such wicked barbs as “National Brotherhood Week”, “Wenher von Braun”, “The Vactican Rag” , "MLF (Multi-Lateral Force) Lullaby”, and the famous “So Long Mom”.

Including “Lobechevsky”, long standing personal favorites are “Smut”:

“I do have a cause though. It's obscenity.

I'm for it.

Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut
and unsubt-le.

I've never quibbled
If it was ribald.
I would devour
Where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."

Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they're hard core.

Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers, stained
glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!

Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers
Lurid, licentious and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
Let's face it I love slime!

Old books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!

I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will
If it is swill
And really fil-thy.

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they're trying to take it all away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words: Smut! I love it.
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut.
I don't know what
Compares with smut.
Hip, hip, hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!”

And “Who’s Next?”:

“First we got the bomb and that was good,
'Cause we love peace and motherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K.,
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way!
Who's next?

France got the bomb, but don't you grieve,
'Cause they're on our side (I believe).
China got the bomb, but have no fears;
They can't wipe us out for at least five years!*
Who's next?

Then Indonesia claimed that they
Were gonna get one any day.
South Africa wants two, that's right:
One for the black and one for the white!
Who's next?

Egypt's gonna get one, too,
Just to use on you know who.
So Israel's getting tense,
Wants one in self defense.
"The Lord's our shepherd," says the psalm,
But just in case, we better get a bomb!
Who's next?

Luxembourg is next to go
And, who knows, maybe Monaco.
We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb!
Who's next, who's next, who's next?
Who's next?”

Amazingly, after his wild success with this album, Tom Lehrer returned to being a Math professor. Many rumors have been circulated as to why this sudden disappearance form the public eye, but Lehrer had long said he was never fond of performing. In an interview with the radio host “Dr. Demento” about ten years ago, he said he found himself waking up in them middle of the performance. Music was no longer enjoyable, it was a mindless job, so he returned to mathematics. Though the joke he made at the time was “that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”. Given the ridiculous actions and agendas that politicians engage in today, he has a point. The world’s greatest comedian could not have invented G.W. Bush and his administration.

So Tom Lehrer lives in enjoyable obscurity today, teaching mathematics and occasionally spreading rumors of his demise to cut down on junk mail. Though occasionally a journalist can coax him out of his den with a cold cut.

Sydney Morning Herald (Will have to register with the site, but the interview is worth it.)

And here’s a great interview he did for The Onion recently.

“Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.” ~ Tom Lhrer.

On a side note, today is Candlemass. Blessed Be to all in this New Year!

Immigrants and Wild Horses: This Weeks Newsweek.

I just got this in at the office and while I have not had time to pursue the two large articles on the Iraqi Insurgents and The Intelligent Design theory, I did read the smaller articles over lunch.

Crossing Over: Bush's Other Battle

This is in regards to Bush's Undocumented Immigrant Amnesty Program that would allow illegal immigrants to work in the country for up to three years without approval from the State.

Bush’ reasoning? “Bush told the group he opposed blanket amnesty, but said they needed to "look at the reality" of the situation. "You have a number of people coming here from Mexico and South America looking to feed their family,"

What about the people that are struggling to feed their families here Mr. President? What about the American citizens that are looking for work? If you send jobs over seas and allow illegal immigrants to come in a work for less than minimum wage, how is the lower class supposed to support itself? Welfare? Walmart?

This isn’t about compassionate conservatism, this is about allowing his big business buddies to hire workers for a pittance and no benefits.

And wasn’t this the President that was supposed to “make us safe from terrorism”? Can someone tell me how opening our borders to illegal immigrants makes us safe from terrorism?

Giving these people a free ride does nothing for us. When Proposition 187 was going around here in California I too was appalled at denying free hospital care and education to those in need, until an co-worker of mine from Trinidad said, in her stunningly beautiful accent, "Look, I am going to take the test to gain my American citizenship in a month. I worked for 13 years to get this. If they can just walk in and get all these benefits, what did I bust my ass for?” I had to admit she had a point. It’s not impossible for someone to gain a green card and work towards their citizenship if they just follow the same rules everyone else is.

But the first article that caught my eye was this on one the plight of Wild Horses, Mustangs and Burros on Federally owned land.

Approximately 37,000 wild mustangs do roam free over federal public lands that are also shared by several million heads of domestic cattle. Apparently the over-grazing and drought are the 37,000 mustangs fault; a patently ridiculous argument from a set of people that have always been notoriously proprietary about where their herds graze, whether it belongs to them or not. Sadly, they seem to have Senator Conrad “Rat Bastard” Burns of Montana (Republican of course, his reasoning is as transparently nonsensical as the rest of the Bush administration) who assisted them by quietly slipping a rider onto the Federal Budget that allows for the Bureau of Land Management to sell “without limitation” every captured horse that is 10 years or older or has proved “unadoptable” to be butchered rather than use humane population control methods mentioned in the article. This applies to the 8,400 in currently in captivity and thousands more on the range.

Sadly this law is already law and the only thing left for people to do is to scramble to save what animals they can.

The Bureau of Land Management has a highly controversial adoption program that puts wild horses in private, and sometimes inexperienced or cruel, hands that has necessitated the sudden surge in wild horse rescue programs such as Lifesavers, Inc. and The Lucky Horse Rehabilitation Project.

Private sanctuaries like IRAM (Institute of Range and the American Mustang) and Wild Horse Sanctuary will attempt to save as many as they can, but resources are limited. Find a local wild horse reserve and support them in their quest to save this majestic and inspirational animal in their natural state.

By the way folks, I apologize if my prose is lacking. One of my dogs is terminal with cancer and that is taking up much of my focus.