Rambling Rhodes

A Dark Day In The Blogosphere

Whether it will be a lasting thing or not, Michele, over at A Small Victory, is hanging up her blogging hat. Let me tell you, this is a tough pill for me to swaller. Michele is one of my daily reads, for more reasons than I can list, and I'll miss her blog terribly.

Yet, I also know what she means when she explains her reasons for quitting. I don't mean the medication issues, either. I mean when it comes to spouting off about politics and marinating in news feeds 24/7/365.

It starts to take a toll and plays with the mind something fierce. You start to feel overloaded and obligated to vent at the same time, and you start feeling mad at the world because not everyone has the common sense to see things your way, and the people who really don't see things your way drop you pathetic e-mails that amount to literary diarrhea and, if you don't have a relatively strong self-esteem, those petty name-callers can really tear at you.

Not me, of course. My self-esteem has achieved near-legendary status. I can laugh off most everything short of a knife in my gut. But, I'm not everybody. Michele isn't everybody, either. She hit her boiling point and decided to step back, and that's too bad. Necessary, but too bad.

Her accomplishments will always be amazing to me. She was nearing 10,000 page views a day. 10,000!! I can't even imagine. Some newspapers and magazines would KILL for a subscription rate like that.

Amanda Beard . Amanda Beard .Amanda Beard .

Although, earlier this week, I had over 300 page views, which was definitely a record for me. Michele, send some of your blogging mojo my way. I'll take your fame and fortune if you're not using it.

UPDATE: Never mind. She's back.

I'm Confused

Okay, so, let me see if I understand this. The media has been saying that Iraq had no WMDs or nuclear capabilities, but now they're saying that Iraq's nuclear plants are being pilfered? There was no yellowcake, but now there's yellowcake? Up was down, but now down is up?

Actually, MSNBC.com had the story up on their site briefly, too, but then they took it down, apparently realizing that this didn't fit coherently into their tight world view.

UPDATE: This, too, is a must read. (via Instapundit)

Most Favorite Picture

I love this pic. Not sure why. Probably nostalgic.

UPDATE: Sorry about that, all. I was half asleep when I posted this pic and didn't tell you anything about it. This is a road that winds itself down into Winona, MN, where I went to college. I took this picture twice, actually. The first time, I was becoming familiar with my camera because I was taking a photography class. It was pretty much the most super awesome picture on a roll of 36 pictures. The second time I took this picture was about four years ago (the picture you see here) when I was trying to figure out my new digital camera. Still one of my favorite pics that I ever took.

Air American't

Hello, I'm Al Franken, and this is Air America, your liberal alternative to. . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

House Of Dreams

Considering that I'm closing on my house Friday afternoon, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that the stress of the whole deal is now snaking its way into my unconcious mind and is affecting my dreams.

Ponder this little bit of nocturnal imagery from last night:

I'm now officially moved into my house, except it looks nothing at all like the real house. And, for some reason, I decided to put my bed in the unfinished basement and make the entire basement my bedroom. I also discovered, much to my surprise, that the acreage that came with the house also features an abandoned trailer home and a dilapidated house, both of which will have to be torn down, and I find myself worrying about what the cost will be to dispose of all that trash.

Suddenly, the dream plops me in my bed (in the basement), and I'm laying there listening to footsteps upstairs, and I end up thinking something along the lines of "Oh, well, I suppose I should have expected ghosts to be hanging around."

There's a knock at the door. I emerge from my bed, naked, and before I can even throw on some boxer shorts, the person at the door just comes in and doesn't find it at all odd that I'm standing there in the nude. She's part of a neighborhood housewarming troupe!

One by one, people keep filing through the door, giving me housewarming gifts and offering to help me tear down the trailer home and dilapidated shack, because they've always thought of them both as neighborhood eye sores. Although still naked, I'm grateful for the gifts and offers. Everyone is commenting about the ghostly noises coming from upstairs and they offer up advice for how best to get rid such residual apparitions. They all seemed to agree that I should call Dr. Peter Venkman and Egon

Then, Roger Ebert enters the house, and his gift to me is some sort of suped-up GameBoy, which is about the size of a laptop computer, and it has the most recent release of Gauntlet playing on the screen. It's the coolest housewarming gift EVER, and it's made even cooler because it came from Roger Ebert, who didn't seem at all nonplussed about my perpetual nudity.

I then woke up.

You may commence with your dream analysis. . . now.

The Cruel Passage Of Time

Picture on the bottom? Taken in August of 1993. Picture on the top? My most recent license photo. I have no way of expressing how monumentally depressing this is.

Iraq Today Gets Me To Remembering

I'm watching the crap boiling over in Iraq, today, and I find that it sucks to have my convictions tested like this. I mean, it really, really sucks.

I don't profess to understand everything and everything about Islamic culture in general and Iraqi culture specifically. But, here's what I do know: during the year I lived in Tokyo, going to school at St. Mary's International School, I was friends with several Islamic students. I studied with them. I wrestled with and against them. I went to class with them. I joked with them.

And, I'll tell you what; whether they were from Saudi Arabia, or Bangladesh, or Iran, or Pakistan, or wherever (no Iraqis, now that I think about it), they were all great people, great friends. They were friendly, they were frightfully intelligent, and they were all just super-nice people.

We never talked politics. Hell, we were 17 and 18 years old, living in an industrial nation that featured vending machines on every corner, including vending machines filled with hardcore porn and used women's underwear (no, I'm not kidding). Politics and world events seemed forever and a day removed from the daily grind of trying to graduate from a truly challenging school system. The buffers of a moden industrial society kind of shielded us from the harsh glare of world events and politics.

One thing keeps crawling back into my brain, every time I see pictures of al Sadr, or Sistani, or even Osama bin Laden, and it's something that actually bothered me when it happened and continues to bother me every time I open the pages of my St. Mary's yearbook.

There were, perhaps, 40+ nations represented in my graduating class alone in 1993, with every possible combination of religions and ethnic backgrounds you can possibly imagine, right down to a Japanese Jew named Carl Shapiro. You want a real melting pot? Go to St. Marys.

Anyway, on the day that my senior class was photographed together on the roof of the school, one of the students, a charismatic (if somewhat unstable) borderline neo-Nazi named Aleksi, convinced almost 90 percent of the class to do a Nazi salute to the camera. I found the suggestion to be in incredibly bad taste, and I refused, opting instead to stand with my arms crossed in front of me.

And yet, today, every time I open the pages of that damned yearbook, I'm confronted with that freakin' picture of 90+ students, representing 40+ nations and every major world religion and countless cultures, giving a Nazi salute. A NAZI SALUTE! And, there I stand, my arms crossed in front of me, with a wide-eyed look of disbelief as my fellow students, apparently oblivious to the twisted symbolism of it all, happily flash a sieg heil to the camera.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Perhaps it's to point out what a little ignorance mixed with a little persuasion can do to convince people to do stupid, even destructive things. And it's scary to think that almost no one is immune from it.

I really should scan that picture and post it here, if only to underscore the surreal shock value of it all. I'll have to remember to do that the next time I go back to my hometown.

Groggy Monday Morning

Having just completed an early-morning 1.5 hour commute from the Twin Cities back down to Rochester today, I'm sitting at work right now wishing the caffeine in Diet Pepsi had more of a kick to it.

I thought about driving back to Rochester last night, but I think the Easter feasting had a debilitating effect on me, kind of like a pride of lions lounging around drunk on meat after bringing down a gazelle. I just plain didn't have the energy.

Melissa met much of my more extended family yesterday, a flurry of introductions of cousins, and aunt and uncle, and cousins' fiances, and children, followed by the probing investigative questions that have been percolating in everyone's mind since Mel and I started dating just over 1.5 years ago.

Melissa took it all in her cool stride, maintaining her impenetrable aura of "cute" through the entire holiday. Of course, I always expected that she would. I could have left her alone for two hours alone with my family, and they'd want to exchange me with her. She has eerie power like that.

My family is fun, if I do say so myself, and they always have been. When we get together, it's like some comedian convention in Las Vegas or something. Everyone tosses jibes at everyone else, and we're all fast and loose with the puns and groaningly bad humor from time to time. And time always flies. The clock twirled away from 1 p.m. to 6. p.m. in what seemed like just a few minutes.

It was a Greek type of Easter, in that my aunt prepared a Greek salad, leg of lamb, some sort of Greek bread, Greek wine (I think) and a variety of other Easter offerings that left me feeling more full than probably was wise. I couldn't help myself. I mean, the lamb, oh my God, the LAMB. Could it have BEEN any tastier. This gourmet says "no."

Next weekend, unfortunately, will be Easter with Melissa's family. I don't want to say they're not fun, but. . . well. . . they're not fun. It's hard to explain, but I think the disparity stems from a difference in rural and city mentality. Whereas much of my family has always lived and worked in cities, most of Mel's family (at least on her mother's side, and to a large degree her father's side, too) are all hardcore farm families. The people who make up her family are stoic, hard working, decent, loyal, yet incredibly boring folk. Conversation topics usually center around the weather, last year's crops, this upcoming year's crops, with some good old reminiscing thrown into the mix. To them, I'm sure the conversations are scintilating. For me, they're blood from the ears boring.

But, on the other hand, I close on my house on Friday, so Friday night and Saturday will no doubt be spent trying to paint the master bedroom so I can actually start thinking about moving my stuff in by the end of the month. I can't. . . I won't. . . sleep in a bedroom that is entirely pink. That has to be changed immediately.

Welcomg to Monday all. Enjoy the ride.