Juxtaposition

So the thing is, I'm sitting here, watching the President's speech at the memorial service for the victims of the madness out in Arizona, and my screensaver kicks in. Now, I have a file set up just for the screensaver program. The file has photos I found on the web that I thought interesting, some of my own pics, a couple of movie posters, friends, old advertising, etcetera. Just as the President changed from memorializing the fallen and moved into his speech segment, my computer reached its 25 or so minutes of idle mode and turned on the screensaver. First, the screen went black - that's what caught my attention. Slowly, this movie still faded in:

It's all just too much.

After staring at the screen for 20 minutes or so, I still don't know where to begin. It's all been too much. Up to 5,000 dead birds fell out of the sky in Arkansas just before midnight New Year's Eve - buried in the AP text of the story was a note, "similar events have occurred elsewhere". Say What? Well, the next day there were about 500 or so birds which fell out of the sky dead in Louisiana. And then there was the two million birds which fell out of the sky dead over Russia in 2007. Then there are the 500 or so that fell out of the sky dead over Stockholm recently,   As I write this, there are reports of thousands of birds falling out of the sky dead in Italy, and a previously unpublished report of birds falling dead out of the sky in Kentucky.

isn't this what you'd like to see ofter waking up some morning?

Then there's the millions of dead fish floating in the Chesapeake Bay on Tuesday, oh, and there were lots of dead fish in Arkansas too - about 100,000 of them about 100 miles away from where the birds fell.Then there's the 100 tons of croakers, sardines and catfish that have washed up on the beaches of Brazilian fishing villages since last Thursday, or the hundreds of snapper fish that washed up on New Zealand beaches a few days ago - with their eyes missing. And then there's the 10,000+ dead fish which washed up on two separate Atlantic Ocean beaches this past August. Then there's the 40,000 dead crabs which washed up on England's beaches in the past few days, as well as 150 tons of dead red tilapia in Vietnam.

There's also a two headed cow just born in Georgia (the Soviet one, not ours.) And it is not the only two header born recently.

To quote Anna Russell , "I'm not making this up, you know."

So what caused all this havoc? "The test results aren't in." "We're still collecting data." "We'll have to get back to you."

Then there's the mind numbing incident in New Mexico. Point blank shooting a U. S. Congresswoman - democrat, of course - because she voted for Health Care and against an Illegal Immigrants/Immigration law which violated several of the principles upon which this county was founded. Well, it sure was one hell of a way to encourage healthy and open debate. 2nd Amendment Clobbers 1st. There has been a small tiddly bit of discussion about the political atmosphere and outrageous statements and stunts which got us there. There's even been a bit of biography on the Judge who was killed. Falling right into the reporting trap was a child of 10, a child who was born on the 11th of September 2001 no less. (Why is it always worse when a child is involved instead of, say, a US Congresswoman or a Judge?) And, ummm, by the way somebody shot out the glass doors of her campaign headquarters last November, nothing to worry about it's happened to several other legislators, too. Say What?  How do we overcome this and restore balance, fairness, common good? "We're still collecting data". "We'll have to get back to you."

Meanwhile, I've now had a "counselling session" at work. Seems that since the beginning of November, I have violated the rules on breaks 3 times. One of the dates on the paperwork was 12/25. "Excuse me person who is making my work life torture and who can fire me at any time, but may I ever so humbly point out that the store was closed on Christmas?" "That means week ending." "I don't recall signing any paperwork about it" "You know we've talked about this" "I want to see he paperwork." "I have the two from December on my desk." "I'd like to see the paperwork." "You'll have to talk to (the personnel director) about it. Two days later, I saw (the personnel director) about it. Well, it was no longer on the computer - they changed to a new system January 1st. She did have the paperwork but it had just been put in a box which was now on the bottom of a shipping pallet. :Okay, Nevermind, I said in my best Eeyore voice. I found an envelope in my mail box and I packed to go home. it had three sheets showing the dates involved, as well as the violation. Good God! I had come back one minute early from the unpaid time they call "Lunch".  And two minutes late from a (paid) 15 minute break as required by law. I never did get the paper work that I'm supposed to have signed.  I got called aside the next day - during the last week of December I had come back early from lunch on two occasions! Then, while stretching to help with a very sore back, I did something bad. So bad I had to call in on Friday because the pain was still overwhelming. 

One day later, I came down with headache/fever/sweats/bad sore throat/coughs rip the throat apart/sneezing/achy/chills kind of thing. On top of that my skin condition has been oozing and scabbing again. Then there's my cable bill which somehow went up $50.00 a month (I got that taken care of), and my failing ten year old computer which can take 20 minutes for a web page to load, ten minutes for a typed sentence to appear, 5 minutes to delete each unwanted email (I get about 250 pieces of SPAM a day), then turn around and load an intensely visually packed web page quicker than one can blink an eye. Like the car which went last February, I just don't have the money to replace it. Oh, well. At least I didn't become homeless this month. So how am I doing? I'm still collecting data. I'll have to get back to you.