Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

china syndrome

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A good article at The Fool about today’s plunge, and the big gains – especially in foreign markets – that preceded it.

Does this drop in the Chinese market really matter? A look back suggests it’s long overdue. The benchmark Shanghai index soared 130% in 2006 and hit another record just the day before the fall. The Shanghai Stock Exchange has grown to a market capitalization of $1.5 trillion, making it, quite suddenly, the world’s eighth largest (just trailing the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at $1.7 trillion).

stop

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If you want to sign the latest petition, to require Bush to seek Congressional approval before attacking Iran, go to moveon.org. I signed it, and added this comment:

This nation’s unmanly fear and insatiable greed have caused far too much suffering. Stop. Lead us to peace or get out of the way, in the Name of God.

Simple but clear, don’t you think?

basta

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I’d just like to share that the unremitting obsession of the vast stuttering herd with the lingering process of death and decomposition of Anna Nicole is not only unworthy of news coverage, it’s actually starting to piss me off. It’s nothing but tawdry and vacuous, and I’m embarrassed that the TV media have a grip on it like a monkey with a pickle.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Last night, I turned on my car radio and heard Larry King interviewing Barbara Walters. Normally I would’ve just snapped it off – King and his show are irrelevant – but I was busy steering and shifting and happened to hear the following exchange:

KING: OK, Barbara. What do you make of the Anna Nicole thing? The whole story?

WALTERS: I feel very sad for that beautiful little baby who one of your people kept calling the kid. Other than that, Larry, I may be one of the few people in the country who has not been following the story. And we have discussed it very little on “The View”.

KING: Why do you think so many people are following? Why do you think there is such a fascination with it?

WALTERS: I don’t know. Why do you? You do it every night.

KING: We do it, but I can’t figure it out. I know I do it, the producers book it, I do it, we talk about it. But what is the fascination of it?

WALTERS: I’m not sure I know. I think there are more interesting things to discuss, more things that are important to people, more things that are inspirational to people. It’s a very tawdry story. An awful lot of people seem to be involved. And I guess it’s, you know, it’s tabloid at its extreme.

I say basta, enough. Let it go, Larry. And ET, and all you goofs. Stop it, for crying out loud.

daylight savings time!

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I like DST. I enjoy walks in the late afternoon. Good for the digestion. So I was concerned to read this in an e-mail forwarded to me today:

… Daylight Saving Time (DST) will be springing a bit further this year. Back in 2005, Congress enacted the Energy Policy Act, which will extend DST by one month – beginning earlier in the spring and lasting later into the fall – beginning on March 11th and ending on November 4th.

Originally the bill was written to extend Daylight Saving by two months, but some very verbal opponents fought the change. Farmers say that DST has a negative impact on their livestock in general – as it is tough for them to adapt to the time change, and they therefore produce less milk, eggs, etc.

Oh, I have the perfect solution to this problem! Take the clocks out of the barn and the pasture, Homer. And when the cows and chickens get close, put your Timex in your pocket. I mean seriously, how do the livestock know that we’ve changed our clocks? Poor little morons.

knockers

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Big ones, small ones; I like all sizes and shapes. And now that I have your attention, doorbells are pretty cool too. At my house, you have a choice, the knocker or the bell. Here’s a picture of my knocker.

As you can see, it’s a bear. A gift from my brother and sister-in-law, on the occasion of my encampment here. I actually prefer that, if you visit, you use the doorbell. Leave the bear alone, sez I, and most people do. He’s behind a screen door. I just don’t want some loquacious asshat twisting off his little tail.

But what, you might wonder, set me off on this silly subject of door knockers and bells and such? By e-mail today I got this quote:

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. -Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau died in 1862, so he was talking about people showing up at his house, engaging his bear, removing their hats and wiping their shoes and expecting to be “entertained.” Without so much as calling first, leaving a voice mail or sending a fax. And by company, he meant that he had the company of his imagination.

It reminds me of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his claim that he woke up in a haze from an opium-enhanced dream, and was in the midst of writing Kubla Khan when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Hence, the poem is a fragment. I’ve always been skeptical. I think he just passed out and didn’t write any more. (This story was mentioned last night on the Studio 60 TV show, but they got it wrong. It wasn’t at 4:00am as the character said, because it was the postman who supposedly woke Samuel up, and they don’t come around at that hour.)

It’s interesting to me that it’s no longer the custom, at least in my part of the word, to come calling upon your friends at their homes. We never just show up around here. Do we? Do you have any friends who come rapping upon your ursine percussive? I have a neighbor who stops by now and then; in fact, he just dropped by while I was writing this post. But that’s OK. In fact, I think I would be rather lonely if I had no neighbors to talk to. I think it’s regrettable that the technologies of telephone and computer are isolating us to the extent they are. No man is an island, and it’s not like I’ve had a recent glimpse of Xanadu.

velvet, angel

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“The dog probably saved their lives” by lying across them during the cold night, said Erik Brom, a member of the Portland Mountain Rescue team. He described the wind in the canyon as “hellacious.”

The two women left the snow vehicle first, followed by Bryant and the dog. The three climbers boarded the ambulance, and Velvet leapt in after them.

In addition to the dog, who provided warmth and comfort, rescuers attributed the happy outcome to the climbers’ use of an electronic mountain locator unit that guided searchers to their exact position.

Another Darwin Award narrowly averted. Of course, I would be remiss in not pointing out the obvious, that people who climb mountains in winter are fools. And that it was a act of careless stupid cruelty to take a dog up into those conditions. That being said, I’m glad and praise God that they survived.

Posted in pet

anti-patriot

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“Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”
— Rep. Don Young of Alaska, in debate on this week’s non-binding resolution.

This is anti-patriotism. It’s un-American, anti-American, subversive rhetoric. We have to find it in the weedchoked and fetid hollows where it lives, and drag it out where our children can get a look at it, before it dies of exposure to clean air and sunlight.

Look kids, you have to be careful of men like this. They hate the truth, they do not love our freedoms. They are afraid of the democratic process because it sometimes unearths truth. They love war and death, and the sight of our armies rolling over people they consider inferior. For pity sake, don’t repeat our mistakes; stop electing asshats like this.