The Color Bars

(Our internet service has been sabotaged by a dead modem, so we are typing from an undisclosed location that is less than optimum mainly because Mr. Cheney isn't very good company.)

When we were kids in the post-infancy of television, cousin Jimmy used to wake up at 4 a.m. and watch the channel where the cartoons would be in a couple of hours. Just the bars. Nothing happened, no sound played. They were just bars of color holding the space of where broadcasting would later appear. They had been there since approximately midnight the previous day when the Star Spangled Banner had given way to their code of silence.

Without Internet service for 48 hours or so, we find ourselves less-than-entertained with even the television. We keep staring out the windows, a few hours from where a tornado claimed the entire town of Greensburg, KS a few days ago. The clouds are thick and the rain is unrelenting. Creeks that had all but become trails are now overflowing their banks into farms and homes in an impressive display of Mother Nature's Prerogative. In a grand display of Never Happy, local forecasters are warning of a summer drought while we're putting flotation devices on small animals just so's they don't pee in the garage anymore.

Please forgive the intermittent posting during this time of technological throw-back. We appreciate your understanding and hope to be back to our sniping, snarky and well-connected (modem-wise) ways within a day or so. If you would like to urge this along, please contact Embarq, the former Sprint, whose modem passed away unexpectedly between church and lunch. We're avoiding the assumption that either of those activities inspired divine retribution on our hardware. Although, we are prone to such things.

Thanks again... Take this opportunity to read some of the old stuff. What's-her-name in NYC thinks it's the best of the collection. And she should know. She's slept with at least one editor from each of the major magazines.

Either do that...or just watch the color bars. We'll be on in a little while.