
The image below is from Key West ans is approximately the same time. There is a very well defined eye which is indicative of strength. She is expected to make landfall sometime Tuesday.

Just the musings of a humble Spaceport Bartender about the world he finds himself in.
by Jean-Louis SantiniSun Aug 24, 3:01 PM ET
The chill left on US-Russian relations by Moscow's military incursion into Georgia could spell problems for future US access to the International Space Station, US experts said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will become dependent on flights to the ISS by Russia's Soyuz spacecraft when it retires the shuttle fleet that has long ferried US astronauts into space in 2010.
NASA will only get its successor space vehicle, Orion, planned for a revival of trips to the moon, ready for flight in 2015 at the earliest.
That leaves the needs of US astronauts visiting the ISS vulnerable to the possibility of a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow after Russia's powerful military overran much of Georgia two weeks ago in the dispute over South Ossetia.
"If recent Russian actions are any indicator, a technical excuse to completely block US access to the ISS for geopolitical reasons would fit nicely into the Kremlin toolkit," Vincent Sabathier, an expert on human space exploration at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told AFP.
Sabathier noted that not only was the short Georgia war a serious thorn in relations, but also the US determination to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic its missile defense system, which Russia calls a threat to its military.
"Almost immediately after the Czech Republic signed an agreement with the US to place missile defense tracking radar in its territory, oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to the central European country were reduced to a trickle... ostensibly for technical reasons," Sabathier said.
The end of the three-decade-old shuttle program leaves NASA with at least a five-year hole on which it will have to pay Russia's space agency to deliver and retrieve US astronauts and cargo to the ISS.
That depends as well on the US Congress voting an exemption to a 2000 law that bans US government agencies from opening contracts with countries like Russia that are considered aiding Iran and North Korea, which the US has labelled supporters of terrorism.
Even before the Georgia fighting erupted on August 8 there was opposition in the Congress to such an exemption, and now that has likely increased, according to Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson.
"In an election year, it was going to be very difficult to get that waiver to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to an increasingly aggressive Russia," Nelson said.
"Now, I'd say it's almost impossible."
Nelson, who supports allowing NASA to contract the Soyuz, said that without the exemption the US could find itself in 2011 with no access to the 100-billion-dollar space station -- largely paid for by the United States.
Because the ISS needs someone aboard all the time to keep it going, the situation, Nelson said, would mean leaving the station to "degrade and burn up on rentry, or with us ceding it to those who can get there."
NASA's chief Michael Griffin told AFP just days before the Georgia conflict erupted that it was a "great concern" that something could happen to make Soyuz unavailable.
"If anything at all in that five years period goes wrong with the Russian Soyuz, then we have no system to access the space station."
But after the Russia invasion of Georgia, NASA downplayed the political risk, saying it has a long history of cooperation with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
All Things Considered, August 15, 2008 · The ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, and the strain this has put on relations between the United States and Russia, could have implications for whether or not American astronauts get to travel in space after NASA ends its space shuttle program.
NASA is planning to mothball the aging space shuttle in 2010. The agency is working on a replacement spacecraft, called Orion, which will be able to travel to the international space station and also the moon. That won't be ready until around 2015, however.
NASA was planning to fill that gap in American space travel by sending its astronauts up to the orbiting station on the Russian space agency's Soyuz spacecraft. Now, some members of Congress are worried that NASA isn't going to get the political support the agency needs to do that.
"The challenge we have is that for approximately five years, the plan — which is a very bad plan but is the only plan that NASA and the administration and Congress have approved — is to be dependent on the Russian Soyuz vehicle to get people to and from the international space station," says Tom Feeney, a Republican congressman from Florida, which is home to the shuttle. "And so now, with the political realities with Russia invading Georgia, we have a new wrinkle thrown in."
The wrinkle is that NASA needs Congress to act soon if the agency is going to be able to buy flights to the station after 2011. That's because Russia needs three years of lead time to build new space capsules. And to make a contract with the Russians, NASA needs a special waiver from Congress.
"The waiver is required because under U.S. law, any country that provides weapons or nuclear capabilities to countries like Iran, North Korea and Syria, is prohibited from getting American technology or entering into any contract for American technology," Feeney says. "It would be illegal for NASA, unless [it] had a waiver, to actually contract to use the Soyuz to get to and from the space station."
Feeney says the House of Representatives was in favor of granting NASA a limited waiver, "but that was before the hostilities in Georgia. My guess is that in the Senate, the attitude is going to be much less friendly toward cooperation with the Russians."
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who spent nearly a week orbiting the Earth on space shuttle Columbia in 1986, says it wasn't easy to previously get support for the waiver. Now, it's even more difficult.
"With the aggressiveness of Russia in Georgia, I think it's dead on arrival," he says. "This tension with the newly energized and resurgent Russia, being run by a man that fancies himself as the czar of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is now going to cause a very serious problem in our American space program."
But NASA spokesman Michael Braukus doesn't seem so concerned. He notes that NASA and Russia's space agency have a long history of successful cooperation.
"We feel that while it's possible that government-to-government issues could have an impact on our relationship, we haven't really picked up any word or any feedback from the Hill that that's what will happen," Braukus says.
He says they won't know for sure until Congress returns to session.
Even if Congress didn't want to let NASA buy more flights from Russia, there's no easy "Plan B." The government could extend the life of the aging space shuttle. But continuing to fly the shuttle, while also building its replacement, would be very expensive.
Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), head of the House Committee on Science and Technology, said in a written statement that "the administration's lack of contingency planning and its 'penny-wise, pound foolish' budgeting for NASA have put the nation in the position where we don't really have a good alternative to depending on Russia for the next seven years, unless the nation is prepared to start providing significant additional funding to NASA."
He said Russia had proved to be a reliable partner in the aftermath of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, when NASA had to ground shuttle flights during the investigation. He said that "barring a major rupture in the U.S.-Russian relationship across the board," he did not see why space cooperation could not be maintained.
Diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall traces the fault lines in the current Georgian conflict back to the Soviet era and finds some ominous echoes of the Cold War.
![]() There have been ominous signs of score settling between Russia and Georgia |
My first visit to Georgia was in 1977. I was staying with an old lady, the widow of a rather famous Russian artist called Vassily Shukhaev¸ who spent 10 years in exile in Siberia under Stalin.
She came to live in balmy Georgia because, she told me, "I've seen enough snow in my life. I never want to be cold again."
Tbilisi then was chaotic, ramshackle and delightfully wayward after the stifling torpor of Brezhnev's Soviet Russia.
Georgians, to my amazement, blithely referred to "the Soviet Union" as another country, somewhere in the north over the mountains, distancing themselves from it psychologically.
With the Soviet lid still firmly on, if there were resentments, they simmered beneath the surface. It was a long way off yet from the burning knotted frustrations which ignited this latest violent conflagration.
But this is not a eulogy for Soviet times and its duplicitous Cold War slogan, that hailed "Friendship of Nations."
Soviet legacy
Far from it. Because it is in part the legacy of the Soviet Union - that network of autonomous regions and republics still peppering the landscape, which engendered the so-called frozen conflicts.
Like so many Soviet concepts, the idea of autonomous regions, inside the 15 main republics that made up the USSR, was both laudable and devious.
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In theory, it gave smaller ethnic groups some autonomy, a structure within which to nurture culture, language and history.
And in the Caucasus especially, each language and culture, whether Abkhazian, Georgian, Ossetian or any of dozens more, should be a jewel to be treasured and protected, especially in our inter-connected world, where bland homogeneity threatens to wash over all of us.
'Moscow's safety net'
But in the Soviet era, the Kremlin's patronage of smaller ethnic minorities was not only about protecting difference.
It was also a deliberate ruse and a political safety net, so elites in these autonomous regions could be encouraged, when needed, to play the part of a Trojan horse, a loyal legion to curb the ambitions of any upstart republic, by ensuring disobedience to Moscow was challenged from within.
This is, of course, what happened when the Soviet Union fell apart. Independent Georgia found that its two enclaves on Russia's border were resisting the new order.
South Ossetia wanted to retain close links with North Ossetia on the Russian side.
Abkhazia feared losing its identity altogether if Georgia's first president made good his threat of delivering a, "Georgia for Georgians."
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Plenty of blame has been thrown around in the last week, both contemporary and historical.
One of the tragedies of this conflict is that there are now two opposing accounts of what happened - one Ossetian, backed by Russia - one Georgian, backed by many Western countries.
Two contradictory views of events that divide not just political leaders, but ordinary people - the Orwellian inversion inherent in that old Soviet claim of Friendship of Nations finally stripped of its cloaking.
Galloping crisis
But even more alarming is the dangerous international fault line opening up. Only one week on, and this is no longer about Trojan horses and tiny frozen conflicts. The crisis is galloping full tilt towards a wider battle.
![]() There are two opposing accounts of what happened in South Ossetia |
Already Russia and the West are at loggerheads over the real reasons for this latest violence and where it might be heading.
Russia insists it moved into South Ossetia to respond to a humanitarian crisis.
This is what any civilised country does, say its spokesmen, like Nato attacking Serbia to protect Kosovo refugees in 1999, or the US after 11 September, retaliating for a murderous attack on its citizens.
The United States is now openly accusing Russia of a blatant land grab to punish Georgia for daring to try to join Nato and integrate with the West, to reclaim the Caucasus as its sphere of influence, and to send a veiled threat to other former Soviet client states .
And what is interesting about that, is that it reveals the US too sees this as a battle for geostrategic power, and is marshalling its diplomatic defences.
Already Poland has rushed to conclude negotiations with the US over the controversial missile defence shield Russia had protested so vigorously about.
Ukraine's defiance
Ukraine's President Yushchenko, another Nato aspirant, has sent early defiant signals, that if the Kremlin hopes to intimidate him too, it is not working.
His shot across the bows was to warn Russia its Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol in the Crimea sits in harbour on Ukrainian soil. He has provocatively demanded Russia give notice before vessels leave port.
But Putin's government has already in recent months made noises about the desirability of the Crimea, with its vociferous pro-Russian population, being Russian territory, despite Stalin's gifting it to Kiev.
Ukraine could be the next battleground.
And if it goes on like this a wider East-West split looks inevitable.
Not a return to the Cold War, but it could mark a chilling end to the post Cold War era of collaboration.
This is an intereating article taken from the Washington Post. I think it provides a good overview of the conflict in Georgia and what has happend there in recent weeks. Not all sides are innocent in this war and there are some forces at work who seek to have the US get involved in this. There are many reasons and history is one of them why we shouldn't be involved there. However, there are many reasons why we should and energy access is among them.
We are entering into an era where wars will be started to secure access to increasingly scarce resources. These wars will be increasingly bloody and very far away. The energy and resource companies will increasingly see governments as their proxies for acces to wealth and their military forces as their private armies.
Eventually we may see, as has been shown in Iraq in a limited extent, the rise of the robust, well-equipped, private military force. These military forces may act directly on behaf of the companies they are hired to project for for. They will be anserable to no one and be under the control of no government. This has happend before with the British East India Company and will probably happen in the future. However, the British East India Company at least had the British Crown to answer to. Their more contemporary private counterparts will in all likelihood have none.
'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast.By Michael Dobbs
Sunday, August 17, 2008; B01
It didn't take long for the "Putin is Hitler" analogies to start following the eruption of the ugly little war between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Neoconservative commentator Robert Kagan compared the Russian attack on Georgia with the Nazi grab of the Sudetenland in 1938. President Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that the Russian leader was following a course "horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s."
Others invoked the infamous Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet leaders claimed the right to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe in order to prop up their crumbling imperium. "We've seen this movie before, in Prague and Budapest," said John McCain, referring to the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. According to the Republican presidential candidate,"today we are all Georgians."
Actually, the events of the past week in Georgia have little in common with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. They are better understood against the backdrop of the complica ted ethnic politics of the Caucasus, a part of the world where historical grudges run deep and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye.
Unlike most of the armchair generals now posing as experts on the Caucasus, I have actually visited Tskhinvali, a sleepy provincial town in the shadow of the mountains that rise along Russia's southern border. I was there in March 1991, shortly after the city was occupied by Georgian militia units loyal to Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first freely elected leader of Georgia in seven decades. One of Gamsakhurdia's first acts as Georgian president was to cancel the political autonomy that the Stalinist constitution had granted the republic's 90,000-strong Ossetian minority.
After negotiating safe passage with Soviet interior ministry troops who had stationed themselves between the Georgians and the Ossetians, I discovered that the town had been ransacked by Gamsakhurdia's militia. The Georgians had trashed the Ossetian national theater, decapitated the statue of an Ossetian poet and pulled down monuments to Ossetians who had fought with Soviet troops in World War II. The Ossetians were responding in kind, firing on Georgian villages and forcing Georgian residents of Tskhinvali to flee their homes.
It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time."
When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.
Let us examine the role played by the three main parties.
Georgia. Saakashvili's image in the West, and particularly in the United States, is that of the great "democrat," the leader of the "Rose Revolution" who spearheaded a popular uprising against former American favorite Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003. It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies: He sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station.
While the United States views Saakashvili as a pro-Western modernizer, a large part of his political appeal in Georgia has stemmed from his promise to reunify Georgia by bringing the secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under central control. He has presented himself as the successor to the medieval Georgian king David the Builder and promised that the country will regain its lost territories by the time he leaves office, by one means or another. American commentators tend to overlook the fact that Georgian democracy is inextricably intertwined with Georgian nationalism.
The restoration of Georgia's traditional borders is an understandable goal for a Georgian leader, but it is a much lower priority for the West, particularly if it involves armed conflict with Russia. Based on their previous experience with Georgian rule, Ossetians and Abkhazians have perfectly valid reasons to oppose reunification with Georgia, even if it means throwing in their lot with the Russians.
It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was disproportionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian "peacekeepers" were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault.
It was a huge miscalculation. Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin (and let there be no doubt that he is calling the shots in Moscow despite having handed over the presidency to his protege, Dmitri Medvedev) now had the ideal pretext for settling scores with the uppity Georgians. Rather than simply restoring the status quo ante, Russian troops moved into Georgia proper, cutting the main east-west highway at Gori and attacking various military bases.
Saakashvili's decision to gamble everything on a lightning grab for Tskhinvali brings to mind the comment of the 19th-century French statesman Talleyrand: "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake."
Russia. Putin and Medvedev have defended their incursion into Georgia as motivated by a desire to stop the "genocide" of Ossetians by Georgians. It is difficult to take their moral outrage very seriously. There is a striking contrast between Russian support for the right of Ossetian self-determination in Georgia and the brutal suppression of Chechens who were trying to exercise that very same right within the boundaries of Russia.
Playing one ethnic group against another in the Caucasus has been standard Russian policy ever since czarist times. It is the ideal wedge issue for the Kremlin, particularly in the case of a state such as Georgia, which is made up of several different nationalities. It would be virtually impossible for South Ossetia to survive as an autonomous entity without Russian support. Putin's government has issued passports to Ossetians and secured the appointment of Russians to key positions in Tskhinvali.
The Russian incursion into Georgia proper has been even more "disproportionate" -- in President Bush's phrase -- than the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali. The Russians have made no secret of their wish to replace Saakashvili with a more compliant leader. Russian military targets included the Black Sea port of Poti -- more than 100 miles from South Ossetia.
The real goal of Kremlin strategy is to reassert Russian influence in a part of the world that has been regarded, by czars and commissars alike, as Russia's backyard. Russian leaders bitterly resented the eastward expansion of NATO to include Poland and the Baltic states -- with Ukraine and Georgia next on the list -- but were unable to do very much about it as long as America was strong and Russia was weak. Now the tables are turning for the first time since the collapse of communism in 1991, and Putin is seizing the moment.
If Putin is smart, he will refrain from occupying Georgia proper, a step that would further alarm the West and unite Georgians against Russia. A better tactic would be to wait for Georgians themselves to turn against Saakashvili. The precedent here is what happened to Gamsakhurdia, who was overthrown in January 1992 by the same militia forces he had sent into South Ossetia a year earlier.
The United States. The Bush administration has been sending mixed messages to its Georgian friends. U.S. officials insist that they did not give the green light to Saakashvili for his attack on South Ossetia. At the same time, however, the United States has championed NATO membership for Georgia, sent military advisers to bolster the Georgian army and demanded the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity. American support might well have emboldened Saakashvili as he was considering how to respond to the "provocations" from South Ossetia.
Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus where the Georgian tail is wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in extending NATO membership, or even the promise of membership, to countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend.
In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia, while the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.
Michael Dobbs covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for The Washington Post. His latest book is "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War."
Well, I heard about this from a friend and thought I might post this here. The following items are actually up for bid on e-Bay Australia. For all those jilted ladies out there......
SO HERE'S THE STORY SO FAR.........
Once upon a time there was a women who, after 22 years of marriage, found evidence that the soon to be ex-husband, had had 'The Tart' in their marital bed this very afternoon. This low life deceitful son-of-a-person ( I'm all for political correctness) blatently denied that this event took place even though the evidence is irrefutable and is now up for auction on e-bay.
The first tiny warning bells started ringing around about the same time a text message was received by the wife stating 'Where are you darling, I'm waiting'. As the wife had left the soon to be ex-husband at home only a couple of hours earlier to go to work, she thought it somewhat strange getting a message of that ilk from him. After a while curiosity got the better of her and with some trepidation, she decided to go home after telling her boss she had an upset stomach, which was no lie. When she arrived home an hour or so later, everything seemed normal but she couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right. His car was parked in the drive-way where she had seen it earlier on and when she got inside, there he was infront of the T.V. watching a DVD as usual. She explained she wasn't feeling too well and said she was going to lie down for a while. His re-action to this was a bit odd to say the least. 'Why don't you lie down here on the couch for a while and I'll get you a cup of tea', he said. That was her first clue that something really was amiss here. Call him chauvinistic if you want and you would be right because this low-life had never made her a cup of tea in over 22 years of marriage.... so why offer now. Yep, you guessed it, he didn't want her going into the bedroom.... now why was that you may ask. She concluded later that 'The 'Tart' must have been in the process of getting her ass dressed and out of there pronto when she had unexpectedly arrived home. Of course she made a bee line for the bedroom then, with soon to be ex-hubby on her heels and apart from an unmistakable aroma of some cheap perfume resembling nail polish remover hanging in the air, nothing seemed to be different - except for one thing. Oh, you men, you will never understand why we have those, annoying to you though they may be, throw pillows and cushions on a bed and what they mean to us women. They are aesthetically important to our decor and when you see them piled up on a chair in a corner of the room, instead of on the bed where you arranged them a few hours ago, those tiny warning bells you heard earlier were now starting to sound like 'Big Ben'. Walking over to the bed, she started slowly taking it apart whilst the soon to be ex-husband stood in the doorway watching. Initially, when she first took the doona cover off, she was sure he just thought she was going to have a lie down but he was oh so very wrong. After the doona was deposited on the floor, she picked up her pillow, turned it over, checked under where it had been and then threw it on the floor. Then came his pillow, she picked it up and here was where she found the first of the two items up for auction - an empty condom packet. With forefinger and thumb, it was gently lifted from the bed and dangled in front of the soon to be ex-husband's nose. He had, by then, turned a lovely shade of red and you could see his mind was racing,... 'how the hell am I going to get out of this'. He then said the only inane thing he could come up with at the time which was, 'What's that?'. As a couple, they had not used condoms for many years, or at least she hadn't, but surely that didn't mean he could have forgotten what one looked like! For some reason, she continued to strip the bed and when the top sheet was removed the location of the 2nd item up for auction, 'The Tart's' knickers, were discovered at the foot of the bed.
Explanations were needed pronto and would you beleive it, he actually came up with some. They were all a pack of lies and instead of admitting it, apologizing and starting to grovel, this is what he came up with. 'I dropped my phone down the toilet, I didn't want to put my hands down there and I could't get it out with the toilet brush so I used a condom because I couldn't find any rubber gloves'. Well, well, well, that was thinking on your feet eh! She thought she had heard it all now but figured she would see how big a hole he really was keen to dig for himself so she then asked. ' When was that then and where did you get the condom from?'. He replied, 'It happened just after you left for work and I rummaged around and found one in the pocket of an old jacket in the wardrobe'. 'So how is your phone then, is it working?' she asked... 'No, it's stuffed', he replied. 'So how do you explain sending me a text message a couple of hours after I was at work then'. 'What message? It wasn't from me, my phone's not working', he replied but noticed he had gone a funny shade of green as it began to sink in that he had actually sent the text to her by mistake. 'What about these knickers then, what are they doing in our bed and whose are they', she asked thinking to herself, this will be good. She wasn't disappointed, as blatant as lies go, it was a classic. 'Sorry love, I've been meaning to tell you for years but I am a closet transvestite and they are mine'.
10 out of 10 for trying buddy but your out of here........ systematically his clothes were gathered up and thrown out the front door along with 'The 'Tart's' knickers which, after second thoughts, were scooped up and retrieved. YES, there really is a God for it started to rain then. Not just that fine rain which gets on your damn nerves but bucket loads of torrential rain which the soon to be ex-husband found himself standing in whilst calling the soon to be ex-missus all the names under the sun. He was gathering up his wet soggy clothes and the photo she had thrown at him of them outside the church on their wedding day (she thought that maybe a nice touch) when he screamed out for his car keys and wallet. Off she went to get them and with no hesitation, handed them over and told him to get lost in no uncertain terms then watched as he drove away. Dangling in her hand was the key she had slipped off his keyring, to the soon to be ex-husband's 'Harley Hog', his pride and joy - which brings me nicely to the next item that will probably be sold on Ebay at a start price of.99c and of course, with no reserve!
Bhulbona ar shohojete
Shei praan e mon uthbe mete
Mrittu majhe dhaka ache
je ontohin praan
Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
Shei shurete jagbo ami
(Repeat 2X)
Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
dao more shei gaan
Shei jhor jeno shoi anonde
Chittobinar taare
Shotto-shundu dosh digonto
Nachao je jhonkare!
Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
Shei shurete jagbo ami
(Repeat 3X)
Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
Shei shurete jagbo ami
Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
dao more shei gaan
Footnote:
The lyrics are based off a poem.
From Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (sung by Palbasha Siddique).
“Stream of Life”
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
The Joys Of Boys............Girls can do some of this stuff too!
The following came from an anonymous mother in Austin, Texas..
Things I've learned from my Boys (honest and not kidding):
1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a
2000 sq. ft.house
4 inches deep.
2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
3.) A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.
5.) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
6.) The glass in windows (even double-pane)doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
7.) When you hear the toilet flush and the words "uh oh", it's already too late.
8.) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
9.) A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a
36-year old man says they can only do it in the movies.
10.) Certain Lego's will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old Boy.
11.) Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
12.) Super glue is forever.
13.) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool, you still can't walk on water.
14.) Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15.) VCR's do not eject "PB &J" sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
16.) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17.) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18.) You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.
19.) Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.
20.) The fire department in Austin, TX has a 5-minute response time.
21.) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.
22.) It will, however, make cats dizzy.
23.) Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
24.) 80% of Men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.
Women will pass this on to almost all of their friends, with or without kids.
a) For those with no children - this is totally hysterical!
b) For those who already have children past this age, this is hilarious.
c) For those who have children this age, this is not funny.
d) For those who have children nearing this age, this is a warning.
1. What is your occupation? Security Officer
2. What color are your socks right now?
3. What are you listening to right now? Sibelius Symphony No. 1 by the Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimr Ashkenazy conducting.
4. What was the last thing that you ate? Eggs and those flakey biskits with jelly on them. Ummmmm.
5 Can you drive a stick shift? I learned really late in my driving life. I have a tendancy to burn out a clutch. I want to respect the automobile so I try not to drive on a stick too much if I can help it. Besides its VERY expensive to replace a clutch.....
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Sky Blue
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My best friend Stephanie.
8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? I swiped this from Heather's blog and I like her
9. How old are you today? 44 years and one month exactly today. Not sure if I need to go into more detail than that...... After all, this isn't particle physics.
10. Favorite Drink? I love iced tea... NO LEMON. If I wanted tea flavored lemonade, I would ask for it.... Mc Donalds has come out with an excellent sweet tea that I could live on....
11. What is your favorite sport to watch? Don't watch much sports. I watch baseball only if the Cardinals are playing. I could really go for airplane racing at one time if they had it on TV. No one covers what I like anyway.....
12. Have you ever dyed your hair? No. Still I am starting to get these grey spots in my hair and whenever I let my sideburns grow, I get this "Reed Richards" look with the grey on the ends....
13. Pets? No I don't but I would love to have a cat, but then again, I have so much stuff in my life and I'd want the time to be with my friend.
14. Favorite food? Lately I have fallen in love with Michelinas Lean entrees. I take them to work and they are tasty and have a wide vareity of flavors. .
15. Last movie you watched? At the theaters I saw Hancock a few weeks ago. At home I just watched "The Wind and the Lion" directed by John Milius.
16. Favorite Day of the year? Every day is just like any other....
17. What do you do to vent anger? I find that people tend not to be interested in what I am angry about. I usually talk to myself and vent. Usually I am alone with ym anger.
18. What was your favorite toy as a child? I had a lot of toys that I loved. Nothing really stands out as a favorite. I shouldn't have to think about that really and now that I do if I had a favorite, I would still have it....
19. What is your favorite, fall or spring? Spring because winter's death grip is off the world and new life is begining Also, its warmer. I dislike the cold miserable weather.
20. What was your first job? Working at the Boys Club as a councilor. However, I had a really good job working at Bass Pro as a packer. Just couldn't keep up with the 40 packages an hour they called for. I delivered Chinese Food (cooked it too) for a bit.
21. Cherry or Blueberry? Not usually a berry kind of guy....
22. Do you want your friends to email you back? I think this is one of those e-mail test things, so I really don't expect anything like that. Feel free to leave a comment though.
23. Who is most likely to respond? I hope a few people....
24. Who is least likely to respond? to this? Pretty much everyone who just does blog-by readings ( I’m guilty of that myself )
26. When was the last time you cried? I been crying a lot lately. My best friend is dying of Cancer, my brother is going through financial difficulty and the stress is starting to get to me.
27. What is on the floor of your closet? Shoes, a few boxes and some suitcases.
28. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this? See #22
29. Who is the friend you have had the shortest that you are sending this to? See #22
30. What is your favorite smell? Fresh bread baking. Ever since they closed St. Louis Bread at the mall for that damn construction, I have missed that smell terribly.
31. What inspires you? A beautiful sunrise, a wonderful song or other piece of music, a movie that you wish the story would never end, a place that is natural with green trees and grass , filled with nature. Finally the idea of flight inspires me. The idea that you can take off in a plane and go anywhere in the world that vehicle can go is something that triggers my wunderlust..
32. What are you afraid of? I am afraid of not being able to make it. Knowing I live on the ragged edge of disaster just makes life a bitch. Its a daily struggle to just get out of bed sometimes.
33. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers? I guess it depends on my mood. It has to be plain or cheesy. No spicy for my delecate tummy.
34. Favorite car? One that runs and is paid for and works. A car I don't have to worry about.
35. Favorite cat breed? Spayed and Neutered.
36. Number of keys on your key ring? 5 for home, 1 for work three for the car, 1 for the storage room.
37. How many years at your current job? 2-3 years
38. Favorite day of the week? Payday
39. How many states have you lived in?