"My wafflely wedded life"

Taking a break from harsher realities yesterday eve, I watched some YouTube vids. This
was good for a nice laugh and just gave me the feeling this marriage is off to a great start.

Dada recalls a Grand incident he experienced in a parallel universe.

Although years ago, I remember it like yesterday. It was my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon. Around sunrise, it was a chilly 17 degrees of a late winter's morning. A soft blanket of clouds prevented the sun from exercising its color saturating talents on the Canyon's walls beneath us. But that was alright. Stepping toward its ledge, it was impossible to imagine being more awed than I was already was.

"Okay, it's a great ditch, can we go now?" said a bored teenager to her parents. Standing directly in front of me, those were the last words she muttered. For with more caprice than a Snickers bar impulse buy while waiting my turn in the grocery store check-out line, I suddenly stepped forward to give the girl a gentle yet forceful shove over the ledge.

A rapidly fading, yet terrifying scream was the last sound issued from her lungs just before slamming head first into an outcropping of stone. Bouncing off, she continued her tumbling free fall in a sudden lifeless silence, caroming off granite walls to the canyon's floor a mile below.

It was over in a matter of seconds, just before the echo of her scream returned for an 'instant replay' to the horrified ears of all who had been present. In those few brief moments, the young girl's separation and estrangement from Nature had been annulled. Her reconciliation with creation complete. Forever.

The bloodied and gnarled body's remains were recovered from the sandy canyon's base shortly afterward. The pieces of flesh left on the ledges above from her rapid descent were gleaned by Nature's other creatures or claimed over time through their own putrefaction.

But the stains of blood left on the granite walls lasted longer, converting from bright crimson to black almost overnight, they would remain the last evidence of the reunion, engagement, then marriage that took place between Nature and a formerly alienated girl in a instant on that cold winter's morning. In fact, those subtle tints on the ledges and walls of granite would last for decades.

After all, everyone knows how difficult it is to get out blood stains.

Back on track!

I've taken a short recuperative off season respite since my penultimate blog (to "Living the Perfect Train Wreck"). Having played what I thought my best game of the season, I realize that even that is not always good enough.

My final pass was a tight spiral spun in an arc of a siren's shoulder with the velocity of a speeding train. But it was bit a wide. And it fell a few inches short. Into the arms of the wrong person rushing to embrace it. Even then, I was disappointed there weren't more spectators in the stands to witness my almost winning ticket to a Super Bowl.

And so, the resulting self-imposed off season found me in a room of empty lockers, empty dreams. It felt so good to be so close. Yet fall so short. But in this interim, I didn't just sit on the tracks waiting for a speeding train to hit me. No, I took a seat on the side-rail; to observe others still seated on the mainline awaiting the train.

While sitting to the side expecting disaster, I reunited with old friends waiting there too. My few regular readers will recognize the names "a ball of light" and "The Unabomber." And I made a few new friends as well.

What follows are images of a couple of things I saw, of what I reflected upon this past week. If looking at them somehow reminds you of The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs fear not. It's no coincidence.















A shot or two from a second town hall meeting on health care reform where our congressman, Silvestre Reyes, stayed overtime to answer all questions posed of him.

Perhaps the Monsters of the Mesozoic's ferocity could be tempered with the realization Obama wishes no harm to the health industries profiting off sick and dying people. Nay, he plays golf with the captains of those industries!


And then there was this:

What really set me thinking about hanging up my cleats was from this newspaper "article" which illustrates, par excellence, the American dream for a future based on our unsustainable materialistic past. The irony being, the name for this beast being hawked here (as a supposed objective review) is taken from an extinct dinosaur. I lifted the following quotes directly.

The 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor

• is prepared for racing in off-road endurance events. (Every suburbia soccer mom will need one!)
• pricing starting at $38,020 (steep, I know, but the economy's in recovery, right?)
• the beast shows its teeth with a 5.4-liter V-8 delivering 310 horse-power and 365 lb.-ft. of torque.
  
• the Raptor will be offered with a 6.2 liter V-8 for $3,000 more, which is expected to generate 400 horses and 400 lb.-ft. of torque.
• the Raptor sports a Hummer-esque front end
  
• opting for the $1,075 Graphics Package adds an effect akin to black paint splashed on the bed sides and cab's rear (simulating mud "normal" people still try to keep off their vehicles, but this should be very impressive in the mall parking lot)
• Dada note: any mention of mpg you can expect was conspicuously missing
  

Wow, after digesting this, I'm surprised I didn't go bowling or slit my throat. But I realized with Obama's health care reform and auto manufacturers cranking out future "cash for clunkers" (you will pay for these voracious monsters), there is no need to fear the future. It will look just like our past (with optional fake "mud" for a thousand plus bucks). "Train wreck averted. Okay, everyone, back on the tracks!"

With that, I have decided to come out of retirement for another season. Despite that penultimate blog that resulted in what I thought the perfect throw turned into errant toss that cost me my ticket to a Super Bowl, I have come to realize -- even an intercepted pass is a completed pass.

And I'm not favring you either!

"Living" the perfect train wreck

Sometimes one experiences the realization they're in a situation, like inside a rail car of a runaway train, racing toward their final demise because the brakeman has 'jumped ship' and the engineer hasn't the experience or juevos to change anything, be it slowing its increasing speed or direction in which all on board are headed. In that final moment you concede to the only choice you have...

Security camera photo shot of passenger 1/2 second before fatal
crash. A Yale linguist studying this man's final word said while
the passenger didn't get to finish it, it definitely started with the
letter "S".

...and experience the perfect train wreck!

Would I Brett Favre you? (Or assuring immortality, not by your talent, but by becoming a part of speech.)

Today Dada indulges his secret sportswriter ambitions.

Brett Favre - v., -vred, -vr·ing, -vres.
To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another, often causing consternation in others; to waver endlessly; to outright lie. "I know I've quit before, but I'm not Brett Favring you, tomorrow I stop smoking for good."

Brett Favre was a talented quarterback willing to take chances, often with spectacular game altering results more often positive than not. As the record books attest, he's one of the greatest to play the game. But even off the field, Favre is setting records. As sports writer Jim Litke notes in today's paper, who else in one year's time has retired twice from football, come out of retirement twice, all without missing a game?! This may be where Favre's real talent lies.

Today there are fewer than two dozen people alive who remember "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh. He, too, was a great quarterback. But memories are fleeting. Just ask Baugh. Oh, you can't, he's dead. But that's okay, because most folks who knew of him are dead with him.

In time, Favre's fame as one of the greatest QB's to play the game will fade just as memories of other greats have. Just like Baugh's. But I'm beginning to suspect Brett Favre's inability to retire from football may ultimately assure his immortality. Not because of his skills on the football field.

So what's better than being a gridiron legend? Becoming a part of speech! Parts of speech embed in the language, lasting decades, even centuries beyond one's lifetime. Just ask Jules Léotard, Rev. William Archibald Spooner, or Gaius Julius Caesar. The language is full of dead people who became nouns and adjectives.

Favre's inability to quit the game presents him with a really unique opportunity -- to become a verb! (And I'm not favring you either.)

Rare medium well done?

"The strongest relationship between a severe economic crisis and a mass popular rebellion took place in the U.S. in December, 2009, and continued throughout 2010.

"The conditions for the economic collapse were building up in the early 2000s during the two terms of President George W. Bush. His neo-liberal regime was marked by the corrupt ‘bargain basement’ sale of the most lucrative and strategic public enterprises in all sectors of the economy. The entire financial sector of the U.S. was de-regulated, de-nationalized, dollarized and opened up to the worst speculative abuses. The national economic edifice, weakened by the massive privatization policies, was further undermined by rampant corruption and gross pillage of the public treasury. Bush's policies continued under his successor, President Obama, who presided over the banking crisis and the subsequent collapse of the entire national economy, the loss of billions of dollars of private savings and pension funds, a thirty percent unemployment rate and the most rapid descent into profound poverty among the working and middle classes in American history."

*************

Whoops, Dada would like to apologize. Seems the above quote is taken from James Petras' Latin American Social Movements in Times of Economic Crises (under the "Argentina" section). The correct transcript references a different time frame and originally reads "Argentina" for "U.S.," "President Carlos Menem" in place of "President George W. Bush" and "President De la Rua" for "President Obama."

I realize this may have gotten the juices of doom and gloomers flowing and upset those anxiously digesting recent government Pollyanna Creep fed them by the media. Sorry.

However, after hearing all the recent media assurances the recession is ending and then reading something like Mike Whitney's recent "Bulletins From Clunkerville", who knows? Maybe Frank Zappa was wrong, despite his 1966 proclamation, "It Can't Happen Here!" Maybe a popular uprising actually could. Maybe it actually will?

Let us pray!

And the winner is.........?

The Taliban's recent Afghanistan offensive has been particularly offensive. Casualties they are inflicting are at their highest levels since the great biblical flood time of Noah. The reason? To disrupt the democratic presidential election being held in Afghanistan this Thursday.

As Obama's US Envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, assures us, the Taliban will fail. That's why US troops are in Afghanistan (as well as Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, Columbia, Bulgaria, Guam, Greenland, Korea [South, and soon to be North], Spain, Turkey, Florida, Ohio, etc. etc.. et. al.) -- to assure democracy.

Dada would like to also note, with troops already present in Afghanistan, should the wrong winner be elected democratically, the US military can act to quickly remove, overthrow or eliminate the newly elected leader.

For America, democracy only works when the the right man (our man) wins. Screw the will of the people.

Breakfast at Denny's: A Grand Slam meal with Teabags!

Our city councilman's weekly meeting with his constituents featured our Congressman, Silvestre Reyes. It took place in its usual weekly venue, a neighborhood Denny's restaurant. Mrs. Dada received an e-mail yesterday that a group of conservative teabaggers would be there. That sounded pretty exciting to me, so I thought I would tag along with her. With food being served during the meeting, I confess I was secretly hoping a food fight might ensue.

Sadly, that didn't happen. No marmaladed muffins were thrown. Obviously, El Paso Teabaggers lag behind other Teabaggers in rudeness and crudeness so prominently in the news from other parts of the country recently. There was no shouting down of opposing points of view. But there was much of the same disinformation as elsewhere presented.

It was a standing room only crowd of considerable size and those of us for health care reform with government involvement were hugely outnumbered. Afterward, the throng of Teabaggers hung around outside giving interviews to the media. Mrs. Dada, eager to express an alternative viewpoint was asked to step up. She did, interviewing with the local CBS affiliate and El Paso Times.

It was then I was approached by a man whom I thought was eager to speak. He inquired, "So you're for the president's reform." I responded affirmatively with a few grave misgivings, i.e., the suspicion that with private and public options, neither will work efficiently which may result in two messed up alternatives and angrier mobs.

But that aside, we then discussed our differences. One of the most upsetting omissions of the discussion during breakfast inside was the $trillions all of our god-damned wars are costing us. That never comes up when "health care reform we can't afford" is being discussed. I was able to bring that up in my discussion with the man outside.

But when I mentioned, under a public option, if you lose your job you won't lose your insurance, he responded that he had recently lost his job, has a family of four children and had lost his health insurance. I rued the number of under- and uninsured families that have gone bankrupt under similar circumstances. He proudly responded, "I've never declared bankruptcy."

I stared at him incredulously and finally said, "Most likely because you never had a need for major health care during those times."

The conversation just sort of disintegrated after that. I wished him and each member of his family good health until they have insurance again.

Running low on time...

"It is time to water the tree of Liberty"

is an abridged version of Thomas Jefferson's

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time
to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Since I seriously doubt Barrack Obama is a tyrant (a puppet for tyrants maybe), I'm assuming the cowboy pictured above considers himself a patriot. And that's what had me so nervous watching him live on MSNBC yesterday evening. I was afraid this "patriot" was thinking of spilling his own blood. (You can imagine my disappointment.)

The sixth annual Border Security Conference is being held on the UTEP campus and foremost in everyone's mind: "Where can I go pee?"

It's a big deal, the two day annual Border Security Conference being held here. About 600 people, some of them important people types are present. Folks like the University's President, U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy Director, etc. Fortunately, I don't think Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is scheduled to speak today, was here yet.

See, arriving at the UTEP campus yesterday afternoon for my final class on Latin America, I discovered there was no water to the building. Hence, no water fountains, no restrooms. Apparently, in the process of ongoing campus construction, water was accidentally cut off to a number of buildings. I can't confirm for a fact water was also cut to the Undergraduate Learning Center, site of conference, but I was told by the Director of the Center for Lifelong Learning that it, too, was also affected.

Dada thinks it ironic a group of high level officials gathered to discuss the flow of drugs into the country had to worry about the flow of other things as well. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways I guess.

(NOTE: By the end of my hour and a half class, it was happily noted everything was flowing freely again. Water, bladders and drugs -- oh, the latter of which, actually, never has been successfully cut off.)

Image of the Day

Dada - having fun with Painter

After my dentist ordered "only soft food or liquid dinner tonight," I awoke the following morning with the weirdest craving...

...for BAKED BEANS! (Oh Julia Child, where were you when I needed you?)

While the last supper of ice cream and beer from my previous evening as a tooth's new filling "set up" had been a treat, my unusual appetite the next morning left me scrambling. Fortunately, I had the wherewithal -- a can of beans -- to cater the craving. Here's why.

Our species, H. sapiens sapiens, is a member of the Homo genus. There were about 12 other members, or 'siblings' of Homo that we know of. We're the last left standing. All our other family members are deceased, or extinct.

As a family, our genus hasn't been around all that long. About two million years. Sounds like a long time, but it isn't. Cockroaches have been here well over 400 million years. Compared to our own H. sapiens' 200,000 years, well, it makes us look pretty damn puny. And when you consider it takes Earth as member of our solar system 225 million years to make one orbit around our galaxy, the Milky Way, you can see, as a species, we have "no where nears been around the block yet." Whereas roaches have, perhaps at least twice. And as Seals and Croft so intuitively noted nearly 40 years ago, "We may never pass this way again."

So how in the hell does this have anything to do with my craving for baked beans last Tuesday morning? Well, I'm not sure. But being as how this is the very first time in our history H. sapiens sapiens has stood on this very spot in the Milky Way, I know nothing of the "Why" for anything. Who knows how the effects of this particular spot in the cosmic plane may affect us? Or maybe my strange craving was just some chemical deficiency being transmitted from my cells to my brain, then gut, that something in beans was something I was lacking. Something I needed because of my strange dinner the night before.

Whatever the reason, the fact our species is the last surviving representative of our genus and we are likely, from all available evidence, manifesting our destiny to join our extinct siblings, sooner rather than later, via our very violent and careless behaviors toward our own species and its generous host Earth, I decided to do all I could to contribute a small part to promoting our genus' longevity as much as possible. That is, I would have baked beans for breakfast if that's what my biology was inexplicably demanding!

I make my own breakfasts because I love eggs and enjoy doing many different things with 'em. So here is Tuesday morning's breakfast I whipped up in the kitchen for the very first time. With beans, of course.

First I laid the foundation. It consisted of a warmed flour tortilla on top of which I laid in some very hot pico de gallo - the heavier the hotter (better). Heaping on enough pico will count as a day's serving of vegetables. Next added, a smattering of diced onions and some cheddar cheese. Please note, with apologies, cooking and assembling with one hand while photographing it with the other in low light and no flash added a nice blurry flavor to pictures if not the final product's actual taste.

This I topped with one EVO fried egg. I don't usually break the yoke, but did to make it spread out and nicely cover the first layer. At this point, I was really excited I would soon be satisfying my hunger for solid food with baked beans, of course.

Ah, finally (!), I topped the egg with another flour tortilla and slathered it with spoonfuls of beans (sans pork please!), added a little more cheese, red taco sauce and sliced olives. Final addition was a couple of slightly overdone (for crispness) vegetarian bacon strips. Yummy, bean craving sated! And the new filling worked great!

Okay, I'm pretty sure that didn't help the survivability of our species any or that I even extended its lifespan on the planet but I can tell you, for the few brief moments while consuming this, I really didn't a rat's ass if we blow ourselves to smithereens.

Thanks to KFOX-TV for sending a crew to cover yesterday's anniversary rememberance of the bombing of Hiroshima...

...but where were the other local El Paso TV News stations, KVIA, KDBC, KTSM?

I'm always saddened at the all too often small turnouts for important events such as yesterday's downtown El Paso observance of the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Sixty-four years ago on August 6th, 70,000 people were instantly vaporized with one terrible new weapon and all we can muster is 30-35 people from El Paso and Las Cruces to remember?

Dada wonders, what if 64 years ago 70,000 people in the border city of El Paso/Juarez were incinerated in a second? Would more Americans remember? (Well, maybe not.) But, say, what if it was 70,000 people in Denver or Seattle burned to a crisp? (Maybe?) I don't really know.

Here then are the words of one of yesterday's speakers, Fr. Peter Hinde, who is exceptionally qualified as our Monday afternoon's instructor on Latin America this summer.

[Note: Fr. Hinde's theme about "Where is the media?" inspired my opening for today's blog. Oh, and sorry, but from a quick check of the EP newspapers, this was apparently a non-story also, which is frightening in that 64 years later human annihilation is about as imminent as ever and growing more so by the year with the proliferation of such weapons].

***********************************

Pax Christi Aug 6, 2009 (sporsor of yesterday's Hiroshima memorial)


"Good afternoon. Father Vincent introduced me as a member of Pax Christi. I am also a member of Veterans for Peace, a veteran of the US Army Air Force of WW II. The bombing of Hiroshima was on August 6th, Nagasaki on the 9th, and three days later with the 457th Fighter Squadron I flew over Nagasaki. We were on a fighter sweep to Seoul, Korea to knock down Japanese fighter planes. From 15,000 feet looking down I could only detect where the port city of Nagasaski had been.

"What would be the most hopeful sign for true peace today? Rallies like ours here in El Paso occurring all over the country? A mobilization of hundreds of thousands … maybe millions in Washington, D.C.? Or hundreds, even thousands, of people arrested at civil disobedience protests? Such protests have already happened. Those arrested and tried, before sentencing, called on judges to hold US war policy accountable before international law? But the Media. Where is the Media to pick up such testimony?

"Too few in military service know their right and obligation to obey international law when given an unlawful command. They have a right to speak the truth even if it leads to the indictment of a superior officer, even if that superior is the President of the United States. We have witnesses from those who have served in WW II, in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Gulf War, in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, and they have joined Veterans for Peace. But where is the Media coverage? (in Hell, Healing and Resistance wherein you find their testimonies)

"Major General Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps tells us: “I spent 33 y ears and 4 months in active military service as a member of our country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. During that period I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. [Do some of these names sound familiar?] In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” But where is the Media to pick up his voice?

"Major General Butler goes on: “I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession, I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended motion while I obeyed the orders of high ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.” When I flew over Japan in WW II, I was but a cog in a war machine, a skilled fighter pilot promoted at the age of 23 to the rank of Captain. I didn’t wake up till years later when I met a Japanese priest whose whole family was wiped out in Hiroshima, he away at the time of the bomb in training for the Japanese Air Force.

"Again General Butler: 'I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909 – 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American Sugar interests in 1916. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.'

"The raping of those same and other countries in the Latin American continued after Major General Butler’s service. Over the 40 years of my own experience in those countries as a priest missionary the U.S. supported military dictatorships: Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras. Over this time frame there was better media coverage, but always with the Administration’s spin, and outright lies.

"A case in point to illustrate such lies in our US media. In August 1985 a New England delegation of Witness For Peace, I with them, went down the San Juan River on the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica to investigate charges that the Contra forces were operating out of bases in Costa Rica. Reagan denied it; the government of Costa Rica denied it. Yet the 26 of us - reporters, ABC, NBC and CBS camera crews accompanying - were taken off our little boat by Contra forces and held for 24 hours at one of their outposts in Costa Rica.

"In the return at one point a New York Times reporter rented a high speed launch and we got to where he could phone his editor at the Times from the only phone in the town of David. I overheard the reporter’s end of the conversation as he insisted with the clearest of evidence: “Yes, they were Contra! Yes, we were in Costa Rica!” We had traversed a river with Nicaragua on one side and Costa Rica on the other, taken by soldiers outfitted with boots and guns from the US. The armed men admitted they were Contra and expressed their grievances against the Nicaraguan government.

"The “report” in the Times as also in the other media could be summarized: “These were hippie types from the US. There is confusion as to where they were taken and by whom. Some said one thing; others contradicted that.”

"In recent years with preparation to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, Chiefs of staff at first told the President a war in the Middle East was doomed to failure, but President George Bush, who never saw a day of war service, knew better. Generals, Colonels spoke out about this Iraq War saying it was poorly planned, Col. Andrew Bacavich expert on the history of the US military charges that the US is addicted to military solutions to conflicts. You will find him on Internet… not in the Major Media. We need courageous whistle-blowers.

"Some in the Administration in important positions in the chain of command gave evidence that Congress and the US people were being misled. Our problem is the Media, the IVth power of government, and maybe the most powerful, is owned by corporations. We have to fight for the right to be informed and that our Congress listen to the people instead of to the corporate lobbyists. The case of Dan Rather is also illustrative. He was fired because he would not toe the Bush Administration line.

"There is a straw in the wind. Some of our top military strategists are now questioning the US Nuclear Policy. Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of Baltimore was asked by STRATCOM, the military command in charge of the Nuclear program for the United States to give the keynote address to a conference of top military strategists and to challenge them from an ethical point of view. They trusted Archbishop O’Brien for he had been in the military service in charge of all catholic chaplains.

"O’Brien reminded them of the US Bishops’ 1983 Peace Document that called for nuclear disarmament. The bishops back then tolerated a policy of deterrence, but only if serious efforts were made toward disarmament. Instead the US maintained its policy of Mutual Assured Destruction in the last three administration and has gone ahead to develop tactical nuclear weapons. Obrien called for a policy of ZERO nuclear weapons.

"We need of a Federal level Peace Department with funds subtracted from the Defense Department, formerly and more properly called the War Department .

"Let’s boycott the Major Media and go to sources that can be trusted to really inform. If there is anything the previous administration learned from Hitler it is that you keep things secret, keep the people dumbed down, and then rally them around the flag. One administration after another has used “false flag” issues to justify war, and by that much have desecrated the flag. Let’s make that flag stand for truth, justice and love for all humankind. In God we trust. OK then let’s trust God and begin to disarm. Then our freedom with be complete and the USA worthy to be called the land of the free and the brave.

"(Remember the first of Professor Britt’s 14 characteristics of fascism. “Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public display.)"

The final words of my dentist's assistant as I exited the chair with my new filling: "Only very soft foods or liquids the rest of the day!"

Thirty-seven minutes later I was in an Albertson's check-out line with my dinner: a half gallon of vanilla ice cream and a four pack of Samuel Adam's 9.2% Alc/Vol. Imperial Stout. (I'd been looking for a reason to try this new stout and, besides, I sure didn't want to damage that new replacement filling the dentist had labored over for an hour.)

It was a filling that nearly dropped me to my knees while chewing bubble gum in the wine aisle of Costco last December 22nd. Apparently the gum discovered a nerve. I haven't chewed bubble gum since. Coincidentally, my next dental appointment was the very following day, the 23rd.

I happened to mention my day before "religious bubble gum induced experience" to my hygienist. She in turn mentioned it to the dentist. He checked around, saw nothing suspicious and, with an asterisk said, "Sometimes, if a tooth cracks, it's difficult to see. Call me if it bothers you." The x-rays during my July visit were inconclusive. An old filling, if that's what it was, hadn't been bothering me other than a slight sensitivity to pressure once in awhile. I suggested to doc, "Maybe we should wait til next time; to let 'it' grow until we can see it." Doc didn't think that wise.

So this past Monday in the dentist's office, 45 minutes after my appointment time, I was finally called in to replace that suspected filling. The tooth, still not much of a problem, prompted me to suggest, "Since you're running so behind this morning, maybe I should just come back for this later, say, like next February!" (Again my suggestion was nixed.)

I should tell you I've been going to this dentist for many years. My faith in him is what keeps me coming back. When I chipped a front tooth years ago, I was sure it would mean a cap but my dentist rebuilt it, sculpting it back to like new condition.

My dentist and I have been through the "irrational exuberance" years of the stock market's internet/technolgy bubble when we would exchange our latest stock purchase tips. Back then doc would fill more stock trades on his back office laptop between patients than fillings in their mouths.

Then the bubble burst, the market went south. Eventually we had no "tips" to exchange. We eschewed any mention of the subject. But Monday was different. I guess each of us was curious as to the other's opinion of where things economic stand right now and where we're headed.

You have to understand, financially doc and I are opposites. He buys properties in Dallas, the New Mexico mountains, etc. while I, in turn, am on the other end of the economic spectrum, i.e., I help him pay for those things with visits every six months. I also helped with his flight lessons in the 90's, as well his trips to places like "Cabo."

Yet, we are polar opposites on many things, which is never more evident than when he knowingly says something antithetical to my opinions for which I have no response with my mouth full of mirrors, picks, drill bits and suction tubes. He knows this. He enjoys it. And I guess I do too. It keeps me coming back.

And so Monday, while waiting for the Novocaine to kick in, we talked about our concerns for the economy and where it may be taking us. In a way, on this, we have never been closer. But being more doom and gloomy than he, I asked where he keeps the gold he recommends buying. He named places like safe deposit boxes and brokerage houses. That didn't mollify my suspicions of such places should the very economic foundation the nation has built the walls of its playing card empire upon crumble.

"With Wall Street already stripping the treasury bare in broad daylight with bailouts and bonuses, do you really think the closed down bank is going to let you inside to your safe deposit box, most likely already looted? Or that bankrupt brokerage houses will transmit the proceeds from your *GLD* sell order to your locked down bank over electronic wires lying lifeless in the streets as they're all abandoning ship with our loot for some unknown island paradise?" I asked.

That's just the cynic in me. At least we agreed one place you should NOT keep your gold and silver. At home. In the house. Starving people may get suspicious you are not as hungry and emaciated looking as they. And Doc added one other place you shouldn't keep your gold. In glistening crowns in your mouth. There are already people losing their heads just over the border in Juarez for far less than their gold crowns.

One thing we did agree on, however, before I left. I would help him a bit this month with the payment on his Dallas properties.

"...no other signs of violence"

There was a short article on yesterday's El Paso Times online edition describing one of the murders (usually many - 8 per day in July) in Juarez. It's written by Daniel Borunda. It's written as it should be, objective and emotionally detached. A sign of good journalism, it reads thusly:

Decapitated man found in Juárez
Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times

A man's decapitated body was found early Monday in west Juárez.

Chihuahua state police said the man was wrapped in bed sheets with his severed head laying next to him inside a white plastic bag. His right ear had been cut off and left atop the blankets. The man was nude but his clothes were left on the body.

The man had not been identified but appeared to be in his 20s. He had no other signs of violence.

"He had no other signs of violence"! I was so thankful the victim wasn't brutalized more before dying.

Maybe my reaction was exaggerated. Maybe I was just injecting a reader's shock at the brutality, compassion for the victim, or whatever, which may be misplaced. That's because the article acknowledges the cause of death has not yet been determined, pending results of an autopsy.

I mean, I guess it's possible this may have been a suicide, right?

Dada's Dally, "C'est mon dada!"

Dadaism:

- an early 20th Century artistic expression that rejected logic and
embraced chaos and irrationality. It was a movement intended as
protest "against a world of mutual destruction." ( ~George Grosz, Dadaist)

Example:

Dada in art: Artist "R. Mutt" chose porcelain as his medium of choice
for the movement's most famous sculpture, entitled. "Fountain"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dadaism redux:

- political expression as an outgrowth of the artistic movement a century
earlier. Also rejects logic in favor of chaos and irrationality, but with
one minor difference from its predecessor: it is a movement intended
to promote a world of mutual assured destruction. (Dada 'dada')

Example:

Dada in government: Shown here as it manifests in sandstone and
marble in a fine blend with FOX News -- often the media of choice.

WARNING: Graphic graphic ahead! If easily offended by the antics of your own species, please don't go here!

From this morning's El Paso Times comes the latest total death figures from last month in the ongoing drug war in Juarez. Dada wishes to congratulate all sides in this seemingly endless battle. Of course, none of this would be possible without the most important of all behind-the-scene contributors -- American dopers!

As reported by the Times, a total of 248 Juarez murders (8 per day!) in July has established a new record for violent deaths in that city. This despite Mexican army troop and federal police buildups.

But 248 deaths in one month does more than set a record, it shows the tremendous progress being made in the drug war that during all of 2007 generated a mere 300 total deaths in El Paso's sister city! And it establishes a mark that Dada is sure will endure for, oh, er, at least the next 31 days!

Today's Juarez figures for July come on the heels of the number of deaths being reported that were suffered by the American military in Afghanistan during July. As one mother who lost her only son there on the 22nd of July said (wishing to retain anonymity while choking back tears), "It's good to receive the July death figures for Juarez. It makes me feel somewhat better about my lost son, about Afghanistan. We only lost 43 brave American soldiers there in an oil war last month. Imagine how much worse it could have been if we were fighting a drug war in Mexico!"

Great news, or how I inadvertently revived my Painter software after attending what I thought was its funeral.

I know there are some of you who enjoy the incredible images you have grown to expect here at Dada's. (So, okay, I'm prone to hyperbole, no one really notices the graphics.) However, in that I enjoy creating some of my own illustrations here on Dada's (often more than their accompanying text), I am happy to report I have managed to revive the program I use to create them with (Painter VI).

250GB external easy to install hard-drive

In that the PC is getting older now, I shopped for an external hard-drive to back-up files I do not want to lose. When first shopping for an external hard-drive, I saw a couple of 100+ GB HD's for around $79. Then last week I discovered this smaller, larger capacy (250GB) HD by Western Digital for $60, so I bought one.

Back in the 90's, I installed a second internal hard drive on my PC. It was a little unnerving for me inside the box with all those wires and cables, but I managed it. My, how things have changed! This little Western Digital just plugged into a USB port and "Presto! Bingo!" was up and running. No software to install. The PC immediately recognized the new hardware. This is how I imagine 'plug and play' to be years ago but never found it to be as easy as it was promoted to be -- until I added this little gizmo.

Which brings me to my lost Painter program which died a couple weeks after an update to some other software. A System Restore did nothing. Nor did unstalling/reinstalling Painter. Then I got the idea to install Painter on the new back-up hard drive. I wasn't sure it would work , coming through the old PC, but it did!

So far, I've been impressed with the friendliness of the new peripheral. It means I'll still be able to "paint" new graphics for Dada's, something you've all come to expect and enjoy. (OK, OK, I'm prone to hyperbole. Sorry.)