Monsoon Is Upon Us

Monsoon storm clouds above Phoenix, Arizona

Yeah, the humidity goes way up, occasionally the electricity will go out with a nearby lightning strike, and even a bit of flooding comes with the onset of the Monsoon season – but the skies – the skies are brilliant. From the middle of July to the end of August I could post sky pictures every day. The best views are at sunset when billowing white thunderheads crawl up into the sky while a low sun paints the bottom of the clouds with hot pinks, oranges, and reds. But even on these days when miserable grey skies loom overhead threatening torrential rains, the sky can look amazing.

TV Must Be Broke

Our television without cable, antennae, or satellite dish rarely shows anything more than a reflection

Jeez, there’s got to be something better than this on TV? Besides reflections, images are rarely seen on our quickly becoming archaic TV, we are still in possession of an old picture tube-based television. Due to the fact we have not had cable, satellite, or even rabbit ears on our TV for years, we are not the best candidates to upgrade to plasma, LCD, DLP, projection, HD, or any other means of TV viewing. Sure we watch movies, they come to us via Netflix and we watch them in a small window on our computer monitor. Quickly we have become social rejects as our vocabulary regarding Lost, Survivor, Friends, the Sopranos, or any other hit show is crippled. No, we don’t watch sports, no broadcast news, no sitcoms, nothing, nada. Instead, we travel, visit friends, cook, read, listen to music, do stuff. Currently listening to The Sea from Morcheeba after the Thai song Duay Nam Ta from the Num & Ning CD Love and Dream, with the TV still off.

Crystal Ball Says…

The Wizard in front of the Wizard of Odz Lamp Repair in Phoenix, Arizona

The Wizard gazes into his crystal ball at the Wizard of Odz on Bell Road in Phoenix, Arizona and while attracting customers to this lamp repair shop, he told me on the side that the future looks bad. From an unpopular war to crazy executive orders, state secrecy rivaling communist Russia, to poor people about to lose homes they should have never been sold, rising energy costs with disappearing supplies, a cooking planet whose tears are drying up at the damage we curse it with, the future of America looks like a great place for haves and hell for the rest. Where is our celebration, our happiness, has the spirit of America fallen down, stumbled, bruised its shin? When will we dump King Bush, shake off the shackles of corporate governance gone astray, and embrace our freedom again? Crystal ball says, not soon enough.

Oh, Are Foreclosures Up?

A corner in Phoenix, Arizona

Hand me a pacifier. The home foreclosure rate in Phoenix, Arizona is up 168% from some time a year ago due to the overinflated real estate bubble that landed hardest in California, Florida, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. So I can’t help but wonder if our low gas prices are acting as a pacifier for the bruised pocketbooks of Phoenicians. While this station is selling gas for $2.75 a gallon, another down the street is selling for $2.63 while Nebraska folks are paying $3.22. What really doesn’t make sense though is that oil is selling for $76 a barrel and the price of gasoline keeps going down, I wonder what surprise is in the works.

Text Books are a Rip Off!

An envelope that brought a low-cost college textbook through the mail.

Caroline’s Macroeconomics college textbook came in the mail today. Not from some overpriced publisher but as a used book another student no longer needed and was smart enough to part with. What a horrible disservice to our nation’s ability to rise up from ignorance, that the required materials for an advanced education are a huge profit center for corporations. Harry Potter will sell for as little as $17 while this Macroeconomics textbook lists at $121.95 (88 Euro, 59 Pounds, 14,790 Yen, or 4,900 Rupees that is 300 Rupees more than the average monthly income in India), oh but wait, the book has recently been discounted and is now only $85.36 at Amazon.com – I’ll take two.

Does It Fly?

A wing from a Cessna attached to an emo's rice burner

From those guys at Blendtec and their popular “Will it Blend?” series of viral videos comes a new as-of-yet unannounced program entitled “Will it Fly?”. Seems they have brought in the services of a professional Emo who is outfitting various cars with wings from a Cessna, an F-16, a barnstormer, a hang glider, a Fokker Red Baron Triplane, and the dare-devil-you-ain’t-seen-nothing-yet 197-foot wide wing from a new 787 Dreamliner attached to a CRX Turbo modded Honda “whip”. Sorry guys for the spoilers, but I hate these winged wonders, even if they do prove to fly.