Weekend Update - Falling Edition

• (Fall has definitely descended upon the Willamette Valley, chilly nights, gray foggy mornings, and the occasional light rain shower. But the majority of the flowers are stoically hanging on, pretending to enjoy it all, and bracing themselves for the inevitable. I love Autumn in Oregon. It makes you melancholy and slightly stupid. You find yourself leafing longingly through L.L. Bean catalogs and saying idiotic things like "I swear if you stare at a tree long enough you can see the leaves change color," while exhaling heavy sighs of bourbon tinted breath, and writing sentences that should have ended 30 words ago. The huge veil of morning glories covering up the old ugly heating oil tank in the back is still alive with happy little flowers of purple, red, and white, and I'm compelled to stand out in the rain and take them all in, to take them into my very soul to be remembered in the harsh realities of dark winter months. Someone please get me another drink and lead me back inside. But I digress ... )
  The date was May 4, 1970. I was 25 years old and it was my first day of work at the bus company, driving little green converted school buses through the neighborhoods of Eugene, Oregon. I was probably slightly stoned, having just recently been introduced to marijuana that year by a sweet little waitress named Susie. It was also the day of a horrific shooting at Kent State University, in Ohio. And now Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has opened a probe into those events, requesting key documents from the FBI in a letter delivered Saturday morning, following the revelation that an FBI informant may have opened fire just before the 1970 massacre of four anti-war students by members of the US National Guard.



• Mr. Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio's 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, apparently favors dressing up in his nazi SS uniform and parading around with other like-minded individuals. Okay, first, I'm not making this up, and it's people like Mr. Rich Iott who makes writing this blog fun. Read all about it here.

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted its expensive device back. This whole thing reminds me of a Marx movie I saw once. Groucho played a FBI detective.

• Imagine being a typical New Yorker hurrying home during the busy evening rush hour last Friday when suddenly right in the middle of Grand Central Terminal hundreds of gay people suddenly fell down and played dead on the platform. The nerve of those gays! Always wanting equal rights. The nerve.
• And finally this God-fearin', I-Know-My-Rights item: Bob R. of Eaton Township, Ohio was filling a birdfeeder near the pond on his 12-acre property when he was shot in the leg. The bullet was fired by his neighbors who were shooting at logs on their property. Now ain't THAT America?