Friday, March 14, 2014

Florida is long, and other random thoughts

People in other states don't realize how freaking LONG Florida is.  When I lived in New Jersey, I could drive from one end of the state to the other in two hours.  In fact, I used to do it all the time for work.  Well, on Wednesday, I had to drive from where I now live to Pensacola.  I got in my car and started driving.........and then I kept driving and driving and driving.  After about 4+ hours, I finally got to the state capital, Tallahassee.  The most depressing thing was realizing that I had another three hours of driving ahead of me.  I live in the northeastern part of the state.  Imagine if someone was doing that drive from the Miami area, or even worse, the Keys.  The drive would take about 11 or 12 hours.  That's just crazy............

The story of Malaysian Airlines Fight 370 is one of the most bizarre stories in a long time.  If it's even possible, let's leave aside for the most the fact that there are just under 240 people on the flight who have seemingly vanished into thin air.  First, there was the story of those stolen passports, the users of whom ended up on the flight.  That seems to have become a non-story.  Then, there were the two Iranians on the flight, and that fact alone caused alarm bells to go off before that too became a non-story.  Now, we have the latest wrinkle, which is that the flight was diverted hundreds of miles off course, according to tracking by military radar.  I have to be honest; I suspected terrorism from the get-go, because planes do not suddenly go wildly off course and then vanish with not a single word from the pilots, or some indication of a mechanical problem.  On the other hand, terrorist groups invariably like to take credit for doing stuff like this. The silence after this plane vanished  has been deafening.  Not a word from any of the "usual suspects" (al Qaeda or one of its affiliates; Hezbollah; etc., etc.), or even some lesser-known outfit.  I just hope that this mystery is solved sooner rather that later, as the families of the passengers and flight crews deserve some type of answer as to what happened to their loved ones............

Am I the only person who is utterly repulsed by the entire Kardashian family? Honestly, what have any of them contributed to the world?  ANYTHING?  They seem to be incredibly good at self-promotion, I'll give them that.  Yet, they draw fans from all over the world--Kim Kardashian, who might be the trashiest of them all, has over 17,000,000 fans according to her Facebook page.  To me, that just means that there are over 17,000,000 stupid people on the planet who take their cues in life from a vapid "celebrity".  I get that we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture.  I don't like it, but such is life.  The thing is, the Kardashians aren't even famous for any particular reason.  The women are pretty.  Well, so what, there are millions of pretty women in this country and elsewhere in the world.  They're not smart in the conventional sense (though they're certainly savvy enough to turn their inexplicable popularity into dollars).  They've contributed nothing to the world.  Can anyone explain their popularity to me?????

I'm a grammar freak.  It drives me up a wall when I see people confuse the words "they're, there and their", not to mention "your" and "you're".  They are NOT the same words and they do NOT mean the same thing. People who can't tell the difference look like idiots.

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