Happy Death and Ressurection of Jesus (observed) weekend!

Drinking coffee, and thinking about how to reorganize the kitchen cabinets. I know that I want to make them more functional, and utilize the space over the washer/dryer for stuff that does get used but with less frequency, but .. where to put it all? I think that I'd be well served to check first with how to pull everything out of the cabinets over the washer/dryer and go from there.

Pulled the stereo equipment out yesterday afternoon and put it all back in. I still have the annoying hum from the cable box. The HD cable is AMAZING. Of course, there are like 12 HD channels that don't cost extra money. HBO, for instance, has two of its eight channels also in HD.

Okay, it's nearly 0800, and I need to make a move.

Late-night snark builds healthy bones:

"Hillary Clinton is running for president. She set a fundraising record---she's already raised 26 million dollars. That's a lot of money. To put that in perspective, that is more money than President Bush lost in all the years he was a businessman."
---Jimmy Kimmel

"Republican candidates are announcing their first quarter fundraising totals so far. Mitt Romney announced he's raised $23 million, Rudy Giuliani said he's raised $15 million, and Congressman Tom Tancredo announced he's raised two children."
---Conan O'Brien

"Bush visited Walter Reed today. When you've got a problem like Walter Reed that needs solving, what better sight than to see George Bush walk through the door? He's created so many disasters, I'm not sure he knows which is which anymore. He walked into Walter Reed and he said he wanted to have it ready for next year's Mardi Gras."
---Bill Maher

"Actor and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson---the guy from Law and Order---is thinking of running. He's only been married twice. By Republican standards, that would make him the family values candidate."
---Jay Leno

Grab your bongs and don your thongs---a west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

I'm running late already because I slept in a little bit and then didn't get immediately on task but rather paused to read a little bit. Ah, well. I have a short day today and much to accomplish.

And, last night, I spent some time researching how to breed and raise honeybees. It's scary how reliant we are on a SINGLE species of insect for our entire organized society and how this has been coming on since the LATE 1980s WITHOUT ANY ATTENTION . (grumbles.) Okay, I'll move back to Brittney Spear's ass crack.

And it's too challenging to raise bees for a hobby. And, I'm not sure what benefit there would be (punny) from it here in the middle of the city.

Oh, and there's a resistant strain of a fungus that attacks wheat crops too. Yeah. Fire, flood and famine. I thought that the Four Horse(wo)Men of the Apocalypse only came together when my family had a reunion.

Maybe I'll stick with figuring out how to reorganize the kitchen cabinets and re-wiring the stereo rack, which are my afternoon projects.

Just in case you really still think that things haven't changed

So, you think that Fox News is onto something, that the fundamental values of this American nation are intact, and that the government and the corporate structure of this country really are inclusive, rather than operated solely for the benefit of the wealthy, white people.

Here's a little nugget for you that may open the door a crack in your dim little perspective:

In the comments of the diary yesterday, I posted about a man who brandished a gun during the protest and about how AU Public Safety would not confirm who he was. As you will see in the testimonies, the man was threatening to arrest students and intimidating them with his firearm. Well, yesterday the Director of Public Safety on campus confirmed that the man with the gun was indeed a Secret Service agent. Let me reiterate: a Secret Service agent came to my school and pulled a gun on a group of peaceful protesters and threatened them with violence, and the media is framing the students as the aggressors.

Yep. Karl Rove goes to speak at a university in the United States, and students are OUTSIDE protesting, and this is what they get - threatened with a weapon by an agent of the Federal Government, who is then supported (as is Rove and the rest of the gummint structure) by the "Liberal" media who suggests that the STUDENTS were aggressors.

I have a question for you - why the FUCK was the Secret Service at an event protecting Karl Rove, who's not an elected official? They don't protect CONGRESSMEN unless they're running for President. Have they become the SS of our new society?

The next person who hints at the concept of a "Liberal Media" is going to be packed up in a straight jacket and shipped off to Argentina to live in THAT society for a few years. Then, you can come back up here and tell me what you think about our cow-like population and the sycophants in the "media" who live only to support those wealthy white people that they so aspire to be part of.

In a nation where they burn the buses if the government tries to raise the bus fares, where they take over the factories from the wealthy owners when they try to outsource those jobs to Malaysia and operate the factories for the benefit of the workers, and where the newspapers are more likely to report scandal than the rise of Brittney Spear's jeans, you have some public interaction with the machine of society.

Stuff your nonsense headlines you gained from Fox News and the Heart organization without doing any research on your own. You and Bill O'Reilly all deserve a special place in Hell.

This one, though is my favorite - it shows a German auto journalist who's driving a W12 Phaeton .. at night. The controls and interior lighting - how FABULOUS...

Did I mention that he's driving this Phaeton at 170 miles per hour? 280 km/hr. ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY? Or are my math skills weak this morning? At night? Hell, my night vision isn't what it used to be - plus, there's the risk of someone driving their kids around in a Suburban hauling into your lane without looking at sixty.

Maybe a trip to Germany..

Here's another video that I've just found - a guy demonstrating all the cool stuff that his Phaeton does - check out the way the trunk opens up...



I wonder if I can buy the one in Minnie to hold me over until the 2010 re-do is brought back to the US?

Here's another amazing VW ad from Germany (of course for the Phaeton, which I'm getting hornier for by the moment.)

Donna sent me this European VW commercial the other day. Now, I'm all horny for a Phaeton again.

The one in Minnie is still for sale.

Speaking of things still for sale, the big house on Warwickshire is STILL for sale, and they're down to $220,000 - which is only $10,000 more than what I offered them last.

Poseidon POS Redeaux

I'm watching the Hallmark Made for TV "Poseidon Adventure" from 2005. Everyone who hasn't had a job in twenty years seems to be in it. They're following the structure of the book more closely, although the rollover is caused by a terrorists' bomb instead of a tidal wave. It's just not .. um .. that great.

Last night, i was watching "Mother, Jugs & Speed," the 1976 Bill Cosby/Raquel Welch movie. A hoot. Oh, my. I have the soundtrack on vinyl. John's away for the evening and Bram's working until .. next week, I guess.

Tomorrow's Good Friday. I need to work on my Easter Sunday service - not that it's going to be all that well attended.

Bram told me last night he thinks he's sticking around for a good long while. That makes me happy. I like him enormously, and I love having him here. I love both of my boys, and I like having them here with me.

I've been talking to this guy on gay.com that I've been wanting to meet for more than two years. He's a big muscle boy/personal trainer. He always talks so tough and aggressively, but now that we're actually talking, he's a pussycat. I think he's really shy. He doesn't have a boyfriend, hasn't had one in forever, and works a Bram-like schedule.

I talked to him about the cruise; he was like .. "um, me? On that cruise? Why me?"

Well, you'll look great in a tuxedo, and you'll do.

One of the guys at the office has reduced 35 pounds in four months. FOUR MONTHS! With that kind of diligence, I could probably meet or exceed that result.

Which would have me down to what I weighed before 1990.

John's working on a food program for us; this is going to involve a weekly cook night, where I make up about 24 chicken breasts at a time and package up a huge cooker of brown rice, and package everything up for use all week long. Then, eating every three hours (a little something per the schedule) keeps my glucose levels stable, which keeps the insulin production in check AND causes the body to consume its fat stores.

Plus, exercise, of course.

I'm loving having this cool new office..

Now, I need some business flow to go with it.

I have some tax work to finish today, and then I have to work on web marketing with Tom.

Houston is now larger than the Miami/Ft.Lauderdale/Palm Beach MSA. Houston's now the 6th largest MSA in the USAmerica. What about THEM apples? When I moved here 26 years ago, Houston was the 12th largest MSA. Who's bigger? New York, of course, followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Philadelphia and then Houston. Houston doesn't need to haul in cities from across the Trinity River, or down in Orange County. We're just one sprawling carbuncle.

Rather explains why we're getting so much international air carrier attention, but hardly explains the crappy auto show.

It's just so damned peaceful here in my little corner. I want some masonry picture hangers today so that I can finish hanging pictures - I thought I was done, and then I opened the drawer back here and found .. yet more.

Today would normally be my Rick day. However, with recurrent cancellations, and an hour's drive each way, I'm over it. So, no more atlas adjustments. More's the pity, 'cause it was really wonderful.

So, it's not just me

Honey bees, Sean Michael DuBose and holy crap, but things are just getting weirder.

So, I sent Sean a text message over the weekend and he didn't reply, which was very strange. Then, I sent him a MySpace message, and he still didn't reply, which wasn't very strange. But, it sent me back over to his MySpace profile, where I found a friend of his who had as his profile headline "RIP Sean DuBose."

I shot that boy a message. He replies "he was killled." Apparently, education in Oklahoma is to a higher standard. However, I got that message back tonight, and thought "well, hell, if Sean was killed here in Houston, surely the Chronicle would have something about it - his mother's all about that sort of obituary thing."

And, there it was. He was killed sitting in his car at 04:30 a.m. last Wednesday; his car caught fire, he was in it, it burned up with him in it.

Amazing. Judy's now had her husband die of a heart attack, her first son die in a little hazing incident, and now this.

And, what if it just doesn't matter? My thoughts about honey bees are not silly, wildly out of hand or anything. Check this out (which I've hauled off of an email subscription I get from John Maudlin...)

Honey Bees and Food Supply
By Shannara Johnson

"If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would have four years left to live," said Albert Einstein. "No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

The question many beekeepers and scientists are asking themselves these days is, are we there already?

Recently, there's been a great media buzz about the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of millions of honey bees in the United States. Beekeepers have helplessly stood by while up to 95% of their bees vanished into thin air. One Midwestern beekeeper lost 11,000 of his 13,000 hives, others in 24 states face losses of 60% to 80% on average. Internationally, the same phenomenon--to a lesser degree--has surfaced in Canada, Poland, Spain, Germany, and other European countries.

What's the cause of the "colony collapse syndrome," as it is now called? No one knows for sure, though there are plenty of theories.

Award-winning TV producer, investigative reporter and editor of Earthfiles.com Linda Moulton-Howe talked to various scientists about the bee bane. "Penn State entomologist Diana Cox-Foster, Ph.D., analyzed some bees found in deserted hives," reports Moulton-Howe. "Dr. Cox-Foster has seen as many as five different viruses and unidentified fungi in the bees. She says that is two times more pathogens than she's ever seen before in honey bees."

Something is compromising the bees' immune systems, other scientists agree; among the suspected culprits are modern pesticides and GM crops. And while no one agent might be solely responsible for the bees' disease, Moulton-Howe wonders "what happens when farmers spray herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and rodenticides on land that has also genetically modified crops with pesticides built in?"

As an example, Monsanto's "Round-up Ready" crops, which are modified to withstand the spraying of herbicides, are widely used in the U.S. Recently, though, weeds have developed a Round-up resistance--resulting in frustrated farmers spraying more and more of the weed killer, in combination with others, on their fields.

Eric Mussen, an entomologist and Extension Apiculturist at UC-Davis, also found that some fungicides approved by the EPA for bee safety, while not killing adult bees, are fatal for bee larvae and young bees.

How did the EPA react to his warnings?

"Well, they said they wanted to see some evidence or some data," Mussen told Earthfiles.com. "So, I sent them the evidence. And I cannot see that anything has changed since then and that was a couple of years ago."

Another hypothesis is that nicotine-based pesticides, which have emerged in the last six years, might be messing with the memory of the honey bees, rendering them incapable of finding their way back to the hive.

"The interesting thing [...] is that bees are leaving the colony and not coming back," states Jerry Hayes, chief of the Apiary section at Florida's Department of Agriculture, "which is highly unusual for a social insect to leave a queen and its brood or young behind. They are seemingly going out and can't find their way back home.

"Imidachloprid [the most common nicotine-based pesticide], when it is used to control termites, does exactly the same thing. One of the methods it uses to kill termites is that the termites feed on this material and then go out to feed and can't remember how to get home."

It also causes their immune systems to collapse, says Hayes, adding that imidachloprid has recently evolved from a mere seed treatment to a foliage spray, often combined with fungicides to increase its efficacy.

Mounting stress for the bees might be another factor, suggested a February 23 article in the New York Times. There are fewer and fewer beekeepers in the U.S., who are trucking their hives on 18-wheelers around the country to serve increasing demand from their customers.

"Bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. This has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses."

But it's not just viruses. Mites are also a big problem, "and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago."

But how dire is our situation due to the loss of honey bees?

Honey bees pollinate fruit and nut trees, melons and vegetables in the U.S., a $14.5 billion industry. A 2006 study by an international research team found that pollinators affect more than one-third of the world's crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide.

"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honey bee to pollinate that food," according to Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. And Paul Wenger, VP of the California Farm Bureau Federation, said that with fewer bees, "you'll see lower pollination, lower yields, lower crop production."

So, could we face a national food crisis soon?

It's possible, says Jerry Hayes, wondering if honey bees are the canary in the coal mine. "What are honey bees trying to tell us that we humans should be paying more attention to?"

He thinks having to import more food could be a dilemma in itself: "How much of our food production do we want to turn over to other countries that might be friendly now and not friendly in the future? [...] Then the question is: who fills the gap? And do we become reliant on them? I think I read a figure from the USDA that they project by 2015 that 40% of our vegetables would be coming from China."

Given the, to say it mildly, less-than-perfect environmental track record of the Chinese, we wonder what agents our veggies may be laced with in the future. (Case in point: according to ABC News, it is now suspected that the recent pet food poisoning, which caused renal failure in hundreds of cats, may have been caused by melamine, a toxic fertilizer component found in wheat gluten from China that went into U.S. pet food.)

And as to Hayes' question what honey bees are trying to tell us, it seems pretty clear to us: in the long run, you can't mess around with Mother Nature without facing the consequences.