Losing to Diversity wasn't the end of the world, Susan Boyle. You still have a voice that made us all hear the voice of one of God's angels!

Susan Boyle ... the world's latest Diva

Having no idea what my own next stop in life is, it gives me great joy to know that the next several stops for Susan Boyle will be a confirmation of the incredible plans of God.

Apparently she would like to resume her former custom of trying her luck at the karaoke contest at Moran's Turf Bar on Sunday nights, but for now she is in the care of a record label Sony BMG. To all intents and purposes, she is in hiding at a safe house and being deliberately shielded from the global public interest in her rather imperfect but continuing fairy tale.

Admittedly, those of us who watched her crash and burn--even exposing her legs in an undignified manner--after losing to an unknown dancing troupe after the final performances during Britain's Got Talent Show ... know that she will return.

Hopefully, with some psychiatric help--and a voice that doesn't end--she will be the world's next diva and recording star.

At least I hope so. It gives hope to all of us ordinary, un-beautiful and imperfect people ... in God's wonderful plans for us all.

I will surely be one of the first to buy the album that she will be putting together with the Czech National Symphony orchestra during the coming weeks thanks to the promotion and efforts of Simon Cowell. Yes, he is taking cruel advantage of the sad psychological "meltdown" following her inability to handle the ugly and insensitive reporters who followed her continuously as a "freak" whose plain looks and spinster lifestyle were made into something to laugh at.

But let's all just watch as God's plans for Susan Boyle's life unfolds!

Rush Limbaugh doesn't just want P-BO to fail; he sincerely (I believe him) wants P-BO's nominees for the Supreme Court to fail.

A Nameless, Mindless Drug Addict Whose Groupies Go by the Moniker, "Ditto-Heads"

Rush Limbaugh doesn't only want President Barack Obama to fail; he wants Judge Sonia Sotomayor--and any other of President Barack Obama's nominees to the Supreme Court to fail also.

"Do I want her to fail? Yeah ..." Limbaugh said of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor on his radio show yesterday. Then, to correct the meaning of his foolish words, he continued ... "Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes! She'd be a disaster on the court." Not even a half-decent catch of his unforgivable gaff in my opinion ...

And for those who have suggested that Limbaugh never really meant what he said about the president, Limbaugh said this today: "Do I still want Obama to fail as president? Yeah ... AP, you getting this?" Limbaugh asked that of the Associated Press live and on the air. How he even gets 30% favorable ratings in the U.S.A. is beyond Mediawingnuts' mental capacity.

He went on, "He's gonna fail anyway, but the sooner the better, so as little damage can be done to the country."

Don't get me wrong; I too find problems in some of the positions taken by P-BO. But I surely want both President Obama and his presidency to succeed as our country has never succeeded before.

As suggested by my previous posting, my allegiance is to Jesus, but I have great love and concern for my country and her leaders.

The Currently Ongoing Obama-Cheney "Debate" : "Who would Jesus bomb" ... or maybe "Who would Jesus torture?" ... an empty debate, no?

The above graphic summarizes and recaps just about all of the empty back-and-forth idiocy I've heard from both Barack Obama and Dick Cheney. They argued seemingly opposing views as to just what policies would keep America safe from terrorism in the months and years ahead. How "harsh" should harsh interrogations really be? Should we spend more time bombing Iraq or Afghanistan--and what about Iran and Pakistan while we're at it?

Having worked in a medium-to-maximum security penitentiary for almost three years now, I have to wonder why either Cheney or P-BO have so little faith in our "Super-Max" Federal Penitentiaries. But then, closing or not closing Gitmo was hardly the main issue.

What was truly sad about our leadership during 9/11 and recently afterwards--and even now as the action in Afghanistan heats up--is that both the previous administration and the Obama administration have been continuing to propagate continuing fear instead of trust, love and resolve to submit to "The Way" of Jesus in the face of danger.

Who would Jesus torture?

Who would Jesus bomb"

Who would Jesus even aim a weapon towards?

Answer: NO ONE!!

Even the concept of Christians going to war should have ended instantly after Jesus rebuked Peter for even trying to protect the Son of God. (You remember--after Peter sliced off the ear of one of Jesus' Roman captors)

Whatever happened to "love thine enemies" and "Do unto [all] others as you would have them do onto you"?

Exactly to whom do we owe allegiance anyway" Our country? Our families? The flag (or God-forbid, a flag pin)? The almighty dollar? ... or should we truly owe our allegiance to a King and His Kingdom? Jesus gave us the answer in no uncertain words. A man cannot serve two masters! Giving unto Caesar that which is Caesar's never implied breaking God's Laws in the process, did it? Let's all wake up to the reality of the unending now and the Eternal King whose sad eyes watch the carnage we have kept unending since the time of Cain.

When it Rains in Grays Harbor County ... It Pours!

Likely Increase in Population in the Grays Harbor County Cemetery in the Days and Weeks Ahead

From our local newspaper yesterday:

First Case of swine flu Reported in Grays Harbor County
By Callie White - The Daily World

Thursday, May 22, 2009 12:12 PM PDT

A 14-year-old Hoquiam girl is Grays Harbor County’s first known case of the A/SWH1 virus, once known as the H1N1 virus, and more widely known as “swine flu.”

The girl, who has now recovered, was ill earlier this month. It took about a week for a flu test taken by a local physician to come back.

The girl was kept out of school during most of her illness, which should decrease the risk of exposure, according to the Grays Harbor Health Department.

Mike Parker, Hoquiam Superintendent, said the students at Hoquiam Middle School will get letters to take home today to let parents know about the case. It will include precautions kids can take to prevent spreading the contagion.

“We’re going to follow the lead of the Health Department,” Parker said. He added that the school nurse, whose office is in the middle school, “is on top of this.”

[End of Article from Newspaper] The above headline and article were the headline news on page one--32-point headline at least!

First the tragedy on Thursday--also a page one news story, and now this! What next for Grays Harbor County ... and Mediawingnuts and his brother, Richard, who thought they had found the perfect paradise beyond the boundaries of civilization?

PS: And yes, Richard and I drive by that very middle school when Richard drives me daily to the hospital for my AIS treatments. Richard noticed immediately that he felt cramps as we passed that school coming back to Ocean Shores this afternoon.

Now I'm Angry!!

Injured Sea Lion In Grays Harbor

Our quiet ocean view peninsula helps to create a harbor and safe haven for California sea lions among other flora, fauna and undefinable living creatures. The marina nearby Richard's and my chalet houses a ferry to Westport Marina wherein the above sea lion was found yesterday with an arrow stuck in its side.

My anger at both Dick Cheney and Barack Obama (who still believe in "Holy Wars" and "smart bombs" [future posting on their silly-but-serious debate yesterday forthcoming] was almost serenity when compared to my feelings when seeing the above picture in today's local paper, The Daily World.

I don't believe in the death penalty, but had un-Christian-like thoughts about the beasts who targeted one of the gentlest of God's creatures in one of God's most serene locales in the Western Hemisphere.

Still, The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has at least offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to a civil or criminal conviction. Anyone with information can call the NMFS office at (360)268-6239.

Holy Crap! I never even thought! Those %&$#@ Zeta-Reticulan would stoop so low!

The Root Cause of the Abscess on my Colon ... uncovered (more or less)

Despite the interesting possibilities discussed by the vast (three is "vast" in Mediawungnuts' blogosphere) commentary on my previous posting, I believe the genuine photo taken last year provides ample evidence.

How they were able to redirect the bacterial laser energy from my ear to my colon is a Zeta-Reticulian secret, I believe.

Whistle While You Work ... la la ta ta ta la la

My danged colon is acting up again ... but Dr. Juris Macs (my surgeon) is a pleasure to have nearby! Or is it the psychedelic anesthetic gas used during the operation?

With my job coming to an end any week now and with my financial situation (even beyond the job) continuing to provide its own levels of anxiety ... Sweetheart, all seven cats, Brother Richard and I are making do (doo-doo?) of a new kind ... more or less.

Today's prognosis is that the abscess* of the colon (right side again) will drain and heal before 15 June 2009.

*A colon abscess is nothing more than a fist-sized collection of pus causing painful pressure in its cavity formed by the colon’s tissue on the basis of an infectious process--usually caused by bacteria or parasites or other foreign materials (e.g. splinters or bullet wounds). It is a defensive reaction of the tissue to prevent the spread of infectious materials to other parts of the body. The basic symptoms and signs of an abscess on the colon are redness (mine was as red as a tomato), heat (I thought I was placing my hand on a George Forman Grill), swelling (mine was the size of a baseball), and pain (10 on a scale of 1 to 10) on the abdomen—mine was on the front-right side.

Hey, this is close to home--the Recession is slamming my future financial "security"--i.e., The Social Security System!

The recession is taking its toll on Social Security. The officials who oversee the program forecast yesterday that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2037 -- four years earlier than estimated last year. If the trust fund's longevity continues to drop by four years each year ahead, I figure I have about six years left. That's 6 x 4 = 24 and 2037 - 24 = 2013 ... and six years from now, it'll be 2015 (give or take six months). Halfway between 2013 and 2015 is 2014--or really, only about five years from this moment--one year short of the magic six I might still have.

But that's only the half of it!

In exactly seven and a half weeks, my entire income will be that $1050 Social Security check. My fixed expenses are 500 (mortgage)+ 362 (car payment) + 150 (long term health care insurance) + 150 (MediGap, Option F) + 200 (average monthly electric bill) + 40 (cat food) + 60 (gasoline) + 114 (TV and Internet cable) + 60 (two dollars-a-day for human food--assuming neither I or my brother, Richard, are required to eat the seven cats and one dog with whom I share my cabin on the ocean) + 75 water and sewage + 50 for garbage pick-up ... plus ...

Add it up, friends!

Please pray that I can find a part-time job. Even 75 year-old men can do something!

Can't they?

Do I sound a little as though I haven't trust in God who has gotten me through worse holes in the past? Do I sound just a little like I'm feeling sorry for myself?

Right! Ignore this posting ... for now ...

How Could I Have Missed Les Miserables?

If you haven't heard and seen the 10th Anniversary Concert DVD ... do so!

But shamefully, I must admit having missed it entirely ... until the night before last ... when the power of the drama, music and overall effect of the performance of Les Miserables by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall--for a 10th Anniversary Concert celebration--blew me away and is with me yet.

I simply can't get the music and story out of my mind ... like the finale (below) that absolutely tore me up:

Take my hand
And lead me to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God.

CHORUS
do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
there is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
and the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom
in the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the ploughshare;
they will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
and all men will have their reward.

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
when tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
when tomorrow comes...
Tomorrow comes!

I'm sure to have another posting about this concert once I've let the performance digest--and have likely watched it another dozen times! Those words, "To love another person is to see the face of God" are a theology in and of themselves.

All I can really say at this time is, "WOW!!"

Goodbye Swine Flu Pandemic .... Welcome Airstrike Pakidemic (and Afghanidemic)!

In Deference to both Serenissima and Aunt Nancy, I am only showing photos that depict the more beautiful side of war--the "clean" airstrikes that do not leave broken, bleeding bodies and gore strewn about the target area. This photo shows that our drones are targeted and our pilots are so well trained that deaths are both clean and (probably) painless. War, in the cause of goodness and God's will is a beautiful process. Think of the "Rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air ..."

Ignore my previous postings lamenting the most recent death of an American to the burgeoning swine flu. The real pandemic is WAR!!

In the photo above, villagers mourn children and other civilians killed on Wednesday before burying what the international Red Cross said were dozens of Afghans and Pakistanis — including women and children — killed in American bombing runs. A former Afghan government official said up to 120 people may have died there.

Another 50 or so civilians died in Pakistan earlier in May from American airstrikes.

That makes the swine flu no more than a blip in the scheme of things, don't you think?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. "deeply, deeply" regretted the loss of innocent life, and the U.S. military dispatched a brigadier general to investigate the deaths in two villages in western Afghanistan's Farah province.

The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan's and Pakistan's worsening conflict jumped 40 percent (on a weekly basis) to a new high this year. The only confirmed statistics show that a record 2,118 civilians died from violence last year, up from 1,523 the previous year.

" ... Gave proof through the night ... that our flag was still there!"

100% increase in US Swine Flu deaths in one day!

The Time to Prepare is Now!!!

Health authorities today reported a second death in the United States from swine flu -- a woman in south Texas. The Texas Department of State Health Services announced this afternoon that a woman from Cameron County, the southernmost county in the state, died earlier this week after contracting swine flu. It said she had "chronic underlying health conditions" but did not elaborate or provide any other details on the woman.

The woman was the first US citizen to have died (the first person in the US to have died only being a non-citizen ... probably Mexican) and clearly signals that the pandemic is of earth-shattering proportions. President Obama suggested that he was planning on relooking at his plans to close Guantanamo--and plans for evacuating the entire planet are being examined at major universities around the US.

But watch me bite off the tongue in my cheek the minute a dozen or so folks here in Ocean Shores come down with H1N1!!!

My brother did not turn one of my cats ass-skyward to take this picture of the black hole at the center of MCG-6-30-15!!

Black Hole at the Center of Galaxy MCG-6-30-15

My brother, Richard, managed to take a picture or two this evening, and while trying to focus the camera on an apparent UFO hovering above our cabin-cum-chalet-cum-shack-cum-cat-house, accidentally focused on a massive black hole, the one at the center of MCG-6-30-15. (MCG-6-30-15 is a galaxy "out there," but nothing to be concerned about vis-a-vis UFOs and the such.)

Anyway, Gavin Hamilton, an astrophysics professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Andrew Polhemus, a physics teacher in Fort Collins, Colorado, are working on a project to visualize what an "infaller" might see if he or she were swallowed by a super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way--only conjectured to even exist, but a "reality" in many high school and undergraduate astronomy books. (Sort of like the Theory of Evolution, but less obvious ...)

Anyway, among some of the interesting tid-bits uncovered in their research are two that strike me as noteworthy:

(1) It's really the space that is being sucked in by the black hole and light, for instance (and everything else save God and His angels for other "instances") are like canoes going over a waterfall--that is, light (like the canoe) is simply falling slower than the space around it.

and

(2) The earth is rather safe in that even the nearest black holes are hundreds of light years away from us, and further, even if our own sun were to be replaced by a black hole like the one in MCG-6-30-15, we wouldn't even be sucked in by that black hole only eight light minutes away from our earth.

Of course, no one really has any idea what's inside the event horizon of a black hole, so we don't really know what there is to be afraid of anyway.

Just ask my brother, Richard. He has been living in one since last October.

On the other hand, you might listen in on an interesting series of talks on Armageddon at the First Baptist Church (FBC) of Iowa Falls for a peek inside that "event horizon." (I specifically refer you to the visual and audio of "What in the World #9.)

So as not to give you the impression that I'm anti-Baptist (I most assuredly AM NOT!) or that I'm not a believer (I most assuredly AM!), let me simply state that many of my believing friends have an obsession with Armageddon not too unlike the average astrophysicist's obsession with what's inside the event horizon of a black hole.

Life's simply too short for me to be counting the angels on the head of either pin--the event horizon of a black hole or Hal Lindsay's imagination! But I have to embarrassingly admit to having enjoyed a couple of books from the "Left Behind" series anyway and absolutely loved the entire Harry Potter collection.