In case you think I don’t know what I’m talking about.

When it comes to baseball, I came across theis entry I wrote dated 10/17/03. The interesting thing about it is how some of the things I wrote about came to pass:

Good teams find ways to win and bad teams find ways to lose which is something the Cubs and the Red Sox proved this year. Grady Little probably sealed his fate by leaving Pedro Martinez in too long and from what I understand (and have read) the Red Sox could be overhauling their roster between now and next year. I figure Kim is gone (since he was left of the post season roster and greeted the beantown fans with the one finger salute) but, I would be focusing on pitching if I were Theo Epstein. Colon, Maddux and Schilling are all out there for the taking. Arizona wants to get rid of Schilling to free up money and Maddux and Colon are free agents. The Yankees have had great success pitching up older stud pitching and patching together a good rotation.

and in the same post:

Oh, and as far as the Mets go - I’m glad Gerry Hunsicker didn’t get the job - if I was the Wilpons, I’d be doing everything in my power to pry Omar Minaya back from the Expos.

I love a parade.

Where it’s at.

My Grant Morrison shot of the week.



Taken at the Mermaid parade last week, all I could think of was Grant Morrison’s run on the Doom Patrol.

In the can.

Aside from the fact the holiday is coming up, aside from the fact I have to get myself mentally prepared for motorcycle training school, aside from all these things that occupy daily life - if things have been a bit quiet around here it’s mainly because I have three other writing projects going simultaneously that are in various stages of development - there’s the work for a friend’s website, a special interest project I had been asked to write something for (that remotely has to do with Nazis), there’s the interview I have to finish preparing for with a long time favorite writer of mine for another site and then there’s the larger task of writing copy for a 36 film boxed set.

All this along with a few design projects that are cooking, various networking opportunities and a few other slow boiling projects. It looks like a very busy summer indeed!

Bad anniversaries.

I’m reposting this because I saw something that reminded me we are two years gone. My cousin’s daughter had a blurb up that acknowledged the anniversary of the day and how she still missed her dad - having lost my own father this year I wanted to repost this to acknowledge the family’s loss:

The empty seat at the table...

I don’t try to mark time so much presently. Days go by, running together, passing at a faster and faster rate. I succumb to the denial all manage as we grow older, the point where you’re not anticipating another birthday, just trying to ignore it. Oddly though, much as life may inevitably change - much as you try to resist change, constants are still in every person’s life to contrast that change. One such constant for me has been and remains seeing family at the holidays.

I’m not the baby of the family anymore, graduating to the ‘grown ups’ table long ago but unquestionably, comfort is still derived in being around ‘your people.’ People you know and love. People connected by the ties of blood or marriage who accompany you for the better part of your ride through life. People you see each and every year at certain times. Those who can recall a time when you weren’t marked by the bumps and bruises accumulated during your time here on earth.

Family is important. I find as I get older, it becomes even more important to me. I never thought of myself as having much in the way of family so, I am thankful for what little family I possess. Ironically, as I grow to enjoy being around my family more, there is less time left to me enjoy their company.

Each family has its own traditions. One of ours is the post meal card game. I couldn’t tell you when the game really started but, I do remember joining in somewhere during my late teens or early twenties. Being able to play in the game was a special privelege, a great boon if you would, a rite of passage from the recesses of childhood into the adult world. Accepted into the pantheon that was the core of players. Over the years some came, others went but, a select few of our number wound up sitting down after dinner and before coffee year in - year out. Admittedly as the number of games mounted, I found myself increasingly looking forward to each game. Our tradition, the menfolk sitting down, pretending to be big shots among one and other in our high stakes game of quarters.

Play cards with the same people through the years and you come to recognize the kind of player a person is. You get surprised every now and again but it doesn’t matter because the game itself, the banter, the company, just being there is what’s fun. Also, age becomes less of a barrier as you rack up time on the planet. A gap of ten or twenty years doesn’t mean as much as it did when you were younger. You start seeing people as they are rather than what you imagine them to be.



Well, we lost a player last week.

I’m not good enough to be able to do a man justice and sum up his life in a few sentences. What I can say is our last card game was at Christmas. Christmas was at Bob and Linda’s house. Bob broke out the new tabletop he had gotten for a gift from his son-in-law. He beamed with pride over the big holiday score, along with the nice set of chips, it wound up being a treat for all of us, a step closer to legimitizing our game. We played, we joked, we did all the same good natured ribbing of each other we all enjoyed.

I may be mistaken but, I’m thinking Bob was the big winner that day. Now, six short months later he is gone.

We went to visit him at the hospital last week - appropriately enough on the day where the sky opened up with rain. Bob had been asleep since Saturday and my cousin had been at his side standing vigil. It was tough on her, she had hardly been away from his side since he was admitted to the hospital almost two weeks prior but, you spend thirty years with someone I imagine you don’t ever want to ponder a day when they won’t be with you anymore.

Bob didn’t look at all like the smiling man who gleefully piled his chips before him. There was an ever increasing wall as his winnings mounted. The happy, vivacious charlatan has been spirited away and replaced by a small frail figure. Occasionally, his slight frame evidenced a great shudder showing the incredible weight of his illness. Sitting in the small room it was hard to reconcile the man I knew with the ravaged figure before me.

There wasn’t a shortage of people though, well-wishers, friends, family. People whose lives had been affected by Bob, by his energy, his joy of life. It is at these moments bearing witness to a person stirring the last embers of a precious fire before it dims, you confront mortality, you wonder what the measure of a person truly is. How can success or failure be measured? What is the legacy a person leaves behind?

Sitting in his hospital room and over the subsequent days after Bob’s passing I came to realize the measure of life’s wealth and simply put it is in the lives we touch. As the fates would have it, Bob turned out to be one of the wealthiest men I have ever had the privelege to know and he will be sorely missed.

They killed Farfour! YOU BASTARDS!

If you don’t know who Farfour is, I posted about him previously but you can take a look at the YouTube clip (which is actually quite funny).


However, on a much more solemn note, word reaches us today that Farfour has been killed!

In the final skit, “Farfour” was killed by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour’s land. At one point, the mouse called the Israeli a “terrorist.”

“Farfour was martyred while defending his land,” said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed “by the killers of children,” she added.

I know it’s taken very seriously by the people producing it but, it just shows how wacky they are.

Hard to believe.

You know, I was doing some looking around for material for an entry when I came across this gem - I just have a lot of trouble believing things like this still go on in the world:

Interviewer: Is female circumcision a regular thing for you people?

Villager: Yes.

Interviewer: Aren’t there people who refrain from circumcising [their girls]?

Villager: No, all women are circumcised.

Interviewer: So it’s a must...

Villager: Yes.

Interviewer: It has been said that circumcision is harmful to the girl’s health.

Villager: We have never prevented it, because a girl must be circumcised. She must. It doesn’t affect her at all. It would affect her if she didn’t. But this way, the girl becomes smart and calm, and then she grows tall and beautiful.

Interviewer: If she’s circumcised, she grows tall and beautiful?

Villager: Yes.

Apparently you can find all kinds of good clips from Arabic tv here.

I got this email.

And while I usually don’t post these things it does make a certain sense since if you leave stuff in a hot car (especially plastic stuff) it has a tendency to melt and it’s not hard to see where certain chemicals could leech into fluids contained inside.

Drinking Bottled Water Kept in Car....a friend whose mother recently got diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor told her: women should not drink bottled water that has been left in a car. The doctor said that the heat and the plastic of the bottle have certain chemicals that can lead to breast cancer. So please be careful and do not drink that water bottle that has been left in a car and pass this on to all the women in your life. This information is the kind we need to know and be aware and just might save us!!!! The heat causes toxins from the plastic to leak into the water and they have found these toxins in breast tissue. Use a stainless steel Canteen or a glass bottle when you can!!!

A new Reverend Al.

Al Goldstein isn’t really relevant to a generation of people under the age of say 35 or so.

To a generation of people over that age though, Al was something of a pioneer in a lot of ways. People over 35 can still readily accept a world without cell phones, email and the Internet. In a world where easy access to pornography wasn’t readily available through the World Wide Web, the garish weekly Screw magazine and the late night cable show Midnight Blue were both forerunners of an underground scene that becomes ever more part of the mainstream daily.

“The World’s Greatest Newspaper” — was founded in 1968 by Al Goldstein. Begun as a response to a burgeoning sexual revolution and to the air-brushed soft-pedaled sexuality in magazines such as Playboy, Screw set out to be the most outrageous magazine of its type. Printed weekly in New York City, in tabloid form, it quickly succeeded, reaching a circulation of 500,000, and making armies of enemies among conservatives and the “moral hypocrites” in government that Screw had vowed to fight...

Screw is best known for its alarmingly frank representation of sex, in both lurid photographs and prose that has continually pushed close to the edges of protected speech. Founder Al Goldstein continually beat back the government forces that have tried to stifle him and has won a series of obscenity cases...

Screw is also legendary for its covers, which have featured a Who’s Who of American underground cartoonists, such as Robert Crumb, Vaughn Bodé, Wally Wood, and Danny Hellman.

After discovering Al’s blog, I find myself captivated by his take on the world - none of the piss and vinegar that made him such a charlatan back in those halcyon days has disappeared, if anything he is railing against the vagaries of life with an even louder and more indignant voice as exampled by this entry:

It has long been argued that only cowards kill themselves. The truth of that is self-evidenced by getting old and eating lunch at a senior citizen’s center. While slurping my pea soup along with these other dreadfully boring old fogies, death in my mind becomes an expensive cashmere blanket that will give me the peace and serenity I desperately long for. The greatest sin helps you forget everything you ever learned or read. I imagine the real joy is of it like a non-surgical frontal lobotomy that spares you the indignity of being discovered in a house of horrors.

If you have ever watched a loved one succumb to the vicissitudes of time, you can strongly identify with those words above.

The other thing I ran across when I was looking around for stuff for this entry was this:

When it’s time to think about a career change.

Become a Bounty Hunter, CSI, Accountant, Teacher, Eng., HR Mgr., Graphic Designer - Degrees online - Start now.

I’ve always been a big proponent of reading the writing on the wall. When you see your profession advertised in the same sentence as a Bounty Hunter, I think it becomes time for one to start thinking about a career change. Aside from the fact I would like to think design overall isn’t by necessity something everyone is capable of doing - it reminds me of all those old daytime commercials I used to see enticing a person with the line ‘You can drive a big rig!’ or ‘Become an air-conditioning mechanic!’

My sadistic glee.

“We are making a dent,” said Ontario police Cpl. Jeff Higbee. “But it’s summertime and… we expect to see more activity”

Reading the article referenced above, I felt a delicious glee and sense of satisfaction. I only wish they would do the same thing around my neighborhood. I live not to far from a park and the local streets sometimes can be the site of these loud, buzz-bomb sounding little heaps soaring their way through the neighborhood. Almost always they are smaller compacts and I get the sense the drivers have seen one of the 2 Fast 2 Furious movies one too many times.

Aside from the danger to other drivers and pedestrians (and there are a lot of kids around because of the park), I cannot begin to tell you how annoying it is for one of these idiots to decide to go roaring up the block around 1 in the morning in what is otherwise a very sedate and quiet area.

In a word, schmucks.

29 down, 21 to go.

create your own personalized map of the USA



Yes, I had to succumb - still so many more states to visit!

What are you doing this Saturday?

A group of us are going to check out the Mermaid Parade, drop me a line if you’ll be there and want to hook up!

Yellow schools of taxi fishes.


I took this shot and it reminded me of this tune.

The week that was.

Today, I get to go to another funeral. I don’t like going to these things but I heard this passage on NPR awhile back and it summed up things rather well and I think since I heard it I have tried to take those words to heart:

“Always go to the funeral” means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

In this instance, I think it is a situation that underlines those sentiments. The person who passed was someone who I never really understood (neither of us spoke a common language) but, the family that survives is important to me. I go to try and be there for them.

It’s been a bad week in that way - I came into the week finally getting a project finished, a project that had consumed all my waking moments for the preceding several days as I tried to figure out the design problems it presented. I am happy with the end result but, after finishing one of these projects, I find it akin to eating a large meal in that I want to push myself away from the table and take a nap (even if only a figurative one) and have a day or two of getting back to normal.

I didn’t have that chance this week.

When I got into the week, already drained and found myself with committments on my time, I just wound up playing catch up over the next few days. The beginning of the week was supposed to be relagated to working on site for a long term client and as the week progressed it just didn’t happen because of one reason or another. I did wind up being there one day but, it was a brutally long day and I found myself walking back in my door after midnight.

Ah, and then there is the phantom stone. I am trying to figure if I passed a stone yesterday or if I was the recepient of some middle of the night kitty trampoline jumping. All I know is I am still sore on one side.

Still with everything that went on, the week was good. I’ve had better weeks and I’ve had worse but, I am coming to the conclusion that how I approach the world has as much to do with how bad things get as any external event.

Pssst...

Hey. C’mere.

Just between you and I, while there are a lot of people raging against the guy, will you admit how irrelevant the President is in our lives?

I seem to see a lot of electronic ink devoted to the topic regularly. Anger, anger, anger all directed at Alfred E. President but, I get the feeling sometimes like the nation is just holding its breath waiting for the next election to roll around so we can put this 8 years behind us.

8 years, wow!

Between Bush the senior, Clinton and Bush the Jr. that’s 20 years of my life gone. It’s hard to sometimes imagine a generation is coming of age and that is all they have known. Stop for a second and really give that some thought if you will. If a person was born in 1988 all they have known is a Bill sandwiched between a lot of Bush - seems like a healthy stripper metaphor is in there.

Even if they were born say around ’84, they can’t really have very clear memories of anyone before those three.

I imagine age gives you perspective, the first guy I can really remember was Nixon and I have vague memories of Johnson and his veep Humphrey (who ran against Tricky Dick in ’68). I survived Ford and Carter though both of whom I remember quite well and of course, Ronnie Rocket.

What I wonder about right now is the wave of nostalgia twenty years hence for the ‘good old days’ of the decade just after the millennium. It’s only in looking back we get a sense of the events we have lived through, we never seem able to recognize those trends while we are living them. What will the focus be on I wonder?

In the meantime, will somebody tell me why, oh why we are having debates between prospective candidates 15 to 16 months before any actual election takes place? By focusing so readily on the next presidential race, aren’t we in fact giving a pass to the people who are in office now in both the Executive and Legislative branches of government? Am I the only one who thinks this sideshow devoted to figuring out who the horses will be in the next Presidential race only serves to distract the country from taking care of the things it needs to address today?

Works for me.

Commissioner Bud Selig announced Wednesday that, once the Giants slugger retires, his name in the official MLB record books will be forever accompanied by an asterisk, followed by a pound sign and exclamation point, all preceded by the letter ‘F’—a string of characters that, according to Selig, “will always be associated with Barry Bonds.”

Of course since it is from the Onion one has to suppose it is hardly true although one can hope.

Creature comfort.



Creature comforts is running the next few weeks on CBS. Basically a rebroadcast updated with American voices it’s worth watching because it has truly funny moments.

Update.

I made an earlier remark about the redesign of Mike Wieringo’s site and surprisingly enough the top banner has since been changed.* It certainly looks a helluva lot nicer and is more in keeping with the style and character a guy who makes his living as a penciller (although I am somewhat mystified by the plural internet[s]). I still think the thing (header) is way too big.

What’s funny is there is a column for “ART,” that seems like it would lend itself to small sized versions of the draw to Mike’s site - the daily sketch. Linked to the larger versions he normally posted in the body of his old design would seem to be a good solution. I can’t help but think, taking the sketches out of the body of his blogging (text) would at least give some of what he writes an equal amount of significance. Even though I do visit to see his sketches I do enjoy reading what he has to say as well.

I guess it may be a work in progress, we’ll see. Also, he‘s got a Flickr stream up with color work (linked from his website) and the color stuff is just out and out spectacular, really worth a look!

*Further update - it appears the site has three rotating banners. I imagine it’s a question of waiting for the one to take precedence. Still thinking how the navigation isn’t as good as it used to be though.

A Monday roundup.

Looking through the traffic reports for the blog is always somewhat interesting.

I endeavor to be an equal opportunity offender. What I mean to say is, I think I am most successful if I can generate traffic across a broad spectrum of opinion and views. It won’t feel like I’ve totally arrived until I can get Warren Ellis to resume answering my emails (or at the very least link to me). Even getting Peter David to link here would be something of a victory (at least he does answer emails).

Fortunately people do link here and they get scads more traffic than my lonely corner of the internet could ever hope to generate. Even though I got dropped from Cherry Bomb’s selected set of links, sweet, sweet Alix (of We Could Be Naked) links here.

I even got a nice mention by Elayne in her blog this week for something I wrote, being linked to is an incredible measure of flattery (really!). That two people of disparate outlooks on life would link here is to me something even more of a victory because regardless of our differences we are united in the things we like more.

Some other things which are of note of late:

Vinnie shut down his blog for the summer and while it’s understandable (him wanting to take a break), it’s still disappointing because looking at his work is such a treat.

Mike Wieringo redesigned his website (and I still haven’t made the grade there linkwise).

In the process of redesigning though things have grown more cluttered (although his drawing is still a treat to look at). I don’t know what it is about it but, I liked some of the icons for his old site much better. Perhaps because the iconography for the old site was so uniquely his and didn’t look as generic as the new design does.

I looked again and realized too that it was a couple of things including the type treatment (having the top banner dominate much of the space above the fold). It’s one of those situations where you know criticism isn’t really welcome as much as fawning adoration but, I’ve included a link to show what I’m talking about. If you click through you see how the page comes up on my computer (and I’m using a big monitor) suffice to say it’s just a poor page layout.

(Just one more thing to put me on Mike’s sh*tlist)

Danielle Corsetto is trying to generate enough cash through donations to do Girls Without Slingshots five days a week. I just keep hoping she can find a print outlet for her work which will essentially achieve the same goal.

If you’re going to do something...

Do it right! If you haven’t seen this, you can be treated to the mother of all baseball manager tantrums. I imagine he didn’t like a call, the sense I get is the home plate umpire had a varying strike zone. Lou Pinella better watch out because there is a challenger to his title as baseball’s most fiery manager:

In case you missed it.

“You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me,” he said, referring to his screen acting career.

“I’m grateful for the other things that have come into my life,” he added.

I managed to see Paul Newman live in one of his last stage performances as the stage manager in Our Town at the Westport Community Playhouse and seeing one of our nation’s great actors close up in such a small venue in one of American Theater’s standards was nothing less than a tremendous treat.

Jeffrey DeMunn, Jayne Atkinson and Frank Converse have been confirmed for the cast of the Westport Country Playhouse revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. They join the already-announced Paul Newman and Jane Curtin. James Naughton will direct the starry group.

The production will run June 5-22.

Curtin will play one of the four parents of the story’s central teenage sweethearts. Beyond "Saturday Night Live," Curtin is known for the sitcoms “Kate & Allie” and “Third Rock from the Sun” and an occasional stage turn in plays such as Love Letters.

It’s too bad Newman has decided to stop acting but understandable - he’s leaving big footprints behind for today’s actors to follow in though.

Masturbation and you.

You know when I was younger, I honestly thought there would come a day when I wouldn’t get horny. Actually, it was more that I thought I wouldn’t get as horny. The years have passed and the feeling doesn’t ever really go away. I wonder why that is sometimes, this tendency towards self abuse whose pull is so powerful (you know it wasn’t until I reread that I realized the horrible pun contained within).

Woody Allen said (in Annie Hall): Don’t knock masturbation — it’s sex with someone I love. As much as that may be true, I can’t help but feel I could put my time to better use though. If I somehow took all the time I have spent throughout my life “milking the lizard” as it has colorfully been referred to among friends and devoted the same amount of time to one of life’s great puzzles or some other problem that confronted humanity I think I would be famous by now and our collective lot would be a better one.

I don’t think Albert Einstein masturbated.


Well, actually I think he might have masturbated once but, just once and he had a really good orgasm and after that figuring it would tough to follow that up he just abstained. Hence we have E=Mc2.

Stephen Hawkins probably isn’t able to masturbate himself and look at what he’s able to come up with. Yes, if it wasn’t for masturbation we would be flying to the stars!

The reason I bring this up was because of a discussion I was having with someone today. The person was mentioning during the course of the conversation seeing an ad for Enzyte or some such other concoction guaranteed to give you a woody that could crack concrete.


If you not familiar with the Enzyte campaign (I don’t know maybe you’ve lived in a cave for the last few years), it has the ubiquitous Bob in each ad who goes everywhere with the same vacant smile plastered on his face (due to his constant state of arousal no doubt). The ad always extols the great virtues of Bob’s prowess when it comes to getting a boner and how he is the envy of his friends and neighbors. They go on to say how Bob’s wife is really happy but, I can’t help but think if Bob has been married for 10 or more years, she’s not so much happy because Bob has a boner as much as she is because she’s doing the pool boy on the side.

We spend a lot of time in this country focused on stiff dicks.

Besides the people in government.

In addition to Enzyte, you’ll see the campaign for Viagra too. More talk about a hard man being good to find. Thing is, we spend so much time focused on this nowadays, our obsession as a nation stands in marked contrast to our nation’s determination to put a man on the moon in the sixties. Yes instead of lifting our gaze skyward and pondering new vistas to explore, our country is pulling its pants out at the waist, discretely checking to see if we’re hard and wondering why we’re not if we’re not.


The funny thing about Viagra is they speak about one of the side effects being blindness.

Well, D’uh!

I mean I can remember my mother telling me for years I would go blind.

If you haven’t seen this.


It’s out on DVD now and I have to say I highly recommend it. I keep hoping it will make it to a regular series but seeing as how Peter Krauss is part of the cast on a new ABC show slated for the fall, it looks unlikely. Still it’s one of the more entertaining things I’ve seen over the last few months.

I’m putting this back up again.

Because I was flipping channels and Rock and Roll Circus was on which I am finally getting a chance to watch but, again this stands as one of the best performances by a band I have ever seen:

It’s like poetry.

It’s like being with a hooker when she asks if I want to pay another $100 for her to lick my asshole. Of course I am going to say yes. I guess that’s why my kitchen is filled with useless as-seen-on-TV Garlic Presses and Hot Dog Toasters that do not work.

You can’t make this stuff up. Nobody can turn a phrase like Al Goldstein.

Friday cat blogging gone terribly, terribly wrong!

photo © polyrealism

I give you Hitler-cat!

So very, very wrong but so very, very funny.

Kitty math.

Maybe it seems a bit stupid but, when I wake up in the morning I have a small bundle of fur curled up beside me (or on top of me). If I just look over at the bundle it is enough to elicit a reaction and a head turn in my direction to see if I have opened my eyes.

Then, the purring starts. It is loud, so very loud the purring, and seems unending.

If I lie back and prompt it by tapping upon my chest slowly, hesitantly the fur bundle will crawl up on top of me and get comfortable. It is a dangerous moment in the day because the small, radiantly warm package purring away atop me can be enough to lure me back into the world of dreamland once more.

I lie there on the precipice of the day and my mind is gloriously free of all worry as my focus is only on the delicious heat and soothing noise coming from this little being perched on me. Sometimes I do fall back asleep, only to wake hours later with my companion still in the same position but, if the urgency of the day seizes me, after some perfunctory petting, all I need do is make it apparent with some minor urging and she alights from me and says good morning in the unfathomable language of the feline.

I am followed to the kitchen as we both make our journey into the land of wakening.

Breakfast follows, more petting and purring. There is some exploring which needs to be done to see if the house has undergone some serious transformation since its last inspection. All this needs to be fit in before the after breakfast nap.

The thing that amazes me is how such a little creature can fill the beginning of my day with such an abundance of joy, truly one of the most remarkable equations of kitty math.

Is this indicative of a wave of change?

I saw this news article about a book burning and had to pass it along. Makes me think in some ways of Fahrenheit 451 although it is less about censorship and more about subtle changes occurring in society:

“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.

The fire blazed for about 50 minutes before the Kansas City Fire Department put it out because Wayne didn’t have a permit for burning.

Speaking of.

Al Goldstein, I did some poking around and found his blog! It is definitely a must-read as Al hasn’t lost any of the piss and vinegar that made him so entertaining!

The arrogance of the new generation, with their new tech breakthroughs, is astonishing. Like assholes, everyone these days has a blog and an opinion. People with no knowledge or expertise on anything pontificate about everything. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean you know anything other than you should wipe your ass after you take a shit – and I believe many of these tech-yuppies forget to do that. It is the blind leading the blind, the ignorant leading the ignorant, and this is what our government is based on. How did George W. Bush become president when he never went to a foreign country? His advisors were as dumb and provincial as he is.

And you bloggers are equally as dumb. Why do you lay upon us your ignorance, your pomposity and conceit? I want to learn from an expert, from an authority, those who know more than me. I am not interested in learning from you vermin. It would be like you trying to teach me how to eat pussy when I had sex with over 7000 women. You have had five and had to pay for each of them. It’s a world with no criteria, evaluation or grades. These people who are telling us what to think believe that the world is flat and women are afraid of sex. They are trying to interpret a world they do not and cannot understand.

You SUCK!

I order stuff online, I don’t have any trepidation about it anymore and for the most part I’ve had pretty decent experiences. Last month I spent an inordinate amount of time straightening out a royal f**k up by Amazon but, I’ll give them credit, they really did go out of their way to placate me for bad service.

I ordered a ladder through Amazon, got a decent price (even though I found it for cheaper later), waited for the thing to come... and waited... and waited. It showed up as having shipped but the thing was it wasn’t coming through UPS, FedEx or USPS. Amazon had to send it through some freight shipper and they were just clowns, there’s no other way to put it.

The thing wound up out at JFK a day or two after leaving Ohio and then you couldn’t get through to these people. If you didn’t call them after 9am or before 5pm you were sh*t out of luck and even during business hours there were times the phone would just go unanswered, add to the fact they didn’t have any kind of voicemail. It just goes on and on and on and I would rather not even get into what it took to get this whole thing straightened out.

I wound up sending a few emails to Amazon and speaking to some people over there (as I said the shipper was just useless) and they really did try very hard to make things right. As it wound up they reimbursed me for shipping and refunded a good portion of the cost of the ladder so I wasn’t in a position to complain. Well, maybe I was in a position to complain but, you could see they were really trying and I appreciated they kicked back the money they did to compensate for the aggravation.

Recently I ordered some books (comic books) through another website. I know they do a lot of business on eBay and I believe I even bought something from them on eBay about 7 years ago but, this is the first time I’ve ever ordered anything directly from their site - I ordered the thing as a preorder, two months before the book came out. I didn’t even think too much about it until the other day when I got an email saying the things were shipping. A few days later I went to pick up my mail and found a flat there waiting for me (among other things), I opened the flat up later on when I got home. There was an invoice in the envelope and some other promotional material but the books I had ordered weren’t in the envelope. Just an invoice (packing slip) and this other crap.

I sent the people an email - they said they would refund my money but, it wasn’t the money I wanted, I paid for the books. Of course in the interim they said they no longer had any stock on the books. I won’t dignify them by providing a link to their site but I certainly won’t order from them ever again. In the meantime, if I had just used the local guy I usually go to I would have gotten the book but I figured since they are the distributor of choice for Dark Horse I was guaranteed getting the book(s).

So, in the spirit of the old Al Goldstein moments on Midnight Blue, F*CK YOU TFAW.COM. Though your website states: Welcome. You've arrived at the best online store for comic books, manga, anime and pop culture collectibles! The truth is you really must be from another world if you’re buying into your own hype because your service leaves plenty to be desired.

Cat care lesson #23.


Always check the box of recycling before putting it at curbside. Kitties are not to be recycled!

Baseball self-denial?

After years of being lorded over by Yankee fans one has to excuse me if I find the disconnect going on this season between the Yankee fan and the team’s performance nothing short of amazing. Hearing all the sports talk radio in New York beseiged by Yankee fans still confident they will somehow reach the post-season is akin to the denial of our current president.

How bad are the Yankees this year?

Well, as of the end of play today, the Pittsburgh Pirates have a better win/loss record then the Yankees - and I’m sure the fans in Pittsburgh aren’t kidding themselves that a wild card shot is in the offing.

The return of the Bionic Woman.

If you came of age in my day, there was a certain quality to television that is long since absent. I found an old newspaper when I was cleaning out things the other day and it was interesting just to look at it as a bit of a curio – if only to get a sense of how much the world has changed on so many different levels.

The paper was from ’81 or thereabouts which doesn’t seem too long ago until I realize it’s over 25 years!

Looking through the TV listings you see the choices were much more limited than they are now. Now, TV is a 24/7 cacophony of information and mindlessness attacking the senses constantly but, even as recently as 1981 that wasn’t the case. There weren’t three cable news channels and there wasn’t even much in the way of cable. MTV was still just a heartbeat away and still hadn’t pervaded society as it would a few years later. Most of TV was just broadcast and while NY had a bigger selection of channels (a whopping 7), most of them went off the air sometime between 1 and 3am.

There wasn’t a 24-hour news cycle, there weren’t cellphones, faxes, email. People just weren’t that connected constantly.

Anyway, what bought the time to mind was seeing how TV is recycling another one of its old ideas. This time they are bringing back the Bionic Woman that at the time of original broadcast was a pretty big deal (along with The Six Million Dollar Man). It makes me wonder what other ideas TV might regurgitate on today’s audience.

TV runs in cycles though and I was thinking about that period from 1970 to 1980 when I did some exploring on YouTube and came across some of those old shows. Shows that were fairly popular in their day but, shows now largely forgotten. There were a bunch of SciFi imports from England:

Space 1999:

Eight years past 1999 and the moon is still fixed in orbit. Plus, we sure don’t seem to be conquering space’s vistas the way we envisioned.


UFO:

Funny if only one can explain why all the woman in the space station needed to wear purple wigs.


The Six Million Dollar Man:

What would the price be when adjusted for inflation?


Love American Style featuring the pilot for what would become Happy Days:

I actually remember this episode in particular for very specific reasons that have nothing to do with TV.


Room 222:

A favorite of mine when I was a kid. Plus it had Karen Valentine in it (who is 60?!?!?!).


The Mod Squad:

Too funny to watch in retrospect.


It Takes A Thief:

Robert Wagner’s take on Cary Grant.


Mannix:

This was on every Saturday night when I was over my grandparents. I remember it as being progressive because of the dynamic between Mannix and Peggy Fair.


Cannon:

A Quinn Martin production!


The Mystery Movie:

There was a time when these filled up NBC’s broadcast schedule.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the seventies were taken up by ‘cop shows.’ It was the wave of the seventies that makes me wonder if it will ever have a big comeback and take over the TV schedule the way reality programming or game shows have over the last few years.

There were a few other shows like The Name of The Game and another show which though it ran briefly is interesting in the way it presents technology:

Crazy kitty = regular kitty.

Cat owners will tell you about those moments when cats suddenly will have incredible bursts of energy. It manifests itself in different ways depending upon the cat; a sudden dash across the room for no explainable reason, a sharpening of claws real or pretend. Usually cats’ pupils will be opened wide and they will have this look about their faces of surprise and earnestness.

Anna is no different, there are times she will come nosing around and if I make any move she will be off like a shot. There is an almost cartoon-like quality as you hear the scratching of nails as she tries to build up speed before running the length of the house.

I know the secret now though.

See, whenever one of these moments strikes her I know it’s time to check the litter box.

These bursts of energy, these moments of extreme playfulness, are all in celebration of kitty suddenly feeling ‘lighter.’ In other words, kitty is celebrating the occasion of a good dump.

A mighty wind.

So, I keep trying to write about tornados.


See, a week ago Wednesday to be precise, I managed to once again come very close to some awful weather malady.

Last year, I wound up criss-crossing the path an F2 tornado took no less than three times about 15 or 20 minutes before it struck.

No sh*t!

It was another one of those times when I was blissfully ignorant of something until after the fact.


That day I was driving down the Saw Mill River Parkway getting off to go down to Tarrytown to pick up the mail on my way into the city. The red line on the image is the path the tornado took, I was going down the purple road and then across the green road where it has the callout about tree damage.

On July 12, 2006 a strong south westerly wind on the surface acted in conjunction with a strong upper level jet to cause conditions to become ripe. The tornado spawned as a waterspout over the Hudson River in the southwest quadrant of the storm and traveled in the northeast direction, something that is distinctive with most tornado causing thunderstorms. Once it reached the Westchester side of the river it became a Tornado and roared up Beekman Ave., the Main Street of Sleepy Hollow. The tornado reached F-2 status as it crossed over the Sleepy Hollow village line into Hawthorne. From there it tore across Hawthorne, New York, destroying a California Closets office and warehouse. It then proceeded up Stevens Ave. and crossed into Valhalla, New York inflicting much damage. It finally crossed the Kensico Reservoir and caused slight damage in Greenwich, CT before going out to the Long Island Sound.

It was just one of those days where you miss something by a few minutes. I was actually in Tarrytown getting the mail when the thing was going up the main street in Sleepy Hollow and it started to rain. Then, I was going to go back around the lakes and pick up the Saw Mill again but decided to go down and take Benedict Avenue over.

WHITE PLAINS, July 12 — A reported tornado touched down in central Westchester County on Wednesday, heavily damaging a commercial building on Route 9A, knocking down trees and physically lifting a state trooper’s car and twirling it around.

The twister, first spotted crossing the Hudson River and described as looking like a waterspout, touched down at least twice, according to reports made to the National Weather Service. It moved over the village of Sleepy Hollow, then into the town of Mount Pleasant, where it did the most damage in the hamlet of Hawthorne. It was in Hawthorne that the state trooper, who was driving on Route 9A, encountered the storm.

So, that was a bit of a close call and even going home that night I somehow was lucky enough to avoid all the traffic tie ups resulting from the storm (again not intentionally).

This past week, I was supposed to go into the city on Wednesday. It was another one of those hot days, we actually set a record for the temperature up here with 85° but, I didn’t really pay much attention because I was getting a lot of things crossed off my list and it was a fairly productive day.

Sure, they predicted thunderstorms late in the day but, because I was getting a lot of things crossed off the ol’ list it didn’t register with me. My only thought about the weather was whether or not I would want to take the train into the city and just avoid the hassle of driving through thunderstorms and the accompanying road mess either on the way in or on the way home.

As the day got later, it became obvious I just wouldn’t have the extra time to take the train in and I still had to pick up the laundry. So, I went down and got the laundry and just bagged it and threw it in the trunk figuring to fold it later on in the evening. I started making my way in and at the time I noticed how the sky to the west was getting really, really dark. As a matter of fact, the sky was a deep purple, although you couldn’t see any clouds you could tell there was bad weather on its way.

Oblivious to this, I started my drive into the city making my way through another, very suburban looking part of the village. It’s part of the village where the lawns are always well manicured, and the streets rarely have much traffic on them but, it also serves as a bit of a back way down to another main road which would put me onto the first part of my journey cityward.

Aside from the sky to the west it’s a pretty normal day, there’s a woman standing alongside the curb no doubt waiting for the school bus to pass by and drop off her kid, I pass a pair of kids riding bicycles giving them a wide berth but, as I am driving through the neighborhood, I notice something which in the briefest passing moment strikes me as a bit odd.

I am looking at a tree, all spread out with it’s leaves and silhouetted against the darkening sky to the west and there... is... just... something... about the light on the leaves which seems a little bit off.

Now, I’ve been in situations out in the Midwest where I’ve seen bad weather and anyone who has been through that kind of weather will tell you there is a weird quality to the light. It’s a hard thing to explain to someone until they’ve seen it for themselves but, things take on a strange quality in that light. Thinking back now, the thing that stands out is how the leaves were so amazingly still with not even the slightest hint of a breeze blowing through them. Even so, they were framed by this terribly threatening sky so it seemed odd they wouldn’t be moving a little.

And I drove another few blocks and I got to a part of the village where there is a campus for a fairly well known corporation and a few houses were constructed on the grounds of the campus with everything behind a six-foot red brick wall. The road I was about to turn onto traces the edge of the wall.

I look across the street at a driveway into the walled in complex and there is some kind of septic truck and I notice what appears to be for lack of a better phrase, ‘a dust devil.’ There just seems to be this crazy, frenetic jumble of debris flying about. Dust, leaves, all the loose stuff lying around, moving about with great violence. It’s not a funnel or anything but, things are just twisting and twirling about in a really active way, a way that makes the heart beat a little faster as hardwired and instinctual alarms are ringing somewhere in the back where the reptilian brain is.

Rain starts to come down in thick and sporadic drops.

Plop... plop... plop... plop...

They make a noise hitting the car, a heavy almost meaty quality to the force of the droplets.



I make a left turn, go down a small rise, turning a corner (all the while with the wall to my right) and as get around the corner I come upon a scene that is like an explosion has just gone off. Thick branches are lying about the road, a power pole sits awkwardly over the roadway at an impossible 30° angle and power wires are twisted across the road surface. The sky opens up and it is suddenly like someone turned over a bucket of water dumping the contents all about me. Rain is coming down with such an intensity the cars’ wipers can barely keep the windshield clear and it is hard to even see more than a few feet ahead.

I make a u-turn and find I cannot even retrace my path, branches are down all over and the short five or ten minute ride back to my part of the village becomes a odyssey of picking around downed trees and branches. At some point I know I drive over something big but not having much choice even though I can hear it painfully striking the bottom of the car.

It was that fast.

It wasn’t a tornado though, it was rather something else called a downburst:

A downburst is a column of sinking air that is capable of producing damaging straight-line winds of over 150 mph (240 km/h), often producing damage similar to, but distinguishable from tornadoes. This is because the physical properties of a downburst are completely opposite that of a tornado. Downburst damage will radiate from a central point as the descending column spreads out when impacting the surface, whereas tornado damage tends towards convergent damage consistent with rotating winds.

It’s one of those heart-palpitating events you are happy to survive and it’s the second time in as many years I’ve skirted the edge of some nasty, nasty weather.

No, it wasn’t a tornado, but residents of northern Westchester don’t feel much better now as they cut their way through the trees that came crashing down on their neighborhoods.

Briarcliff Manor’s deputy fire chief suffered a fatal heart attack while helping a neighbor with a downed wire, the only known casualty from Wednesday’s thunderstorms. There were problems that approached being a disaster: Schoolchildren had to scurry for shelter when falling trees and wires trapped their bus in New Castle, and a Katonah mother and her three children somehow avoided injury when two giant oaks collapsed into the living room where they were gathered.

In the storm’s aftermath, residents are left with one big mess, a few thousand residual power outages, and a lot of newfound home repairs. And, yes, more rain is coming. Forecasters were predicting up to 3 more inches of rain for the Lower Hudson Valley, starting before dawn today and lasting, on and off, into the weekend.

But, seriously folks.

“It feels really good,” Jamison said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s a good accomplishment. I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big.”

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Monster Pig. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

I just really like the part where he say how it feels really good and he probably won’t kill anything else that big. Talk about value scales.

The dreadful secret of the Brady Bunch

I came across this and just had to share, it was too funny!

These are a few of my favorite things.

I love the band Cake and this video by the band combines two favorites, Cake music and the Iron Chef!

My goal is to educate!

So, if you have a few moments, take the time out to watch this informative video on the struggle to secure our great nation’s borders. Via Mike Nesmith’s VideoRanch the adventures of Mark Steen Border Patrol!

The difference a year makes.

Last year the Mets and the Yankees both finished tied with the best win/loss record in baseball both teams winding up with a 97 (win) 65 (loss) season.

Even though each team had the best record in their respective league, neither was able to make it out of the playoffs and into the World Series.

This year fortunes have changed and what might have looked good on paper turns out not to be as good as expected and what didn’t look good on paper turns out to be better than expected.

So, where do the two teams stand as of today a week before June begins at what could be considered a third of the way into the season?

Well, the Mets have played 43 games to this point. Their record is 28 (wins) versus 15 (losses) and if they are to match last year’s record they will have to play ten games over .500 the rest of the way going 69 (wins) and 49 (losses). Yes, there are 118 games left in the ’07 seasons and 59 is 118 divided by two so if the Mets can play well over the next few weeks they make their job the rest of the way infinitely easier.

The Yankees?

Well, the Yankees enter today with a 19 (wins) and 23 (losses) record meaning they’ve actually played one less game then the Mets so there are 120 games left in the Yankees season if it is necessary for them to play all of them. If the Yankees are to match the record they posted last season they will have to go 78 (wins) and 42 (losses) the rest of the way or in other words play .650 percentage baseball from today until the end of the season. They need to play 18 games over .500 the rest of the way.

A few years back, when the Mets were being managed by Art Howe, I realized sometime around mid-May the season was over for them. They just didn’t have the horses or the kind of team that could go on a really prolonged win streak necessary to put them into contention.

I haven’t read anything about it but, it was then I started to realize if a team plays really well in April and the beginning of May they can make it much, much easier for themselves over the course of a baseball season. One of those big early season holes becomes insurmountable after a point.

Like I said, I haven’t read anything about this topic anywhere else but, slowly this has become ingrained within me as a theory about baseball. Teams doing well at the start of the season are just going to have an easier time of it. Right now, if you look, Boston with 30 wins only has to play 8 games over .500 the rest of the way to have the same record the Yankees and Mets wound up with last year.

Truthfully it usually takes a little bit more to lead the league in wins whether it’s the American League or the National League but, not a lot more. Anything can happen between now and the end of the season but, like the man said, “It gets late awfully early around here.”

A quick end to global warming.

Global warming has become what the hole in the ozone layer once was in that it is the environmental issue of the moment. It’s the thing we hear about all the time, the issue news organizations focus on, the next great calamity facing us as a species as told by the doom-sayers.

I can’t make sense of it really because as a human being, my life is a blip when measured against the timeline of the planet. Is it warmer now than when I was a kid? Are winters milder? Is the weather more volatile? Maybe, maybe not. Thing is in the scope of the planet’s life it’s hard for me to know whether or not it’s because of something we’re doing or if it just is the normal course of events.

The mere statement above will cause some people to go apoplectic but, I generally want to get all the information I can before making a decision about anything and as far as climate science goes we still have an incredible amount to learn. Something in the histrionics of one side of the argument or another is something I find somewhat off-putting.

The curious thing about the two issues (Global Warming vs. Ozone Depletion) is how they have contrary affects on climate.

Then again, if you are worried about Global Warming, if you really are lying awake at night wondering when the end will come, let me possibly reassure you that Mother Nature could take care of the issue of Global Warming so quickly you would be amazed. Not only that, you might find yourself very unhappy if she did.

Were there to be a volcanic eruption on the scale of Karkatoa or Mount Tambora we might find ourselves in another Year Without a Summer and the prospect of snow in June is an unwelcome one to say the least but, it has happened and will most likely happen again at some point in the future.

The Grant Morrison image of the week.

photo by: DrJoanne on Flickr

The one that got away.

Awhile back I was talking about something I missed out on. In case you think I was joking, I wasn’t. I had been looking into a particular stock.

See, I was thinking about something one day and I started to do a bit of research and found there was a company that was doing what I had been thinking about. So, I looked into the company further, checked out their website, read some articles and was trying to buy some of their stock. I figured it was a growth area and down the road the company would be well-positioned in its market.

The only problem for me was that it was traded on a foreign exchange and the brokerage firm I have my retirement stuff with doesn’t trade on any foreign exchanges. The stock was a little pricey but, I was tracking it for a few months. It had been around $60 per share in December and had gone up around $85. I was waiting for a little market correction to bring it down a little and then would figure out a way to get it. But, it wasn’t an easy thing because to do so would have meant opening up a new trading account that at the time seemed a bit more trouble than it was worth.



Take a look at the chart above. Yep, that’s the stock. If I had gone out and say just bought 100 shares I would be having a really big smile on my face right about now and not worrying about what happened over the rest of the year. In the meantime, I’ve got my eye on two other things that I just picked up and have my fingers crossed. You don’t see charts like that all that often.

Changing spots.

I haven’t really thought much about Leopard as I am quite happy with Tiger and haven’t purchased any new hardware since ’03. Still there is some interesting speculation going on about the delay of Leopard’s release:

One more thing: doing away with overlapping windows in most of the OS would give Apple a marketing bludgeon to use against Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT). In the marketplace of ideas, it would paint Microsoft’s six-years-in-the-making Vista as a completely old school effort. It would take Microsoft's best-known and recognized brand — Windows — and make it appear as tired as DOS. It would be a marketing shot heard round the world — and it would be one that would take Microsoft years to copy.

If you’re really serious.

About helping out the environment and stopping the whole Global Warming thing you might want to look into this:

Designed and introduced in 2002 as an everyday reusable replacement to disposable plastic shopping bags, millions of which are used once and thrown away daily, ACME Bags Workhorse is both stylish and tough. Its unique design is based on the classic plastic shopping bag, but is made of super strong, durable, rip-stop nylon that is virtually tear-proof.

I was reading an article about these things yesterday and couldn’t help but think it might be a good thing to look into. Especially as seeing I spent a good deal of time recently folding up a number of the bags that had amassed in the bag drawer and how a lot of times these things go right into the garbage. First off, plastic of course is generated by petrochemicals and second there is just the concern of the impact these things have on the environment.

Consumers find themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to paper or plastic. To find out what is best to do in the grocery store, we turned to Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“It depends on where you live,” he says.

Plastic bags threaten wildlife along the coasts, so if that’s where you call home, Hershkowitz says the choice should be paper. In the heartland, he says it’s plastic.

Everytime I hear or read something about this subject, I can’t help but think of the North Pacific Gyre said to be approaching the size of Texas!



NPR’s Scott Simon talks with oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer about a giant patch of garbage the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking of Clintons.

There is no denying the strong reaction that comes to them:

For all those who’d like to stick it to her, here’s your chance. For those who are horrified at the thought, be comforted by this: every dollar spent buying this kit is not going to be donated to Ms. Clinton’s political rivals! The kit contains a Hillary Clinton look-alike doll, a book of voodoo spells particularly appropriate for the junior senator, and pushpins.

Another easy out.

Some time ago I was talking to a female friend of mine who has been married a long time. She commented on the fact she and her hubby would occasional get into spats, nothing significant but, annoying nonetheless. You can’t help but be with someone a long time and not occasionally brush up against each other and step on the other person’s toes.

So, I was listening to her and I told her I knew of a way she could win each and every argument she had with her husband. Literally, I told her there was a way she could end every argument immediately and come out on the winning end each and every time.

So, when she heard me say that, she was curious to find out what the way was, what was the secret to managing to be the victor in any spat she may have with her spouse.

Now, I’m going to give you guys the answer. It may sound extremely sexist but, I hate to say it, deep down it’s true and if you catch any man at one of those moments of pure unadulterated truth, he will admit, yes, indeed this does work.

All a woman needs to do to win any argument with a man is to walk over to him, unzip his pants and suck his d*ck.

OW!

Yes, I hear the groans in the gallery. I hear the sharp intake of breath as the shock of the statement settles in but, hear me out.

It is virtually impossible for any man to be angry when he is getting fellatio. If you don’t believe me, try it.

Now, my friend said to me she didn’t want to win an argument that way and while I can understand that, it didn’t make sense. See, this is supposed to be the person you love, the person you cherish and have chosen to spend your life with. This is something no matter who the man, makes a man happy!

If you don’t believe me go ask Bill Clinton.

Unfortunately, we men are ruled by our genitals. Maybe the world would be a better place if that weren’t the case but, it’s true. I think it is something that is hard-wired into us as a species. Something that is there for a reason. It causes men a lot of the time to make some really, really stupid decisions. Like, anytime you ever watch one of those Dateline NBC shows To Catch A Predator? There you go! Stupid decisions motivated almost entirely by a man’s genitals.

Getting back to winning arguments though...

So, my friend said to me she didn’t like winning an argument that way but every guy I spoke to about it later agreed! It’s just very difficult (I was going to say hard but thought better of it) to stay angry when you are on the receiving end of some oral sex. We like oral sex, maybe it isn’t the be all and end all of the whole sex thing but, it certainly is an added plus and you notice it when it’s not part of the menu.

A lot of ladies just beg off the whole oral sex thing though and the other day I was reading something which just seemed to give a woman one more excuse not to do it:

Researchers have linked oral sex to a type of throat cancer, saying that those who engaged in the sexual act with more than six partners over the course of their lifetime were nine times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer.

Another f*ck you moment.

Awhile back, I got an email from a friend just after the ’04 presidential election. If you don’t remember some of the rhetoric being bandied about back then this should vividly bring it back to you:

I received this email from a friend yesterday that puts into words what a lot of this country is feeling right now. It moved me and, at the same time, reminded me that there is still hope. MoveOn.org, who worked tirelessly on Kerry’s campaign, also sent out an email that noted “a healthy environment, a strong and fair economy, good schools, domestic safety and the end of the war in Iraq are goals we all share — red states and blue states alike.”

I was also feeling very isolated from my family back home (in a Red State) but received a welcome email form my cousin this morning saying “it’s a shame that so many people seem to blindly follow our leader who continues to make poor decisions both domestic and abroad. How long will it take to repair all the damage that has been caused to economy, environment and relationships with other countries? It is very sad.”

Dear friends,

I have been composing this note in my mind all morning. I guess it’s a sort of concession note, one which I was hoping and praying would be a victory note instead.

This is a very dark day for our country. The unified blindness to the danger that this administration poses to our very way of life and to our lives, is astonishing.

We are now in profound danger of losing everything that this country has stood for for over two hundred years. This disregard for the Constitution (which a President is sworn to protect) and the contempt for individual rights which this Administration has practiced is now only going to increase, as their perception that the American people approve of their actions is now in play.

It baffles me how the idea of “values” seems to have been completely distorted. Pastors around the country stood at their pulpits this past Sunday and urged their congregation to support Bush and his contingent because they represent “family values.” They will get rid of Roe vs Wade, they will prevent gay marriage, they will bring prayer in schools and they will promote faith based initiatives... These issues are just a smoke screen put up to blind people to the fact that this administration has only one true “value” and that is MONEY. This country just sold it’s soul to the devil and doesn’t even know it.

What kind of “values” allowed them to murder thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, people whose only crime was they were in the way of Dick Cheney gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields and in the way of this administration’s desire to set up permanent US bases in the middle east (that is what they are doing in Iraq, building permanent bases), these people weren't insurgents or terrorists, they were ordinary people going about their lives, children, babies, mothers, fathers, grandparents, farmers, teachers, lawyers and doctors, eating breakfast, going to school, telling their children bedtime stories, when bombs started dropping on their homes, their schools and their places of business. They hadn’t threatened us, they hadn’t attacked us, they hadn’t done anything which justifies their deaths. (And what about the thousands who have been maimed, blinded, orphaned... homeless and jobless, the atrocities our government perpetrated are endless).

This Administration’s “values” are to sacrifice the lives of brave young men and women whose only mistake was to trust their government. Brave and honorable American military personnel who had faith that their president wouldn't put them in harm's way unless it was absolutely necessary. Their lives are being sacrificed for the almighty god “dollar.”

“Thou shall not commit murder...” unless you can justify it with lies. These are the real “values” of this administration, lies, murder and contempt for anyone who disagrees with them.

Trying to find ways around the Geneva Convention (which simply promotes human decency), mistreating helpless prisoners, keeping people imprisoned with no access to counsel (not everyone in Guantanamo Bay and other prisons is guilty, but have no way to defend themselves), this is the kind of behavior we equate with dictators and despots like Stalin and Hitler and yes, Saddam, not with our great American “values” of liberty and justice.

What kind of “values” justify the selling of our nation’s beauty to the highest bidder? The fact that this Administration is willing to sell off forrest which are thousands of years old (some trees where saplings when Christ walked the earth), sell off the glorious beauty of God's creations, plant and animal, for corporate profit and greed is a sin not a “family value.” The fact that they will pollute and plunder this magnificent planet is tragic.

They are selling off our children's future, they are putting our health on the block for the highest bidder. And they are doing it behind closed doors in secret meetings... those are the real “family values” of this Administration, how valuable is your family to their wallets. They rule the country through fear, when the truth is we should be afraid of them.

America is in for a shock when the truth of just how corrupt this Administration is begins to be clear. Because mark my words they are corrupt, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” ...well the blind faith of the people just gave them “absolute power.”

I have a prayer today for the “Presidential Prayer Group,” pray for America’s sons and daughters because their lives have just been put into the hands of monsters...

And grieve with me because our lives are about to be forever changed...

Yours, O

PS Let’s never give up the faith that real “values” will eventually prevail and we will be able to regain some sort of true decency and justice and honor to the concept of being a American. Let's march and write and demonstrate and not go gently into the night! And most importantly never ever give in to the fear and betray your fellows, together we will stand, divided we will fall.

What followed was a flurry of emails between the sender and myself, ultimately ending our friendship (which wasn’t the worst thing in the world). See, I have little patience for drama.

I know we are approaching another one of these ongoing cycles of presidential elections in this country, a cycle which seems to be getting longer and longer for some reason. I imagine if they are going to pass a law banning something in this country, they should pass a law making it illegal to politic for the office of president more than six months before the actual election (and while they are at it they could add a rider about not putting up Christmas decorations before the first week in December).

I got mightily ticked off about this email. Ticked off enough to descend into my alter ego of Mister Cynic and begin poking holes in the whole argument much to the consternation of the sender.

I just fail to see where the political spectrum becomes a zero sum game and if anything I will fight every attempt to make it such. After the ’04 election, the people on the losing side predicted all sorts of doom headed our way (this was very much like what happened after the 2000 election) but, lo and behold here we are in 2007 and we’re still here.

Amazing isn’t it?

Also, the midterm elections if anything proved once again that our system of government does a very good job of course correcting because the electorate voiced it’s displeasure with the executive branch by giving the minority party control of the legislative branch of government.

Imagine that.

If the picture were actually as it had been painted back in ’04 or ’00 we would be well on our way to a fascist dictatorship but, the truth is we’re not.

I like that.

I like that our system for the most part does work. Mind you, there are times when just like anyone else, I’m not particularly happy with the course our country is taking but, I have to figure there is some overall inherent wisdom in the people of this country to recognize when things are going awry and to get angry enough to go out and voice that displeasure through the ballot box.

What is all this about?

Good question because I’m trying to figure out where I’m going with this myself.

I think the point I am trying to get across is, in order for us to have any kind of productive debate in this country, in order for any of us to move forward, it is important that we be able to listen to what the people of an opposing viewpoint have to say and to listen to them with at the very least, the respect we want given to our own viewpoint.

Politics over the last two or three decades seems to have become more about the furthest wings of each of the two parties. I can’t tell you why that is but there’s no denying it’s there.

Why is that?

The whole idea of labeling our country into a neat little divide of red states and blue states is ludicrous in and of itself. When a news network puts a map of states and colors them red or blue aren’t they doing an enormous disservice to the American electorate? Looking at that map, the networks would have you believe the voters in those states all voted together along the same lines and that is hardly the case.

This is a big country, maybe we have a tendency to forget just how big it really is at times. Within our country, there are broad ranges of experiences when it comes to people’s daily lives. The daily life of someone who lives in Brooklyn per se has to be dramatically different as contrasted against someone who lives in rural Montana. Isn’t it important that we recognize our lives are different from one and other but focus on the things which likes and dislikes we have in common?

I was thinking the other day when I read or heard something about gun control.

Oh, I know what it was I was watching the Mitt Romney thing on 60 minutes (don’t even get me started on that).

When I hear the words gun control, what do they mean?

See, I think in rural areas gun-control means ‘no-guns.’ I don’t own a gun or shoot so I am impacted little by the prospect of gun-control but, what occurred to me is when I hear the words gun-control what I think about really is handgun control.

This is a big issue here (if you’re outside the U.S.). The whole talk about guns, who has one, who can get one, who can use one, the licensing process, always becomes a big discussion whenever a major election rolls around. There is always the specter of the second amendment that comes up and the citizen’s ‘right to bear arms’ but, I have less of a problem with a guy bearing arms as much as I have with them concealing arms (baring taking the place of bearing).

So, when we talk about gun control, shouldn’t we use the correct terminology and say handgun control? Why don’t we?

Probably because it’s easier to paint things as good or bad, black or white and it’s something I think we should fight at every turn. My point being the next time you get into one of these debates with someone (and Lord knows they‘ll be happening with more frequency over the next 18 months), can we remember there aren’t any ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ per se as much as there are people with different viewpoints who may be convinced of our argument if we respect and listen to what they have to say.

Think about it.

The blitz.

You can always tell when the warm weather arrives in suburbia. You can tell because weekend mornings are suddenly given over to the basso groan of lawnmowers as the neighborhood struggles towards getting the perfectly manicured look. I imagine this is what London sounded like during the blitz, the shuddering throaty noise surrounding people.

I’m the neighbor you hate. The neighbor who lets the grass grow until it absolutely needs to be cut. I wasn’t always that way but, as the years have passed I find myself caring less about the lawn and more about the overall state of the house in general and there are so many other things to focus on and put my attention towards.

I like this time of year.

I like it because it is a blessing to be able to have the windows open and to have a gentle breeze flowing through the house. I miss that feeling all winter long. Also, nothing beats the warmth of the afternoon sun, it can just cook anything bad right out of you.

Last weekend in another sign of the changing of the seasons, I started to write a very long entry about baseball.

Specifically I began to write about the Yankees and Roger Clemens. I had been watching the game last Sunday when at the onset of the seventh inning stretch, The Rocket made his dramatic announcement to the fans in attendance he was returning to save the Yankee’s season.

My first thought was, we are witnessing the last stages of the saga of Joe Torre.

This is going to get ugly.

Why?

I can’t explain but, I do feel it deep within my bones. Sure, the Yankees need answers but, any true baseball fan would have to agree that Roger Clemens is not one of them. Clemens was being greeted as a savior but, he will probably wind up being the last excuse for George Steinbrenner to show Joe the door.

I’m a Met fan so, what goes on in the Yankee universe means little to me.

I was a big Yankee fan once. I remember the frustration I felt watching players I loved, players who ‘grew’ with the team being treated cavalierly by the organization always looking to the next great free agent acquisition. I finally had enough and that’s what made me decide to switch allegiances.

I have never been upset about that choice because I found everything I loved about the game in being a Mets fan, everything that was disappearing as a Yankees fan. Even when they ran of an amazing 4 World Series titles in five years I wasn’t rueful about my choice.

See, in the world of the Yankee fan, nothing aside from winning it all brings any satisfaction.

It’s not about having a good team or watching great games as much as it is about dominating the sport or crushing the competition. It’s the kind of fervor that seems better suited to football rather than baseball (reminding me of the old George Carlin bit comparing the two sports). Nothing less than winning it all will do and no amount of money is too small to be spent in achieving that goal.

Still, baseball has done something right with the way they’ve structured things given the luxury tax and other elements of the game because since the year 2000, a different team has won the World Series. The Diamondbacks, the Angels, the Marlins, the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Cardinals have all managed to take the crown since the new millennium. It’s been fun to watch and it makes the game more interesting too.

Each year begins with hope (and renewal) for fans in each of the cities hosting a major league team and that’s the way it should be. This year the big surprise is the Brewers and the Yankees who were supposed to dominate everything yet again have struggled mightily - that’s why they play the games because nobody ever won it all on paper.

So, where was I?

Oh yeah, this is probably Joe Torre’s swansong because if the Yankees can’t win it all this year after spending 28 million to get Clemens well, it will be easy to say the manager had every opportunity to win everything and wound up not doing the job.

Is Clemens worth it?

Yankee fans are funny, Randy Johnson actually had two very good years with the team but, was practically run out of town because he didn’t win each and every game he pitched. A-Rod has been booed mercilessly throughout his time with the Yankees and one can only imagine each step towards a record setting year for Rodriguez takes him closer and closer to being in a different teams’ uniform next season.

See, I think the Yankees needed to have a bad year this year if only to shift the focus of the team back onto what got them to the point where they had those great teams of the late 90’s.

Looking back now, the guys who were a big part of those teams weren’t necessarily future hall of famers as much as they were good teammates. I have to respect those teams even more in retrospect but, the thing about them was they weren’t built by going out in the off-season and getting the biggest name in the market.

You would think the Yankees would have learned that by now.

You have a team with Wang, Mussina and Pettitte as three fifths of your starting rotation and once the guys are healthy things will take care of themselves, sans the extra 28 million for a guy who doesn’t even want to travel with the team on the days he’s not pitching.

Every time I watch the Yankees today, all I can think about is how there were a couple of years there when Yankee fans were speculating the Mets should trade Jose Reyes for Rodriguez or Wright for Rodriguez. Then it was either of the two for Alfonso Soriano. What Yankee fans never understood in those discussions was the feeling watching a young player and knowing they are going to be great.

So, the Yankees go out and sign another aging veteran and in my mind I am reminded of the days when the Yankees would go out and sign Pascual Perez, Britt Burns, Ed Whitson or trade for guys like Ken Phelps. You would think they would have learned by now.