Quick coffee down at the Z&T Café

The Zen and Tao Acoustic Café is nothing like Starbucks, nothing like any of those quiche-riche cafés where they'll rip you $7 for a sandwich that's mostly nothing but bread and another $4 bucks to chew on one liquified coffebean,

and before this post becomes just another of every-other post in existence which is AGAINST something I will tell you what the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café IS, and what it IS is

a place where people can go to talk, to discuss opinions of the day, to drown themselves in a sothing wave of decne tlively discusssions about art philosophy religion politics and ecumenical badgers if they want to, it's a place to exchange ideas, write songs, come up with catch phrases and plan your vacations for years to come.

Plus, it's a place for good live acoustic music.

And you can get whatever kind of coffee you want.

Even one liquified coffeebean, if that's your particular bent.

VG

Bush Curses Hezbollah at Lunch at the G8 Summit

Personally, I'm not truly offended by his use of the expletive, even though there already is widespread talk about the "frankness" of his feelings toward the whole issue. For those of you who don't know, Bush was talking with Blair just before lunch at the summit and didn't realize that there was an open microphone and camera that caught him saying, "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s#!t and it's over."

I am, however, very concerned at our President's blasé attitude toward the issue. This isn't some sandlot game where we can simply tell the boys that they need to share their toys. This is real life with several groups of people who have "heard" the voice of God Almighty telling them to ensure that the other group of people cease to exist. That's the fact.

Since his misunderstanding of that simple point makes me completely afraid for all our futures, I will focus my final paragraph on the issue that is easier to control. Basically, his misuse of the word "irony." It's not ironic that Syria has control/influence on Hezbollah; heck, they are supplying the weapons! Irony would be if a Hezbollah-launched missle went wildly off course and levelled a hospital in Damascus. See? THAT would be irony.

Syria simply cutting off supplies, arms, support to Hezbollah is a simple matter of fact. Therefore, our President should have stated, "The simple fact of the matter is that if Syria would smack their boys upside the head and tell them to stop doing that s#!t, then it would all be over. Now, pass me another piece of that there yummy bread!"

[note: this blog post is protected by the First Amendment. God Bless America!!]

VG

Gas Prices and Voices at the Pump

I can't remember where I saw it - either on the local news channel, but I'm thinking it was more of a national investigative report, because the visual memories don't seem like any gas station in town, but I remember that a few months ago I saw some sort of tv report about the outrageous gas prices

[as an insert let me just say that in all actuality these gas prices are only outrageous by OUR standards. The rest of the world has been paying these prices for gasoline for ages; we do not seem to realize that we have the cheapest gas prices probably in the world - well, at least cheaper than Europe - but anyway . . . ]

The question of the interviewer was basically, "Why are gas prices so high when the oil and gas companies are reporting record profits?" and the voices at the pump (your regular "average joe/josephines") were saying relatively inane things such as "dang, I'm gonna have to get a second job just to be able to afford this," and "why isn't the President doing something about this?" [another aside: this is stated as if the President, instead of being an elected position, is some sort of benevolent/magnanimous deity who, with a wave of the hand, can sweep away all discomfort and right all the supposed wrongs, but again, whatever . . . ]

and finally there was a person who made a clear, if irritating, statement - she said something along the lines of, "what most people don't understand is that the companies, while reporting profits now, have to look several years into the future to project whether those profits are sustainable, and that is determined by current market fluctuations. Essentially, the state of the world currently will affect next year's influx and could cause interruptions in service then and beyond, so the profits now will be used to offset any possible problems then."

The interviewer (supposedly flabbergasted, but then, I am assuming that this segment was unrehearsed) stammered, "Wow! That's the most thoughtful response we've gotten all day! What do you do for a living?"

And then the woman looked shy and replied, somewhat softly, "I'm a lobbyist."

"For whom?"

Again, a short pause. Then: "The oil and gas industry."

Rehearsed or not - that was priceless. A wonderful bit, not necessarily of journalism, but of commentary about our overall economic culture.


VG