I Feel Bad That I Don’t Feel Bad

Posted by: on Aug 28, 2014 | No Comments

In the hit Broadway show A Chorus Line, the character Morales recalls the story of her drama instructor Mr. Karp,  who tormented her, calling her “nothing.”  Years later, Morales learn that Karp had died and sings “and I reached on down to the bottom of my soul and cried….cause I felt ‘nothing’.”

Tuesday in Arizona, a 9 year girl old shot and killed her fire arms instructor with an Uzi. My first reaction was that I felt nothing. Now as I think about this, I realize I’m feeling many things. I am sad that a man who had served our country had been shot and killed. I am amazed that parents thought it was OK for their 9 year old daughter to be shooting an Uzi. I find it incredible that a man who was trained to use an Uzi did not know enough to realize that this young girl would be unable to handle the recoil from that submachine gun when he set it to automatic mode.

Most of all I’m angry. Angry that the entire conversation of common sense gun control regulations in our country is dominated by one side and its fanatical leadership group. A group that refuses to budge one inch on any new regulations, despite the growing outcry from the public, despite the epidemic of gun violence and gun related deaths.

Let me say, I’m not a fanatic in favor of the total ban of all fire arms. Common sense tells me that this is unrealistic in a country where people cling to the “right to bear arms” even when that right was granted in an age of muskets and one shot pistols. You want to own a pistol or two, OK. A rifle for hunting, fine. But explain to me why a 9 year old, or anyone else for that matter, needs to have the right to own, or needs to know how to shoot an Uzi. Makes absolutely no sense no matter how much the NRA spins it.

I guess in the end I really felt a lot of things, but being sad about this unfortunate death is not on the top of my list. Although I am sad. Sad that it wasn’t Wayne LaPierre (President of the NRA) or one his gun toting disciples on the receiving end of that Uzis bullet. If that were to happen, then I’d feel something.

Almonds Make Me Nuts

Posted by: on Aug 17, 2014 | One Comment

The other day I was reading some interesting info about almonds. Before I get to that, I need to be something off my chest about almond “milk.”  It’s not friggin’ milk! It’s juice or water or something entirely different but it’s not milk. Milk is lactated not squeezed out of a nut. Cows, humans and other living, breathing animals make milk. Almonds that grow on trees do not. To call it milk is udderly ridiculous.  Glad I got that off my chest.

Almonds are now the number 1 consumed nut in America, having replaced peanuts. In reality, the #1 nuts in America are the folks running our country, but that’s a completely different type of nut. Almonds are also very unfriendly to the environment in which they grow, which is mostly in California. I’m sure you are wondering how a nut can be anti-environment.  Let me ‘splain.

If you’ve been reading the news at all, you know the climate has been pretty weird lately. California is now in one the worst droughts that region has ever seen. Water is at such a premium they now drill for groundwater they way they drill for oil. Where there was once surface water, there is none. Where there was once ground water pretty close to the surface, that is vanishing rapidly.  So it’s drill baby drill. Let’s forget about the consequences of how much that destabilizes the ground above those ever deeper water wells…at least until parts of California become one big sinkhole.

80% of all the water in California goes to agriculture. Of that, 10% goes to grow almonds. Many of these almond groves used to grow cotton, vegetables and other annual crops. Cotton was not as lucrative but used 40% less water than almonds. In a bad water year, you let cotton or vegetable plants die, take the hit and replant the next year. Almond trees need constant care and constant watering. So just remember, every time you eat an almond, you are helping suck California dry (which some people might think is not such a bad thing).

This scenario reminds me of the 1st Superman movie back in 1978. In that film, the villan Lex Luthor was going to set off a nuclear bomb in the San Andreas fault and sink part of California into the Pacific Ocean. He had purchased all the land on the other side of the fault which would become beach front property with names like Lutherville and Costa del Lex (and Otisburg for you Superman aficionados). In reality, you really don’t need a bomb or the world’s #1 criminal mind to completely screw up California…just a bunch of nuts.

 

Another Ma Nature IRAnt

Posted by: on Aug 8, 2014 | No Comments

Another Ma Nature IRAnt

We all know the world is a scary place right now. My morning ritual these daze is to wake-up, turn on my computer, go to CNN.com and Google News and pray the world hasn’t completely blown itself while I tried to get a good night sleeps.

Not completely lost in the multitude of wars, skirmishes, terrorism, etc., is the punishment that Mother Nature continues to inflict on our little planet. Let’s start in California, America’s fruit and veggie basket. Where there once was surface water, now there’s none. Where there was once well water near the surface, now there’s not so much…if any. So they drill, just like for oil, in some spots up to 2000 feet below the surface. Of course the one little side effect is that when you suck all that water out of the ground, you suck out the support system for the land above it. California may not float off into the Pacific but don’t be surprised if parts of it sink into the ground.

A little further up the coast, we have wildfires. Again, a little water would go a long way towards alleviating that situation. Unfortunately, when the rains do come, that will only lead to mudslides and more devastation. Without the trees to hold things in place, things have a tendency to slide down hill, often with catastrophic results as we saw this spring and in the last few daze.

Heading all the way up the coast, the problem is too much water and not enough ice. Where there once was the Arctic Ice Cap, we now have waves…big waves. Do you know what those waves do? They help break up the remaining ice so there is even less ice and more open water. According to more than a few folks who are a lot smarter than me, the day is rapidly approaching when the Arctic Ice Cap will be free of ice during the summer months. According to these experts, that would be bad. I guess during the summer we’d have to call it “the unfrozen water formerly known as The Arctic Ice Cap.”

On top of all these disasters, we have disease outbreaks. Ebola in Africa, which seems to be spreading much faster than anticipated; a tick epidemic on longisland (one which makes you allergic to red meat), rhodeisland and otherislands and inland areas on the east coast, which means lyme disease. In southern environs of the USA, there are reports of Chikungunya, which is carried by mosquitoes. Bad enough the little bastards are giving us West Nile Virus, now we have something I can’t even pronounce. Sounds like chewing gum or some long lost Indian tribe about to open a casino.

Maybe Ma Nature is taking a look at the state of things and realizes that humanity is on the verge of imploding her planet. Maybe she thinks it time she taught us another lesson on who is really control of things here on planet Earth. Let’s just hope she doesn’t have one big ass asteroid in her arsenal. If she does, we may be the next dodo to gogo.