Honestly, I swear this wasn’t me.

I have to admit, this is one of the most sinister looking creatures I’ve ever seen, but after reading the article all I feel is sadness that there are still living, breathing animals out there being killed simply for how they look.

Well this is probably my worst nightmare.  The day giant spiders have taken over the planet is a day I’ll gladly be struck by lightning.

Miss California

Well apparently the Miss USA pageant was on yesterday.  I hadn’t even known about it.  Didn’t this used to be a pretty  big deal?  I honestly don’t remember seeing a single advertisement anywhere on TV leading up to the ‘event’, but oh well, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.  My attention was caught this morning by a small clip of the pageant that was being shown on MSNBC, with the headline “The worst answer in pageant history”.

What was the question that could elicit such an answer?  Well, it was a question about gay marriage.  Carrie Prejean (Miss California) was asked, and I quote, “Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage, do you think every state should follow suit, why or why not.”

Miss Prejean responded with this:

“I think it’s great Americans are able to choose one or the other.  We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what in my country, in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be, between a man and a woman.”

A mixture of applause and a smattering of boo’s could be heard from the audience as she finished her answer.  Celebrity ‘gossip blogger’, Perez Hilton, who was also a judge of the competition, was the one afterward quoted as calling the answer “The worst in pageant history”.  Also in a video blog later posted on his site, he called Prejean “a dumb bitch“, for which he soon after apologized.

Another of his quotes came by way of  an ABC News interview:

“I was floored, I haven’t said this before, but to her credit, I applaud her for her honesty. However, she is not a politician, she’s a hopeful Miss USA. Miss USA should represent everyone. Her answer alienated millions of gay and lesbian Americans, their families and their supporters.”

For my own views, I thought her answer was fine.  It was honest, and they were her true beliefs.  What does this Mr. Perez Hilton want, her to lie?  Does he want this so called representative of the country to stand up there and just mouth whatever the judges most want to hear?  Because it is fairly obvious to me that Perez would have only found one type of answer truly acceptable.  I’m sure he wishes she had stopped after her first two sentences.

The simple fact that he is bashing her for an honest answer goes to show that he didn’t WANT an honest answer.  He wanted his own thoughts reflected back upon him, so he could nod and smile and think that all was right in the world.

They have a saying that you should never ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.  He, Perez, should keep his mouth shut if he isn’t open-minded and mature enough to accept a differing viewpoint.  How can a single young woman “represent everyone” as Perez states that she should?  Is that even possible?  Does he think that the entire country is of one mind on the topic?  Does he feel NOBODY else has a different opinion than his own?  Is the lesson here that it would be better to lie than be honest about your feelings?

I think that she took a chance, and was willing to be honest rather than a hollow shell spouting the lines that are expected from those women.  I honestly think that her answer is what caused her to finish 2nd instead of 1st.  I’m willing to bet if she had smiled and just said what the judges wanted to hear, and what a portion of the audience wanted to hear, she could be wearing that crown and nobody would be raising a fuss at all.

If I was her though, I’d feel pretty proud about myself right now.  These days it is pretty rare to see a public figure who is willing to break the cuffs that political correctness has chained most of the country with.  Good for her.

Starting on March 22, a series of major eruptions have taken place from Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The biggest exceeded 65,000 feet in height. More than a dozen eruptions as high as 60,000 have followed the first week alone. Activity may continue for weeks or months based on the volcano’s history.

An extremely interesting article detailing the effects and / or results of volcanic eruptions on the rest of the country and / or world.

Click HERE to read, or the link above.

Mt. Redoubt though, this guy loves to blow off some steam now and again.  So after a hand-full of explosions, with ash clouds reaching 50 and even 65,000 ft into the air, the ash finally reached anchorage yesterday.  It started off looking like a bank of fog moving in.  When I first saw it I didn’t even think of ash, even though I had been expecting and fearing it would come.  It wasn’t until I started getting calls from friends in various parts of Anchorage–panicking about the ash falling–that I realized what was going on.

I had to quickly start rushing around, sealing up my house to make sure no stray ash got in.  They say this volcanic ash is almost like little bits of glass, very sharp and extremely damaging if you breath it in or get it in your eyes.  They even say that if you are unlucky enough to be caught out driving in it, you can’t use your windshield wipers because it will just scratch the glass up.  Not to mention it will muddy up your oil and clog up the air filters.

Businesses closed, the airport closed.  Folks were running around wearing face masks.

Can you even see the ash in this picture?  If you didn’t know to look for it, you might just think that was a bit of dirty snow.  All this drama and trouble, and that is all we have to show for it?  Not that I want the city covered in 2 inches of ash, but you would sort of imagine that it would look more dramatic than what is in this photo.  That is my backyard by the way.  If that ash wasn’t laying on snow you wouldn’t even know it was there.

Mt. Redoubt could still keep on exploding, lets hope this doesn’t keep putting a halt to city life.

So apparently Bristol Palin and her “babydaddy” broke it off.  There was a newspaper article that quoted Bristol as saying they decided “awhile ago” to end things.  I, for one, am not at all surprised.  Did anyone honestly see them sticking together?  Perhaps I’m just cynical, but it “seemed” to me that they were almost being forced to stay together due to the rabid media attention that was focused on the entire Palin family during the failed VP bid.

Can you imagine, just for the sake of imagining, how absolutely nuts the press would have become to not only have a juicy, underage, out-of-wedlock, pregnancy story, but to then add into the mix the fact that the father was out of the picture?  That would have been a firestorm.  I think these two kids–because lets face it, they are pretty much kids–were being forced to ‘stay together’ so as not to rock the boat.  To keep the press and the country relatively  happy, they were required to smile and keep up the pretense of happily-ever-after and tell everyone they planned to get married and live their lives together raising a family.

Is it any wonder they waited until now to make the news public?  I sure wouldn’t have told anyone about it while 200 cameas and microphones were constantly focused on me.  I sure wouldn’t have let anyone know while my mom was running for public office (not to mention the 2nd highest public office in the country).  Why leave open the opportunity for people to claim your mom (Sarah Palin) lost just because of you — because I sure wouldn’t put it past people to say they voted against someone for such a stupid reason as their kid was having a baby out of marriage.

People have voted (or refused to vote) for more inane reasons that that I’m sure.

I wish Bristol and her family a good life.  It couldn’t have been easy going through this process in the spotlight.