Birmingham Blues

Happy birthday to Rep. Patricia Todd (it was yesterday; sorry we missed it). We’re glad you were born!

h/t The Terminal

Yesterday went very well for my mother (YAY!), but it was a comedy of errors for me.

Here’s the plan. Not that anything ever goes according to plan. My mother was to have her surgery at a hospital about 25 miles northwest of her hometown, which put it (sort of) on the way for me. So she found a friend to drive her, and I was to meet her there at 1:30 yesterday afternoon. While I was preparing to leave, she called to say that the hospital had had a cancellation and wanted her to come in a couple hours early. No problem, she said; her friend could stay with her until I arrived. So I finished packing and hit the road, figuring the surgery would be done by the time I arrived.

All went well until I exited the interstate.

(more…)

I’m off to GA shortly to hang out with my mother for a couple of days. She broke her arm last week and has to get a pin inserted so the bones will heal properly. My nursing skills are a bit sketchy, so you might want to send some good thoughts her way. The surgery is scheduled for mid-afternoon, and I’m guessing she’ll go home tomorrow before the 23 hour mark.

I hope to find a nice wireless signal at the hospital, but, as others have discovered, the site is frequently blocked. We’ll see. Anyway, Del and Bill will be around. Meanwhile, try to stay cool — and don’t breathe the air. Maybe it will rain.

The husband’s co-worker sent her kids to a local Methodist VBS last week. The girls played two games that this co-worker found slightly “theologically suspect.” The first was a version of Simon Says called “God Says.” (The co-worker said she was pretty sure God never told anybody to cluck like a chicken.)

The second, and much more disturbing, game was a version of that childhood favorite, “Telephone.” You know - where you whisper something in somebody’s ear, they pass it down the line, and at the end everyone enjoys a hearty laugh at the way the original message has been distorted to hilarious nonsense.

They played this game with Bible verses.

Even if you are not claiming absolute Biblical inerrancy, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to play this particular game with a Sacred Text that’s centuries old; is translated from ancient languages, including one that lacks vowels and punctuation; and depends in large part upon reported speech.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm resigned from his position as co-chair of the McCain campaign today, a week after he called the US a “nation of whiners” and declared the current economic troubles a “mental recession”. He blamed Democrats, of course.

“It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country,” Gramm said. “That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country. To end this distraction and get on with the real debate, I hereby step down as co-chair of the McCain campaign and join the growing number of rank-and-file McCain supporters.”

I guess it was just too hard to say, “Look, I said something really stupid.  I belittled people who are suffering real difficulties covering the ever-increasing costs of gasoline, utilities, food, and health care while seeing little to no growth in their paychecks.  I’m sorry.”

Oh well, it’s not like I was holding my breath.

I checked Breaking News at al.com this afternoon and saw the shocking and incredibly newsworthy report that Starbucks will be closing the store just down the street from us, as well as several others in the Birmingham area. 15YOD will be sad, but the people who own the local coffee and sandwich place across the way are likely thrilled.

Anyway. The typical breaking news item on al.com might garner one or two comments at most — unless it’s about Larry Langford, and then there will be one after another, some expressing rational concerns, some vehemently defending the mayor from the evil forces raging against him, and some just flat out racist. The Starbucks story is up to 39 comments at current count (leaving off two duplicates). Most of them are of the “Starbucks coffee is TEH SUCK” variety, and I’m right with them there. Can’t drink the stuff, although I love the chai lattes. However, I’ve always been impressed by the friendly, polite staff and quick service, so I don’t feel the need to express any hatred toward the company.

Not so greywool, who left this uplifting message:

I prefer a good cup of Maxwell House or Red Diamond brewed fresh at home and away from all the hippies.

Community coffee chickory blend is the best IMHO.

But until you’ve had a good pot of coffee cooked over an open fire, you haven’t really had a cup of coffee.

Starbucks didn’t serve coffee. They served drinks with drops or two of coffee in them. Mostly made up of sugary, milky, creamy, goo.

Glad they and their Hippie, Seattle based bunch are leaving.

Hopefully the west coast will soon be swallowed into the pacific and that beachfront property in Arizona will become reality.

Ah, al.com — the place to go to read manly men wishing death and destruction for those not like them. I think I’ll skip the coffee and have a drink instead.

Dick Cheney is coming back to town on August 1 to raise money for Jeff Sessions and other Republican congressional candidates. I note he’s going to a slightly snazzier venue this time (Shoal Creek rather than The Club), but he’s cut the asking price in half. Last time those luncheon tickets were $1,000 each, but this time you can see him for the bargain price of $500. Or $2,000 if you want to have your picture made with him.

Seriously? $2,000 for a picture with Cheney? Does he autograph it too? Well, okay, I might have my picture taken with Cheney if he paid me $2,000, but only if could turn around and donate it to Chase Change for Cheney.

The good folks at Left In Alabama have set up this ActBlue page to help counter Cheney’s efforts by raising money for Democratic candidates here in the state. It’s modeled on Burn Bush for Burner, which raised well over $100,000 for Washington state Congressional candidate Darcy Burner last year and is still going strong.

Let’s do the same.  Click here to donate.

I just filled out a survey from kiva, a charity I admire and support, and that got me thinking about something I’ve been half-intending to post about, so here goes. A while back, a friend of mine said a group she belongs to was going to collect pull-tabs from soft drink cans for the Ronald McDonald house. She said she’d heard that the pull tabs weigh more than the can. I said I’d heard that too, but when I got home I thought “that just can’t be true” so I looked it up, and it’s not.

But this where it gets complicated - there’s been an urban legend circulating for years that if you bring sacks of these tabs to the recycle center, the Reynolds people will use them to fund dialysis. Or something like that. You may have seen the emails. So, the Ronald McDonald people decided that if people were going to save the darn things anyway, they might as well get in on it, so now you can drop them in the lid of cute little houses, and the Ronald McDonald people get a little bit of cash, eventually.

There are many sites where this whole confused issue is discussed, but I found this post, and its comment thread, fascinating. There’s the whole issue of the McDonald Houses using the pull tab thing to “build goodwill” since even they have to admit that at $1.49 for 4,175 tabs, they’re not going to get rich off of it. Then there’s the lady staunchly defending her nine-year-old, who led his entire school in the effort to yield $38 for Ronald. Who can put a price on the value of teaching a child to give?! etc.

Okay, this is what I think. (You knew I’d be getting to that.) (more…)

If you’re a Joss Whedon fan in need of a musical fix, or even if you’re not, go watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion. Acts I and II here, Act III coming on Saturday.