Fuck you and the horse you road in on.

There are some phrases I identify with my late father’s generation and the title above is one of them. I don’t get much of a chance to use it but, I have to say it’s quite the delicious phrase.

I mean, if you have to say something nasty... if you’ve gotten to that point, there really is no reason to be half-stepping you might as well just plunge into the deep end and go for broke.

You know, if you take it upon yourself to do a Google search of the phrase you come up with some very interesting results, and they’re not from places you would think (as in the New York Times).

I can’t say why I was thinking about the phrase tonight, it wasn’t as if I had a particularly bad day but I was fuddling around here and I thought to myself I haven’t written anything on the blog of late and for some reason the phrase was the thing that leaped to the forefront of my mind. And here too I had no intended recipient.

It’s not as if I’m doing much fucking these days and certainly I’ve never gotten to the point where I’ve fucked a horse but it is a pretty interesting way to tell someone what you think of them at a specific moment.

Maybe it’s the fact that tonight is the night that the President is giving the State of the Union address?

I bear no animosity towards the President, I actually happen to like him so maybe I am thinking about his detractors.

On almost dying.

So, about a little more than two weeks back now I had some fun. I feel like I’m almost out of the woods now so I’m a little more comfortable talking about it.

There’s no question I’m not doing such a great job taking care of myself and although I’m aware of that, I’m still struggling with what it means to do a better job. In a lot of aspects of life, ignoring things and hoping they just take care of themselves isn’t all that unusual but where your body is concerned therein lies a path to some significant consequences.

Starting round about a little into December one of my eyes began to bother me. It wasn’t the eye itself that was the problem though, rather the skin in the eyelid became itchy. I’ve had some problems with my eyes over recent years, the kinds of problems which probably don’t bode well in the future and I’ve also had some skin issues too.

Overall though I feel for the most part lucky.

And I say that because I know people who haven’t made it this far or who have suffered through some really horrible health issues. I remind myself of this often. Your health isn’t one of those things that is guaranteed and although I have been confronted in the past with situations where I wondered if I would be around for long, things turned out in my favor.

So, the eye was bothering me and I was trying to do my best to avoid a trip to the doctor. What this meant was I was continually trying to get the eye clean to keep the area of the eyelid germ free but in my zeal I may have overdone things. As the weeks progressed, the irritation simply wasn’t going away and the skin around the eye got worse and red and inflamed.

Finally of course things started to take an even more serious turn over the holidays. It just seems to be the case for me that when the rest of the world is shutting down there is a time when I really wish it wouldn’t so right after the holidays ended I dutifully schlepped over to the local clinic (literally January 3rd).

The doctor looked at things, prescribed some ointment and sent me on my way.

And over the next ten days or so as I went through the ointment things did get better. The eyebrow which had been swollen (making my facial expression one of continual astonishment) went down and some of the redness went away. I finished my ointment and the next day the eye still didn’t feel right so much so that that afternoon I went back down to the clinic but the doctor had already left for the day and the aide on the unit said I should give the ointment some ‘time to work.’

And the next day when I got up I thought maybe I was overreacting and should pay heed to the aide but throughout the day the eye still didn’t feel right and again I went back to the clinic in the afternoon again after the doctor had left (and the aide asking me why I hadn’t come back that morning).

Well, the next day when I woke up? This is what things looked like:

Nice, huh?

But we had snow that night and so I shoveled and then made it down to the clinic where I was first in line. I know I’m not pretty but even I have limits.

And the doctor took one look at me and wanted to send me off to the ER. The ophthalmologist
looked too and concurred and my day progressed with me going to an ER at a local hospital and spending the day there ultimately being admitted overnight.

Again, I’m lucky... this was the first time I stayed in a hospital overnight since I was 19 I think which means I’ve led a pretty charmed life in my book.

But, as much as I DIDN’T THINK it was serious, as much as I fought being admitted to the hospital (for reasons I will not go into) the doctors kept stressing how I could lose my sight or worse from this (worse being this or this).

And now two weeks later after lots of drugs I can say things are better. The original problem with the eye still remains but things are definitely better. Thing is, it’s fairly apparent I have some hard work to do, not just on getting better but also on doing a better job of taking care of myself.

Because when you get right down to it, there are no guarantees.

What do I do?

When people ask me what it is my job entails, I always find it almost impossible to explain to those people who aren’t in my business. People generally don’t have a clue as to what goes on in creating a lot of the materials they see everyday.

The truth is a lot of my job is based around preventing bad things from happening. Making sure documents, presentations, components are created correctly and error free. It sounds like it’s shouldn’t be all that involved but the truth of it is the only way you can be sure that things are error free if you haven’t created them yourself is to go through them with a fine tooth comb.

Also, since most of this work is performed at the end of the process, it’s the step that is often allotted the least amount of time. When a deadline looms everyone can be late EXCEPT for production. It can resemble a game of hot potato as well, the person touching something last getting the blame if things go wrong.

So, you can see where it can be a very high stress, low reward situation.

Sometimes though, you get a chance to work with good people, people who are talented and who recognize the contribution you are making to the success of something. In general work can be thankless for a lot of us but if you do get a thank you it can make all the difference in the world.

In this case, below is a project I was involved with and fortunately I was working with good people who knew both how labor intensive the assignment was and the tightness of the deadline and consequently specifically wanted me on the project because of their faith in my abilities.

This job was 40 panels... huge file sizes. This is a fence wrap currently up around the World Trade Center site. Every single piece of art had to be checked, resized, in some cases bleed added and because such big moves were being made on the art it had to be done in a very specific way to insure that the art would look good (and not pixelated) when it finally did go up. I had to scale everything and make sure it lined up from panel to panel and that everything was set up and packaged in such a way there would be no possibility for error on the part of the vendor.

And of course throughout the whole process I’m correcting things others haven’t caught along the way.

I got the files late Friday evening (the weekend before Thanksgiving) and worked from late Saturday through to Monday afternoon with only three hours sleep to get everything done. Fortunately I was able to do most of the work from home which made putting in those long hours a little easier. At the end of everything it all was uploaded and when it did finally go up everyone was both pleased and amazed with how good it all looked.

Elliott, the designer on the job, went down and watched the installation (to make sure it was done properly) and made a short film of it. I have to say I walk away pleased for my part in it all:

Fence Installation from Elliott Scott on Vimeo.

People who use the LIRR should be excited.

Because each and every day progress is being made on the East Side Access project and it is getting closer and closer to completion.

Look here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtacc-esa/sets/72157632542807761/show/

Don’t know what East Side Access is?

Simply put: Extending between Sunnyside, Queens, and Grand Central, the project will route the LIRR from its Main Line through new track connections in Sunnyside Yard and through the lower level of the existing 63rd Street Tunnel under the East River. In Manhattan, a new tunnel will begin at the western end of the 63rd Street Tunnel at Second Avenue, curving south under Park Avenue and entering a new LIRR terminal beneath Grand Central.  Current plans call for 24-trains-per-hour service to Grand Central during peak morning hours, with an estimated 162,000 passenger trips to and from Grand Central on an average weekday. Connections to AirTrain JFK at Jamaica Station in Jamaica, Queens, will facilitate travel to John F. Kennedy International Airport from the East Side of Manhattan.

How can people not know or do this?

Clean Hands Save Lives

Not only does lathering up protect you from respiratory illnesses like colds, but it also helps ward off more serious conditions, including hepatitis A, meningitis, and potentially life-threatening superbug infections, such as MRSA. Overall, 80 percent of all infectious diseases are spread by touch.

Here are just a few research findings that illustrate the protective power of clean hands:

• Kids who washed their hands four times a day had 25 percent fewer school absences due to contagious diseases and 57 percent fewer sick days due to GI bugs.
• When 40,000 Navy recruits were instructed to wash their hands five times a day, their rate of respiratory infections fell by 45 percent, according to a study published in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
• A 2011 study found that when students disinfected their hands three times a day with ethanol gel sanitizer, there was a 66 percent drop in pupils who missed four or more days due to illness and a 20 percent rise in students with zero absences, compared to data from the previous year.
• Hand washing reduces risk for colds and other respiratory illnesses by 21 percent, according to the CDC.
• Washing with soap and water lowers risk for diarrhea and severe or fatal intestinal infections by up to 59 percent, a systematic review published in Lancet reported.

Great article...

READ IT!
LEARN IT!

LIVE IT!

You’ll be the one reaping the dividends in days not spent feeling sh&%^#y!

Meanwhile, back in the states.

The other day when I did discover the hiccup, I had intended to write about something else but discovering the hiccup I managed to get sidetracked.

Anyway, I can’t say to having ever been a huge fan of Peter Bogdanovich. I was too young to ever really appreciate his first wave of success and by the time I would be of age to even glean something from those early films, there was the scandal surrounding his involvement with Dorothy Stratten which colored my view of the guy. Then he always appeared somewhat full of himself with the talk of Orson Welles and his appearances on the Sopranos did little to warm me to him.

But... but, he did direct a great documentary in 2007 which I just finished watching...

It‘s one of the better musical documentaries I’ve ever seen. I like Tom Petty and I’ve grown to like his music more as the years have passed. I wasn’t a huge Heartbeakers for those first few albums in the late seventies but over the years the man has built up quite the catalog and I’ll give Bogdanovich a lot of credit here because he covers it all as far as the band and the music go.

Stevie Nicks, the Heartbreakers touring with Bob Dylan, The Traveling Wilburys, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Johnny Cash, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway - you’re talking some stellar names in music here and the film hits all its marks.

The only thing that is missing is anything about Petty’s personal life which you get the tiniest of glimpses into. The choice to give Petty’s personal life such short shrift actually leaves you with some alarming questions and it stands as a polar opposite to an American Masters piece on John Lennon I also saw in recent days.

In any event, it’s worth checking out. And all the more a good reason to embed a few music videos here – remember those?

Great because of the concept and a decent song - cowritten with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics! (Look for Dave sitting on the mushroom talking to Alice)

I loved this song when it came out! (still do) And while it is dated in its namechecks, still pretty relevant in its subject.

One of my all time favorite videos. Great song and it references the work of Windsor McCay (Little Nemo)!

Great song and check out the backing band that include two of the Beatles!

A mini film starring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway (with the Heartbreakers scattered liberally throughout). Can you spot Matt LeBlanc?

Apparently blogger has a hiccup.

I had heard the news about Peter David and I haven’t really given him much thought since something that happened a few years back.

And while going through the posts to see how long ago it was, I came across everything marked with him including some things that were in the drafts queue and which I choose not to share and it wound up appearing on the blog so I have egg on my face.

I have egg on my face a lot so it’s not something I get terribly upset about but, I do not suffer from schadenfreude so I have removed it.

One thing I will say though, my old man suffered from a bunch of micro strokes for a few years before having a more significant one when he was about 80. Being I cared for him for the last decade of his life, I know a little of what is ahead for the David family and it will not be easy.

In my father’s case, he already was an octogenarian but all things considered he was fortunate. He walked around for a few weeks complaining about vertigo and doing this flexing thing with his hand. Madame X was around then but the truth of it was even though we shared a house the old man’s cantankerous nature determined the best plan was to avoid contact as much as possible.

What was funny was he had no idea and neither did I until one morning I noticed him doing the flex thing and suddenly this checklist appeared in my head...

“Hey Munge, what’s the matter.”

More flexing...

“I don’t know, I’ve been having this vertigo lately.”

“Vertigo, huh? So, is the room kind of spinning?”

“No.”

“Is your vision telescoping, looks like your looking down a tunnel?” All I could think of in the moment he mentioned vertigo was the Jimmy Stewart/Alfred Hitchcock film.

“No.”

“You feel kind of week on your right side? Like your leg won’t hold you? Your hand is a little numb?”

“YEAH!”

“You idiot, you had a stroke!”

Now, the idiot part may seem harsh but you have to understand the dynamic. This is a man who consistently berated me and anyone else in his close circle as a matter of course. The only way to stop him from being verbally abusive to you was to give him a dose of the same medicine.

I called the doctor after that. It was a family doctor we had known and used for almost forty years and I told him my father had had the stroke and when he asked me when the incident occurred I told him it had happened a few weeks ago (because the flexing thing had been going on for three weeks and my father had been oddly reclusive to the point of not wanting to come along to the annual family Easter dinner).

The doctor was a bit annoyed and responded they couldn’t do anything for him so long after the event but I still wanted him tested and what followed was a few months of shuttling him back and forth to the doctor, taking over his bills (because he had trouble writing), locking the car up.

Madame X was a saint, she took him to do his laundry and would take him to run errands and go for walks. I have to admit she really stepped up even though she was terrified of him (that’s a whole other story). I really respect her for that and I cooked and cleaned (I had taken over much of the cleaning anyway by this point but I wasn’t cooking for him).

And it was thankless work, literally thankless work as the hard of hearing fool would get on the phone and loudly have conversations with persons who shall remain nameless accusing both myself and madame X of all sorts of shenanigans.

Unbelievable.

But it happened and in about nine months he did get better enough where I could start to let him drive again and he recovered to be able to do quite a bit but he was not the same. He was frailer of that there was no question and he did tend to be a little more unsure of himself and isolate himself as a result.

All in all I’m sure for him it wasn’t fun.

And it’s not fun for anyone suffering from a stroke because on some level they are still alive there in that braincase, the messages are still being sent out it’s just they’re garbled along the way and the equipment doesn’t do what you want it to do.

And Peter is in his fifties...

But, you can recover from these things. Or at least get back a bunch of what you’ve lost, maybe not all of it but enough to make do. And if you have people around you who can help out all the better but it isn’t at all easy for them.

See, we don’t talk about those people... the caretakers. Family members who do the dirty work. I’ve had a couple of people now who walked the path I walked and I’ve been there for them when they cried to the heavens about how onerous their load was, how thankless the task is but how because of their sense of responsibility, because of their makeup, they will not relinquish their charge and walk away.

And every person who has that burden is in my prayers.

I’ll keep saying it until it sinks in.

Learn that FaceBook is pale substitute for picking up a phone or writing something to someone and worse still you are volunteering a wealth of info to people you really wouldn’t want to have if you took a second to think about it:

If you want to keep a secret, don’t put any trace of it online. That’s something ex-CIA director David Petraeus just learned the hard way. But our lives are increasingly digital, and the government recognizes it.

In July, Congress asked nine data brokerage firms – including credit reporting agencies – what consumer information they collect, how they do it, and whether they sell it to third parties. On Nov. 8, it released those companies’ responses.

You can read the lengthy original letters and the responses here, but investigative journalism site ProPublica sums things up nicely in their article Yes, Companies Are Harvesting – and Selling – Your Facebook Profile:

AMERICA! Nation of idiots!

You know, I find myself wondering sometimes about our society in this country. Although as time has gone on I find myself less and less surprised by “people’s” stupidity, there are still times when I am (for lack of a better word) gobsmacked.

Case in point...

So, we’ve watched as the TV networks have milked a truly tragic event (and also seen the word HORRIFIC gain in popularity as well) for the last week. Nary a day has gone by when there has been some story or another about what happened up in Connecticut. News organizations are so preoccupied with it, they literally go about beating the bushes for any angle they can find... I mean it’s as if talking to the mechanic of a third cousin of the mother-in-law of one of the parents will gain some new insight to the events. Let’s just do everything we can to sensationalize this and boost our ratings!

It’s really sickening and then at the same time I feel bad for the people involved because they don’t get the privacy to mourn.

And then the insanity of something always seems to take people off guard somehow. This too is a bit amazing because if there is one hallmark of our species is that as much as you can dress us up in the trappings of civilization, deep down we are a barely civilized lot.

I can’t make sense of it anymore than anyone else can, it’s just sad.

But you have to really love the people at the NRA...

Yep, these are the people who really are out of touch with the world:

“I call on Congress today to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation,” LaPierre said. The proposed program, called the National School Shield, would help train and install security at schools nationwide under the leadership of former Arkansas Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson.

“Innocent lives might have been spared,” LaPierre said, if armed security was present at Sandy Hook.  “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

LaPierre, Hutchinson and David Keene, president of the NRA, all declined to take questions from the press and said NRA press officers won’t be responding to the media until Monday. LaPierre in part blamed mass shootings on “vicious, violent video games” such as “Bulletstorm,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Kombat” and  “Splatterhouse.” He also reached back in time to place blame on movies like “American Psycho” and “Natural Born Killers” for portraying “life as a joke and murder as a way of life.”

There you go, the problem isn’t that we have too many guns, or that guns are so easy to get, or maybe even being more specific that there simply is no good reason a sport hunter or someone who is interested in protecting themselves has to have a 50 round magazines and weapons better suited for war zones.

Nope.

We need more guns. Lots and lots of them! We should all have guns! Instead of a tax refund the government should just send us out a gun and some ammo (at least that’s what it sounds like the good people over at the NRA are advocating).

And really when you get right down to it... it’s VIDEO GAMES! Those f%*&ing video games are just screwing this nation up! It’s amazing we could conduct wars with video games and send young people around the world to kill other people because video games made their minds into muck!

You might think I’m a pacifist (and I’m not) or you might think I believe no private citizen should own a gun (which I don’t - people should be able to own guns if they choose) but there is simply no question that selling weapons like the Bushmaster (which is basically a M-16) to the general public is a recipe for disaster. And that there are people who don’t want to recognize the differences between limiting the sale of these weapons and the rifles that hunters use or the sidearms people carry for protection really is the height of stupidity.

 

The AR-15 rifle was first developed by the Fairchild ArmaLite corporation in 1957. ArmaLite sold the rights to the design to Colt in 1959, and the weapon was adapted for military use as the M16; it went in to service in Vietnam in 1963. The modern AR-15 is a demilitarized version of the M16, and is now manufactured by several companies including Bushmaster, Colt and ArmaLite. It is a lightweight, small-caliber semi-automatic rifle, with a light recoil and a variety of optional barrel lengths and targeting/aiming devices.  Minnesota Sen. Michelle Bachmann said during her presidential campaign that the AR-15 is her favorite gun “because you can be so accurate with it.” Depending on the make, model and options, an AR-15  can cost anywhere from $900 to $2000.  Because it falls under the federal definition of the term “assault weapon,” the AR-15 has long been a target of anti-gun legislation. “It was one of the weapons [specifically] banned by the Assault Weapons Ban legislation in 1994,” Christopher Koper, criminology professor at George Mason University tells TIME. According to the U.S. Code, an semiautomatic weapon can be “any repeating rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge.”

 And if the people over at the NRA can’t see the distinction and get on board let’s give their program a go – put the National School Shield into practice with one caveat...

Make the NRA pay for it.

A line that is still true today...

To be young, stupid and have no future at all... I love Brooklyn!

This always has me excited.

One way or another.

I’ve been going through a lot of older stuff of late, sorting, organizing and throwing away.

Here’s something I did way back in my late teens or early twenties when I spent a lot of time drawing famous people from pictures. I can’t be sure if I did this in the pause between when I left high school and college. I do know looking back that I wish someone had shown me how to properly use a brush when doing ink work, things might have been very different. But, life is a learning process and looking at this I realize I need to spend more time drawing again.

Oh, if you don’t recognize her, it’s Debbie Harry of Blondie fame
(and you might not recognize for two reasons,
one being I did a piss poor job or the other
her moments of glory are now long behind us).

It’s going to get ugly now.

More from the drafts queue:

And you should know that too. You should know it deep within your bones, the little hairs on the back of your neck should stand up the way they do when the sky is dark and the air is charged just before a severe thunderstorm because there are storm clouds on the horizon.

Those storm clouds take the form of innocuous notices, notices that are handed out as harmless leaflets, notices that are broadcast in very plain language statements, notices that say, “We have noticed you and we know others have noticed you too. While we have been patient expected your nuisance to blow itself out, we realize now we are going to have to be more forceful in our show of disapproval.”

And that’s really what it is because when things started popping up in other cities it meant it was time to stop the virus at its source and that’s what is about to happen.

Don’t be surprised if it gets ugly, very ugly.

Because the people there have nothing left to lose and that’s how they found themselves there to begin with.

You know, it took me a second to figure out just what the hell I was writing about when I started this dribble but then I got to thinking and I believe I was talking about the Occupy Movement.

It’s interesting how the Occupy movement has kind of blown itself out since last fall. It’s not that its message is any less relevant, more as if the movement itself has lost direction.

Bur I don’t think it’s going to go away and here’s why...

There is an attack on the Middle Class and anything that helps the Middle Class.

++++++++++++++

And I again broke off from what I was writing bit sometimes that’s not a bad thing bacause distance can sometimes bring clarity.

There really is an attack on the middle class today.

It’s a bit of an insidious campaign and part of that campaign utilizes Orwellian speak by branding certain topics with phrases that denote negative connotations. I have heard over the last decade a number of things spoken about in certain quarters...

I’ve heard SOME folks say that Social Security is unnecessary. I’ve also heard the selfsame people talk about brand things like pensions with the blanket name ‘entitlements.’ These are also the same people who rail against any form of medical reform in this country and they also want to do away with programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

Now, a few days ago, I observed there is too much waste in government. I have specific examples I could pull out based around my own experiences but truthfully I am currently trying to find a way to package it, present it and make money off the idea.

I don’t make the rules of a capitalist society, I just play the game like everyone else.

But I recognize too that the system is rigged, rigged against most of us.

And to hear it in some quarters, the über rich are just have the worst time of it these days. Even though all that wealth is concentrated in the hands of so very few, it’s a terrible onus to bear.

If you ever wondered what everyone is talking about when they talk about the distribution of wealth in this country, this handy, dandy chart from the Mother Jones website does the best job I’ve seen to date of illustrating the disparity:



Now, understand looking at that table that 90% of the households in our country have an income of less than $30k a year. And when you get right to it, we’re not even talking about the top 10%, we’re talking about the top .01%!

Now, I’d probably have a lot less of a problem with this if it weren’t for situations like Enron, AIG, Lehman Brothers and others where people are essentially crooks who wear nice suits.

++++++++++++++

Again, picking up something unfinished. If you’re struggling to make it in this country and you watch Fox News and buy into what they’re selling, you should just stop wasting your time and go to the kitchen, tak a knife and slit your throat. It’s as simple as that.

Sean Hannity is not the voice of the people, simply put he is a mouthpiece for the elite and what he puts forth with his homespun platitudes has nothing to do with the realities or society faces. You have a majority of people in this country who are toiling away having trouble to get by and while I don’t advocate Socialism, I do recognize the growing disparity between the majority and a select few who control a disproportionate share of the wealth in our nation.

It’s not a healthy thing and it needs to change.

Walking along a cliff’s edge.

So, I haven’t written much of late.

It’s not a good thing when I don’t write but I have been reading and reading is good.

A few weeks back when the mother of all storms made a visit I lost power for a few days. This was very... inconvenient. If it had happened in the summer time, I don’t know if it would have been as much of a problem.

Days are longer in the summer and it’s warmer too so losing power doesn’t impact you in quite the same way. Oh, and it’s warmer too!

There has been so much happening though that I don’t feel like laboring over the storm though suffice to say that not having power made it woefully apparent to me just how much time I waste f%$&ing around on the computer.

Anyway, one of the books I read I really enjoyed - actually I enjoyed all the books I read (and the seven some odd graphic novels) but, this book I want to talk up:

 

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. To her horror, she finds that her cheerful mother tastes of despair. Soon, she’s  privy to the secret knowledge that most families keep hidden: her father’s detachment, her mother’s transgression, her brother’s increasing retreat from the world. But there are some family secrets that even her cursed taste buds can’t discern.

I happen to subscribe to the Writer’s Block podcast and every once in awhile I hear something I find interesting that makes me seek out an author’s work. That’s how I came across this book. It’s a good read and you wouldn’t think a 50 year old bachelor would enjoy reading a story about a young girl but I did because there is a maiical quality to the story and the writing is very good (although the lack of quotation marks when characters are speaking took some getting used to).

So, in short do yourself a favor and go out and read this book.

More writing when I have some time.

Things to give thanks for.

Maybe we should take the lesson of Thanksgiving and apply it to every day of our lives.

Yes, yes, I know it’s all wrapped up in the story of the Pilgrims and everything and also it is uniquely an American custom but let’s for a moment take its Harvest Festival (and Pagan) trappings and cast them aside to talk about the things that are amazing in the world around us... things which are beautiful and things that make the world better.

Now I come to culture late and this is something I’ve heard countless times over the course of my life but for some reason, I had gotten on one of my Internet idles and did some looking around and exploring and found some of the background about this particular item and walked away with a greater appreciation of it.

So for Thanksgiving I give you this:

And while you might find yourself a bit lost by it all, maybe knowing the lyrics will help:

When will I love you?
Good Lord, I don’t know,
Maybe never, maybe tomorrow.
But not today, that’s for sure.

Love is a rebellious bird
that nobody can tame,
and you can call him (although it is) quite in vain,
because it suits him not to come.
Nothing helps, neither threat nor prayer.
One man talks well, the other, silent;
but it’s the other that I prefer.
He says nothing, but he pleases me.
Oh, love! Love! Love! Love!

Love is a gypsy’s child,
it has never known the law;
if you love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you'd best beware! (You’d best beware!)
if you love me not,
if you love me not, then I love you (You’d best beware!)
but if I love you,
if I love you, you'd best beware!

The bird you hoped to catch
beat its wings and flew away…
love stays away, you wait and wait;
when least expected, there it is!
All around you, swift, swift,
it comes, goes, then it returns…
you think you hold it fast, it flees
you think you’re free, it holds you fast.
Oh, love! Love! Love! Love!

Love is a gypsy’s child,
it has never known the law;
if you love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you’d best beware! (You’d best beware!)
if you love me not,
if you love me not, then I love you (You’d best beware!)
but if I love you,
if I love you, you’d best beware!

Love is a gypsy’s child,
it has never known the law;
if you love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you’d best beware! (You’d best beware!)

if you love me not,
if you love me not, then I love you (You’d best beware!)
but if I love you,
if I love you, you’d best beware!

Simply amazing!

He said that as bicycles would be so cheap, it hardly mattered how long they lasted.

"So you buy one, use it for a year and then you can buy another one, and if it breaks, you can take it back to the factory and recycle it," he said.

Gafni predicted that in the future, cardboard might even be used in cars and even aircraft "but that is still a way down the road."

"We are just at the beginning and from here my vision is to see cardboard replacing metals ... and countries that right now don't have the money, will be able to benefit from so many uses for this material," he said.

This is so not surprising.

I just came across this on YouTube after watching one of those other “What Would You Do?” videos. This doesn’t surprise me at all, just reinforces how misandristic society has become. Gender villainy with one gender being cast in the role of perpetual evildoer. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

I just don’t know what to say.

Secretary of State Clinton couldn’t help but take a look at the superstar’s bosom at the US Department of State as Aguilera, a UN World Food Programme Ambassador, was being honored on Wednesday.

Talking points for the 2012 presidential campaign.

There’s a lot of “ink” being thrown around post debate. I’m still trying to keen exactly what happened in the sense that I saw much of the post debate coverage crowning Mitt Romney as the winner but what I don’t understand is how that can be.

What I saw for 90 minutes was an absolute lack of substance on Romney’s part. Platitudes and much repeated campaign rhetoric. A real hard try and coming up with the pithy, catchy phrase that will stick in voter’s minds (trickle down government) but it was an attempt that failed.

There were things I specifically wanted to pull out, things I found absolutely reprehensible but if there is one talking point, one perfect rebuttal this is it:

When you hear Mitt Romney’s camp come out and say we can’t afford another four years like the past four years the response should be what we really can’t afford is another four years like the eight years that preceded the past four.

Another four years of out of control military spending, jingoism masked as making America safe and deregulation that brings us to the brink of a new depression.

These are the things our nation can ill afford. We need to remind people of the state of this nation as it was in 2008 when we watched the stock market lose more than half its value. On October 9th 2007 the DJ average was 14,164.53  and on March 9, 2008 less than two months after the President took office the DJ average had sunk to 6,507.04 that is a loss of 54% of market value!

And today’s the DJ average?

13,575.36!

The market has regained almost all of its value back in the four years since President Obama took office. So, if the economy is so bad? How is that possible?

Facebook now tracks your searches!

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Volunteer your privacy via social media and see what a a trail you leave. I just came across this in internet wanderings...

Take your stinkin’ paws off my Facebook search history, you damn dirty API!

Facebook is storing your search terms and matching your account to your offline purchases. Here's how to opt out now, before it's too late.

By Dan Tynan
September 24, 2012, 3:00 PM — Searching for tips on cross dressing, adult incontinence, or nude pix of Snooki? Don’t do it on Facebook – it might come back to haunt you.  Late last week Facebook announced it is now storing a history of your search terms, a la Google, though exactly why it is doing this they didn’t say. Presumably to better serve you ads and/or mine that data for its own nefarious purposes.  Today, these searches will only be visible to you (and, of course, to Facebook). Tomorrow, though, who knows? Facebook may in its infinite wisdom decide that sharing your searches is also one of the “new norms” for online activity.

One of their best.

My friends are so depressed
I feel the question of your loneliness
Confide...’cause I'll be on your side
You know I will, you know I will

Ex-girlfriend called me up
Alone and desperate on the prison phone
They want to give her seven years
For being sad

I love all of you
Hurt by the cold
So hard and lonely too
When you don't know yourself

My friends are so distressed
And standing on the brink of emptiness
No words I know of to express
This emptiness

I love all of you
Hurt by the cold
So hard and lonely too
When you don't know yourself

Imagine me, taught by tragedy
Release is peace

I heard a little girl
And what she said was something beautiful
To give your love no matter what
Is what she said

I love all of you
Hurt by the cold
So hard and lonely too
When you don't know yourself

More good reasons to avoid Facebook.

I’ve said it in the past and I’ll keep carping about it but I really hate the whole Facebook phenomenon. I firmly believe Facebook is just another faddish trend that will burn itself out in a few years (MySpace anyone? AOL anyone?).

I don’t believe in the basic tenets of social media because in doing so you are sacrificing your privacy and I continue to find it amazing how much of themselves people will so readily volunteer up to the world. Things they wouldn’t dream of doing outside the electronic corridors of cyberspace (yes that’s a very clichéd phrase but apt nonetheless).

Time and again as if to illustrate this lesson there are cautionary tales that appear trumpeting the hazards of ‘broadcasting your bizness.’

Case in point:

Facebook’s “People You May Know” section can be a helpful tool to connect people to potential friends on the social media site. Suggestions normally point you to someone you used to know or friends of friends that you may want to connect with. The suggestions do not normally display photos of your husband’s other wife.
That’s what happened to Ellenora Fulk, the first wife of Tacoma, Washington, resident Alan Fulk, when “People You May Know” recommended she add Alan’s new wife as a friend on Facebook. Alan recently changed his last name to O’Neill and married Teri Wyatt. Teri’s profile picture, the one that had been suggested to Ellenora, depicted Teri and O’Neill dressed up in evening attire standing in front of a wedding cake — a dead giveaway that O’Neill had found himself a new wife. The only problem was, he and Ellenora were still married.

But wait! That wasn’t the only story dealing with Facebook F*&%ups...

A Kentucky woman who was issued a DUI after she caused a car accident with four teenagers is being sent back to jail after a judge ordered her to delete her Facebook page.

Local NBC affiliate WAVE3 reports that Paula Asher wrote a dismissive status update to her Facebook page after the accident, stating, “My dumb (expletive) got a dui and I hit a car… lol.”

 Asher was allegedly under the influence at the time of the accident and fled the scene before police arrived.

The parents of the four teens injured in the crash asked District Judge Mary Jane Phelps to have the offending Facebook page removed and the judge complied.

So, yes Virginia there is such a thing as comeuppance.

Friends don’t let friends Facebook.

Homer Simpson votes!

Too funny not to share:

Another wrong to right!

So, yesterday I wrote the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And I’m trying to figure out a way to send an email to Dan Ackroyd too.

Why?

Well, I was watching a movie the other day and this song came on, it’s a real oldie but I remember it and it’s one of those tunes that when you hear it you immediately smile and it was a decent hit in it’s day.

Now, the guy who wrote the song was one of those people who was around at the inception of Rock and Roll but as is often the case he’s overlooked.

His wikipedia page reads thusly:

Huey “Piano” Smith (born January 26, 1934, New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American rhythm and blues pianist whose sound was influential in the development of rock and roll.

His piano playing incorporated the boogie styles of Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons; the jazz style of Jelly Roll Morton and the piano playing of Fats Domino.Allmusic journalist, Steve Huey, also noted “At the peak of his game, Smith epitomized New Orleans R&B at its most infectious and rollicking, as showcased on his classic signature tune, “Don’t You Just Know It.”

Now the guy is 78, it seems to me they should induct him before long and if you can help or offer up suggestions on how to make it happen I’m all for it.

Catching up...

Sometimes during prolonged periods of work from home or inactivity I’ll have the option to catch up on some TV watching (as if I don’t already watch enough TV). I could go into detail about TV but I’d just run off on a tangent.

One of the things I did manage in the last day or so was to watch the first season of Wilfred in order. Wilfred runs on FX and I know it runs late usually so while I have seen a few episodes it hasn’t become appointment TV as it were and I haven’t had the presence of mind to program it into the DVR (which is a new addition and which I actually like).

The second season is well into full swing and like the first I haven't been able to watch the episodes with any regularity. But it’s a well written series and very funny with a great premise. So, today I was looking around Hulu to see what I could watch from the second season (and I missed out on the first half - damn!) but they also have some shorts up too.

This was one of them, which is a mashup from a key moment in the first season but the mashup is absolutely hilarious. Suffice to say one character ingests something she shouldn’t have and it happens just before she has that big first day being the anchor on the afternoon newscast:

I can’t help but think of this.

Every time I think about out current Presidential race.

Really worth the watch:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e12-all-about-mormons

I really hate the disingenuous.

Say hello to the new king of double speak. Nothing irks me more than people who say one thing and do another, Paul Ryan is king of this. Playing to the crowd, he mouths platitudes all the while ignoring his own responsibility and role in the state of the nation.

Although Ryan blames the president on the campaign trail for the cuts, the debt limit was increased under an agreement that called on a bipartisan “super-committee” to negotiate an additional $1.2 trillion in savings, or face sequestration - meaning the automatic cuts that include those defense cuts and items unpalatable to each party. After the super-committee failed to strike a deal, the country was left with sequestration. Ryan was a member of that committee.

You’ve probably heard talk about the deficit, how it has grown larger and how the President ignored the recommendations of a bi-partisan committee but the truth...

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform’s report proposed deep spending cuts in both domestic and military spending, and an overhaul of the tax code that would have lowered rates but raised revenues — all in an attempt to slow the growth of government by $4 trillion over 10 years.

Many Republicans, including Ryan, opposed the military cuts and new tax revenue, while many Democrats opposed changes to Social Security that included raising the full retirement age.

The 18-member commission needed a super majority of 14 votes in order to bring the report to a vote in Congress. But it received the support of just 11 members. Seven members, including Ryan, opposed it, thus blocking congressional action.  In a statement on the final report, Ryan said he “could not support the plan in its entirety,” but said some elements of it were “worthy of further pursuit.”

And this is a man who goes before the nation and chastises the President about ignoring the committee while failing to own up to the fact that he was one of the people who impeded progress... what a loser.

Another September 11th and some quick observations.

I didn’t mark September 11th in any special way outside of noticing the fact that the weather was eerily like it was way back in 2001 when some morons flew planes into the sides of buildings to prove a point.

Got to wonder about the logic behind that too there because we an see that was a totally effectual gesture, now wasn’t it?

I mean, as a nation we just suddenly dropped to our knees, rolled over and played dead and in the most hackneyed of terms, ‘The Terrorists Won!’

Lots of bombs and lots of dead people later I can’t really say the world is that much a different place, can you? Aside from the fact that I equate air travel with a trip to the proctologist we haven’t seen any dramatic shift in the attitudes of Muslim extremists towards us or us towards Muslim extremists now have we?

When are we as a species going to recognize about the only way to win these kinds of battles is to take your lumps, occupy the moral high ground and make the other party look like a complete asshole. Gandhi and Martin Luther King proved that works rather well in the last century. I’m not sure either side has the courage to do just that here but one never knows.

But I really digress here...

Rather, I did want to note September 11th in one very particular way. I wanted to reinforce one very clear lesson that should not be lost on anyone.

Namely, no f%*&ing job is altogether that important.

Not that I’m not saying work doesn’t have a place in all our lives.

Not that I mean we should be idle.

Rather, listen to that voice inside you above all else.

I was was watching some tv about September 11th (because we as a nation really like to indulge in these spectacles of mourning - ever see those roadside shrines anyone?) and the thing that stuck with me was about the people in the South Tower.

Think about this for a second...

The North Tower has been hit by a plane. People in the South Tower are made aware of it and begin to leave their offices. They get down to the lobby only to be told there is nothing to worry about and to return to their desks.

And some of these people died!

So, essentially they went against their better judgment because they wanted to be good soldiers and they went back to work.

Case in point...

If there is a hurricane, a blizzard, a blackout, some other act of God... be smart and stay home! What is wrong with people in this world? Miss a day! You’ll survive and so will the company. If there is any lesson we can take is that we are objects anyway so why put yourself in harm’s way?

I saw things that referenced this a few times and every time I saw it I was just aghast. Leave!

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

I was shooting emails back and forth with a friend this morning and at one point he wrote the following:

Hey, on a different note, there is this prediction by NASA about a sustained 3 - 4 day blackout around the 21st of December during a period when the earth will be shifting or adjusting its axis. Sounds more like sci-fi but there are some among us that will react in ways that may not bring forth Christmas cheer. I know you’re good at researching and thought this major event may stoke some that detective in ya. Top o tha mornin to ya am man!

And things like that do stoke the detective in me so, I found the following on Snopes:

NASA predicts total blackout on 23-25 Dec. 2012 during alignment of Universe.
 
US scientists predict Universe change, total blackout of planet for 3 days from Dec 23 2012. It is not the end of the world, it is an alignment of the Universe, where the Sun and the earth will align for the first time. The earth will shift from the current third dimension to zero dimension, then shift to the forth dimension. During this transition, the entire Universe will face a big change, and we will see a entire brand new world. The 3 days blackout is predicted to happen on Dec 23, 24, 25.... during this time, staying calm is most important, hug each other, pray pray pray, sleep for 3 nights... and those who survive will face a brand new world.... for those not prepared, many will die because of fear...

So, I forwarded the link back to my friend and suggested he forwarded the link to this as well:

But if you really need to look into it because you are in fact worried, take a gander at this article over on the NASA website:

The year 2012 is acting like a badly behaved celebrity. Frightful rumors and gossip are spreading. Already more than a half dozen books are marketing, to eager fans, astronomical fears about 2012 End Times. Opening in theaters on Friday, Nov. 13, will be 2012, a $200-million disaster movie that seems designed to break all records for disaster spectacles -- with cracking continents, plunging asteroids, burning cities, and a tsunami throwing an aircraft carrier through the White House. The movie's ominous slogan: “Find out the truth.” Two other major movies about the 2012 doomsday are also reported to be in the works.Anyone who cruises the internet or all-night talk radio knows why.

The ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike.

Employee checkers.

Written way back in early September of last year...

My current gig is winding down so I find myself a bit melancholy about it. There are a few people I really enjoy seeing and certainly I’ll miss the opportunity to see them and also of course there is the scramble to line up another gig(s) so the idle period isn’t too long.

In the meantime, there is a lot of sturm and drang as it is because the game currently being played is what I refer to as employee checkers.

Employee checkers is a bit of an insidious game and what it entails is shuffling people around in an office to shake up the status quo. I can’t ever remember seeing it work, at least not in the way it’s supposed to – people who are generally happy in their job and their neighbors stay happy and people who aren’t as content usually come out on the losing end.

Today was the day the walls came down, quite literally too. In an effort to encourage an open office, cubicle walls were removed and overhead storage was removed too. This means instead of having a semblance of privacy, you can now look out across the vista of the floor.

I’m a bit of two minds on this but since the gig is winding down I don’t really have to worry much about it. I like having a little bit of privacy myself. To be blunt, I’m a guy and getting to be an older one at that and the poking or scratching that I do discreetly isn’t the kind of thing I really want to share with my co-workers. Call me silly if you will, but I would rather spare other people from that.

This has kind of been on a incremental rollout as well - while the walls came down today, it was the finish to a process that started a few months back. The first thing I noticed when it happened was the noise level went up. Suddenly, you can hear conversations three and four desks away. It got louder and the ironic thing I noticed was the people who were the most vocal in breaking down the walls were also the same people who found it necessary to spend the bulk of their day with noise canceling headphones pasted atop their heads so they could shut out the background noise and concentrate. Since I’m already subject to advance hearing loss, I don’t especially want to be spending hours with headphones on if I can avoid it.

I also noticed there were two distinct camps in terms of reaction to the whole open office event... people under the age of 35 or so, were quite happy about it and people over the age of 35 were pretty happy with the way things were and not especially looking forward to the new order.

And then I was talking to a friend about it and she pointed out something to me that made the most sense...

We have a generation now that lives their lives publicly, for better of for worse. There is no filter and even the smallest most inconsequential aspect of their lives compels them to share it, I don’t know if it is a matter of looking for approval or what but think about it this way - this is a generation that has embraced, wholeheartedly, social networks like Facebook. And what is a means of interacting in Facebook? People post things and then their circle ‘likes’ them, gives them their approval, it’s the whole aspiring for fame and notoriety...

Please! NOTICE ME! APPROVE OF MEEEEEE!

So I can hardly be surprised.

Now, that gig did wind down and as fate would have it, right after that go-round I was out of the office for a few months (three I think). And the game of employee checkers didn’t affect me altogether that much.

When I came back, I came back to a brave new world albeit an empty one as most everyone had moved to another floor but there were a few stations or desks that did not and the station I sit at was among them.

At first I was genuinely put off by this but it was only supposed to be a week’s worth of work and that later turned in to another couple of months and then something funny happened...

I was freed.

See, because everyone else got moved to another floor it meant I was more or less left to my own devices. Truthfully, I often wondered why I simply wasn’t allowed to telecommute because the truth of it was there were days that went by when I didn’t have a need to go to the other floor and the way things were set up I worked on specific projects with specific deadlines that had little or nothing to do with anyone else.

It was glorious.

So, walls down and everything else and it didn’t matter in the slightest because no one around me was anyone I answered to and the reality is I am a responsible person meaning if I need to stay late to get something done on time, I do and if I need to ask I question, I ask so things proceeded quite nicely.

Now, that was awhile ago too now and in the interim there have been a few more rounds of employee checkers.

I was back recently at this gig and I have to say I love the place... not like, LOVE.

And the reason I really enjoy it is because there are a lot of people there that I like and the fact is, people know me. And because they know me, I get cut an extraordinary amount of slack or maybe a better way to put it is people give me the credit to not needing to be micromanaged. So, I come in, do my work and go home.

It is one of the easiest gigs I have ever had. Even when it gets hairy (and believe me there are times when it does get a little hectic, lots of work, tight deadlines) it doesn’t matter because I am comfortable.

But they are playing employee checkers again.

I’m an outsider though, a contractor and I have a different perspective on what works and what doesn’t. There are so many talented people doing so much good work I wonder sometimes if maybe trying to fix things all the time isn’t really the solution as much as recognizing all the good work being done.

Who knows.

The unsung hero behind the success of the relauched Doctor Who series.

 Sure, there are a lot of people who are responsible for the success of Doctor Who. Honestly, the show has reached such heights for me over the last few years and made me such a big fan of it. It hits all the bases with great writing and acting.

But the one thing you may not notice, the one element that plays such an important part in the show, something that adds to the drama of it, that elicits such a strong emotional response is all due to the efforts of one man...

This guy here:

And truthfully if we don’t love him for it because his work makes the spirit soar.

20 years on.

I was writing another entry when I came across this little bit by George Carlin. It’s from 1992 now 20 YEARS AGO (amazing to me) but the thing that struck me was that it is still relevant and fresh today:

And somehow the fact that it is still relevant in the observations that George Carlin makes here says more about our country and our failures than anything and I have to say that makes me sad.

Bill Gates getting his sh*t together!

Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, wants to talk poop. Literally. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is hosting a “Reinvent the Toilet Fair” on August 14 and 15, is on a mission to build a better crapper. Why? Poop is a worldwide problem.

It‘s a fascinating thing but at the same time quite admirable. Let‘s hope it runs better than some iterations of Windows though.

I like how they put it, “more with less.”

When’s the last time you left your desk and took a real lunch break?

For many workers, the answer is “not recently,” a trend driven by a bad economy and high workplace expectations, researchers say. A recent McDonald’s ad campaign even took advantage of lunch break dissatisfaction with a series of commercials telling workers, “It’s your lunch. Take it.”

Although there are no national statistics on lunch breaks, small-scale surveys find that up to two-thirds of workers skip lunch or eat lunch at their desks.

I was talking to someone about this the other day. This is a real issue and something I’ve noticed happening over the last ten years or so. I don’t know how it happened truth be told but somewhere along the line what was once a 35 hour week with an hour for lunch (paid) became a 45 hour week without lunch at all.

And the thing is that no one really said anything about it. It just went away.

Welcome to the new circle jerk.

I was looking over at Warren Ellis’ blog when I noticed some little buttons along the bottom. I wasn’t quite sure at first what they were for though and I was looking to see if you could leave comments anyway not that I was going to leave a comment but just seeing if there was the ability to do so.

As it is, I realize blogs are very much so ‘last decade’ (not having come up with a good buzzphrase for the period between 2000 and 2010) but I still find blogs to be much more substantive than anything else that has come along since.

Getting back to the matter at hand, one of the buttons was for Google Pus (oops typo there but in this case I like it) and the other was for Twitter.

And I looked at the links and then clicked through and suddenly it all made sense...

Like Facebook, Twitter is the refuge of the idiotic, the vapid and the moronic. Post after post after post after post on Twitter and what they amount to is, “ME TOO!”

I really find I should be making the mentally challenged ‘der’ sound right about now.

This is what we have become. As we descend down a hole of stupidity where originally thought escapes us and lemming like we can only comment on other’s observations. And truly this is nothing new, it’s just in the past it wouldn’t happen in such a public way, it would normally happen off in a bar somewhere where someone was well on their way to anesthetizing themselves with large quantities of cheap alcohol.

And if you think I am being highly curmudgeonly in this case (and I readily admit that I can be highly curmudgeonly at times), then I challenge you to look through the some 300 plus ‘tweets’ and find something of substance in any of them.

You’re going to have to look hard and long (there’s a double entendre for you), because you’ll be f$%^ed if you can.

One more difference between the sexes.

I was watching this video on Yahoo and afterward the thought occurred to me that we men simply don’t put that much thought into the cues we give off:

And what about if you don’t have a dog?

It’s coming, it’s coming!

I started writing this in January of 2011...

I made a mistake.

I like watching streaming movies – about the only complaint I have about the whole streaming thing is that you don’t have access to closed captioning (at least not that I know if). So, while I’m working on one monitor, I can have a movie on the smaller monitor.

Usually this is a good thing and one of the things in the instant queue was the Oliver Stone movie World Trade Center.

Right away, I see things that bother me. Things that stick in my craw as a New Yorker, things that are easy to slip by people who aren’t from New York but the thing you really notice living here all your life.

The first thing is seeing a Number 2 train or rather that would be a subway train badged number two but obviously an IND or BMT train (IRT trains are narrower and the MTA actually separates the two guages classifying IRT as A Division and IND/BMT as B Division).

Then there was a scene in front of the PA Bus Terminal up on 42nd Street. And it was shot in front of the PA Terminal but the problem was in the shot there are a series of planters in front of the terminal.

Thing is, they didn’t put those kinds of planters (barricades) in front of buildings until AFTER September 11th.

Anyway, I’m a big sap when it comes to sentimentality in the movies but scary or gory stuff doesn’t really register that much for me. I’ve seen a fair amount of pretty gory stuff over the course of my life and it’s been bad enough movies have a pretty hard time even coming close.

Some things though... even get to me.

That first half hour of Saving Private Ryan when I saw it in the theater was

Picking up, I know what I was going to say was that the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan where they are on the beach during the D-Day invasion had me crying. It’s just a train wreck to watch in that it seems very realistic, much more so than any other war film I’ve seen. The confusion and the wanton death make awtching the film a truly visceral experience.

Watching World Trade Center was much the same way. I don’t want to rehash that day but I can admit to being fascinated with it. It’s a scab one can’t help to pick at.

I would have to say that of there is one defining event in our nation of the last 20 years that is it. Everything since has been colored by that day although we no longer seem to mouth the platitudes that were on everyone’s lips for quite some time afterward.

If we don’t (insert stupid and mundane facet of life) then the terrorist will have won!

Thinking about what it was before that, at least as far as our country goes I might have to say it was the Iranian hostage crisis but that was a prolonged affair.

Everything from September 11th, 2001 until today has revolved around those events and I have to wonder what things would be like if they hadn’t happened.

In the Bizarro logic that is a terrorists mind, all this effort and energy was spent in making some kind of statement but like a dog chasing its own tail, the rest of the equation wasn’t thought out or if it was, it was certainly bad math.

To think that somehow we would just throw up our hands as a nation and walk away without retribution of some kind shows how much we are misunderstood in certain quarters of the globe. That’s a two way street though in essence that there are a lot of people, here in our country, who look at the rest of the world and intrinsically believe that people in other lands, in other societies and from other backgrounds would have the same worldview we have, would approach things as we do.

I’m spinning my wheels here though on a bit of an unfinished thought.

There was one thing that came out of that day, one thing that motivated those decisions that were made in the weeks. months and years afterward. One promise that was made to the American people that I think was a bill of goods.

It was safety.

Every war, every bombing, every action, every moment we have to take off our shows, or walk through a metal detector, or appear on some camera, or have our bodies scanned, every single bit of freedom and liberty that we have that has insidiously been removed from us, that we have surrendered willingly has all been done for one reason and one reason only.

And I have to ask, with all of this and beyond everything I have mentioned, bea r in mind that it all carries a significant price tag:

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the United States of America and U.S. Territories (including Protectorates)[vague] from and responding to terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. In fiscal year 2011 it was allocated a budget of $98.8 billion and spent, net, $66.4 billion...

With more than 200,000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

The Department of Homeland Security has been dogged by persistent criticism over excessive bureaucracy, waste, ineffectiveness and lack of transparency. A House of Representatives subcommittee estimated that as of September 2008 the department has wasted roughly $15 billion in failed contracts. In 2003, the department came under fire after the media revealed that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS with responsibilities for sensitive national security databases, had obtained her advanced computer science degrees through a diploma mill in a small town in Wyoming. The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the Government Accountability Office revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price (many of which later could not be found), and iPods ostensibly for use in “data storage.”

So, let me ask you... do you feel safe?

It’s really true.

Just so you know I started this a few weeks back...

Over on Mafus’ blog he talks about yesterday being his brother, Mike Wieringo’s 49th birthday. Had he lived that is because Mike passed away suddenly at the age of 44. It’s a bit stunning how death can arrive like that. Arrive and visit someone so young (especially when you are well past that age regarding the ‘young’ comment).

It just underscores the fact that there are no guarantees in this world how long your ride on the merry-go-round is going to last.

I think about these things often especially in those darker moments. Moments when I think about the human condition, about my condition and what the future holds for me or what I’m carrying around from my past.

It really is a gift in a lot of ways but it’s up to the person whether or not we cherish that gift.

Anyway, Mike Wieringo is gone but his blog is still there. If you were a fan of his before or recently maybe discovered his work I would urge you to take a look at that blog. First off, there is a ton of artwork there that has never seen the light of day outside of Mike’s blog and from what I am led to understand will not be seeing the light of day anytime soon either. So, if you want to see the most amazing artwork take a look.

Even more than that though, if you do take a gander at Mike’s blog, the thing you will discover is just what a good guy he was. When i was growing up, the world was a smaller place, comics were a smaller industry and being in New York I was lucky enough to meet some of the people who worked in the field as well as getting a chance at being up to the offices of some of the companies that produced those amazing printed flights of fancy. The thing that I carried with me all these years was how nice these people were, how encouraging the ones I met were.

Mike was like that, he was cut from the same cloth. And you know it really sucks that he’s gone.

Check out Mike Wieringo’s blog here.

I find this somewhat unnerving.

I make no secret of the fact I’m looking for work. A friend of mine once said to me,“You should always be looking.”

But lately, all my efforts have been devoted towards finding a regular, steady gig and admittedly there are times when I feel somewhat discouraged to say the least. I know of several people who have just simply given up entirely – they just stopped working. I know how some of them get by but others, I can’t figure out how they’re managing.

I don’t have that luxury, like a shark I have to keep swimming or I’ll die.

In the meantime I came across this article today, let me give you the backstory = a young 20 something with a masters degree took it upon himself to create a fake ad on Craig’s List for a non existent job. He didn’t do it for shits and giggles as much as an experiment to see what kind of response he got. It’s actually a great article replete with charts even but take a gander if you will.

I’m off a mind that you simply have to keep plugging away to increase your odds of success but reading the article I can readily accept how hard it is to put on a brave face:

I created a fake e-mail address to receive all of the applications.

Before I published the ad, I hypothesized that I would receive a lot of résumés, and I didn't want applicants usurping my personal inbox, especially for a non-existent position.

“A lot of résumés” is an egregious understatement.

I published the ad at exactly 2:41 P.M. on Thursday. The first response came in at 2:45—just four minutes later. Ten minutes later, there were 10 responses. Twenty minutes later, there were 56. An hour later: 164. Six hours: 431.

At 2:41 P.M. on Friday—exactly 24 hours after I posted the ad—there were 653 responses in my brand new inbox. Not wanting to face any more after that, I promptly removed the ad from Craigslist.