Barely kicking

Once again, I'm apologizing for failing to show up as promised. I'm going to stop promising. It seems to be a jinx. I had a rugged week. I spent half of it fighting off a bad case of broncitis. I lost but fortunately I had to go to the doctor for my overdue annual physical and he gave me a Zpac. I'm amazed at the advances in antibiotics. The last time I took them I remember getting a bottle full of pills that I had to take several times a day for a week. This zippy little Zpac is six pills over five days. My kind of regime. I'm on day three and feeling much better but family issues came up in the interim, so, it's always something...

Of course I have been thinking of you and saving up my little vignettes. I haven't had a bird story in a long time but just the other night. I decided to stop at Wendy's for take out because I was too lazy to even nuke anything. I went inside because the car line was so long, I thought it would be quicker. It probably wasn't. That franchise is pathetically inefficient but at least I wasn't burning up the ozone waiting in line. But anyway, I came out and it was just that time of twilight where the sky is really pale blue, and there must have been 500 swallows sitting on the wires and covering an adjacent parking lot.

The guys on the wires suddenly took flight as I made my way to the car. It was like watching a storm closd as they swung and swooped and rotated in formation. I watched them for a long time and was amazed that no one else noticed. I finally pointed them out to the guy in the car parked next to me. We both watched until the dark got dark and they settled back onto the wires.

And I don't know if I ever told you about the huge black dragonfly I saw last month or maybe it was at the end of August but the last time I saw it, I remember thinking how weird it was that it looked like its wings were rotating like a helicopter instead of the customary hummingbird like flapping, but damn if there haven't been other sightings.

And I haven't forgotten I promised a funny story about my medical adventures but tonight is definitely not the night for it so let me pass on the latest news on the drug war instead. Holland has just banned mushrooms because some young person died after taking some. There's not indication that they took into consideration multiple drug and alcohol abuse, which is common in the problematic cases, but they simply blamed the shrooms.

This will of course simply drive the market underground and there will be more unfortunate incidents and a new black market will drive more crime. They've been selling shrooms in Amsterdam for decades and the number of incidents in comparison to the use is negligible. It they used the same criteria for alcohol, booze would have been banned a long time ago. Once again, politicians pander to the short term political advantage over the long term public good. It's sad to see Holland regress like this.