see more crazy cat pics

(OR MAYBE NOT, @ LEAST HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI--ESPECIALLY SO AMONG farmers and planters wanting to get their planting in. Or as much as they hope to get in, unless they have designs on taking land out of production because of high fuel and fertiliser prices in exchange for Federal subsidies to that effect.)

Some thunder rumbled through before midnight last evening, but it's mostly just a haze as I write you here in the Minnwissippi. In any case, rain is being called for thru the day, and maybe the odd residual shower into tomorrow.

Still, though, trees and shrubs are starting to show their buds as we welcome the world, or as much of it as is willing to pay $3.50/gallon for gas of late, for the 100 Mile Garage Sale this weekend (encompassing the area along both sides of the Mississippi between Winona and Red Wing on the Minnesota such ... and, on the Wisconsin, between Fountain City and Diamond Bluff.

(Which, if you ask, is across the Mississippi from Red Wing, just past the Hager City/Bay City ur-connurbation.)

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FINALLY! RESULTS FROM ZIMBABWE'S MARCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS--and they're not pretty for pretty much anybody involved.

For starters, opposition Presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai (Movement for Democratic Change) won the majority of votes ... but the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission qualified the result, noting where Mr. Tsvangirai did not have the requisite 50.1% majority necessary to avoid a runoff round.

The runoff involving, more than likely, the longtime dictator Robert Mugabe (ZANU-PF) ... and in any case, expect a rather nasty brand of Katzenjammer ensuing in the runup. Unless some class of a power-sharing agreement can be brokered to avoid further violence and disorder as would make the Rwandan Genocide of the mid-1990's look like Six Flags.

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WHY YOU CAN'T EXACTLY TRUST ANYTHING LABELLED "MADE IN MACAU" TO BE THE REAL McCOY: Your Correspondent was listening this morning to the BBC World Service this morning, and took note of an item where the European Union announced imposition of penalty tariffs on shoe imports from the former Portugese colony-turned-Special Administrative Region of the so-called "People's Republic of China" per the "One China, Two Systems" doctrine.

The item noted in hindsight where Macau, whose economy has long been reliant on gaming-related tourism (especially after the long-standing monopoly on casinos by Stanley Ho's STDM group was abolished in 2002), has also been a rather convenient port by which Chinese manufacturers (and, to a minor extent, those in Hong Kong) can get around import quotas and tariff restrictions by having the surplus production of export goods shipped to special warehouses in Macau and then relabelled "Made in Macau" for the sake of deception. After all, Macau has never had much of a manufacturing base, even during its nearly 400 years of Portugese colonial rule; as just noted, gaming-related tourism (particularly so from across the Asia-Pacific region) has long been Macau's socioeconomic foundation, with the revenues surpassing those of Las Vegas in 2006 thanks, no doubt, to a weak and undermining dollar.

In any case, Macau has long been one of those "gray areas" in the foreign-trade arena as have been nothing short of embarrassment to customs inspectors and collectors over the years--particularly so as a "back door" by which China could secretly export goods to the United States between the start of Communist rule in 1949 and the abolition of trade restrictions in the early 1980's by relabelling such as "Made in Macau" when such wasn't the case. Especially so the likes of goods made under forced or convict labour, which are always denied entry into the United States.

Has anybody considered studying this potentially embarrasing "bait-and-switch" in Chinese trade by which China used and useth Macau to bypass trade restrictions and interception risks through clever relabelling?

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HOW FITTINGLY APROPOS FOR A CITY REBUILDING ITSELF FROM TORNADIC DEVASTATION exactly one year ago today:

Greensburg, Kansas has decided to take advantage of its name and, in rebuilding and reinventing itself after tornadic devastation, has taken a "green" (environmental) approach, and then some.

As in mandating the use of energy-efficent construction techniques and appliances and making the widest possible use of renewable energy sources, especially so wind and solar power, in Greensburg's reconstruction. Not just residentially, but also @ the local school and commercial and government buildings.

So much so, in fact, that local officials are hoping to use envirotourism as a socioeconomic tool to attract business, not to mention hoping to keep the local kids in and around Kiowa County and not move to "the big city" (as in the likes of Wichita, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Denver or even Kansas City) just to find decent jobs.

Not exactly Radiator Springs, Arizona ... but certainly, for Greensburg, the name is an apt fit. Even if their original claim to fame is being home to the World's Largest Hand-Dug Water Well.)

(As for driving down that way, it's off I-70, Kansas exit 159 @ Hays and then south along US 183 for 95 mile or so. And along the way, there's opportunity for worthwhile detours such as the Barbed Wire Museum in LaCrosse and Fort Larned National Historic Site.

(Traffic coming from the south and east should consider the Kansas Turnpike, a/k/a I-35, to Exit 53 on the east side of Wichita, thence following US 54/400 [known in Wichita as Kellogg Drive] westerly for about 111 miles.

(From the west, take I-25 to Colorado exit 100A in Pueblo, then following US 50 easterly via LaJunta, Rocky Ford, Lamar [whence US 400 picks up], Garden City and Dodge City [taking some time to stroll around Historic Front Street and other sites of note in the Queen of the Cow Towns], whence you continue on US 400 into Greensburg; 320 miles being the net distance.)

As for more specific driving directions from your particular neck of the woods towards Greensburg, try MapQuest for starters.