Hell Freezes Over & the Democrats Debate

No. Hell Freezing Over is not a reference to last night's debate between Barack and Hillary. I'm referring to an amusing email Alma the Texas Songbird sent me yesterday. Apparently it's been all over the Internet, but I'd not seen it.

But, before I get to that I must say I thought Hillary came out on top in this debate. Barack seemed to stumble a bit regarding explaining his unfortunate choice of words describing many Pennsylvania voters as being bitter and finding refuge in religion, guns and other dubious interests. Barack also stumbled a bit explaining his choice of church and minister.

Hillary almost seemed honest when she addressed the coming under sniper fire in Bosnia issue again. She sort of admitted to being embarrassed at being caught in such a bald faced lie. She also made the point that she's better suited to go against John McCain because people have been rummaging through her baggage for decades while Barack is fresh meat for the Republicans to attack.

Enough of talking about last night's debate. Below is the amusing email from Alma the Texas Songbird about Hell Freezing Over.

HELL EXPLAINED BY CHEMISTRY STUDENT

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

The Night of the Hunter

If you'd asked me last Saturday afternoon when I last saw a movie I liked I wouldn't have been able to remember one. I don't think I've been in a movie theater this century. Most movies, particularly current movies, just don't much engage me. I gave up on NetFlix when I ran out of movies I wanted to see and when watching movies that I didn't enjoy started to seem like a huge waste of time.

If you'd asked me last Saturday afternoon what my all time favorite movie is I likely would have said All About Eve. If you asked me the same question Sunday morning I likely would have said The Night of the Hunter.

Turner Classic Movies on Saturday nights has a thing they call "The Essentials". Meaning movies that it is essential you watch if you want to have an appreciation of the best movies ever made. The Night of the Hunter was last Saturday's Essential.

This movie held my interest beginning to end. It's a film noir. Now considered one of the best film noir ever made. After the movie was over I had to look it up in Wikipedia. Apparently I am not the only one to have been impressed by this movie. David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick and the Coen Brothers were influenced by it. The Night of the Hunter is very David Lynchian.

When the movie was released in 1955 it was not a hit, neither critically or with the public. The director, Charles Laughton, yes, that Charles Laughton, he of Mutiny on the Bounty, was so disheartened he never directed again. Years later when the movie began playing on TV, it finally became a hit. Read the Wikipedia article to see all the various references made to The Night of the Hunter in things like the Simpsons, Seinfeld, Bruce Springsteen's song, "Caution Man", Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Coen Brother's movies contain many references.

Anyway, I just loved this movie. It's black and white and beautifully photographed, set in the Great Depression, it tells a very sophisticated, very adult story. And there was a scene near the end that evoked in me something very very rare. A tear. It still haunts me. The movie I mean, not the tear.

UPDATE: Here's a Blog devoted to Charles Laughton with a lot of The Night of the Hunter info.

Oh My! Someone in the News has a Texas Connection!

Last week, when the latest got booted from American Idol, I was surprised that that newspaper I love to roll my eyes at, that being the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, did not once more mention that the bootee had a Fort Worth connection, in that he was married to a Fort Worth girl and he had visited Fort Worth at some point in time.

Well, today's Star-Telegram did trot out the trite verbiage again, as in "Michael Johns has a Fort Worth connection---his wife, Stacey Vudris, is from here."

No, I do not make this up. My two readers may remember me mentioning this newspaper's oddities before and that one of their employees tried to explain to me that, unlike the Dallas paper (the Star-Telegram also has an odd Dallas fixation) the Star-Telegram tries to be a local paper by giving its readers local connections to its stories. No matter how flimsy. Or pointless.

I don't know if they repeat these local connections over and over and over again because they think their readers have bad memories, or if it is for the benefit of new readers. Last week in a legit news article we had to be reminded, again, that CBS News Guy, Bob Schieffer, is from Fort Worth.

In today's paper, in addition to being told again of Michael Johns important connection to Fort Worth, we were also reminded that LeAnn Rimes is from here, as in "Garland-raised LeAnn Rimes." I don't know if I've seen this "raised" type verbiage before. It's a refreshing change. In the same article, under the heading "The Texas Connections", we learned, in addition to CMT Buckle winning Garland-raised Rimes, that Fort Worth-raised T Bone Burnett also won a Buckle. A Buckle is like an Oscar only you get it for singing country music, not acting.

Now, I came to Texas from a small town in Washington called Mount Vernon. Fort Worth acts more like a small town than Mount Vernon. In 1998 Mount Vernon was rated the #1 Best Small City in America by a legit rating entity. A couple years ago Fort Worth was put on a list by some Washington D.C. lobbying group for being one of the Top Ten Most Livable Communities in the Nation. Fort Worth had a city wide celebration for this esteemed honor. Meanwhile, up in Washington, in a state where towns and cities are often near or at the top of such lists, Tacoma was on the same Top Ten list as Fort Worth.

I asked the Deputy Mayor of Tacoma if his city had a city wide celebration for the wonderful award. He said, no, we politely thanked them, then ignored it. He giggled when I told him Fort Worth had a city wide celebration. He'd been to Fort Worth for a Sister Cities Convention, which was held at a downtown hotel, not the Convention Center. I don't think Fort Worth understands that conventions are supposed to take place at the Convention Center. All my years here I've never noticed downtown being busy with visiting conventioneers, a phenomenon that happens frequently in Seattle and Tacoma.

Back to the Star-Telegram's bizarre need to make connections between people in the news and Texas, no matter how tenuous. My aforementioned hometown of Mount Vernon has a few connections to somewhat well known people. I do not recollect the local paper repeating those connections over and over and over again.

Like, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, lives in Mount Vernon, well, actually Big Lake, a couple miles outside Mount Vernon's city limits. Conservative talk show host, Glen Beck, is from Mount Vernon. Mike Pegram, Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner and owner of a McDonald's empire and my brother-in-law's boss, has a house in Mount Vernon. And some McDonald's. Cheryl Bentyne, jazz singer with The Manhattan Transfer, she's a Mount Vernon girl who I went to college with. Movie star Jim Caviezel, born and raised in Mount Vernon, his uncle lived 4 houses from mine. Actress Demi Moore lived in Mount Vernon and went to LaVenture Middle School. That's right in my old neighborhood. I did not know Demi Moore when she was in town. Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr, is from Mount Vernon. Ross the Intern, from the Tonight Show, grew up in Mount Vernon.

I know of the above not from reading it repeated over and over and over and over again in my local paper, I know the above because I read the Mount Vernon article in Wikipedia. There were others on the Wikipedia list, but I'd not heard of them before, except for a NBA and MLB player or two.

On a positive note, regarding the Star-Telegram, it has been at least a year since I've seen that paper use its obviously embarrassing 'Green With Envy' verbiage. So, it is possible to wise them up if you nag enough and if you clearly reflect back to them how their ludicrous verbiage looks to others. Now, if only someone would do that same favor for me.

Who Makes More Money Than Me?

In Sunday's Parade magazine's annual "What People Earn" issue I learned that someone named Miley Cyrus is a 15 year old who makes $18.2 million a year playing someone named Hannah Montana. 15 years old. I'm almost 3 times that age and with my Google ads and the occasional change I find on the ground I make a minuscule fraction of Miss Cyrus's $18.2 million. Not that I begrudge her her fortune. I'm sure she's worth every penny of it. That's Miley on the right in the photo. I don't think the guy on the left is her dad, Billy Ray.

A comedian named Jeff Foxworthy is over 3 times older than Miley and makes $10 million a year. I've watched Foxworthy's act. I don't find him very funny.

Leona Helmsley had a dog named Trouble. Trouble makes $12 million a year. That's almost as much as Miley the Teenager. I'm sure Trouble works very hard for his money.

A Hedge-fund manager named John Paulson is in NYC making $3.5 billion a year at age 52. That's way more than Miley is making. I had to look it up to find out what a Hedge-fund manager does. It is some sort of private investment fund that charges a performance fee. Mr. Paulson must perform really really well.

American Idol winner Carrie Underwood makes $7 million a year. That's less than her ex-boyfriend, Tony Romo, the Dallas Cowboy quarterback. He got something like a $69 million 5 year contract this year with a $13 billion signing bonus. More than his boss, Jerry Jones paid for all the homes and businesses he destroyed to build his new stadium. That's scandalous.

Mary-Kate Olsen, 21, she's one of the notorious Olsen twins, one of whom, I don't remember which, had some involvement with Heath Ledger before he died, makes $17 million a year. As an actress/entrepreneur. What has she acted in lately? Entrepreneur?

The CEO of Boeing, James McNerney, 58, makes $19 million a year. I assume the amount would be more if he'd managed to get the Dreamliner in the air on time.

A model in NYC named Gisele Bundchen, 27, makes $33 million a year. Modeling.

That annoying Dr. Phil, who is on TV way too much, makes $90 million a year. He is only 57 but looks much older.

Steven Spielberg makes $110 million a year. I would have guessed it to be more. He makes really good movies.

Edward Perry, a 26 year old Peace Corps volunteer from LA makes a whopping $2,900 a year.

While Ryan Seacrest, the 33 year old, somewhat annoying, American Idol host makes $12 million a year.

Eli Manning, 27, makes $11.5 million a year throwing a football in NYC.

While the world's most powerful woman, she of the Big Give, among many other things, and who I've always found annoying and don't really know why, makes $260 million a year. No wonder she can afford to Give Big.

Well. Enough of that. It's time for me to start my daily search for spare change laying on the ground to augment my meager Google ad income.

New Dallas Cowboy Stadium Survived Tornado

I am still in recovery mode from the vicious storm we had here less than 24 hours ago. I have managed to sleep a little bit. Today I've been up since 4am and have been a very busy boy.

I decided I'd not been to Chinatown in Arlington for quite awhile and with the sky being tornado cleaned of smog it seemed a good time to check in and see if Mother Nature wreaked havoc on Jerry Jones and his monument to insensitivity to ones fellow human beings.

When I got to the stadium zone I detected no signs of damage. Mother Nature must be on the payroll. Or she is biding her time to exact the eye for an eye thing. I guess it would be more poetic if a tornado leveled Jerry Jones's personal home with little warning, just like his bulldozers did to all his victims.

One thing I did notice today was 4 flags have been planted at the top of the stadium. Go here for a look at what the new stadium looks like on April 11, 2008. And to read what the flags were. I'm guessing you could guess what one or two of them might be. I had to guess on the 4th one. I'm pretty sure I guessed right.

Thursday's Texas Tornado Aftermath

The Big Storm that roared through North Texas late Wednesday and in the wee hours of Thursday morning brought at least 5 tornadoes, including several that struck Breckinridge late Wednesday. Survey teams checked out the damage and issued the EF ratings for the tornadoes. 4 or more were EF1's. The assessment process continues. An EF1 tornado whips up winds between 86 and 110 mph.

So far the only known injury was to a Johnson County man who lost his arm when the trailer he was in was turned over and over in the high wind. In the photo you see here the trailer was spared, which totally goes against the norm, while the tied to a foundation building was badly damaged.

Several houses were seriously damaged in Johnson County.

About 5 miles north of my abode, in the town of Hurst, straight line winds up to 80mph damaged more than 200 homes.

At Oakland Lake Park, yesterday, I saw several trees blown down, including a long-lived Mulberry Tree. It was sort of additionally tragic because only a couple days ago did the park maintennance people finally get around to removing tree limbs they'd piled up all over the park last month after doing extensive tree trimming. And now they've got a way way worse mess to clean up.

I don't know if it's irony or what, but in Haltom City, that's about 5 miles northwest of where I am, students at an Institute of Massage were in the middle of their finals when Mother Nature massaged holes in the roof and blasted out windows, distracting the test takers. I don't quite understand why they were taking a massage test in the early morning of Thursday. Maybe the earlier storm hit just north of me and I didn't notice.

In Southlake, that's up by Lake Grapevine, the school board called an emergency meeting to figure out what do to about the damaged school building, with broken gas lines, ruined air conditioners and a destroyed stadium scoreboard. They decided to open school as usual, with no lunch, due to no gas.

Apartment buildings were damaged in Bedford, that's a little town next to Hurst, moving four families out til the damage can be repaired.

Today the sky is blue, the temps are warm. And I managed to sleep a couple hours.

The Tulips are Blooming & I'm Homesick

I'm homesick. I've not seen the Skagit Valley of Washington in Spring Tulip mode since I moved to Texas in 1999. The color carpetting is sort of like Texas wildflowers on steroids. That is Cultus Mountain in the background, one of the Cascade Mountains foothills, looking east towards my old hometown of Mount Vernon. If it weren't so cloudy you would see the Mount Baker volcano towering over the valley. You will see no Bluebonnets if you visit Washington state during the spring. I think they may have been eradicated for being a pesky invasive weed.

Hellacious Texas Storms & Toxic People

We've had hellacious storms here in Texas the last 24 hours. With a number of damage causing small tornadoes. I tried to go to bed after midnight, but went in to total insomnia mode. About 3am I started hearing rumbling in the distance. Within a half hour I was in a War Zone with non-stop Thunder and Lightning. I heard Tornado Sirens in the distance. The storm went on for a couple hours. For a few minutes it was directly over head with the Lightning Strikes and Thunder being simultaneous.

So, I don't think I nodded off even once. I got up about 6am and have been grumpy ever since. Maybe it's caused by the lack of sleep but right now I'm thinking I need a break from dealing with Toxic People. Years ago I read a book by Lillian Glass called "Toxic People: 10 ways of dealing with people who make your life miserable". It was a very helpful book.

I'm thinking of giving myself a 7 day timeout from any possible contact with anyone Toxic. Turn off my phone, not read email, basically avoid human contact as much as possible til I'm ready to deal with the Toxic People again.

I'll probably keep doing my Boring Blogging during my timeout. It's a salubrious outlet for my aggravations to get to vent into the wind.

Texas Wildflowers, Tornadoes & Polygamists

Mother Nature goes a bit nuts in Texas during April and May. The wildflowers are being extra colorful, or so it seems, this Spring. The bluebonnets are popping up all over. For the month, or so, when the wildflowers are blooming, it makes Texas look the best it looks the entire year. The other 11 months the basic color scheme on the ground in Texas is mostly brown. There are plenty of green trees though.

Today and tonight we are being blessed with Mother Nature's other thing she likes to do to Texas this time of year, that being Severe Thunderstorms with Tornado creation possible. It's 3pm and it's not started up yet, except for some raindrops.

I went to read Gar the Texan's MySpace blog this morning for my daily dose of West Texas Eruditeness and learned Gar the Texan is now blogging in a new location. His Blog is called Random Ramblings: The insane opinions of a lunatic. I think he's flattering himself, the opinions expressed didn't seem all that lunatic to me, let alone insane.

Gar the Texan's first and only posting on his new Blog is about religion, with his random rambling inspired by the current West Texas cult scandal. Basically it seems Gar the Texan has some issues with the Religion Industry. Likely, this being an issue for the boy, is due to him being raised in his own West Texas Fundamentalist Cult led by his mom. I'm pretty sure Gar the Texan's Cult was not a Polygamist one.

Speaking of the weird Texas Polygamist Compound scandal and the removal of all those kids, today I watched Fox news while consuming food and there was a story about a similar raid on similar polygamists in Arizona in what became known as the Short Creek Raid, taking place in 1953 in what is now called Colorado City.

In the Arizona raid 200 kids were taken from their mothers with the fathers being arrested. At gunpoint. Several of the Arizona kids who were taken, now in their 60s, told the Fox News reporter how the Short Creek Raid and its aftermath terrorized and traumatized them. When the fathers got out of jail there were forbidden to see their families. But, many of them managed to sneak in visits. With several wives ending up pregnant and having to hide the pregnancies and the newborns.

After several years passed, the families were allowed to be back together. With only one wife for each man.

Bret Michael's Rock of Love and the Skanks

There are some TV shows that I confess I watch because they are just so train wreck awful and somehow indicative of the decline of civilization that I will sit and watch for as long as I can stand it.

The worst of the current worst is on VH1, a cable network that seems to be a repository of the worst of TV. The show I'm confessing to watching is called Rock of Love. It's about this over the hill supposed rock star named Bret Michaels and his search for love and a good groupie who can function backstage if or when this Bret Michaels person gets a singing job.

The show starts off with about 20 women and one by one they are eliminated. Bret Michaels is always saying how beautiful these women are. But from my humble view I think the majority of them are extremely, well, I think the best word to describe them is skanky. Like here in the D/FW zone there are all these strip joints, some are customized to certain wants, like there is a fat girl strip joint to appeal to chubby chasers and there is a skanky girl strip joint to appeal to guys who like skanky girls. Guys like Bret Michaels.

Here's a blurb from VH1's Rock of Love website, "If there was ever any doubt about Bret Michael's status as a Rock God, season one of Rock of Love put all those doubts to rest. The enormous success of the show proved two things: Bret continues to draw in fans by the millions - and his appeal to women has never wanted."

"Wanted"? His appeal has never wanted? Is that a Freudian Slip of some sort?

Now, I know Bret Michaels was in a band named Poison. I've no memory of a Poison song. My knowledge of Bret Michaels previous to his reality show was watching him perform with Pamela Anderson in one of those notorious Pamela Anderson home videos. Bret Michaels is a short pudgy balding homely guy who wears a wig and a hat at all times to cover his need for a toupee. He reminds me of one of my runty ugly cousins. And he wears makeup. If this is a rock god, well, God help us.

This is the second season of Bret Michael's search for love. I don't know what happened to the one who won his heart last year.

Of all the skanky women on this year's Rock of Love by far the skankiest is this awful, horribly ugly German named Angelique. She's a professional stripper who has trouble keeping her clothes on on the show. She's had something done to her lips that makes her face one of the ugliest I've ever seen. Of course Bret Michaels regularly tells her she's a beauty. And he kisses her. He kisses all the skanky women. Over and over again. Except for one, one of the few non-skanky ones, who was unsettled by all that spit swapping and so refuses to do any kissing. I like her. Too much kissing gives me chapped lips. A condition I'm in pain from right now. Oops, I got off subject. So this German girl totally creeps me out. Her English is so bad they use subtitles, which are often quite funny. I don't know what it is about Germans, maybe it's my Dutchness, but something about them makes my skin crawl, and this Angelique one is a super skin crawler.

I have no idea when original episodes of Rock of Love air. I accident upon it channel chasing while eating lunch. I do know the skanky awful ugly German got the boot. If I knew where she was doing her strip thing I'd let you know so that you don't accidentally have to see that thing take her clothes off. Maybe she's been deported. We can only hope.