On the 19th, a letter appeared in the Oregonian about a sales tax that would be on out-of-state visitors only (rebates for residents) and I wrote a reply along the lines of many I’d written before that had never made it into the paper. This latest didn’t, either, and I was about to post it here when Nathan mentioned he’d seen my name in the paper on Monday. Apparently I’d missed the blurb in The Stump.
Survey Says…
My comment on the DNC’s latest attempt to get me to donate something:
SECTION V: COMMENTS
Please tell us your thoughts about the issues our nation is facing:
Another unfunded war? Really? The head of GE in charge of the Council on Jobs? Really? Even if I had a job I wouldn’t donate to people who did that.
I Like the Taste of Straight (Radioactive) Iodine…
According to this NPR report, the Japanese are lucky because it’s not the partially-spent fuel rods that caused spikes in radiation levels around the Fukushima nuclear reactors, it was just material from the reactor core.
Along with officials in Japan, independent experts in the United States and Europe are investigating the source and nature of the radiation released. But it looks like most of the material likely came from the reactors themselves, not from the pools of used fuel that have caused such concern.
Like, the reactors aren’t anything to worry about? Were people really more concerned about the spent fuel pools than the reactors or is that sort of a deflection of concerns?
Neon Mirage
Me and Stan Ridgway at Mississippi Studios early this morning. My iPhone is just not cut out for low-light venues.
Get his new album, Neon Mirage. Become his friend.
Fat Tuesday
You danced and partied at the Mardi Gras
Threw back all the beads at the parade
Fake worlds and logos in the shopping mall where you came from
Everything seemed the same the whole world nowSo you headed down south
Left your old home town
Relocated so far away from the real world
But where is the real world?Get out of the bar
And follow the stars
Now you’ve relocated so far away from the real world
But where is the real world?Ambitious eyes set firmly on the future
So keen to leave your old home town
But you’re a lost soul looking for the great illusion in another state
You had to escape you know you just couldn’t
Wait you thought the real world let you down.So you headed down south
Left another home town
Now you don’t have the time to think
Who’s left behind in the real world
Watching game shows all day was no kind of deal
It all seemed oh so surreal
Had to break from the real world
But where is the real world?
One day you’ll wake up and you will feel
“I am alive. This is real”
—Ray Davies, “The Real World”, Workingman’s Cafe