Miniature disasters and the Democratic nomination
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Today this blog turned six years old. I’ll take a cake with marzipan icing, please (but hold the marzipan babies). Mmm . . . sugar-almond paste.
Yesterday was a weird day of accidents in Corvallis. Driving to work in the morning, I was forced to stop because the westbound lanes of Philomath Boulevard had been temporarily closed in the aftermath of a four- or maybe five-car accident . . . then in the late morning something like half of Oregon State University campus lost power because of a fallen power line along 35th Street and Western Avenue (caused by a bird landing across two high-tension wires, causing a short circuit and blowing two fuses on the power pole) . . . then in the afternoon on campus, right in front of the Valley Library, a car driven by a student hit a professor riding his bicycle (at least that’s what I heard). I guess the professor (not wearing a helmet) did a faceplant on a manhole cover and they had to cut his shirt off in order to put a neck brace on (I happened to be walking across campus and saw this part). Hopefully he’s going to be OK; his face was pretty bloody.
(This bicycle wreck, however, is a way worse. It’s an unbelievable photo, like an explosion of cyclists. A sleepy drunk driver from Texas crashed into a bike race in Mexico yesterday.)
Though I suppose all of this is quite quaint in the context of . . . oh gee, I don’t know . . . the recent China Earthquake (69,122 dead with another 17,991 missing) or the Cyclone Nargis disaster in Burma (133,600 dead or missing, with 2.4 million people in need of food, shelter and medicine). Even the most serious local problems seem like miniature disasters in comparison. Reminds me of a song: “Miniature Disasters” by KT Tunstall.
Barack Obama finally claimed the Democratic nomination last night, defeating Hillary Clinton (though she hasn’t actually conceded yet). Remember back when we didn’t know Obama from Osama? The Los Angeles Times reports: “How Obama went from underdog to alpha.”
The 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination wasn’t the first time Hillary Clinton has refused to drop out of a race. This is a really funny video: Young Hillary Clinton.
Also, who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life: garfield minus garfield.
Are you ready for a 1980s throwback NBA Finals matchup? The Boston Celtics host the Los Angeles Lakers starting tomorrow.