More draft dreck...

This is from all the way back in 2009!

This past week I found myself in the city to get a flu shot. I haven’t been in the city much over the last month or two because of the leg however, since the cast came off I really don’t have any excuse for hiding out as it were.

I was meeting a friend for lunch and we were meeting at a restaurant just up the street from where my last gig was. It’s been only two months since I’ve been there but it feels like an eternity.

And the funny thing is this - I miss it.

Not just the money either (which I do miss) but I was really enjoying the structure of my day, my schedule and the people I was around. Sure it had its moments but for the most part, I really enjoyed it. So, being up the street from the place put me in an odd frame of mind...

I stopped there. You know, this particular client was a part of my life on and off for the next six years. After an initial spell of being back there for three months (after not having been there for seven years) I would get called in from time to time.

After this I wouldn't hear from them for almost 8 months and then sometime last in the following year it became a steady everyday gig for a year.

It did have its moments both good and bad. My direct supervisor was the consummate company man. He had been there when I was there seven years prior and he was a guy who had only had really two jobs over the course of his professional career. I admired him for that. It took a lot to stick in a place like that for as long as he had.

The thing was though as a boss you knew he didn’t have your back.

That’s not to say he wasn’t loyal, he was decidedly loyal but only to the women who worked under him/ Time and again in one situation after another you could see where there was a different set of rules that applied based entirely on gender.

It was so blatant it was a bit of a running joke among other people on staff because they could see his charges get away with murder while performing poorly.

I always found it more than a little disconcerting that even though I sat right outside his office at one point (which wasn’t fun at times) he would pointedly sneak out at night very quietly without ever saying good night. It was just weird.

Again, I did respect him because he knew his stuff and he was a SURVIVOR. He was smart enough to know how to play the game and sidle up to people in authority and always stay in their good graces, I was simply amazed at the deft political skill he showed, it was Machiavellian.

I worked under him for a bit of time and then later on after falling out of favor for a bit, someone else I had worked with moved into a senior position and had me back in regularly.

I hadn’t been in for awhile, wondered why the phone stopped ringing but was glad to go back because overall this was a client I truly liked. I liked a lot of the people there and I did enjoy the work a great deal.

Then after I had been back, I found out why the phone stopped ringing and it turned out I was made the fall guy for one of my old bosses’ pets. I got the whole story which explained quite a bit because suddenly when I returned, a few folks had trouble looking me in the eye. It’s one of those things you just wonder about and think to yourself, “What happened?”

Then I realized one truism that I hate about the industry I work in...

‘Blame the freelancer.’

See, that’s the bad thing about this business and one of the reasons why I’m really, really tired of being the guy.

• The guy called in at the 11th hour when the project has been around for six months and suddenly people realize the deadline is approaching.
  
• The guy who get the big heaping pile of shit stacked on his plate
  
• The guy who if he saves the day will not get the credit but if something goes wrong will get the blame.

I can’t begin to tell you how much this happens in this business. Anyway, I really loved working at that place even though half the time I was worried about when the work would dry up. It turned out though over the next six years that I was there, each and every staff person who worked in my area of specialty was shown the door.

Every... single... one.

Not because they did a bad job (though SOME of them did) but only because the company wanted to start over. Totally ridiculous style of management.

At the height of the great recession, this one office out of all the offices globally was the only one to show a profit and then over the next six years the senior management just ran it into the ground.

So very sad.

Are you a TURD sufferer?

Do You Know Someone Suffering From Trump Unacceptance & Resistance Disorder (TURD)? 

Know the signs, spot the symptoms, and save a life. 

TURD is a pattern of pathologically dissociative and psychotic behavior, first observed in the late hours of November 8th 2016 and increasing in severity with passing time.

 Sufferers of TURD often exhibit pronounced cognitive dissonance, sudden bouts of rage, rioting, and uncontrollable crying.

 People with TURD are characterized by a persistent unwillingness to accept that Donald Trump is going to Make America Great Again.

TURD is caused by the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America. For many, both in America and worldwide, this was a shocking and unexpected outcome; their preferred news sources having failed to inform them that the alternative candidate was a criminal parasite in such ill health she got chucked into the back of a van like a kidnap victim.

Research is ongoing. TURD appears to correlate closely with the following environmental and behavioral factors:

• Membership in the Democratic Party
  
• Identifying as a Feminist
  
• Currently enrolled in college, and/or Possession of a Liberal Arts college degree
  
• Living in a densely populated metropolitan area
  
• Massive student debt
  
• Spotty or non-existent work history.

Patients with TURD are very resistant to treatment, and dangerous in large groups.

Any possibility of treatment requires that they be separated from their hive-mind support apparatus; they cannot begin the process of accepting reality in the presence of encouragement towards delusion and irrationality. Separation may require the assistance of law enforcement.

If you have a friend or loved one suffering from TURD, urge them to seek treatment.

Together we can beat this scourge, and Make America Great Again.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. After losing friends because they can’t get over an Election... well I’ve seen TURDs up close.

Besides, I’m sure my day will come. The one thing our nation is good about is swinging the pendulum back and forth when it comes to politics.

Good writing.

I write but like many things in my life, I fall far short of the standard I would set for myself. I live for good writing and whether it’s something I read or something I watch I have a great appreciation for both construction and language.

Usually, my week is punctuated by the guilty pleasures of certain favorites on television I am compelled to watch because I recognize the people behind the programs have considerable chops when it comes to telling a story.

FARGO is one such guilty pleasure but I have to sayt that this season has been considerably underwhelming, even disappointing when compared to the sweeping menace and scope of Season Two.

Still I cut Noah Hawley a huge amount of slack because with two previous seasons of FARGO under his belt as well as a season of LEGION I have to say he’s managed to rack up an impressive body of work.

Sometimes, if something is really good it can make me cry. This probably has to do with my own struggles with depression and how I’m wired but also because it is something that touches me very deeply. There have been two moments in the last two episodes of FARGO that have been a payoff for the patience of sitting through the season up to now.

The surprising insertion of Mr. Wrench a character from Season 1 was a great moment and something that was a deft touch. The following two scenes though are why I watch the show.

The setup for the first scene is this, a lead character who has been through the wringer and is being chased by three very nasty characters looking to kill her has found herself in an oasis of sorts after spending the last day running through the woods chained to the aforementioned Mr Wrench. It's a surreal moment but wonderfully written and spectacularly acted:

And this second scene from the most recent and penultimate episode, the setup is that the primary law officer played by Carrie Coon (who is just amazing and having an incredible year both here in FARGO and also with her work in The Leftovers) seems to have trouble with all those automatic things we take for granted as if she isn't there. It only adds to a sense of alienation she feels and the scene is written beautifully, watch for yourself:

This is the kind of writing that inspires me and makes me want to write something substantial all the more because it breaks things down about humans so exquisitely.

(ps - I had to wait DAYS before someone posted that second scene on YouTube!)

Democratic disconnect,

I understand there is a tendency among people on the Left to vilify the folks who don’t buy into their narrative but let’s be honest here....

I’m someone who votes across party lines. There are a majority of Democratic and Republican voters who can’t make that claim but when you break it down, people like me are the ones who decide elections.

I know it’s hard for the diehards to understand but, it’s true. We’re a centrist nation. So I look at what has happened since November and laugh more than a little bit.

On the left, there are people who genuinely believe that the reason Democrats have lost elections is because they weren’t Radical enough. I’m really sorry but I hate to burst your bubble that is so not the case.

The reason Bernie Sanders was so popular was not so much because he was radical as much as it was he talked about what the common man faced and was dealing with the issues that are important to the Middle Class.

I know on some level it’s hard for people to believe, they want to frame this discussion along racial lines or gender lines or a litany of special interest groups but that’s not at all what it is about.

I have worked in branding for the last decade or so and part of the brand promise of the Democratic Party HAD been about the interest of the Middle Class and the working man (or woman). The Presidency of Barack Obama changed all that and it became a globalist message.

And look, I understand you are trying to portray yourselves as very magnanimous and Christian in your attitudes towards illegal immigration and the like but in essence all you have done is to position yourself as the enemy of the Middle Class, here’s why:

Illegal Immigration for all the attributes you want to ascribe to it is all about maintaining an underclass.

Think I’m wrong?

I know you want to just apply the racist label to me, but hear me out... allowing a hoard of people into the country who don’t speak English and don’t work on the books allows exploitation. Not only does it allow exploitation of the people who are in the country who don’t speak the language it also allows a downward pressure on wages because you have a labor pool in competition with citizens who cannot be exploited due to labor laws.

This is the dirty little secrety the Democrats don’t want to talk about.

And there is the additional tax burden that falls to the Middle Class as well

This is all fairly plain to see.

The Democratic Party enjoyed it greatest success when it was the champion of the Middle Class, it's not at least it isn’t anymore. The funny thing is that the Democrats look at someone like Bernie Sanders and think his appeal was because he was radical and not because he spoke to the Middle Class!

Amazing...

 As a centrist, I would like it if the Democrats were smart enough to provide a counter balance to the far right but, they’re not doing that! Instead they want to go on Witch hunts to appease the far Left wing of the party.

It’s a huge mistake!

No one will listen to me though, I’m just a single voice screaming into the abyss but you know something, I’m the kind of voice they should be listening to.

C’mon...

How cool is this...

I’M A TEENAGER AGAIN!!!

Back in March something happened and I didn’t even note it which was very remiss of me...

On the 15th of March, it was my 14th blogaversary! 14 YEARS! That’s amazing!

I’ve actually kept this thing going more or less for a long, long time now!

When I think about that it scares me. It scares me because all at once I think about how much has changed and simultaneously how little has changed.

My paramour, the love of my life, the genteel presence that graced my days is now long departed and married to another. I guess that’s sad but truthfully, I always felt that if we had something we would be together. That could well be one of the biggest miscalculations I’ve made in my life but then again maybe not.

There are some things that have come to light in the intervening years that have taken the shine off my old paramour including the sneaking suspicion she was a cheater which is a bit sad.

Makes me think about someone I know who is totally devoted to her spouse but found a pair of panties in his pocket when doing laundry that definitely were not hers. In one way she wanted to be in denial but another part of her didn’t want her trust to be shattered. I said pointedly that it spoke more to the kind of person the spouse was and not anything about her.

I think about that myself when looking back.

The ogre is gone too...

This is a more complicated situation because one of the things I did was take care of an aging parent.

In the years since I’ve had others who have found themselves in similar circumstances and I’ve tried to lend an ear and console them when things were tough. They themselves have ever expressed amazement at how difficult it was and knowing my own situation marveled that I endured it but again, as I said to them, there are burdens you carry in life not so much to be a martyr or for anyone else but to be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you did what was right.

My roof still needs fixing and I need a steady job desperately. I sure wish those things were different.

Those are two pillars that need to be in place for me to move forward and time is wasting but it’s been a struggle.

Yet, through it all... the good moments and the bad moments I am still here. I do have to keep that in the forefront of my thoughts sometimes because I can have a bleak outlook but it is worth remembering... and of course now that I’m fourteen I can sow my wild oats!

It gets late early.

This is another one from the drafts queue:

So, there’s this theory of baseball I have, let’s call it the PJ Theory.

The PJ Theory of baseball goes something like this... any team that plays well in April say ten games above .500 is guaranteed to be in the playoffs if not win their division. The reason I say this is because when you get to the end of any baseball season of 162 games, a team that wins say 98 games or two or three either side that number is the one winning the division (and going further too).

98 games is a 98 win 64 loss record. There’s a 34 game difference between wins and losses which sounds like a lot but is a lot less than people realize.

Once you win 10 games or have ten more wins than losses early in a season, all you have to do for the rest of the year is win ONE more game a week than you lose. If you get 15 games above .500 it’s even easier! Just avoiding any prolonged losing streaks and you’re there!

Yankees fans should be very happy right now, because the Yankees record is, in fact, about 10 games over that magical .500 mark.

Mets fans? Well, it’s not time to start worrying yet but looking at the record as I wrote this they are two games BELOW that .500 mark!

I would probably worry a bit more about the Mets if it wasn’t that their biggest power threat was on the disabled list, their starting catcher and first basemen are on the disabled list, two of what was supposed to be one of the best starting rotations in the league is on the disabled list as well as their 6th starter. They missed their closer for the first three weeks of the season. They had their regulars all off to a slow start.

So, there’s that.

But, we don’t want it to get much worse and hopefully they got that long losing streak out of their system and won’t have another one like it for the rest of the year.

I started this earlier this year and the Mets fortunes have only worsened and not improved. We are well on the way to another lost seasons which any Mets fan will tell you is incredibly frustrating to say the least.

In the meantime, we can see how the PJ theory has worked out very well for the Yankees who although in the midst of a prolonged losing streak (five or six games in a row), return to New York still in first place!

That’s saying something that a team can lose six games in a row and still hold the division lead.

In round about four weeks, we should be seeing the big Mets fire sale. This will be a clearing house of players who are close to free agency as the Mets look to restock the farm system. You are currently seeing the last of Curtis Granderson, Neil Walker, Asdrubal Cabrera, maybe Jay Bruce, maybe Lucas Duda, maybe Addison Reed, maybe Jose Reyes, maybe Rene Rivera, maybe Fernando Salas.

Of that group, I would like to see the Mets hold on to Lucas Duda but I think he’s likely to go. I’d like to see them keep Rene Rivera (and trade Travis D’Arnaud), keep Jose Reyes. I’d even like to see them keep Jay Bruce because he certainly has come around.

Thing is they won’t keep a lot of these guys and they shouldn’t.

The Mets aren’t going anywhere. They have a good team but not a great team. When they hit the pitching sucks, when the pitching is good there’s no hitting and of course the bullpen has been something of a disaster. They would need to have two very prolonged win streaks of 10 games apiece to even think about being in contention.

It’s not happening this year - and here it is only June.

Now, the Yankees have a better chance only because of the PJ theory but they also have a very tough road to hoe. Their starting pitching is highly suspect - Tanaka and Sabathia are not the sure things they might have been. Severino has a long way to go before you can count on him. Pineda is one bad outing from going off the rails. The Yankees will need one, maybe two starting pitchers for their rotation before the end of the year if they want to get deep into the post season.

Then there’s the offense...

I know everyone is blown away by Aaron Judge but don’t get too excited. A lot of folks around the major leagues haven’t developed a book on Judge yet who only appeared in 27 games last year. They simply haven’t figured out how to pitch him and once they do, those long balls he hits are going to get less and less frequent.

I watched a little bit of the Yankees versus Oakland over the weekend and came away unimpressed with Judge. He’s a monster, don’t get me wrong! A bat looks like a toothpick in his hands but he has huge holes in his swing. He’s a mistake hitter, he gets around on mistake pitches and because of his size he can jack the ball out of the park but, make no mistake, major league pitchers are smart and they are crafty and it won’t be long before Judge is seeing a steady diet of pitches inside and off speed that will only wind up as long foul balls.

It will remain to be seen if he is smart enough or talented enough to make an adjustment.

Gary Sanchez hasn’t impressed me either. He’s too big to be exceptionally nimble behind the plate. As a matter of fact right after I wrote that I did a quick search and sure enough the Yankees themselves want Sanchez to shed some weight. Catching is not easy and Sanchez is a too big. If you do a quick look you’ll see other teams scouts have noticed it too.

And now he’s injured.

The team has two players that need to produce all year long to have any chance and those are Matt Holiday and Brett Gardner. If those two stay healthy and productive the Yankees should do well but if they are lost for any length of time it will hurt the team a lot more than Yankees fans may realize.

Still without those pitchers it isn’t going to be easy but they still have a way better chance than the Mets and going into this season you would have never thought that. I myself dropped the ball with my preseason predictions to be sure.

Another snippet.

I’ve been watching as the DOT reconfigures the streets around Union Square with another one of their ingenious plans to alter the cityscape. This involves putting in bike lanes...

So I had started this way back in 2012 which is now 7 YEARS AGO! (What the fuck!)

I have very extreme views on this subject truth be told...

The whole reconfiguration of the streets is a bit of a mixed bag in my estimation.

There are certain streets where I think it’s actually made things nicer and then others where it was probably one of the stupidest ideas imaginable. I’m also not a big fan of the city lowering the speed limit either but more on that momentarily.

The bike thing on the surface is a decent idea except for one big drawback...

BICYCLISTS DON’T FOLLOW TRAFFIC LAWS!

Hello! You have bike lanes and bicyclists still manage to ignore red lights, go the wrong way on in bike lanes, ride outside of bike lanes, ride on the sidewalk and still not give pedestrians the right of way.

Bicyclists are of a singular kind of stupid... they believe rules apply to everyone but themselves in the pursuit of their one true God, momentum.

If I had my way, the city would require everyone riding a bike within the five boroughs to be licensed and insured. When I ride the Vespa or if someone rides a motorcycle they need both these things and I’ve seen bicyclists easily go as fast as motorcyclists but they have neither and they can do as much damage.

Ever been hit by one of these dopes? I have.

The guy was riding the wrong way on Union Square West and plowed right into me. He didn’t have the light (never mind riding the wrong way) and he didn’t stop. What was funny was how I managed to keep him from leaving the scene and how I got him arrested too.

Thing is I had to go to the emergency room later that night and I never did sue although I should have. My leg was totally screwed up by the accident. This happens a lot more than you might realize and part of the problem is because it very much unregulated.

Although I will say this, a guy who was sitting next to me on one of my recent gigs road in from Brooklyn everyday and stopped at the gym to shower before coming in. Well, he got nailed with a ticket by the Police at 14th and 1st for running a red light (a nice big hefty one too, like $200!).

Thing is, they really need to enforce the law a lot more.

Now, I don’t drive as much into Manhattan anymore which I guess was part of the goal, but I’ll tell you something else, I NEVER take a taxi anymore! Traffic has become JUST HORRIBLE! And what I don’t understand is with all these cars idling it can’t be good for the air quality. I thought the city had problems meeting the air quality standards so I’m a bit surprised.

The city could do a lot more if they really wanted to cut back on traffic...

First off, while they’ve talked about congestion pricing for anyone going into Manhattan below 96th Street there should be a residence tax on anyone who lives in Manhattan below 96 and who owns a car. You live in Manhattan! Do you really need to have a car? Aren’t you just adding to the congestion by owning one?

So, there’s that.

The other thing is that if you work any kind of weird hours and live way outside the city like I do driving sometimes is the ONLY option to commute to work. Public transportation outside the five boroughs is nowhere close to the level of service in the city. People commuting in should not be penalized further especially at a time when wages have remained flat and everything else (gas and tolls) have gone up!

The other thing the city could do is to mandate all deliveries in the city to take place between the hours of 10pm and 6am, this would actually lead to an increase in jobs.

And speaking of jobs can we finally do flex time and telecommuting? I know the tendency is towards the open office so an eye can be kept on all the worker bees but really? If we staggered work hours it would lead to less overcrowding on the transit system and also on the roads. Telecommuting would take that traffic away altogether.

One other thing the city could do is to designate specific crosstown streets and avenues as Bus and Taxis only, NOT UBER, NOT LYFT but medallion taxis and radio car services that are licensed and regulated by the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission. It would put those services back on an equal footing with the new darlings who dodge regulation by allowing those vehicles to use roads meant to speed them around town.

So, those are my suggestions... the speed limit thing. Let’s just go back to what it was. New York is a big city and considering the size of it, there are VERY LITTLE in the way of traffic/pedestrians deaths each year given the volume of people and the volume of traffic. If folks want to live in nice, idyllic and quiet surroundings, there’s a simple answer for them... MOVE!

Watch this.

Okay, so here’s the weird thing... you know a week or so back when I was posting the link to the whole Rogers and Hammerstein thing from Carousel which I really like about June Is Busting Out All Over? Well, I’ve been toying with this other thing where I want to spend a whole year pushing content out and I came across this as part of the process and while I may in fact republish it at another time it’s one of those things that is just so good, I wanted to share:

Well I guess the Democrats proved me wrong.

Today we got a perfect view of where the Democratic Party is at. Today a man with a rifle decided to go hunting Congressmen based solely on their party affiliation. I’m trying to think if there ever has been an instance where some Conservative has gone on a hunting spree of Democrats - there are a few folks who read who I know would set me straight.

I’ve got to hand it to you folks... it was the President’s birthday and you gave him the biggest gift you could possibly give him.

Surprisingly enough, dopes like Peter David who regularly has a Friday hissy was noticeably mum about this development. Me, I was taking bets on how long it would take for the Liberal Left to get around to shifting the blame to the President and of course it wasn't even 24 hours before the pundits at MSNBC were all a tizzy trying to pass it off as Trump’s fault.

Thing is the people at MSNBC are a big part of the problem.

Now understand, I have never in my life been a person who flips levers (or fills in dots) on the basis of party affiliation alone but I have to say, watching what has gone on from the Left in the last few months has proven to be so repulsive to me I wonder if I will ever pull a lever for a Democrat again.

That’s an indication of a failure in a strategy. I don’t like the Tea Party and I think Paul Ryan is an asshole but you’re losing me. You’re losing me because it is very apparent and very transparent that no matter what the administration does, there is a segment of the populace that is determined to bring him down.

In and of itself I would likely have less of a problem with that than one might think only because we do live in a Democracy and there is supposed to be a plurality of voices. It’s an essential part of any healthy Republic but that isn’t what I’ve been seeing.

Over the last year, I’ve seen where people were attacked at political rallies (Trump rallies) and in those cases there was a justification that it was okay to take that kind of action. There was rioting, violence directed towards the attendees and also fights with the Police.

I don’t seem to remember a comparable thing happening conducted by opponents of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders at their rallies.

Then there is what happened in Berkeley... and I’m speaking as someone who isn’t a fan of that Milos guy.

And now there’s a guy that decides he should go out and take potshots at Republican Congressman on the basis of party affiliation alone.

Sorry, not right.

I’ve seen this false equivocation on the Left and that’s not working for me either. You didn’t have people in a huge demonstration in front of the White House when Obama was President talking about how they wanted to blow up the White House and if you had there would have been a firestorm over it. Nor, did you have a public figure go out and put a picture of themselves up with the President’s bloody head.

Look I understand every side has their assortment of nuts and I’m willing to accept that, but when I see Rachel Maddow on night after night channeling Fox Mulder and playing into the craziness of conspiracy theories I have a bit of a problem.

The truth of it is, the Russians who now are the bogeyman of the moment have never had a better ally than the Democrats of today. In the last five months, the Democrats have done more to undermine the faith in the mechanisms of our government than anything the Russians themselves could do and no doubt they are at this moment having a grand old time laughing at us.

Look, you’ve got Hillary Clinton out there blaming the Russians and then the DNC itself for her loss which only underscores how paranoid she is. She literally came out and tried to foist the blame for a poorly managed campaign on a DNC that bent over backwards to give her the nomination. And the burn here has to be that in their heart of hearts, there can’t be more than a few Democrats who know that if Bernie Sanders had been the nominee he would be President today.

Seriously.

However, even with all that... when there are people in this country who start shooting other people on the basis of party affiliation then you lose me entirely. The violence at the rallies was the first step along the path, the things at Berkeley was the second and this might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

So, you have only yourselves to blame because I wasn’t one of those people who blindly pulled a lever. And honestly, if you’re one of those people who crows about how smart you are but who consistently votes Democratic, I have got some bad news for you because you’re really not as smart as you may imagine yourself to be.

Go back and look...

Aw hell I updated a post from the other day and I know no one will likely go back and look given the meager traffic I get anyway.

This is really great though, they just don’t do stuff like this anymore and it’s a fun watch:

Don’t come around much anymore.

So, I went to the movies.

Finally the other day, I made it to a movie theater again. This was the first time I set foot in a movie theater since sitting through the drek that was Avatar, a Disney film masquerading as high entertainment with plot holes bigger than the Lincoln Tunnel.

Part of the choice of movie was about negotiation because I was in very pleasant company but, since we agreed on a Fincher film (and I really like David Fincher and the company) it was a win/win all around for me.

So, I went to see the social network...

I started this back in 2010 and in the ensuing seven years my opinion of Avatar remains unchanged. I did not see the Social Network in a movie theater so I’m wondering what exactly happened and who I was supposed to be going with because that never came off.

I don’t go to the movies so much anymore. I’ve got a friend who appears to enjoy the Friday night opening weekend movie but that isn’t my speed. The thought of standing in line to be in a crowded theater and likely have someone kicking my seat or talking around me doesn’t propel me to running out and spending close to twenty bucks on a movie ticket.

I’m one of those people who is really happy to go after something has been in the theaters for awhile on a weekend more or a Monday night or during a weekday and there is very little now that I can see warranting going to a movie theater to see.

Aside from the fifteen minutes of commercials you now have to sit through BEFORE the show even starts, it just isn’t fun like it used to be. Never mind the thought of picking up bedbugs or something else in a theater... yuck!

The truth about climate change.

I know the crisis of the moment over the last week has been the decision by the President o pull out of the Paris Accords but there are a few things to address before giving in to the hysteria.

First off, take the time out to watch this, because it speaks to the issue in perhaps the clearest and most concise way, a way that has been for the most part absent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYWVBs7lfnk

The takeaway here as it is for a lot of the actions Obama took during his term in office is that these were ‘Executive Actions.’

If they weren’t, they would not so easily be discarded and it speaks to the ‘Obama legacy’ more than any other thing. Remember, Obama came into office promising to reach across the aisle and work with the other side. If the Paris Accords had been submitted to Congress for ratification as any treaty is, the current President could not so readily say we’re out of this.

There were a lot of things Obama did via Executive Order and because that promise of reaching across the aisle remained unfulfilled it’s a big reason you’re seeing many of his efforts wash away like sand on a beach.

You can say it’s the evil Republicans but the truth is it’s always been about compromise and that goes for the guy currently occupying the Oval Office too. Compromise is key. We are far too polarized for my liking but our nation has ever been polarized and looking back you can see where that has always been the case.

In the meantime, here are a few little tidbits about the Paris Accords which have so readily been glossed over...

Industrialized countries have voluntarily pledged $10.3 billion since 2013 to help poorer nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address the effects of climate change. The United States has pledged by far the most — $3 billion, twice that of the second-largest pledger, Japan.

Notice out of 10.3 billion the US was supposed to contribute a THIRD. This money is IN ADDITION TO FOREIGN AID THE US DOLES OUT! These monies are devoted to projects in other countries, it’s charity by the US taxpayer which would be a nice thing if we had a budget surplus BUT WE DON'T!

So, we currently have huge National Debt and a crumbling infrastructure in THIS country as well as people who are in poverty but WE HAVE THE MONEY TO SEND OVERSEAS?!?!?

Let’s also talk realistically about just who does what under the Accords: 

The United States, which in 2009 set a goal of reducing GHG emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, has now announced an INDC of 26% to 28% below its 2005 level by 2025. China’s INDC states the objective of peaking its CO2 emissions by about 2030 while making  best  efforts  to  achieve  an  earlier  peak.  China’s  INDC  also  proposes  a  goal  of  20%  nonfossil  energy  use  in  2030.  In addition, in September 2015, China announced its intent to expand the country’s seven current regional emissions trading programs in to a national cap-and-trade program beginning in 2017, although specific emissions caps and other policy details have not yet been announced. China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest CO2 emitter in 2008 (Figure 9-2). In 2012 its CO2 emissions per capita were about one-third of the U.S. level, and its emissions per unit of economic output were about 70% higher than the U.S. level.

Yes, unfortunately it was truly a shitty agreement, more about show than anything else with the US once again footing the bill for the rest of the world. In the meantime here at home, local governments are already indicating that even though we are not party to the accords they will do their best to honor them, BUT WE WON'T BE PAYING FOR OTHER COUNTRIES EVEN THOUGH WE'RE DOING OUR PART!

Michael Bllomberg announced he would donate to the fund to make up for the shortfall by the US pulling out and the truth is that he and any other wealthy person is more than welcome to take the opportunity to step up and contribute and I applaud them for their charity but this IS NOT a burden that should be shouldered by the American Taxpayer.

Just because it’s June!

So, I am so very weird in my likes and dislike and I’ll tell the story about this another time but this only seemed fitting to post (first is the sequence from the film at the end is the song from the soundtrack - much shorter but both are worth the time):

 March went out like a lion
Awakin’ up the water in the bay;
Then April cried and stepped aside,
And along came pretty little May!
May was full of promises
But she didn't keep ’em quickly enough for some
And the crowd of doubtin’ Thomases
Was predictin’ that the summer’d never come
But it's comin’ by dawn,
We can feel it come,
You can feel it in your heart
You can see it in the ground
You can see it in the trees
You can smell it in the breeze
Look around! Look around! Look around!
June is bustin’ out all over
All over the meadow and the hill!
Buds’re bustin’ outa bushes
And the rompin' river pushes
Ev’ry little wheel that wheels beside the mill!
June is bustin’ out all over
The feelin’ is gettin’ so intense,
That the young Virginia creepers
Hev been huggin’ the bejeepers
Outa all the mornin’ glories on the fence!
Because it's June…
June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June!
Fresh and alive and gay and young
June is a love song, sweetly song
June is bustin’ out all over!
The saplin’s are bustin’ out with sap!
Love he’s found my brother, Junior,
And my sister’s even loonier!
And my Ma is gettin’ kittenish with Pap!
June in bustin’ out all over
To ladies and men are payin’ court.
Lots a ships are kept at anchor
Jest because the captains hanker
Fer the comfort they ken only get in port!
Because it's June… June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June!
June makes the bay look bright and new
Sails gleamin’ bright on sunlit blue
June is bustin’ out all over
The ocean is full of Jacks and Jills,
With the little tail a-swishing’
Ev’ry lady fish is wishin’
That a male would come
And grab ’er by the gills!
June is bustin’ out all over!
The sheep aren’t sleepin’ anymore!
All the rams that chase ewe-sheep
All determined there’ll be new sheep
and the ewe-sheep aren’t even keepin’ score!
On account a it’s June! June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June!

Weird word combos...

This is another draft queue thing I started way back in February of 2010.

It was only two words:

Hamster Rodan

 Even today I can look at those two words and they bring a pretty clear picture to my mind - something of a nightmare creature that is a combination of a Japanese Monster Movie and a throwaway pet (yes, I said it).

I had a hamster growing up. I was really quite young when I had it. I can remember we had a basement and I left the thing in the basement and my parents (or my mom, who knows) thought the thing had died when it was likely hibernating or something.

So out to the trash it went... or maybe the backyard.

That wouldn’t have happened to Hamster Rodan I don’t think.

Hamster Rodan would have been all up in the neighborhood terrorizing and destroying gaily painted tract homes in the suburbs. Making the forest a personal nest of cedar shavings to burrow into. Leaving pellets the size of a small Volkswagon behind much to the chagrin of the neighbors.

Let’s face facts, you don’t fuck with Hamster Rodan, EVER.

All you do is stand there aghast, staring up and watching those whiskers move wildly as the mouth on the thing doesn’t stop as it looks for its next meal.

There are some words that are powerful, words that you shouldn’t put together for fear of the mighty alchemy they might bring forth.

Hamster Rodan is just such a pair!

Wow, this is old!

I like the president.

I think people are often confused in our country. There are times I hear things or receive emails and I find myself ashamed for the people saying them or sending them. And this isn’t just limited to our President Obama, it extended to President Bush as well.

While there are (or were) often times when I disagreed with the policies of both men, I cannot find it in myself to spew the level of venom I find all too often present in the diatribes of their detractors. Maybe this is because I can believe it is possible to respectfully disagree...

I started this entry way, way back in 2010! Funny going back and reading it now.

I honestly don’t think our former President was a bad person but I do have a lot of problems with some of the things he did over the course of his eight years in office.

Still, it’s about respecting the office and not the man.

You won’t hear opponents to the current President acknowledge that. As a matter of fact, you’ll more than likely be subjected to a tirade and a litany of excuses for their own behavior in that regard.

The thing is, you treat the people you don’t like the way you want the people you like to be treated. No one says you have to agree with the President or his policies, you can even think he’s an imbecile but you should still respect the office.

And that went for Bush or Obama or even Trump today.

It’s sad to see people can be so wrapped up in getting their own way they won’t recognize that. I don’t care though. That’s your problem if you don’t have the level of maturity to act like an adult.

I have to admit, I am disappointed in people today.

I’m disappointed because I see the same behavior on the left that the people on the left were complaining about in some quarters of the right.

You all need to grow up.

Triumph Tuesday!

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

Not that he’ll get the credit.

The President returned from the first overseas trip of his term in office and while the reviews have been mixed there are things he simply won’t get the credit for that he really should.

We often talk about how Defense Spending gobbles up such a huge portion of the Federal Budget but the thing here is that the folks on the Left (you know the very people who clamor over the Russian threat) somehow believe that if we just ask nicely other nations will cooperate and behave.

It’s that kind of thinking that led to the very high regard people have of Neville Chamberlain and his turn in the British government when dealing with Hitler.

We do spend A LOT of money on the military, way, way more than any other nation on the planet. Thing is the people who are upset about what we spend are the same people who think we should walk on tiptoes around the other nations that are part of the NATO alliance.

NATO just built a beautiful new headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and you know what? That’s YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK! All the construction costs, all the benefits to the local economy.. not coming here. And the especially great things is that we footed the lion’s share of the bill.

Now, we heard earlier in the week how the President pushed aside the Head of Montenegro to move to the front of the line but I’m thinking if you’re the one picking up the tab then there really is no reason to stand in the background.

Our President was roundly mocked and pilloried here in our country for this though because let’s face it, everything he does is wrong anyway and really we as Americans should know our place I guess.

Is it really right that we keep our commitments and other nations that are part of the alliance shirk theirs? Now, there are countries where maybe the expectation can be managed but NATO members are supposed to maintain 2% of their GDP for defense.

Take a look at this jewel:

Now, the question is this... do Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Turkey seem as if they can’t afford to carry their fair share of the bill?

I’m sure after Angela Merkel was laughing it up with Obama a few weeks ago, she was laughing even more when she was meeting with her ministers talking about how her nation only managed 1.2 of their GDP for defense while we carried the load and our former President didn’t really seem to have much of an issue with it.

Inversely it was funny to witness Merkel’s sour expression when Trump talked about NATO members maintaining their agreed upon standards for defense as the US was tired of shouldering the burden.

And people in this country, well, if you’re on the Left you’re simply shocked by Trump’s behavior, right? Yet, you do know those dollars can go to better things, don’t you? They can be spent here at home creating jobs or supporting Veteran’s. Or they can be spent in other areas completely!

Now during his visit in Belgium while people were idolizing our former President in Germany, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize for nothing and whose foreign policy lead to the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, the demonstrators in Belgium were telling our President to ‘go home.’

Seems odd to me because do they really want us to go home? They seem awfully comfortable taking American taxpayer dollars for their defense, does this mean the feeling is we should just leave?

Here’s the thing, I keep thinking about how all throughout the eighties, there were huge demonstrations against President Reagan and the United States but you know what happened? The wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Truth be told when Reagan came into office, NO ONE thought that would EVER happen. As a matter of fact, people often portrayed Reagan as mentally unstable. He was not loved by the Left. And I don’t especially think he was as great as some made him out to be but he was nowhere near as bad as they made him out to be either.

To be clear, there are no dues as it were but countries are relying on the US to pick up the slack and we simply cannot afford that as a nation. The commitment in the alliance needs to be an equal one and having a President continue to harp on it is not a bad thing, the current President is making it a centerpiece of relationships between us and other nations and it’s likely the only motivation that will change the dynamic that has been in place since the 70s.

Knowing that there isn't understanding.

I have things I know about myself that I’m really not happy about. Problems where I can be analytical and understand the underlying issues that have led to certain conditions but at the same time even though I understand those underlying concerns it’s not at all helpful.

There are things even at this late stage in the game I would desperately change if I could and every day is a bit of a struggle to confront those things.

Lately, it’s been hitting me in a very acute way, a worrisome way. A way where I know it’s important for me to address these problems.

Once, when I was very young, I think I must have been eight or so, I was in a very, very bad car accident with my mom. She was driving, we had this ’64 Ford Falcon, it was white. I can remember how it looked clearly. It looked something like this (without the fancy wheels):

I can clearly remember where we were (on some side streets in a very dilapidated city in upstate New York) and I’m not really sure where we were on our way to but, I do remember my mom was driving of course and I was in the back seat on the passenger’s side opposite her.

As my mom inched into a left turn from one one way street to another after stopping at a stop sign, I looked out the window to my right to see a very, very big sedan bearing down on us at a high rate of speed.

This was the sixties so when I say it was a big sedan you have to imagine something that was more akin to a tank in comparison to today’s cars. Some kind of GM or Chrysler thing that was about half again as wide as cars are today and easily longer.

There was no question about what was going to happen and surprisingly enough even at that tender age I had the presence of mind to move from the passenger side I was sitting on to the far side of the car which i pressed myself up against directly behind my mother. A few seconds later there was a tremendous impact, just huge. It was so violent it pushed our car which it hit up the street about 20 feet or so and the collision managed to push the passenger side door almost a foot into the passenger seat.

My mom was freaked out of course, the whole thing caught her totally by surprise but I can remember how time slowed down the way it does when your brain is processing information sometimes. As soon as I caught sight of the car I just moved over and I can’t think the whole time between me first seeing the car and the car hitting us was more than a few seconds, it was mid block when I saw it but still a lot less than a minute to be sure.

I never thought to shout out to my mother though and I’ve always wondered about that in retrospect.

Now, the reason I bring up that story is because of the character flaws I see within myself. Just like that time with the accident, my brain can do the calculations of the inevitable outcome and it all moves very much in slow motion but as much as I want to avoid the accident I wonder if it is inevitable and in that sense I am very scared.

I want to believe life will get easier but I don’t think that’s in the cards, I would however like very much to avoid any major accidents if I can.

Misery loves company.

Today, I had lunch with a friend and it was really nice to see him but as nice as it was to see him, I was sorry too because he is very unhappy with his current gig.

It’s a shame when you know a person who is really talented but they can’t find that niche, that one spot in the world where they are fulfilled. I know that feeling intimately.

I myself want to find that niche in the world that will fully engage my talents but that’s a big ask. I started working again, a few weeks ago. I’m extremely happy to be working... extremely happy may even be a bit of an understatement because I REALLY needed to be working.

Work is weird now, it’s weird because I realize things about myself and the things that make me more productive and the things that discourage me.

I often wonder if companies really look at people as resources or assets anymore or if they simply look at people as disposable tools and nothing more.

Me, I know exactly the kind of situation I would thrive in and the kind I don’t. Primarily, I’m not an exceptionally huge fan of today’s open offices.

You know about open offices, right?

Open offices were something that took hold over the last decade plus but studies are now showing that they actually discourage productivity and hasten the spread of disease. People don’t have privacy anymore and privacy is something of a good thing. A little privacy goes a long way especially in a work environment. Making an office more like a factory floor is not something that will encourage creativity no matter how many people tell you it fosters collaboration if you take a look around and see all the noise cancelling headphones people wear you know that it’s a lie.

My friend though is working in a very small office where there is no privacy at all and I feel for him because in my current gig I often feel as if I have been been put on the proverbial iceberg and cast adrift in the floe.

It’s a strange thing to be sure.

You would think that people would play to others’ strengths but they don’t.

My friend is one of the most talented people I have worked with or run across but he is so very frustrated I can only imagine what torture each and every day is for him.

Still it was so good to see him if only to commiserate... misery does love company after all.

What is fear?

I grew up reading comics to which I owe a great deal. One of the takeaways from youth in general is that death has to be this sweeping and dramatic thing, it's one of the reason horror movies likely have such a big audience among the young - vampire movies all those clichéd things about death and dying.

All very dramatic, isn’t it?

Thing is the longer you hang around the planet, the more you come to realize when death taps you on the shoulder, it is rarely as dramatic as one might think. More often than not, it’s just a quiet tap and then you aren’t around.

Today, I brushed up against one of those power words, words that hold all kinds of underlying terror and malice... biopsy.

It’s quiet terror.

Mind you, I’m thinking it shouldn’t be a big deal (I’m sure hoping it isn’t) but whenever you brush up against that kind of a word there is that little tug at the back of your mind, the ‘What if,’ that always makes you a little uncomfortable and gives you a bit of a chill.

These things are rarely dramatic but they are still terrifying nonetheless.

This week’s story about Islam.

513,000

The interesting thing I notice (and I use the word interesting sarcastically) is that even though I see people out in the streets demonstrating in pussy hats regarding the administration’s treatment of women (which I’m still trying to make sense of since it appears that the same people demonstrating have absolutely no problem denigrating any woman that is a part of the administration)  or protesting the ‘Muslim’ ban (again not based in reality much) generally are quiet as mice in regard to this:

In a report last year, the CDC says the surge in female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is “wholly a result of rapid growth in the number of immigrants from FGM/C-practicing countries living in the United States.” It then went on to list those countries, and virtually all of them have large Muslim populations.

Immigrants from Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation, are not factored into the government’s 513,000 figure. If they were, the size of the CDC estimate would likely grow by “several tens of thousands,” the 2016 study’s lead author says.

 And let’s not forget this:

Another brutally misogynistic byproduct of mass Muslim immigration is so-called “honor killings,” which also are on the rise in the US.

A recent Justice Department study estimates that each year now in America there are at least 27 murder cases involving men who kill their daughters or wives for “dishonoring” the family — a number that has “increased significantly” over the past decade, alongside a sharp increase in immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

 So, where is the outrage? I’m curious because to me, that looks like a fairly big number.

I mean if it were a REPUBLICAN all the ardent feminists would be making a HUGE deal about this but amazingly enough it appears they are fairly mum on this topic. I‘m not seeing Rachel Maddow or anyone on CNN even discuss anything on this.

I’d laugh but it’s not funny. It just shows once again the whole fallacy regarding ‘The Resistance.’

Triumph Tuesday!

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

Movies to nap to.

I never used to do this but I’ve found that I can easily fall asleep during certain movies. What’s especially odd is that there are certain movies I fall asleep while watching again and again and again.

This past weekend, my ticket came up and Rogue One showed up at my library for me.

Now, Rogue One was one of the rare movies I actually dragged my ass to a theater to check out which is very rare for me nowadays. Sure enough, I got to a certain point in the film  about 25 or 35 minutes in and just found myself nodding off. Not only that, I did stir a little but basically I missed a good chunk of the thing up until about the 1:20:00 minute mark.

That’s a lot of movie!

Now, I watched it again... let’s not say where but the same thing happened again!

And even this past weekend I thought I would give it another go and guess what?

SAME THING!

I’ve seen the movie in its entirety but it’s just not really that good a film. It’s so bad as a matter of fact that I can go back to the segments where I nodded off and immediately start yawning!

If you took the Star Wars name off the thing and just treated it like any other Scifi movie the thing would have been panned, it’s HORRIBLE!

I guess it’s a good thing in a way though because now even though I never take any kind of sleeping pills orr the like, I’ve got a sure fire way to put myself to sleep if I’m having problems with insomnia.

Another one of those myths of the Left.

So, in the past day or so I finished this:

The book that the series is based on and I have to say it‘s a highly entertaining read and worth the effort.

Now while Kerman paints the prison system as a totally shitty place to be (surprise), she talks at length about the prison-industrial complex as it is referred to and then trots out the stat that is often used about the United States having 5% of the World’s population but 20% of the World’s Prison population...

Now, if you do a quick search you can find a lot of ink given over to the subject. The chart above was pulled from a Washington Post article:

The United States population was 319 million as of July 4, 2014, according to the U.S. Census. That accounts for about 4.4 percent of the approximately 7.1 billion world population, which confirms the first part of this claim.

Politifact even chimed in on this:

A 2013 report by the International Centre for Prison Studies showed the U.S. had the world’s highest incarceration rate at 716 inmates per 100,000 people. Updated figures on the center’s website show the U.S. now has 707 prisoners per 100,000 population, ranking it second behind the island nation of the Seychelles (population 90,595), which has a prison population rate of 868 per 100,000 people.

The Times has written about this as well!

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

Wikipedia even has an article on it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate

So, according to all these sources we are one of the most repressive places to live on the planet! I mean we must be because when we look at those figures it just shows how out of whack things are. If we take the numbers at face value it is just a staggering validation of the liberal argument about the criminal justice system in the United States.

But wait a second...

First off if you read those articles, they talk about certain nations under reporting the figures of how many people they have in jails. When they start looking at those figures and factoring them in, the numbers for the United States drop to around 20%.

THAT’S STILL HORRIBLE YOU SAY!

Hold on... again, we are taking numbers for an equation that is really skewed to validate an argument and doesn’t take other factors into account.

What factors you say?

Okay, since you asked... let’s look at the top ten countries in terms of population size right off the bat. The list is as follows:

• China
• India
• United States
• Indonesia
• Brazil
• Pakistan
• Nigeria
• Bangladesh
• Russia
• Mexico

We’ve already talked about how China may massage their numbers in that article but look at some of the other nations on that list and ask yourself this question - just exactly how good is the criminal justice system in some of those other countries. How safe are the citizens in India, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Mexico?

We’re not even including places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Sudan or a host of other nations where there is no criminal justice system or penal system to speak of. If you’re a victim of a crime, you’re just shit out of luck.

The world’s safest countries are shown below:

Surprisingly, we don’t even make it onto the list of the fifty safest countries to visit!

Do you want to travel, but you’re afraid of putting yourself in harm’s way if you do?

Traveling the world, especially solo, is super rewarding but it can also be pretty intimidating, not to mention, your friends and family might be worried and trying to talk you out of it.

To make it easier to pick a stress-free spot, here’s a list of the 50 safest countries in the world. The list was compiled with information by independent think tank, Vision of Humanity, based on 23 different factors including political stability, violent crime, homicide, and many other measures of safety and security. The lower the score on this list, the more peaceful the nation.

See, the thing is there are a lot of places in the world where you’re just taking risks and there isn’t the kind of rule of law that there is here in the US. It means that when people trot out that figure of 5/25 it’s not taking into account a host of other factors to accurately portray the issue.

We are a hodgepodge nation, unlike any other nation on the planet in the sense that there is no single dominant ethnic group, our society is an amalgam of different sensibilities and attitudes and considering that things work a lot better than people give them credit for.

And again, while it has gotten better, safer in my lifetime, (maybe because they are putting more people in the clink) there is still a considerable amount of crime in our nation.

Let‘s face facts though, the 5% population - 25% prison population is just trying to make it seem like we live in a totally repressive culture and that’s not the case.

Sunday treasures.

You know I don’t see this getting a lot of press but only recently I found myself getting caught up on Into the Badlands.

It’s funny because I caught the first few episodes of Season 2 and then went back and watched the first season on Netflix. Tomorrow, AMC will run the entire Season 2 in a marathon leading into the finale for the Season. This is really great DVR fodder and you should take advantage of the opportunity to throw that on DVR to be able to watch it with limited commercial interruption.

It’s worth it too because the show is the strangest mix of Scifi and Kung Fu movies. It’s well acted, the costumes, sets and color are amazing to look at. Women kick ass in it. The story holds up well too.

Quick synopsis, sometime in the dystopian future after some calamity the US is divided into a walled off area of fiefdoms ruled by feudal Barons who have armies of warriors in some interdependent structure with one and other and a region of lawlessness outside of a huge wall.

The Badlands are actually the areas ruled by the Barons and the lead character is a clipper (assassin/enforcer) for one of the most ruthless of the Barons.

I won’t go into greater detail but it’s definitely worth a watch... it might take a few episodes but it’s addictive and it’s already been renewed for a third season so it’s gaining popularity.

Check it out.

Days of the week...

Tuesday.

Here it is Wednesday and I’m writing about Tuesday which should probably be an indication about the week.

You know what Tuesday is?

Too long because I’m too tired because I worked too hard and too much without getting to rest.

So, I started this long before I started the Triumph Tuesday thing which is about to run out anyway forcing me to scramble for content.

I got work!

Yay me!

The rub is of course, I am REALLY TIRED! Not a little tired but a lot tired and the days seem so much shorter than they used to be.

I’m lucky in a way because the gig is nothing to really complain about aside from my usual grousing over things that are well beyond my control and really, I am soooooo very thankful to have gotten something to come in.

My effort just to find a steady gig continues though...

But this entry still holds true because even though it’s Thursday I am just wiped out each and every day, the odd math of the day has now inverted and ideally if it was good math I would be making way more money for way less time and effort.

We’re all in the same boat though I think....

However, the weekend looms before us, HOORAY!

Stay classy.

Not too long ago, a woman sent me a note telling me I was a classy guy. I didn’t believe her and honestly she wasn’t right.

There are a lot of things I think of when I think of my mental image of me. Adjectives which I would apply to myself and how the world around me perceives me. Like many, I carry...

I started this and then stopped.

The upshot is a woman I know called me a classy guy and also at the same time said ‘I wanted it all.’

She was wrong and she was right.

I’m not really a classy guy, maybe that’s the veneer I project today but I know in my heart I am a savage, as much as I may try to pretend otherwise, I am deep down a creature formed of my circumstances and upbringing and I can honestly say that my upbringing was anything but civil.

Even into very late in life i found I had to be a beast. I found that I dealt with a tyrant and when you deal with a tyrant you have to be willing to be as much of an animal as the tyrant is otherwise you will be crushed under the tyrant’s heel. The trick of course is to walk that line between grace and becoming a tyrant yourself. Not an easy dance to be sure but one that can be done if you have something of a moral compass.

Anyway, the woman in question called me classy and I never held that in my mind’s eye as part of my self image. You have a picture of yourself, and truthfully if I looked at myself in my mind’s eye, classy was never one of those adjectives that would be on the menu.

Then there was the ‘wanting it all’ and later on in retrospect I thought to myself that she was entirely right on that count. Thing is though, I can’t say I ever really made up my mind in that regard, there was this old Star Trek episode called Amok Time and there’s this quote that stuck with me, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but is often true.”

In regard to the woman in question I hadn’t yet made up my mind if the having her was really something I wanted and I was put off more than a little by her assumption that I would so easily be swayed.

Surprisingly, I have standards and expectations of partners and I have been blessed very much with the company of some truly smart, beautiful and dynamic women. It may make me different from other men, but I’ve never been in the situation where I awoke wanting to chew my arm off to escape.

I give myself over to someone... I mean heart and soul. If I am in your corner, I am in your corner and you will never have someone who will champion you the way I will. I want you to be everything that you are capable of and at the same time I want you to lift me up as well. Not blindly, but in concert together being a team supporting each other.

That’s something that’s very, very important to me. Given the fact that it’s something that is so very hard to find, I have at the moment pushed back from the table as it were and since in life time is growing short, I can’t honestly say if that is the right decision but then again I’ve seen people who have compromised and in the process wound up making their lives a living hell.

This woman is someone I in one sense wanted for so very long but I never really felt that she warranted the effort because she did not reciprocate in the slightest way. If anything there were times when I felt that in being supportive I was being viewed as a fool and that was something I could not simple abide so when the ‘wanting it all’ was thrown up, I found it all at once both off-putting and more than a little presumptive.

Presumptive in the sense of, ‘You know, I don’t know if you even merit that.’

Anyway, to get back to the original thrust here, I’m one shade of nice, just barely. You would have to have known me for a very long time but while I believe in the niceties of civilized life I still think that those niceties are a very thin veneer. I can be the most polite and courteous person you can come across but at the same time I can be an animal too just let me know what the rules are and once I do I am more than willing to throw down even though I am an old lion, there is still a lion inside.

I heard from this woman today actually.... I had had to put some distance between us. It didn’t mean I didn’t think about her any less because I still did quite often and I do know she is going through some tough times but, I’ve been going through some tough times myself and the truth is that she never had any kind of bandwidth to be a supportive friend for me. I was disappointed in her because a part of me really wished it would be different but I finally had to acknowledge the reality of the situation and also come to grips with the fact that whatever I did offer up, really had no value to her. She just took it for granted.

This is the curse of the beautiful woman, women who draw men into their orbit like moths to a flame, they don’t feel any sense of obligation because they figure they are dispensing light but my days of being a bug are long gone and I simply cannot abide putting an effort into someone who feels there is no need to reciprocate, it’s nothing more than a tremendous waste of time and energy,

And after all, I’m really not all that classy a guy.

Triumph Tuesday!

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

I'm just tired...

Seriously, I spent the entire day Saturday napping on and off. There is something to be said for the nap. I got lucky last week and now I’m wiped out (not lucky in the way some people would apply to that phrase - work lucky). Monday is almost here but I’m not complaining!

If you’re a baseball fan, you should be watching...

Gamechangers Ep 3: A Legend In The Booth with Hank Azaria from Hank Azaria

So back in 2010, Hank Azaria the character actor and long of the Simpsons did a short for Funny or Die. After a long, drawn out path it has made its way to a series (although it’s only 8 episodes) it’s actually a lot of fun and has a good cast. It’s funny for the non baseball but baseball fans will really enjoy it.

Check it out.

This is why you will die.

Happy, happy, joy, joy! Today we get a chance to talk about DEATH!

Everyone is dying! From the moment you are born there is one certainty to your life and that is that it will reach an end. We all will arrive there but how and when we arrive there is the subject of debate.

I recently touched base with a friend (whom I have to follow up with) and found he was another one of those folks who had faced a really significant health struggle due to MRSA.

This was the second time in recent months I had heard of someone being stricken with something along those lines and unfortunately it’s one of those things that appears to be happening with much more frequency as the days pass.

We worry about a lot of things in this world but we may be taking a trip to the good old days very soon and by good old days I mean a time when we didn’t have the luxury of antibiotics to overcome infections.

Yes friends, the fact of the matter is that new antibiotics are not in the pipeline and that isn’t like changing soon...

Although society wants pharmaceutical companies to research and develop new antibiotics, policy-makers do not want healthcare professionals to use them. In other words, products should sit on the shelf until they are really needed by patients because of the antimicrobial resistance problem through the imprudent use of antibiotics over the years.

Furthermore, if antibiotics are used, they are generally used for the short-term, not like the long-term therapies that help bring in revenues for companies.

“The reason why many companies dropped out from the anti-infectives [field] was because of the [lack of] return on investment,” says Klaus Dembowsky, chief medical officer of Polythor, which recently licensed its investigational antibiotic POL7080 (which targets “superbug” Pseudomonas species) to Roche.

Yep and it’s not as if people in charge aren’t aware of it (this is from 6 years ago!):

“MRSA continues to be a major cause of community-acquired antibiotic resistant infections,” says Dr Brad Spellberg, one of the authors of the 2004 IDSA report Bad bugs, no drugs. “However, because companies in the late 1980s and early 1990s recognized the threat of MRSA, starting in 2000 we did get new MRSA drugs. Right now, we have reasonable antibiotics to treat MRSA. As resistance catches up with them, in the future we will have problems again.”

Frankly I worry about this myself given certain medical issues I face and the inclination of doctors to prescribe antibiotics to address those issues so I’m always a little resistant to antibiotics as a line of defense and you should be too.

You should worry about this:

And one of the things I like about the Pew Roadmap is that it recognizes that the biggest barriers to finding new classes of antibiotics aren’t really regulatory or financial ones: they’re scientific. The plan calls for efforts to produce new chemical matter in the property space that antibiotics tend to occupy, which is a rather weird one compared to most other drugs and not well served by current screening libraries.

But there’s hope and oddly enough as I was putting this together only yesterday word of a breakthrough was announced!

Scientists report that they now know how to build a molecular Trojan horse that can penetrate gram-negative bacteria, solving a problem that for decades has stalled the development of effective new antibiotics against these increasingly drug-resistant microbes. The findings appear in the journal Nature.

Led by University of Illinois chemistry professor Paul Hergenrother, the scientists tested their approach by modifying a drug that kills only gram-positive bacteria, which lack the rugged outer cell membrane that characterizes gram-negative microbes and makes them so difficult to combat. The modifications converted the drug into a broad-spectrum antibiotic that could also kill gram-negatives, the team reports.

Still that breakthrough is a ways off and I have to say one thing is to stay out of hospitals because if you are going to get MRSA a hospital will likely be the best place to pick it up.

The Russians are coming!

I have to do this quickly because I have been trying to be diligent about getting content up every day and I only have a few minutes left to do so...

A few thoughts on the Russians that have so occupied our Democratic friends...

Back in 2012 Mitt Romney (who I despise by the way) correctly assessed the Russians as the biggest adversary our nation faced. Barack Obama mocked him on this and oddly enough Obama was caught on a hot mic telling the Russians right before the Election of 2012 that he would have more ‘flexibility’ after the election. When the Russians went in and took control of parts of the Ukraine, Obama effectively did nothing. Even after they shot down a passenger jet, Obama was for the most part silent.

Now, is anyone so incredibly naive as to think that 2016 was the first time Russians tried to interfere with the US Elections? Likely not but you know it wasn’t really a big deal to any Democrat because good old Barry had won a second term.

A few months back there were raucous calls from the Democrats to fire James Comey. As a matter of fact only last week Hillary Clinton came out of the woods and plainly said that Comey was the reason she lost the election. Last week also Comey appeared before Congress and blew his testimony, blew his testimony in the sense that the FBI had to sned a letter to Congress telling them that Comey may have overstated things a bit. It wasn't the first time Comey screwed up publicly either.

Back in February, Susan Yates told the Trump administration that Michael Flynn may not have been entirely forthright with the administration. Democrats have asked why it took so long for Trump to remove Flynn (18 days) and why he didn’t fire him outright on the say so of a holdover from the previous administration.

This week the Deputy AG who was confirmed only at the end of April reviewed Comey’s performance in his job as Director of the FBI by canvassing former Justice Department officials of both Republican AND Democratic administrations and the response was almost unanimous that Comey had well over stepped his bounds as Director of the FBI. The Deputy wrote up his recommendations and Comey was fired.

Now... the question is this. If the Democrats were so very upset that Michael Flynn was not fired immediately and now are upset because James Comey was fired on the recommendations of his boss the Deputy Attorney General just what is it that the Democrats want?

Oh, I know... they want Hillary to be President. Problem is she lost.

Now, if there is any funny business, they will get rid of Trump. Good.

Plain and simple, that’s the way it should be too. Or government though has a framework in place that will see to that. Besides, can anyone actually say this made things EASIER for Trump? Really?

But if Comey had remained as Director and ultimately the FBI investigation turns out that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians then Comey’s call and the whole investigation gets called into question. There’s no doubt if it turns out that there has been no collusion there is a segment of the population that will never believe it because what we have now is the second coming of the Great Red Scare.

This time it’s the Democrats in the role of Joe McCarthy though.

This is not the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ as the breathless folks on the Left want to describe it as because at this point there is nothing approaching a criminal investigation. As a matter of fact in repeated testimony before Congress each and every time the subject has come up the answer has been that the person testifying has seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Yet, you still get people appearing in the rotunda looking very serious and very earnest talking about the ‘possibility’ and what ‘might’ have occurred. It’s more than a little ironic that these are the very same people who appeared to have no problem with home brew email servers.

Again, if things turn out the other way... well guess what, we pillory people for being traitors in a big way but excuse me if I can’t find it in myself to get caught up in your hysteria.

I realize there is an almost giddy sense of being part of the ‘resistance’ but I do have to call bullshit on you idiots. I call bullshit because I see people taking selfies and posting to their social media streams. I see people getting together with their friends as if it is some great social event to go demonstrating. I am reminded of the quote by Konstantin Stanislavski “Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.” This could readily apply to the folks demonstrating for I find they are far too much in love with themselves in the ‘resistance.’

Besides if any of the idiots that were out there marching around actually volunteered or took the time they spend demonstrating (complaining) and doing something that is actually productive the world would be a much better place.

So, that’s the screed for today and good night.

Triumph Tuesday!

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

Why aren’t you watching?

So, my free preview on TV just ended and I managed to watch some things I hadn't had the chance to. One of those binge watching escapes even though it was cut short, I managed to continue through other means and I cannot say enough about.

If you haven’t seen The Leftovers, it’s in a countdown now to the last four episodes of the series and it’s really very good.

Most of the first season was shot in my neck of the woods and only a few towns down (Hastings on Hudson) so I found myself continually looking and trying to see what I recognized after I realized that. It’s better than just watching because of it’s location though because of what it deals with and the creative force behind it is Damon Lindeloff who was one of the people behind LOST.

So, really, check it out (but do start at Season 1):

Faith.

Faith’s a funny thing.

Faith is a quiet little gift you carry with you for the times you really need it.

Some folks brandish their faith like a weapon and personally I find that to be somewhat immodest. I’ve been around people who use their faith to raise themselves above others and I can’t say that I quite think that’s right but then that’s their business.

I was (binge) watching something the other day and they had this tune playing in the background and it made me think about the many people who mock others because of their faith which again strikes me as a bit wrong.

If you’re not really bothering anyone else why can’t other people just leave you alone?

So, this song though really struck a bit of a chord in me and I think it’s quite beautiful and though I might share it...

 

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God
When it's gotten real late and their kid's not back from the party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane start to uncontrollably shake
No one's laughing at God
When they see the one they love, hand in hand with someone else
And they hope that they're mistaken

No one laughs at God
When the cops knock on their door and they say we got some bad news, sir
No one's laughing at God when there's a famine or fire or flood

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke, or
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they're 'bout to choke
God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious, ha ha
Ha ha

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God
When they've lost all they've got and they don't know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize
That the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one's laughing at God when they're saying their goodbyes

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke, or
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they're 'bout to choke
God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one laughing at God in hospital
No one's laughing at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God, we're all laughing with God

 

Where there’s life therer’s hope.

I saw this the other day and I had to share it because it’s funny in some ways and heartening in others: