Le Prince Bleu – nifty movie, and the soundtrack is great.

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Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields: amazing research on this site, which among many nationwide listings (including a *lot* of notable Maryland fields), has two separate listings of Miami-area airfields, including some amazing old photos of Dinner Key, several others.

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hmm… email posts did work from the road, fortunately, I cc’ed my regular email.

Pasted –

6/26/04 1:37 pm in front of courthouse .

3 wifi access points, all closed. named BOSS (45), glodemo(40), and scales(40). strong signals, considering the distance from the building to the road.

6/26/04 2:11 pm – rte 10, fed hwy.

bus population –

driver – all business white man, 50 or older. jet black hair, likely dyed. an anachronism… professional in a business full of the rude and slovenly. probably a hard case with mooch-riders, but returned my ‘afternoon’ greeting.

1 Asian mid/late teens boy, with older Asian girl, 20ish speaking mandarin, as far as I can tell. happy.

all-female family unit; black grandma [50’s], mamma [25ish], and two kids, 7, and maybe 2. all but the smallest wearing khaki blouses and blue jeans. youngest wearing a pink sun dress, stark contrast… highlight of the group – cutie. older sis eating corn chips from a brown paper bag.

white man, paint-spattered t-shirt and jeans. has some sort of paperwork in a grocery bag., along with a banana. he sits quietly, face vacant.

older white woman, retirement age. clean clothes, but filthy carry on. i wonder if she’s homeless. well-equipped… wristwatch and glasses in good repair.

passing the hustler store, under construction – taking applications. maybe i should tell bro.

rowdy teens got on, at the gateway theater – were sternly warned by driver to be good. intimidation seems to have worked for the moment.

teens good until off the bus, then yelled “smoke weed!” once going out the door. i haven’t heard it called weed for a long while… usually just pot or smoke.

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Nepal Tries To Appease Sweating Deity

A sweating idol of Bhima, the second Pandava, is troubling Nepal amid a bloody revolution launched in the name of Communist icon, Mao Zedong.

The stone image began dropping “beads of sweat” on Tuesday at the Bhimeshwar temple in the Eastern town of Dolakha that earlier served as a trade route to Tibet. Temple authorities alerted devotees by ringing bells.

Priests started offering special prayers as hundreds of devotees thronged the shrine in the remote village on Wednesday to appease the deity.

“As per tradition, the royal palace performs a special puja whenever the idol sweats,” a Nepalese official said.

The temple normally sends the sweat soaked in cotton to the palace for worship.

Most Nepalese believe that disaster has fallen upon their country every time the image sheds sweat; and the catalogue of such calamities is quite long – the most recent one being the 2001 massacre of King Birendra and his family.

In the past, the sweating had preceded the 1934 earthquake that killed thousands in Kathmandu, the 1940 hanging of Nepal’s first four democracy fighters by the Ranas, the 1950 anti-Rana revolution, the passing away of King Tribhuvan and King Mahendra (grandfather and father of the present monarch) in 1953 and 1972 respectively and the 1988 earthquake that caused destruction in many parts of the kingdom.

This time the idol sweated mostly from the left that the Nepalese believe portends ill for the people. Sweating from the right is considered bad for the royal family. In 1986, King Birendra visited the temple after news of sweating by the idol reached him.

Incidentally, the sweating incident coincided with the conclusion of the two-month festival of Machhendranath whose chariot had collapsed in Kathmandu about a month ago that the Nepalese regard as a bad omen. According to legend, Machhendranath was the teacher of Gorakhnath who had blessed King Prithvi Narayan before he founded the present ruling dynasty.

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Ah, Garganticus… both you and Fin Fang Foom are so awesome… not just for being giant scaly monsters, but for having the decency to wear short pants. (Though Garganticus wore trunks that actually matched his scaly skin, Foomy was brazen, and donned purple togs in sharp contrast to his green skin… maybe he was a fan of the Hulk and his purple slacks?) Where does a 400-foot monster go to get pants with a hole cut in the back to accommodate a tail?

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We got a nice double whammy this weekend… two successful recoveries as a direct result of the system. A 9 year old boy who ran away, and a 92 year old with Alzheimer’s who fell down and couldn’t get back on his feet.