January 11, 2009

• I swear, this weekend was an unintentional old school throwback weekend. Last night I played cards and after the first game we played Mike Tyson's Punchout on the Wii. Ok, technically its now just called Punchout, but you can download any of the old school games that they used to have for the original Nintendo. I just might have to buy a Wii, as those games are very nostalgic to Generation Xers such as myself. My office at work has moved into a new building and today I went into work for an hour to unpack my desk. The way there is along the same route of a job I had 10 years ago. And when I got to the new building, it kinda reminded me a little bit of when I was working at AAA and we moved into our new building. In fact, it reminds me of the AAA building a little bit. Also, the Cartoon Network and a Tom and Jerry marathon on this afternoon. It was just what I needed, mindless tv that makes me chuckle. I haven't seen Tom and Jerry in a long time and it as great to watch a few hours of it. Tonight on the newly formed MLB Network, they were playing a Cubs-Pirates game from 1991, complete with the call of the game by Harry Carey and Steve Stone. I wish I could say it was great to see a game with old Cubs such as Mike Harkey, Shawon Dunston, Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, Jerome Walton, Gary Scott and my favorite Andre Dawson, but the reality is that much like many other seasons, 1991 wasn't exactly a stellar season for the Cubs. With any luck, though, the old school streak will continue tomorrow and Dawson will be elected to the baseball Hall of Fame. I'm not holding my breath though. My guess is that Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice are the only two that get in. And maybe Burt Byleven.

  I was also watching a thing on the History Channel over the weekend about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. No, the Dust Bowl wasn't a college football bowl game (like a few of the guys I was playing cards with thought) but instead an area in the mid section of the country comprising of parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. It got its name because there was a drought that lasted 10 years back in the 1930s. As a result of this drought, this region would experience these devastatingly horrible dust storms. These storms were also known as black blizzards, which fittingly was the title of the documentary. I'm sure some of you already know about the Dust Bowl, and I did before I saw this program, but after the guys from the game last night not knowing what the fuck the Dust Bowl was, I figured I best clarify. Outside of the main facts of the drought, dust storms and location, I did not know much about the Dust Bowl. Watching this though was incredibly depressing, yet I could not turn away, I found it very interesting. These people went through hell. It seemed like if things weren't bad enough, there was always something else they had to deal with that made it go from bad to worse to overwhelmingly awful. It got so bad that it was almost comical. If it were a movie (and honestly, it really should be someday) you would say it was over the top and ridiculous and too much. Yet, it happened.

  It makes me wonder what if something like this happened today, say on Bush's watch. I'm thinkin' the only way it could have been worse would have been if Bush were president at the time, as he always has a way of turning one car crash into a 100 car pile up which involves planes, trains and automobiles. The way the Dust Bowl was ended was that a very smart guy in Washington D.C. realized that we had helped create the problem ourselves by the way we were treating the land. Of course, the Bushes of the world (this would include She-Bush Sarah Palin) believe that America never does anything wrong so he would have refused to acknowledge the fact that it was us doing it. And we know his environmental record, my guess is that he would have ignored the problem and pretended it wasn't happening until eventually everybody moved out of Oklahoma and it blew away. I come to this conclusion because of his years of steadfast denial of global warming and his pulling out of the Kyoto Agreement. Fortunately though with a scant nine days left until he leaves office, this is one problem that he can not turn into mega disaster.

  Still the whole thing is a reminder of how we must take care of the Earth so that it takes care of us. To paraphrase my late Uncle Bob, if you take care of your car your car will take care of you. I think we should live by that rule when thinking of the Earth.

  • 10:19 pm
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