An explanation if you are still upset about Hillary Clinton.

Every once in awhile I’ll see something written by some Hillary supporter griping about the what ifs and thoughts along the lines of, ‘If Hillary were there and this happened I’ll bet they would have strung her up’ or something to that effect.

Let’s look at this picture:

See that pic? Okay, so in some parts of the world (including the country we fought a War of Independence from) they have this thing called monarchy. It’s where if you are the member of a certain family you effectively get to run things just based off of heredity. I found this great definition for those among us who have trouble understanding this concept:

Since antiquity, monarchy has contrasted with forms of democracy, where executive power is wielded by assemblies of free citizens. In antiquity, monarchies were abolished in favor of such assemblies in Rome (Roman Republic, 509 BC), and Athens (Athenian democracy, 500 BC).

Now, the last time I checked our nation is a Democracy (although you will probably get an argument even on that in some quarters).

As such I find myself more than a little bit bothered that since 1992 our nation has been led by the members of two families and for a little while there it looked like it was something that was going to continue. The whole Bush/Clinton/Bush thing accounts for 20 years of this nation’s history (and my life) and thinking that we could be looking at another four or even eight years of dynastic rule is not only antithetical to the foundations our nation was built upon but could be nauseating as well.

The United States is the third most populous nation on the planet with 324,725,000 or 4.33% of the entire population on the planet and you actually mean to tell me this IS THE BEST WE CAN DO?

What is it that we would have to keep picking the leaders of our country from the same families (and this extends to Michelle Obama, Chelsea Clinton and anyone named Bush)?

I realize one of the things that was held out as part of the qualifications for Hillary to be President was that she was a former First Lady.

REALLY?

So, maybe I should let the Surgeon’s wife do my next operation or a Pilot’s wife fly the plane on my next trip or maybe better still the Gynecologist’s husband can do your next exam?

I find that argument so inherently stupid yet seemingly smart people were in fact making it.

In absence of any kind of record of legislative success over a Senate career that could at best be called lackluster, a record as Secretary of State that was filled with missteps and disasters, or going further back and looking at an initiative and actions that set the cause of healthcare reform in this country back 2 decades, sharing a bed with a President (and one wonders if that was even the case given Willie’s actions) just doesn’t rank high on my list of qualifications.

Now, the thing here is I’m pretty sure that the very same people who would lay the label of misogynist at my feet are also the same ones who had absolutely no problem mocking Sarah Palin or doing their level best to denigrate Kellyanne Conway or Ivanka Trump.

Funny how that works.

You know how they talk about six degrees of separation? I’m two degrees separation from the Clinton’s and truthfully what I’ve heard about her is enough to give me shudders.

Mind you, it’s not as if I think we’re all hunky dory these days either with what we’ve got BUT I can live without being in a nation that has royal families and for that I am thankful.

I embrace it!

Another drafts queue jewel...

Oh, and because I thoroughly embrace the tendency in me to be a nasty cretin (I mean, I try to work against but sometimes I just succumb).

Something that had been bothering me, I kept flashing on a cartoon I had seen somewhere, while all this stuff over at the PAD boards was going on. One of those separated at birth kind of things like Daryll Strawberry and Dino the Dinosaur.

This was in my queue thing too but I think I got this one out in another post.

I was annoyed at all this stupid sturm and drang (not realizing sometimes the best thing to do is just walk away from an idiot).

Started twice on this!

Really, I am trying to get better in life. One of the things I am reminded of is something I heard Joel Osteen say once:

One day, David was in a New York City taxicab on his way to a meeting. Suddenly, another car pulled out right in front of them. The cab driver had to slam on his brakes and swerve into the other lane, missing the car by inches. The driver of the car started honking, screaming and shaking his fist. He was so upset. But astonishingly, the cab driver just smiled and waved at him. David was impressed by the cab driver’s restraint and asked him how he was able to keep his cool.

The taxicab driver explained that many people are just like big garbage trucks. They go around all day full of frustration, disappointment and anger. As their garbage piles up, they need somewhere to dump it; and sometimes, they’ll try to dump it right on you. You can’t take it personally because it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave and wish them well.

I keep thinking that if I can embrace one principle that this is the principle upon which to build for a fuller life.

Anyway, it wasn’t much of an entry to begin with but I do love that Joel Osteen story it turns out the guy who told Osteen that story has written a book (which I have on my library reserve list), may be worth checking out: The Law of the Garbage Truck

Too busy.

More from the drafts queue:

If you read with any regularity (and Lord only knows who you are that you wind up here reading this), you’ll have noticed there has been a significant lack of really topical material or life updating as it were.

There are a couple of reasons for that, primary among them just being terribly busy with work.

A few months back, someone I was seeing at the time said I was married to my job. There are things people can say to you, things they can say about you that can so totally miss the mark as to leave you speechless or simply flat out annoyed. In this case it was just very, very annoying.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve had steady work for the last few months but I know quite a few people in my stellar neighborhood who simply can’t admit to being quite as fortunate. And almost to a person, in each instance it is not a matter of the person being bad at what they do but more about their age, or if not their age the economy, or if not the economy just their circumstance.

And folks... bad things happen to you when you don’t have money to pay your bills.

So, I take the whole work thing pretty seriously. Not just in the sense of doing a good job but also in all the things around working, like being on time and just being there. And given my location in relation to my job there is a certain amount of time that is built into the day just for getting back and forth and after that there really isn’t much time left over.

And out of the time left over, there is a lot to do and less energy to do it.

But, I notice something about life...

I don’t know if other people have noticed this too but, sometimes when you are caught up in this flurry of activity and don’t know how things are going to get done, how you’ll be able to squeeze the time in to do them or anything else, more just gets done.

Maybe it’s because of the lack of focus – the inability to worry or obsess over things both trivial and mundane that more things are able to be processed. Somehow, it seems to be the case though. Lots of things are happening, crisis popping up, people to meet, projects to finish.

Take this past weekend as an example: even though there was a short week – work was busy cramming five days of effort into four.

And at the very end of it there was ‘the pitch.’

The pitch is something familiar to anyone who has worked in the world of advertising or related fields. It’s akin to a...

And there things stopped.

And as with everything in my drafts queue, I have to put on my thinking cap to try and remember just what it was I was referencing when I started down the path to writing a particular entry. I love writing but there are times admittedly when I get distracted or just go off on a tangent and I find myself somewhere and can’t figure out how I arrived at that place (this happens to me with alarming frequency).

You know, I tried to get back to this once as we can see and now I’m trying to revisit it a second time. I’m wracking my brain trying to come up with who it was who said I was married to my job and the only person I can think of might be a very brief relationship I had with someone who was surprisingly well off.

I mean so well off that she owned a multi unit building in the village and property on the north fork of Long Island. She didn’t have to work at all and I think the married to the job thing was just code be at my beck and call.

I broke up with her, she wasn’t nice. Surprisingly being nice is something of a prerequisite for me in a relationship.

My cousin’s wife was funny because as I described the situation to her later she said, “Couldn’t you have juuusssttt stttaayyyyeeeddd with her?”

She meant well, at least for me in the sense that she knew having a partner so well off would be a good change from the struggle life is normally but amazingly enough it’s not what I’m about. You would think I would have more brains and be about that but I just can’t do that.

There’s that nice thing again.

And while nice could engender a lot of things, let me describe it because just saying someone needs to be nice is somewhat vague - I have to like you, I have to think you’re a good person and respect you. I certainly don’t want to be walking on eggshells around you worried that you’ll blow up over nothing or next to nothing.

Which is something the person in question did more than once in the brief time we were together.

So I may have a shred of integrity, who knew!

Mike the dick.

Another one from the drafts queue:

Mayor Mike has made a lot of noise lately.

First off, he advocated congestion pricing for motorists. Yeah, if you live in Manhattan you are probably all for that but, if you don’t live in Manhattan and it’s not as easy to get in all the time you see where that could be a problem. The other thing noticeably absent from the Mayor’s suggestion to implement congestion pricing is that it doesn’t apply to areas of the city that are given over to congestion each and every day, areas outside of midtown Manhattan.

What?

These areas aren’t subjected to the same negatives of heavy traffic that the citizens in Manhattan are? Places like the Bronx on the approach to the GW bridge, the Cross Bronx Expressway, the crossings between Queens and the Bronx, Flatbush Avenue, the Van Wyck merge, Northern Boulevard, Main Street in Flushing, I could go on and on and on.

No, when Mayor Mike talks about things like this, generally it applies to keeping exclusive parts of the city nicer at the expense of people who can little afford it.

Congestion pricing?

Hey Mayor Mike! How about slapping an exorbitant surcharge on the parking garages of luxury high-rises? How about mandating commercial deliveries in midtown during the early hours of the morning (1am to 5am)? Think those things might make a difference?

The reason I am slightly miffed about this whole thing is because of the Mayor’s latest folly.

Once again, the Mayor takes advantage of a segment of the population that provides one of the easiest targets and which is not organized enough to have a significant voice of dissent. What I am talking about is the announcement today by the Mayor of implementing a program whereby all the yellow taxis in the city will be ‘green’ in five years.

Sure, there are some people who say, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ and to hear the mayor tell it...

That’s where I stopped.

Let‘s talk about double standards a little bit shall we?

Rudolph Giuliani was the man who preceded Bloomberg as mayor of New York City. At various times Giuliani was called Mussolini or a fascist by his detractors - him being Italian it was an easy ethnic slur for people to get away with.

The September 11th attacks happened on Primary Day in 2001. In the aftermath, there was talk about Giuliani possible running for a third term as mayor and rescinding that part of the city charter that limited the mayor to two terms. It was at this time the handy slurs came out but the truth was at the time Giuliani did act very much like a leader in the days and weeks after September 11th and he rose to the occasion as great leaders do.

Now the irony here is that Little Lord Fauntleroy as I like to think of Mike Bloomberg DID change the law and DID pursue a THIRD TERM BUT NO ONE CALLED HIM A FASCIST OR ANYTHING ELSE.

Funny, huh?

The new mayor who succeeded Bloomberg is a true clown. He is someone who wants to bring back the good old days in New York City not recognizing that those days were not all that good.

Bloomberg for all his accolades did very little for many parts of the city that needed attention. Bloomberg’s focus was very much on Manhattan on the other boroughs, not so much.

Yet, for all his faults trying to make Manhattan into some kind of rich person’s Disneyland I have to say he was way preferable to the idiot in office now.

Then again, New York is getting so wildly expensive in so many ways: toll increases, transit increase, rent increases but no salary increases to match, one wonders if it’s not time to ‘bug out’ and not spend as much time struggling paying so much for things that are so much cheaper elsewhere. I love New York but like any long term relationship as time goes on the fire cools a little.

Another snippet.

This was started, restarted and now started again another drafts queue dollop...

Way back around Thanksgiving I wrote about self indulgent parents and today once again I found myself in a situation with the selfsame parents. You’ve heard of lose/lose situations? This could best be described as one of them.

Imagine if you will going through the ordeal of a funeral. Feeling nothing but empathy for the people who were closest to the deceased, trying to do your best to be there for them and then finding yourself poked and prodded (quite literally) by a child where the parent cannot be bothered to supervise their issue.

Some things simply beggar the imagination.

What’s laughable is watching the indignity of the irate mother who bristles because you have the audacity to scold her child for intruding on your own person, as if that is a lesson you should have to teach anyone else’s child - the simple act of behaving oneself at what is supposed to be a solemn occasion.

I’ve seen a lot through the years but some things take the cake.

I feel bad for a child in that situation because a child takes its cues from the parent and if a parent isn’t doing their job it’s not like you should blame the child for it. I apologized to the mother, not in earnest but in embarrassment for the parent failing in their job. The irony is in watching someone who is ‘smart’ not realizing you’re doing something for their benefit and could actually care less...

Anyway, I know exactly the incident I was describing here...

In this case, the kid in question spent the better part of one Thanksgiving dinner under the table trying to punch me in the balls. I was telling another cousin about this and he said I should have just kicked the child but as much of an ass as I am I wouldn't do that. I was mystified by the situation however and actually blame the parents for this.

The parents, both of whom are teachers have an attitude about them if you’re being quite honest. My family (or at least that part) for the most part can be somewhat provincial but the parents in question... well they are ‘special’ in quite their own way.

It wasn’t the first time this kid acted up and truthfully I figured it to be an extension of the parents and their attitude towards me. They didn’t deal with the problem when it was addressed with them in the past because it wasn’t the first time the child had misbehaved or the first time it had been bought to their attention. It simply was a matter that they didn’t care or they didn’t think enough to address it, that much is quite clear.

Anyway, from time to time I am blessed with the wonderful experience of passing stones.

My father had this, my uncle had it and as I got into my forties it popped up for me as well. It took a bit of time though for me to make the connection with what was happening. You don’t necessarily know that wonderful ache you’ve been feeling is something other than some kind of muscle thing, it takes awhile to make the connection even if you are one of those people that runs off to the doctor all the time.

In my case it took a couple of times for me to get it.

I’ve had a couple of times now over the years where it got REALLY bad. Fortunately not so bad where I had to go and get a medical procedure done but let me tell you you would be amazed at how much water a person can force themselves to drink when they’re not someone who usually drinks a lot of water.

I mean I’ve had a time or two when I could actually tell where the thing was at it moved around!

Anyway, this day in question the little brat was behind me at a table with other children in attendance and decided to sneak up behind me and give me two good wallops right where I was feeling especially tender from a stone.

Think the kind of pain you feel if you’ve ever twisted your back and you move suddenly magnified by 100... even that isn’t close.

And as I said I turned around and told the kid quite tersely to ‘STOP THAT! SIT DOWN!’

For that I was pilloried... I became persona non grata and the mother of said child had a meltdown it was all very dramatic. Quite the issue, really... things ranged from ‘you don’t yell at someone else’s child’ to defenses of the kids behavior and then I won’t even go into what the father of said child and his cousin said that was overheard (clowns).

Thing is when I was growing up and you misbehaved you got flack from adults it wasn’t all about the precious little child and I imagine that’s how things have changed in the world.

Now, I haven’t seen the kid or the parents since and ask me, am I upset?

There was as I said some sturm and drang and fallout that lasted for some time but really, feh.

I’m waiting... the kid is getting into those teenage years. You know you get a feeling about things. I’m waiting because I get every sense given the parents and the child’s behavior there should be some interesting stories in the offing. Either way glad they’re gone at least from my orbit.

Being in the minority.

I’m not a big Stan Lee fan which likely puts me in a minority.

Mind you I met Stan once a long, long time ago and he was a genuinely nice person and he is indeed a nice person when you meet him. He’s a social person, in a big way but even though he is I can’t say over the years I’ve grown to be a big fan of his, if anything I’ve gone entirely in a different direction after having grown up suckling at the teat of Marvel’s ‘Golden Age’ back in the sixties and the seventies.

The big reason for that is I realized some time ago if you go back and look, really look at what Stan was without Jack Kirby it’s remarkable.

Stan was Martin Goodman’s nephew by marriage meaning in a very small company he was related to the big boss. When Jack Kirby started at Timely, Stan Lee was a gopher, there‘s just no other way to put it. Jack created Captain America which was a huge hit at the time (among the many other things Jack did).

How did Timely do without Jack?

In the sixties if you go back and see Jack’s notes in the margins of pages he pencilled things become a lot clearer about who was doing the heavy lifting in that ‘partnership.’

Let‘s put it this way... what has Stan done in the ensuing years afterwards, after Jack left during that Golden Age. What work can you point to that stands out?

You know, Jack left and went to DC... the guy is penciling AND WRITING in some cases over 100 pages a month. The material he’s writing? The New Gods, Darkseid, Kamandi, OMAC, Jimmy Olsen, Mister Miracle... any of those sound familiar?

And then, he goes back to Marvel works on Captain America some more and also creates the Eternals, Devil Dinosaur and Machine Man just to name a few.

There was a big campaign throughout the eighties to have Marvel return Kirby’s originals to him in the meantime after Martin Goodman sold his company Stan (NEPHEW BY MARRIAGE) got a nice little golden parachute of a million dollars per year (which Stan gets for LIFE).

And then there’s the movie cameo thing... I’m sorry, but to me it’s just Stan jumping out to grab the limelight again after a lifetime of doing that.

Stan is a LIKEABLE GUY, he’s very charming but whenever I see one of these movies, I think of Steve Ditko who lived in poverty and Jack Kirby among others who did a lot more to establish those concepts and create those characters and who don’t quite get the same level of acknowledgement outside of comics fandom.

Triumph Tuesday!

Because honestly I cannot get enough of the Insult Comic Dog:

Guilty pleasures.

 As it wraps up its first season, we see once more how Noah Hawley is rapidly becoming the auteur to reckon with of the small screen. The question isn’t whether you’ve been watching but more like why not if you haven’t as I know for myself I wasn’t looking forward to it or expecting great things but LEGION has quickly become appointment television:

 Oh, and by the way, this sequence with Aubrey Plaza does a coupe of things, it shows how good Plaza is at playing bad, does an incredible job of being stylistic in the way it marries music and image and just confirms everything I thought was telegraphed early on in the series.

Things we’re uncomfortable admitting.

So let’s talk about religion for a moment, shall we? Let’s talk about the ‘religion of peace’ if you will. While one should not harbor ill will towards the adherents of any religion on the basis of faith alone, neither should they ignore the underlying tenants of a religion and it’s attitude towards the world and others of different faiths.

Look, we all just want to get along, right? We should. But, can we is the question? Can we get along with adherents of a faith that is so rigidly conservative that prosthelytizes repressive and violent opinions?

There is no reform movement within Islam as a whole, it simply does not exist. Unfortunately even though there are many peaceful adherents of the faith, the public face of the religion is not one that preaches tolerance.

Case in point, if you are a Muslim and walk away from the faith or convert to another faith, this is a crime punishable by death in some countries EVEN TODAY!

More than 20 Muslim nations have laws that declare apostasy by Muslims to be a crime. As of 2014, apostasy was a capital offense in Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Executions for religious conversion have been infrequent in recent times, with four cases reported since 1985: one in Sudan in 1985; two in Iran, in 1989 and 1998; and one in Saudi Arabia in 1992. In Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Yemen apostasy laws have been used to charge persons for acts other than conversion. In addition, some Islamic countries without laws specifically addressing apostasy have prosecuted individuals or minorities for apostasy using broadly-defined blasphemy laws. In many nations, the Hisbah doctrine of Islam has traditionally allowed any Muslim to accuse another Muslim or ex-Muslim for beliefs that may harm Islamic society.

This principle has been used in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and others to bring blasphemy charges against apostates.The violence or threats of violence against apostates in the Muslim world in recent years has derived primarily not from government authorities but from other individuals or groups operating unrestricted by the government. There has also been social persecution for Muslims converting to Christianity. For example, the Christian organization Barnabas Fund reports.

On what level is this even remotely okay?

I watch things just to be sure I see something for myself and don’t take another’s word about something but I would really appreciate how anyone can condone this garbage.

I call it garbage because that’s what it is. You have every right to protest, every right to voice your opinion but somewhere along the line people confused voicing that opinion with advocating violence (akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater). There’s an old saw about you don’t respect the man you respect the office.

If you’re good with the little snippet above by Dogg boy, just imagine if we took everything in it and reversed it. Case in point, take every white face and make it a black face, take the Trump standup and put in Barack Obama and if you’re still good with that I can’t say anything because I think you’re likely an imbecile.

When Madonna says things along the lines of ‘blowing up the White House’ and Dogg boy makes his little movie it encourages more idiots out there to think they might actually be justified in doing something incredibly stupid.

I can hardly think of myself as this doddering fogey especially if you read the post I made about Frank Zappa and the government. I don’t believe we should give undying fealty to our government EVER but there is a huge difference between what is acceptable and what isn’t and this crosses a big line.

It’s wildly racist and incredibly immature but then it could well be that that is the audience it is trying to reach. The question is whether there will be the kind of significant outcry against it as there would be under other circumstances.

Unless we live under a double standard and then you know these things have a way of backfiring on people when they least expect it.

All my heroes are FUCKING GEEZERS!

So, what happens to you in life is the years seem to build up rather quickly and before you know it you’re not a teenager anymore and the music you listened to is no longer produced by angry young men (or women) but by people who are looking more like grandma and grandpa.

WTF!

Anyway, I was looking at something else, prepping something else and I thought of this and wanted to share:

I don’t make this stuff up.

So the other day I was talking about the parallels between myself and a distant cousin who met with a very untimely end over the course of what was a difficult path in life. If you didn’t see it, it’s here.

Now, in that post I mentioned a family friend and as fate would have it, she had asked me to drive her out to JFK as she is taking a trip to visit her granddaughter who is studying in Spain. Now, she’s staunchly Democratic, so that’s one issue and the other is that as time goes on she gets more set in her ways but some people in this world get credit no matter what and she’s one of them. I know she can be very particular but that’s offset by the many ways she has gone out of her way for me and truthfully I love her for that.

I’m usually on BPT even though I fight it and she wanted to be out at the airport an ungodly four hours before her flight which would have meant driving out at the height of rush hour. Originally I was supposed to drive her out on Tuesday afternoon but Thursday I was calling her telling her she should think about changing her plans and Friday I called again telling her she DEFINITELY should think about changing plans after I had spent about an hour on the phone with the airlines going over options for her before I called (I had her itinerary and wanted to call knowing what the options were).

She did change said plans and off we were on Monday afternoon. She was pissed because I showed up later than she wanted to but she hadn’t given me a specific time only a time she wanted to be at the airport. The drive for the most part was pretty uneventful as I still have ‘the knowledge’ of the tri-state area from my years driving and we made it out to the airport not at the exact time she wanted to be there but not too much later.

Anyway, as is usually the case the ride was punctuated by conversation and we talked about her daughter of course who is the mom in the equation and who also happens to be my first girlfriend of sorts.

And really I have to say, her daughter is just about as incredible a person as there could be. She’s smart and driven and really a terrific person. Her older sister passed away about 10 years back and I knew them both and her older sister was something too.

I can look back on some really fond memories with both of those women...

Anyway, I’m driving my friend out there and were talking about life in general and she genuinely wants good things for me (which is one of the reasons I hold her in such high regard as it seems folks like that are harder and harder to come by in life). She was talking about her daughter and I wholeheartedly conceded I thought her daughter had accomplished so very much and by that measure I felt sorely lacking.

And pointedly she said, ‘Considering where you started out, you’ve done really well.’

You know, I know she’s right but that’s not good enough.

It’s easy to say, oh well... that’s where I started out so I should be happy where I’ve gotten to but, a part of me knows that no matter what you can’t be a success by making excuses. I know I make excuses for myself and it doesn’t help me.

It doesn’t help any of us really when you think about the excuses we make for ourselves as people. Those excuses are the things that stand in the way of us. The things that keep us from being everything we can be, from tapping into the potential inside each of us. The fact that we can’t give up or settle.

So, I can acknowledge it, respect it and be glad someone else knows it but embracing it would be a bad thing and the question for all of us is are you okay with embracing the status quo or are you more interested in all the possibilities that are out there for you in the big wide world?

You still coming around here?

Again another from the drafts queue!

MMmmm?

That it, poking around trying to satisfy your curiosity?

Well, there’s not much to see around here now at the moment, is there?

Let’s see... actually, if you want to know it’s been quite busy lately. A bit of a whirlwind since Sandy came to town. I had a solid stretch of work and as things go it was a pretty busy time. One week I actually logged 68 hours and during that week begged off on something else that somebody tried to dump on me....

So, given when Sandy occurred it’s a pretty easy thing to place around the time this was written. My life is like that, periods of insane activity followed by weeks of anxiety because there is nothing happening work wise.

If you are coming around, now, the last few weeks, I’ve tried very hard to be consistent in producing something, anything in terms of content (even though I SHOULD BE WORKING ON MY OWN WEBSITE!).

Yet, I do like writing. So I hope you do keep coming around and if you see something you like you tell your friends.

Triumph Tuesday!

Because honestly I cannot get enough of the Insult Comic Dog:

There but for the grace of God go I.

This is from the drafts queue...

I don’t like Mondays.

A drunken ex-convict killed a 59-year-old acquaintance by cutting her throat and sexually assaulted one of her grandchildren during a 14-hour standoff on Long Island that ended when he fatally shot himself yesterday afternoon, the police said.

Residents in the town of West Islip woke up to the last day of a holiday weekend with plans for backyard barbecues and beach excursions and found a frenzied ordeal in progress on Kime Avenue.

Monday one of the big stories in the New York area was a standoff the police were having out on Long Island. It was a 14 hour drama and almost clichéd in the way those things are. The guy was a drunk, he had been to jail a bunch of times, he came to the house of his victims looking for someone who wasn’t there at the time, he came looking for some kind of repayment for a real or imagined debt and the misfortune of his victims was that they were the ones who were home when he showed up.

The killer had a high powered rifle of some sort which forced the police to evacuate some of the house in the neighborhood for safety’s sake and they even had to go as far as shutting down a major highway (on Memorial Day no less) because the houses the guy was holed up in abutted the highway in question.

White’s daughter – estranged from her husband, who employed Zagarella in construction – returned home at around 12:30 a.m. yesterday to find her mother lying in a pool of blood in the garage, her throat slashed, Suffolk police said.

A blood-soaked Zagarella, looming in the doorway with a rifle, yelled for the woman to come inside, but she ran to a neighbor’s home to call police and alert them that her kids, ages 10 and 13, were still inside with the drunken lunatic.

After the long standoff, at some point in the afternoon the guy decided his best way out of the situation was to kill himself, which was a good thing because he saved the taxpayers scads of money which would have been otherwise devoted to a lengthy drawn out trial. In one way it would have prolonged the pain of his victims but, at the some time you have to wonder how staggering it is for them in any case to have something like this strike their family.

The next day in the paper, they ran a story about the circumstances in the killer’s life. It was a story filled with a bunch of tragedies designed to put a face on the killer and to make some kind of sense out of such a senseless event.

...abused as a child, neglected by his mentally ill mother, and introduced to alcohol as a 15-year-old by his equally troubled father, his family wrote a Rockland County judge just before he was to be sentenced for a 1986 burglary, court records show.

“My brother’s problems started over 30 years ago before he was born, because he was born to a father who was an alcoholic and a mother who had mental problems and nervous breakdowns,” his sister wrote. (log in required)

At this point they are almost 100 responses to the story about the killer’s life ranging from righteous outrage to sorrow.

Me, I was home most of the day on Memorial Day and at different points I had the TV on more or less as background. I wasn’t really paying too much attention to it and the story about the thing on Long Island really hadn’t registered with me in any fashion, just another one of those horrible things you hear on the news. It was late in the afternoon when they announced the situation was over after the guy blew his brains out.

But, when they said his name, I immediately pricked up my ears.

See, I had met him maybe once or twice when I was around 10 or 12 or so. It was a long time ago to be sure but, I didn’t remember him as being violent. My grandparents on my father’s side both came from big, big families and each had something like 7 or 8 siblings so my father had lots of cousins. One of his cousins was a notorious alchoholic who died at a very young age from cirossis of the liver...

So, here’s the deal...

I remember Phil Zag...

I remember Phil and Phil Jr who was just a little older than me.

I can only remember meeting Phil Jr once I believe over at his grandmother’s house. His grandmother and my grandmother were sisters and as I spent a lot of time with my grandma growing up, I spent time over at Cuchitina’s and Uncle Louie’s house. My grandmother would go over to visit and I would get to spend time around them and I liked them. As a little kid I just remember them being very nice, loving people.

I don’t know exactly what Uncle Louie did but they had a modest house in a nice part of the Bronx on a beautiful quiet street. They had four kids (I believe) who were all of my father’s generation, two girls and two boys but the rub was that tragedy had stricken the family and one of the girls had died too young (Helen) and one of the boys (Tony) had died in some kind of auto accident. This left Fran and Phil and while I didn't know or remember Fran too well I did meet Phil.

And Phil drank.

Phil drank about as much as my old man (another Phil) drank but Phil Zag drank to the point that he got Cirrhosis and died in his forties. I can remember going with my father to the hospital to see him shortly before he died.

Now, the thing here is that there are definite parallels between my life and Phil Jr.’s (me being a Phil Jr too among them). There’s the alcoholic father thing, the divorced parent thing, the knockabout childhood. I’d be lying if it wasn’t eerie.

Somewhere though, he took one path and I took another.

Now, I don’t know where that was. I do know even as a teenager Phil Jr. had serious enough problems he had to go to the equivalent of a juvenile facility.

I can’t say I was an angel as a teenager but things never got that bad for me.

Years later, I have one long term family friend who has known me since the age of about 12 and she has commented one more than one occasion how she is simply amazed at how I turned out. While I don’t know really how to respond when someone says that I know why she says it.

She says it because in explaining the comment she remarks that I really didn’t have a normal upbringing (and she would know having dated my old man for a period of time). There are latch key kids but I didn’t even make that cut and we were poor.

When I say I grew up poor I am being generous. I am being generous in that I have stories that truly would make your hair stand on end.

I’m a survivor though and somewhere along the line because of I believe three people (actually four now that I give it some thought), I’m okay. I wonder sometime where I would be if I had the kind of foundation most people have - I’d honestly like to be further along in a number of ways and I feel fortunate that I’ve come as far as I have but thankfully I didn’t wind up on the path that Phil Jr wound up on and when I think of the turns his life took and the similarities between us I shiver because that could have been me and I really do have a certain amount of empathy and pity for a person who went down a dark path.

What I don’t do.

Another one from my drafts queue!

You know what I realized the other day? It occurred to me, that in many of my relationships I was the one who did the breaking up.

I was surprised when I came to the conclusion. In amaze me. When I look back on those past relationships, I never think of myself as someone in the drivers seat, but apparently I was...

I stopped there.

You know, we walk around with this image of ourselves in the world by which I mean we walk around with this idea of how the world around us perceives us. I have realized in the last few years that except for the very well adjusted among us, there is usually a very large gap in between our perception and how others perceive us and our actions.

Recently, it was something that came to my attention again as I was talking to someone about work.

The conversation boiled down to while I am very nice, while I do a very good job, I apparently project that I don’t suffer stupidity from people in the form of bullshit. On one level it bothered me a great deal, I don’t want to be the turd in the punch but in another way, I don’t want to be a doormat either.

I’ve done the things I do for a very long time and I try not to have the big ego that is characteristic of a lot of people in my field. I just don’t see much point in doing anything other than making life as painless as possible when it comes to work. A job is a JOB, you are getting paid to perform various tasks to the best of your ability and I take great pride in my work but not to the point where I feel it’s worth getting into a fight with someone over.

Sometimes, people can confuse that with not caring about your work and that’s simply not the case at all but in my business you are usually catering to the whims of other people or creating solutions that conform to their sensibilities. Even if they are wrong, you can do your best to give a good argument why they are wrong but you aren’t doing yourself any favors by being obstinate.

In relationships, I think I’m likely very similar. I really believe a good relationship should be about lifting your partner up as they also support you. That’s an earmark of the best relationships but I have seen quite a few that are built around one person’s insecurity and I would rather not be a party to a situation like that.

I’ve been very, very lucky but it is true that in my personal life as in my work life I have a low level of tolerance for bullshit. So, when I was talking about the relationship thing it was a Eureka moment when I realized I cut things off at the legs in situations where it didn’t pass muster. Maybe i am the bad breaker upper from Seinfeld.

I always thought to myself that the one thing I would hate to be is to be some women’s story. Every woman has them, stories about the old boyfriends... ladies know exactly what it is I am talking about. It’s the things they share with their girlfriends and with other people down the road. I didn’t ever want to be someone’s bad story and I fervently hope I haven’t been.

Then again too I realize that you can’t stay friends often afterwards because someone inevitably walks away hurt. In a perfect world that wouldn’t be the case but the world we live in is never perfect.

Now it can be told!

Yesterday was a bit of a first for me.

It was a first in the sense that I worked my first election.

What!?!? You say.

Well, I was certified in the last few months as an Election Inspector and since yesterday was Election Day I was scheduled to work the election.

And a long day it was because to work the election here in New York means opening the polls at 6 am and closing them at 9 pm and you are there for the open and close. 6 am to 9 pm would be a long enough day but then you have to factor in the prep time to get everything ready to open at 6 and then the very extensive wrap up which has to take place after the polls close and closing the polls takes a lot longer than opening them since there are very, very...

This is another one of those draft queue jewels and man if this isn’t an old one.

My first election was the 2008 Presidential Election where Barack Obama was elected President. Not only was it notable because it was the first time we elected an African American President but it was also the first time my county (and I believe all the others here in New York State), used electronic voting machines.

Previously, we had this big tanks of voting machines. Huge suckers that were green and had all these switches you had to flip. The great thing about them was that when you entered the voting booth, you had to move this huge lever to one side which drew a curtain around you. When you had finished flipping all those switches to cast your ballot, you drew the humongous Wizard of Oz lever back over to the side it was when you started. The curtain drew back, the machine made this loud clunking noise and simultaneously you heard the noise of all the switches being reset back to their original position.

It made voting a very satisfying experience.

The electronic machines have a slow you feed your ballot into after filling it out in a privacy screen area. It's nowhere near as satisfying to say the least.

I until this past election worked each and every contest including primaries missing only one or two due to work for the last eight years.

The first election I worked, we had this wonderful nun who lived a stone's throw away from my polling place at Maryknoll which is the headquarters for the Jesuit order. She was a fascinating woman who had traveled extensively as part of her missionary work. Also, she had the brother bringing us coffee, tea and snacks to have throughout the very long day.

Really it was wonderful.

Aside from the asshole who tried and did take down our Plan A machine (and I am sure it was intentional on his part because I repeatedly had told him not to yank on his ballot after he fed it in the wrong way twice) it was a decent day.

I worked the handicap machine for my polling site which meant I had a variety of duties. Also, I got to meet the local politicians who vote at our polling place and struck up an acquaintanceship with them - more on that another time.

The fun didn’t last long though because of one particular biddy.

Anyway, the days are extremely long, the pay isn’t that great unless you’re not working and then money is money. I’d do it again but part of me is hoping the biddy is finally old enough not to work elections anymore. After watching her directing people to vote and standing over them as they vote I just couldn’t deal anymore. Mind you that I was dedicated enough that there was a case during one election where I wasn’t working the election (read not getting paid) that I swung by at the end of the day and wound up helping them close down the polls because the other people there were so inept (including biddy). Kind of scary really.

To be continued...

If you hate Trump, today you should be happy!

So, here we are...

It is only March 10 and we are barely over a month into a Trump Presidency and today the Republicans lost the midterms.

How did they do it?

It's simple really, the Republicans confused ‘Populism’ with ‘Conservatism’ and what got Trump elected was not Conservative Values. Today Paul Ryan danced out in front of the media to try and sell the American public on what could best be described as a turd.

‘Here’s your turd!’

Forget three pronged approaches, forget all this crap about having a card and not being able to use it like having the keys to a car and not being able to drive it. It’s a turd. It’s something that will lead to more money being shouldered by Americans who can least afford the expense.

Now, I have someone who I love DEARLY. He however, is someone who falls victim to the propaganda of Republican rhetoric, so much so he said I was no Republican on more than one occasion over the last eight years. In his mind, every increase in his premiums is Barack Obama’s fault.

Seriously.

And he does well... I mean he lives a comfortable life here in the New York area but he is definitely in the upper echelon of wages. It isn’t like he hasn’t worked hard to get there, I want to make that clear but he at the same time is galled by the actions of the Obama administration. The thing is though, he doesn’t want to recognize how bad things were under Bush.

I’ve had more than one discussion with him about this pointing out the fact that under a Bush administration, my premium for health insurance trebled going from around $300 a month to over $900 a month. Also, I pointed out how Bush spent like a sailor in office racking up budget deficits and being fiscally irresponsible as to create a huge deficit.

I’m taking the whole great recession out of the equation only because I think people on both sides of the aisle can share some responsibility for what happened but getting back to what I was talking about, here we have someone who is definitely in denial because EVERYTHING the Democrats do is wrong.

Now, as I have said in the past, I am a Republican but I don’t have a problem voting across party lines and I can’t say everything the Dems have done has been bad.

As a matter of fact the ACA was the one great achievement of the Obama administration and while not perfect, it certainly did not warrant the ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ attitude that it is being given by the Republicans. Merely it was the first step on a path that would bring our nation more in line with a single payer system. Yes, I uttered those words because I have no doubt our nation is well past due when we did embrace the idea of a single payer system for healthcare.

This is tantamount to blasphemy on my part but look, the simply fact is that every study shows we just don‘t get the bang for our buck that we should be getting in this country when it comes to healthcare.

Anyway, I’ve actually spent the time looking at the Republicans plan and looking at who supports it or doesn’t and why.

The whole FSA thing is bullshit. You know it, I know it. The same thing with assigned Risk Pools and if you look a little back you’ll see where I even called the Ryan Plan out on these very issues.

So, let’s say this POS passes...

Dems, you’ve just been handed control of the House and Senate and if you can’t figure out a way to win seats you are truly pathetic because if this thing goes through, once people start to realize just how much it will impact them... get ready to see the anger.

The tweets, people can ignore them. The Russian stuff, sounds like paranoid delusions. The healthcare thing? Take something away from people and make them pay more? Guess what? You are screwed.

And look, this crap about people having skin in the game when it comes to medical costs, I call bullshit.

How many people go out and buy a car and get screwed over? How many people sign up for a cell phone plan and get shafted? Now all of a sudden we are expected to suddenly be educated consumers and spend the time shopping around for the best price on a medical procedure when it couldn’t possibly be at a worse time?

How about the government put a fixed price chart in place that specifies what can be charged for procedures (actually insurance companies do this already). How about making the entire nation ONE RISK POOL?

But they won’t do that.

So look, if you really want to do something... CALL YOUR CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE, CALL YOUR SENATORS OFFICES AND WRITE SOME LETTERS.

Because the demonstrating thing is hot air.

MORE... MYTHS OF THE LEFT!

 

Over my life I’ve noticed something that I have found disturbing and it bothered me even more during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

What that was was the high propensity for violence among people who are supposedly ‘liberal’ and ‘open-minded’ when their behavior displays that they are anything but. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have a tendency to be a contrarian meaning no matter where you fall on the political spectrum I know at some point I’ll say something that will wind up getting you pissed.

Anyway, during the campaign there were a slew of protests at Donald Trump events. These protests in more than a few occasions wound up in leading to violence directed at the people who were attending those events even though I could see no parallel happening with opponents to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Free societies (or at least our society) are built upon the tenet of Free Speech and while that also means you have the right to demonstrate against speech you don’t like it doesn’t give you license to engage in violent attacks on those you disagree with.

That’s thuggery.

An aside here, there was an instance at a Trump rally down in the Carolinas where a demonstrating was being escorted from the event and got punched by an attendee. That was wrong but I did find it funny that the young man who was demonstrating had gotten punched by a man in his seventies - you’ll excuse me but it did remind me a bit of when Robin Ventura charged Nolan Ryan on the mound and got his hat handed to him.

You can watch that moment here if you’re nostalgic:

But as usual, I digress...

What I wanted to get to was this hypocrisy about ‘openness’ or ‘liberal’ when the truth is that this is the kind of ‘openness’ that was evident in the Soviet Union during its heyday. You don’t get free license to indulge in thuggery because you believe you hold some sort of ‘moral high ground’ in your own mind.

This short perfectly illustrates exactly what I’m talking about and why if people don’t get the message you’ll be looking at a second term of Trump because it’s a behavior that repels people and doesn’t sway them to your argument in the slightest:

Triumph Tuesday!

Because honestly I cannot get enough of the Insult Comic Dog:

The interesting history of the map of Gotham City.

I came across this and passed it along to Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool but if it doesn’t make it over there I came across this great article in the Smithsonian Magazine of all places that is a fun read for any comics fan:

Before DC Comics  could destroy Gotham City, there had to be a Gotham City to destroy. Enter artist and illustrator Eliot R. Brown, the cartographer of Gotham.

The grieving process.

Someone I know is going through what could easily be described as one of the most horrendous things a person can endure directing the care of someone dear and watching them make slow progress to death.

It once again proves the point that as advanced as we may think medicine is, it still has a long, long way to go. That’s a big problem too these days because medicine (and doctors) know JUST enough to keep you going.

What do I mean you may ask? Well, when the people of my grandparents generation came to their ends, basically they lived their lives and then one day they stopped. They stopped in that they had something happen to them physically and their life was over. There was no trip to the hospital, no back and forth, no entry into a nursing home, no in and out of intensive care. They just died.

My grandfather who I miss dearly to this day died in a day. I was over my grandparents house sitting in bed with my grandfather while my grandmother made us espresso (I cannot tell you what a treat this was for very young me and how much I fondly remember this) when he started coughing. He kept coughing and coughing and you may not believe me but somehow I knew that was it. The cough came from deep inside of him, a deep fleshy sound, not violent but all the same one that you could tell racked his body and shortly after it had started he was bought to the hospital and died in the wee hours of the morning of the next day.

But, he died relatively quickly as did others of his generation.

Now what happens is that a person will have a major life altering event after which while they will continue to live they will endure a slow decline to the point of their death. Sometimes, this is a form of torture, especially in an instance where the person in question can’t make the decision for themselves.

It’s one reason why it is vitally important to have a living will, a health proxy and a DNR all set up BEFORE THAT MOMENT ARRIVES.

The person I know currently is just holding on to their loved one but I have to wonder if it wouldn’t have been better and more humane to let go months ago. You can’t say anything because they are so determined the patient will get better but ask yourself this... you can’t get many things fixed properly in this world, whether it’s your TV or your car and the human body is a far more complicated machine for which we don’t have any sort of manual.

They do not simply hook you up and miraculously there is a readout of what is wrong with you, rather given current medical knowledge they look at the clues and try to solve a mystery which if they can solve it correctly will bring you back to health (or it may not).

Also, I know having been down this road myself people have expectations that are entirely out of whack.

Case in point, you go to work... some days you are tired, some days you are burnt out, some days you are just trying to coast through the day. Some of your fellow employees are lazy. Some are just plain bad at their job.

Now, how is it that anyone can walk into a hospital and expect that workplace to be any different from countless others?

Once again though I am in a very circular way getting to a point. You think you know what you want them to do when something happens? You think what they should do and what will improve your chances? Maybe you should heed the advice of the people who are on the front lines and who know best because of the choices that they would make for themselves, namely doctors. Take a look at this:

Preferences of physician-participants for treatment given a scenario of irreversible brain injury without terminal illness. Percentage of physicians shown on the vertical axis. For cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), surgery, and invasive diagnostic testing, no choice for a trial of treatment was given. Data from the Johns Hopkins Precursors Study, 1998. Courtesy of Joseph Gallo, "Life-Sustaining Treatments: What Do Physicians Want and Do They Express Their Wishes to Others?"


And while you’re at it - take the time to go and listen to this RadioLab episode The Bitter End:

Let’s start calling it what it is.

Over the last decade maybe more there has been a decidedly nefarious use of the English language to change the debate on a topic and alter the perception of people who rail against it.

It’s the term ‘undocumented immigrant’ as opposed to ILLEGAL ALIEN.

Here are some really interesting little tidbits:

“This disturbing fact follows ICE’s admission that, of the 36,007 criminal aliens it released from ICE custody in Fiscal Year 2013, 1,000 have been re-convicted of additional crimes in the short time since their release,” according to the letter, dated June 12, 2015.”

And:

Amid the escalating national clash over immigration, new cases have emerged in federal court in South Florida showing how five undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala, all with criminal records, had been previously deported and returned undetected across the southwest border.

One of the five defendants, a Mexican, was deported at least seven times previously, while the others have at least one previous deportation each on their record.

Somewhere along the line, people realized that by changing the language of something they could change the argument about it and so ILLEGAL ALIENS became UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS.

And we should feel pity for these poor undocumented immigrants, right? They come here and they start families and they work hard...

At least that’s the argument.

Look, some of these people do come here and work very hard, I wrote a while back about black and white and gray and this is definitely one of those areas where things are gray to be sure.

But... I do know of two situations personally where people have abused the immigration laws knowing full well exactly what they were doing when they did it.

In one case, a woman who had told someone close to me she could no longer have children (after having children by two different men back in her country of origin), MIRACULOUSLY GOT PREGNANT! Must be the water or something, or maybe it was just one of those divine Christian things but WOW! She did it!

The guy in question, I love him, dearly but talk about stupid...

Anyway, he was with this woman for a bit of time and at one point did something he shouldn’t have done which was to bring the woman’s children into the country. So here were... the woman, her two children, her sister and two brothers who were already here all illegally.

And the guy was actually supporting the woman, her two children and the sister. He even got them registered for school and everything. Somehow though once those other people showed up their relationship started going off the rails and it was around them I was telling him maybe it was time just to cut his losses and remove himself from the situation.

Low and behold a month later she was pregnant!

And him being stupider still didn’t urge for an abortion or even do a paternity test (which he should’ve done and why he should’ve done it will be clear in a few sentences) and the woman bought said baby to term and had the kid and now he was supporting the woman, her THREE kids, and her sister.

Around this time though, money which had been coming in hand over fist for the year or two prior started drying up in a big way. Things were getting tight and he could no longer afford to be the big man like he had been.

Before he moved the rest of her family up here, she had been living with the guy but after they arrived in relatively short order the situation became so entirely untenable (after a few months) he moved them out and was covering all their expenses (free room and board!) and he had what amounted to a no-show job too that feed even more money into the household.

He suddenly became a one man cash machine.

Now another thing that happened after the baby arrived was the woman would arrive with the newborn at the guy’s office, drop it off with his secretary and drive off with someone for the day (no one was really clear who that was).

And as the money dried up... well, the flow had to stop and it would have been necessary for this woman and her sister too to actually find work so the guy told them he no longer could afford to give them a salary for doing nothing and that was that, he's help them out, certainly maintain his obligation as far as the new baby was concerned but the gravy train stopped.

A week later he was arrested on charges of molesting the woman's children.

Yep, she went in and swore out this complaint against him... and suddenly EVERYONE IN THE FAMILY - THE WOMAN, HER KIDS FROM EARLIER, HER SISTER, HER TWO BROTHERS ALL GOT U VISAS!

Hurray!

It was another miracle a bad situation that turned to their favor since they were crime victims.

Thing is, they weren't.

So, for two years the guy endured a nightmare, it involved court, lawyers, more money and just got worse and worse. While he had been living a very good life now he was in the absolute opposite of that life, he had entered a nightmarish world where he lost his freedom and was watching everything he had worked for disappear.

At one point they even taped the woman on the phone having a conversation with him admitting that the charges were fake and asking ‘Where’s the money!’ because she had though to come out of this not just with citizenship but also being able to take his possessions.

Nice stuff.

This went on for some time and he was in jail while all this was going on because they wouldn't give him any bail considering he had bought people from outside of the country in and thought he would be a flight risk.

And he had children of his own from an earlier marriage and was the custodial parent so their lives wound up being affected too.

You can watch things from a distance and just shake your head. I felt horrible for him but at the end of everything in large part it was his own stupidity that led him to this juncture and as of this writing he is still very much trying to put his life back together.

Even though he was found not to have done any of the molestation he was accused of, WELL THOSE FOLKS STILL GOT TO KEEP THEIR U VISAS! And he's still out all he had to spend on lawyers plus all that fun time in jail.

The other person I know came here wanting to leave their home country under a tourist visa and then stayed to go to school. When school finished there was a marriage that occurred which was paid for but the person who received payment never really felt too inclined to follow through and help with securing any further steps along the process for citizenship.

This was a nightmare of a different sort but again all was done with a very clear goal in mind and a clear knowledge of how to game the system.

So when you see someone who has fought being removed from the country point to their time in the country as a reason for why they should not be deported, excuse me if that won’t fly.

And if you point to people who have come here illegally and then started families and point to those families as reasons why they shouldn't be deported again, not working.

Everyone wants to paint this as some form of xenophobia but the truth is our society is built on a steady stream of immigrants and it is one of the great strengths of our country but the question is shouldn't WE have a say about who comes?

It’s a nice thing to believe that people are just looking for a better life but we have people here in our country who are looking for a better life and before we start fixing the rest of the world’s problems we have a responsibility to fix our own.

We have a whole nation of people who are struggling AND we have limited dollars than can go to social spending. The budget is not a bottomless pit, you can’t just continue to spend and spend and spend and think there will not be ramifications.

Plus you aren’t even beginning to talk about the effect it has on the labor pool in our own country as well... don’t give me any of this stuff about ‘doing jobs Americans won’t do’ because you’d be surprised at what people will do when forced into a position where they don’t have a choice.

Let’s also think for a second about all the people who actually take the time and effort and energy to come here legally... IS IT FAIR TO THEM?

I’ve got a very simple solution to anyone who wants to advocate open borders... if you feel so strongly about this, if this is something that really tugs at your heart and is an important issue for you then do the right thing - TAKE THESE PEOPLE INTO YOUR OWN HOME AND SUPPORT THEM. PAY ALL THEIR EXPENSES AND DO NOT ASK FOR ANYONE ELSE TO SHOULDER THE COST.

This includes any school expenses from their children and anything else. You want to do that, hey, I can only stand and watch and applaud you for your incredible example. You are truly a giving, caring human being.

Me, I’m struggling way too much on a daily basis and I have done charity work in the past and will continue to do so in the future when I can but leave me out of this mix because I have seen people abuse it and I think they honestly should start enforcing the law.

Vile

You know, I like a cocktail. I’m not the kind of person that goes out and gets tanked as I might’ve been in my younger days but I am very specific in my tastes and what will happen is that I will run through something because it catches my fancy for awhile.
Currently, my drink of choice had been the Rusty Nail after seeing Saul Goodman partake of one in the Season 1 opener of Better Call Saul.

It’s truly a nasty drink but smooth and it’s one of those drinks that’s almost impossible to get well made in a bar and by well made I mean of a decent strength.

Anyway, my mixer of choice normally is this:

But a few weeks back I had exhausted my mixer supply and the local liquor store had run out as well so I took a chance on this:

NEVER AGAIN! FOUL! STAY AWAY! TASTES LIKE... I DON’T KNOW WHAT! I’VE HAD GRAIN ALCOHOL THAT MAKES A BETTER DRINK.

You just don’t get it.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the election of the next DNC chair and what the party has to do and it’s a funny thing to watch. The loudest voices at these things, the people who are the most adamant continue to want to move the party further to the left.

You can see the way people are talking, they look at Bernie Sanders and they look at Hillary Clinton and they try to figure out which orbit they should arrive at but they’re missing a bigger picture overall.

The dirty secret about the Obama years is that the disparity between the rich and the poor only grew over those eight years. Richard Gephardt said during the 2004 campaign a truth that is even more relevant today than it was at the time he said it:

I think we're in danger because of the opening up of free trade — which we all support — of having a race to the bottom, what I call a race to the bottom for wage levels. Companies everywhere, not just American companies, are really being forced to go to the cheapest-wage countries to do their manufacturing or to deliver their services. I think we have to bring about international standards, both for workers and the environment, in our trading relationships.

Gephardt got it and this was 12 YEARS AGO! Unfortunately we have not enforced those standards in trade at all and currently any organizations responsible for enforcement of International Standards are mere Paper Tigers. This applies to other essential planks in the DNC platform including agreements on Climate Change. These are lofty goals to be sure but other countries will not readily sign away their capacity to achieve the same standard of living and economic growth that the United States takes for granted.

We like to think everyone, everywhere views the world the way we do here at home but that is simply not the case and its very naive for us to believe that.

Under the guise of good intentions though, the DNC has left many Americans behind. Americans whose votes they need and whose votes they counted on.

People in the Middle Class don’t look at the social safety net the Democrats support as something that helps them because when the shit hits the fan, they are not likely to be in a position to qualify for those benefits. They instead look at them as a drain. When the economy is doing well, people have less of a hard time with these things but as the income gap has grown and people are struggling more and more, that magnanimous attitude falls by the wayside.

The Democratic Party needs to return to the center – it needs to find people without the baggage that Hillary Clinton carried but center is where it’s at. Tim Kaine for whatever faults he may have, reads as a very good candidate for 2020 if the Democrats are smart enough to draft him.Thing is there is a push to go further and further to the left and it’s likely a push that will end up backfiring.

We are genuinely a nation of centrists no matter what you may believe and look at the election numbers and you can see that vote totals are split close to down the middle in national elections, there’s a reason for that. The DNC fails to recognize that only at their own peril.

Totally unscientific predictions.

Okay, here it is March 1st. Very early to do something like this so I’m putting my neck out there. This is my very unscientific predictions for the order of finish for the 2017 baseball season. It will be interesting to come back to this in October and see how I do. I’m not going to predict wins so much as order of finish in each Division.

NL EAST Mets (I’m biased) Braves Nationals Marlins Phillies	AL EAST: Red Sox Orioles Yankees Blue Jays Rays
NL CENTRAL Cubs Cardinals Pirates Brewers Reds	AL CENTRAL Indians Royals Tigers White Sox Twins
NL WEST Giants Dodgers Padres Rockies Diamondbacks	AL WEST Astros Rangers Mariners Angels A’s

I’m not going as far as to predict who will be the two wild card teams and who will manage to make it through the playoffs... OR WAIT... SHOULD I!

Okay, what the hell!

NL Wild Card teams: Dodgers Braves	AL Wild Card teams: Rangers Orioles
Playoffs 1st Round Giants face Mets Braves face Cubs	Playoffs 1st Round Rangers face Indians Astros face Boston
LCS Mets face Cubs Boston face Indians	WS Mets face Boston

I like to wear sheep’s clothing.

I’ll tell you something

I am a wolf but

I like to wear sheep’s clothing

I am a bonfire

I am a vampire

I’m waiting for my moment

Chorus;

You come on like a drug (Temptation waits)

I just can’t get enough (Here’s to your fate)

I’m like an addict coming at you for a little more (Can’t stay much longer)

And there’s so much at stake (Temptation waits)

I can’t afford to waste (I heard you say)

I never needed anybody like this before (Don’t say it’s over)

I’ll tell you something

I am a demon

Some say my biggest weakness

I have my reasons

Call it my defense

Be careful what you’re wishing

Chorus: You are a secret

A new possession

I like to keep you guessing

You come on like a drug (Temptation waits)

I just can’t get enough (Here's to your fate)

I’m like an addict coming at you for a little more (Can’t stay much longer)

And there’s so much at stake (Temptation waits)

I can’t afford to waste (Temptation waits)

I never needed anybody like this before

Oooh....X4

When I’m not sure what I'm living for

(When I’m not sure who I am)

When I'm not sure what I'm looking for

(When I'm not sure who I am)

When I'm not sure what I'm living for

(When I'm not sure who I am)

When I'm not sure what I'm looking for

(When I'm not sure who I am)

When I'm not sure what I'm looking for

When I'm not sure what I'm living for

When I'm not sure what I'm looking for

So what is this?

GARBAGE!

It’s just GARBAGE!

Sometimes I share stuff that I love, in this case this is one of those songs that is so good it can make me cry. Only because it has such a great lick in it, terrific sound and Shirley Manson is just so unbelievably at the top of her game in this song it is one of the high points of her repertoire. Plus it captures this moment in the whole human condition thing where a person is just consumed by passion.

UNFORTUNATELY, GARBAGE NEVER MADE AN ACTUAL VIDEO FOR THIS!

So here’s what I’ve done... you can see the band do live performances over the years of the tune each is good for different reasons and then lastly there’s the cut from the album:

1998:

1999:

sometime around 2008:

The album cut:

Glad to be gone.

I don’t read comics much anymore.

Well, maybe I should qualify that. I read comics but only what I am able to get through the library (Locke and Key.... amazing).

I don’t miss the expense. I don’t miss trucking to the comics shop each week (although that is less the thing now with e-readers). Most of all, I don’t miss comics.

Again, a qualification.

I don’t miss Marvel and DC for the most part.


The reason for this are many, a big one being that comics has developed into something particularly bad these days. The funny thing is is that it is a great time to be a comics fan. There are so many movies and TV shows out there now and surprisingly enough, they get it right MORE THAN THE COMICS THEMSELVES DO!

Why is that?

Well, a large part of it likely has to do with event comics and another part of it has to do with comics eating itself.

Event comics just destroyed comics. Each year now comic fans are treated to some kind of major story arc that goes across a whole line of books and promises to be ground-shaking, earth-shattering! I think DC has rebooted the DC universe three or four times in the last few years (if what I hear is correct).

I do know I recently picked up four or five Justice League softcovers from the library and they were unreadable. The art was muddied and overworked. The story was just atrocious, so incredibly lacking in any kind of decent character development and the portrayal of the characters so far afield from their core as to be painful.

I’m not singling out DC either because Marvel is just as guilty.

I read something recently that made me so happy I don’t read comics regularly - Captain America is a Hydra agent and has been for some time. What’s next, Superman is a sexual deviant?

There is something to be said for responsibility and stewardship, neither of which are in evidence here. Marvel likely would argue, “Hey! It’s working! We’ve got people talking about Captain America! They’re interested again!”

Count me out.

And again, herein is the big issue I have with comics... what we witness is akin to keeping a person on life support long after they should have been let go off. If you ever had an older relative who was ill for a prolonged period of time you know what a difficult decision this can be, letting go. Recognizing that the time has come to let something pass - the comics business is a commercial enterprise though and as such can’t see it’s way clear to do that or figure out a way to get out of the box it is in.

That’s where I stopped.

So, let’s talk about some good things that have happened incomics to offset the rant...

Miles Morales.

Really, single best character to come down the pike in a long time. This actually gives us a sense of WHAT COMICS SHOULD BE DOING.

When I say what they should be doing I don’t mean jumping Miles Morales over to the normal Marvel Universe and plastering him on to an already burdensome continuity weighing what was good of the character rdown with a load of shit that’s unnecessary.

Rather, it’s taking something and injecting some life back into it and making it relevant for today.

You know what else is good about comics?

Ms Marvel - Kamela Khan.

Why? Because she takes that sense of wonder that is inherent in the medium but also gives us a window into other people’s lives in a way that makes us look at them as less of an outsider.

This is a good thing.

I’m a big one for the teenage hero.

Up until round about the time they made him Kid Flash I thought Impulse was one of my favorite character because I loved everything that was new about Bart Allen. Same thing goes for Blue Beetle and the Tim Drake Robin book... both of them really captured the things that made Spider Man great in the very beginning.

Comics though doesn’t get it.

The guys who are smart get it... Bendis is one, Straczynski is another (wicked smart and entertaining guy - I actually wrote an article about him way back), Ellis on a good day, there are others.

I had just seen where DC bought the Authority and other Wildstorm characters into the DC universe... such a bad move.

The one thing comics has to do if it is to remain relevant is to jettison the past.

Bill Watterson at one time had given a speech that spoke to how comics kept regurgitating the past but I couldn’t readily find it. It’s not a question that continuity in and of itself is bad as much as the ‘reboot’ is.

What did in comics for me was ‘Brand New Day’ a reboot that came after an especially good run on Spider Man by JMS. JMS had done wonders for injecting some vitality into the book but I imagine that wasn’t enough for Marvel and so they took an easy way out.

Maybe I’m too old to get it anymore, I wonder about that sometimes but then I look at someone like Jack Kirby and he managed to hit it out of the park for years. Good storytelling is just that, good storytelling, it seems so simple but comics companies keep bogging it down with the past.

Seems like the few things that are really good are the ones that look to the future, you would think ‘comics’ as an industry would’ve absorbed that lesson by now.

Fake news.

We’ve heard the mantra of ‘Fake News’ used quite a bit lately usually in regard to what the administration is doing or going to do but let’s take a look at some fake news that people in some quarters don’t appear to acknowledge:

The Middle Class.
President Obama helped the Middle Class - FAKE NEWS!

The middle class that President Obama identified in his State of the Union speech last week as the foundation of the American economy has been shrinking for almost half a century.

From 2007 to 2014, real median income fell by a stunning 6.6 percent; third-party research indicates that there was some recovery in 2015, but that real annual median income will more than likely still be underwater compared to 2007 when last year's data is released in a few months.


Illegal Immigration
Illegal immigrants only add to the nation, they don’t take anything - FAKE NEWS!

And I stopped there.

This was something I recently started writing and then I was stricken by something and it led off to a new avenue that hadn’t occurred to me before now.

I am sometimes writing things well in advance of when they are posted just to be sure there is a regular daily stream of content as I try to resurrect the blog here.

Today though there were demonstrations again after an ‘event’ held by the President over the weekend and I realized something about our friends in the news media.

For all their carping, THEY ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY!

Why?

Because you... and I... AND ALL THE OTHER DOPES OUT THERE ARE WATCHING.

A Trump Presidency is the best thing to ever happen to the News Media. The more outraged you are, the more you tune in to see the latest thing to fuel your outrage. It’s a simple equation really. The news organizations whether they are pro or con the current political climate can keep you torqued up to such and extent as to keep you riveted to the news.

I was watching the National Geographic channel this evening where they were revisiting the Obama years and it was very clear that at a particular time in his Presidency, Barack Obama just decided in his frustration he would bypass Congress completely.

That was a BAD MOVE.

And it led us to where we are now because, as much as you may hate them (and Congress in general deserves a really specialized form of contempt that will condemn them to a special ring of hell) the members of Congress are elected representatives of the people and for the head of the Executive Branch of government to take it upon himself to bypass them was a terrible idea.

And you can agree with him doing it but then the flip side is when people who you don’t agree with are in power they do the same thing!

The News Media though is doing their level best to play into your outrage because they can keep you watching.

Now, it doesn’t mean I think any of us should be uninformed but if you don’t thing there is a glee within quarters of the media who watch as their ratings numbers go up and up and up you are in a very real state of denial.

I don’t think anyone is better off for it but we’ll see how much the media can ratchet up things before there is an explosion and when there is you can be sure our friends will be devoting non stop 24 hour coverage to it to keep us all up to date whether or not they actually have something new to report.

In absence of anything to report they’ll just go to that old fallback of speculation and conjecture that appears to be serving them very well currently.

And then wonder why we have contempt for the media and doubt its trustworthyness.