Martians and Venusians
Cold v. Hot

I was listening to Elton John's "Rocket Man" on the radio yesterday and was laughing about the lyrics:

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids;
In fact, it's cold as hell,
And there's no one there to raise them
If you did.

It just seems to random. Granted, it's not random in the fact that it's about a Rocket Man but, you know.

Anyway, I went home and saw a headline on yahoo: "Brr! Mars colder than expected." Funny how things like that happen. In case you don't want to read the article, don't worry. The title pretty much says it all.

I thought Preakness was the name of a horse, not a horse race. Oops. :D

I don't think my girl Hillary is going to win the Dem nom. Somehow I doubt we'd ever get a Obama/Clinton ticket, but wouldn't that be nice? Huh. Spell check recognized Clinton but not Obama.

I'm reading an article now about panhandling in Madison. It's pretty interesting, actually. There's one guy whose goal is $10 because there's a motel near the beltline that will give him a room for the night for $10. Then there's this tidbit:

The rules apply citywide, but they've had the most effect on State Street. There are now only two legal panhandling sites there, and one of those is closed this summer due to street construction. That leaves the lamppost at Peace Park, 452 State St.

This is where Regulus and others ply their trade. Like most social settings, it is governed by unwritten rules. Only one person panhandles at a time because pedestrians will avoid a gantlet of cups. No one gets more than an hour at a time. The next in line queue up on a park bench.

"We have to have rules or everyone would run wild," said Jeff Joe, 54, a Peace Park regular.

If you spend time at the park, you will learn this: Panhandlers average $10 to $15 an hour; the most lucrative time is during state sports tournaments, when high school students from small towns flood the strip; older people are less generous; college students are where the money's at.

"They want to make a difference, they want to change the world," Joe said.

The unwritten rules thing made me laugh, and wow. $10-$15 an hour?? Maybe I should take up panhandling!

Another headline: "12-year-old China quake survivor loses leg." Somehow this doesn't make me too terribly sad when considering the fact that 30,000+ have actually died.

Gas in Madison is now $3.78/gallon. Or as Sarah says it, it's $3.77/gallon. Technically, it's $3.779/gallon.

This is the type of blog post that Sarah hates. Haha. Too bad.