...and sometimes live just goes along swimmingly.

I haven’t been writing or taking pictures lately. It’s a mix of the good and the bad. Good because I have just found myself far too busy over the last few weeks. Plenty of writing going on, just not necessarily up on the blog. There also have been a few times when I have labored away at very long winded posts only to have the application lock up because I’ve got ten windows and over 100 tabs open in Safari. As much as OSX vaunted stability is a major selling point of the operating system, you still are exposed to application lockups and failures.

Life has been settling into a bit of a routine and a nice one at that. The mysterious ‘STUFF’ is getting done and that’s a good thing indeed!

The fastest road to 1000.

I have posted oh so many photos on Flickr over the last few months. Some I am very proud of, some not so much but, they are all my children so I love them equally. However, I can see what people look at and what they don’t. Female photographers get more traffic than male photographers, particularly if they use themselves as a model, even more so if they flash skin. There is an army of men out there (and I unfortunately am among them), wandering the electronic byways. All of them looking for pretty things to look at. So, it comes as now surprise to me, I have set a new record for myself, quickest views to 1000. Just posted last week, another one of the NetMichelle series has taken off as people are compelled to look even when what they are looking at is the merest of flashes of skin.

I had to pass this along.

I was looking for a movie quote for something I was writing and I was checking out Kevin Smith’s movies because I’m pretty sure the quote in question comes from one of his flicks. I ran across this little jewel which had me laugh hysterically:

One time my cousin Walter got this cat stuck in his ass. True story. He bought it at the local mall, so the whole fiasco wound up on the news. It was embarrassing for my relatives and all. But the next week, he did it again. Different cat, same results, complete with a trip to the emergency room. Then, last week, I saw him in the pet store. He was buying another cat. I said, “Walt, what the hell are you doing, you know you’re just gonna get this cat stuck up your ass too, why don't you knock it off?” And he says to me, “Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the gerbil out?” My cousin was a weird guy.

More proof you’re getting screwed.

No, it’s not your imagination. Contrary to whatever crap you’ve been fed, wages are not keeping up with inflation.

After factoring for inflation, Americans’ median hourly wages have declined 2 percent since 2003, while productivity, the amount an average worker produces in an hour, continues to rise.

Workers’ pay now makes up the lowest share of GDP since the government began recording the data in 1947. In the meantime, corporate profits are at their highest share since the ’60s.

Wild card predicitions.

I’ve refrained from commenting on baseball, choosing instead to just bask in the glory that is this year’s Mets season. The national league though is interesting if only in that there are quite a few teams jockeying for a wild-card berth as the season winds down in the next five weeks.

This is the breakdown of the standings as they are today for the NL wildcard:

Team	Wins	Losses	Games behind	Games remaining
San Diego	68	65	—	29
Philadelphia	67	66	1.0	29
Cincinnati	67	67	1.5	28
San Francisco	66	68	2.5	28
Houston	66	68	2.5	28
Florida	65	68	3.0	29
Arizona	64	69	4.0	29
Atlanta	63	69	4.5	30

Last month, Florida ran off a streak where they went 9 wins and 1 loss against some decent teams. They just dropped two in St. Louis but are going into Milwaukee for a weekend series. If they manage to sweep or take two of three from the Brewers, watch out. Philadelphia, the team in front of them plays them 9 TIMES between now and the end of the season. They also play Cincinnati 3 more times and the Mets 7 more times. Out of 29 remaining games, they will be playing those teams ahead of them 19 times. Florida manages to run off another 9 and 1 streak between now and the end of the year, they will be the surprise wild card winner.

Make your vote count!

Interesting tidbit via the MonsterBlog where they are having a contest allowing people to vote on the worst summer job from among five candidates. Worth the time to take a look and vote, as exhibited by part of the story below:

About halfway through the summer, I got promoted to work the end gate at the Safari. My responsibilities were laid out by my manager. He dropped me off at the end gate of the Safari and asked Jose to show me the ropes — or the bat, that is.

You see, the end gate was a passage to the real world for the monkeys and baboons. The inner fence was controlled electronically as cars drove up to it to exit the final portion of the safari. About 30 yards after that gate was my new post. The gate remained open until the safari closed. Here, Jose showed me how the baboons and monkeys would try to make a break for it by riding atop a car, under a truck or just plain rush my gate. I was trained on how to use the Baboon Beater — a three-foot-long, six-inch-round bat — to dissuade our fuzzy friends from exiting.

As if there weren’t better things to get incensed over...

Whatever floats your boat. If you find yourself up in arm over the recent decision there are only 8 planets in the solar system then, this is for you:

“We as planetary scientists and astronomers do not agree with the IAU’s definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed,” says the protest, placed on the Web at (http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/planetprotest).

The petition organiser, Mark Sykes, who is director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said the IAU definition of a planet “does not meet fundamental scientific standards and should be set aside.”

A word to the wise.

I always thought about the problems inherent in selling an old cell phone, this article just proves my concerns were well-founded:

“People are just not aware how much they’re exposing themselves,” Schmidt said. “This is more than something you pick up and talk on. This is your identity. There are people really looking to exploit this.”

Executives at Trust Digital agreed to review with AP the information extracted from the used phones on the condition AP would not identify the sellers or their employers. They also showed AP receipts from the Internet auctions in which they bought the 10 phones over the summer for prices between $192 and $400 each.

The new Bush initiative:

At last we finally get a sense of the direction the president wants to take the country in!

“Make no mistake: It will take patience and sacrifice,” Bush said. “But such drastic measures could lead to a better tomorrow for all of us, especially for your commander in chief.”

Bush then closed his speech by exhaling sharply, tightly closing his eyes, and massaging his temples. “I just—Christ, I just need a goddamn minute, you know?” he said.

Another reason not to be crazy about big SUVs:

Is the stupid behavior of the people who drive them.

“I heard his tires,” he said. “Then I heard a couple of thuds. I looked out and saw a couple of people lying in the middle of the street. They were just pedestrians walking.”

As bystanders began gathering around the victims, the SUV came back around, swerving and knocking over newspaper boxes on the sidewalk, Fulford said.

“Everybody started freaking out, getting out of the street,” he said. “That car was like a weapon. He could have come right at us.”

Makes you just shake your head.

Your kid commits suicide.

The kid has been the target of bullies to the point where you are in the process of transferring him to another school and before that happens he takes his own life. To add insult to injury, you are prosecuted (and convicted) because as a single mom raising two kids you don’t keep a clean house. Sounds like a story you’d have to make up, unfortunately no:

Scruggs said she was shocked when authorities charged her. She said her apartment was cluttered, but not filthy.

“I miss him every day,” Scruggs said. “The pain is always there.”

Prosecutors said the boy was miserable because his schoolmates ridiculed his body odor and bad breath, caused by Scruggs’ filthy home and her lack of attention to the boy’s hygiene. His mother said that the bullying drove her son to take his life.

Legal experts said it was thought to be the first time a parent had been convicted over a child’s suicide.

House rule number 8!

Friday cat blogging on a rainy Monday.

Alluded to last week – the incredible kitty haircut with before and after pics!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Without all that hair, there’s hardly a kitty there!

A most wonderful day.


Unplanned to say the least but, a wonderful treat nonetheless. Today as I was flipping channels I came upon this unbidden, something which I had caught snippets of before but which I still find gripping and watchable.

Since the weather for the last few and next few days is overcast and miserable, I wound up leaving the television on and what a treat:

Grant plays Admiral Matt Sherman, Commander of the submarine U.S.S. Seat Tiger, which is stationed in the Philippines at the beginning of World War II. Joining him is Nick Holden (Tony Curtis), as his conniving junior officer. The story is narrated by Grant, reading selected logs to us from the U.S.S. Sea Tiger captain's journal, a gimmick that was later used in the TV series, Star Trek.

Then, one of my all time favorites:

A surprise Academy Award® winner for Best Original Screenplay copped by Sidney Sheldon (yes, that Sidney Sheldon, the future best selling author at the beginning of his 50 year plus career), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) delighted audiences who lined up to see it again and again during its enormously successful post Oscar® re-issue.

Followed by something I can easily identify with:

The trials and tribulations of home ownership portrayed in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House resonated with a public living in the post-war housing boom. The premise was reworked later for a radio series in 1949, starring Grant and his future wife Betsy Drake, who also wrote some of the scripts. And over the years, the plot has been reincarnated countless times, most notable in 1986’s Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks.

Finally, if you find yourself up later this evening - these two are some of the most watchable films ever made:

North by Northwest came into existence when Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman hit a brick wall while working on the nautical thriller, The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). They messed around for a few weeks while telling the studio the project was going great until one day Lehman thought of creating a pure Hitchcock film.

...and for the night owl:

The film’s ending differs from the ending of the Frances Iles (a pseudonym for author James Hilton) novel on which it was based. In the novel, the character of “Johnnie” kills his wife “Lina” by poisoning her with a glass of milk. In a 1941 New York Herald Tribune interview, director Alfred Hitchcock stated that this ending was unacceptable because the studio feared that an unhappy ending would result in commercial failure and because the Production Code Administration mandated that all screen murderers must be punished.

Two things occur to me today:

First, Cary Grant was a singular movie presence the likes of which we will never see again. The nearest actor today who could even come close to being in Grant’s league would have to be Sean Connery.

Second, I have to admit to thinking of Madame X and Betty, neither of whom wouldn’t have been happier than to make a day of something like this and throw in a little baking (cookies?) as well.

Create a cover blurb contest!

Okay the cover below was posted on Steve Gerber’s blog and I have to give him kudos and link love for it.



Now I am betting the person who passed it along to him did some nifty Photoshop work and blacked out a caption that was on the cover to the left of Superman (the viewer’s left). Also, I am fairly positive the blurb in question was such that it downplayed whatever inference readers could draw from looking at the cover alone. Still since it was blacked out, let’s have a little fun. Post your suggestions for a cover blurb for this cover in the comments section. Without it, well they say a picture is worth a thousand words. All I know is the thing had me laughing hysterically!

Shhhh... be wery quiet, I’m hunting wabbits!

I love doing the Flickr thing. In large part because it manages to allow me to make connections with people all over the world. It is a bit more successful in that than the blog has been unfortunately. Then again, I haven’t really managed to put together the right package to promote the blog either so, there’s a whole ‘tree falls in the forest’ aspect to the thing.

Nonetheless, the Flickr stream manages to generate tons of hits. The shots I took more by accident of the Law and Order CI shoot bought out the legions of women in love with Vincent D’Onofrio. Little did I know Vinny boy was the hearthrob of so many women. Once again, the rules of attraction escape me.

So, Vinny boy bought all those female viewers to the stream but of course, naked (or nearly naked) women is what bought a helluva lot more male eyes to the stream. Guys just never tire I guess of looking at the ladies, especially if they’re done up like this:

Advanced cheating man search.

One of the thing that raises my hackles often is the way men are portrayed. I should qualify that perhaps, it’s not the way men are portrayed all the time but, the way they are portrayed by angry women. I often read stories about what equates to as very impolite and rude behavior being attributed to a person’s gender. The behavior in question directed at women and then used by women as an example of how all members of my gender embrace said behavior.

I really hate that.

Anyway, I was reading this RKB’s blog and she had written a column about this website which I thought to pass along.

The entire tone of the site assumes some sort of moral superiority on the part of women, one that seems to play into the idea of women as watchdogs and men as horndogs, and it's these sorts of assumptions (that all men are likely to cheat) that further the age-old “battle of the sexes” mentality. Because while their blog claims to be “revolutionizing the way women date,” all it’s really doing is providing an outlet for scorned, angry women. I’m not going to go so far as to suggest one can spot a cheater a mile away (I certainly know better), but if the first thing you do after you return from your date is scour their database, you’re in trouble.

I am sure a website like this will find a large audience - goodness knows they are probably the same people who are compelled to watch the Jerry Springer show day in and day out.

Look for yourself, Don’t date him girl dotcom. The site comes complete with a podcast (which I cannot bring myself to listen to) and even a useful tool in the form of the Advanced cheating men search.

It’s never been a question of remembering...


...more a question of trying to forget.

Last week, The History Channel was given over to programming focusing on the events in and around September 11th, 2001. It’s was their 9/11 week as they billed it and each night’s primetime schedule was led with shows bearing titles such as Countdown to Ground Zero - The Miracle of Stairway B - The Man Who Predicted 9/11 - The World Trade Center: Rise and Fall - Grounded on 9/11.

Also this week, New York Magazine’s cover contained the blurb:

What If 9/11 Never Happened?


In the issue a series of articles speculated on how life would be if the events New Yorkers experienced on that tragic day hadn’t taken place.

There is a very good article by John Homans titled The Long Funeral which opens with the lines: “Anyone who lived or worked in downtown Manhattan on 9/11 has no need to see the new Oliver Stone movie, powerful as it’s said to be. An anniversary isn’t necessary to remember that day. It comes back easily, in infinite detail. We remember, moment by moment, where we were, where our friends were, what we saw and heard and said as we came to awareness about what was happening...

It‘s worth reading and I suggest you check it out.

The thing I agreed with wholeheartedly is, yes, I do not need to see the Oliver Stone movie. I do not need to see the TV shows on the History Channel. I do not have to read or watch anything else about that day. I remember it very clearly and very vividly. I don’t think I will ever be able to forget it. I won’t validate the point by sharing my own experiences of that day or the weeks afterward. If anything, it would just be counter purposes to what I am trying to say here.

Each year now, coming up on five years, we have stopped and focused on what happened that day. I am all for being respectful of the memory of what happened and the loss of life that occurred but, when do we pass respectful reflection and move into the area of self indulgent scab picking? If a wound is to heal doesn't going back and picking at the scab prevent the wound from ever fully healing.

Unlike a lot of people, I avoided that part of town for a long time after what happened. I did it on purpose. I always want to remember what the area was like before that fateful day and I am looking forward to a day in the future when something new will be there and those few blocks become a part of the city once more.

When I look at the skyline now, it seems empty. I never knew how much I could miss those buildings until they were gone and every time I look at the city from a distance and see the strange skyline which I still cannot get used to I cannot help but remember that day.

I can’t wait for them to finish building a new tower, a new memorial and just finish building that whole complex back up so it can become a part of the city again. When that day comes it will put us a long way along the road to moving forward. People point to September 11th as the day the war on terror began but, really when you think about it the day the war on terror began was back in 1983 when Marines were attacked in Lebanon or even before that when the embassy was taken over in Tehran.

It was just in those cases, it seemed so very far away.

If we were going to measure it by an attack on American soil, then it still wouldn’t have been September 11th. Instead it would be the first World Trade Center attack when Ramzi Yousef and others blew up a truck bomb in the basement of the complex back in 1993.

Five years have passed and while I mean no disrespect to those who lost family and loved ones, I think it is time for us to move on. While we will never forget can we stop trying so hard to remember?

Another reason to make sure you don’t piss off the kitty!

A pair of cats really have owned an apartment, in New York City, in the 21st century. “It presented an odd set of circumstances,” remembers Brian Tormey of TitleVest, the title-insurance agency that handled the transaction, with a laugh. He’s willing to tell the story, though out of respect for his client’s privacy, he won’t name names.

I always enjoyed watching him.

You may remember him from the following movies...

Donnie Brasco (1997) Nicky / City Slickers (1991) Ed Furillo / The Freshman (1990) Victor Ray, Carmine's Nephew / When Harry Met Sally... (1989) Jess / Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) 2nd Lt. Steven Hauk / Tin Men (1987) Mouse / Birdy (1984) Renaldi / The Godfather: Part II (1974) Young Clemenza (Peter)

I think you may have even wound up confusing him with Peter Arquette because of a similarity in style and demeanor. Somehow though 57 seems way to young.