Random stuff

There's a new book out saying that Barry Bonds used steroids. It's all over the news. Uh..... Was there anyone around who didn't think he used them? (I guess this is big news to Naivey McEasyfooled from Headinthesand, Nebraska.) The question that I am hearing a lot is: Does this taint the home run record? And the answer is: Yes, it does. Babe Ruth set his record while ingesting massive amounts of tobacco, booze and processed meat products. It's not fair to compare his record to someone who's ingesting massive amounts of steroids and, I have to assume, ego inflator pills and self-entitlment supplements.

The other night after Kirby Puckett died the local news did a story about how at the Metrodome a bunch of people had come out to set up a memorial to him. Nice story right? One little problem. This "huge memorial" consisted of two carboard signs and a candle. They kept showing it from different angles to make it look like it was more but it was just pathetic. Why not wait untill there's a little more stuff there before you do that story? Oh yeah, cause you're a crappy local news show and you just have to get that big story first. It was done by the channel 11 reporter that I just hate too. I call him the Bart's People Guy. ("The old Number 9 doesn't come by here much anymore......")

For your enjoyment:

My sweet boy

I think I'm addicted to Hurricane Katrina footage. I try not to watch it when Joseph's around because I don't want to upset him so I watch little bits here and there when he's not in the room or I read about it online. Yesterday though I was watching a story about a town that had been totally wiped out and Joseph caught the very tail end of it. He asked why there was such a big mess on tv. I tried to explain that it was a really big storm that had knocked down the buildings but that sort of thing almost never happened and we were safe and nothing like that had happened to us. He asked if it had knocked down houses and I said it had. He started to look worried so I tried to reassure him that we were ok our house was safe. I could see he was getting upset and I thought he might be worried, remembering the storm we saw in Florida or remembering having to camp out in the basement a few weeks ago during a tornado warning. I kept trying to comfort him but his eyes were getting all filled with tears and his lower lip was trembling. Finally has asked me "But where will all those people live while they fix their houses? Now they don't have beds to sleep in!" Oh my god. First off, show me another 5 year old that would think of something like that. Second, it's really hard to give an upbeat, positive answer to that question when you're trying to keep tears from running down your face.

But I think I answered his questions ok. It's hard to know how much to say because on one hand I want to be able to protect him from having to think about bad stuff like that but on the other hand I know he's going to hear about it somewhere and I would rather he hear when he's with me and able to ask questions about it. It's hard to find a good balance.

This morning when he and I came downstairs he turned the tv on and it had been left on the news so he saw a little bit more (about 10 seconds) before I could shut it off. (It's one thing for him to see a knocked down house but he doesn't need to see coverage of the stuff that's going on at the convention center and what not.) When I turned the tv off he turned to me and frantically asked "What about all the babies?" I was able to give him a good answer this time. I told him I had seen a story about all the new babies in hospitals being taken to other hospitals in helicoptors and airplanes. I was able to tell him that all the babies were safe ...... cause, yeah, there's some things a kid doesn't need to know. He got this sweet look on his face, gave my belly a big hug and said "I'm glad our baby is safe in your tummy away from the hurnicane." What am I going to do with my sweet, sweet boy?

Sigh

I'm a little bit depressed. I've been reading too much about Hurricane Katrina online. As if all the devestation wasn't enough then people have to go and make it worse by looting and fighting and generally turning into sub-humans. It's one thing to break into your local Wal-Mart to steal food and blankets, it's another to break into an electronics store to steal a flat screen tv and car stereos or breaking into a children's hospital to steal drugs. Geez, people make me sick. I'm just thankful for my own little corner of the world where my family has a roof over it's head and the people I love are safe.

Sometimes In April

HBO has a new movie called Sometimes In April that they are playing a lot right now. If you have HBO you should really try to catch it. Be prepared, it's very tough to watch. It's about the tribal conflicts that resulted in mass genocide in Rawanda in 1994. It's kind of amazing that something like that was happening and people outside of the country really didn't know about it. It's pretty scary. Actually, what's really scary is that stuff like this is still going on today in parts of the world. Here is an interesting chart that shows some places that this kind of thing is still happening in: http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocidetable2003.htm I don't know, it was kind of hard for me to get to sleep last night.