odds and ends

I haven't done this lately. Here are odds and ends not worth an entry by themselves:

I got a "survey" in the mail from Howard Dean, the Democratic National Party chairman. It's all made up to look official, with "registered" something-or-other in three places on the envelope and a cover letter from Dean asking for money. They were beginning to teach public opinion surveying when I was a government major at FSU, and I remember enough to recognize a bogus survey when I see it. I'm sending it in, though. I'm telling them what I think about the DNC's not seating the Florida delegates and the Democratic candidates ignoring Florida except to come in for fund-raisers. I'm proud to have omitted obscenities and profanities. They won't read it anyway, after seeing no check fall out of the envelope.

Obama and Hillarious are in Florida today. I wish them well but where have they been all during this campaign? I'm a Democrat the same way Will Rogers was a Democrat ("I don't belong to an organized political party. . ."). I'll hold my nose and vote Democratic in November because nobody can afford to pay me enough to vote for John McBush II.

Speaking of Bush, the man Garrison Keillor calls the "Current Occupant" now has 243 days left in office, or a little less than 35 weeks. Most babies conceived in the past two to seven weeks will be born with a Democrat in the White House.

On a somewhat brighter note, they've autopsied a man whose body was being guarded by a gator and concluded that he drowned with no assistance from the gator. This came too late to save the gator, however. You can read about it here:
http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/5/18/349430.html

This news came a couple of weeks after a professional golfball retriever was attacked by a gator at a golf course but fended him off, after gouging him (the gator) in the eye and telling him Bobby Bowden was on the next green with a couple of FSU football players carrying gigs and a big rope. Just kidding about Bowden and the FSU players. The golfball retriever wears a wet suit and a Scuba tank, which makes the job somewhat harder for the gator.

Sometime this summer I will be undergoing eye surgery -- cataract surgery. I've worn glasses since the first grade and contact lenses since tenth grade, but my vision in one eye is getting cloudy and the acuity in both eyes is not good. At some point I will have to take the contacts out and wear glasses for several weeks. I haven't worn glasses since I went to ROTC summer camp 40-plus years ago. My new glasses resemble the bottom of the glass I'm drinking out of as I type this. Wearing them is going to require a lot of time to get used to them, because everything looks a mile away. I'll keep you posted.