Potpourri

Long car rides provide ample opportunities for the mind to wander.

I don't use a cell phone, for calls or for texting, when I'm behind the wheel.

To be honest, I rarely use a cell phone- period.
I carry one, usually turned OFF, because when you drive solo as much as I do, I like knowing I can call for help in case of an emergency.

Other than that, well, talking to hear myself talk or listening to someone else blathering on is NOT my idea of how to spend my time; it's too much like how I spend every work day, frankly!

So, instead, I think...

(which I also do at work - don't get cute! Free range thinking is different!)

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You know all the lies the financial community, in this country, and apparently in Europe as well, spun for the general public - about what were healthy investments, solid banks, good mortgages, etc?

What if all the money we're borrowing from China is based on those same lies?
What if it's all an international shell game and that money doesn't exist either?
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Has anyone else entertained the thought that the whole purpose of those "I'm a Mormon" commercials is to make the election of Mitt Romney to the presidency more palatable to the general public?

Heaven knows he, the LDS church or some PAC associated with him is wealthy enough to have funded, in a calculated move, a national campaign in the year preceding the start of the election 'season'.

What other purpose would the commercials serve?

just askin'.

The funny thing is, I'm old enough to remember hearing fears raised by the specter of the first Catholic president - God forbid! - John Kennedy.

Adults in my hometown - educated, Northeastern elites - talked about the 'reality' that we were in danger of the Pope virtually being second in command in this country - and soon, we'd all be forced to join the 'Mother church' so many of our families had worked so hard to distance themselves from!
Seems silly now, right?

Helps me remember that, frequently, voters today aren't any more, or less, goofy or paranoid than they were decades ago.

Actually, now that I think of it, that's not very reassuring!
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Has anyone else ever wondered HOW and WHY those XXX Adult 'clubs' survive in the middle of nowhere?
I don't just mean the stores that claim to sell X-rated magazines, videos or 'toys'...
I mean the ones that tout 'Real Nude Girls', 24/7... really???

The three I passed last weekend, in rural Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri, were hundreds of miles from any major population center.

Who's dancin on those poles?
Farmers wives and daughters?
Do they import them in from cities? (Why would they come - and where would they stay?)

I've lived in rural Iowa... in another era, to be sure - one in which the back doors of stores were left unlocked and opened. Customers could enter from either the front door or through the store room; a time when there were packs of blank checks from each of the 3 banks in town so, in case you left your checkbook at home, you'd just grab a blank check from 'your' bank and write it out for the amount you needed - so you'll understand my skepticism.

XXX rated homegrown strippers and sex performers who are known around town - the daughter of the sales manager at the Piggly Wiggly or the waitress at Waffle House?

I don't think so.

Can't tell you how tempted I was stop, go in and check it out... if the reality of that idea hadn't made my skin crawl so much, I would have done it!
Curious minds want to know!
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And, while I usually try to stay out of big box stores, I'm ALMOST tempted to go to Wallyworld to try THIS out!
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I'm reading a fascinating book by Tom Perrotta titled "The Leftovers".
It's set three years after 'the Sudden Departure' -a Rapture like phenomena in which millions of people, worldwide, disappear. Not a Christian 'End time" tale but a powerful metaphor for how human beings deal with grief and cope with unexpected loss and the whole re-arranging of the world as we knew it.
This is one book I wish I was in a book club to discuss - so much to think about!
GREAT read; check it out!
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I know the technology already exists...crossing a dirigible with a wet vac and adding a filtration system...so WHY doesn't someone suck up all the flood water that is killing crop fields and whole towns in the Midwest and transport it to bone dry Texas?

How hard could it be?

Don't they already do that, to some capacity, when fighting forest fires?

Are we lacking the reserve, the desire, to help out?

Trust me, if I can forgive that state for giving us "W", anyone can!

Yes, I know there's Rick Perry lurking in the wings, but that doesn't mean 'regular' people or livestock should be allowed to suffer, does it?
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Whatever thoughts are chasing their tails in your head this weekend, enjoy your extra day off!

Some of us, (OK, ME) will actually be laboring on Labor Day...
again, you're welcome!