...Try, try again to remember to deploy the buses, Mr. Nagin.
God be with all in the path of Hurricane Gustav. That's a mighty big storm.
John McCain has selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin for the VP slot. What an outstanding choice by McCain.
Obama did a slow striptease with his Veep choice announcement and all I got was underwhelmed with a naked Joe Biden. Palin, on the other hand, truly is a surprising and exciting choice of a running mate.
If McCain's intention with this pick was to siphon off women voters, he's off to a good start. I really am impressed.
UPDATE:
My dawdling dream candidate weighs in and I concur:
U.S. Senator Fred Thompson issued the following statement:"I am absolutely delighted by this selection. Once again, John McCain has shown that he is an independent thinker who paints in bold strokes. Sarah Palin is a conservative reformer with executive experience who will bring a breath of fresh air to Washington . She will be an ideal running mate for John McCain, and will make a major contribution to our country's future."
I thought Tales from the Crypt was canceled years ago, but it appears to be back on. I never did like that show.
HBO did have two of my all-time favorites though: the ever-present in our DVD player Rome and our runner-up The Wire. We just finished watching The Wire's final season DVDs. It's sad it's all over but we'll always have Omar:
However, the best use we've found yet for a television outside of target practice in the Jungle Room is Wii Fit. We've had it for almost a month now and can really tell a difference. It's full of gaming hooks to keep bringing you back, only instead of gaming, you're exercising. Elvis could have used one of these.
I screened-captured this from a vid and don't recognize the concert, but it looks to have been a good one.
Wail on, Skydog!
Here's a nifty companion multi-media presentation to this interesting article on a California ranch where city house pets get to get in touch with their inner working dog:
The sun is shining, the fields are clear, and the sheep -- a jittery trio of fluff -- are just getting comfortable.Suckers.
Selkie, a border collie recovering from a tennis ball addiction, gets her cue. She cuts a wide curve around the field, hunches low and creeps in. Bleats of protest are useless. The sheep stiffen and get moving.
It's a good day to be a dog.
Selkie isn't really a stock dog but she plays one at Drummond Ranch, which isn't really a livestock ranch, but a 40-acre haven an hour outside Los Angeles. There, city dogs escape their leash-and-lounge existence and learn to get in touch with their inner herder.
The ranch is part of a trend that mixes training techniques, a back-to-basics ethos and a hint of dog (and human) therapy.
"It really, really seems to center the dog and give the dog a sense of confidence and fulfillment, a good assertiveness, a good energy," said ranch owner Janna Duncan, who has taught dozens of canines and their owners the art of moving livestock.
"It's almost as if the dog needs a job. And when they discover, 'This is what my job is supposed to be,' then everything falls into place."
The American Kennel Club says new herding clubs are popping up across the country, although it does not track exact numbers. Nearly 200 clubs held herding trials last year. More than 10,000 dogs competed, a roughly 10 percent increase over 2006.Owners describe the practice as an antidote to tighter leash laws and disappearing dog-friendly spaces in U.S. cities. They talk of their dogs' first time in the arena with the pride and amazement usually reserved for describing a child's first day at kindergarten. Many also acknowledge that herding was a last resort.
"I'd been through about three trainers and was getting nowhere," said Ann Preston, patting her panting, post-workout Selkie. "I had two vets tell me she was stark-raging mad."
Preston acknowledges Selkie's problem was really an owner problem. As a border collie, she was bred to herd. She needed mental stimulation and as well as a physical workout. As a couch companion for Preston, a 65-year-old sculptor, she was a poor match.
"I'm gentle. I just want to play and cuddle my dog and scratch its tummy and, you know, have my face licked and maybe my feet licked on occasion," she said.
Selkie wasn't interested. She was sensitive to noise, pushy and obsessive. She wanted her ball thrown. All day. And tomorrow.
Experts say the dog-owner mismatch is common. People spend too little time researching a breed's temperament and habits before choosing their family's new addition. A fluffy St. Bernard, for example, is a working breed that may protect your kids -- against the letter carrier. Then you've got a lawsuit.
Preston said she's lucky she found Drummond Ranch and Selkie found sheep. One look and the light bulb went on, Preston said.
Duncan's clientele isn't limited to the traditional herding breeds. She's trained huskies, Labrador retrievers, even a four-pound Yorkie from Malibu.
On a recent morning, a hulking Bernese mountain dog named Kerry thumped around an arena cajoling the sheep on cue to Duncan's screeching whistles and clipped calls.
Each breed, Duncan explained, has its own persuasion technique.
Referring to Kerry, she said, "The guardian dogs get to know their flock. They befriend the sheep and the sheep feel safe. They'll follow them anywhere."
But not all breeds have such charisma.
Trainers use an instinct test to suss out the herders from the non-herders. Placed in a small pen with sheep and a trainer, the dogs' reactions are evaluated for style, temperament, responsiveness to commands and use of force.
At Drummond Ranch, those deemed trainable continue with classes. A four-week series cost $165.
Carol Delsman oversees the American Kennel Club's herding program from her cattle ranch in Baker City, in rural northeastern Oregon. Delsman is happy to see urbanites discovering their dogs' hidden talents but considers her primary job preserving a lost art.
Herding breeds have spent centuries as companions for shepherds and ranchers. In Scotland and England, border collies are revered for their ability to disappear into the hills and come back with a herd unharmed.
"But as people decide not to have kids but to have dogs, breeds actually get altered. If we alter a breed too much, it can't do what it was bred to do," Delsman said.
The challenge is less about training dogs to handle sheep than about coaching humans to properly handle their dogs, she says. The dogs already know how to herd; they just need to learn to do it on command.
The new communication can be transformative for dogs and humans.
Preston says Selkie is a different dog -- though it took work and weekly visits. She also says she's a different human, with a new understanding of obedience and control, and an appreciation for the power of finding a calling.
Selkie, of course, just pants. Her tail flaps furiously. Preston can guess the thought inside that black-and-white head: This is too good to be true.
I bet after all that hard work play-herding, those dogs just wolf down their Happy Meals.
Seriously though, it sounds like a healthy thing for both the dogs and their people. I'm for anything that gets folks and their furry children outside and moving.
And my dogs enjoy stopping at the magic window for burgers as much as anybody's.
Will it be Lee or Collier? As Lee's my home county I think it preferable that Collier, one county south, host this particular get-together:
Tropical Storm Fay continued its windy and wet trek toward Southwest Florida this afternoon and forecasters posted a hurricane warning for Southwest Florida.That means conditions are developing that a hurricane could land within 24 hours.
Most computer models are in agreement: the small eye of Fay will come ashore in Southwest Florida. But that could be anywhere between southern Collier County and Captiva Island.
The timing of landfall is uncertain as well. Best guess estimate now is 8 a.m. Tuesday.
Hurricane Charley hit that area a few years ago as a Cat 4. Cat 1 Fay should be... well, a breeze in comparison.
UPDATE:
She landed in Collier and has not been a bad guest at all. Lots of lovely, sorely-needed rain.
UPDATE II: Fay the tourist criss-crosses Florida wearing alligator shoes and helping out Lake Okeechobee big time.
This is Governor Crist's first storm and he needs Jeb's manual. A Florida governor in hurricane season should always accompany words like "disaster" with "Will you idiots please pick up a few jugs of water and some bags of ice for yourselves?"
I'm going to skip the television coverage: I've seen enough spots of reporters in rain gear standing in front of gently swaying palm trees to last a lifetime. I'll stick with the National Weather Service's advisories and leave it at that.
Hopefully she'll realize what a terrible vacation destination Florida is in August and rebook for elsewhere.
...And leaves political offal aplenty. Elements of John Edwards' downfall that I found interesting include his informing the general public that he didn't love his mistress, Rielle Hunter (a standard bid for mitigation to the collective wife that we are not); that he was 99% honest when he was denying any connection to her (what exactly is the meaning of "is," anyway?); and the most awful offal, that he was as polished as the White House silver at dragging out the corpse of his son Wade for potential political gain:
In 2003, he mounted his first campaign for president. His strong showing earned him a spot as Kerry’s running mate in 2004.Shrum, then a Kerry advisor, said in a 2007 book that Kerry had qualms. Edwards, he wrote, told Kerry he was going to confide something he’d never told a soul: that after his son Wade had died, “he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service …
“Kerry was stunned, not moved,” Shrum wrote. “As he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before – and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else.”
“I believe he gave into a very human tendency,” Shrum says now. “He wanted to be vice president and said what he had to.”
At least it was only a magic hat that John Kerry carried around in his briefcase.
Or Missing, Recovered (Deceased), and Recovered (Alive), if you prefer:
Florida's Casey Anthony in happier times.
Those times being the short happy weeks after her little daughter Caylee had disappeared but before she'd gotten herself incarcerated for suspicion of making the tot go poof.
Casey's mom sounds like she'd like to make someone disappear too:
In transcripts of a 911 call, Caylee's grandmother tells an operator she thought her own daughter's car had been used to transport a body."There's something wrong," Cindy Anthony told the dispatcher.
"I found my daughter's car today, and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car."
In three 911 calls, she said she wanted to press charges against her daughter Casey, 22, for "grand theft", then in a second call she said she had someone in her home who needed to be arrested in relation to a missing toddler.
Meanwhile, a handsome 15-year-old Alabaman named Blake Stone went missing a few months back, but he turned up again. In a freezer where friends not much older than himself ultimately placed him after they thrill-killed him. One of the friends had been given flyers of the missing boy to distribute. Somehow he never got around to posting them. They were found in his house when police came to arrest him.
Shasta Groene was rescued from the clutches of kidnapping, child-molesting serial killer Joseph Duncan, but he's not done with her yet. She's currently a pawn in a game he's playing with the Feds. The Feds want two things: to put him to death and to keep Shasta Groene off the stand. Duncan only wants only thing: to save his worthless hide. So he got himself appointed as his own attorney for the upcoming penalty phase. That means he'll be cross-examining Shasta, the lone survivor of a killer who wiped out almost her entire family (though this trial pertains specifically to her kidnapping and to the kidnapping and murder of the youngest brother, Dylan). And the videos he made of Shasta and Dylan in captivity? He's asking they be shown in open court. Will the Feds drop her in the meat-grinder or will they drop the DP? Will the judge be able to keep Duncan on a leash tight enough to minimize damage to Shasta but loose enough not to get the penalty overturned on appeal?
Her father has terminal cancer and is just trying to stay alive long enough to get her through this mess.
I do know of one other kid who also had to testify while one of these monsters was representing himself. He was a lone survivor too. A little kidnapped Baltimore boy named Billy Arthes survived Arthur Goode, a molester who went on an abduction and murder spree that cost the life of Jason Verdow, a young boy from the neighborhood across the field from my own, and also that of another boy in Virginia. He testified at both trials, but it was at the Florida trial where the death penalty was being sought, and where Goode was doing the cross-examining. Billy held up and his testimony greatly aided in Goode's miserable life being extinguished in the arms of Ol' Sparky.
Are the Feds counting on Shasta to be as tough as Billy? Perhaps she will be. I'm worried that she's fixing to get another layer of horror troweled on. In this instance, it wouldn't bother me a bit if they withdrew the death penalty and let Idaho or, preferably, California handle it. Idaho is ready to impose a death sentence on him for the Groene family murders they've already convicted him for, and he's due to stand trial next in California for the kidnapping and murder of a Golden State boy.
Finally, via Owen: Florida can now nod knowingly to California: we have our own feral child case to match their Genie.
