A metaphor for something

I love found metaphors, the way they just crop up, ready for the picking. Today, being the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, will see a visit from Presnit Bush to New Orleans. After assuring the residents that he has been doing a heckuva job these two years in rebuilding the city, he will host a two minute silence. At the same time, in another part of the city, Mayor Ray Nagin will be ringing a bell to signify hope and progress:

“We ring the bells for hope that the promise that was made at Jackson Square will become a reality and will restore a confidence in government at all levels,” Nagin said, referring to President Bush‘s assurances of federal assistance during a September 2005 speech at the French Quarter landmark.”

Well. If that’s not a metaphor for something, I don’t know what is.

Dead Air

We have been laboring under slate-grey skies now for what must be ten days, surely over a week. August has stopped dead in its tracks. The rain may come in brief spasms, but the general atmosphere is still and unhealthy, and generally the ground is dry. Neither fish nor fowl. Neither baking heat nor air clearing storm. There is an industrial smell about tonight, as if we are living next to a badly functioning incinerator at the edge of a northern town. Down at Lake Michigan the seaweed clogs the shore and the waves break lethargically under a viscous skim. A oppressive marmoreal torpor bears down on it all.

Your tax dollars at work

Seen over at Corrente today, a bumper sticker from the Minneapolis St. Paul Area. Your tax dollars have been going to the hard pressed, wealth creating private sector all these years. Yeah, that’s what we need – more venture capitalists. Meanwhile, the bridges collapse.

Special yogurt

What a great town San Francisco is.  At some point, however, I seem to have picked up an especially persistent strain of food poisoning that won’t quite leave – bad sushi perhaps?  I’m walking along, minding my own business, and it’s as if the bottom has dropped out of the elevator for a minute.  And the bloating!  I think I might need some of that special yogurt that women eat.  But enough about me and my health issues.

The Traverse City  Film Festival is in full swing, and we have been seeing some good movies.  Only one exceptionally good movie, however, and that is Tuya’s Wedding, the only truly cinematic offering so far.  It’s beautifully done.  More later, perhaps.  Also, went to see the latest Bourne movie last night.  It was ok.  I think Bourne is now a dead horse.  There are very clear hints at the end that there will be a “Son of Bourne Reciprocity”, or something, but that would not be wise.