Dog Days

No moon at all. Well, there was no moon until after 03:00, but even then, only a thin little slice shone among the clouds which have reappeared in the east. It's up there right now, a few degrees from bright Venus. But still, the night is very dark. There was a song called No Moon at All. I could probably find the lyric on the Internet, but don't feel like it. I remember a couple of lines, though:

No moon at all, it's so dark
Even Fido is afraid to bark.

I can tell you, the dog who has moved in on the next block to the west is not Fido. I've been hearing barks all night, probably provoked by raccoons and deer and stray cats. The dog must be unaccustomed to wildlife. Probably a Chico dog. I hope it adjusts soon.

( Dogs and Hard Lessons )

(no subject)

California's last working gold dredge sank.

Odd. I didn't even know that any of those things were still in use. This is sort of like finding out that the carriage factory has burned. I knew that there were still a few placer miners about, most of them week-end hobbyists, gleaning a bit of gold from the streams, but I thought the last dredges had been retired ages ago. Very odd.

On Not Watching the State of the Union Address

The State of the Union Address was on tonight, so (naturally) I haven't been watching it. I sometimes wonder why anyone would watch this media event which, for the last two decades at least, has never been anything more than a sort of half-time show in the ongoing super bowl of political campaigning. It invariably consists of one part pious platitudes and bogus claims to undeserved credit for success, one part attempts to explain away glaring failures, and one part pie-in-the-sky projections about our impending achievement of ultimate greatness. It is as though all the vacuity of all the political speeches ever made had been distilled into one heady elixir of illusion and delusion, and spooned out to press and public as a cure-all and magic potion, guaranteed to triumph over the nation's, and now the world's, ills. All the best word smiths of the party in power put their heads together to fashion a bejeweled container for the snake oil to be peddled by their talking-head-in-chief, hoping that turns of phrase will turn public attention from the mysteriously invisible contents. And people watch, without even so much as the promise of a blessed interruption by a redeeming commercial featuring Ozzy Osbourne! Not I. I was lured away by the thought of pouring molten lead into my ears, and piercing my eyes with hot daggers. Of course, I did neither of these things, but contemplating them was far more pleasant than enduring the mother of all political speeches. I'm sure I made the right choice.