Nom Nom Nom de Plume
Bullets pinged around me, hitting city buildings in little explosions of concrete. Ping. Ping. Ping, ping, pow. I dodged, then rolled around the corner and landed back on my feet. I adjusted my invisible tie, strolled into the restaurant and headed for the bar.
“Beer, PBR, can, pull tab, unopened. And shake the ever-lovin’ shit out of it.”
My wife looked radiant standing by the quasi-official counter where a disinterested staff person stood bored. Another member of staff had just departed with patrons in tow.
The place was almost completely empty.
“Sheila will seat you when she gets back. Your name, please?” Apparently Sheila was the only one with seating powers and it would likely be a wait of at least 45 seconds so, of course, they needed my name. Dammit, my cover was blown.
I paused, glanced at my wife, then said, awkwardly, “Fleischman. Joel Fleischman.”
I knew all that time invested watching Northern Exposure would pay off someday.
You gotta give my wife credit. She played it cool. Her mouth dropped open, she facepalmed, then moaned, loud enough for the woman at the counter to hear, “Oh, God.”
They never suspected a thing. Smooth. It’s all in a day’s work when you have a license to ill.
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Fukushima #reblog
Today’s regurgitation reblog is served up by the WordPress “random post” feature. Back on July 24, 2011, I posted an “Aerial Reconnaissance Challenge” that was a photograph of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. It was also a Sunday.
This morning, while looking for an updated photograph, I found this news scarcely four hours old:
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Parsing Obama
Luckily I'm already prepared for radiation events. Suckers!
“I want to be very clear: We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the U.S., whether it’s the west coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or the U.S. territories in the Pacific.”
— President Barack Obama, March 17, 2011
Putting on our critical thinking caps, we immediately see that this one is pretty easy.
We can start by examining what Obama does not say. For example, he doesn’t say anything like, “No radiation is going to reach the U.S.”
In other words, some radiation that is not “harmful” will reach the U.S.
He also said that he wants us to know what he knows as President. But unfortunately his vague comment doesn’t bother to provide a definition for what “harmful” really means.
He could have said, “Our best estimates are that Washington, Oregon and California will be exposed to X millirads by Tuesday.”
But he didn’t.
Meanwhile a graphic from the New York Times shows radiation in “arbitrary units” (whatever the hell that means) hitting the west coast of the U.S. by Friday (also known as yesterday).
It seems that no matter what our government may or may not be saying some of us may already be plumed. But that’s just what Obama told us would happen.
Ah, Japan, and your state-of-the-art earthquake preparedness. This was supposed to be the best of the best? Nuclear reactors that were only built to withstand about 80% of what could conceivably happen?
That is the way we humans do things, though. We always seem to think that we know what’s best.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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