Be afraid, be very afraid.

How much of our lives are spent in fear? It’s something I’ve thought a lot about over the past few months.

Fear is a horrible thing. It’s used as justification in really bad decision making, whether on the personal level, a societal level, a species level. The self preservation instinct is based somewhat upon fear and that’s something you’d have a lot of trouble casting aspersions on but, when you get right down to it more often than not being afraid seldom is helpful.

The reason I bring the subject up is because I’ve come to realize I’ve spent a majority of my life being afraid of one thing or another.

I remember there was a friend I use to house sit for two decades back. I loved being able to house sit if only to get out of the crappy space I was living in at the time. The only thing I found very disarming was this painting he had done which hung prominently in the living room. It was a birds’ eye view of a small boy walking alone through an alley. It had very dramatic perspective but, the unsettling thing I found looking at it was the expression on the boy’s face.

It was a combination of sadness and fear.

The funny thing was, the painting always felt to be more an accident than anything else, I never attributed the ability or skill to my friend to capture the particular emotion so vividly. No, it was more a matter about what I brought to the table, emotional baggage. The results of a hard journey through life so, when I looked at the painting, saw the expression upon the boy’s face, it made me uncomfortable because I knew the feelings behind it all too well. The isolation etched in those features, the horror felt so deeply it seemed to ooze from his pores.

Anyway, being in a bit of an introspective phase and having to deal with quite a few crises over the last few months have made me focus on the direction I would like life to take. At least that is part of what goes in in my quieter moments. The thing I realize I want more than anything as I move forward through life is to stop being afraid, to stop allowing fear to consume or paralyze me. To vanquish the fear within me and really enjoy each day to its fullest.

Everybody’s life would be a bit better with a little less fear, case in point:

acarophobia fear of itching or of insects causing itching
acrophobia fear of heights
aerophobia fear of flying or draughts
agoraphobia fear of open spaces
agyiophobia fear of crossing busy streets
aichmophobia fear of sharp or pointed objects
ailurophobia fear of cats
algophobia fear of pain
amathophobia fear of dust
amaxophobia fear of riding in a car
ambulophobia fear of walking
anglophobia fear of England or the English
anthrophobia fear of humans
anuptaphobia fear of staying single
aquaphobia fear of water
arachibutyrophobia fear of peanut butter sticking to roof of mouth
arachnophobia fear of spiders
astraphobia fear of being struck by lightning
astrapophobia fear of thunder and lightning
automysophobia fear of being dirty
autophobia fear of solitude
ballistophobia fear of missiles
bathophobia fear of falling from a high place
batophobia fear of heights or being close to tall buildings
batrachophobia fear of frogs and toads
belonephobia fear of pins and needles
bibliophobia fear of books
blennophobia fear of slime
brontophobia fear of thunder and lightning
cancerophobia fear of cancer
cathisophobia fear of sitting
cenophobia fear of empty spaces
chrematophobia fear of money
cibophobia fear of or distaste for food
claustrophobia fear of closed spaces
climacophobia fear of falling down stairs
clinophobia fear of staying in bed
cremnophobia fear of cliffs and precipices
cyberphobia fear of computers
cynophobia fear of dogs
dromophobia fear of crossing streets
dysmorphophobia fear of physical deformities
ecophobia fear of home
eleutherophobia fear of freedom
eosophobia fear of dawn
ergasiophobia fear of work
ergophobia fear of work
erotophobia fear of sex
erythrophobia fear of red lights or of blushing
euphobia fear of good news
Francophobia fear of France or the French
gallophobia fear of France or the French
gamophobia fear of marriage
geniophobia fear of chins
genophobia fear of sex
gerascophobia fear of growing old
graphophobia fear of writing
gymnophobia fear of nudity
heliophobia fear of sunlight
herpetophobia fear of snakes
hierophobia fear of sacred things
homichlophobia fear of fog
homophobia fear of homosexuals
hydrophobia fear of water
hypsophobia fear of high places
iatrophobia fear of going to the doctor
iconophobia fear or hatred of images
kainotophobia fear of change
kakorrhaphiophobia fear of failure
kenophobia fear of empty spaces
ligyrophobia fear of loud noises
linonophobia fear of string
lygophobia fear of darkness
lyssophobia fear of hydrophobia
macrophobia fear of prolonged waiting
metrophobia fear of poetry
monophobia fear of being alone
muriphobia fear of mice
myophobia fear of mice
mysophobia fear of contamination or dirt
nebulaphobia fear of fog
necrophobia fear of corpses
negrophobia fear of blacks
neophobia fear of novelty
nosophobia fear of disease
novercaphobia fear of one's stepmother
nyctophobia fear of the night or darkness
ochlophobia fear of crowds
oenophobia fear or hatred of wine
ombrophobia fear of rain
onomatophobia fear of hearing a certain word
ophidiophobia fear of snakes
ophthalmophobia fear of being stared at
optophobia fear of opening one’s eyes
ornithophobia fear of birds
paedophobia fear of children; fear of dolls
panophobia melancholia marked by groundless fears
pantophobia fear of everything
parthophobia fear of virgins
pathophobia fear of disease
pediculophobia fear of lice
pentheraphobia fear or hatred of one’s mother-in-law
phagophobia fear of eating
phengophobia fear of daylight
phonophobia fear of noise or of speaking aloud
photophobia fear of light
pogonophobia fear of beards
psychrophobia fear of the cold
pteronophobia fear of being tickled by feathers
pyrophobia fear of fire
Russophobia fear of Russia or Russians
satanophobia fear of the devil
sciaphobia fear of shadows
scopophobia fear of being looked at
scoptophobia fear of being looked at
scotophobia fear of the dark
sitiophobia fear of food
sitophobia fear of food or eating
spectrophobia fear of looking in a mirror
symmetrophobia fear of symmetry
syphilophobia fear of syphilis
taphephobia fear of being buried alive
technophobia fear of technology
thalassophobia fear of the sea
thanatophobia fear of death
theophobia fear of God
tocophobia fear of pregnancy or childbirth
tonitrophobia fear of thunder
topophobia fear of performing; fear of certain places
toxicophobia fear of poisoning
toxiphobia fear of poison or being poisoned
triskaidekaphobia fear of the number thirteen
uranophobia fear of heaven
xenophobia fear of foreigners
zelophobia fear of jealousy
zoophobia fear of animals

Did somone step on a duck?

And speaking of flatuence (as opposed to smelling it), there’s this jewel from this week’s Savage Love advice column by Dan Savage:

I have a sexual interest in the sounds of men using the toilet. I hide a wireless telephone headset in an inconspicuous place in the bathroom of several restaurants close to my home. I can then record, from my home, the sounds of men farting and defecating. My husband is aware of this and tolerates it...

Just proving yet again one person’s nasty business is another’s guilty pleasure.

Howard Stern is a dirty, rotten crook.

Or, the truth behind Fartman.



I always thought the Fartman thing sounded a bit familar. I’ve been going through a lot of old stuff laying around here and I happened to have a couple of stacks of old National Lampoons when I came across the above photo funny. I can swear I’ve heard Stern speak the very words in all three speech ballons during the dream sequence.

Of course, this saw print in 1979! It’s ironic if only because part of the Stern schtick is him purporting to have reinvented the wheel. I like Stern and watched or listened to him through the years but, I do find it troubling he made such a blatant swipe. Especially since he went as far as to trademark the Fartman name! Got to love someone who swipes a concept and brands it as their own.

Not with a roar but with a whimper. (from 12/30)

Today was an eventful day of sorts. It was the last Howard Stern show broadcast on K-ROCK. After all the years of entertainment, Stern escaped to the haven of pay radio. The last moments of his show were taken up by a loud shouting match between Hank, the angry, drunken dwarf and BeetleJuice.

I’m not one of those people that will follow Stern to the world of satellite radio, I actually don’t think it’s worth the money.

It’s not that I don’t love radio - I really do. Between some things broadcast on NPR and other shows broadcast on regular radio - I have a great love for the medium. This American Life is a huge favorite of mine, I catch Prarie Home Companion when I remember to, Car Talk, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, The Pet Show with Dr. Warren Eckstein, the Joey Reynolds show, Dr. Joy Brown, Mike and the Mad Dog, Bob Grant, Paul Harvey well, you get the idea. Those shows are just the ones still being broadcast! I can go back into the vaults and pull out a great number of radio shows I miss that are no longer on the air - even some stations that have undergone format changes (WCBS FM being the latest loss).

Radio is great because it can provide you with a background and distraction in a way TV never can - TV being a visual medium demands all of your attention, radio is somewhat less demanding in that regard. You can still work, or just putter around and get things done while radio provides you with a soundtrack to your day.

So, while I’ll miss Stern, I won’t be following him.

Stern was part of what I considered to be one of the best station eras in history. WNBC AM in the 80’s had IMUS on from 6-10 am, then the Soupy Sales show from 10 to 2 followed by Stern. I always thought Stern was a better listen in the afternoon than in the morning, you could catch the whole show and somehow the edginess of his show was better placed in the afternoon.

When NBC fired him unceremoniously during a hurricane of all things, I was very disappointed. The Boy Gary and Fred show that followed for a few weeks after Stern left NBC was a dismal failure (although you rarely hear mention of the ill-fated show today) and was a brief comma in the airwaves until Joey Reynolds took over the timeslot before NBC ultimately went out of business and sold it’s spot on the dial to SportsRadio 1050 WFAN.

Yeah, that was a long, long time ago.

Through the years, I would listen to Stern and then sometimes I would find myself going months without listening to the show having had my fill of all the vitriol and bile which seems part and parcel of his world. Choosing to start my days in a queiter and less angry fashion, I would just wander down the dial for a brief time. I just needed a break from all the rawness Stern brings to the table.

Well, he‘s gone for now - even though there was an incredible media barrage in conjunction with his departure. I’ll miss him but I have to say, as much as I liked listening to him, Howard was never as good as his own press.

Finally.

Civil liberties groups filed lawsuits in two cities Tuesday seeking to block President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program, arguing the electronic surveillance of American citizens was unconstitutional.

The U.S. District Court lawsuits were filed in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights and in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lest we forget.

I have a surname that ends in a vowel but, I can always change my name. I can go and anglicize it, shorten it, or take another name entirely.

Why?

Mainly, because people can (and do) make assumptions about me based around my surname.

It does make a difference.

I know it. But, whatever difference it has made, it hasn’t impacted me much. It’s not like I carry around a big sign or wear a t-shirt with my name prominently displayed on it. I can escape the prejudice inherent in my surname, I am fortunate in I don’t have features clearly putting me into any specific ethnic group or excluding me from the dominant one in this country.

What prompts me to speak about this topic?

Today is a federal holiday - some people taking more notice of it than others. and admittedly, I never placed much import on MLK day but, I was reading something Christopher Priest wrote and it gave me a reason to rethink the significance of the day:

If white people overcame centuries of violent repression, I guarantee you there'd not only BE a day to commemorate that struggle, but that the entire country would shut down to observe it.

And while Priest’s observations on the holiday provided me with some food for thought, reading of his own experiences was a reminder of just how different life can be based solely on skin color:

I was the office mascot. The little black kid. The co-key operator for the Xerox machine (with John Romita, Jr., who enthusiastically relinquished the top slot to me). My how liberal we are. Jim, go grab this, “In a jig.” Staffers, some still in the biz, used to come by and rub my head “for good luck.” One staffer kept little jigaboo figurines on his desk: warped, offensive little gnomes in white face eating watermelon. Denys Cowan stole one off of this guy’s desk and gave it to me as a Christmas present. I keep it on my desk here to remind me some of these people still work there.

Oh sure, our country today is a politically correct society but bigotry and prejudice are still very much a part of some people’s daily lives. I can’t begin to fathom what it is like to be black in America and I have to remind myself there are still serious problems where the issue of race is concerned. When I wrote about my friend Kevin three years ago, it was perhaps the closest I could come to identifying with the issue because it affected somebody who was very important to me, a good friend, a nice person, who felt this weight burdening them, this inescapable reminder which would confront them when they least expected it.

As Kevin described it he had a goal (which he did in fact achieve) which was to make it to the age of 35 without winding up dead or in jail. When I think about it now it makes me really, really sad. Not that Kevin made his goal for which I am infinitely happy but, that our society is such, it made it really clear to him there was only so much he could expect.

Sometimes, I think a lot of what happens in our society today is based around the class of economics. Capitalism in it’s purest form as a way of perpetuating discrimination. If capitalism works, there have to be winners and losers, no? This past year was a reminder of just what is going on in our country - when Americans could be abandoned the way they were in New Orleans after Katrina.

It wasn’t just the abandonment, which was horrible in and of itself, it was more that it was an indictment of our country. Yes, pull back the curtain behind all the go-go economic success, the booming stock market and you come to realize there is some real poverty still out there in this nation. If we were back in the seventies, now is the time I would loudly proclaim, “WE CAN PUT AN AMERICAN ON THE MOON SO WHY CAN’T WE END POVERTY IN THIS COUNTRY?!?!”

Somehow those goals have been left behind us. We, as a nation are prepared to get wrapped up in the sloganeering of a media driven society. A society where, “No child is left behind” or where we conduct a “War on Evildoers” but, all these slogans lack true substance.

Anyway, I digress.

Priest was right on the money about the holiday, it should be more important to everyone than it is. How can a nation which is supposed to have its precepts based upon the concepts of freedom and liberty treat any such holiday in a diminutive fashion? In doing so, doesn’t it diminish us all?

I think things are better for people in the country today than they were when I was young (in terms of race relations and prejudice) but, they still have a very, very long way to go. I don’t know if a day will come in my lifetime where people stop defining themselves according to the color of their skin - hell, over the last decade and a half there has been more proof to me that people want to focus more on what differentiates them than what brings them together. I imagine though that was the intent behind the holiday to begin with, simply put honoring the birth of a man who embodied hope, hope for a better world. That’s something we all should take note of and respect.

While we’re talking about the subject...

It’s as good a time as any to take a gander over the stir caused by one of the more infamous examples of bad behavior and the dialog it stirred back in 2004 when the Comics Journal ran a certain editors’ obituary.

This guy’s hands are practically crawling up my dress under the table. Jo got up to go to the ladies’ room and he grabbed me and tried to shove his tongue down my throat.

—Colleen Doran

It was just the old hand on the thigh, hand on the shoulder, hand on the arm, not letting go unless you pull yourself away strongly enough to leave bruises.

—Jo Duffy

(When a 17-year-old Jill Thompson tried to shake his hand) he put his hand out and honked my boob.

—Jill Thompson

The only time I ever spoke to the man, he told me in a condescending tone, “You don’t look like a writer,” then attempted to cop a feel.

—Poppy Z. Brite

Synchronicity.

I’ve read a few things regarding an incident that took place recently. In a strange bit of coincidence, I came across this story and thought I would email it to Ronee Garcia but I can’t seem to a way to email the woman without registering on some board so, I figured to just post it here and hope it finds its way to her. Given all the debate the incident has stirred I thought it might just be further validation of her argument.

Beating the Erasers.

Susan Drury tells the story of what happens when one of the most respected men in town gets accused of sexual harassment by one of the most trusted women in town. For a lot of the townspeople it was a difficult decision, but they chose to believe him over her. And some of them didn't change their minds, even when the man was later revealed to be a murderer. (21 minutes)

Clicking on the title will download the RealAudio file and clicking on the body will take you to the synopsis of the This American Life episode.

True tales for a Sunday morning!

You can’t make stories like this up. The guy’s name even adds to the bizarre circumstances surrounding this one:

Jerry Colaitis of Upper Brookville, N.Y., injured his neck while attempting to dodge a piece of hot shrimp playfully tossed at him by a table-side hibachi chef, attorney Andre Ferenzo of Roslyn told the jury.

That neck injury necessitated an operation. An apparent infection forced another procedure.

Months later, Colaitis was dead of a blood-borne infection...

Stupid people?

Last night John Stossel hosted a special broadcast of ABC’s 20/20 titled Stupid in America. At one point, Stossel compared public schools in our country to other monopolies, specifically public utilities such as the phone company or the electric company. His argument encompassed the theory that competition was good and that by allowing for there to be competition in the public education system in the form of tax credits and vouchers, education in this country would undergo a dramatic improvement and reform.

It’s a nice theory, really, it is.

But, I’m not buying it.

I’m still on the fence about the whole deregulation thing and whether or not it’s been good in the long run. Monopolies like the electric company were deregulated out of business and suddenly we had rolling blackouts in California a few years back, the whole manipulation of the energy market by the likes of people such as Enron and also there seems to be a growing lack of investment in the upgrade of power generating facilities and the networks that deliver them - there just isn’t as much of a financial incentive for those old monopolies to upgrade their networks in order to make it easier to deliver power other companies will charge users for.

Same thing goes for the phone company. I agree it’s considerably cheaper to make a long distance phone call these days but, much of what has happened in the telecommunications industry is a result of technological breakthroughs that were well on their way. I don’t think deregulation made any difference in the explosive growth of the internet over the last decade. There are outside forces which came to bear on the telecommunications industry foreseen long before they broke up the Bells.

In each instance of comparison too, Stossel is comparing companies providing a very clear, straightforward service. Your lights are either on or their not. Your phone either works or it doesn’t. There may be variables in the amount the consumer pays or in the areas of coverage (in the instance of phone service) but, these are very concrete services being delivered.

I can’t imagine education being such a clear cut service and I think Stossel has done education in this country a great disservice with his oversimplification of the issue and his poor comparisons. Students have as much to do with their success in the classroom as do educators. Families have an even more important role in the formation and education of children in this country. The breakdown of families, the need for households to have dual incomes where both parents are working, the changing expectations for schools as something more than places where a child will go just to get an education all factor in to the state of education in our country.

One instance on the show cited by the online synopsis, talked about students going into schools in Washington DC (hand-picked by the city’s education people) and videotaping what goes on in school. There, a student apparently took off his shirt and started dancing around the teacher which Stossel used to illustrate the breakdown of education in even what are thought of as the best of schools but, I think it’s here where he totally missed the mark.

What about the parents of that kid? Who is raising a child that believes he can be so bold as to act out in this manner? Why does it become the teachers’ fault? If a child is bought up with a lack of respect for his elders or those in authority, how does it become the educators who have to take on the brunt of the blame? If you put a child in a position where they feel they no longer have to fear the repercussions of their actions how does that becomes the educators fault?

It reminds me of an oft told parable I’ve noted on occasion. I was speaking to a relative with two young girls in school. We were talking about education in this country and I wanted to underline something to him. I asked when he was a child if a teacher ever struck him or if he got in trouble in school what the reaction would be when he got home. His response was much in the way I remember my own experiences in that if you got in trouble in school, you would wind up paying for it when you got home - your parents would be asking the question, What did you do wrong?!”

Then I queried if a teacher dared strike his own little angels what his response would be and it was, “What did the teacher do wrong?!?!”

If kids don’t behave all the time around their parents, where is the logic in assuming that the little dear is going to behave once their out of sight of their parents? I mean, honestly! What planet are we on where children are these perfect little angels who behave politely and respectfully at all times? Within the last few years, the New York City school system ended the practice of “social promotion.” When I first heard about social promotion I was dumbstruck. Little Johnny can’t be left back a grade because it might damage his sense of self! Who came up with that one?

Let’s see how this prepares a child for the real world? MMmmmm, let me get this straight, if you don’t do the work and fail to make the grade they’ll not only keep you at your job but give you a raise as well?

Thankfully, social promotion was ended but, the amazing thing was the incredible uproar it caused parents and others who went out and demonstrated in droves against ending the practice! Teachers are not babysitters, they’re not the ones who can provide a child with an authority figure in their life if a parent is too busy or can’t be bothered to assume that role and certainly they have a tougher time doing their job if the very same parents who relinquish these obligations somehow hamstring them further by refusing to at least support teachers when they do try to correct the problem.

I think education in our country is one of the most important issues facing us as a society. It’s of overwhelming importance to have a well-educated citizenry without question. It’s the thing that will insure our nation’s future as a world leader. There is no question we need to look at ways to improve the educational system in our country but, let’s not forget the role parents have in the education of their children. We can go about enacting all kinds of reform, creating millions of charter schools and revamping the whole system in this country as we know it but, if we don’t look at the whole issue and the factors involved it will be akin to building a house on a bad foundation and we’ll just wind up spinning our wheels into stupidity.

Besides, I’ve got to imagine the monopoly in China isn’t hurting the educational system in that country (If Stossel’s observations are accurate - that wouldn’t be the case but it is). A standardized cirriculum controlled by the central government is still in place despite other reforms but, China stills emphasizes vocational training in a way that has fallen by the wayside in our own country. Schools are not businesses supplying a standardized commodity like phone or electric service, they are delivery method for information. As such, it is equally incumbent on the receiver whether or not the transfer of the information is achieved successfully.

SON OF FCB!

Or, what kitty does with her day:



A quiet moment in the life of Anna who today is having a less than quiet day having already arrived at the vet for her medical exam (a very healthy girl, thank you very much) and now waiting for her shave down (lest her fur become a creature unto itself).

I fail to notice.

“All that is required for evil to prevail
is for good men to do nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

A horrible thing has happened - I come to realize I have become inured to the antics of the current administration. In a sense I imagine it is a victory of sorts for George Jr and Co. and a loss for many of us. Watching, hearing or reading about each new transgression on the civil liberties of our citizens no longer surprises or shocks me in the way it once might have.

I now sit back and await the days for the mid-term election, hoping against hope that some kind of serious push can be made to take the executive branch to task for its wild spending habits, gross mismanagement of resources and waste of public good will.

Whatever opportunity existed in the days following September ’01 to significantly alter and unite or nation are rapidly falling by the wayside. It’s not about Afghanistan, it’s not about Iraq, not anymore for me - it‘s about seeing things like the aftermath of Katrina, a growing trade deficit, rising federal debt, an increasing loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector, chipping away at Social Security, no real tort reform and a lack of any true progress in controlling the costs of medical care, insurance and drugs - don’t even get me going about education.

Like the song goes, I’ve Become Comfortably Numb.

I’m numb yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m asleep though. I’m just waiting. Counting the days until the next election. Tick, tick, tick, tick. All I’m hoping for is that the democrats can get their act together to send a strong, clear message that will resonate not just with their loyal base but, with crossover voters like me. It won’t be such a hard task this time around.

Can anyone tell me?

I got to thinking about this the other day...

So, who won?

I mean for the 18 months or so after Septmber 11th, you would often here, “If we don’t (or can’t what have you) [FILL IN THE BLANK HERE], THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON!”

I don’t know, did we win? Did they? I’m not getting that real big sense of change, any of you getting it maybe?

On a less dicier topic.

It has begun:

Apple introduced two computers, a notebook and an iMac desktop, based on Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) microchips, the first to result from its decision to switch from IBM PowerPC chips that it used for years.

“Everybody expected to see the Intel notebook computer at Mac World,” said Ted Schadler, a technology analyst with Forrester Research. “But people did not expect to see the new iMac.”

Objectification.

So, I got a mention on Elanye Riggs blog which really flattered me. I find any kind of attention for the blog a good thing for the most part but admittedly I do operate off in a rather remote part of the internet without a great deal of traffic. I am sure I don’t match the kind of traffic Elanye gets.

I got the mention mainly because there is something of a firestorm brewing in the world of comics over a story making the rounds about harassment of a women by a man (see below). I tried writing something to the issue (unfinished) but still haven’t fleshed out my ideas in a way I would like. In the meantime, I checked back on Elanye’s blog and saw some further comments and then got a bit worried because of a reference that made me think I might be suspect.

See, I have links too around here to half nekkid women and what worried me was I might have offended Elanye in some way.

Now, I happen to like half nekkid women. I am getting older though and the women in question are getting younger, there’s a bigger gap in the ages between me and the women I’m looking at which has an inherent creep factor in it. Truthfully, I don’t want to fall into the creep category. At the same time though, I don’t want to stop looking at half-nekkid women.

I imagine that’s a big part of the problem though.

An issue like this brings out many, much more complicated feelings and factors than are entirely being addressed. Does that mean I would endorse a guy being creepy to a woman? No. As a guy though, I know what guys are like and the truth of the matter is ladies, we are pretty disgusting creatures but, we’re not women. We don’t approach the world with the same outlook or POV that women do and I have to believe as a gender we ever will.

Men pursue, women get to do the picking. Of course, there are exceptions to each and every rule but, it’s pretty much the way things work. So, if a woman is being pursued by a man she finds attractive or interesting or desirable would the behavior displayed be viewed in the same light as the behavior of a man she wanted nothing to do with - in that way?

I am reminded of something that happened this weekend. In the course of my travels, a store I frequent regularly was staffed by a young woman whom I hadn’t remembered seeing before. The establishment in question has a register and sales counter placed a foot or two above the level of the sales floor (no doubt to control shrinkage). In any event, this young women was blessed with very (how shall we put this?) impressive physical attributes on prominent display due to the her choice of garments (not lift and separate here, more of a push together and out). The combination of the lady’s choice of dress along with the construction of the store combined in such a way so when I went to complete my purchase I was eye level, front and center with her assets (a combination of a low cut top underneath some sweater thingee which framed her in a flattering way) with perhaps less than two feet separating us.

I was embarrassed, really. I wanted to look, she was absolutely beautiful. There was no question and it seemed as if the male members of the store’s staff who pointedly fluttered into her orbit in a desperate attempt to gain her attention and approval confirmed that assessment. It didn’t seem as if she was a stranger to the attention.

Now during the course of my purchase, she was involved in movements which, shall we politely put it, made the display all the more obvious. I forcibly made an attempt to look everywhere but her breasts and it’s not I didn’t want to look believe me.

See, I’m a guy, we look. Furthermore, we like looking.

Now, I don’t or won’t justify putting hands on someone’s person in an unwelcome manner. I also won’t abide someone making someone else suffer because they have no interest in having sex. However, when we talk about things like objectification, I think we’re starting to get into a very hazy area here.

Sex sells. There’s just no other way to put it. Am I out there on the street whistling and catcalling at women with a group of construction workers? No, but mainly because I really don’t think most self respecting women are going to fall for that. Recently, I heard a story from someone who met their current beau in a bar. His line? “You are the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.” Now, my first response was, “AND THAT WORKED?!?!”

The woman in question was very flattered by the comment and in no way doubted its sincerity but, every guy I told the story to had the same knowing smile, it was a line. See, if it came from an ugly, balding troll it probably would have been viewed in harsher terms but, the lady in question found the speaker somewhat attractive and there you have it.

Look, I don’t want to get anyone pissed off or hurt anyone to be sure but, when we talk about these kinds of things it isn’t the zero sum game people would have you believe. I am not a proponent of the ‘she was asking for it’ school of excuses - that’s just bullshit but, I have also witnessed a bunch of times when someone cried ‘harassment.’ It’s unfortunate but true. Each and every time I’ve seen it done (and it’s been more than once - thankfully I’ve not been party to it), it just weakens the argument when someone is really being harassed.

This is a subject, I can’t do justice to with the written word either I feel because there is an antiseptic nature to the written word which doesn’t contain the nuance of speech. Also, it’s a damn complicated one, a few paragraphs here can’t do it justice.

But f**k! I’m damned confused by it all because there are some women who like being objectified, who don’t mind it at all and there aren’t any kind of warning labels on women to make things easier. And men are, really, really stupid. Plus if we didn’t think about sex so much there would probably be a cure for cancer, world peace, an end to hunger in our time and a lot of other good things. I’m not excusing obnoxious behavior but, I also think the world would be a much harsher place if we didn’t recognize some of the things that make us different particularly when it comes to gender.

An opinion I can agree with:

When every scene can be tossed out or invalidated by the next creative team, it gets that much more difficult for me to make any kind of emotional investment in these fictional characters. If one creative team can kill a character and the next creative team can say, “No, that character’s really alive” and the one following that can say, “Just kidding, the previous guy’s run was a dream” then I can’t help but saying, “deal me out.”

Erik Larsen’s column One Fan’s Opinion has ruffled many feathers in the short time Erik has been writing it but, I have to say more often than not I’ve been finding myself in agreement with his opinions and the column is rapidly becoming a favorite. This week’s column hits the nail right on the head, continuity isn’t the ogre it’s made out to be but to realize that you have to have a little respect for the work that’s been done before you – something that’s been noticeably absent from many comics for the last few years.

When is a comic convention like a misogynist convention?

Interesting column over on When Fangirls Attack that’s worth a read.

When I was a teenager I worked at my local comics shop. The staff consisted of the kindly and cantankerous older middle-aged comics fan and a cast of lovable zanies. I had a great time. Until my boss asked me if I could stay late at work one day to help him bag some comics. And so I stayed late and started bagging the comics. And my boss took the opportunity to tell me that he found me sexually arousing. And he asked me to have sex with him. And I started to silently cry — pretty babyish of me, huh? Should I have punched him in the nuts? I didn’t — I cried silently. I was 16, he was in his late 50s.

Speaking of movies.

I managed to catch a few things on DVD over the past week or two. I was in a place that had a deal of two DVDs for under $10 so I availed myself of some things I had wanted to see but, didn’t feel like getting to the theater for.

Saw Constantine which was passable and a bit of a popcorn film. Good casting even if the script was a little weak and strayed a bit far from the original concepts (Los Angeles can never match London in my book)

The Aviator was very interesting even if it did seem to end a bit abruptly (before Hughes got to Vegas). A visual treat for the viewer.

Miss Congeniality 2 - what?!?!? Yes, I enjoyed it. It was funny. I don’t want to hear any guff for it.

Catwoman, not as insipid as expected given the reviews but, certainly could’ve been much, much better. Again it was a matter of just having a bad script and not really being sure of who you were trying to get into the theater. It wanted to be everything to everybody and managed to fail miserably because of it. I don’t know if it was supposed to appeal to preteen girls, women or men. It didn’t seem the filmmakers knew either.

Alexander was just horrid - I‘ve never been a big Oliver Stone fan and he just confirms my distaste for his movies.



Finally, there was Million Dollar Baby. I wasn’t surprised by any of the movies’ “twists” or “turns,” finding the story direction heavily telegraphed and having been told it was a sad movie in advance without knowing the ending. I must admit though, it still got to me even with the foreknowledge where it was going to wind up so, saying something of the power of the film. It truly is one of those “must sees” but, I was thinking after watching it, it was the kind of movie that at one time was the rule as opposed to the exception. It had a quietness about it that reminded me of another movie I saw long ago, The Shootist.



Movies nowadays are all about quick cuts, lots of camera movement and visual clutter in the frame. Eastwood’s career and experience seem to have proven to him the strong power of the stark image and it shows in his work. There is a minimalism going on, a very straightforward way of shooting without all the cacophony prevalent today. The camera looks at the actors the way you would look upon art in a museum, lovingly with a strong unblinking gaze. Light and shadow are as important as the actors themselves in conveying the emotion and thrust of the story. Really classic work and not surprising it received the awards it did. See it if you haven’t.

The unfinished year.

’06 is rapidly turning into the year of unfinished entries. Everything has been so busy of late or rather, I’ve been so busy of late whenever I do get started on putting keystrokes to html, I find myself either distracted, preoccupied with something else or just out of steam.

This year started on a weird footing in that I came into the year fighting an ear infetion, having EYOC back in the hospital and just managing a full plate otherwise thank you very much.

I did manage to squeeze in seeing a movie the other day. Caught Spielberg‘s latest, Munich.

Enjoyable flick, Eric Bana does quite the turn. I find myself growing to be a bigger fan of Geoffrey Rush with each thing I see him in. Outside of a sequence of cross cutting in the third act (between a love making scene and an act of violence) which seemed a bad choice, I liked the film overall. It’s not a true depiction of history but interesting nonetheless and manages to be thought provoking entertainment.

There is a sequence towards the end where two characters are having a running dialog with the skyline of New York as a backdrop. Seeing as it is supposed to be the early 70s when the conversation is taking place, it was interesting to notice all the buildings in the shot (a couple of new apartment buildings over on the east side along 1st avenue, the new Trump building on 49th and the CitiCorp Center) that weren’t in existence back at that time.

Sounds like I’m being a bit of a stickler but the last shot in the movie as the ending titles run is a digital composite of the skyline of lower Manhattan with the WTC smack dab in the middle of the shot. WTC of course, long gone by the time the movie was filmed but digitally inserted by the filmmaker to make some kind of final point to the movie. A little heavy handed for me though. If the decision was made to put the WTC in they certainly could have digitally removed the newer buildings from the background in the other sequence.

There are some other plot twists which I found very transparent but, my fellow viewer didn’t pick up on them and I won’t go into detail here for fear of spoiling the film, it is worth seeing.

Now, that’s art!

Finally, graffiti I can enjoy.

The sadist in me.

I read this an had to surpress a chuckle (which I think says something about me). Maybe it’s that I look upon birds the way a cat does. I’m not sure - it’s either that or the fact I have found my car bombarded by rather disgusting, large bird crap on occasion or maybe I let my opinion of pigeons color my view of this particular fauna.

Klem, a professor at Mulhenberg college in Allentown, Pa., first learned about the “window hit” problem 30 years ago from a teacher.

Klem responded by marching into a forest and hanging a bunch of windows from the branches of the trees. Then he sat down and watched what he calls an “appalling” number of collisions. Some birds lived. Many did not.

There was this image bought to mind of many Monty Python moments.

Some notes from the land of the manufacturing employee

Habermehl says future wages at Toyota depend on the UAW, whether plant employees realize it or not. When wages rise at the Big Three, they’re also likely to rise at Toyota. And when they fall in Detroit’s plants, Toyota could reduce them as well.

and...

The hard facts about GM's predicament are by now well known. The company says health care makes up $1,500 of the cost of each vehicle produced. GM is the largest private purchaser of health insurance in the country, footing the bill for 1.1 million workers, retirees and family members. Most are retirees, the very people with the highest health care expenses.

and...

For decades building American cars was a family affair. Children followed their parents into the auto plants, where generous union-negotiated wages lifted them into the middle class.

But the days of the industry’s blue-collar aristocracy are numbered.

South Park meets the Superfriends

Excellent short promo worth checking out!

UPDATE: If you clicked through and wondered “Wha the fu?!” Let me add above the spotlight and below the headline “ZOOM SIGNAL” you’ll see a helmet-like icon which you need to click through to get to the animation in question.

The disappearing middle class?

Often during the transit strike of a few weeks back, I heard grumblings from people commenting on the audacity of transit workers who would dare go out on strike considering the benefit package they have. More often than not, these complaints masked a certain amount of jealousy on the part of the speaker. Any complaint about the transit workers was usually accompanied by the statement: “I don’t get a pension!, or I can’t retire at 55! or I have to pay for my medical benefits!

Whenever I heard these comments, my first thought was, “so, because you don’t have a decent benefit package, no one should?”

Instead of working people holding this (the transit workers’ benefit package) out as an example of the way things should be - they just buy into the histrionics of people like Mikey B who compared the transit workers to thugs. Of course, the interesting thing about Mikey B is that he makes more than enough money to pay for his own medical benefits, he’ll never have to worry about his retirement with all the wealth he has managed to amass during the course of his lifetime and hey, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing the guy has managed to make a fortune, good for him.

At the same time though, can we get the people of this country to acknowledge that a higher standard is needed as the low water mark for our citizens? Things like affordable health care, retirement benefits and pensions are not the evils of society they are portrayed to be?

We had a savings and loan failure back in the early nineties, anyone remember that? You should as the cost to American taxpayers was staggering even by today’s standards:

Estimates of a clean-up bill of around $30 to $50 billion shocked US taxpayers at the time, but turned out to be optimistic. Today we know that between 1986 and 1995, when the storm abated, the underwriting of US thrifts by the financial industry and the US taxpayer cost an extraordinary $153 billion.1 The extent of the disaster turned it into a major threat to the US financial system, and one of the most expensive financial sector crises the world has seen.

Yeah, it’s those goddamn workers making $50k and upward a year which are driving our country into the toilet! Puhhllleeeeeezzze!

How about this one for you a running total of the U.S. taxpayer cost of the Iraq War. The number is based on Congressional appropriations.

So, when I read the story linked to below, I shudder.

“They’re destroying the working class. Why can’t people see this?” asked the 38-year veteran. “Anybody who works in manufacturing has no future in this country, unless you want to work for wages they get in China.”

Abby Abdo, 52, of Weirton, said workers once believed that if they accepted pay cuts and shunned strikes, they would keep their jobs. Not anymore.

“Once they get what they want, they kick us to the curb,” he said. “There’s no guarantee anymore. No pensions. No health care. No job security. We have none of those things anymore.”

My point is this, whenever you hear people trying to blame the working class of our country for society’s ills, it’s time to take a step back and point out the skewed priority’s we seem to have as a nation. Affordable health care, pensions, social security, these are not bad things, these are not the evils they are made out to be. A social safety net isn’t something to be ashamed of (as a nation), it’s something to be proud of. Maybe it’s time the people of this country start to sit up and take notice of that and remind there fellow citizens, their elected leaders and the media of that very fact every opportunity we get.

A package of happiness?

Ingredients: mischief, curiosity, grace, stealthiness, happiness, love, contentment and lots and lots of fur.



Trying to get back into the habit of Friday Cat Blogging - Anna shows her continued fascination with boxes of all sizes and shapes.

Season’s Greetings.

Christmas Eve is upon us - I find my way over to my cousins’ to spend time with him and his family, happy that the holiday is here (meaning an end to the whole Christmas season) and thankful to have a place to go. The last few days have passed like a whirlwind and even though there is plenty of traffic on the way down to his house, I am surprisingly calm just enjoying the drive without the radio or sound of any kind.

Beautifully warm as the day was, it somehow takes the edge off of the holiday. I’ve never been a big fan of the cold weather and getting days where the temperature climbs towards 50° at this point in December is the best present I could imagine.

So, during my meandering drive, I take a somewhat different route choosing to go down the Sprain as opposed to the Bronx River just opting for a wider road that will more likely be easier to navigate than the winding curves of the BRP (especially when clogged with those who don’t drive much of the rest of the year).

This route takes me across Central Avenue, a shopping hub where the stores are still jam packed as people try to get that last minute shopping finished.

After I cross the Avenue, I wind up entering this very beautiful part of Yonkers, hidden away the BRP bordering it on the east and a ridge separating it from Central Avenue on the west. One stretch of the area has these wonderful wide tree-lined boulevards, with very quaint and stylish houses standing regally beside the road.

Every year at this time, some people are compelled to make a spectacle, adorning there house with the Las Vegas equivalent of home decoration and this neighborhood is no different with the occasional nod to garishness. However, the thing that is so striking, the thing that seems to embody some of the solemnness of the holiday and the quiet beauty which has diminished over time is the very simple decoration I come upon while driving through the area.

House after house festooned with a series of paper bags at curbside. Plain brown paper bags which contain nothing more than candles fluttering in the slight breeze of the evening. A sight which is both magical and wonderful to behold. I had never seen anything like it before - after doing some digging around I found it is called Luminaria. If there is one custom I would like to see more of during the holidays, this is it — it beats any light show I’ve ever seen hands down and the pictures don’t do it justice.

Manga as propoganda?

I’m a comicbook fan, unapologetically so but, I never caught the Manga bug. Some of tha Manga drawing style has seeped into mainstream comics and I don’t have a problem with it as some of the old guard do. However, Manga is something that mainstream comics is not, it’s more popular, reaches a broader audience and manages to embody more than the comics themselves.

So, is it any kind of surprise when an art form is used for the purposes of propoganda?

The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer’s World Cup, and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave — television dramas, movies and music from South Korea — swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.

Here are two panels from a very popular and recently released Manga book in Japan (I’m just putting the images up, it’s in no way an endorsement of the views expressed):



The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.

Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, “An Introduction to China,” which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.

The book describes China as the “world’s prostitution superpower” and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, “I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China.”



In one book, crazed Chinese communist guerrillas spray benevolent Japanese troops with cyanide. In another, savage Korean immigrants massacre innocent Tokyo residents in the wake of World War II...

“These books finally depict history from a Japanese perspective, and there is nothing wrong with that,” says Atsushi Iwata, 22, student at Tokyo’s prestigious Waseda University who attends a weekly seminar by a co-author of “Introduction to China.”

“It’s the right of any nation to interpret history as it feels it should,” he said.

Yes, proof once again that a-holes come in all sizes, shapes and colors - well, they say you can’t argue with an idiot.

When the subways stop.

Before the workers are cursed, take a moment to read this editorial in the Daily News:

The great and growing disconnect between white-collar and blue-collar workers in our town makes it hard for office workers to see, understand or respect what is at stake in this labor standoff. Few riders know, for instance, that transit workers have to ask for a day off 30 days in advance. Back in October, in an annual ritual, some MTA workers slept on cots in bus depots so they could be first on line the next morning to ask for permission to take Thanksgiving off.

Nosing around.

Tonight I was nosing around the local 100 website, while I was doing it I found this little tidbit on the calendar about an event scheduled:

Dec. 20: Citywide Bus and Subway Strike

Submitted by eddie on Mon, 2005-12-19 05:39.
Start: 2005-12-20 06:01

So, I called channel 7 which was on the air to let them know. Seems like it could be nothing or it could be something. If channel 7 does wind up being the first to break the story, you’ll know where they got the tip.

...’tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la laa...

“They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” store owner Changa Manakynda said.

A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand’s largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.

The horror... the horror... (LOL)

Priceless.



I was looking around for material for another post when I came across the image above. It’s just struck me as a very funny image. I thought maybe about having a contest for the best caption.

The end is near?

I imagine, since we’re only a week or two away from the New Year.

Sounds rather dramatic though doesn’t it?

(Cue foreboding music) THE END IS NEAR!

What does a New Year mean anyway outside of the changing of the calendar, the marking of days? Do we wake up New Years Day to a new and suddenly different world?

I think not.

Depending on what we did the night before, we wake up either at the start of another day or with a terrific hangover if we’ve overdone it. Not much else happens really on New Years Day when you think about it. People are just bracing themselves to get back to work, having made it through another holiday season.

Oh, I guess it means stores will be putting up decorations in the next week or so for Valentines Day but outside of that, what else?

Over the next week or so, they’ll be lots of retrospectives about the year just passed on TV and in Newspapers. Lists of events that happened, people who died, those kind of things. It’s this onus that we burden ourselves with, a forced reflection due to a change in the calendar. In the coming weeks they’ll be talk about whether or not it was a good shopping season for retailers and then we’ll quickly move on.

I don’t like the calendar, never have. Calendars, clocks, all these human inventions to try and enforce a rigid structure to the world around us, are just off-putting. They force us to approach life in a very different way and I don’t know if it’s a good way. For example, did you know that:

On November 18, 1883, four standard time zones for the continental U.S.A. were introduced at the instigation of the railroads. At noon on this day the U.S. Naval Observatory changed its telegraphic signals to correspond to the change. Until the invention of the railway, it took such a long time to get from one place to another that local “sun time” could be used. When traveling to the east or to the west, a person would have to change his or her watch by one minute every twelve miles.

When people began traveling by train, sometimes hundreds of miles in a day, the calculation of time became a serious problem. Operators of the new railroad lines realized that a new time plan was needed in order to offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals.

Since every city was using a different time standard, there were over 300 local sun times to choose from. The railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.

Imagine that!

Sun time. Can you think of how different life would be if based around Sun time? All those late nights at the job - do they still happen when you’re on Sun time? Thing is, we’re not talking about such a long time ago, a mere 122 years. This is the world my grandparents were born into. A world were Sun time was becoming a thing of the past and the world was entering the brave new frontier of “Time Zones.”

The pace of life is speeding up, getting faster and faster as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place. Does this mean one day, instead of the four time zones our country straddles, it will become sixteen time zones because having time zones of an hour will be a value far too large to use as a measure in such a fast-paced world.

I shudder at the thought.

If you focus so much energy on measuring something, of keeping track of it, are you able to enjoy it?

So, as the calendar turns over once again like an odometer on our lives, let’s take a moment to try and downplay its significance. Not that I don't think everyone shouldn't have the most wonderful holiday imaginable, just let’s try to move the focus away from the structure we try to impose on the world. We might all be a bit better for it.

More on time and its history can be found here.

Speaking of They Might Be Giants.

It really is worth it to go over and check out their site. Currently, they have a series up called Venue Songs with some wonderful listening.

Click here to check it out.

Fingertips

Cleaning out my drafts, unfinished snippets, entries that I started and never really got around to finishing. Take them as you will:

From September...

You should try everything once.

At least that’s what they say.

So, Friday night I found myself at the Garden. Someone, who is a very important person to me, asked me if I wanted to go with them to this “event.” Seeing as how they are always there when I need them, what small price was there in spending a few hours of my time? Plus, I enjoy the person’s company greatly.

The event was a motivational lecture by Joel Osteen. The way things had been laid out to me, I imagined it would be some kind of Tony Roberts slanted event - “Discover the champion in you!”



You get the idea.

I’m not big on things like this, I don’t know why but I can’t say I’ve ever been much of a joiner. I actually do my best to shy away from anything which even remotely looks like “group think.” It’s just the way I’m built, I don’t put too much stock in the whole “school of fish” type of attitude - whether it be driving, or just finding ways to get around when I’m walking around Manhattan - if I see a group of people heading a certain way, my first instinct is to go the other way. I don’t like crowds. Funny thing is, for whatever purpose there have been more than a few instances where I was very happy that instinct kicked in and it saved me from being stuck in a mess of people not able to get out of some kind of bad situation or worse.

The last few days have been very hectic but, I was looking forward to this in any case because again, it’s an excuse to spend some time with someone who’s important to me.

We get to the Garden.

And it is just a madhouse! I cannot begin to tell you how many people are at this place. It’s like it was a Knicks game or something. Most of my energy is consumed in scanning around the lobby and the rest of the facility and taking in the signage and the graphics around the place. At one time being a designer for MSG, I look around to see what the caliber of the work on display is (yes, I have as much of an ego as anyone else). Invariably I am comparing the work that is up to the work I did during the time I worked there. Also, I am looking at different things that have been done to the building, installation of video monitors and the like.

Well, we get to our seats which are pretty good and then the show starts...

...and what a show it is. Lots of music, big glossy video shot in the gauzy, fuzzy manner showing lots of sunny skies, smiling happy people, titles skewed and moving across the screens with all kinds of positive messages. Everybody is just Stepford happy and while I’m watching all of this I can’t help but try and see if I can remember all the different commercials where I’ve seen the same kind of tricks used (I’m fairly certain one was an Insure commercial and another a Chase commercial).

It is at this moment I know I have signed up for something I wasn’t anticipating.

I turn to my companion and let them know I will stick it out but, not to be surprised if I do not suddenly burst into flame or happen to have an errant lightening bolt descend through the roof of the Garden obliterating me on the spot. The other thing that’s creeping me out at the moment is how I have this really strong feeling of programming but in a hi-tech way. Maybe programming is a bit strong, more aptly put it was the strong sell. A lot of touchy feely messages wrapped up in a Madison Avenue, this very strange amalgam of religion


Many Christian readers will undoubtedly be put off by the book’s shallow name-it-and-claim-it theology; although the first chapter claims that “we serve the God that created the universe,” the book as a rule suggests the reverse: it’s a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals. Osteen tells readers that God wants them to prosper, offering examples of obtaining an elegant mansion or a larger salary (“don’t ever get satisfied with where you are,” he cautions).

From mid October...

The other day (last week actually), I was treated to a wonderful lunch and good company in the form of Ed and Brian (author of the cat fumettis). The restaurant we ate at is a personal favorite, the menu feature a combination of Southern foods I love so much - Fried Chicken, Catfish, Jambalaya, greens, that kind of stuff. A few other restaurants in the same neighborhood serve this cuisine but, they fail in ways the place we dined at never has.

A side benefit of eating at this restaurant, is the very distinct trend in the hiring of wait staff. I imagine this is a result of the rumor the place is a business venture of professional models. Each time I have eaten there, I find myself waited upon by an enticing and demure member of the opposite sex. Our lunch the other day was no exception. The last two times we’ve been there - the servers have been just about the nicest, prettiest ladies one could ever hope to encounter.

Of course, the three of us sit there and talk about all the banal things which create a link between us. Things of interest to one and other but, not likely of great interest to any female within earshot. The three of us are sitting there, contentedly scarfing down our meals, punctuated by animated conversation and every once in awhile our server will alight making the meal much better by both her grace and charm.

Each time, she wanders off about her duties her brief visit turns the discussion to the subject of her beauty. It is at these moments, Ed will prod me in a good natured way to try and entice our server into expanding beyond our patron/server relationship (I am trying to be so delicate here). Specifically, the conversation centers around her healthy bosom which through the combination of her choice in wardrobe and the necessity to lean forward when engaging in any conversation with her patrons presents aforementioned bosoms front and center in a manner where they cannot easily be ignored.

I find myself a bit embarrassed by this - yes, surprisingly as much of a letch as I consider myself to be, I am always highly reluctant to *** but there really is no denying the wonderful vista which is being presented.

Now, Ed is just about one of the most amazing people I know. He’s a huge bear of a man who greets you by clubbing you amicably on the shoulder when he sees you. The amazing thing about it is the force of his greeting could actually knock you sideways were you not braced for it, that’s how strong the guy is. This would not be something of note were it not for the fact Ed is slightly older than my own father.

So, as we sit there - during the course of the meal, I am prodded (good naturedly) by who even though he is advanced in years cannot readily ignore our servers charms and... (that was as far as I got)

From late November/early December...

Where does the week go?

I’m not really big on holidays much anymore.

I’m trying very hard to combat the curmudgeonliness that comes with getting older but, it is a battle. Holidays, birthdays, all those kinds of celebrations seem to have a bit less import for me. Most birthdays over the last few years have been spent just trying to have a kind of a good day instead of some all out gala celebration. Holidays are another thing altogether. I’m making the passage from the small table to being one of the older generation at the big table and finding myself wondering too often where all that time has gotten to.

This year Thanksgiving just appeared for lack of a better term. To a lot of people, the holiday is a big event on the calendar mainly because of the four day weekend and the big absence from work. There can be travel over a long distance involved in the Thanksgiving odyssey as well. This week had so much crammed into it, Monday seemed like it had been a week or two ago and by the time Thursday rolled around I was deep in the fugue state.

Basically there’s just so much going on lately - it’s hard to keep track of where we are in the calendar. The only thing I do think of being important at this point is counting the number of days until pitchers and catchers report heralding the return of warm weather once again.

From early December...

The December slide.

So, we’re in the tunnel now at the end of the year. That few week period between Thanksgiving and New Years where life is supposed to be all wonderful (It's A Wonderful Life!).

Ahem.

You’ll have to ’scuze the Scrooge like attitude but this is probably my least favorite time of year. I imagine part of it is that I focus on all the things I didn’t get done through the course of the year or how imperfect life seems when I keep running up against all those idealized holiday images that are plastered everywhere you look.

Fa-la-la-la-laa...

The best holidays I’ve ever had have involved being down in Florida for the New Year. Twice, I’ve been somewhere where the weather is warm and it is without a doubt the absolutely best way to soften the blow of the years turning.

This year, I’m a little (at a loss for words, obviously)

From mid December...

Some people...

...get up in the morning to take care of business,
other people get up just to be in the way.

—Norman Soloman (dec)

Busy week last week, lots of stupid drama. Most of it unnecessary but, drama to be sure nonetheless. When I have a week like the one I had last week, I have to remind myself of what Norman used to say.

Norman was a large man, tall and carrying a fairly large belly - you would occasionally see him stuffed in obscenely tight fitting and garish bicycle clothing as he laboriously pedaled his way around the rolling hills of Tarrytown. On warm days, he’d be standing outside the Y, chatting away with Carlton another longtime resident of the male only dormitory housed in the facility.

Much of their conversation would center around how various other residents and mutual acquaintances from around town were full of shit. If it wasn’t that then it was just your regular dog talk about women. It was however always entertaining, certainly for me anyway since I was in my late 20’s at the time and the world that Carlton and Norman lived in was very different and their conversations offered a glimpse into that world.

Carlton and Norman were both around the same age (at the time in their late 40's). They were men of a different generation, both born in the late forties or early fifties and both black, they had witnessed and been a part of the significant change the country had gone through during the course of their lives. It had tinged their perceptions of the world around them - they both were plain speaking men, men who didn’t hide behind the mask of guile, who looked a person in the eye and said what they thought. An more than anything, they were nice, they were gentlemen, saying that they were doesn’t mean they were impolite because they weren’t. They just didn’t suffer fools gladly and after everything they had experienced during the course of their lifetime saw no point in doing otherwise.

As I clock more time on the planet, I see the wisdom in their outlook - although I often have to remind myself it’s not an excuse to fail to exercise impulse control. Lots of the drama in the last week was the work of fools (actually one fool in-particular). When it first jumped off, I was in my own special brand of hysteria but, working through the five stages of grief I wound up at acceptance in fairly short order.

Just as Norman said, there are people who get up in the morning just to “be in the way.” We all encounter them but, of course it’s how we handle them that makes life different for each of us. That’s something I’ve been trying to do over the last few months, figure out better ways to handle things. A lot of my life has been spent around a person or people who were unhappy and found that the only way they could derive joy was to get others aggravated or annoyed. What happens though when the end result of it is you don’t get angry? You take away the power the person has over you.

More from December...

My life mopping floors.

A lot of what I’ve been doing lately is a thankless job. Thankless in the sense that there’s a lot of dirty work to do, big messes to clean up. Most of these messes center around the EYOC. This is nothing new, I’ve been cleaning up his messes for a long time now but, I had hoped it would get a little easier with time instead of the inverse.

I have conflicting feelings about things too at times, never the less somewhere along the line the whole dutiful son thing was indelibly stamped on me. I imagine it was from my fraternal grandparents and my uncle who I still hold in very high esteem and always considered people of great character. Even though all three of them have long since passed, theirs is the standard I measure myself by, their expectations, their outlook and the way the lived their lives and treated the people around them.

So, I keep expecting the messes to get easier but, no they just get harder and harder. The EYOC has always been somewhat abusive to put it mildly would probably be better described as a bit of a sadist - there I’ve said it. This is a guy who took some delight in grabbing the snout of the family dog and twisting it until the canine yelped in pain. You can’t make stuff like this up, you can only wonder where along the lines things went of the rails where someone would think that the dog is somehow digging on the moment.

Over the last decade plus as I’ve cared for him he’s alternately been nice in moments of weakness and nasty and vindictive in others. The nastiness and vindictiveness is something which I’ve taken in stride more or less - not that it’s been easy but, life gives you lemons and all that.

So, lately the EYOC has become nasty and vindictive yet again.

Sweeeettttt.

________

Fingertips by the way, is a reference to a series of songs at the very end of They Might Be Giants Apollo 18. It’s just a beautiful potpourri of tunes and lyrics that the band never quite got around to fleshing out. If you haven’t heard it, it’s worth a listen, somewhat in the vein of that second side of Abbey Road by the Beatles, another great sampling of unfinished ideas.

...I’m sure monsters must meet the most innnnttteeeeerrrresting people!

image from RobotJohnny.com

The faux Chinese proverb kept echoing through my head this past week. The last two or three months of life might be considered very interesting by most people’s standards. I have alternately found myself at the heights of elation and the depths of depression over that period of time. Good stuff for afternoon soap operas but, not fun stuff to live through, I can tell you that.

It’s exhausting.

I’ve said it before, I don’t need a life of excitement, it isn’t something I seek out or crave. A life of excitement doesn’t necessarily infer one will be living a life of happiness, just one of drama.

Happiness, yes there’s something I crave, something I can never get enough of but, excitement, interesting times? No thanks.

Every bit of encouragement I receive, being in the company of friends, speaking to people I care about on the phone, getting some mundane task off my to-do list - just having a nice day - I am thankful for but more often than not, none of these things I find rewarding, joyful and satisfying could in any way be considered exciting.

Just something to remember the next time a bit of “excitement” comes your way... excitement is rarely a good thing and better left to others.

Sandy ass.

via Flckr


I got an email from Brian, just an amazing photo of a sand sculpture - I found it very difficult to tell whether it was real or not. I got to thinking and I would venture the poor bastard who is so incredibly talented as to sculpt this probably has a hard time rubbing two nickels together trying just to survive. I could be wrong but, doesn’t life seem to work that way? More the pity.

Check out the photographer’s Liberoliber’s photostream for yourself (he’s not the sculptor) - some beautiful work.

Ironic.

I was looking around for something to do with another post (which will be up later) and as a result of my searching, I came across the Jump The Shark thread for the Bugs Bunny Road Runner show.

One of the reasons cited for the show jumping the shark was networks’ concern about the violence inherent in all the old Warner Brothers cartoons and how much wound up being edited out. It got me thinking, nothing in any old cartoon could begin to compare to what a kid is able to get his hands on with something like Grand Theft Auto.

Given the choice between the two, I wish they would bring back the unedited cartoons.

Yes Virginia, there will be a transit strike.

New York transit authorities and union leaders held last-ditch talks on Thursday against a midnight deadline to avert a subway and bus strike the city's mayor says could cost $400 million a day.

“There has been no progress whatsoever,” Transport Workers Union chief Roger Toussaint told a news conference eight hours before the contract with the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. (0501 GMT) on Friday.

And you know what... there should be.

A lot of people will probably balk at such a comment but, before you do try and remember a few things.

A few years back, the MTA pointedly told the public it was facing a historic, looming budget deficit. The MTA used said deficit as an excuse to raise transit fares across the board. Then, it turned out that MTA had engaged in some very creative accounting and had in fact a rather large budget surplus. Amazingly, even though the deficit was the main justification for a fare hike, the discovery of a budget surplus didn’t mean the MTA would roll back fares.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a crisis of credibility. In just a few days, subway and bus riders will be hit with the largest fare hike in history. Earlier this year, when talk of a fare hike was growing, I urged the MTA to delay consideration of an increase and open its books – so all New Yorkers could know if such an increase was necessary.

Why should they? They already got approval to raise fares no need to give back money they’ve already gotten.

Now, we’re the riding public - MTA’s customers. The MTA is supposed to be a public agency with the interests of the public inherent in their charter. It would stand to reason, that they wouldn’t be running a business for profit but, then there’s that tricky little part about a budget surplus. The point I’m working at is this, if the MTA is dishonest with the riding public about their books, if management doesn’t come clean with the very people whose interests they were formed to protect, is there a reason to believe they would be more open and honest with their employees?

While we’re talking about those employees, let’s take a moment to remember a few other things. The subway (and buses) run better now than at any time in recent memory. Why would all the credit for that be laid at the feet of the managers of the agency and not the employees? Why wouldn’t you give credit to the people who spend their lives operating, maintaining, cleaning and servicing the public? Is their contribution any less significant than the people who are in charge?

There’s been a long period in this country where organized labor has taken a series of hits, as if organized labor was somehow a hinderance or a problem. Of course, it would be foolish to fail to recognize the abuses that have occurred within the organized labor movement and corruption of various union organizations through the years. Still, organized labor and unions are responsible for some very beneficial actions taking place for the American worker. This is not the zero-sum game management shills would have you believe - while I was writing that the thought flashed through my mind you might swipe out management for Republican but I think this goes beyond the two party system.

Gas prices go up, milk prices go up, corporate robber barons abscond with bigger and bigger windfalls and in the meantime, American workers are expected to work longer hours, shoulder more and more of the expense of their own medical benefits and fund retirement without the benefit of pensions. Corporations demand loyalty and fealty on a one way street, expecting employees to live, breathe, eat, sleep and die for their jobs only to be discarded like an obsolete piece of equipment when they break down.

I hope the transit workers do strike and I hope they win - the pendulum in our country needs to swing back in the other direction (towards the American worker) because it’s been swinging towards managements’ side for far too long.

Just for fun.

The interactive NYC transit map - just hours of aimless fun for geeks like me.

A Santa to be proud of!


click on the above image to see the NY Post story.


“Christmas has religious origins. It’s in the Bible. Santa is not in the Bible. He’s not a religious symbol. Santa Claus has become a piece of Americana,” Krupnik explained yesterday.

...and Mr. Krupnik is dead on with this one and as a Christian I have absolutely no problem with it! The whole commercialization of the holiday has gotten way out of control with ornaments and store display being put up right after Halloween. The only thing that gives me pause is I’m afraid it will spark anti semetic remarks from those who object to the display but, for my money Mr. K is spot on!

from Gawker:

The New York Post has a field day with the macabre Christmas display in front of an 18th St. brownstone, delighting in Yuletide puns like “’tis the season to be creepy” “Christmas jeer” and “ho ho....no!” But hm, a closer look reveals that the placement of the “BAD SANTA” block lettering is covering up an integral part of the display... doll’s head, check; bloody St. Nick, check; large curling snakelike phallus, cleverly obscured by a well-placed headline. Oh, NYP, you ARE a coy one, aren't you?

Wrong profession?

I should have become a proctologist because it sure seems like I spend most of my life dealing with assholes.

Just sayin’.

100,000 Iraqis died because of the war.

About a year ago, a study estimated the number of Iraqi casualties since the war began. It came up with a number – 100,000 dead – that was higher than any other estimate, and was mostly ignored. This week, Alex Blumberg revisits that study to look at the reality behind it. In Act One he reports that not only is the study probably accurate, but it says that most of the deaths were caused by Coalition forces (despite concerted efforts to avoid civilian casualties). In Act Two, we hear U.S. forces trying to cope in the aftermath of some of those deaths.

Prologue. We're a nation at war, but it hardly feels like it. That contrast is especially jarring for people like Hannah Allam, who just returned home to Oklahoma after two years in Baghdad running the Knight-Ridder Newspapers bureau there. Ira talks with Hannah, and Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss about what it feels like to come home from a war that nobody's paying much attention to.

Another episode of This American Life - certainly worth a listen. (requires RealAudio)

Appealing to me on so many levels.

I have a link up on the sidebar to Masuimi Max who is a fetish model of some note. The fetish model thing appeals to me although I am much chagrined to admit it. I imagine it goes back to the days of watching those Bettie Paige loops on channel J. Something about the page boy haircuts and the outfits... ah, but I digress.

The point I had wanted to make was that I really like the design of her site a great deal. If you can get by the fetish model thing as content, I have to say it’s really a beautiful site and worth checking out. Whoever worked on the design of the site has a love of those old 50’s movie posters and it shows. Lots of good color and type selection. Take a look but not if semi clad women offend.

Look here.

On another note, as I eventually get around to setting the Flckr account up - maybe I’ll even wind up posting the photos I took of NetMichelle from the session I shot at MoSex.

The ball and the wall.

So, I went up to visit the EYOC today - this after the longest break I’ve taken from him in over a decade, a whopping 10 days! Imagine if you will for a second - I haven’t taken that kind of break from the care and feeding of the EYOC in that long a period of time.

After the hell that was Thanksgiving week and being up there 3 times making sure he wasn’t alone on the holiday, I needed a bit of a break myself. There’s just a limit to how much you can go, go, go all the time and being in crisis mode for a period of two months wears on you. So, most of last week was just spent doing maintenance. It sounds so mundane but, very, very necessary.

I kept meaning to get up for a visit but, when all was said and done I figured if anything truly bad was happening I would know. In the interim, things were stable - I imagine it was the calm before the storm, why not take advantage of it.

Without droning on about the visit which was generally uneventful, although I was glad to learn there are other people visiting, the truly unique thing was what happened afterward. Once again it was a reminder of just how necessary it is to always have the camera (and damned if I didn’t and was cursing myself afterward).

The facility where EYOC has been spending his time lies between what could be called bedroom communities and the true rural part of the state. It’s developed to be sure but, there are swaths of woods here and there. One such swath surrounds most of the facility which has a fairly large campus and a good deal of undeveloped land.

So, as I’m walking back to the car, I see a flash of movement along the pavement making it’s way towards the sanctuary of the parked vehicles. As I get closer, I can see just the other side of the fence is a beautiful long haired tabby, big fluffy tail and all looking for all the world perfectly in place in the snow dusted woods. I call to the cat (like I do to all kitties) but, to no avail - like lots of felines it’s a bit wary of strangers and although it stops to see where the call is coming from there isn’t any sign of heeding my call, instead just insuring there isn’t any pursuit.

Well, a cat running away in and of itself isn’t ever really much to talk about. Pretty cat and all that in picturesque surroundings but that’s about it. No, what made this interesting was the youngish doe off to the side out in the same woods not that much farther out from where the kitty was (maybe about 50 feet or so).

Watching the doe take sudden interest in the small cat and track the cat’s progress through the woods with great interest was something to watch. The movement had caught the doe’s eye and she hesitantly made her way closer, quietly shadowing the cats’ steps through the woods. It was like watching domesticated nature come into contact with wild nature. Nothing earth-shattering, just something that was really fun to watch in the dim afternoon sun of a cold December day.

Georgie Junior gives James Buchanan a run for his money?!?

Just was reading this rather interesting article and thought I would pass it along...

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

Just think, three more years to secure that place in history - just lovely!