More.

I woke up this morning to a nice full double rainbow over Gavilan Mountain. Here she is. People in many cultures think that rainbows are signs of better things to come. Lets hope so.

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Call me nostalgiac but I really miss Celestial Seasonings Emperor's Choice tea.

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I am within spitting distance of 800 posts, or beyond, depending on my taste for symmetry. This is either a testament to the inordinate amount of time on my hands, or my general obsessive nature, which requires that those I love and cherish be within my emotional and cyber bandwidth. But I have definitely knocked last years totals into the tulies.

Of course comments have slowed to a trickle, unless as KJ says, I am writing about food or sex. Something else as well. I forget. Anyway there is no way to keep this up and run a business, so "A change is gonna come" as the song says. Lawdy, lawdy. I know I have said it before but this ain't paying the bills and nobody needs a continual blow by blow of my life, chicken tacos notwithstanding.

Not that I am quitting mind you, but I will merely drop in once in while rather than spreading a constant patina.

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The Houdini book by Sloman turned in to a big disappointment that I ended up skimming at the end. Never made his case fully for Houdini's espionage side, too much information, too long, poorly constructed in a literary sense. Only the hardest core houdiniite could finish this one.

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I think one of my best friends is divorcing me because I am fattening.

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Alternate View - Tetons

I think that the secret of staying emotionally aloft in these economically stressful times is to try to limit the worry to just this month. Take them one at a time. We get sick when we look too far forward. We will make it, a month at a time. Now if I could just figure out this month.

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Russia. What a waste of a perfectly good glasnost. You see what happens when you put a KGB man in charge. Funny shit starts happening. Journalists are tracked down in England and killed with polonium. Political opponents are jailed and destroyed. The Russian way. Fascism and thuggery happens so damned quick.

“On Thursday, the liberal Yabloko party and newspaper Novaya Gazeta said their telephone lines had been paralysed by endless calls featuring a recorded female voice: ‘Putin is very good. Putin loves you. Putin makes your life happy. Love Putin and your life will fill with meaning. Putin does everything for you. Remember, Putin does everything just for you. Putin is life. Putin is light. Without Putin, life has no meaning. Putin is your protector. Putin is your saviour.’ Over and over again.” 

One of the brightest and definitely the most cynical countries in the world. Old men in uniforms with countless medals and old women who longed for the security of the state run collective, longing for the good old days of Breshnev, Stalin and the gulag.

There's a cautionary tale here somewhere, about the ease in which revolutions and awakenings get co-opted.

I took an hour and read Pravda the other day. No mention of the demonstrations. One writer delivering the nastiest blasts against the west, over and over. Lisa Karpova. Try this one, Interference in Russian affairs is an act of war.  Here is what she had to say about our Vice President, amongst others:

The agitators, the tweeters, the Twitters and facebook monkeys can all go to hell...trying to stir up color revolution. Let them cram it where the sun don't shine. You too, HELLary loud mouth, frustrated man wanna be, incompetent know nothing.
Meanwhile, your western government is paying agitators and terrorists to bring down the legitimate governments in other countries. Paying the slime of the earth to destroy what was built with great sacrifice.
Besides the big mouths of freaks like Hillary "War Zone" Clinton and John old timers' disease war monger Mc Cain, many fraudulent videos were made prior to the elections where they tried to pass them off as filmed on election day - utter complete fakes! In one video in the western media, they forgot to change the date on a wall calendar from November 25 to December 4. One prominent media source showed scenes from Greece and told the viewers they were seeing scenes from Moscow while observant viewers noted the difference between the Greek and Russian alphabets as unmistakable.
Such obvious interference in Russia's internal affairs, according to international law, is an act of war.

Getting pretty nasty, I'll say. Lacks a bit of editorial control, sounds like a Kremlin mouthpiece all right. Here is another broadside from Ms. Karpova -  Nuclear War on the horizon. The things you read in Pravda come from the top, the tone and substance are both repugnant and chilling.