Semo.net Weblog

Part I

“…I was in the third vehicle, the one that took the hit. When the thing blew up on us, it pushed me down into the floorboard. I didn’t think I had any legs anymore, from the pain I was feeling…I remember telling our driver to stop, but he wasn’t even there anymore.”

—David Kelley

The main reason a very restless David Kelley entered the military at 17 was that he was tired of school. “I called every branch,” he remembers. “I left messages with all of them; The Navy was the first to call me back.” And so Kelley began his military service as a Navy man in 1994.

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Wow. This ring thing must be really touchy business… 

One of the zaniest old sitcoms on TV was “The Nanny”, which happened to star one of the funniest women on the planet, Fran Drescher. As many will remember, even though this Queens-born Nice Single Jewish Girl might occasionally think about something besides marriage, her giant-haired mother, Sylvia, never for a second wavered in her own desire to see The Nanny hitched and living the high life on Long Island. And with each passing day…month…year…Sylvia became less and less choosy about possible candidates for son-in-law.

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This post is a follow-up to an article written by Toni Thompson on October 29th, 2007 entitled: Warriors Voice: 1SG Jeffrey Pennington 1137th Military Police Company Missouri National Guard. First Sergeant Jeffrey Pennington has chosen to re-deployed to Iraq. The following is a powerful testimony in his own words:

I am being deployed to Iraq again. I will fall in with a Military Police company charged with helping train Iraqi Police forces in a fairly large city. During my last tour I was stationed on a rather large base with a fledgling, but present, information infrastructure, several conveniences such as small shops for sundry items, dining facilities for hot food and best of all it was out in the desert at a rather heavily guarded base.

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Ticket winner was Drew Brown! Congratulations Drew!

Thank you to all who bought tickets!

Oh Hollywood, you can make even the vilest of societal bane into good TV. Idol Gives Back 2008, in all its grandeur, left me feeling empty, not inspired, not philanthropic, empty.

I didn’t get Snoop Dogg’s lofty platitudes. Carrie Underwood’s gut-wrenching song about the inherent selfishness of her fellow man didn’t make me feel bad. I wondered how many starving children she could save by turning that gossamer dress into food. Bono didn’t get to me at all. He always seems to be assuaging his own guilt over the enormous fame and money he has. He looks so cool and hip squatting next to those people who have absolutely nothing. Maria Shriver’s blathering? Nothing. And I just couldn’t reconcile the image of Annie Lennox singing from that opulent Idol stage with the perfectly scripted film of her visit to that horrifically downtrodden family far away. It seemed too tidy to tie it all up with a song. (more…)