Did anybody else catch the pope drooling as he made his latest celibacy plea? He's looking pretty bad - don't really expect him to hold much more than another year or so. Then we start the process of finding another again. This is almost always full of murder, mystery, and intrigue.

The protesters are out en masse in Washington (and also in Washington). That giant sucking sound you hear? Oh, it's nothing to be concerned with. It's that global war on terrorism, remember? Today we're gonna' blow up a couple of Phillipine villages and try and figure out a backup plan for getting rid of that socialist dude in Venezuela. We're also gonna' knock off a few poor people in Georgia and a couple of other former Russian states. Israel is gonna' blow up just another few dozen houses, and then they'll really pull out. Remember the third greatest lie? (I won't cum inside you, honest...). England and Canada want to go out and play howitzers with the Afghanis, well as long as we don't drop any more bombs on the Canadians. This isn't even counting the two-dozen or so other conflicts going on which have all gotten pumped up with fresh ammo by the container-load in the last six months. No, it's not a world war. That's different.

I tried late last year to invest in some infantry arms and ammo manufacturers. Profits are certainly soaring. But I quickly discovered that none of the big boys trade on exchanges. Privately held corporations. This makes sense - they have no need for outside funding, profits are incredible, and they don't have to answer to any social-activists or public pressure like the tobacco companies do.

Looks like a great day to wash the car, don't you think? Not me. I'm gonna' go work on some stubborn light fixtures. Besides - it's just over a couple of weeks 'til summer hits and we traditionally have a good last soaking.

Discovered that some of the brown eggs at the market have been touched up with food coloring - something you can only find out by hard-boiling. Wonder what they do with the white ones... Bleach bath? Chalk?

Since it happened to be on my mind I tempted mother nature by going to the car wash after heading home from the shop. Doesn't matter if it rains. Consider that the Cherokee hasn't been washed since probably before the millenium. The Wrangler doesn't get washed - ever. But I do reserve the right to scrape dead bugs off if they start to get like a quarter-inch thick. Had my radio on when I went into the thing. Ohmigosh. Big-time radiation field. Made a quick mental tally of how many joules were slamming through my body and decided that next time I might just use the hose. Those blowers are probably about 30-40 amps, another 30 or so for the motor that drives the thing. That's about 200 kilowatts (assuming 220V). Granted some of that energy is doing work on your car but there're still a lot of electrons pulsing around about a foot from you. And inside the car you're a giant capacitor. I used to work with a lot of concentrated energy fields and have a healthy respect for them.

Had to look at the archives and see if I had ranted previously about the Robert Blake thing. Yup. Now maybe we'll get to hear some of that dirty laundry.

Completely forgot last month to mark the twentieth anniversary of Gary's murder. Never heard back from the Boulder police - who sent me a letter last year promising to re-open the investigation. I followed up but they didn't. I even know that they've been surfing the web for clues. I've got the logs. Search hits for 'Gary Stoner murder Boulder' from a boulder city department and it's probably the only hit out there. Maybe by the time we hit twenty-five years they'll get her. Maybe not. My guess is she's probably done it again and gotten caught already. She enjoyed it too much. Let's see what I can remember. Stabbed an obscene number of times with an ice-pick. When the police started looking for clues, I suppose it would heave been hard to overlook the purse or wallet that got left behind. And she came back. The next day. Probably to try and re-collect her purse but this was after the cops had all gone home. The only person who ever came back. I stayed in that complex another few months. Gary was a somewhat transient who sold his own blood and a little bit of pot to survive. Nice guy. He'd loan you money 'til payday. Loved his rock-n-roll and had a great record collection. He had just found a new girlfriend. Doubt he had ever kissed her. The gal who dropped the purse was the chauffer since neither Gary or his new-found girlfriend drove a car. But it was still twenty years ago. I picked her out of a photo lineup then. I friggin' don't remember what she looks like anymore. Too long ago. For the rest of us, life marches on.