Little Wolf's World

1. The Brother-in-law is still looking for a job. I am not sure what to even think on him anymore.

2. My Mom is better. They have put her on oxygen and she seems to be doing well. (I need to make another visit, but not until after this coming weekend.

3. Wife is still without a job. She did make an interesting contact at a wedding we were at this weekend that may become a job, we shall see.

4. Though I don't often post about it, I do watch a lot of sports:
a. I was happy over all with the Browns drafting this weekend. My only concern is that Brady Quinn dropped as far as he did and that we moved up to get him. (All the sports talking heads think it was a good move and they are supposed to be the experts.)
b. Despite a number of bizarre things, (a snow out of one series, playing a home series away from home, etc) the Indians are in first place at the end of April for the first time in what feels like a century.
c. The Cavaliers, for the first time in franchise history, swept a playoff series and are into the second round.
d. While not a real thing, I watched most of 2 separate showings of 'The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh' in the last week. Talk about strange movies that I will sit and watch anytime they are on TV.

5. I greatly enjoyed the 3rd season of the new Battlestar Galactica. I am really annoyed that it will take until at least January before we will see new episodes.

6. I have enjoyed Battlestar's 'replacement' for the short term Painkiller Jane.

7. I don't really understand NBC. It seems like they haven't shown new episodes of any of the Law & Order franchise in months. (I know it is new this week, it just seems weird.

8. How does Fox premiere a show this time of year? One that is a continuing premise show, and not even give it at least more that 3 viewing dates to build an audience. (Drive was an enjoyable show.) (All-in-all, at least they showed it in order, unlike Firefly which was just plain incomprehensible the way they showed it.)

9. While I am not a huge American Idol fan. (Actually not a fan at all) I am forced to watch it and while I thought Sanjaya was interesting, someone should be dragged out behind the wood shed for his being on the show as long as he was. (Either Jordin Sparks or Melinda Dolittle will win this season.)

10. On the local news this evening was a story about a man who is going to jail for attempting to hire someone to kill his wife. Aside from crying in court during the pre-sentence hearing today, the strangest thing about this may have been his defense. He claims that he thought the undercover police officer that he was speaking with was a member of a biker gang that he wanted into, and thought the 'kill my wife' thing made him sound tougher. (I think the map of his wifes mail route and details of how he wanted the murder staged that were captured on tape sort of did him in.

Well I am getting to tired to think straight and I need to clean the kitchen before I sleep tonight.
Have a good one all. I'll be back soon.

Labels: Family Updates, Odd Stories, Personal, Some Thoughts

George Tenet has a book coming out. While I am sure this is almost shocking to most people I find what is going around the TV interviews to be the funniest part of all of this.

Mr. Tenet, in an what appears to me to be an attempt to 'rehabilitate' his image, has written a book that returns fire at a number of members of the Bush Administration. What I found to be the most interesting is how the political talking heads are responding.

For whatever reason I decided today to listen to Rush Limbaugh as I ran errands around noon. While the regular blowhard was 'absent from school' today, the subsitute blowhard was actually funny, and the callers were actually scary. What I gleaned from the substitute blowhard was that Mr. Tenet is NOW the darling of the Left. (You know those crazy liberals.) He was also, along with the callers, blaming everything on one William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton. So let me see if I understand. 6+ years after the man left office, and everything is Bill's fault. The fact that the Bush Administration did everything it could to find a way to bring Iraq into the argument didn't really seem to register. A couple of things that really got me laughing. First was the person who seemed to think that Al Qa'eda was in Iraq (other in the Kurdish areas, where Saddam was not able to operate militarily) and that we 'need to fight them there in order to not fight them here.' (Does anyone actually believe that?) The second was a person who seemed convinced that Bill had done everything in is power to set up the Imperial Executive. (Perhaps we should call him, He-who-should-not-have-reigned.)

What was really stunning to me about all the ranting by the substitute Blowhard today was that, having listened to a number of the 'liberal' talkshows, they were harder on Mr. Tenet than the Blowhard and his listeners.

What does this teach us? I don't know, but I am really hoping that the morons that I heard on the Rush Limbaugh show were not representative of the entirety of the listenership, but I figure it probably was.

Labels: Commentary

I have been following the spree killings at Virginia Tech with only marginaly interest. It isn't that I don't think the story is interesting, but I am rather put off by the 'wall-to-wall' coverage of the cable news industry. I do believe that it is an important story, but I can only take the repetitions of the exact same information so many times.

I have heard several interviews with some of the students who survived the classroom attacks. These have been both very chilling to me as well as very riveting. I wish I had some insight in to the situation and how to deal with the situation. I don't, and I can't imagine what the Virginia Tech community is going through at this moment.

I find that the information that is coming out on the young man who killed the 32 other people to be very interesting. The fact that he had mental health issues isn't really surprising, but for the first time that I can remember the news channels, (I have watched CNN for the most part) are actually delving into the mental health issues surrounding this situation. As someone who is on a medication for Depression and whose wife has been diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety/Panic Disorder and had multiple hospitalizations in the nearly 13 years we have been married this is a relief. It seems that many times in these situations that the mental health issues are a post-script used as the 'cause' of what ever caused the killer to spiral out of control. It seems in this situation, that a deeper explination of this young man's problems is being discussed.

I find it rather had to believe that these kinds of things continue to happen in this country. I have read a trilogy that had a point of discussion which seems to fit these situations. I wonder if to some extent these spree killings are a symptom of a much deeper problem societial problem. That these kinds of spree killings aren't just a way for a specific level of societal anxiety or societal pressures to be released at a regular interval.

Finally, I wish to once again express my deep sadness and sympathy for those whose families have been affected directly or otherwise by this tragic situation.

May HaShem look after the families and the souls of those who have died, and may the memories of those who have died be nothing but a blessing on those who knew them.

Labels: Some Thoughts

I wish to express my sympathies to the families of those who were killed today at Virginia Tech.

While I don't know much of the circumstances, the report I saw had 31 dead. I hope to learn more later today, as this is a problem in our society that we need to find a way to prevent.

Labels: Memorium

I am not talking the run-of-the-mill nervousness. You know the type you get when you have to speak in front of people.

I am talking more in terms of that 'little-voice-in-that-back-of-your-brain-telling-you-there-is- a-problem' kind of nervousness. The kind of nervousness that is general nearly paranoid in its approach to how you look things around you.

Digression 1: My interest in politics began when I was 8 years old and there was a re-election of the sitting President. It was the first time I became aware of the bigger country out there.

Digression 2: I first remember learning about Rome, and I remember reading about the Roman empire and some of the things that lead to its down fall and collapse.

The things that have me paranoid is the direction that this country is headding in. For one thing this country has much in common with the Roman Republic.

Some of the things that were symptomatic of the deteriation of Roman Repulic. The Gladatorial games, the constant expansion of the republic. Both of these continued under the Empire and they added some lovely things like the use of people outside of the traditional military structure.

We have our own version of the gladitorial games to keep the masses under control. How many people watch an average NFL game. How many have an interest the new extreme fighting programs that are on TV it seems like 7 nights a week.

The US hasn't directly expanded in a number of years but the war in Iraq is definitely a war of that was, at least in retrospect, not a necessary war.

In Iraq we are using nearly as many military contractors as we are military personnel.

The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire when the 'executive branch' of the government made itself all powerful and singular in nature.

Why am I nervous? Because history shows that minorities tend to get 'put down' by the majority when the majority begins to feel threatened. Democracies can be subverted by a well planned attack if the people attempting the subversion have a well thought out plan and are willing to work over a period of time for the goal.

Look at Germany after the first World War. The National Socialist party had a plan, they executed it and they succeeded and took over the government. Look at Imperial Russia in the early part of the last century. The overthrow of the rule of Tzar Nicolas by the democratic forces lead directly to the rise of the Bolsheviks and the rise of the totalitarian socialist society that developed.

As I stated above in the first digression, I have been aware of the political situations in this country for closing in on 40 years (that should give you an idea what election was refered to above.)

As I state in the second digression, I made a very astute observation long before it was 'fasionable' to see that happening in this country.

The current administration is guilty of attempting to subert the Constitution and the political structure of this country. But they are not the first. The peril of our social structure and the centralization of power in a manner that wasn't the idea of the Framers of the Constitution, goes back to the second President.

Hopefully the public will realize that it is time for a change in the political nature of our society. Not to a less tolerant, more authoritarian political structure, but to a less authoritarian more equitable government that respects all citizens equaly.

Please think about the idea of the overall direction that this country is heading in, and let me know if you are nervous.

Labels: Peanut Gallary

My mom, as I mentioned in my Passover post, was in the hospital. She got out of the hospital on Tuesday of that week. The diagnosis wasn't as bad as I was fearing, but not as good as nothing being wrong. She was diagnosed with both Asthma and Emphysema. She is on Oxygen, but seems to be doing well otherwise.

Additionally, Brother-in-Law, who just spent the last 4 or 5 months preparing for a career as a truck driver, decided not to work for the company that had hired him. It wasn't until well along in the process that we found out what was going on, and that had to be dragged out of him by Wife. His trainer with the company he was going to work for was, to say the least, a problem.

After much discussion, it appears he is trying to justify working for Waste Management as a garbage truck driver. We have told him he isn't going to make enough money, but apparently that doesn't matter. And who am I to tell him what to do.

Ah Well.

Labels: Family Updates

I have to say that if I didn't have bad luck with my cats, I wouldn't have any luck at all.

As documented about 18 months ago, we had to put to sleep one of our cats. Prior to that I we had had to put to sleep the sister/litter mate of the male we put to sleep at that 18 months ago. (We had to have put her to sleep about 10 years before.) The little cat we got to replace the first female we had to put to sleep is generally healthy except that we have to clean her teeth every other year or so, and she has an under-developed tear duct in for one of her eyes.

The little Siamese Lynx Point we had found about 15 months ago abandonned in our apartment building. Wife had taken both of the cats in for their annual appointments. We had notice that she had a strange behavior and Wife mentioned it at the time and the Doctor said that it was a feline seizure disorder. What she didn't mention at the time was that she wass having these seizures 2-3 times a day.

Today we took the little Siamese in for a dental cleaning. Well as part of the cleaning they determined that 3 of her teeth were bad and needed to be extracted. (3 teeth from an 18 month old cat, this was very disturbing.) My wife then tells me she also discussed with the Doctor again about the seizures, and that they are happening 2-3 times a day. The Doctor is now doing tests and is going to talk to an expert in feline seizures to determine what the best way to treat this is. I am just really thrown off by this. I am not sure why, but has upset me. (Okay, it is because the cats are like my children, but still.)

Labels: Cats

Labels: Festival Wishes