Campanastan

Fear of Flying - Welcome Aboard!

I've had this pdf of an article from the 9 September 2006 issue of The Economist for a while. It's not outdated, in fact, it's just in time for what promises to be a miserable summer flying season, at least here in the USA.

Download economistfearofflyingwelcomeaboard.pdf

What great way to close out June.

Enjoy (or not!).

"Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place." -- Billy Crystal

Darfur: Now Even the Good Guys Are Bad

I guess it was inevitable in Darfur, just like it was in southern Sudan during the war with the central government: the lines between the "good guys" and "bad guys" are becoming increasingly blurred.

A couple of weeks ago the Christian Science Monitor reported that aid groups are now being attacked by bandits representing all sides in the war. And the rebel groups that are fighting the government have now splintered, with three main rebel groups morphing into more than a dozen groups. The CSM reported that these groups have found the "soft" aid groups easy targets and are taking advantage of them.

Aid groups are finding it increasingly difficult to assist nearly 4,000,000 people in need. Some groups have pulled out of embattled areas, and others have resorted to helicopters to provide supplies, an expensive option.

It is no longer a "simple case" of black African rebel groups fighting the government-backed janjaweed militia and government forces. Now, there are black African rebel groups fighting the government as well as each other. The 7,000 African Union troops have been ineffective, and an additional 15,000-member UN force is still not in place.

"There are no good guys anymore" said UN humanitarian operations chief Manuel Aranda Da Silva. 

There is also an excellent article (you may have to subscribe to read it) by Bernard-Henri Levy in the 7 May issue of The New Republic entitled "A Guided Tour of Hell". The title is an understatement.

"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography." -- Paul Rodriguez.

Trojan's Condom Ad: Fox and CBS Take a Pass

Good friend Barney Popkin sent me a missive about the Trojan condom ad that was rejected by both Fox and CBS. Take a look and see what you think.

The ad features attractive women in a bar surrounded by talking, beer-guzzling pigs. One of the pigs goes to the men's room, purchases a condom, and is transformed into a good-looking man who finally gets a rise (pardon the double entendre) from a woman at the bar.

Fox rejected the ad because "contraceptive advertising must stress health-related issues rather than the prevention of pregnancy". So condoms don't prevent STIs (sexually transmitted infections)? CBS said that it would not be appropriate "even with late-night restrictions". Go figure.

According to the Trojan website the "Evolve" campaign's mission is about promoting safe sexual practices. Makes sense to me.

"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be enjoying themselves."

Water For Darfur? A Remarkable Meeting With Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir

Bev Herzog, a colleague of mine who is the chair of one of my professional societies, the Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers (AGWSE) of the National Ground Water Association (NGWA), just informed me of a remarkable meeting between US geologist Dr. Farouk El-Baz and Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

Here is Dr. El-Baz's email:

"You will not believe what just happened! A couple of hours ago I met with President Omar al-Bashir to discuss the new find of a dry lake in Northern Darfur, which probably overlies groundwater. So, I told him why discourage anyone from helping to ease the humanitarian crises; why not challenge them to put their money where their mouth is... invite all to come and participate? I offered an initiative: "1000 Wells For Darfur." Any person, organization, foundation or county can take part. Those who provide $10 million or 10 wells will have their name on the wells forever. He agreed enthusiastically. We talked some more and at the end of the meeting I said: I have to give a lecture tonight, shall I announce this initiative or shall I leave it for now? He said 'YES', go ahead and announce it on my behalf. I met later with the UN people and they will plan their work as the first step in the initiative and will help publicize it internationally! God works in mysterious ways indeed."

This is almost too good to be true, but as Bev said, Dr. El-Baz, originally from Egypt, is very well-connected throughout the Middle East. I am somewhat skeptical but have learned to expect the unexpected.

I will keep you posted - keep your fingers crossed!

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann

Fahgeddaboutit: Hillary's Campaign Song (But Do Watch the Video)

Someone in Hillary Clinton's campaign has a sense of humor. The video announcing the "campaign song" is a send-up of the final scene from The Sopranos. There is even a guest appearance by mobster "Johnny Sack" (Vincent Curatola from The Sopranos) as the menacing hood at the counter.

But the winning song? You and I by Celine Dion. Mon dieu!

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Salem Municipal Airport

Salem (city motto: Salem! Next 5 exits), the capital of Oregon, is a pleasant city of about 150,000 on the banks of the Willamette River. It is often knocked for being nondescript, although it does have a very nice zoo that is open for five months every two years. Salem's problem is that it suffers from the "Philadelphia complex", in which case an exciting city seems less so only because it is across a river from a far more vibrant town. Just as Camden, NJ, does this to Philadelphia, so does West Salem do it to Salem. It's sad.

But not exciting? Consider this: each summer, the city holds the annual "Bridge Paint Drying" festival. The city paints the two downtown bridges over the Willamette River. Tourists and locals alike gather to celebrate the "drying of the paint" and cheer their favorite bridge on. The city crowns a king and queen and holds a grand "floating parade" on the river. When the paint finally dries, a huge evening fireworks display conjures images of the northern lights. It's the biggest thing in Marion County!

Contrary to popular belief Salem's name is not derived from the Hebrew and Arabic words for "peace". It received its European name from the first white settlers who visited here and were intrigued by the unusual-looking boats the natives used. When the Euros asked the natives what they did with the oddly-shaped vessels, the locals indignantly replied: "Sail 'em!" The name stuck.

Salem had been a while without commercial air service until 7 June 2007, when the Delta Connection (actually SkyWest) started service betweem Salem (SLE) and Delta's Salt Lake City hub. There are four flights per day: two incoming, two outgoing. If you book a flight there, make sure you have a back-up plan (like a way to get to Portland International Airport).

The fact that Salem had no commercial air service meant that people had to travel to Portland International (PDX), the nation's 35th busiest airport, about 60 miles north, or Eugene (EUG), a smaller regional airport about 70 miles south. I live in Corvallis, about equidistant between Salem and Eugene, and about two hours from PDX. I try to fly out of EUG when I can, but I thought I would give Salem a try. Besides, a Delta ticket to Albuquerque out of SLE was $200 less than out of EUG.

My first indication that this may not have been a great idea was my arrival at the terminal a little after the opening time 5 AM. The sole entrance to the terminal building - automatic sliding glass doors - was not working. You had to pry the doors open to enter. The SkyWest counter agent was pleasant, and he asked me if I might stand by the door to help others enter. I guess he thought they might go somewhere else (not a bad idea). So I helped out.

Fast forward to the plane, one of the those 50-passenger Canadair RJ200 regional jets. We started acclerating down the runway, but soon started slowing down. The pilot told us the generator light had come on, so he aborted, but said he would try again (remember, this is a small airport so he could just go back and try again). Same thing happened, so we headed to the terminal.

We sat on the plane for a while, but soon were told to deplane because they needed a mechanic. Upon entering the terminal, the friendly TSA chief asked "Was it the foxes?" What? He then related that a family of foxes lived on the airport grounds and periodically wandered onto the runway. Two takeoffs had already been aborted in 7 days' operations. Usually a guy is out there with a gun shooting blanks to scare them off, but not today. He had gone to PDX to catch a flight.

More stories started coming. A few days ago a pilot was in the cockpit waiting for the plane to be fueled. When he noticed the fuel gauge remaining immobile, he called to the attendant. Well, it turned out that there was no fuel in the tanker truck. That would turn out to be prescient, because when we finally were ready to depart almost 4 hours later, we learned that the oil tank for the generator had not been filled up enough, so the light would come out as the plane warmed up. The TSA agent told us that had this happened at PDX, the airline would have been fined. Here, the plane could just turn around and try again.

I did learn that three other start-up airlines were gearing up to use SLE:

1) Aeromuerto, a Spanish-language airlines that will cater to the many Latinos in the area. It will fly between SLE and Albuquerque, El Paso-Juarez, Tijuana, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. It will feature planes painted red, green, yellow, and brown. Flight attendants will be comely, buxom young women in spike heels and short, low-cut dresses. Pilots will wear funny hats, fright wigs, fake noses, and lederhosen. In-flight entertainment will feature all the latest telenovelas, Betty La Fea, Sabado Gigante, and futbol. Erik Estrada will be its official spokesman. Aeromuerto's motto: Buena suerte, amigos!

2) AA - no, not American Airlines, but Aryan Airlines, which will fly only to an unknown airport in northern Idaho. Planes will be painted white, and flight attendants will have shaved heads and carry sidearms. One of the investors is rumored to be Mark Fuhrman, the former LAPD detective who gained notoriety at O.J. Simpson's trial. NRA members will get a discount. Rumor has it that the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and ground personnel will be represented by the union Aryan Brotherhood, which has never lost a negotiation. Aryan Airlines has already notified the Salem Airport authorities that they will not occupy the same terminal building as Aeromuerto. AA's motto: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

3) HootersAir, not the infamous one, but a Northwest-only airline that will fly just to Seattle and Vancouver. Its logo will be a Northern Spotted Owl. The airline will certify that no old-growth trees were cut down nor any non-recycled materials used in its airplanes. Motto: Hurt no living thing, unless it's a forester.

Yes, the Salem Municipal Airport is the place to be - but not for flights.

"The light at the end of a tunnel may be an incoming train."

Iraq: A Prescient Report

This morning I listened to an excellent interview on NPR's Here and Now with Dr. Conrad C. Crane, a former Army officer and military historian who now heads the U.S. Army Military History Institute at the Army War College.

Crane, a classmate of General David Petraeus at West Point, who, along with colleague W. Andrew Terrill, wrote a report published before the Iraq invasion (February 2003):

Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario

Download crane_pub182.pdf

In this report, Crane and Terrill foresaw many of the difficulties we experienced in Iraq: the insurgency, sectarian violence, the rejection of the Iraqi exiles returning home, etc. As to why their advice was apparently disregarded, Crane mentioned that it was perhaps because decision-makers "cherry-picked" (not his term) certain premises or scenarios.

It's an interesting interview. Remember, Crane's report was produced for the U.S. Army. 

"Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence." -- George W. Bush, 2 May 2007.

Watergate, Father's Day, Nixon, Bush

Hard to believe that it was 35 years ago that five men were apprehended for attempting to break into to the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex on the banks of the Potomac River in Washington, DC.

Were it not for a letter written by one of the convicted burglars, James W. McCord, Jr., to Judge John J. Sirica, the break-in would likely have not brought down the Nixon administration. In it, McCord alleged that the break-in was part of a much larger scheme and that a massive cover-up was in progress. Sirica had suspected as much, but McCord's letter confirmed his suspicions. The rest is history.

Think of how the word "Watergate" has permeated our culture and language and how the suffix "-gate" is appended to many words to indicate a cover-up or something similar.

What brought this up is not some obsession I have but a comment by George Packer in 11 and 18 June 2007 issue of The New Yorker about a new play ,"Frost/Nixon", starring Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost. It's about the series of interviews Frost conducted with Nixon in 1977.

Packer used the Frost-Nixon interview as a metaphor for the struggle to control historical memory - specifically, a president's legacy. Who remembers Lyndon Johnson for the Civil Rights Act? Who remembers Nixon for creating the EPA or recognizing China? As for the present, who will remember George Bush for anything but Iraq? Packer, who wrote the excellent The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, noted that in the past week, the 332nd of his administration, Bush had one of his best weeks ever. Consider that he: 1) tightened sanctions on Sudan to protest the Darfur genocide; 2) had his Iraqi ambassador, Ryan Crocker, meet with Iran to discuss the stabilization of Iraq; and 3) excoriated critics of the immigration bill for indulging in demagoguery. Pretty good, but who will remember any of this?

As for remembering Watergate, and what it signifies, God bless NPR's venerable Daniel Schorr, a charter member of Nixon's notorious "enemies' list". Hear his 17 June 2007 NPR commentary "Remembering Watergate."

On this Father's Day, I of course remember my father John, who died in 1984 after a bout with a particularly nasty form of cancer. He loathed Nixon; to him, Nixon would always be "Tricky Dick". He never forgave Nixon for forcing him to vote for Sen. Jack Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election. My father was a second-generation Italian-American from Boston who worked his way through Harvard. Need I say anything further about his feelings towards the Kennedy clan? He often referred to Joe Kennedy, the patriarch, as "the bootlegger" or "the Nazi-lover". But he could not vote for Nixon, so Jack, the Irish-American from Boston, was the recipient of John Pilgrim Campana's vote in 1960.

I know how he would feel about Bush, and it would have nothing to do with Bush's Yale pedigree (well, maybe a bit).

My father was a remarkable man. I can even forgive him for being a Red Sox fan. I only wish he had been around to see the Sox win it all in 2004.

I miss you, Dad.

"Saudi Arabia announced this week that they've arrested 11 members of al-Qaeda. The bad news, they arrested them at a big fund-raiser they were throwing for al-Qaeda." -- Jay Leno

"Crap Detecting" at Wilton High School: Censorship Scores Big

Bonnie Dickinson's advanced drama class at Wilton High School (Connecticut) knew they had something controversial when they created their play, Voices of Conflict, a series of monologues based on the real words of real soldiers in Iraq - taken from blogs, interviews, and letters.

They were right - Principal Timothy Canty canceled the performance, citing concerns about the feelings of those who have or have lost loved ones in Iraq. He was responding to a complaint by a student and her mother who felt the play was unbalanced and disrespectful to those in Iraq. The original version of the play did contain powerful language (Duhhhh...it's based on soldiers, right?).

The picture (by Joanne Ciccarello) of the troupe is from the story by Harry Bruinius in the 12 June 2007 edition of the Christian Science Monitor, upon which this post is based.

Dickinson got the idea for the play after reading In Conflict: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Duty, Loss and the Fight to Stay Alive by Yvonne Latty, and the class took it from there. The play does emphasize the negative aspects of the war, although the students don't see it as such - they see it as "reality".

"We're not all liberals, and we have different views on the war, even if we see that there are no easy answers," said cast member Tara Ross. Devon Fontaine added: "A lot of things in life are hazy, and we've really learned this as we've done research for this play...But I think it's the highest honor we can give the troops by letting their voices be heard." 

In a classic example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, Canty's actions generated protests, including a letter signed by 33 prominent playwrights. But his decision stood.

Oddly enough the students will get a chance to perform, but not at Wilton High School. Instead, they will perform at several venues in New York City. The students are excited about that, but they still are forbidden from presenting it at school, which is all they really wanted to do.

I remembering reading a book in the late 1960s-early 1970s about education; I believe John Holt wrote it. He said that the objective of education should be to teach our children to be "crap detectors".

Looks like the students at Wilton High School have learned that lesson well.

"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." -- General William Westmoreland

Things I'd Love to See: The Tonys (Soprano & Blair), Bonds, Hilton, Tancredo, Romney, Rudy, Friedman, Cuba, Baseball, Bush

Haven't done this for a while, so here goes....

1) "The Sopranos". Have the show end with Tony Soprano entering the witness protection program and being exiled to some nondescript suburb in the San Joaquin Valley. The closing shot would have his trademark bathrobe-clad waddle down the driveway to fetch the paper, but this time, he'd be bending over to retrieve the Modesto Bee instead of the Newark Star-Ledger.

2) The Feds and Barry Bonds. Hey, c'mon - charge him with something or drop it. I am no FOB and hate to see him break the record of an exemplar like Henry Aaron, but baseball has always had its great players who happened to be jerks (Ty Cobb, anyone?). Bonds has been living under a "steroid cloud" for years now. It's time to fish or cut bait; charge him with something or leave him alone.

3) Blind spots when it comes to drugs and baseball: no more. Has anyone commented on how players like Ivan Rodriguez of the Detroit Tigers have noticeably "slimmed down" over the past year or two? Yeah, I guess he was on WeightWatchers. And how about all the ballplayers who took "greenies" in the 1960s, 1970s (and even today) while MLB looked the other way? The mavens of MLB need to figure out what they want to do vis-a-vis drugs and the like, and do it. Tell the MLB Players' union to drop dead if need be.

4) An end to the increasing "dumbing down" of the news. Paris Hilton - fahgeddaboutit, already! Example: on this morning's Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz aired clips from several cable news outlets showing a correspondent discussing the announcement that General Peter Pace would not be renominated for another term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Pretty big news - a big Iraq war casualty. In each case, the correspondent was interrupted by the news anchor for a "breaking story in Los Angeles", which turned out to be the latest Paris Hilton jail thing. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing Paris Hilton contributes to society is more CO2 to exacerbate global warming, and unlike a coal-fired power plant, she provides nothing in return.

5) Mitt Romney get the gig he deserves - replacing Bob Barker on The Price Is Right.

6) The "9/10 Rudy Giuliani". Let's hear more about the Rudy before 9/11, and his FORs (Friends Of Rudy) - guys like thug Bernard Kerik. Would you dump your wife at a press conference before bothering to tell her first?

7) Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO). We learn that there is an illegal Mexican immigrant in Rep. Tom Tancredo's lineage. Hey, wonder where Tom's ancestors came from?

8) A good retirement for British PM Tony Blair. Although I did not care for his Iraq war policy, I like him, and wish him well. I realize many Brits would disagree with me, but Tony struck me as someone who tried to "do the right thing." I expect he'll become a force for good in the world.

9) "Immigrant" and "illegal immigrant". Let's not confuse the two. And for folks who think we treat illegal Mexican immigrants badly: you should see how your Mexican amigos treat illegal immigrants crossing their southern border.

10) Cuba. Drop the embargo and have an enlightened foreign policy towards Cuba, one not dictated by the rabid Cuban exile community in South Florida whose motivation is primarily revenge. Such a foreign policy would not mean that we endorse Castro's (a brutal scumbag - "el caudillo") regime, but since when have we not done business with scumbags (Saddam Hussein, Shah of Iran, Mobutu, et al.)? The late Mike Royko wrote a great column on the USA's Cuba policy about 10-15 years ago. Maybe I will dig for it.

11) Thomas L. Friedman for USA Energy Czar. Actually, "energy czar" is not broad enough - just make him "czar", period. He's written The World Is Flat, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and others. He's a real smart guy (all right, I wasn't thrilled with his Iraq war views). What he's been harping on for years is how our bankrupt energy policy (do we have one?) and heavy dependence upon foreign energy is not only "enslaving" our foreign policy but also financing our terrorist foes - not to mention cooking the planet. We need to have a policy that discourages oil consumption and promotes "greener" fuels, innovation, conservation, etc. He wrote a great column in the 3 June 2007 New York Times on "Our Green Bubble". From his WWW site, click on his NYT's columns and see if his "The Power of Green" video (based on his article in the NYT Sunday Magazine of 15 April 2007) is still available on the NYT's website.

12) Bush's Global Warming "Conversion". Okay, now get serious - don't just call for meetings, but do something substantive. Let me put it in terms you can understand: pretend global warming is a tree on your ranch, and you have a chainsaw. Go get 'em, George!

"Now I know what it takes to get the Federal government to pay attention to a black man from New Orleans." -- Jon Stewart, commenting on the indictment of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA).

The Political Compass: Where Do You Land?

My friend Barney Popkin, always on the lookout for the unusual (which he invariably finds), sent me a link to an entertaining site - the Political Compass. It's a diagram based on a questionnaire that is designed to determine not whether you are "right" or "left" but where you belong on a "compass" that involves characteristics besides "left" or "right", a linear classification devised for seating the French National Assembly in 1789. Does such a simple linear scheme work today, given the complex political realities? Of course not!

As the introduction says, how do you distinguish a Gandhi from a Stalin? Both are "left", but is that all there is to it?

Where would the conservatives in today's Russia fit? Are terms like "left" and "right" adequate? Where would a reactionary like my buddy Robert Mugabe land on a linear scale?

The Political Compass is designed to overcome the shortcomings of the linear classification. The test takes about 5 minutes, and the result is a graph like the ones above and below indicating your position.

 

The above plot shows where some famous world leaders might land on the compass. 

I took the test, and landed somewhere around Nelson Mandela, but slightly to the right. I took the test again a few days later and landed about in the same place, though slightly above Mandela. Quantitative comparisons are fruitless, since I received an actual numerical plotting position and these graphs merely provide relative positions.

Here is a compass for the U.S. presidential candidates in 2004:

How about famous composers? See the following.

As you can imagine, we can get quite silly here. How about Barry Bonds? Paris "Jailbird" Hilton? Roger Clemens? Michael Vick? Bruce Springsteen? Bono? Tony Soprano? Dick Cheney? Vladimir Putin? Quasimodo? Raskolnikov? Soupy Sales?

It's questions like these that define today's political discourse.

So where do you land on the socio-political-economic compass?

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." -- Steven Wright

Bush Gets Tough(er) on Sudan

Amazing! This post is actually about giving ol' George Bush some credit for once (hey, my counter is down to 593 days -- oops, sorry!).

President Bush came out pretty firm on the genocide in Darfur, even using that "G-word", which many people eschew in the interests of "sensitivity". In April he took President Omar al-Bashir to task for his obstructionism and failure to stop the government-backed janjaweed militias and ordered sanctions. On 29 May 2007 he ordered tighter sanctions, including blacklisting an additional 30 Sudanese or Sudanese-controlled companies. He also targeted a transport firm accused of ferrying weapons to Sudanese government and militia forces in Darfur. He also instructed Secretary of state Rice to consult with allies on a new UN Security Council resolution.

Some are skeptical about the efficacy of the new sanctions, since Sudan seems to have no trouble getting foreign investment in its oil industry from Chinese, Indian, and Malaysian firms. Those funds will keep its economy humming and continue to provide funds for killing more villagers.

Lest you think I'm the only Bush critic who's going "soft", on 1 June 2007, Daniel Schorr, no FOG himself, praised Bush's actions in the Christian Science Monitor, especially for calling "a spade a spade". He mentioned that Bush may consider enforcing a "no-fly" zone to keep Sudanese military planes from bombing villagers. Some have questioned that strategy, since the Sudanese apparently use planes with markings identical to those of the relief agencies. Wonderful, guys!

Schorr went on to say that "Bush promises to do in Darfur what Mr. Clinton failed to do in Rwanda."

Good for you, George! Maybe your legacy will look a little better.

"Hey, Omar! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, fella! Bomb this!"

Like Pearls Before Swine: Similes and Metaphors

My friend Marty Ennis sent me this timeless collection of similes and metaphors, compiled by high-school English teachers, who rushed like lemmings to a cliff to get theirs in before the others. The 25 here represent some of the best of 2006.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge on a formerly surcharge-free ATM. 
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag full of vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy! comes on at 7 PM instead of 7:30 pm.
12. Her hair glistened in the sun like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 pm traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 pm at 35 mph.
14. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
15. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
16. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
17. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been out so long, it had rusted shut.
18. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
19. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan might just work.
20. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
21. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
22. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
23. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
24. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -- Marilyn Pittman

Campana's Astounding Travel Reports: Vienna, Central America, South Carolina, Kazakhstan, Georgia

Over the years I have amused/befuddled friends by writing "semi-fictional" reports based on my peregrinations. These travel reports are still online.

Enjoy (or not)!

Hey - my "Backwards Bush" counter is down to 597 days! Awesome!

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving her infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base." -- Dave Barry

Sinners, Repent! (Online) Confession is Good for the Soul

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, given our tendency to do things electronically and take the easy way out. We can now confess online, admit our transgressions, and request forgiveness.

Time was that to cleanse oneself of guilt caused by the commission (or omission) of some deed you'd exile yourself to the desert, a mountaintop, or a lifetime of helping those less fortunate. If society wanted to "cleanse" you, then the sanctions might be considerably harsher. Or maybe you would just confront the person you wronged and sought forgiveness.

If you were a Catholic (as I was raised) you could go to confession if you committed a sin, endure a scolding (or worse) from Father Doyle, say a couple of prayers, and presto! Back in God's good graces - for a while at least. If you practiced another religion I suppose you could confess to your minister, rabbi, priest, imam, or avoid the middleman and confess directly to your Supreme Being.

Now comes something else. Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, FL, now sponsors:

www.ivescrewedup.com/

where you can post your screw-ups anonymously (after you go through the "legalese" to enter the site). The FRC has four physical campuses, so I'm guessing it's a "megachurch".

A quick perusal of the posted confessions indicated such sins as swearing, cheating on a test, wishing bad things on people, to bigger-ticket items such as fornication, stealing, drug abuse, violence, etc. Ages ranged from pre-teen to over 60.

I wondered how many confessions were actually real.

The pastor at Flamingo Road Church is one Troy Gramling and he was interviewed last week on Anderson Cooper's CNN show (I missed that).

Of course, after you have confessed, you should probably visit www.imscrewed.com to see what your punishment is. There is such a site, but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

'Fess up, now! Hey, whatever gets you through the night...

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." -- Jerry Falwell