It's about time

In hockey it's a hat trick - three scores.  I just call it turning 60.


The first score seemed to take forever.The next not so long.And the third; I probably could have held my breath.

I thought I'd take heart or more accurately the idea of that Julie and Julia babe and write something every day of my fifty-ninth year.

No.  My life has never been so interesting and if it were, then I'd have better things than this to do.


Still, there is much to be considered between now and next September 19th.

• The process of elimination
• Good dog Rover.
• Old friends, imaginary pets, and those voices - always the voices!
• Cannoli
• The Ghost Whisperer, Wu Tang, Ayn Rand and Bigfoot.

There is more.  No doubt. But my attention span has been stretched to its limit.

Oh, and no bucket lists, no senior moments and no poetry.

Jaime

Rah!

"Simplify.  Simplify."
                                                       - Thoreau

Patriots’ Cheerleader Tryouts

"More than 300 women showed up to compete to become a New England Patriots cheerleader at the Dana Farber Field House on Saturday February 28, 2009."(Globe Staff Photo / Essdras M Suarez)

This made me smile. And for more reasons than just the obvious. Yes they are pretty and sweet and sexy and seemingly healthy. And they dress that way and jump up and down and smile all the time.

But it goes deeper. We need cheerleader tryouts!

Wall St., continues to collapse. The Justice Department releases legal memos actually justifying torture. Torture! Abu Ghraib gets a new coat of paint, some plastic flowers and a new name. And every night, the warning: Beware of ShamWow imitators.

Girl Scout cookies are shrinking. The Sri Lankan cricket team is massacred and Leno has moved to 10:00.

My guided Chakra meditation CD is not going to get us out of this one. No-sirree! We need cheerleader tryouts. Something silly, fun, pretty - that calls us back to a better time. Something transcendental. Cheerleader tryouts.

I’m not saying we need cheerleaders. And I'm not saying we don't. That’s something different.We need cheerleader tryouts. Where the vision of cheerleadering and all it stands for sparkles in the minds of young girls. All that energy and earnest hope. The optimistic gutsiness it takes to suck it up, dance onto the field and yell real loud because you think you just might make the squad if you do.

No entitlements, no Ponzi scheme. Not “hope” like the jingoism of a political professional begging questions about his plans for the country. But the honest dreams of beautiful kids with futures.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
     - Thoreau

We’re All Boas on This Bus.

Bus-sized boa slithers into record books (from the British-based weekly science journal Nature)

PARIS (AFP) — Stunned scientists have found the fossilized remains of the world's greatest snake -- a record-busting serpent that was as long as a bus and snacked on crocodiles.

The boa-like behemoth, dubbed Titanoboa, ruled the tropical rainforests of what is now Colombia some 60 million years ago, at a time when the world was far hotter than now, they report in a study. The size of the snake's vertebrae suggest the beast weighed some 1.135 tonnes, in a range of 730 kilos (1,600 pounds) to 2.03 tonnes. And it measured 13 metres (42.7 feet) from nose to tail, in a range of 10.64-15 metres (34.6-48.75 feet), they estimate.

Jonathan Block, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Florida, who co-led the work said “The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie 'Anaconda' is not as big as the one we found."

"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips," said David Polly, a geologist at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.

Ants from Mars, frogs the size of Border Collies, mine-sniffing rats, and all of a sudden a boa constrictor the size of a bus has scientists “stunned”?

We fret over Bernie Madoff, Joe the Plumber and Jessica Simpson’s waistline, while “stunned scientists” are uncovering the real treachery. It’s like one of those sci-fi movies from the fifties where only the little kid sees the giant cockroaches in the woods while the rest of the sleepy town mocks him on its way to the Fourth of July picnic. Sure, Hollywood told us, parade the flag down Main Street all you want – meanwhile the Soviets are poised to devour your children, America. Before you know it you’re up to your waist in 40-foot boa constrictors.

But the prize goes to vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Block. It’s not enough for us to know the damn snake was the size of a bus. Jonathan has to tell us more about himself than we really need to know by comparing it to the snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez. Jonathan’s snake is bigger than that.

Good for Jonathan.

Don't Squawk for Me Argentina

More distressing news from the animal kingdom.

The Associated Press tells us today that:

“A Queens politician is drafting measures to protect Brooklyn's wild Quaker parrots, whose nests have caused power outages. Councilman Tony Avella wants to make it illegal to capture the parrots and wants the city to relocate their nests when necessary.

The green parrots also are known as monk parakeets. They're native to Argentina but have been in Brooklyn for about 30 years. Flocks of them have settled at Brooklyn College.

The utility Consolidated Edison says parrot nests built in electrical equipment have caused at least seven fires in Brooklyn.

. . . Animal lovers say the parrots are part of the neighborhood and bring life to the skies.”

Feral Argentine Quaker parrots cutting off the power and setting fires in Brooklyn. And they are defended by folks who insist that they “bring life to the skies”. Life to the skies and chaos to the streets of Brooklyn. What’s not to like!

So the Religious Society of Friends recruits volunteers from Argentina to liven the skies of Brooklyn. After three decades in the city, they start taking a torch to the place. Probably not the kind of “inner light” their original sponsors had in mind. Time to go meeting.

Relocate the nests? How does Somalia sound? Match them up with some of those Somali pirates that seem to be thumbing their noses at us all. The birds’ penchant for sabotage and arson will probably come in handy when the pillaging starts

Do you suppose they squawk with that annoying accent?

And while we’re talking about queens; hairdressers are vying for the chance to become the new first lady’s stylist. The One can’t leave the White House for a cut and blow, so somebody has to be summoned. It’s a gig worth fighting for. They are going at it “hammer and tong” – actually more like “gift basket and styling gel”. For all his talent, I am not sure that salon owner Barry Fletcher helped himself when he told AP. "This would pretty much validate all of my hard work and effort to get to a level where I could handle a powerful queen like the first lady." Watch out Barry.

Maybe we should send a few powerful queens to Brooklyn to dispatch with the parrots. It worked well in To Wong Foo. They’d almost certainly want to style their own hair thank you. And the First Lady can always call the people at Harpo.

Rats!

More disturbing news from the Animal Kingdom.

TOFO, Mozambique, Aug. 3 (UPI) — A few enterprising Mozambicans say they might be able to turn their rabbit-sized, land-mine sniffing African rats into a tourist-attracting oddity.

The rat handlers let their rodents poke around at the end of thin leashes until they scratch at the ground. That’s the sign they’ve discovered an explosive device, The Georgia Straight reported in its travel section July 31.

I don’t know what disturbs me most about it all. Is this really the best that enterprising Mozambicans can do? Training rabbit-sized, mine-sniffing rats on leashes? Is this truly the dream of the Junior Achievers and 4H’ers of Twenty-First Century Africa?

That there are people known to the UPI as “rat handlers” piques the curiosity though. Are there rat groomers? Rat farmers? Maybe scientifically-formulated rat food in eight enticing flavors? Perhaps I underestimated the grandness of the entrepreneurial spirit here, but I can’t imagine that rat husbandry, supplies and accessories (exercise wheels? rhinestone leashes?) do much to sustain the nation’s economy

And the tourists! No more giant sea turtles? No white sand beaches? Have the safaris become tiresome? Is it no longer enough to take snapshots of the “colorful locals”, post them on your blog and then and show them off at the happy hour back at the Marriott? It strikes me as déclassé to travel halfway around the world to see a “tourist –attracting oddity” that is in fact just a bunch of rodents on ropes.

Of course they are cheaper than dogs and certainly require less security and general fussing and fawning over than royalty or even celebrities. So there is probably virtue in that. Although I just might travel halfway around the world to watch a tethered Paula Abdul and Matt Lauer tiptoe through a minefield.

Where are the PETA people on this anyway? Is a rodent really more expendable that a right whale? Or a princess?

Wilbur, Get My Agent on The Line, Pronto!

And when they came for the pandas, there was no one left to speak out.

You go to bed one night as a charismatic megafauna – the picture of the freedom, the majesty of the great western plains. The wild horses! The stuff of legends and little girls’ dreams. The “go-to” extra when Detroit reaches out for new car ads. Wild horses! Rolling Stones hits and god knows how many faux-western “saloons” salute you and it’s all good baby. It’s phat!

And the next day ka-pow! That star on the dressing room door now says "feral equid". The Times is telling the Sunday brunch crowd on the Vineyard that you are a feral equid. A pest. You and your kind are just so many giant pigeons shitting on the great statue that is the American wilderness. We can’t feed you we can’t corral you; we can’t even afford to kill you. Feral equid.

Killer bees? Who cares – they died with that Belushi guy didn’t they? And what about those Northern snakehead fish that were attacking Maryland? Voracious, air-breathing, land-crawling predators that are ugly! I mean 1950s sci-fi “nuclear test gone bad” mutant ugly. Nobody paying them much mind.

Even the damn sharks have a fan club. Try to haul a few of them out of the water and win a prize in Nantucket and they’ll treat you like you took a nine iron to a fairway goose cause you choked on your backswing.

Maybe if you learn to swim under water you can hide out among the manatees until this all blows over.

I’d call Mr. Ed. He’s gotta know somebody. Or Ellen Degeneris.