A Trapdoor In The Sun

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb? 1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed. 2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed. 3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb. 4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs. 5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb. 6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Light Bulb Change Accomplished. 7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark. 8. One to viciously smear #7. 9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along. 10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

Houston, We Have an Oil Problem Posted on: Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 03:00 CDT By Steve Huff huff.column@earthlink.net The other day at least three of my patients could not afford the gas to come to the doctor. On the way home I glumly pumped $44.85 into my Mini Cooper. That night I paid $600 for a plane ticket that used to cost $275. It was a flight to Houston where my sister lives. An oil town, new buildings had popped up across the skyline, old buildings enjoyed facelifts, luxury services flourished and Chevy Suburbans ruled the road. Houstonians haven't seen a boom like this since 1982. Clearly, $130 a barrel is not bad for everyone. With profits at record levels, Big Oil feels little incentive to do anything except find more oil. Beyond petroleum? Renewable energy projects have long since degenerated into forays to the Rocky Mountains to wring out shale. That, I believe, is where windfall oil profits become reprehensible. Sure, a profit margin of 10 percent is respectabl...

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/16/news/economy/oil_speculator/index.htm?postversion=2008051615 Oil prices: Wall Street's game Big fund money is flowing into oil markets sending prices to levels never seen before. Is it profiteering or an essential way to ensure supply? By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- There's no question about it: A new breed of speculator is pouring money into the oil market. What's less certain is whether this new money is responsible for driving up prices or essential to a healthy market. Many blame record prices on Wall Street investors new to the oil market, saying they're bidding up gas prices to artificially high levels - and soaking drivers. As oil nears $130 a barrel, some say $10 to $70 of that price is due to Wall Street speculation. But that's not the whole story. Nearly everyone agrees that speculators have always been essential to a functioning market and that oil prices could be much higher ...

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/feds-scrape-tog.html The Bush Administration has shown its support for plug-in hybrids by promising a measly $30 million to get them on the road within eight years, a figure and a timeline some automakers and plug-in advocates say is too little and too long. Getting these cars on the road quickly, they say, should be a national priority with the funding to match. The Department of Energy made a big deal of the hand-out, announcing it at a plug-in hybrid conference in Washington D.C., but c'mon -- $30 million? To be spread out among three companies over three years? What'd it do -- scrounge change from couch cushions in the Pentagon? Granted, the award brings to $71.3 million the amount DOE has invested in hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology in the past three years, and EV advocates were quick to thank Uncle Sam for the money. But they said it's going to take a whole lot more than that to wean us from oil -- which, by the way, will co...

With gas at $4.00 a gallon, what is your theory on what has caused the cost of fuel to rise so dramatically? 1. Oil companies (and OPEC) are understating their proven reserves volume to create an artificial bubble in the commodities market - thus greatly increasing their own profit margin. 2. Poor dollar performance along with increased demand from China and India are causing speculative traders to reinvest heavily in crude to greatly increase their profit potential. 3. World oil production has reached peak status and have began the decline period of the bell curve. Increased demand met with a diminishing world supply will bring forth the fall of modern society. 4. It's all the government's fault.

I watched a bio of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain a few nights ago called " About a Son - Kurt Cobain . The movie was a handful of tape-recorded interviews Kurt made, about a year before his suicide, married up with some beautiful cinematography of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. It was quite an interesting film, but it got me thinking: The year was 1994. The moment is etched into my memory still, to this very day. I was working for a department store in the mall. Gottschalks, I believe. I had gone on break that morning and sauntered up to the lunchroom on the administrative floor. I remember looking though the refrigerator for a pop when I heard a news anchor on the television announce what I saw to be the end of the last great music revolution. Kurt Cobain's body had been found in a greenhouse on his property. Police were calling the find a suicide. Something died in me that day. Now it wasn't that I was a Nirvana fan because I wasn't. In my opinion, they had some really g...

http://fridayfivegroup.multiply.com/journal/item/30/Friday_Five_Prompt_for_June_6_2008_Childhood_Entertainment First of all, I must say that my parents were not loaded with money so we kids created entertainment wherever we could, for the most part. There are a few things that stand out though. 1. Star Wars Figures - I remember after Return of the Jedi came out, having this intense love affair with everything Star Wars. My friend Chris and I would get together on weekends after school and set up scenes with our Star Wars figures. Chris had a few of the harder to find characters. One day we chose to recreate the Sarlac Pit scene from Return of the Jedi. We took a pie plate and cut kind of a star shape in the center..then buried it in the sand. We would set up the sail barge along with the figurines right next to it and stage the epic battle from the movie. It was a blast watching Boba Fett fly through the air and then land in the fake pit...to be fake devoured for 1000 years. Later i...

I know I said I was done with politics, but I heard this last night on Hannity and had to bring it up. I come off as liberal to a lot of people, and that's fine with me...but I do have strong roots in conservative idealism. My problem with Republicans currently, as I've oft stated, is that they have forgotten what they are supposed to believe in. Barry Goldwater must be rolling over in his grave right now. Republicans Are in Denial By TOM COBURN May 27, 2008; Page A21 As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial. Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republic...

1. American Beauty. I can't put into words how much this movie moves me every time I watch it. It's not a spectacle. It's not over the top. There are no real special effects. But the true meat and bone of American Beauty is the concept that no matter how hard we try in life, attaining perfection is a near impossibility. For Lester Burnham, perfection was going back to his teenage years, driving the cherry hot rod, dating the cheerleader. Now in his 40's, his life had become estranged from everything he wanted it to be. For his wife, Carolyn, perfection was success. For their daughter, it was simply love and attention. The last five minutes of this movie are spellbinding... 2. La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) I caught this gem on DVD a few years back. Roberto Benigni put on the performance of his life in this story of a Jewish Italian bookstore owner who finds the love of his life only to be forced into the Nazi prison camps with his son. I love this movie...

Some of you more conservative types may be offended at what I'm about to say... but I want to personally THANK you people who voted George W. Bush into office again back in 2004. THANK you for the $4.00 a gallon gas prices and a dollar that's worth CRAP. THANKS for tax cuts that really only benefit the well off yet are being PAID FOR with our INCREASING debt to COMMUNIST CHINA! THANKS ONCE MORE, for this UNENDING war in Iraq that will end up costing MY SON TRILLIONS during his adulthood! Thanks for all the jobs lost to India and stagnant wage increases! Believe me, I could go on!!! Think about those things when you go to the polls this November. The right wing talking heads WANT the issue to be about a supposedly racist pastor (who, by the way, ISN'T running for President) and other issues that ARE NOT ISSUES. They want you to believe that the billions that have been wasted (ie. squandered) in Iraq have made America safer. They tell us that if we didn't fight them o...

RETIREMENT PLANNING FOR 2008 If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00. With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left. If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $36.00 left. But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, You would now have $214.00. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It's called the 401-Keg Plan.

This was once a hot button issue, but the discussion has died down recently to make room for debates over Barack Obama's preacher, Hillary Clinton's dirty campaigning and well, quite frankly, not much about McCain. Still, to many of us Americans, this IS an important issue, especially now that more of the middle class' hard earned paychecks are going into our gas tanks and money is getting tighter. Both Democrat candidates have introduced proposals for government ran health care. Hillary's system forces everyone to be insured one way or the other, while Obama's plan makes buying into a national system optional, and allows individuals to continue to use private insurance. His plan also creates standards to which private insurers must meet in order to continue business as usual. McCain's proposal focuses more on reform. His plan also has utilizes standards and forcing more competition in the health care arena - something that is needed. There are currently five m...

I need one of these for when I go to the theater and a bunch of bratty teenagers in front of me decide to talk through the whole movie! NEW YORK (AP) -- A wall-mounted gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States. The Mosquito, which targets loiterers, projects a shrill noise audible only to teens and young adults. Almost 1,000 units of the device, called the Mosquito, have been sold in the United States and Canada after the product debuted last year, according to Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device sold under the company name Kids Be Gone. The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear. It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whe...

I'm letting go of you. Finally. I thought it would be different, I really did. A year flowed by under my unmoving feet. A year of self discovery, self preservation. Self indulgence and sometimes self pity. Still pieces of me remained motionless. A door closed and reopened elsewhere. I stepped through. I waded through the heartbreak and remorse. Jealousy was lost, but the anger and hatred remained. Until now. I'm letting that, go. This is where my universe has shifted itself to. I once told you I would be your beacon. That you could always follow me home if the waves became insurmountable. The light has been turned off. For my own well being and to be fair to those I now love. I am so sorry. You are on your own.

she closes her eyes and imagines her life beneath palm trees that dance on an ocean breeze and endless blue skies the clouds that reside dance in her head where memories lie of lighthouses and heavy storms comfort her when she is alone and loneliness is unforgiving and emptyness is unrelenting and happiness is as easy as just dreaming of the sand beneath her toes and she's the only one who knows

the sun gently slips behind the january mountains leaving the sky to fend for itself against the harsh, black, moonless night i, myself, a bystander watch from a hill high above the oilfields and smoke a Marlboro gathering my makeshift thoughts and trying to grasp some sort of perspective of myself sometimes i feel crowded... that there's just one too many kooks aboard this square yellow bus sometimes the clown is driving with his self-depreciating humor but the smile he wears is painted on he hides behind it and sometimes I glimps it as a single tear runs down his white cheek splashing harmlessly against his grey faded lapels at other times it is the demon who smiles devilishly and who delights in steering us slightly askew seemingly intreagued by the suffering of others at his own gain when he is driving we all duck and cover then sometimes the intellect drives and takes us on a cultural tour of life that surrounds us as he feigns concern at the p...

too far gone to care... i want to but i don't dare the drone of machinery envelopes me in cold metallic wings too numb to feel too blind to see too dulled to need sudden exctacy biting hooks tear open skin exposing insects deep within gnawing on my strange disease a simple request - give this to me don't offer stolen hope i only want to sear if there's eternal darkness it isn't far from here

Estranged emotions, held in check Twisted understanding, bleached in the sun Bubblebath of memories, so appealing, so inticed I will hold my breath, behind this shaded guise Release the catch, hold my aim Steady as the crow flies, under darker skies There was a time, not long ago I could see, my own face In a different light, gently smiling There was a time, now I've passed behind Bear the weight, hold the shame Steady as the crow flies, under darker skies It's me or me, one of us will go Decisions final, released before me I don't belong, don't fit in Don't live here, just visiting Pull you down, end the game Steady as the crow flies, under darker skies

Thank God I don't have these sort of dark flashes anymore! ------------------------------------------ in my pocket, the one on the right i carry three wooden matches i take the first and strike it agaist the wall to light my cigarette and discard it watching a small puff of smoke escape from it's charred tip the second match lights a picture of her the flame rides a wave of blackness until i can no longer see her smile and after a bath of gasoline i light the third