Bothersome things

Unqualified man arrested for
enhancing women’s buttocks
with questionable injections.

Another endless Sunday. I did weed a bit in the garden. Most of the day I was unable to get on the web. There is not much, if any, news on Sundays. Sundays are mostly just blah. I’ve decided to just concentrate on a few things that continue to bother me. I do not claim these are necessarily important, nor that they would necessarily bother anyone else. But they bother me.

First, where does all the veal go? You cannot ordinarily buy veal at all here in our little town. On those very rare occasions when you can, all you can find is veal scallopini. If you go up across the border into Creston, B.C. you can sometimes buy veal. But, again, all you can ever find is veal scallopini. In Seattle you can almost always find veal scallopini, and occasionally you can find veal stew meat. On very rare occasions, if you happen to have a lot of really big bucks in your pocket you might find veal shanks. But that’s all. You never see any other cuts of veal for sale, anywhere. No leg of veal, no veal roasts, no veal chops, not even a calf’s head when you need one. So…what happens to the veal? Is it all sold to restaurants so expensive I can never see it even offered on a menu? Do we ship it all to Europe where eating veal is commonplace? Surely they don’t grind it up into dog and cat food?

Another thing that bothers me is why do they constantly screw things up? That is, in my opinion. For example, automobiles. I have a 2001 Subaru Forester. It has 150,000 miles on it and runs as well or better than when I first bought it. I love it. It’s not great for mileage but passable. So what have they done to the new Subaru? They made it bigger! I don’t want it bigger. I like it fine just the size it is. I know this kind of thing has happened in the past to other vehicles. Why, when they have an obvious winner, do they have to screw it up by making it bigger (with probably worse gas mileage to boot)?

I am still bothered by the Gannon/Guckert question. I do not care if people are homosexuals. I don’t care if they want to marry. I don’t care what they do in the privacy of their homes. I firmly believe they are born, not made, but I don’t really care either way. But I still want to know how it was that a known homosexual prostitute, with no real journalistic credentials, was allowed access to the White House on many occasions when there was no ostensible reason for him to be there. I find it incredible that I seem to be the only person on earth who wonders about this. I don’t even care what he did while he was there. But I would like to know who permitted this strange apparent breach of security and who has covered it up so successfully.

I am also bothered by cooking shows. When cooking shows first started, as I recall, they basically taught you things about cooking. They were interesting and educational. But not content with modest successes they have now morphed into contests of various kinds. I don’t think cooking ought to be competitive, at least not in the sense TV has made it competitive. Now, instead of educational and interesting programs about cooking, we have contests to see who can make the most ostentatious cakes, or the most absurd desserts, or beat some other chef in using cheese or tomatoes, or who is to become the next infotainment chef on the ever-expanding cooking shows. When Rachel Ray, who really isn’t much of a cook, can become one of the biggest stars in the field, you know something has gone wrong. Of course we have even made eating itself into a contest, what with all you can eat and hotdog or pie eating contests. Only in America could we convert one of life’s basic pleasures into competitive contests in which the food itself becomes irrelevant.

I am also bothered by the fact that American political campaigns have nothing much to do with what they are presumably for. What does Obama’s occasional failure to wear a flag pin have to do with anything? What does it matter what some nitwit preacher says on any given Sunday? What do the candidate’s wives have to do with it? And why are the candidates virtually compelled to not tell the truth in order to be elected? Everyone knows, well, some people know, well, I know, there is no necessary connection between anything they say on the campaign trail and what they will or will not do once they attain the White House. There is no way they can ever possibly live up to all the promises they make, and once established in power they don’t have to do so. It is mostly now just a very long and tedious farce.

Mostly, as I’m sure you already know, I am bothered by the fact that so few people seem to care that Bush/Cheney and their minions are known war criminals. When Nancy Pelosi can report that she likes George W. Bush I tend to believe everything is hopeless. How can anyone claim to like a person responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands upon thousands of people, who could preside over the most executions in the state of Texas ever with only casual investigations into the individual cases, who could mock a woman on death row for pleading for her life, for failing at everything he has ever attempted, for blowing up small creatures just for fun, for being totally separated from reality while pretending to be a “compassionate conservative.” What I really don’t understand is how Pelosi could admit to this in public. If she really likes such a pile of compost she ought to keep it to herself. I don’t understand any of these things and I am bothered by them. I used to be a more or less happy-go-lucky fellow, empathetic and forgiving, content to believe my government was acting more or less in the best interest of its citizens, and even believing in truth and beauty. But no more, the last few years, especially the last eight years, have turned me into an unhappy, cynical, bitter, disgusted old man who worries that no one is going to be held accountable for their murderous war crimes. My only hope is now Barack Obama, but I’m not sure than anyone can really be up to the massive job that awaits them. What Bush/Cheney have wrought may well be irreparable.

LKBIQ:
“Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”
Carl Schurz