journal features

water balloons

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

St. Catharines, 2011.07.02

The highlight of the day was the piña col^H^H^H^H playing with a water hose in the back yard.

As far as I know, it was Kenny's first experience with being tormented with water balloons and spray from a hose. It won't be his last.

We did very little, and generally took it as easy as possible. My only venture from the home was to the liquor store. We did accomplish one thing, and that was to eat like kings as we usually do at Grandma's: including the special treat of a Turkish dish called "The Imam fainted". Mari's becoming quite used to the idea of a slow cooker and its many wonderful uses, and I will certainly do nothing to discourage that.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)