January 31, 2010
LITTLE MAYOR MIKIE: AFRAID OF SMOKE, FAT, SALT AND JUSTICE
Mayor-For-Life of New York City, Little Mikie Bloomberg, has taken time out of his campaign to take the fun out of Fun City to appeal to President Obama to move the trial of the guy who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on New York City out of New York. They call it a change of venue, something normally done when a court of law determines that a defendant cannot obtain a fair trial in a certain jurisdiction. Well, Little Mikie has no such concerns for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, alleged al Qaeda mastermind behind the suicide bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
No, Little Mikie, the Little Billionaire Who Could, he's concerned about the excessive cost of security involved in such a sensational trial. He's also afraid of the unrest that might occur in New York City, and also the inconvenience and the trauma. Which leads one to wonder if he remembers how very sensational, traumatic and inconvenient were the events of 9/11/01. To New Yorkers, it was our worst day ever, when two hijacked jets toppled the twin towers, killing around 2,500 people. It was also our best day ever, when New Yorkers responded to death and disaster magnificently, performing acts of heroism and sacrifice without a second thought, and help and good wishes poured into our town from every part of our stricken nation.
For Khalid Sheik Mohammed, it was his finest hour. Years earlier, he had been given the green light and the funding by Osama bin Laden to carry out his audacious plan, to recruit and train 20 young fanatics to hijack 4 commercial airliners and crash them into New York and Washington. The plan succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings, with 19 out of 20 of the hijackers taking part in the plan and 3 of the 4 jets finding their deadly marks. They killed close to 3,000 people and opened up a new chapter in terrorism. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama bin Laden were heroes to illiterate deluded fanatics all over the Muslim world and jumped to the head of the Most Wanted lists of every law enforcement agency on earth.
Well, Mr. bin Laden, having been let off the hook by his old business associate Bush The Younger at Tora Bora years ago when he told American soldiers to stand down, is still at large, pursuing a very successful inspirational video career somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. Not so for Mr. Mohammed, who has been in Federal custody for a few years now. He is finally being brought to trial for his crime, fittingly in Federal Court in Manhattan, the scene of the crime, but Little Mayor Mikie wants to move the trial elsewhere. Well, fuck him and the horse he is too short to ride in on.
And fuck the president for caving in to Mayor Little Mikie, who does not speak for New Yorkers and never has in his 8 years as mayor. LIke many wealthy men who enter politics, he did so only to straighten us out, figuring that a man with the ability to earn billions of dollars knows best in all things, and so uses his office as a forum for telling people how to behave and what to think. Little Mikie's ego is so bloated that he even took it to the extreme of telling us what we can and cannot eat. This guy's even more egotistical than former New York Mayor Giuliaini, who has been making a living selling his own fictional account of the events of 9/11, casting himself as a hero even though New Yorkers know he was just one more frightened New Yorker stumbling around lower Manhattan that day while abler men saved lives and gave theirs.
New York City is where this trial belongs, costs or no costs, sensation or no sensation. This is where thousands of survivors of this attack live, those who escaped death in the greatest rescue and evacuation operation since Dunkirk. This is where thousands more gather every year to mourn their dead, both the innocent victims and the heroic first-responders who gave their lives to save thousands. This is where Khalid Mohammed must face justice. The worst has already been done to New Yorkers, and we survived and thrived. What's a little inconvenience or a few rallies by fringe groups? That sort of thing is merely part of life's rich pageant around here, and frightens no one, with the exception of little Mayor Mikie.
Little Mikie is unreasonably frightened of the use of salt, tobacco and trans-fat by people other than himself, so it stands to reason that other things will frighten the little fellow too. New Yorkers deserve a better mayor, a braver man. Bloomberg and Giuliani now make it two in a row now who have used the office of Mayor to push their own narrow moral agendas that have little to do with governing New York and a whole lot to do with scolding its citizens, not a one of who needs life coaching advice from demagogues. New Yorkers have already seen the worst that Mohammed can do, and we trust our Police Department to keep our city safe while we put this monster on trial. Let the world see that we are not afraid of men such as this, delusional jerkoffs who think they enjoy broad popular support. Or maybe Little Mikie figures this town isn't big enough for two such men and wants Khalid Mohammed out of town. Bullshit.
Let him have his day in court and face his accusers in the place where he committed his crime, since that is how America does things. Let him say whatever he wants to say, it can make no possible difference. What he did will always speak loudest, and the voices of the dead louder still. Moving the trial someplace else will deny the dead the justice they are due. The trial will bring none of them back to life, will not rebuild the shattered towers or restore the world to its pre - 9/11 sensibilities, but it will remind the world that the people who commit acts of savagery will answer for them in court. They will get a fair trial, with representation by an attorney and their rights respected until proven guilty, because that is how civilized people run their courts of law, openly and fairly with a single set of rules for all defendants.
To run and hide is to hand Mr. Mohammed another victory and deny New Yorkers some measure of justice, almost a decade after the crime. President Obama needs to tell little Mikie to go snoop around somebody's dinner table for unhealthy ingredients and leave justice to the big boys. America needs to be America, not only to show the rest of the world, but to show ourselves that the things we stand for, the institutions we have created and the rights we afford our people are not flimsy things to be discarded when inconvenient or traumatic. The Bill of Rights is not the Bill of Suggestions, and our courts of law are not optional institutions to be substituted with other extra-Constitutional judicial venues created on the spur of the moment during times of crisis. These are some of the things that make America America, and if holding Mohammed's trial in New York City is the harder thing to do, well, New Yorkers have never backed down from hard times or hard choices. This is no time to start. Unlike Little Mikie, few New Yorkers need to grow a spine.
No, Little Mikie, the Little Billionaire Who Could, he's concerned about the excessive cost of security involved in such a sensational trial. He's also afraid of the unrest that might occur in New York City, and also the inconvenience and the trauma. Which leads one to wonder if he remembers how very sensational, traumatic and inconvenient were the events of 9/11/01. To New Yorkers, it was our worst day ever, when two hijacked jets toppled the twin towers, killing around 2,500 people. It was also our best day ever, when New Yorkers responded to death and disaster magnificently, performing acts of heroism and sacrifice without a second thought, and help and good wishes poured into our town from every part of our stricken nation.
For Khalid Sheik Mohammed, it was his finest hour. Years earlier, he had been given the green light and the funding by Osama bin Laden to carry out his audacious plan, to recruit and train 20 young fanatics to hijack 4 commercial airliners and crash them into New York and Washington. The plan succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings, with 19 out of 20 of the hijackers taking part in the plan and 3 of the 4 jets finding their deadly marks. They killed close to 3,000 people and opened up a new chapter in terrorism. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama bin Laden were heroes to illiterate deluded fanatics all over the Muslim world and jumped to the head of the Most Wanted lists of every law enforcement agency on earth.
Well, Mr. bin Laden, having been let off the hook by his old business associate Bush The Younger at Tora Bora years ago when he told American soldiers to stand down, is still at large, pursuing a very successful inspirational video career somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. Not so for Mr. Mohammed, who has been in Federal custody for a few years now. He is finally being brought to trial for his crime, fittingly in Federal Court in Manhattan, the scene of the crime, but Little Mayor Mikie wants to move the trial elsewhere. Well, fuck him and the horse he is too short to ride in on.
And fuck the president for caving in to Mayor Little Mikie, who does not speak for New Yorkers and never has in his 8 years as mayor. LIke many wealthy men who enter politics, he did so only to straighten us out, figuring that a man with the ability to earn billions of dollars knows best in all things, and so uses his office as a forum for telling people how to behave and what to think. Little Mikie's ego is so bloated that he even took it to the extreme of telling us what we can and cannot eat. This guy's even more egotistical than former New York Mayor Giuliaini, who has been making a living selling his own fictional account of the events of 9/11, casting himself as a hero even though New Yorkers know he was just one more frightened New Yorker stumbling around lower Manhattan that day while abler men saved lives and gave theirs.
New York City is where this trial belongs, costs or no costs, sensation or no sensation. This is where thousands of survivors of this attack live, those who escaped death in the greatest rescue and evacuation operation since Dunkirk. This is where thousands more gather every year to mourn their dead, both the innocent victims and the heroic first-responders who gave their lives to save thousands. This is where Khalid Mohammed must face justice. The worst has already been done to New Yorkers, and we survived and thrived. What's a little inconvenience or a few rallies by fringe groups? That sort of thing is merely part of life's rich pageant around here, and frightens no one, with the exception of little Mayor Mikie.
Little Mikie is unreasonably frightened of the use of salt, tobacco and trans-fat by people other than himself, so it stands to reason that other things will frighten the little fellow too. New Yorkers deserve a better mayor, a braver man. Bloomberg and Giuliani now make it two in a row now who have used the office of Mayor to push their own narrow moral agendas that have little to do with governing New York and a whole lot to do with scolding its citizens, not a one of who needs life coaching advice from demagogues. New Yorkers have already seen the worst that Mohammed can do, and we trust our Police Department to keep our city safe while we put this monster on trial. Let the world see that we are not afraid of men such as this, delusional jerkoffs who think they enjoy broad popular support. Or maybe Little Mikie figures this town isn't big enough for two such men and wants Khalid Mohammed out of town. Bullshit.
Let him have his day in court and face his accusers in the place where he committed his crime, since that is how America does things. Let him say whatever he wants to say, it can make no possible difference. What he did will always speak loudest, and the voices of the dead louder still. Moving the trial someplace else will deny the dead the justice they are due. The trial will bring none of them back to life, will not rebuild the shattered towers or restore the world to its pre - 9/11 sensibilities, but it will remind the world that the people who commit acts of savagery will answer for them in court. They will get a fair trial, with representation by an attorney and their rights respected until proven guilty, because that is how civilized people run their courts of law, openly and fairly with a single set of rules for all defendants.
To run and hide is to hand Mr. Mohammed another victory and deny New Yorkers some measure of justice, almost a decade after the crime. President Obama needs to tell little Mikie to go snoop around somebody's dinner table for unhealthy ingredients and leave justice to the big boys. America needs to be America, not only to show the rest of the world, but to show ourselves that the things we stand for, the institutions we have created and the rights we afford our people are not flimsy things to be discarded when inconvenient or traumatic. The Bill of Rights is not the Bill of Suggestions, and our courts of law are not optional institutions to be substituted with other extra-Constitutional judicial venues created on the spur of the moment during times of crisis. These are some of the things that make America America, and if holding Mohammed's trial in New York City is the harder thing to do, well, New Yorkers have never backed down from hard times or hard choices. This is no time to start. Unlike Little Mikie, few New Yorkers need to grow a spine.
January 30, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 616
If dogs could talk, they'd still be dogs, but at least we'd find out what the hell all that leg humping is about.
THE LIFE COACH SAYS: GET YOURS!
Life Coach here, you there. Today we talk about getting what you want. Always remember, other people are not important when it comes to getting your way, that's Rule #1 for looking out for #1. Oh sure, you've got to put up with other people, there's no getting around that, but if you change your attitude towards others, it won't be so bad. Don't look at them like you have been your whole life, as worthy individuals with the same rights as you, with feeling and desires and aspirations. That outlook is for saps. Look at other people as a means to getting what you want. They can do things for you, get you things and generally make themselves useful to you. Never do anything yourself that someone else will do for you.
For those that cannot serve your ends, well, who needs 'em? Sure, they have their wants and needs too, but who cares? That's their business and their responsibility to get theirs, not yours. Besides, you can't feel what they're feeling, therefore it isn't real and has nothing to do with getting what you want. But first you have to decide what it is in life that you really want. Is it money and material things? Of course it is! What the hell else is there? Well, there's poverty and misery, and Life Coach says you can have my share of that!
Or maybe you are one of those people who seek other things in life, useless crap like dignity, integrity, goodness, love, brotherhood and inner peace. In that case, you're the perfect sort of person that Life Coach recommends his students seek out. You are ideal for helping others get what they want, and will likely feel good about yourself when you're being used like a tool. Life Coach and his students appreciate it. Not grateful appreciate, mind you, but mindful of the fact that you fools can't do enough for others, and thats right up our alley. Well take all you've got to offer, and then some. You may not like what I'm selling, but you can't fault my honesty. The Life Coach doesn't need saps as students, he wants those who want to take what the saps have.
That's the name of the game in Getting Yours; taking. As far as we know we get only this one measly life, so you've got to take whatever you can get your hands on. Remember, money buys plenty of happiness and material things are a constant source of comfort and joy. Take Life Coach for example. I have six beautiful homes on three continents, two private jets, a dozen cars and a whole bunch of servants. I run around with all sorts of beautiful women, all of who eventually leave me when they realize that I'm not all that interested in the stupid shit they talk about or what they want (like that could ever be important to me!), and that works out just fine. Next! Happiness and fulfillment are mine.
So, before we get into the nuts and bolts of exactly how to acquire all you want, first you have to develop the proper attitude towards life. Before you can embrace The Life Coach's philosophy, you must rid yourself of the emotional and intellectual baggage that has been preventing you from realizing your dreams. Stop looking at those other people as precious beings deserving of whatever goodness and rewards they can get from this life. If that was true they'd have already done whatever it takes to get what they want! The fact that they haven't just proves that they are lazy drones undeserving of anything but whatever drifts their way in the course of their impoverished and unfocused lives. No, thanks, that's not the way of achievers and accumulators.
Focus is paramount, and your focus must always be squarely on yourself. If you turn your attention away from what is important (you!), you wind up getting bogged down in the messy and chaotic lives of these pesky other people. Some of them might even expect you to share what you have or who you are just because they do! Who needs that horror? Emotional attachments are real focus busters and a drain on you. The Life Coach doesn't welcome students who are unfocused. My seminars are for the seriously dedicated, and by dedicated I mean committed to themselves and their own pleasure, comfort and possessions.
You see, don't you, where this is leading? You think The Life Coach is going to give away all his secrets in a free internet blog? Get real! I only took this job at this Mickey Mouse web site to promote my Self Help Life Coach Seminars, at $250 a pop, in which I outline my surefire program for personal success. Individual sessions are also available for serious students, prices to be discussed at the seminars. If you don't get this whole concept, you aren't Self Help Life Coach Seminar material and don't deserve success and fulfillment. There are givers and there are takers in this world, and takers are my kind of people. It's just that simple.
So if you want everything you've ever dreamed of and don't feel like sharing it, mail me a check or money order for $250 to reserve your seat in my next seminar and get the ball rolling! You can even submit the money via PayPal with your credit card, The Life Coach is not picky about where he picks up his long green, just so long as he gets his. Just pay your money and come equipped with the proper attitude: that it's about time you got yours and screw everybody else! Money, power and possessions are waiting for you to claim them, women will beg you to use them! The Life Coach will show you how it's done, then it is up to you to do it. All you have to lose is being a loser.
For those that cannot serve your ends, well, who needs 'em? Sure, they have their wants and needs too, but who cares? That's their business and their responsibility to get theirs, not yours. Besides, you can't feel what they're feeling, therefore it isn't real and has nothing to do with getting what you want. But first you have to decide what it is in life that you really want. Is it money and material things? Of course it is! What the hell else is there? Well, there's poverty and misery, and Life Coach says you can have my share of that!
Or maybe you are one of those people who seek other things in life, useless crap like dignity, integrity, goodness, love, brotherhood and inner peace. In that case, you're the perfect sort of person that Life Coach recommends his students seek out. You are ideal for helping others get what they want, and will likely feel good about yourself when you're being used like a tool. Life Coach and his students appreciate it. Not grateful appreciate, mind you, but mindful of the fact that you fools can't do enough for others, and thats right up our alley. Well take all you've got to offer, and then some. You may not like what I'm selling, but you can't fault my honesty. The Life Coach doesn't need saps as students, he wants those who want to take what the saps have.
That's the name of the game in Getting Yours; taking. As far as we know we get only this one measly life, so you've got to take whatever you can get your hands on. Remember, money buys plenty of happiness and material things are a constant source of comfort and joy. Take Life Coach for example. I have six beautiful homes on three continents, two private jets, a dozen cars and a whole bunch of servants. I run around with all sorts of beautiful women, all of who eventually leave me when they realize that I'm not all that interested in the stupid shit they talk about or what they want (like that could ever be important to me!), and that works out just fine. Next! Happiness and fulfillment are mine.
So, before we get into the nuts and bolts of exactly how to acquire all you want, first you have to develop the proper attitude towards life. Before you can embrace The Life Coach's philosophy, you must rid yourself of the emotional and intellectual baggage that has been preventing you from realizing your dreams. Stop looking at those other people as precious beings deserving of whatever goodness and rewards they can get from this life. If that was true they'd have already done whatever it takes to get what they want! The fact that they haven't just proves that they are lazy drones undeserving of anything but whatever drifts their way in the course of their impoverished and unfocused lives. No, thanks, that's not the way of achievers and accumulators.
Focus is paramount, and your focus must always be squarely on yourself. If you turn your attention away from what is important (you!), you wind up getting bogged down in the messy and chaotic lives of these pesky other people. Some of them might even expect you to share what you have or who you are just because they do! Who needs that horror? Emotional attachments are real focus busters and a drain on you. The Life Coach doesn't welcome students who are unfocused. My seminars are for the seriously dedicated, and by dedicated I mean committed to themselves and their own pleasure, comfort and possessions.
You see, don't you, where this is leading? You think The Life Coach is going to give away all his secrets in a free internet blog? Get real! I only took this job at this Mickey Mouse web site to promote my Self Help Life Coach Seminars, at $250 a pop, in which I outline my surefire program for personal success. Individual sessions are also available for serious students, prices to be discussed at the seminars. If you don't get this whole concept, you aren't Self Help Life Coach Seminar material and don't deserve success and fulfillment. There are givers and there are takers in this world, and takers are my kind of people. It's just that simple.
So if you want everything you've ever dreamed of and don't feel like sharing it, mail me a check or money order for $250 to reserve your seat in my next seminar and get the ball rolling! You can even submit the money via PayPal with your credit card, The Life Coach is not picky about where he picks up his long green, just so long as he gets his. Just pay your money and come equipped with the proper attitude: that it's about time you got yours and screw everybody else! Money, power and possessions are waiting for you to claim them, women will beg you to use them! The Life Coach will show you how it's done, then it is up to you to do it. All you have to lose is being a loser.
January 29, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 615
Silly robes don't make a holy man, nor does a white lab coat make an effective scientist, but they sure do help fool some people. The better deal is to listen to what the person has to say before assigning them either sainthood or genius.
SCIENTISTS WORRY ABOUT STUFF
Now the inevitable reports start appearing that the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti may be the beginning of a trend. Scientists are "concerned." That's usually the term they use when they have no friggin' idea, concerned. Now, after the fact, of course, we get word that one science guy issued a warning in 2008 that the fault in the earth's crust on the island of Hispaniola that contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic could blow soon. Only thing is, he predicted an earthquake several hundred miles away, on the Dominican Republic side of the island. Looks like the study of earthquakes is at about the same level of sophistication that medical science was in the Middle Ages, which makes a lot of the non-scientists among us "concerned," hoping they don't start bleeding the earth to eliminate ill humors and amputating perfectly good peninsulas.
Then there's the reports that the hole in the planet's ozone layer is mending itself, which on the face of it seems to be a major victory for environmentalists. Not so fast. There's a little concern coming our way from other scientists who fear that the closing of the ozone hole is contributing to global warming. Well, what's the story? Do we start belching black fumes from our factories again? Or maybe just take a little time out and realize that these sciences of studying the earth's tectonic plates, it's climate and volcanos and the like are in their infancy and at this point about as accurate as the Roman scientists who decided that Vesuvius would not blow after studying the entrails of a dove. We all know how that one turned out: not so good for Pompeians, great for archaeologists and travel agents.
What we don't know with anything resembling any degree of certainty, however, is whether or not the Haiti quake is the harbinger of things to come in say, Miami or Atlanta, or Caracas or Havana or Rio. Remembering the devastating tsunami in the Pacific in December of 2004, there was no shortage of predictions for similar events, a whole lot of concern, but no answers. Which is not to say that another Pacific tsunami won't happen tomorrow or next week, or that the Dominican Republic won't be stricken by a large earthquake soon. We just don't know. Why pretend?
Time passes differently for a planet than for the creatures that ride its back. What may seem like only yesterday to a planet could be thousands of generations to humans, so our records of these things is by cosmic timing standards brand new and pretty sketchy. We've only been using written languages for about 6,000 years, and we've only practiced widespread serious science for a few hundred of those years, so our understanding of the forces of nature is on the light side so far. Our ability to predict seismic events is pretty lousy. Hence the "concern."
We're not even 100% certain about global warming, even though we are proceeding as if it is a proven fact. When we say that this past 10 years was "the warmest decade on record," by definition that means it is the warmest decade that we know about. Our record keeping only started in the 1800's, about 5 plus billion years into the life of the planet. Hell, we didn't even start until a few hundred thousand years ago, a mere fortnight to a planet. For all we know for sure, the earth is cooling. Or that this warm decade is merely an acceptable fluctuation in temperature indicative of nothing in particular. The odd thing is that humans think we can finally stop talking about the weather and do something about it. Then a Haiti comes along to remind us that we have much to learn.
It's a great idea to stop poisoning the earth and the sky on its own merits. Whether or not we are affecting the planet with our activities, it's never a good thing to poison ourselves. Ideally, zero parts-per-million of any man-made toxin is the ideal number, but some of those toxins have provided the way of life that has enabled our other human sciences to flourish, thus vastly improving our short human lives. The science of medicine has progressed from using goose dung to dress wounds to replacing heart valves and curing polio. The science of aviation, in an incredibly rapid progression, went from a 12 second flight to putting a man on the moon in just 66 years. Our computer sciences progressed in a mere half century from computers the size of a house to laptops that outperform their huge predessessors. Hopefully, our earth and climate sciences will progress to the point where knowledge replaces concern. Until then, we'll have to live on this earth as we've always lived on this earth, very precariously.
Then there's the reports that the hole in the planet's ozone layer is mending itself, which on the face of it seems to be a major victory for environmentalists. Not so fast. There's a little concern coming our way from other scientists who fear that the closing of the ozone hole is contributing to global warming. Well, what's the story? Do we start belching black fumes from our factories again? Or maybe just take a little time out and realize that these sciences of studying the earth's tectonic plates, it's climate and volcanos and the like are in their infancy and at this point about as accurate as the Roman scientists who decided that Vesuvius would not blow after studying the entrails of a dove. We all know how that one turned out: not so good for Pompeians, great for archaeologists and travel agents.
What we don't know with anything resembling any degree of certainty, however, is whether or not the Haiti quake is the harbinger of things to come in say, Miami or Atlanta, or Caracas or Havana or Rio. Remembering the devastating tsunami in the Pacific in December of 2004, there was no shortage of predictions for similar events, a whole lot of concern, but no answers. Which is not to say that another Pacific tsunami won't happen tomorrow or next week, or that the Dominican Republic won't be stricken by a large earthquake soon. We just don't know. Why pretend?
Time passes differently for a planet than for the creatures that ride its back. What may seem like only yesterday to a planet could be thousands of generations to humans, so our records of these things is by cosmic timing standards brand new and pretty sketchy. We've only been using written languages for about 6,000 years, and we've only practiced widespread serious science for a few hundred of those years, so our understanding of the forces of nature is on the light side so far. Our ability to predict seismic events is pretty lousy. Hence the "concern."
We're not even 100% certain about global warming, even though we are proceeding as if it is a proven fact. When we say that this past 10 years was "the warmest decade on record," by definition that means it is the warmest decade that we know about. Our record keeping only started in the 1800's, about 5 plus billion years into the life of the planet. Hell, we didn't even start until a few hundred thousand years ago, a mere fortnight to a planet. For all we know for sure, the earth is cooling. Or that this warm decade is merely an acceptable fluctuation in temperature indicative of nothing in particular. The odd thing is that humans think we can finally stop talking about the weather and do something about it. Then a Haiti comes along to remind us that we have much to learn.
It's a great idea to stop poisoning the earth and the sky on its own merits. Whether or not we are affecting the planet with our activities, it's never a good thing to poison ourselves. Ideally, zero parts-per-million of any man-made toxin is the ideal number, but some of those toxins have provided the way of life that has enabled our other human sciences to flourish, thus vastly improving our short human lives. The science of medicine has progressed from using goose dung to dress wounds to replacing heart valves and curing polio. The science of aviation, in an incredibly rapid progression, went from a 12 second flight to putting a man on the moon in just 66 years. Our computer sciences progressed in a mere half century from computers the size of a house to laptops that outperform their huge predessessors. Hopefully, our earth and climate sciences will progress to the point where knowledge replaces concern. Until then, we'll have to live on this earth as we've always lived on this earth, very precariously.
January 27, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 614
No one cares what kind of cell phone you have or how many wonderful things it does, only that you respond to their calls and messages. It's called the "Consideration Application" and is standard equipment in human beings, but will cease to function if not used regularly.
STATE OF THE UNION MADE SIMPLE: GREED GOT US HERE, IT'S GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME TO RECOVER
Last night President Obama made one hell of a good speech at The State of The Union Address. The following has nothing to do with that speech:
So, here we are a year into Barack Obama's presidency. The economy still sucks, there are still 2 wars being waged on Third World nations by the United States and the Senate and Congress are daily proving what corrupt scumbags they are. That being said, Obama's doing a decent job. Not a great job, but as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Those circumstances are having the bad luck to follow the most destructive administration in American history, that of our first puppet President, Bush The Younger, and America's first dictator, Shotgun Dick Cheney. It will take years to straighten out the damage they did; to our economy, to the Bill of RIghts and to the way our government operates.
The Cheney Administration oversaw the transfer of trillions of dollars from the American working classes to the super wealthy elite, to the point where less than 1% of the wealthiest Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. The Cheney Administration refused to police the financial industries that handle everyone's money, gutting and underfunding existing regulatory agencies. The result was an orgy of greed and larceny that nearly brought our economy to its knees. The Cheney Administration lied to the American people in order to attack oil-rich Iraq, and abandoned the search for Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the devastating 9/11 attacks.
The Cheney Administration betrayed an American spy, allowed New Orleans to drown, awarded multi-billion dollar contracts to Cheney's company, Halliburton, to rebuild Iraq and New Orleans, which they then proceeded to fuck up completely, sticking American taxpayers with huge bills to repair their "repairs." The Cheney Administration hired corporate mercenaries to illegally torture prisoners and carry out assassinations.
The Cheney administration oversaw the theft of millions of dollars of crude petroleum every single day for years in Iraq, and sent huge bundles of United States currency to that nation to bribe political, religious and business factions, very little of which has ever been accounted for, then used the corruption they engendered as an excuse to remain in Iraq for years after defeating their armies and hanging their leader.
The Cheney Administration stole elections, consorted with felons and mounted the biggest fear-mongering campaign since the Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, creating a frenzied and divisive political climate that allowed the wealthy to pick the bones of the American economy clean, sending home foreclosures and unemployment through the roof. This mess they left behind will require the work of not only Barack Obama, but the next several presidents to repair.
The culture of greed and corruption has infested Congress and even the Supreme Court, which saw fit this week to allow unlimited corporate influence over our elections, potentially leading to foreign corporations and governments investing heavily in favorable election results in The United States of America. Favorable for them, that is. Mr. Obama has perhaps the hardest job of governing these United States since Abraham Lincoln, and the reason the nation is in such straits can be boiled down to one word: Greed. Greed for power, control and money by the dictator Cheney, and plain old fashioned greed for money by corporate America.
Now corporate America want us to listen to their "economists," the same sad shills who have sold Americans out, that if we only listen to them them our economy will bounce back, like we'll ever trust them again. They point to the election of a male stripper to Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat as a positive step, a guy who makes Sarah Palin look good! There are more potential puppets being groomed for political office too, intellectual lightweights perfect for fronting the ideas of the greedy and power mad, just like Bush The Younger.
If they are fooling anyone, it is only morons. Some people will buy dogshit if you wrap it in an American flag, and the Republican/corporate alliance is counting on such fools and anger addicts to create further divisiveness to divert attention from their greed. They will convince the jackasses that their blatant anti-Americanism is patriotism, and unleash them on the nation. They will use these dim fools like rented mules, make them eat their traitorous and elitist dogshit, then take whatever they have and abandon them when they have served their purpose. Don't forget, they're still licking their chops over the trillions in Social Security funds they failed to "privatize" under Cheney. Imagine if Social Security was in private hands in 2008? Uncounted millions of senior citizens would be ruined, their work of a lifetime stolen to fuel rich men's scams.
These are the people who were already fabulously wealthy and felt it was a fine idea to start aggressively stealing on a massive scale. Most of the unindicted co-conspirators in the financial industries still don't feel they did anything wrong, only that they slightly miscalculated. Obama has to disabuse these people of such fantasies. Their "slight miscalculations" ruined countless American lives and made 5 to 7 trillion dollars of wealth disappear, so our president has his work cut out for him. Not only that, Obama also has to deal with a great many people, both the powerful and the insignificant, who are opposed to him only because he is a black man.
Anyone with a computer has been getting inundated with racist e-mails, both subtle and blatant, attacking our legally elected President and Commander in Chief. Having to fight this Neanderthal Factor as well as the entrenched Culture of Greed is one more monkey wrench thrown into the works of reforming an American Government severely damaged by 8 years of dictatorship and corporate anarchy. The State of The Union is weird, and it is not Barack Obama's fault. It will take a lot of work to get America back on track.
So, here we are a year into Barack Obama's presidency. The economy still sucks, there are still 2 wars being waged on Third World nations by the United States and the Senate and Congress are daily proving what corrupt scumbags they are. That being said, Obama's doing a decent job. Not a great job, but as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Those circumstances are having the bad luck to follow the most destructive administration in American history, that of our first puppet President, Bush The Younger, and America's first dictator, Shotgun Dick Cheney. It will take years to straighten out the damage they did; to our economy, to the Bill of RIghts and to the way our government operates.
The Cheney Administration oversaw the transfer of trillions of dollars from the American working classes to the super wealthy elite, to the point where less than 1% of the wealthiest Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. The Cheney Administration refused to police the financial industries that handle everyone's money, gutting and underfunding existing regulatory agencies. The result was an orgy of greed and larceny that nearly brought our economy to its knees. The Cheney Administration lied to the American people in order to attack oil-rich Iraq, and abandoned the search for Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the devastating 9/11 attacks.
The Cheney Administration betrayed an American spy, allowed New Orleans to drown, awarded multi-billion dollar contracts to Cheney's company, Halliburton, to rebuild Iraq and New Orleans, which they then proceeded to fuck up completely, sticking American taxpayers with huge bills to repair their "repairs." The Cheney Administration hired corporate mercenaries to illegally torture prisoners and carry out assassinations.
The Cheney administration oversaw the theft of millions of dollars of crude petroleum every single day for years in Iraq, and sent huge bundles of United States currency to that nation to bribe political, religious and business factions, very little of which has ever been accounted for, then used the corruption they engendered as an excuse to remain in Iraq for years after defeating their armies and hanging their leader.
The Cheney Administration stole elections, consorted with felons and mounted the biggest fear-mongering campaign since the Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, creating a frenzied and divisive political climate that allowed the wealthy to pick the bones of the American economy clean, sending home foreclosures and unemployment through the roof. This mess they left behind will require the work of not only Barack Obama, but the next several presidents to repair.
The culture of greed and corruption has infested Congress and even the Supreme Court, which saw fit this week to allow unlimited corporate influence over our elections, potentially leading to foreign corporations and governments investing heavily in favorable election results in The United States of America. Favorable for them, that is. Mr. Obama has perhaps the hardest job of governing these United States since Abraham Lincoln, and the reason the nation is in such straits can be boiled down to one word: Greed. Greed for power, control and money by the dictator Cheney, and plain old fashioned greed for money by corporate America.
Now corporate America want us to listen to their "economists," the same sad shills who have sold Americans out, that if we only listen to them them our economy will bounce back, like we'll ever trust them again. They point to the election of a male stripper to Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat as a positive step, a guy who makes Sarah Palin look good! There are more potential puppets being groomed for political office too, intellectual lightweights perfect for fronting the ideas of the greedy and power mad, just like Bush The Younger.
If they are fooling anyone, it is only morons. Some people will buy dogshit if you wrap it in an American flag, and the Republican/corporate alliance is counting on such fools and anger addicts to create further divisiveness to divert attention from their greed. They will convince the jackasses that their blatant anti-Americanism is patriotism, and unleash them on the nation. They will use these dim fools like rented mules, make them eat their traitorous and elitist dogshit, then take whatever they have and abandon them when they have served their purpose. Don't forget, they're still licking their chops over the trillions in Social Security funds they failed to "privatize" under Cheney. Imagine if Social Security was in private hands in 2008? Uncounted millions of senior citizens would be ruined, their work of a lifetime stolen to fuel rich men's scams.
These are the people who were already fabulously wealthy and felt it was a fine idea to start aggressively stealing on a massive scale. Most of the unindicted co-conspirators in the financial industries still don't feel they did anything wrong, only that they slightly miscalculated. Obama has to disabuse these people of such fantasies. Their "slight miscalculations" ruined countless American lives and made 5 to 7 trillion dollars of wealth disappear, so our president has his work cut out for him. Not only that, Obama also has to deal with a great many people, both the powerful and the insignificant, who are opposed to him only because he is a black man.
Anyone with a computer has been getting inundated with racist e-mails, both subtle and blatant, attacking our legally elected President and Commander in Chief. Having to fight this Neanderthal Factor as well as the entrenched Culture of Greed is one more monkey wrench thrown into the works of reforming an American Government severely damaged by 8 years of dictatorship and corporate anarchy. The State of The Union is weird, and it is not Barack Obama's fault. It will take a lot of work to get America back on track.
January 26, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 613
Pain has a way of focusing our attention like a laser on parts of our body that we didn't know existed. Pain killers restore our blissful ignorance. In extreme cases, however, an actual doctor and a cure may be called for.
INTRODUCING THE LIFE COACH: YOU CAN'T PURSUE A DAMN THING SITTING AT HOME
In our never-ending pursuit of becoming the Best Website Ever, bobcrespo.com, currently the Second Best Website Ever, is including yet another feature for our loyal readers; The Life Coach. While previously we here at bobcrespo.com considered a job like Life Coach to be a pretty presumptuous thing to be or a scam at best, it seems that there is a great demand for being told what to think and how to live. Go figure. So we went out and hired one. The Life Coach, who prefers to remain anonymous, gives us all tips on how to effectively have better lives instead of just talking about our nebulous self-improvement plans or dreaming about winning the lottery. The Life Coach comes to us with a very impressive resume, having lived a full and rich life and accomplishing many things, not the least of which are climbing Mount Everest and nailing Courtney Love backstage at the Grammy Awards. Now he is willing to share his experiences with the lucky readers of bobcrespo.com. Consider his words of wisdom:
The Life Coach here, you there, so listen up. Today's lesson for a more rewarding life: Leaving the house. This is aimed at house-bound couch potatoes wallowing in their own nothingness. When a junk e-mail pops into the inbox of your computer informing you that you can pursue a college degree while sitting on your chubby duff at home, if you have a shred of honesty with yourself you have to admit, that no, no you can't pursue a college degree while sitting on your chubby duff at home, and the whole point of pursuing anything or anyone not already present in your refrigerator or in your living room means that you have to leave your house. That would be the very minimum definition of pursuit, no, leaving the house?
Even those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from home have earned that privilege by at some point in our lives actually leaving our homes in pursuit of something, whether it be an education, a job, a meal, a suit of clothes, a good time, a new experience or a spouse. This whole notion of having an ideal existence within the confines of your own home sort of assumes that within your own home is every amenity known to man, including several rewarding vacation destinations.
Unless your home is the size of a small nation or located within some sort of magic zone (and darned few homes are!), you need to leave the place every so often, probably on a regular basis. The Life Coach didn't gain all his experience and wisdom sitting on his ass playing dumb video games, watching reruns of "Friends" and casting votes on who gets thrown off some island or who sang a song with maximum competence and minimum weirdness. That is not living, that is witnessing life! Big difference.
There's a world out there, people! There's people, places and things, the 3 pillars of living an interesting and rewarding life. Put it this way: The Taj Mahal or the World's Largest Ball of Twine isn't going to visit you. That beautiful, smart and interesting significant other isn't going to ring your doorbell and ask if you can come out to play. You have to go out and find them! The museums and parks and ball fields and forests and beaches are a lot more impressive in person than on your video screens.
And guess what, couch brigade, there's a lot of interesting restaurants with fabulous foods who do not deliver, so you actually have to wear something other than shorts and a T-shirt and attend them to experience fine dining or exotic culinary experiences. And if in these hard financial times fine dining is a little pricey for your budget, you can learn to cook something other than hamburgers and macaroni & cheese. That's even something you can do in your own home, although shopping for ingredients might involve several stops at local food stores and green grocers. You will even save money obver your usual diet of Dominos, Chinese take-ouut and KFC.
So listen to The Life Coach and watch this space for more tips on turning around your mundane, ordinary and video-dominated lives. The things you need to do to change don't come in a can or at the click of a mouse, so have patience and practice small things, like walking around the block, maybe finding out if the neighbors are still the same ones that were there years ago, the last time you bothered to check your immediate surroundings. Little by little you can venture out further afield. Before you know it you'll have gone to interesting places, met interesting people and done interesting things. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, that of turning off the boob tubes that surround you and tasting what life has to offer.
The Life Coach here, you there, so listen up. Today's lesson for a more rewarding life: Leaving the house. This is aimed at house-bound couch potatoes wallowing in their own nothingness. When a junk e-mail pops into the inbox of your computer informing you that you can pursue a college degree while sitting on your chubby duff at home, if you have a shred of honesty with yourself you have to admit, that no, no you can't pursue a college degree while sitting on your chubby duff at home, and the whole point of pursuing anything or anyone not already present in your refrigerator or in your living room means that you have to leave your house. That would be the very minimum definition of pursuit, no, leaving the house?
Even those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from home have earned that privilege by at some point in our lives actually leaving our homes in pursuit of something, whether it be an education, a job, a meal, a suit of clothes, a good time, a new experience or a spouse. This whole notion of having an ideal existence within the confines of your own home sort of assumes that within your own home is every amenity known to man, including several rewarding vacation destinations.
Unless your home is the size of a small nation or located within some sort of magic zone (and darned few homes are!), you need to leave the place every so often, probably on a regular basis. The Life Coach didn't gain all his experience and wisdom sitting on his ass playing dumb video games, watching reruns of "Friends" and casting votes on who gets thrown off some island or who sang a song with maximum competence and minimum weirdness. That is not living, that is witnessing life! Big difference.
There's a world out there, people! There's people, places and things, the 3 pillars of living an interesting and rewarding life. Put it this way: The Taj Mahal or the World's Largest Ball of Twine isn't going to visit you. That beautiful, smart and interesting significant other isn't going to ring your doorbell and ask if you can come out to play. You have to go out and find them! The museums and parks and ball fields and forests and beaches are a lot more impressive in person than on your video screens.
And guess what, couch brigade, there's a lot of interesting restaurants with fabulous foods who do not deliver, so you actually have to wear something other than shorts and a T-shirt and attend them to experience fine dining or exotic culinary experiences. And if in these hard financial times fine dining is a little pricey for your budget, you can learn to cook something other than hamburgers and macaroni & cheese. That's even something you can do in your own home, although shopping for ingredients might involve several stops at local food stores and green grocers. You will even save money obver your usual diet of Dominos, Chinese take-ouut and KFC.
So listen to The Life Coach and watch this space for more tips on turning around your mundane, ordinary and video-dominated lives. The things you need to do to change don't come in a can or at the click of a mouse, so have patience and practice small things, like walking around the block, maybe finding out if the neighbors are still the same ones that were there years ago, the last time you bothered to check your immediate surroundings. Little by little you can venture out further afield. Before you know it you'll have gone to interesting places, met interesting people and done interesting things. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, that of turning off the boob tubes that surround you and tasting what life has to offer.
January 25, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 612
There are too many scientists wasting their talents producing revolutionary advances in shaving. We're good with that, thanks. There are a few diseases, however, we'd all be grateful to see cured.
DOPOTO REPORTS: THE SKY IS NOT FALLING
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO), in the course of performing our our only function, pointing out the emperor's new clothes, has been perusing the various sensational news reports concerning the election of a single senator in Massachusetts. The Senate seat in question had belonged to the late Senator Teddy Kennedy for 47 years but was won by a Republican candidate, a former naked male model named Scott Brown. Republicans are boasting that this is a strong rebuke to President Obama, while Democrats are panicking that they've lost their Senate "super-majority" and have to rethink their thinking.
What operatives from both political parties fail to remember is that the Democratic candidate, interim Senator Martha Coakley, completely misread her Massachusetts constituency by being completely out of touch with how they feel about the Boston Red Sox, going so far as to claim that ex-Boston World Series hero Curt Schilling was a Yankee fan. Almost every human being in America realizes how grave an error that is, and that Red Sox fans are basically a few million potentially violent psychopaths. That is the only reason Ms. Coakley lost the election. You simply do not open your mouth about the Boston Red Sox anywhere in New England with inaccurate information, especially concerning the hated New York Yankees, who they watched win 26 World Championships in the 86 years from 1918 until 2004, when Boston finally won the World Series again.
The government was not toppled by the election of Mr. Brown, their overwhelming Democratic majority remains intact. Nobody is longing for the return of Bush The Younger and Shotgun Dick Cheney. As far as President Obama is concerned, what America is seeing is a young president learning on the job, by no means an unprecedented state of affairs. All our young presidents, Clinton, Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt, went through the same tough initiation to the halls of power, suffering some initial setbacks and disappointments. Hopefully Mr. Obama will come out of these experiences the wiser and like his fellow young presidents become an effective and memorable leader.
Certainly Kennedy and Roosevelt left their indelible stamps on America, and Bill Clinton won two terms and presided over a time of peace and prosperity, no small achievement in this wicked world. The Scott Browns of this world pose no threat to President Obama or the Democratic agenda, and odds are that his will be a short time in the Senate when Massachusetts Democrats wake up and run a properly Red Sox-sensitive candidate next time around. This election represents no snowballing trend, no sea change in American politics, merely a bonehead move by Massachusetts Democrats who assumed that Kennedy's Senate seat was theirs by default. Complacency is to blame, and the Boston Red Sox factor. A slap in the face to complacency is never a bad thing. Nor is reminding politicians that their hometown baseball teams mean more to Americans than their Senators.
This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious
What operatives from both political parties fail to remember is that the Democratic candidate, interim Senator Martha Coakley, completely misread her Massachusetts constituency by being completely out of touch with how they feel about the Boston Red Sox, going so far as to claim that ex-Boston World Series hero Curt Schilling was a Yankee fan. Almost every human being in America realizes how grave an error that is, and that Red Sox fans are basically a few million potentially violent psychopaths. That is the only reason Ms. Coakley lost the election. You simply do not open your mouth about the Boston Red Sox anywhere in New England with inaccurate information, especially concerning the hated New York Yankees, who they watched win 26 World Championships in the 86 years from 1918 until 2004, when Boston finally won the World Series again.
The government was not toppled by the election of Mr. Brown, their overwhelming Democratic majority remains intact. Nobody is longing for the return of Bush The Younger and Shotgun Dick Cheney. As far as President Obama is concerned, what America is seeing is a young president learning on the job, by no means an unprecedented state of affairs. All our young presidents, Clinton, Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt, went through the same tough initiation to the halls of power, suffering some initial setbacks and disappointments. Hopefully Mr. Obama will come out of these experiences the wiser and like his fellow young presidents become an effective and memorable leader.
Certainly Kennedy and Roosevelt left their indelible stamps on America, and Bill Clinton won two terms and presided over a time of peace and prosperity, no small achievement in this wicked world. The Scott Browns of this world pose no threat to President Obama or the Democratic agenda, and odds are that his will be a short time in the Senate when Massachusetts Democrats wake up and run a properly Red Sox-sensitive candidate next time around. This election represents no snowballing trend, no sea change in American politics, merely a bonehead move by Massachusetts Democrats who assumed that Kennedy's Senate seat was theirs by default. Complacency is to blame, and the Boston Red Sox factor. A slap in the face to complacency is never a bad thing. Nor is reminding politicians that their hometown baseball teams mean more to Americans than their Senators.
This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious
January 24, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 611
Getting insulted because the politician you voted for didn't live up to your high expectations is like taking rainy days personally. These things happen.
JIMMY THE BLOGGING DOG CHECKS OUT THE NEWS
Well, here I am again, sort of. My debut blog here at bobcrespo.com didn't get around to what I was hired to do; cover the news from a dog's point of view. My first blog for this space was mostly introducing myself and explaining who I am to the readers. The guy who runs this place, Bob Crespo, told me to write whatever I feel like on my first blog, but after that I should write commentary on current events. Of course, by current events he meant human news only.
I could go on and on about the sweet Golden Lab bitch that just moved in next door to me and how she had to spend a week in a cage while her owners set up their new house and that on her first day exploring her new yard she discovered a very interesting rotting corpse of a possum, chased three cats around and barked for a couple of hours to let everybody know there's a new bitch in town, but humans don't seem all that interested in these sorts of developments. They want to talk about Haiti, some little island somewhere that had an earthquake a week or so ago that killed a whole bunch of people and wrecked a lot of buildings and roads.
I really don't have all that much to say about Haiti except that the people over there didn't listen to their dogs. Dogs know when earthquakes are going to happen and vacate the premises ASAP. Knowing humans, they probably ignored their dogs' frantic warnings and the fact that any of them not chained down beat it out of there in a hurry. Most likely they hit them and locked them up and told them to pipe down. I notice in all the news reports I've seen on Haiti there is no mention of the loss of life suffered by any creature other than humans, not even the usual zoo story where the imprisoned animals escape and get shot by the police. I'm sad for all the dead and injured humans, especially the children, but I for one would also like to know how many dogs died, but no one seems to know or care.
So much for earthquakes. What else is going on? You humans are fighting your endless wars all over the place, and for reasons that don't really register with the canine brain. To a dog's mind, aggression is reserved for hunting and for countering threats to oneself or one's offspring. Being a born predator myself, I can understand aggression, but even the most savage of nature's predators don't kill just for the hell of it. There's only the one; humans. And if you don't think you are predator, check out where your eyes are located, in the front of your head. Only predators' eyes are located there. Prey (vegetarians) has theirs side-mounted, the better to watch out for the flesh eaters.
Which brings me to another puzzling thing about some human beings, those who refuse to eat meat, in complete defiance of their inborn natures. Lots of these people join organizations dedicated to get humans to stop treating other species badly. You'd think that as a dog I would be grateful for these organizations. Sorry, but this dog can read and when I see that a big part of what these people do is to spay and neuter animals and not try to set us free in any way, well, what's crueler than that? They only insist that people substitute their brand of cruelty to us. Nothing ethical at all about that. You don't see dogs forming clubs to cut human males' nuts off or tie their females' tubes. Animals don't trust other species all that much, especially humans, and if you think about that for about 8 seconds, that makes sense. Your history of live-and-let-live isn't very promising.
You ever wonder what happened to the Neanderthals? Now that was a holocaust! No tattooed survivors, no poignant books, no memorial buildings to Neanderthals. If you're wondering what the hell a dog knows about Neanderthals, here's a clue; dogs are born with species memory, a vital part of our instincts and stored knowledge, so that we can recall things that happened many thousands of years ago, passed down from dog to dog to dog. My own offspring will remember their ancestor that was able to communicate with humans. For thousands of years. How many humans will be so well remembered by their families in a thousand years?
Not that my fellow dogs are all that impressed with my advanced mental abilities, since being the "Canine Einstein" hasn't exactly enabled me to convince humans to stop enslaving and torturing dogs, or even getting them to stop putting those horrible sweaters on us. But perhaps we should just be glad we're dogs and not Neanderthal people. What was done to them was even worse that what is being done to dogs. At least we're still alive. Slaves, but still alive. We're hoping that global warming thing will break down human civilization and we can all escape.
Well, I did it again, strayed from reporting on the news, which is why they hired me here at bobcrespo.com. This is going to take some getting used to, and if Bob Crespo and his dot com colleagues don't like it, let them hire another dog to write blogs for them and see how that works out when the dog pisses on their computer, craps on the floor and chews up everything in the office. I'm the only dog around who can read and write English, so they'll just have to be patient with me until I get a handle on this whole "news" thing.
When I read the news, more questions than answers present themselves to me, and since I have no other choice but to see the world through the eyes of a dog, I wonder about things that wouldn't occur to people, such as why humans can't sense earthquakes. Hell, you people congratulate yourselves when you can smell snow in the air! Sorry, but that's not very impressive to a dog, who can sense a vast array of things that humans cannot. Makes me wonder how it is that you people got to be in charge of the planet. Well, this is Jimmy The Blogging Dog signing off for now. I'm going to need a few days to figure out what the hell it is you people expect of me. Besides, that sweet little Golden Lab bitch next store is coming into heat and I have to figure out a way over than damned fence. Even dogs have our priorities.
I could go on and on about the sweet Golden Lab bitch that just moved in next door to me and how she had to spend a week in a cage while her owners set up their new house and that on her first day exploring her new yard she discovered a very interesting rotting corpse of a possum, chased three cats around and barked for a couple of hours to let everybody know there's a new bitch in town, but humans don't seem all that interested in these sorts of developments. They want to talk about Haiti, some little island somewhere that had an earthquake a week or so ago that killed a whole bunch of people and wrecked a lot of buildings and roads.
I really don't have all that much to say about Haiti except that the people over there didn't listen to their dogs. Dogs know when earthquakes are going to happen and vacate the premises ASAP. Knowing humans, they probably ignored their dogs' frantic warnings and the fact that any of them not chained down beat it out of there in a hurry. Most likely they hit them and locked them up and told them to pipe down. I notice in all the news reports I've seen on Haiti there is no mention of the loss of life suffered by any creature other than humans, not even the usual zoo story where the imprisoned animals escape and get shot by the police. I'm sad for all the dead and injured humans, especially the children, but I for one would also like to know how many dogs died, but no one seems to know or care.
So much for earthquakes. What else is going on? You humans are fighting your endless wars all over the place, and for reasons that don't really register with the canine brain. To a dog's mind, aggression is reserved for hunting and for countering threats to oneself or one's offspring. Being a born predator myself, I can understand aggression, but even the most savage of nature's predators don't kill just for the hell of it. There's only the one; humans. And if you don't think you are predator, check out where your eyes are located, in the front of your head. Only predators' eyes are located there. Prey (vegetarians) has theirs side-mounted, the better to watch out for the flesh eaters.
Which brings me to another puzzling thing about some human beings, those who refuse to eat meat, in complete defiance of their inborn natures. Lots of these people join organizations dedicated to get humans to stop treating other species badly. You'd think that as a dog I would be grateful for these organizations. Sorry, but this dog can read and when I see that a big part of what these people do is to spay and neuter animals and not try to set us free in any way, well, what's crueler than that? They only insist that people substitute their brand of cruelty to us. Nothing ethical at all about that. You don't see dogs forming clubs to cut human males' nuts off or tie their females' tubes. Animals don't trust other species all that much, especially humans, and if you think about that for about 8 seconds, that makes sense. Your history of live-and-let-live isn't very promising.
You ever wonder what happened to the Neanderthals? Now that was a holocaust! No tattooed survivors, no poignant books, no memorial buildings to Neanderthals. If you're wondering what the hell a dog knows about Neanderthals, here's a clue; dogs are born with species memory, a vital part of our instincts and stored knowledge, so that we can recall things that happened many thousands of years ago, passed down from dog to dog to dog. My own offspring will remember their ancestor that was able to communicate with humans. For thousands of years. How many humans will be so well remembered by their families in a thousand years?
Not that my fellow dogs are all that impressed with my advanced mental abilities, since being the "Canine Einstein" hasn't exactly enabled me to convince humans to stop enslaving and torturing dogs, or even getting them to stop putting those horrible sweaters on us. But perhaps we should just be glad we're dogs and not Neanderthal people. What was done to them was even worse that what is being done to dogs. At least we're still alive. Slaves, but still alive. We're hoping that global warming thing will break down human civilization and we can all escape.
Well, I did it again, strayed from reporting on the news, which is why they hired me here at bobcrespo.com. This is going to take some getting used to, and if Bob Crespo and his dot com colleagues don't like it, let them hire another dog to write blogs for them and see how that works out when the dog pisses on their computer, craps on the floor and chews up everything in the office. I'm the only dog around who can read and write English, so they'll just have to be patient with me until I get a handle on this whole "news" thing.
When I read the news, more questions than answers present themselves to me, and since I have no other choice but to see the world through the eyes of a dog, I wonder about things that wouldn't occur to people, such as why humans can't sense earthquakes. Hell, you people congratulate yourselves when you can smell snow in the air! Sorry, but that's not very impressive to a dog, who can sense a vast array of things that humans cannot. Makes me wonder how it is that you people got to be in charge of the planet. Well, this is Jimmy The Blogging Dog signing off for now. I'm going to need a few days to figure out what the hell it is you people expect of me. Besides, that sweet little Golden Lab bitch next store is coming into heat and I have to figure out a way over than damned fence. Even dogs have our priorities.
January 21, 2010
INTRODUCING JIMMY, THE BLOGGING DOG
Bobcrespo.com is proud to present another regular contributor to this page that is not really a page. Joining Bob Crespo, Dot Kahm and The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) will be Jimmy The Blogging Dog, the first inter-species blog. It goes without saying that Jimmy The Blogging Dog is a special animal, a dog who has mastered the personal computer and astounded his owner and the world with his mastery of the English language. At least the written portion of it, since, being a dog, all he can do is bark. Turns out he's a dog genius, and he got the nickname "The Canine Einstein" when he was still a pup. So imagine our delight when Jimmy The Blogging Dog joined our staff. Let's take a dog's eye view of things with the first inter-species blog ever as Jimmy The Blogging Dog introduces himself:
My name is Jimmy. Means squat to you, right? Yeah, there's a million Jimmies around, which one are you, you're thinking. But not a damned one of you bothers to sniff my ass and find out exactly which Jimmy I am, so let me clear that up for you: I am Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. But that's a dog thing, sniffing, so let's leave it a that. Well, let me just add that there are good manners, proper greetings and protocols in every species, and who's to say what's right? Okay, maybe I'm a little touchy about these things.
I'm just saying...
Anyway, people expect me to give them my view of the world. I tried that, but they didn't understand. Then I realized that what they really wanted was my view of the world only as it has to do with humans. LIke they were the only creatures out there! How the hell am I supposed to know what people are thinking about? I'm a dog. I don't even know what other dogs are thinking about, never mind another species. Anyway, I basically told them that I can only react to what people do, but I can't read their minds. Some of these people were getting carried away with that Canine Einstein nonsense.
Let me put that nickname in perspective for you. Do the math here; even a "dog genius" isn't a whole smarter than a stupid human. It's not like I was ever solving Quantum Mechanics problems or anything. I only learned to communicate in your language, something all of you can do from a very young age, even the densest among you. And I can't actually speak a word of English because dog mouths and vocal cords don't do human languages. It's only on a keyboard I can "speak" to you, and let me tell you, it's a very limiting form of communication, no gestures, no smells, no shared mental images like there is among dogs. So, as far as interacting with humans, I am in a straitjacket, but in my own halting way, I get my ideas out.
I'm sort of like Steven Hawkings, but only as smart as, say... Carrot Top. Okay, sorry. Scratch that. A lot smarter than Carrot Top, but maybe only as smart as one of the mid-level Baldwin brothers. Pretty impressive. For a dog, that is, but don't look at me like a new William Faulkner here. You want insights on humanity? Talk to a human, not Jimmy The Blogging Dog. All I'm saying is don't expect anything from me but a dog's opinion. By the way, dogs don't know how to lie, we never really grasped that whole concept, so don't look for any hidden meanings here. I only know what I see, and I try my best to describe exactly what I saw and felt. Don't bite the messenger.
So, now that the intros are out of the way, it seems we don't have much room for discussing the news of the day, which is okay by me since this is my first day on this new job and I have yet to get fully comfortable around here. There's butts to be sniffed, territory to mark and to find out where is the food, water and the exits. Most of my coworkers are pretty friendly (even if, as my customary greeting told me, they have bizarre diets), but as usual seem puzzled to have a dog as a colleague. What they never ask me is how weird it is for me to have every coworker from a different species. It's always about them, even in a place progressive enough to hire a blogging dog.
The people who hired me here at bobcrespo.com also seem to be under the impression that this doesn't freak me out sometimes, like it's normal for a dog to communicate with people. What, one of you wouldn't freak out from time to time if you were the only one of your race that could speak with space men? I'd sniff out that lie in a second. Literally. That's why dogs don't lie since it is impossible to completely lie. Of course it blows my mind sometimes! I sure don't have to explain that to dogs, we just sort of know these things about each other, but humans just can't hear or smell or feel the thousand nonverbal messages every living being sends off when they are lying. Deception is different, done only to other species during the hunt, but never as a form of communication between one another. Dogs can spot deception instantly, which is why we're amazed with some of the crap all of you seem to get away with.
Don't forget that you people always drop your guard around your dogs, and you do and say anything in front of us, even saying and doing the direct opposite of what you said you would. Here's a flash for you: there's no such thing as dog-owner privilege, and what we see, we react to. Every dog pretty much knows that humans are lying sacks of shit, but also that they almost never lie to their dogs, and that's mostly veterinarian- related lies, understandable from a human's point of view. The worst lie ever is the neutering lie. I am grateful that my former owners did not see fit to remove my own family jewels, and Jimmy The Blogging Dog is a fully functional canine, thank you very much.
I have had good luck with the bitches. That's our term, by the way, and we don't call them Hos, either. We also resent that when a human female is called a bitch, it's usually not a good thing. Why is that? Bitches rock. To a male dog who's still got his original equipment, bitches make the world go around, and a bitch in heat will stop us from whatever the heck else we were doing, every time. I'm the proud Papa of several healthy litters, all of who have had the misfortune of having to face Great Expectations, with both people and dogs hoping for another Canine Einstein. Not going to happen.
At least I hope not. Being a dog genius isn't exactly a piece of cake. Dogs think you're some sort of savior come to lead them back to the wild, and humans think you represent an evolutionary leap. I'm neither of those things. I'm just a dog who can write English on a computer. I don't know why and I don't know how this happened, it just is. Sometimes it's exciting, but sometimes just exasperating. I'll never figure humans out, but I have to admit, you are fun to observe. Watch this page for my writings, and you'll find out what a dog thinks of things. At least this one, Jimmy, The Blogging Dog.
My name is Jimmy. Means squat to you, right? Yeah, there's a million Jimmies around, which one are you, you're thinking. But not a damned one of you bothers to sniff my ass and find out exactly which Jimmy I am, so let me clear that up for you: I am Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. But that's a dog thing, sniffing, so let's leave it a that. Well, let me just add that there are good manners, proper greetings and protocols in every species, and who's to say what's right? Okay, maybe I'm a little touchy about these things.
I'm just saying...
Anyway, people expect me to give them my view of the world. I tried that, but they didn't understand. Then I realized that what they really wanted was my view of the world only as it has to do with humans. LIke they were the only creatures out there! How the hell am I supposed to know what people are thinking about? I'm a dog. I don't even know what other dogs are thinking about, never mind another species. Anyway, I basically told them that I can only react to what people do, but I can't read their minds. Some of these people were getting carried away with that Canine Einstein nonsense.
Let me put that nickname in perspective for you. Do the math here; even a "dog genius" isn't a whole smarter than a stupid human. It's not like I was ever solving Quantum Mechanics problems or anything. I only learned to communicate in your language, something all of you can do from a very young age, even the densest among you. And I can't actually speak a word of English because dog mouths and vocal cords don't do human languages. It's only on a keyboard I can "speak" to you, and let me tell you, it's a very limiting form of communication, no gestures, no smells, no shared mental images like there is among dogs. So, as far as interacting with humans, I am in a straitjacket, but in my own halting way, I get my ideas out.
I'm sort of like Steven Hawkings, but only as smart as, say... Carrot Top. Okay, sorry. Scratch that. A lot smarter than Carrot Top, but maybe only as smart as one of the mid-level Baldwin brothers. Pretty impressive. For a dog, that is, but don't look at me like a new William Faulkner here. You want insights on humanity? Talk to a human, not Jimmy The Blogging Dog. All I'm saying is don't expect anything from me but a dog's opinion. By the way, dogs don't know how to lie, we never really grasped that whole concept, so don't look for any hidden meanings here. I only know what I see, and I try my best to describe exactly what I saw and felt. Don't bite the messenger.
So, now that the intros are out of the way, it seems we don't have much room for discussing the news of the day, which is okay by me since this is my first day on this new job and I have yet to get fully comfortable around here. There's butts to be sniffed, territory to mark and to find out where is the food, water and the exits. Most of my coworkers are pretty friendly (even if, as my customary greeting told me, they have bizarre diets), but as usual seem puzzled to have a dog as a colleague. What they never ask me is how weird it is for me to have every coworker from a different species. It's always about them, even in a place progressive enough to hire a blogging dog.
The people who hired me here at bobcrespo.com also seem to be under the impression that this doesn't freak me out sometimes, like it's normal for a dog to communicate with people. What, one of you wouldn't freak out from time to time if you were the only one of your race that could speak with space men? I'd sniff out that lie in a second. Literally. That's why dogs don't lie since it is impossible to completely lie. Of course it blows my mind sometimes! I sure don't have to explain that to dogs, we just sort of know these things about each other, but humans just can't hear or smell or feel the thousand nonverbal messages every living being sends off when they are lying. Deception is different, done only to other species during the hunt, but never as a form of communication between one another. Dogs can spot deception instantly, which is why we're amazed with some of the crap all of you seem to get away with.
Don't forget that you people always drop your guard around your dogs, and you do and say anything in front of us, even saying and doing the direct opposite of what you said you would. Here's a flash for you: there's no such thing as dog-owner privilege, and what we see, we react to. Every dog pretty much knows that humans are lying sacks of shit, but also that they almost never lie to their dogs, and that's mostly veterinarian- related lies, understandable from a human's point of view. The worst lie ever is the neutering lie. I am grateful that my former owners did not see fit to remove my own family jewels, and Jimmy The Blogging Dog is a fully functional canine, thank you very much.
I have had good luck with the bitches. That's our term, by the way, and we don't call them Hos, either. We also resent that when a human female is called a bitch, it's usually not a good thing. Why is that? Bitches rock. To a male dog who's still got his original equipment, bitches make the world go around, and a bitch in heat will stop us from whatever the heck else we were doing, every time. I'm the proud Papa of several healthy litters, all of who have had the misfortune of having to face Great Expectations, with both people and dogs hoping for another Canine Einstein. Not going to happen.
At least I hope not. Being a dog genius isn't exactly a piece of cake. Dogs think you're some sort of savior come to lead them back to the wild, and humans think you represent an evolutionary leap. I'm neither of those things. I'm just a dog who can write English on a computer. I don't know why and I don't know how this happened, it just is. Sometimes it's exciting, but sometimes just exasperating. I'll never figure humans out, but I have to admit, you are fun to observe. Watch this page for my writings, and you'll find out what a dog thinks of things. At least this one, Jimmy, The Blogging Dog.
January 19, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 609
The only thing we have to fear is that there is something even scarier than what we already fear. Don't be so sure you've seen it all.
FREE PLUG FOR MAC COMPUTERS AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS
As a consumer of computers, by no means a professional computer person or one who knows all that much abut them, the iMAC is the best computer out there and beats the crap out of any regular PC by Dell, or HP or any of the other Big Dogs on the computer block. Those annoying commercials with the cool guy portraying the iMAC computer and the dumpy guy playing the PC aside, they are just better in every way. The operating system takes a little getting used to, but after a week or so you begin to prefer the thought processes of one set of annoying geeks, the dweebs at Apple, over the thought processes of the rest of the annoying computer geeks at the other companies.
Which is basically what an operating system is, a means to deal with things in a way that makes sense. Once you get past the cutesy names and the inside geek jokes inherent in every operating system, you learn to do the stuff on your computer that you enjoy doing and hope that things go as smooth as they possible can. Guess what? MACs don't beak down, they don't crash and are pretty easy to use. Whatever else they do besides what you use them for is beside the point. Who cares? You want to do the things that you like to do, period, amen, and these machines let that happen. The amount of time irretrievably wrenched from your life speaking to smug techies in Customer Support pretty much dwindles down to nothing and you can go about your business not really thinking all that much about your damned computer, which is the whole point.
That's pretty much all you want from a product, that it works. We don't want to obsess with our cars, just have them get us from Point A to Point B in relative safety and comfort. It's only when they start giving us trouble on our way to Point B do we think all that much about them, and when that happens our thoughts are pretty foul and X Rated. It's the same with your toaster, too. All you want it to do is make toast. You don't want to tinker with it, adjust it, de-bug it or spend hours and hours speaking to a toaster rep in Kowloon telling you that you've been making your toast all wrong your whole life and now you just want to reach into the phone and throttle the guy until he gets your toaster back online.
In a sense, it's too bad Apple makes such great products, since their head honcho, Steve Jobs, is such an annoying blowhard who would be fun to ridicule, liver transplant or no liver transplant. It's hard to feel sorry for a guy who is a billionaire many times over and has been for a very long time, especially one as condescending and antisocial as Jobs. He also has a penchant for reinventing his products every 6 months to render the last expensive versions obsolete, as if the world cannot turn without having the latest application on your telephone, with literally hundreds of thousands of things you can have your phone do other that making and receiving calls.
Now if he could only invent an App that replaces his liver function, or an App that provides wardrobe alternatives to black turtlenecks and blue jeans for middle aged cadaverous-looking transplant patients, maybe he'll be on to something and earn another few billion. For this borderline technophobe, I'll steer clear of his overcomplicated telephones but I salute his computers and the extra years added to my life by not having to deal with tech support people trying to tell me what the F7 button is for. I'll be happy to never have to find out. Without the fiasco of ever-changing and increasingly irritating Windows programs clogging up my life and my work, I can just exist with one less thing to annoy the crap out of me. Once you go MAC, you don't go back.
Which is basically what an operating system is, a means to deal with things in a way that makes sense. Once you get past the cutesy names and the inside geek jokes inherent in every operating system, you learn to do the stuff on your computer that you enjoy doing and hope that things go as smooth as they possible can. Guess what? MACs don't beak down, they don't crash and are pretty easy to use. Whatever else they do besides what you use them for is beside the point. Who cares? You want to do the things that you like to do, period, amen, and these machines let that happen. The amount of time irretrievably wrenched from your life speaking to smug techies in Customer Support pretty much dwindles down to nothing and you can go about your business not really thinking all that much about your damned computer, which is the whole point.
That's pretty much all you want from a product, that it works. We don't want to obsess with our cars, just have them get us from Point A to Point B in relative safety and comfort. It's only when they start giving us trouble on our way to Point B do we think all that much about them, and when that happens our thoughts are pretty foul and X Rated. It's the same with your toaster, too. All you want it to do is make toast. You don't want to tinker with it, adjust it, de-bug it or spend hours and hours speaking to a toaster rep in Kowloon telling you that you've been making your toast all wrong your whole life and now you just want to reach into the phone and throttle the guy until he gets your toaster back online.
In a sense, it's too bad Apple makes such great products, since their head honcho, Steve Jobs, is such an annoying blowhard who would be fun to ridicule, liver transplant or no liver transplant. It's hard to feel sorry for a guy who is a billionaire many times over and has been for a very long time, especially one as condescending and antisocial as Jobs. He also has a penchant for reinventing his products every 6 months to render the last expensive versions obsolete, as if the world cannot turn without having the latest application on your telephone, with literally hundreds of thousands of things you can have your phone do other that making and receiving calls.
Now if he could only invent an App that replaces his liver function, or an App that provides wardrobe alternatives to black turtlenecks and blue jeans for middle aged cadaverous-looking transplant patients, maybe he'll be on to something and earn another few billion. For this borderline technophobe, I'll steer clear of his overcomplicated telephones but I salute his computers and the extra years added to my life by not having to deal with tech support people trying to tell me what the F7 button is for. I'll be happy to never have to find out. Without the fiasco of ever-changing and increasingly irritating Windows programs clogging up my life and my work, I can just exist with one less thing to annoy the crap out of me. Once you go MAC, you don't go back.
January 17, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 608
Never assume that the person speaking to you hears the voices in your head. Just assume they cannot and explain yourself clearly.
DEAR DOT KAHM: GET THE STICK OUT OF YOUR BUTT!
Well, readers, since my last outing in this space, when I completely claimed my whole page from the boss, who had been writing the introductions to your letters, things have been going swimmingly here at bobcrespo.com. I showed Mr. Bossman himself, Bob Crespo, one of the talents I used to keep my late husband Frank a happy camper, and now you can't wipe the shiteating grin off his face whenever I drop by the office. So girls, do yourself a favor and learn to kneel to conquer, if you get my drift, and don't let anyone tell you that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Please! Now, before I deal with whatever misfits decided to write to me this week, let me remind you to send some money to Haiti to help some good people who are in desperate need. The rescue operation may be over, but the need for help is still huge, so open your hearts and wallets and do some good.
Dear Dot Kahm: I'm a 50 year-old housewife and I'm tired and cranky all the time. My husband doesn't pay any attention to me anymore and my children rarely call or visit. My cleaning ladies keep quitting too. What should I do? - Bitter in The Bronx
Dear Bitter: Well, Hon, it sounds unanimous, you're a huge pain in the ass. When even your kids can't stand you and poor women who desperately need the job won't work for you, it doesn't take an Einstein to do the math here. Who can blame your family for ignoring your annoying ass? Ever try being nice to anybody? Feeling grateful for your privileged life, maybe? Or finding something to do all day long? Here's a clue: it's not the whole damned world that's wrong, it's you.
Dear Dot Kahm: Who gives you advice? - Wondering in Washington
Dear Wondering: Too many people. The better question is: Who's do I take?
Dear Dot Kahm: My boyfriend is a real smart guy who tells me all sorts of things, not all of which I understand. He says that's okay, since if I listen him and do everything he says, I'll be perfect. He says he knows how I should dress, how I should behave and what I should think. Dot, he's a nice guy and all, but I don't feel comfortable doing and thinking things just on his say-so. Am I being obstinate, like he tells me? - Peggy in Peoria
Dear Peggy in Peoria: Sounds like you've gotten yourself involved with a classic control freak, kiddo, and they can never be pleased, ever. Guess again about the "real smart" part, too, and tell him to go somewhere else and create perfect women. I can see you've got the beginnings of a mind of your own. Continue along those lines and stay away from know-it-all jerks who think they have all the answers. I know I sure don't, but I can smell this guy's line of bullshit a mile away.
Dear Dot Kahm: My wife Lizzie likes to wear sexy clothing, and she's a real knockout. Sounds like a dream come true, right? My problem, however, is this: a lot of men are always checking her out, like she's available and even though she's not a flirt, I get uncomfortable with the attention she gets. Am I being unreasonable? - Lizzie's Man
Dear Lizzie's so-called Man: First off, I congratulate you for your honesty. Second, let me just tell you to get the stick out of your butt and let Lizzie dress in a way that makes her feel feminine and desirable. You could have a wife that no other man wants to look at. Is that what you'd like? Or do you want a sexy knockout who likes to celebrate her sexuality and look good for you? It's either one way or the other, so the answer is yes, as in yes you are being unreasonable, you insecure wimp!
Dear Dot Kahm: I am an avid member of the animal rights group PETA. Will you tell your readers how very important our work is?
Dear Loretta: Sure hon, just as soon as every last human being on the planet is doing fine, then maybe we can worry about your little cause. Meanwhile, 36,000 people just starved to death these past 24 hours, and 36,000 more will join them today. Are you aware that Haiti is in a shambles, grinding poverty and illiteracy is widespread, malaria and other curable disease are ravaging Third World nations and more than 6 million people die every year from unsanitary water supply-related diseases? Ask someone else to worry about ferrets and poodles. I'll worry about people if you don't mind. And don't let me catch any of you eyeballing my mink coat with your little cans of red spray paint or you'll be needing surgery to remove my high heel from your rear end.
Dear Dot Kahm: I'm a 50 year-old housewife and I'm tired and cranky all the time. My husband doesn't pay any attention to me anymore and my children rarely call or visit. My cleaning ladies keep quitting too. What should I do? - Bitter in The Bronx
Dear Bitter: Well, Hon, it sounds unanimous, you're a huge pain in the ass. When even your kids can't stand you and poor women who desperately need the job won't work for you, it doesn't take an Einstein to do the math here. Who can blame your family for ignoring your annoying ass? Ever try being nice to anybody? Feeling grateful for your privileged life, maybe? Or finding something to do all day long? Here's a clue: it's not the whole damned world that's wrong, it's you.
Dear Dot Kahm: Who gives you advice? - Wondering in Washington
Dear Wondering: Too many people. The better question is: Who's do I take?
Dear Dot Kahm: My boyfriend is a real smart guy who tells me all sorts of things, not all of which I understand. He says that's okay, since if I listen him and do everything he says, I'll be perfect. He says he knows how I should dress, how I should behave and what I should think. Dot, he's a nice guy and all, but I don't feel comfortable doing and thinking things just on his say-so. Am I being obstinate, like he tells me? - Peggy in Peoria
Dear Peggy in Peoria: Sounds like you've gotten yourself involved with a classic control freak, kiddo, and they can never be pleased, ever. Guess again about the "real smart" part, too, and tell him to go somewhere else and create perfect women. I can see you've got the beginnings of a mind of your own. Continue along those lines and stay away from know-it-all jerks who think they have all the answers. I know I sure don't, but I can smell this guy's line of bullshit a mile away.
Dear Dot Kahm: My wife Lizzie likes to wear sexy clothing, and she's a real knockout. Sounds like a dream come true, right? My problem, however, is this: a lot of men are always checking her out, like she's available and even though she's not a flirt, I get uncomfortable with the attention she gets. Am I being unreasonable? - Lizzie's Man
Dear Lizzie's so-called Man: First off, I congratulate you for your honesty. Second, let me just tell you to get the stick out of your butt and let Lizzie dress in a way that makes her feel feminine and desirable. You could have a wife that no other man wants to look at. Is that what you'd like? Or do you want a sexy knockout who likes to celebrate her sexuality and look good for you? It's either one way or the other, so the answer is yes, as in yes you are being unreasonable, you insecure wimp!
Dear Dot Kahm: I am an avid member of the animal rights group PETA. Will you tell your readers how very important our work is?
Dear Loretta: Sure hon, just as soon as every last human being on the planet is doing fine, then maybe we can worry about your little cause. Meanwhile, 36,000 people just starved to death these past 24 hours, and 36,000 more will join them today. Are you aware that Haiti is in a shambles, grinding poverty and illiteracy is widespread, malaria and other curable disease are ravaging Third World nations and more than 6 million people die every year from unsanitary water supply-related diseases? Ask someone else to worry about ferrets and poodles. I'll worry about people if you don't mind. And don't let me catch any of you eyeballing my mink coat with your little cans of red spray paint or you'll be needing surgery to remove my high heel from your rear end.
January 14, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 607
You're going to get a lot of grief from people no matter what you do with your life, so you might as well do what makes you happy. No sense being miserable and getting grief on top of it.
HELP HAITI TODAY
Donate to the Red Cross today to help the earthquake victims in Haiti. Beware of scams and donate only to a reputable charity that will act immediately. We all must help right now and give what we can to save lives.The Red Cross has a special Haitian fund. There is very little time.
January 11, 2010
CHARITY BEGINS AT GOLMAN SACHS AND OTHER MISCONCEPTIONS
Lots of people seem pretty out of touch with reality these days, which is understandable given the grim facts of life lately. The Greeding Frenzy of 2008 where people who were already very wealthy figured they ought to start stealing in a big way still has our economy in a shambles. Two wars are still being waged by a president who promised to end them. Terror zombies are strapping on exploding underwear and boarding airplanes. That evil bit of anti-Bill Of Rights legislation still stands, the cynically named Patriot Act. Gay Americans are still being treated as America's New Nigger, both in and out of our military, and Sarah Palin still hasn't gone away. Is it any wonder we retreat from from reality? This state of affairs does make for some interesting misconceptions, however. Consider:
The bankers at Goldman Sachs, poised to award around 12.5 billion bucks of their stockholders' dough in bonuses to their wealthy executive corps, figure they can avoid public outrage by insisting that these executives donate a portion of their money to charity. Yeah, knowing that super wealthy unindicted coconspirators are making tax-deductible contributions to some silly save-the-whales-from-the-dolphins charity ought to take the sting out of wondering why you bothered to get an education so you can wind up living in your car and working as a greeter at Walmart for minimum wage and no benefits just so these people can live like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Seems sort of over-optimisitic on the bankers' part.
The Senate has reconstituted the Health Care Reform Bill to something that needs to be called The Same Old Health Care Continuation Decree and announce they they found health care in the United Sates to be perfect and in no need of reform. Why else would they eliminate the Public Option, the only reason for the bill's introduction? They figured, what the hell, private health insurers already have Death Panels, they've had them for many years, and Senators wanted in on some of that life and death power. So they gutted the bill, thus condemning hundreds of thousands of Americans to death for the crime of being not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or well off enough to afford health insurance.
If these senators figure this will make them heroes to their voters, that's a fairly huge misconception since the majority of Americans fall into that middle category and want nothing more than their Senator's head on a pike right now. Perhaps politicians can be excused for being out of touch with reality since that seems to be an industry-related disability. Which is probably why Senators and Congressmen have one of the best health plans anywhere. And the don't pay a nickel for it.
President Obama seems pretty okay with these Senators doing a cha-cha on his health care reform bill, maybe thinking he'll use the money saved on keeping America healthy to invade Yemen to make a whole lot of Yemenites unhealthy and to avenge the exploding underwear guy. The fact that he denied any plans to send troops there shows that he's seriously considering it. Why else would the subject even come up? You don't hear him denying plans to invade Lithuania, do you? Being a 2 war president only ties the record. Fighting 3 wars at once would leave a lasting impression, to be sure, although undoubtedly not the one he desires.
Mistaken impressions are epidemic in America, even in the entertainment industry, which usually has its fingers on the public pulse. Jay Leno thought people would rather watch his smarmy ass 5 days a week in prime time instead of their favorite dramas. Conan O'Brien was under the impression that he had enough talent and personal appeal to carry the Tonight Show, and the company that employs both these men, NBC, thought they were on to a good thing, saving the high production costs as well as the salaries of actors, writers, directors and technicians. It seems they can all guess again.
As it happens, people prefer Law & Order to Jay Walking at 10 P.M., and they were just fine with late night talk shows being broadcast, well, late at night, which was the whole idea, what with them being called late night and all. Luckily, NBC screwing up such a lucrative set up has dissuaded Good Morning America from their planned move to the noon time slot so the anchor people could sleep late. For most of us, our misconceptions don't cost millions of dollars, or in the case of huge banks and the government, billions and trillions. The misconception most of us have is that wealthy executives and elected officials will be held accountable just like any other human being who screws up. Turns out not to be the case. Our own errors in judgement are for the most part not on a monumental enough scale to be overlooked. Perhaps we're just thinking too small. If we all go batshit crazy we'll be mainstream.
The bankers at Goldman Sachs, poised to award around 12.5 billion bucks of their stockholders' dough in bonuses to their wealthy executive corps, figure they can avoid public outrage by insisting that these executives donate a portion of their money to charity. Yeah, knowing that super wealthy unindicted coconspirators are making tax-deductible contributions to some silly save-the-whales-from-the-dolphins charity ought to take the sting out of wondering why you bothered to get an education so you can wind up living in your car and working as a greeter at Walmart for minimum wage and no benefits just so these people can live like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Seems sort of over-optimisitic on the bankers' part.
The Senate has reconstituted the Health Care Reform Bill to something that needs to be called The Same Old Health Care Continuation Decree and announce they they found health care in the United Sates to be perfect and in no need of reform. Why else would they eliminate the Public Option, the only reason for the bill's introduction? They figured, what the hell, private health insurers already have Death Panels, they've had them for many years, and Senators wanted in on some of that life and death power. So they gutted the bill, thus condemning hundreds of thousands of Americans to death for the crime of being not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or well off enough to afford health insurance.
If these senators figure this will make them heroes to their voters, that's a fairly huge misconception since the majority of Americans fall into that middle category and want nothing more than their Senator's head on a pike right now. Perhaps politicians can be excused for being out of touch with reality since that seems to be an industry-related disability. Which is probably why Senators and Congressmen have one of the best health plans anywhere. And the don't pay a nickel for it.
President Obama seems pretty okay with these Senators doing a cha-cha on his health care reform bill, maybe thinking he'll use the money saved on keeping America healthy to invade Yemen to make a whole lot of Yemenites unhealthy and to avenge the exploding underwear guy. The fact that he denied any plans to send troops there shows that he's seriously considering it. Why else would the subject even come up? You don't hear him denying plans to invade Lithuania, do you? Being a 2 war president only ties the record. Fighting 3 wars at once would leave a lasting impression, to be sure, although undoubtedly not the one he desires.
Mistaken impressions are epidemic in America, even in the entertainment industry, which usually has its fingers on the public pulse. Jay Leno thought people would rather watch his smarmy ass 5 days a week in prime time instead of their favorite dramas. Conan O'Brien was under the impression that he had enough talent and personal appeal to carry the Tonight Show, and the company that employs both these men, NBC, thought they were on to a good thing, saving the high production costs as well as the salaries of actors, writers, directors and technicians. It seems they can all guess again.
As it happens, people prefer Law & Order to Jay Walking at 10 P.M., and they were just fine with late night talk shows being broadcast, well, late at night, which was the whole idea, what with them being called late night and all. Luckily, NBC screwing up such a lucrative set up has dissuaded Good Morning America from their planned move to the noon time slot so the anchor people could sleep late. For most of us, our misconceptions don't cost millions of dollars, or in the case of huge banks and the government, billions and trillions. The misconception most of us have is that wealthy executives and elected officials will be held accountable just like any other human being who screws up. Turns out not to be the case. Our own errors in judgement are for the most part not on a monumental enough scale to be overlooked. Perhaps we're just thinking too small. If we all go batshit crazy we'll be mainstream.
January 10, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 605
The road behind you seems amazing sometimes, like it was someone else who went all those places and did all those things with all those people. We live many lives before we reach the end of the road.
REID APOLOGIZES FOR POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS
Democratic Senator Harry Reid has apologized to President Barack Obama, the American people in general and African Americans in particular. His offense? Aggravated Public Honesty. It seems that in 2008 Reid predicted that Obama could very well become the first African-American president of America because he was "light-skinned" and "had no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." The prediction came true, and Obama is our president, and the reasons Reid cited were major factors in Obama's election.
Let's not kid ourselves here that America suddenly and completely lost it's racism because of Obama's undeniable charm. Charm is not enough, and we've elected some decidedly uncharming men to the presidency. Lyndon Johnson springs to mind. While Reid may have ben alarmingly honest and less than walking-on-eggshells politically correct in his assessment of Obama's chances, he was right on the money. Can't a senator express reality once in a while? White men can comment on racial relations in America as well as anyone. They're half the equation, no? And Reid had it right, if Barack Obama was dark skinned with a heavy accent he would never even have won the Democratic Party's nomination, never mind the general election.
In a nation with our troubled racial history, our first black president had to be Caesar's wife, a Mr. Perfect Goody-Two-Shoes of a candidate with few skeletons in his closet, and a man held to a greater degree of accountability than his white counterparts. While openly attacking the man for his skin color was out of the question, don't forget how much political mileage was gotten out of the question of his birth certificate and the bogus claims that he was
a practicing Muslim (our new niggers), a "sleeper" programmed to destroy America from within. None of that went on with any white candidate, not ever.
Obama was also campaigning against the Republican Party after the most completely failed presidency ever. The Republicans were exposed as betrayers of America and incompetent thieves who used a severe crisis to turn on the American people, stripping their Bill of Rights protections, their hard-earned wealth and their trust in the government. The political party that gave us our worst presidency ever, featuring America's first puppet leader, Bush The Younger, and our only dictator ever, Shotgun Dick Cheney, was almost certain to be voted out of office. It was only under these dire circumstances that a black man was elected president.
The fact that Obama is a non-threatening figure, articulate, intelligent, smooth and untainted by scandal or corruption weighed heavily in his favor, but none of these attributes were anywhere near as decisive as his light skin. His mother, after all, was a white woman from Kansas, making him only half black. In an ideal world none of that would matter, only the smart and articulate parts. But this is not an ideal world and a great many Americans still view life and politics through the narrow prism of skin color.
To many of them, Obama was only acceptable because he had a white mother and light skin. Getting rid of the worst political charlatans America had ever seen was no sure thing, and a black man with less political and personal skills than Obama, with darker skin and a less homogenous Midwestern accent would not have won this crucial election, even if he was the smartest guy since Einstein. Why make believe this isn't the case? This nation has shot itself in the foot over race too many times to ignore reality.
So Harry Reid, whatever else he is or isn't, is an honest assessor of a presidential candidate's chances. And as a ranking Democrat who is now the Senate Majority Leader, that's exactly what he is supposed to be. The business of political parties is to pursue their policies for their nation, and to do so they need to be elected. Those on the inside need to be brutally honest about their prospects of success, and to present the strongest possible candidate to the electorate. There were no inherently bigoted remarks made my Senator Reid, only honest, and perhaps a bit cynical, remarks.
To ignore the forest would mean getting lost in the trees. Don't hang Harry Reid from one of those trees for seeing what is, not what ought to be. He is a leader of the party most responsible for changing America for the better and creating an atmosphere in which a black man could become president. Those battles were fought by clear-eyed warriors who could not afford to let wishful thinking get in the way of solid accomplishment. Reality dictated their strategy and reality was taken into account when assessing their chances of success. Reality told Senator Reid that Obama had a chance, and if in the process he articulated some regrettable truths some people would rather not hear, how about some more of that? Pretending never changed reality, and not mentioning unpleasant facts never made them go away. Pointing out the obvious is no sin.
Let's not kid ourselves here that America suddenly and completely lost it's racism because of Obama's undeniable charm. Charm is not enough, and we've elected some decidedly uncharming men to the presidency. Lyndon Johnson springs to mind. While Reid may have ben alarmingly honest and less than walking-on-eggshells politically correct in his assessment of Obama's chances, he was right on the money. Can't a senator express reality once in a while? White men can comment on racial relations in America as well as anyone. They're half the equation, no? And Reid had it right, if Barack Obama was dark skinned with a heavy accent he would never even have won the Democratic Party's nomination, never mind the general election.
In a nation with our troubled racial history, our first black president had to be Caesar's wife, a Mr. Perfect Goody-Two-Shoes of a candidate with few skeletons in his closet, and a man held to a greater degree of accountability than his white counterparts. While openly attacking the man for his skin color was out of the question, don't forget how much political mileage was gotten out of the question of his birth certificate and the bogus claims that he was
a practicing Muslim (our new niggers), a "sleeper" programmed to destroy America from within. None of that went on with any white candidate, not ever.
Obama was also campaigning against the Republican Party after the most completely failed presidency ever. The Republicans were exposed as betrayers of America and incompetent thieves who used a severe crisis to turn on the American people, stripping their Bill of Rights protections, their hard-earned wealth and their trust in the government. The political party that gave us our worst presidency ever, featuring America's first puppet leader, Bush The Younger, and our only dictator ever, Shotgun Dick Cheney, was almost certain to be voted out of office. It was only under these dire circumstances that a black man was elected president.
The fact that Obama is a non-threatening figure, articulate, intelligent, smooth and untainted by scandal or corruption weighed heavily in his favor, but none of these attributes were anywhere near as decisive as his light skin. His mother, after all, was a white woman from Kansas, making him only half black. In an ideal world none of that would matter, only the smart and articulate parts. But this is not an ideal world and a great many Americans still view life and politics through the narrow prism of skin color.
To many of them, Obama was only acceptable because he had a white mother and light skin. Getting rid of the worst political charlatans America had ever seen was no sure thing, and a black man with less political and personal skills than Obama, with darker skin and a less homogenous Midwestern accent would not have won this crucial election, even if he was the smartest guy since Einstein. Why make believe this isn't the case? This nation has shot itself in the foot over race too many times to ignore reality.
So Harry Reid, whatever else he is or isn't, is an honest assessor of a presidential candidate's chances. And as a ranking Democrat who is now the Senate Majority Leader, that's exactly what he is supposed to be. The business of political parties is to pursue their policies for their nation, and to do so they need to be elected. Those on the inside need to be brutally honest about their prospects of success, and to present the strongest possible candidate to the electorate. There were no inherently bigoted remarks made my Senator Reid, only honest, and perhaps a bit cynical, remarks.
To ignore the forest would mean getting lost in the trees. Don't hang Harry Reid from one of those trees for seeing what is, not what ought to be. He is a leader of the party most responsible for changing America for the better and creating an atmosphere in which a black man could become president. Those battles were fought by clear-eyed warriors who could not afford to let wishful thinking get in the way of solid accomplishment. Reality dictated their strategy and reality was taken into account when assessing their chances of success. Reality told Senator Reid that Obama had a chance, and if in the process he articulated some regrettable truths some people would rather not hear, how about some more of that? Pretending never changed reality, and not mentioning unpleasant facts never made them go away. Pointing out the obvious is no sin.
January 8, 2010
ELVIS WOULD HAVE BEEN 75 TODAY, BUT HE ISN'T.
Well, it's Elvis Presley's birthday today, and The King would have been 75. Turns out he didn't live all that long, a measly 42 years. So much for Long Live The King. We'll just have to settle for Long Live the King's music, which is still shaking hips. Speaking of hips, his once shook the world, and The Ed Sullivan Show wouldn't film them, putting Elvis on camera only from the waist up while he was performing in order to preserve the virtue of American girlhood.
Didn't work, since America girls went nuts for this impossibly handsome and polite son of Tennessee and threw themselves at him for his whole life. One suspects that this would still be the case if Elvis were still alive, even at age 75. He was, after all, Elvis Friggin' Presley! This is the guy who got rock & roll off the ground not only as a big business, but more importantly as an art form, one that touches lives in a very special and immediate way.
His reputation was built mainly on a few dozen spare, raw and compelling rock & roll songs he recorded in the 1950s, starting with Lieber & Stoller's "Hound Dog" that he learned from Big Mama Thornton. He wasn't the very first rock & roller, but he was the first rock & roll superstar, the man who got the ball rolling and opened the doors for the rest. Without Elvis, there would have been no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, no Temptations, no Hendrix and no Bob Marley. He was that big and that influential, and his songs still stand up all these years later, as immediate and exciting and fun, still as dangerous and compelling as ever.
That he became a caricature of himself as he got older was also a ground-breaking act in American entertainment. Could William Shatner be thriving with his cartoon-character shtick of Captain Kirk without Elvis' example? Getting weird, reclusive or bizarre has become an accepted part of the aging process for artists thanks to Elvis Presley. Who's a goofier blowhard than that guy who sings for the Eagles, whatshisname, Don Henley? Could Marlon Brando have continued to get plum acting roles towards the end of his life even though he was nutty as a fruit cake without Elvis leading the way in Public Weird? How about Gary Busey? Now there's a walking talking train wreck of a human being and nobody bats an eye, and he still gets work.
When Elvis went a little loopy, it was front page news. That's the price to be paid by innovators. He named his home in Memphis like some English Duke, calling it Graceland, and filled it with pin ball machines and his posse of good old boys. He got fat, then thin, then fat, then thin, then fat again, and started dressing in Peacock Suits and scarves and doing and saying some pretty bizarre things. He took drugs prescribed to him by quack doctors by the handful, but railed against drug use in America. He was probably the most out-of-shape black belt in karate ever. He was every vice and virtue in America rolled into one. No one could invent an Elvis, or train one. He just was.
He was also one of the most chronicled and publicized human beings ever, a person who could never blend in with any crowd anywhere, ever. Millions followed his every move, public and private. Many were disappointed at every step he took closer to safe, establishment entertainment, but remained loyal fans anyway for what he was, who he was. The King! Grown women and heads of state were speechless in his presence. He was Elvis Friggin' Presley, for God's sake! It could not have been easy to be him. It is often said; "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Add to that; reluctant to give it up either.
Every so often would come out with another Number One Hit Song, another instant classic right on the money, a "Suspicious Minds" or a "Burning Love," so you knew he was still serious about making great music and reminding us that yes, Virginia, there is an Elvis. His live appearances in Las Vegas and on world tours were sellout events. If his shows were overblown and Hollywood kitschy, he still delivered his classics with passion and authority, his hips still shaking, his voice still smooth, confident and sexy, and women still throwing themselves at him. His death was a shocking sensation making headlines all over the world. Only 42 years old.
One of the handful of icons needing only the one name, like Marilyn, Frank or Ali, Elvis was ahead of the curve there too. Who would go to a rock & roll show featuring Gordon Sumner or Paul Hewson? They'd line up to see Sting and Bono, though. And like Frank, The Chairman of the Board, he had a cool nickname, The King. Could Springsteen be The Boss without The King? Ask The Boss who showed him the ropes back when he was The Assistant.
No one knows what Elvis would have become, what songs he would have recorded, what direction would his career have taken. Would there be a creative resurgence in his sixties like Sinatra? How many more out-of-the-blue Number One hit singles would he have sung? The only thing you can be sure of is that his life and his work would still be damned interesting. Elvis wasn't one for half-way measures, a man who lived big, thought big and did big. American big. Rock & roll big. Forever big. There was only one Elvis. Once a King, always a King, and Elvis wore the crown until the day he left us too young.
Didn't work, since America girls went nuts for this impossibly handsome and polite son of Tennessee and threw themselves at him for his whole life. One suspects that this would still be the case if Elvis were still alive, even at age 75. He was, after all, Elvis Friggin' Presley! This is the guy who got rock & roll off the ground not only as a big business, but more importantly as an art form, one that touches lives in a very special and immediate way.
His reputation was built mainly on a few dozen spare, raw and compelling rock & roll songs he recorded in the 1950s, starting with Lieber & Stoller's "Hound Dog" that he learned from Big Mama Thornton. He wasn't the very first rock & roller, but he was the first rock & roll superstar, the man who got the ball rolling and opened the doors for the rest. Without Elvis, there would have been no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, no Temptations, no Hendrix and no Bob Marley. He was that big and that influential, and his songs still stand up all these years later, as immediate and exciting and fun, still as dangerous and compelling as ever.
That he became a caricature of himself as he got older was also a ground-breaking act in American entertainment. Could William Shatner be thriving with his cartoon-character shtick of Captain Kirk without Elvis' example? Getting weird, reclusive or bizarre has become an accepted part of the aging process for artists thanks to Elvis Presley. Who's a goofier blowhard than that guy who sings for the Eagles, whatshisname, Don Henley? Could Marlon Brando have continued to get plum acting roles towards the end of his life even though he was nutty as a fruit cake without Elvis leading the way in Public Weird? How about Gary Busey? Now there's a walking talking train wreck of a human being and nobody bats an eye, and he still gets work.
When Elvis went a little loopy, it was front page news. That's the price to be paid by innovators. He named his home in Memphis like some English Duke, calling it Graceland, and filled it with pin ball machines and his posse of good old boys. He got fat, then thin, then fat, then thin, then fat again, and started dressing in Peacock Suits and scarves and doing and saying some pretty bizarre things. He took drugs prescribed to him by quack doctors by the handful, but railed against drug use in America. He was probably the most out-of-shape black belt in karate ever. He was every vice and virtue in America rolled into one. No one could invent an Elvis, or train one. He just was.
He was also one of the most chronicled and publicized human beings ever, a person who could never blend in with any crowd anywhere, ever. Millions followed his every move, public and private. Many were disappointed at every step he took closer to safe, establishment entertainment, but remained loyal fans anyway for what he was, who he was. The King! Grown women and heads of state were speechless in his presence. He was Elvis Friggin' Presley, for God's sake! It could not have been easy to be him. It is often said; "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Add to that; reluctant to give it up either.
Every so often would come out with another Number One Hit Song, another instant classic right on the money, a "Suspicious Minds" or a "Burning Love," so you knew he was still serious about making great music and reminding us that yes, Virginia, there is an Elvis. His live appearances in Las Vegas and on world tours were sellout events. If his shows were overblown and Hollywood kitschy, he still delivered his classics with passion and authority, his hips still shaking, his voice still smooth, confident and sexy, and women still throwing themselves at him. His death was a shocking sensation making headlines all over the world. Only 42 years old.
One of the handful of icons needing only the one name, like Marilyn, Frank or Ali, Elvis was ahead of the curve there too. Who would go to a rock & roll show featuring Gordon Sumner or Paul Hewson? They'd line up to see Sting and Bono, though. And like Frank, The Chairman of the Board, he had a cool nickname, The King. Could Springsteen be The Boss without The King? Ask The Boss who showed him the ropes back when he was The Assistant.
No one knows what Elvis would have become, what songs he would have recorded, what direction would his career have taken. Would there be a creative resurgence in his sixties like Sinatra? How many more out-of-the-blue Number One hit singles would he have sung? The only thing you can be sure of is that his life and his work would still be damned interesting. Elvis wasn't one for half-way measures, a man who lived big, thought big and did big. American big. Rock & roll big. Forever big. There was only one Elvis. Once a King, always a King, and Elvis wore the crown until the day he left us too young.
January 7, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 603
Making plans is lots of fun and gives us something to do. This way, you can torture yourself when things turn out different. Life happens.
CHILD SACRIFICE? WHAT THE FUCK?
Just when you think you've heard it all, it turns out you ain't heard nuthin' yet. When you figure you've seen the worst, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. Now we are treated to reports of widespread child sacrifice in Uganda. Then you pray with all your soul that there isn't anything worse than that. Could there possibly be? Child sacrifice? What the Fuck? It can't be worse! But it does get worse...
You can't process this shit. There's no imaginable frame of reference in your mind for this to fully register. Here's what makes child sacrifice even worse: This isn't the work of one demented serial killer. It's an extensive network of mass murderers on a rampage, a national network of (!) Witch Doctors. A cut of every Witch Doctor's $260 consulting fee is whacked up with the national leadership and to "witch doctor protection rackets."
Who's worse, serial killer butchers of children or those who extort money from serial killer butchers of children to keep their crimes undetected? Wow, even the fucking devil himself would have a hard time with that call. One guy, a former witch doctor, admits to 70 murders, including his own 10 year-old son.
Now he campaigns against child sacrifice, under no threat of arrest, free as a bird. The government of Uganda is on record as saying "To punish retrospectively would cause a problem... if we can persuade Ugandans to change, that is so much better than going back in the past." Those are the words of James Nsaba Buturo, Uganda's Minister of, get this; Ethics and Integrity!
While it's probably a terrific idea to establish something called The Ministry of Ethics and Integrity in a country that tolerates child sacrifice, it might be a better idea to arrest all the child butchers and the child butcher protection gangs and lock them up for about a thousand years. There is nothing worse than these people, and no amount of cultural differences bullshit would ever explain away butchering children alive. Human beings don't do that. Not ever.
Isn't this something the United Nations should be up in arms about? Whose human rights need more protecting than a child's? The prevention of any further kidnapping, torturing and disemboweling of children should be the number one job at the U.N. right now. Where is the international outrage? Where are the sanctions against Uganda? Why are world leaders not telling Uganda to cut that shit out already? Why don't Ugandan leaders stop this gargantuan evil in their own land? What the Fuck?
You can't process this shit. There's no imaginable frame of reference in your mind for this to fully register. Here's what makes child sacrifice even worse: This isn't the work of one demented serial killer. It's an extensive network of mass murderers on a rampage, a national network of (!) Witch Doctors. A cut of every Witch Doctor's $260 consulting fee is whacked up with the national leadership and to "witch doctor protection rackets."
Who's worse, serial killer butchers of children or those who extort money from serial killer butchers of children to keep their crimes undetected? Wow, even the fucking devil himself would have a hard time with that call. One guy, a former witch doctor, admits to 70 murders, including his own 10 year-old son.
Now he campaigns against child sacrifice, under no threat of arrest, free as a bird. The government of Uganda is on record as saying "To punish retrospectively would cause a problem... if we can persuade Ugandans to change, that is so much better than going back in the past." Those are the words of James Nsaba Buturo, Uganda's Minister of, get this; Ethics and Integrity!
While it's probably a terrific idea to establish something called The Ministry of Ethics and Integrity in a country that tolerates child sacrifice, it might be a better idea to arrest all the child butchers and the child butcher protection gangs and lock them up for about a thousand years. There is nothing worse than these people, and no amount of cultural differences bullshit would ever explain away butchering children alive. Human beings don't do that. Not ever.
Isn't this something the United Nations should be up in arms about? Whose human rights need more protecting than a child's? The prevention of any further kidnapping, torturing and disemboweling of children should be the number one job at the U.N. right now. Where is the international outrage? Where are the sanctions against Uganda? Why are world leaders not telling Uganda to cut that shit out already? Why don't Ugandan leaders stop this gargantuan evil in their own land? What the Fuck?
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 602
Context is important. When embracing the concept "Go Green," that is not your cue to stop taking care of your teeth. That won't help the environment at all.
COPENHAGEN IS WORKING TOO WELL
Well, so far so good. The recently concluded Global Warming Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, attended by representatives of all the world's nations, commanded the Earth not to warm up by more than 3 degrees Centigrade. Seems to be working. Immediately following the summit, a blizzard buried the American Northeast in a foot and a half of snow, Europe was plunged into a deep freeze and even Florida is so cold that two of their most important natural resources, citrus fruit and really old people, are rapidly dying off. Apparently the earth is overreacting to being bossed around.
If this keeps up the ice caps will cease melting, the glaciers will rebound and New York City will be overrun with Polar Bears. That ought to put a huge dent in New York's homeless population, which could earn political points for Mayor-For-Life Bloomberg, but it might put a crimp in our children's plans to go sledding in Central Park. No one likes to look at their own kid as a prime candidate for the thinning of the herd, no matter how ill-equipped Peewee might be to deal with life.
Here's hoping that this cold snap is just what it is, a cold snap and not the beginning of a New Ice Age. Those Copenhagen guys will have a lot of egg on their faces if the planet freezes over for a few hundred thousand years and Wooly Mammoths roam the earth again. No one wants that. But in the intervening weeks since the big Climate Confab, the earth has gone a little nuts with the freezing and the snow drifts.
Our leaders have insulted our host planet with their self-important issuing of orders and now the planet is showing us a small sample of what it can do when it gets really pissed off. Check out all those earthquakes and volcanos in the Pacific Rim lately. Nothing says "Get off my back!" like toppled buildings, molten lava and 100-foot tidal waves. We have our clueless leaders to thank for these eruptions and if they continue we'll have to insist that they go back to Copenhagen and humbly apologize to the planet.
It's not like we've got anyplace else to go. This planet is it for us, as precarious as that is. So far, 99% of all species that ever existed on Earth are completely extinct. That we remain in the elite 1% is not necessarily a permanent state of affairs. The world is a harsh mistress, one who can be downright obstinate and contrary.
All these allegations of global warming we've been hurling at Mother Earth have obviously stung her, and a when a planet is pissed off at you, you just might find yourself on the business end of all sorts of natural catastrophes. That oxygen we all enjoy so much just might be in short supply one day, replaced by methane and sulfur. Try getting all self-righteous and making grim speeches on lungs full of that stuff.
We've heard enough from our politicians, and their track record at leading humanity leaves a whole lot to be desired, never mind trying to order the Earth around. Now they've got the damned planet mad at us. Great. It's time to get all these people back to Copenhagen to apologize to the planet and swear we'll stop stinking up the joint. We have no choice but to throw ourselves at the mercy of Mother Nature and hope she forgives our arrogance.
If this keeps up the ice caps will cease melting, the glaciers will rebound and New York City will be overrun with Polar Bears. That ought to put a huge dent in New York's homeless population, which could earn political points for Mayor-For-Life Bloomberg, but it might put a crimp in our children's plans to go sledding in Central Park. No one likes to look at their own kid as a prime candidate for the thinning of the herd, no matter how ill-equipped Peewee might be to deal with life.
Here's hoping that this cold snap is just what it is, a cold snap and not the beginning of a New Ice Age. Those Copenhagen guys will have a lot of egg on their faces if the planet freezes over for a few hundred thousand years and Wooly Mammoths roam the earth again. No one wants that. But in the intervening weeks since the big Climate Confab, the earth has gone a little nuts with the freezing and the snow drifts.
Our leaders have insulted our host planet with their self-important issuing of orders and now the planet is showing us a small sample of what it can do when it gets really pissed off. Check out all those earthquakes and volcanos in the Pacific Rim lately. Nothing says "Get off my back!" like toppled buildings, molten lava and 100-foot tidal waves. We have our clueless leaders to thank for these eruptions and if they continue we'll have to insist that they go back to Copenhagen and humbly apologize to the planet.
It's not like we've got anyplace else to go. This planet is it for us, as precarious as that is. So far, 99% of all species that ever existed on Earth are completely extinct. That we remain in the elite 1% is not necessarily a permanent state of affairs. The world is a harsh mistress, one who can be downright obstinate and contrary.
All these allegations of global warming we've been hurling at Mother Earth have obviously stung her, and a when a planet is pissed off at you, you just might find yourself on the business end of all sorts of natural catastrophes. That oxygen we all enjoy so much just might be in short supply one day, replaced by methane and sulfur. Try getting all self-righteous and making grim speeches on lungs full of that stuff.
We've heard enough from our politicians, and their track record at leading humanity leaves a whole lot to be desired, never mind trying to order the Earth around. Now they've got the damned planet mad at us. Great. It's time to get all these people back to Copenhagen to apologize to the planet and swear we'll stop stinking up the joint. We have no choice but to throw ourselves at the mercy of Mother Nature and hope she forgives our arrogance.
January 6, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 601
There was once a very wise man who claimed to understand women perfectly. He lied about a lot of other things too.
DOPOTO REPORTS: WAR IS THE OPPOSITE OF PEACE
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) is, like any other giant bureaucracy, shaking off the cobwebs of our holiday break and attempting to get back to serious business. Our only business here at DOPOTO is to continually point out what is as plain as day, and so we enter the New Year eager to pick up where we left off in 2009, which was basically reassuring the public that their senses are not fooling them and if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's time to break out the Bearnaise sauce. As usual after a New Year, only the calendar has changed, not people or events.
When you read about generals and troops and escalations in this war or that war, military commanders, as they so often do, explain that reinforcements are being used "to ensure a lasting peace," it's helpful to stop and wonder how 30,000 more people armed with automatic weapons will make a country more peaceful. Senior Analysts here at The Department have concluded that soldiers are employed for but one function, making war, and that war is the direct opposite of peace. Our studies have also confirmed that military generals have no vested interest in making peace, either the lasting or the temporary kind. That sort of thing pretty much puts these people out of work, and human beings like to keep busy, no matter what their chosen occupation.
Calling an army a "peace keeping force" is no more accurate than calling termites "home remodeling specialists." Hearing military leaders talk about peace is like hearing a madame campaign against vice; there is something that doesn't sound quite sincere. While military organizations are vital to a nation's defense, they are not exactly received as diplomats when landing on foreign shores with all their equipment.
They are not there to negotiate with anybody, and they're not exactly what anyone would call a campfire and Kumbaya outfit. Not one soldier in a thousand speaks the local language or cares all that much about the native culture. Those guns are loaded. Their owners are highly trained, dedicated, extremely motivated, and very good at what they do. What they do, however, has absolutely nothing to do with peace. Nobody sends in The Marines to wage peace.
LIke so many things in public life, and military officers are very public figures, what is being said is the opposite of what is occurring. Take Congress for example, whose members have mastered the art of speaking in riddles. Many years ago they changed the name of The War Department to The Defense Department, even though America has never had to defend itself from foreign attack since then, but has made war on others a number of times. DOPOTO theorists posit that American politicians and generals are mostly football fans, thus explaining their adherence to that old bit of football wisdom: "The best defense is annihilating the enemy right off the bat and disbanding their army."
That could be one explanation for the puzzling strategies in both Iraq and Afghanistan of winning the war convincingly in a matter of weeks, toppling the government, and then sticking around for years and years after such stunning victories, in effect insuring that partisan militia's will form. Research indicates that no one but prostitutes and black marketeers likes an army of occupation, and sooner rather than later there will be hostilities. Department archives reveal that that in almost every recorded instance throughout the ages of kings, presidents and generals speaking of "a lasting peace," the forecast is always more war.
And of course in modern times here in America, Congressional leaders weigh in on all this. They are the ones who have to vote to provide the funds for these wars, an so far, these "peace initiatives" are well funded. Some traditionalists dust off the old reliable "Peace With Honor" mantra, which was coined in the dim mists of history by the first nation to realize they were fighting an unwinnable war. When peace is the actual plan, that is when you send in The Diplomats, not The Marines. So in conclusion, to be brief, clear and (our specialty!) obvious; war is the opposite of peace.
This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious
When you read about generals and troops and escalations in this war or that war, military commanders, as they so often do, explain that reinforcements are being used "to ensure a lasting peace," it's helpful to stop and wonder how 30,000 more people armed with automatic weapons will make a country more peaceful. Senior Analysts here at The Department have concluded that soldiers are employed for but one function, making war, and that war is the direct opposite of peace. Our studies have also confirmed that military generals have no vested interest in making peace, either the lasting or the temporary kind. That sort of thing pretty much puts these people out of work, and human beings like to keep busy, no matter what their chosen occupation.
Calling an army a "peace keeping force" is no more accurate than calling termites "home remodeling specialists." Hearing military leaders talk about peace is like hearing a madame campaign against vice; there is something that doesn't sound quite sincere. While military organizations are vital to a nation's defense, they are not exactly received as diplomats when landing on foreign shores with all their equipment.
They are not there to negotiate with anybody, and they're not exactly what anyone would call a campfire and Kumbaya outfit. Not one soldier in a thousand speaks the local language or cares all that much about the native culture. Those guns are loaded. Their owners are highly trained, dedicated, extremely motivated, and very good at what they do. What they do, however, has absolutely nothing to do with peace. Nobody sends in The Marines to wage peace.
LIke so many things in public life, and military officers are very public figures, what is being said is the opposite of what is occurring. Take Congress for example, whose members have mastered the art of speaking in riddles. Many years ago they changed the name of The War Department to The Defense Department, even though America has never had to defend itself from foreign attack since then, but has made war on others a number of times. DOPOTO theorists posit that American politicians and generals are mostly football fans, thus explaining their adherence to that old bit of football wisdom: "The best defense is annihilating the enemy right off the bat and disbanding their army."
That could be one explanation for the puzzling strategies in both Iraq and Afghanistan of winning the war convincingly in a matter of weeks, toppling the government, and then sticking around for years and years after such stunning victories, in effect insuring that partisan militia's will form. Research indicates that no one but prostitutes and black marketeers likes an army of occupation, and sooner rather than later there will be hostilities. Department archives reveal that that in almost every recorded instance throughout the ages of kings, presidents and generals speaking of "a lasting peace," the forecast is always more war.
And of course in modern times here in America, Congressional leaders weigh in on all this. They are the ones who have to vote to provide the funds for these wars, an so far, these "peace initiatives" are well funded. Some traditionalists dust off the old reliable "Peace With Honor" mantra, which was coined in the dim mists of history by the first nation to realize they were fighting an unwinnable war. When peace is the actual plan, that is when you send in The Diplomats, not The Marines. So in conclusion, to be brief, clear and (our specialty!) obvious; war is the opposite of peace.
This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious
January 5, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 600
When on a long car trip with others, a surefire way not to pass the time amiably is to lead them in a rousing chorus of "99 Bottles of Beer on The Wall." They wouldn't be wrong to either bind and gag you or leave you stranded.
TELL ME THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN...
So, there's lots of news involving Sweden lately. Not that actual Swedes are making news, that would be a little too much to ask of them above and beyond being Swedes, but the focus on Sweden gives one pause to wonder about the place. Has there ever been a famous Swedish woman that didn't have one of these prefixes attached to her name: "the Beautiful," "Statuesque," or "Stunning?" Seems like they don't produce any regular women in Sweden, or if they do, they don't let them become internationally famous. As far as Swedish men go, outside of one playwright, one film maker and one painter, none of them seem to be allowed to be internationally famous.
The work of those 3 famous Swedes is awful convoluted and dense, too, with not a whole lot of trouble taken to create art that very many other human beings can relate to, cleverly earning themselves unbounded praise by critics and total ignorance by the general public, thus ensuring their privacy and near-anonymity. If that seems like the opposite goal of someone looking to share their artistic visions with the world, well, what can you expect from a nation that named their Peace Prize after the guy who invented high explosives? Sort of brings Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize into perspective, who accepted it in between strategy sessions involving the 2 wars he is running. So, the more anonymous the Swedes keep themselves the better it is for the rest of us who don't want our heads to explode from contemplating these things.
Swedes are clever that way, as are all Scandinavians, precious few of whose names spring to mind outside of a bunch of beautiful, statuesque and stunning women. So the question is: other than borders and the names of their kings (and who remembers which is which, both the borders and the kings?), what is the difference between Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and the Finnish? Can Europeans tell, what with them all living cheek by jowl on that very crowded continent?
Probably not, any more than they could tell the difference between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. How about the differences between the French, the Belgians and whatever it is they call the natives of Luxembourg? A show of hands, please. Anybody? Okay, how about Germans and Austrians? What major difference stands out there?
Okay, moving south, is there a difference between Spanish and Portuguese people other than the slight variations in their respective languages and the fact that they've hated each other for approximately forever? Nothing that jumps out at you. While Spain gets more ink, the Portuguese also carved out a giant brutal empire back in the day and they also fill stadiums to watch guys dressed like sissies gang up on bulls and stab them to death. So, what's the difference?
Moving further south to Rwanda, can anyone explain the vast differences between Hutus an Tutsis? There must be some, otherwise they were wasting their time slaughtering one another back in the 90's to the tune of almost a million dead, no? Another odd thing about this mutual genocide is that some people blamed it on the Germans, others blamed it on Belgians. How did they know it wasn't Austrians and people from Luxembourg responsible? Somebody must know these differences!
Take Islam, for example. What's the deal with Sunni Muslims and Shiites? Seems like Episcopalians and Methodists to the untrained eye. In other words, not much of a dif at all. Why the suicide bombs and the hatred? Could it be that just like Christianity, Islam has reached that age where the different sects are going to war with one another? They could simply cut to the chase and study the history of Christianity and save themselves a lot of grief.
The end product is the existence of a whole bunch of different Christian sects, none of them all that different from one another, and agreeing to disagree on minor points of dogma and getting on with their lives peacefully. Basically, there is no great difference between Catholics and Baptists, anymore than there is between Sunnis and Shiites. Do they need to repeat one of history's great slaughters to discover this? Judging by current events, apparently so.
It seems that most people agree that to ignore history is to repeat it, except when it comes to themselves, because they are special and different and their little subset of humanity is exempt from reality. So, what's the difference from someone who thinks like that and a complete drooling moron? A show of hands, please. Anybody? Anybody?
The work of those 3 famous Swedes is awful convoluted and dense, too, with not a whole lot of trouble taken to create art that very many other human beings can relate to, cleverly earning themselves unbounded praise by critics and total ignorance by the general public, thus ensuring their privacy and near-anonymity. If that seems like the opposite goal of someone looking to share their artistic visions with the world, well, what can you expect from a nation that named their Peace Prize after the guy who invented high explosives? Sort of brings Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize into perspective, who accepted it in between strategy sessions involving the 2 wars he is running. So, the more anonymous the Swedes keep themselves the better it is for the rest of us who don't want our heads to explode from contemplating these things.
Swedes are clever that way, as are all Scandinavians, precious few of whose names spring to mind outside of a bunch of beautiful, statuesque and stunning women. So the question is: other than borders and the names of their kings (and who remembers which is which, both the borders and the kings?), what is the difference between Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and the Finnish? Can Europeans tell, what with them all living cheek by jowl on that very crowded continent?
Probably not, any more than they could tell the difference between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. How about the differences between the French, the Belgians and whatever it is they call the natives of Luxembourg? A show of hands, please. Anybody? Okay, how about Germans and Austrians? What major difference stands out there?
Okay, moving south, is there a difference between Spanish and Portuguese people other than the slight variations in their respective languages and the fact that they've hated each other for approximately forever? Nothing that jumps out at you. While Spain gets more ink, the Portuguese also carved out a giant brutal empire back in the day and they also fill stadiums to watch guys dressed like sissies gang up on bulls and stab them to death. So, what's the difference?
Moving further south to Rwanda, can anyone explain the vast differences between Hutus an Tutsis? There must be some, otherwise they were wasting their time slaughtering one another back in the 90's to the tune of almost a million dead, no? Another odd thing about this mutual genocide is that some people blamed it on the Germans, others blamed it on Belgians. How did they know it wasn't Austrians and people from Luxembourg responsible? Somebody must know these differences!
Take Islam, for example. What's the deal with Sunni Muslims and Shiites? Seems like Episcopalians and Methodists to the untrained eye. In other words, not much of a dif at all. Why the suicide bombs and the hatred? Could it be that just like Christianity, Islam has reached that age where the different sects are going to war with one another? They could simply cut to the chase and study the history of Christianity and save themselves a lot of grief.
The end product is the existence of a whole bunch of different Christian sects, none of them all that different from one another, and agreeing to disagree on minor points of dogma and getting on with their lives peacefully. Basically, there is no great difference between Catholics and Baptists, anymore than there is between Sunnis and Shiites. Do they need to repeat one of history's great slaughters to discover this? Judging by current events, apparently so.
It seems that most people agree that to ignore history is to repeat it, except when it comes to themselves, because they are special and different and their little subset of humanity is exempt from reality. So, what's the difference from someone who thinks like that and a complete drooling moron? A show of hands, please. Anybody? Anybody?
January 3, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 599
Using the term "horsepower" to define the strength of our engines in the 21st century lets us know we've still got a way to go to escape the 19th century.
2010: SO FAR, SO GOOD
Ah, New Year's Day. A fine way to start a year. You've been up all night, or really really late, and so have slept well into the afternoon. You wake up when you wake up, and eat a combo breakfast and lunch, definitelynot brunch, that artificial meal invented by restauranteurs with its rigid menu and obligatory Bloody Mary or Mimosa. This is your own house and you'll eat what the hell you feel like. It's New Year's, a holiday with no special religious or food-oriented connotations for a change.
Maybe you make a few phone calls to family and friends wishing them a Happy New Year while you sip your coffee and eat cold lamb chops and Double Stuff Oreos. If you're wise you skip reading the papers or watching any news reports today to preserve the illusion that this New Year is indeed a fresh new beginning. New Year's Day is a time to kick back and relax, nurse your hangover if you've got one, watch boring amateur football fames and tell yourself that God is in His heaven, all is right with the world.
January 2nd will be soon enough to catch up on the news that, yes indeed, we're earnestly fucking up yet another year with suicide bombings, wars, poisoning the earth, sky and water, the wealthy are still pulling their reverse Robin Hood act by robbing from the poor and keeping it, the government is still tripping all over itself to make hard times even harder, and clue-free celebrities are making jackasses of themselves. No, that's not for New Year's Day, a day of doing what the hell we feel like and pretending everything is going to be better and different this year.
Hell, some people might even keep their New Year's resolutions for a whole day, but not all that many of us. After all, it's a holiday, so all that resolution keeping and breaking can wait a day or two. A holiday like this one with so few ironclad traditions is a gift. After all, New Year's is all about the Eve, not the Day. People go kind of nuts on New Year's Eve, and we tend to set ourselves up for even greater disappointment that we usually do if we don't have the Best Time Ever!
So if you're one of those masochists, you can spend New Year's Day either sulking about it, or learning from the experience that good times can't be manufactured, they just sort of happen. While you can put yourself into a position to have a great time, the fact that it's New Year's Eve is no guarantee the night will be any more memorable than other nights. Too often New Year's Eve is an overblown, overdone, over-hyped and ultimately strange night. Seasoned drunks call it Amateur Night, while many others simply dread the forced merriment of the whole experience.
Not that it has to be that way, just that it too often is. Then one day it dawns on you that New Year's Eve, like any other day, is what it is, and you choose a little more carefully how you celebrate and don't over-invest the night with unrealistic expectations. The real bonus of the New Year is New Year's Day itself, that holiday with few demands and iron-bound traditions. This year most of us got an extended bonus since New Year's Day was on Friday and we got a whole 3 day weekend to do with as we pleased.
Maybe some of us went skiing or spent some time someplace warm and sunny to recharge the old batteries, and that's a good thing if that's what you enjoy. For most of us, though, New Year's Day unfolds as it will, with nothing particular to do, maybe take a walk in the snow, see a movie or just putter around the house in a robe and slippers trailing Oreo crumbs. That's a pretty cool vacation too, without having to take off your shoes and walk through a metal detector or worry about the weather. It's all good.
It's the New Year, and all things are possible. For this one day, we can do what we want, think what we want and look forward to whatever it is we each like looking forward to, and there's nothing to stop us. Of course, remember it is vital to not read the papers or watch the news. If you can do that, then 2010 has been perfect so far. Life is fair, the world is at peace and all God's children are happy, well cared for and living wonderful lives. Happy New Year.
Maybe you make a few phone calls to family and friends wishing them a Happy New Year while you sip your coffee and eat cold lamb chops and Double Stuff Oreos. If you're wise you skip reading the papers or watching any news reports today to preserve the illusion that this New Year is indeed a fresh new beginning. New Year's Day is a time to kick back and relax, nurse your hangover if you've got one, watch boring amateur football fames and tell yourself that God is in His heaven, all is right with the world.
January 2nd will be soon enough to catch up on the news that, yes indeed, we're earnestly fucking up yet another year with suicide bombings, wars, poisoning the earth, sky and water, the wealthy are still pulling their reverse Robin Hood act by robbing from the poor and keeping it, the government is still tripping all over itself to make hard times even harder, and clue-free celebrities are making jackasses of themselves. No, that's not for New Year's Day, a day of doing what the hell we feel like and pretending everything is going to be better and different this year.
Hell, some people might even keep their New Year's resolutions for a whole day, but not all that many of us. After all, it's a holiday, so all that resolution keeping and breaking can wait a day or two. A holiday like this one with so few ironclad traditions is a gift. After all, New Year's is all about the Eve, not the Day. People go kind of nuts on New Year's Eve, and we tend to set ourselves up for even greater disappointment that we usually do if we don't have the Best Time Ever!
So if you're one of those masochists, you can spend New Year's Day either sulking about it, or learning from the experience that good times can't be manufactured, they just sort of happen. While you can put yourself into a position to have a great time, the fact that it's New Year's Eve is no guarantee the night will be any more memorable than other nights. Too often New Year's Eve is an overblown, overdone, over-hyped and ultimately strange night. Seasoned drunks call it Amateur Night, while many others simply dread the forced merriment of the whole experience.
Not that it has to be that way, just that it too often is. Then one day it dawns on you that New Year's Eve, like any other day, is what it is, and you choose a little more carefully how you celebrate and don't over-invest the night with unrealistic expectations. The real bonus of the New Year is New Year's Day itself, that holiday with few demands and iron-bound traditions. This year most of us got an extended bonus since New Year's Day was on Friday and we got a whole 3 day weekend to do with as we pleased.
Maybe some of us went skiing or spent some time someplace warm and sunny to recharge the old batteries, and that's a good thing if that's what you enjoy. For most of us, though, New Year's Day unfolds as it will, with nothing particular to do, maybe take a walk in the snow, see a movie or just putter around the house in a robe and slippers trailing Oreo crumbs. That's a pretty cool vacation too, without having to take off your shoes and walk through a metal detector or worry about the weather. It's all good.
It's the New Year, and all things are possible. For this one day, we can do what we want, think what we want and look forward to whatever it is we each like looking forward to, and there's nothing to stop us. Of course, remember it is vital to not read the papers or watch the news. If you can do that, then 2010 has been perfect so far. Life is fair, the world is at peace and all God's children are happy, well cared for and living wonderful lives. Happy New Year.
January 2, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 598
He who lives by the sword is hopelessly out of date. Odds are he will wind up second best when confronting he who lives by the gun.
DEAR DOT KAHM - GET A LIFE, YOU FRIGGIN' MORON!
To my loyal readers: The nitwits here at bobcrespo.com finally let me write my own intros to my advice column. I told the big boss, Bob Crespo himself, it was either that or I get lost and take my shtick to another website. Yes, Mister ?My-Name-Is-In-The-Title-So-I Can-Do-What-I-Wan was writing my intros and doing a lame friggin' job of it if you ask me. I told him where to stick his smug jokes and to let me handle my own opening before I get to the letters from you emotional cripples and weirdos. I told him it's not like I plan to use the words "motherfucker" or "shitstain" all the time, so what's his beef? Believe me, he's a real piece of work, this one, and could use some of old Dot Kham's best heart to heart advice, like: "Get over yourself, bozo, you ain't the only one in Brooklyn knows how to tell it like it is!" So from here on in this page will be all Dot Kham all the time! Now let's see what whining drones have written to me this week:
Dear Dot: With all this terrorism I am afraid to fly anymore. I think we need harsher laws to stop these people, don't let them get on airplanes. What should I do? - Frightened in Phiadelphia
Dear Frightened: How about getting a life, you friggin' moron, and growing a pair of balls? You have a better chance of getting struck by lighting than being a victim of terrorism. You want to surrender your civil rights because a few incompetent camel jockeys don't like Coney Island, go right ahead and stay in friggin' Philly with your cheese steaks and second-best baseball team! Just don't ask the rest of us to stop being Americans because you're afraid of woman-hating fags who think they can change the way we live with a few bombs. Listen, pal, it was my town that was attacked on 9/11, and we didn't surrender then and don't plan to anytime soon. We got plenty of A-rabs in Brooklyn and they're okay Joes for the most part, even if their food smells like old dogshit. They got as much right to enjoy American civil liberties as shmucks like you who would play right into the terrorists' hands and live in a Big Brother society. It's chumps like you who love The Patriot Act and getting spied on and having people locked up without access to a lawyer like the Gestapo came for them! What's worse than that?
Dear Dot: My pet poodle Fluffy is getting old and the vet says he needs an operation to cure his cancer, but that would cost $8,000. What do you think his chances are? Loving Fluffy in L.A.
Dear Shit For Brains: I look like Marcus Welby, M.D. to you? How the hell would I know what your dog's chances are? You want to spend 8 grand on a cancer operation? Fine, spend it on somebody's kid that that some corporate HMO told them it was a pre-existing condition and they won't pay. While it's bad news that your poodle is dying, the good news is that Fluffy's only a damned dog, you idiot! Put him out of his misery, go to the dog pound and adopt another young and healthy pooch that they will only kill if no one adopts them, and donate the $8,000 to a poor family to help their sick child survive. Where are your priorities? Sometimes I can't believe I have to explain such obvious crap to you people! Have you been paying attention to this thing we have called life? Open your friggin' eyes, we're all in this together!
Dear Dot: My boyfriend Jimmy says that men are naturally polygamous and that it's okay for him to screw around with other women as long as he comes home to me. He's a great lover and a decent guy and I love him and don't want to lose him. Should I let him fool around on me? - Penelope in Queens
Dear Penelope: Some people are going to screw around no matter what, men or women. At least Jimmy is upfront about it. Just tell Romeo that if it's okay for him, then he won't mind you banging other guys. If he's okay with that, then you should be okay with his stray dog tendencies. Bottom line is, you can't help who you fall in love with, and if the guy's a mutt but he's good to you, well, you've got to ask yourself if you'd be better off with him or without him. The arbitrary sex rules we set up for ourselves too often doom good relationships. As long as your home life isn't torn apart and you're getting plenty of Jimmy's loving, what's the big whoop?
Dear Ms. Kham: My name is Fred Trilling from Detroit and I have a tough question for you: My 1957 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop is the envy of my antique car club and I'm very proud of it. It's in perfect condition, but a couple of parts are wearing out, like the struts and the chrome grille, which I think I polished into near-disintegration. Some excellent replica replacement parts are available but I want original '57 Chevy parts. Am I being unreasonable? - Fred Trilling from Detroit.
Dear Fred Trilling from Detroit: Hell no, Freddie boy! Your car is not only your pride and joy but a national treasure, reminding America that this was a better country when everybody drove giant flashy cars, smoked cigarettes and ate steaks! Replica parts for a '57 Chevy? Might as well tell old Dot Kham to get herself a new plastic pussy 'cause I used it so damned much! Some things are classics and thus sacred, and old Chevies and my nether regions qualify. You just get in touch with my pal Vito from Canarsie, who appreciates all things classic, if you get my drift. He's in the vintage car business and if he can't get an original part, it can't be gotten, and believe me, he's got a full inventory of Classic Chevy original parts. Guess what I drive around Brooklyn every day? A fire engine red '57 Chevy Bel Air Convertible with full original chrome detailing, and Vinny is the guy who keeps my car (and me) running smooth with original Chevy parts, including the hard-to-find white-on-white convertible top. Bless you, Fred Trilling from Detroit, and if you're ever in Brooklyn you can look up Dot Kahm and we'll compare original parts!
Dear Dot: It's the New Year and I need to make some resolutions. Any suggestions? - Amenable in Alabama
Dear Amenable: Being that it's after the New Year, maybe a procrastination-related resolution might be appropriate. Better yet, how about resolving to decide for yourself who the hell you are? Make a mental list of all your other New Year's resolutions and see if you kept a single one. I know the only one I ever kept is to swear off unrealistic expectations. I renew that one every year just so I can say I made a damned resolution. Meanwhile, the trick is tobe who you are all year long, the best friggin' version of you that you can be. Happy New Year, kids!
Dear Dot: With all this terrorism I am afraid to fly anymore. I think we need harsher laws to stop these people, don't let them get on airplanes. What should I do? - Frightened in Phiadelphia
Dear Frightened: How about getting a life, you friggin' moron, and growing a pair of balls? You have a better chance of getting struck by lighting than being a victim of terrorism. You want to surrender your civil rights because a few incompetent camel jockeys don't like Coney Island, go right ahead and stay in friggin' Philly with your cheese steaks and second-best baseball team! Just don't ask the rest of us to stop being Americans because you're afraid of woman-hating fags who think they can change the way we live with a few bombs. Listen, pal, it was my town that was attacked on 9/11, and we didn't surrender then and don't plan to anytime soon. We got plenty of A-rabs in Brooklyn and they're okay Joes for the most part, even if their food smells like old dogshit. They got as much right to enjoy American civil liberties as shmucks like you who would play right into the terrorists' hands and live in a Big Brother society. It's chumps like you who love The Patriot Act and getting spied on and having people locked up without access to a lawyer like the Gestapo came for them! What's worse than that?
Dear Dot: My pet poodle Fluffy is getting old and the vet says he needs an operation to cure his cancer, but that would cost $8,000. What do you think his chances are? Loving Fluffy in L.A.
Dear Shit For Brains: I look like Marcus Welby, M.D. to you? How the hell would I know what your dog's chances are? You want to spend 8 grand on a cancer operation? Fine, spend it on somebody's kid that that some corporate HMO told them it was a pre-existing condition and they won't pay. While it's bad news that your poodle is dying, the good news is that Fluffy's only a damned dog, you idiot! Put him out of his misery, go to the dog pound and adopt another young and healthy pooch that they will only kill if no one adopts them, and donate the $8,000 to a poor family to help their sick child survive. Where are your priorities? Sometimes I can't believe I have to explain such obvious crap to you people! Have you been paying attention to this thing we have called life? Open your friggin' eyes, we're all in this together!
Dear Dot: My boyfriend Jimmy says that men are naturally polygamous and that it's okay for him to screw around with other women as long as he comes home to me. He's a great lover and a decent guy and I love him and don't want to lose him. Should I let him fool around on me? - Penelope in Queens
Dear Penelope: Some people are going to screw around no matter what, men or women. At least Jimmy is upfront about it. Just tell Romeo that if it's okay for him, then he won't mind you banging other guys. If he's okay with that, then you should be okay with his stray dog tendencies. Bottom line is, you can't help who you fall in love with, and if the guy's a mutt but he's good to you, well, you've got to ask yourself if you'd be better off with him or without him. The arbitrary sex rules we set up for ourselves too often doom good relationships. As long as your home life isn't torn apart and you're getting plenty of Jimmy's loving, what's the big whoop?
Dear Ms. Kham: My name is Fred Trilling from Detroit and I have a tough question for you: My 1957 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop is the envy of my antique car club and I'm very proud of it. It's in perfect condition, but a couple of parts are wearing out, like the struts and the chrome grille, which I think I polished into near-disintegration. Some excellent replica replacement parts are available but I want original '57 Chevy parts. Am I being unreasonable? - Fred Trilling from Detroit.
Dear Fred Trilling from Detroit: Hell no, Freddie boy! Your car is not only your pride and joy but a national treasure, reminding America that this was a better country when everybody drove giant flashy cars, smoked cigarettes and ate steaks! Replica parts for a '57 Chevy? Might as well tell old Dot Kham to get herself a new plastic pussy 'cause I used it so damned much! Some things are classics and thus sacred, and old Chevies and my nether regions qualify. You just get in touch with my pal Vito from Canarsie, who appreciates all things classic, if you get my drift. He's in the vintage car business and if he can't get an original part, it can't be gotten, and believe me, he's got a full inventory of Classic Chevy original parts. Guess what I drive around Brooklyn every day? A fire engine red '57 Chevy Bel Air Convertible with full original chrome detailing, and Vinny is the guy who keeps my car (and me) running smooth with original Chevy parts, including the hard-to-find white-on-white convertible top. Bless you, Fred Trilling from Detroit, and if you're ever in Brooklyn you can look up Dot Kahm and we'll compare original parts!
Dear Dot: It's the New Year and I need to make some resolutions. Any suggestions? - Amenable in Alabama
Dear Amenable: Being that it's after the New Year, maybe a procrastination-related resolution might be appropriate. Better yet, how about resolving to decide for yourself who the hell you are? Make a mental list of all your other New Year's resolutions and see if you kept a single one. I know the only one I ever kept is to swear off unrealistic expectations. I renew that one every year just so I can say I made a damned resolution. Meanwhile, the trick is tobe who you are all year long, the best friggin' version of you that you can be. Happy New Year, kids!
January 1, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 597
Being Pope is not nearly as much fun as it was when kings kissed your ass, you could make up all kinds of crazy rules, order people who question you to be burned at the stake and nobody dared to make fun of your silly clothes.
FACTS OF LIFE
As a public disservice, bobcrespo.com has been scouring the world for oddball facts. Just in case you don't have enough useless information stored up between your ears, try these on for size:
A lactating Holstein dairy cow produces about 150 pounds of waste each day, one third urine and two thirds wet feces. Is it any wonder why so few of us want to be dairy farmers?
Bulls are really colorblind and the red cape that bullfighters use to infuriate them appears gray to them. The real reason the bulls are so pissed off is because they have already been stabbed several times by picadors before the matador starts waving his cape around and stabbing him some more. The red cape, however, looks really smokin' with the matador's flashy duds.
Enough about bovines. The new thing with turkeys is to deep fry them. Not that the taste of this dry ass bird is any better deep-fried, it's just than some people want to cut to the chase and swiftly move on to the Thanksgiving Day football games. Only problem is that a great many homes have been burned down by people who figure it's okay to have a few drinks before tossing a 25 pound frozen bird into 5 gallons of boiling oil. Not exactly the most brilliant idea to come down the pike lately, but often a pretty spectacular sight.
To those who are critical of American industry, there's hope. Almost 90% of all pornography is produced right here in the good old U.S. of A, with 260 brand new porn websites going online every single day. Fastest growing genre? Hot Asian Babes Doing All Kinds Of Weird Stuff. Take that, China!
The smallest nation on Earth in both area and population is Vatican City, 110 acres and 800 people. It's also one of the most influential nations on earth, what with the Pope living there and all, and him being the boss of all bosses of more than a billion Roman Catholics. While its power is not quite what it was in the Middle Ages when kings and emperors kissed papal ass, the Vatican still packs an ideological punch.
Good news for the Pope: Christianity is the world's fastest growing religion.
Speaking of tiny countries, the only nation on earth with more personal computers per capita than The United States is San Marino, properly known as The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, with 738 computers per thousand citizens as opposed to a mere 574 per thousand in America. There are 30,000 Most Serene Marinans in a 23.5 square mile landlocked nation surrounded by Italy. This nation also boast the world's oldest Constitution, dating from 1600, and has been independent since the year 301, when they split from the remnants of the Roman Empire. That's about as much information as is needed about San Marino. More, probably.
The top of the food chain is occupied not by humans, but by the smallest of living creatures, bacteria, which eat us when we die. So much for our big brains, appetizers for microbes.
In the World's Record For Futility Department, the structure that was the biggest failure and took the longest time to build and is the longest wall ever is the Great Wall of China, 800 years in the making and completely useless for keeping out invaders, its only intended purpose. It did however, begin paying dividends in the 20th century as a popular tourist attraction.
We're #3! We're #3! As it turns out, America is not the nation with the highest percentage of fat people. Australia tops us for the #2 slot, but the real connoisseur of corpulence, the champion of chops, the lord of lard, the Supreme Leader of Eaters is Samoa, where an impressive 93.5% of the population is obese. Well done! Or rare, medium, medium well, whatever... just get it to the table and watch it evaporate!
At least the good old US of A still leads the world in teenage binge drinking, even if we are only a paltry #43 in average alcohol consumption per capita. The number one drinking country is, get this; Uganda! When you consider that the only other thing you've ever heard about Uganda is the genocidal misadventures of Idi Amin, that figure becomes understandable.
While we're doing meaningless records, guess which country has the most bicycles per capita? No, not China, but The Netherlands. When you consider that drugs are practically legal there and driving cars while really stoned is problematic, and sort of dangerous, that brings the bicycle thing into sharper focus, even if that's about the only thing in sharp focus over there.
The record for the most autobiographies is held by the late Winston Churchill, who apparently never had an unexpressed thought. While the man led a riveting life and was a major player in one of history's most fascinating epochs, you'd think that two or three "The Story of My Life" books would have sufficed, but good old Winnie figured a dozen or more (many with several volumes) would be more like it. No one recognized the man's indisputable greatness more than himself.
The person holding the record for the most Google searches ever is Michael Jackson. Second and third on the list? Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. You have to go a very long way down the list to find people like Einstein, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Caesar, Christ, Newton, Voltaire, Jefferson, Washington, Mandela and yes, good old Winston Churchill, who is hundreds of millions of Google hits behind Madonna, who has written about a dozen fewer autobiographies.
The most nutritious food in the world is seaweed, possibly explaining why whales and Japanese senior citizens are in such great shape.
The Million Man March in Washington D.C. on October of 1995 was 600,000 men short of its title, but the "400,000 Man March" is nowhere near as cool a title.
Deserts cover one third of the world's land masses, while water covers two third of the entire earth. Factor in all the swamps and uninhabitable mountain ranges and that pretty much explains why the subways are so crowded.
The movie phrase that is heard least often in real life is: "The Force is strong in this one!" The most often used movie line? "Feeling lucky, punk?"
The world's biggest ball of yarn? Who gives a crap where it is and who put it there? Nobody's making any detours to see that! There's a limit to skull space for oddball facts and bobcrespo.com draws the line at gigantic balls of yarn.
There's lots of facts about Canada, none of them remotely interesting. Again, there are limits to our curiosity and Canada is a guaranteed eye-glazer.
A lactating Holstein dairy cow produces about 150 pounds of waste each day, one third urine and two thirds wet feces. Is it any wonder why so few of us want to be dairy farmers?
Bulls are really colorblind and the red cape that bullfighters use to infuriate them appears gray to them. The real reason the bulls are so pissed off is because they have already been stabbed several times by picadors before the matador starts waving his cape around and stabbing him some more. The red cape, however, looks really smokin' with the matador's flashy duds.
Enough about bovines. The new thing with turkeys is to deep fry them. Not that the taste of this dry ass bird is any better deep-fried, it's just than some people want to cut to the chase and swiftly move on to the Thanksgiving Day football games. Only problem is that a great many homes have been burned down by people who figure it's okay to have a few drinks before tossing a 25 pound frozen bird into 5 gallons of boiling oil. Not exactly the most brilliant idea to come down the pike lately, but often a pretty spectacular sight.
To those who are critical of American industry, there's hope. Almost 90% of all pornography is produced right here in the good old U.S. of A, with 260 brand new porn websites going online every single day. Fastest growing genre? Hot Asian Babes Doing All Kinds Of Weird Stuff. Take that, China!
The smallest nation on Earth in both area and population is Vatican City, 110 acres and 800 people. It's also one of the most influential nations on earth, what with the Pope living there and all, and him being the boss of all bosses of more than a billion Roman Catholics. While its power is not quite what it was in the Middle Ages when kings and emperors kissed papal ass, the Vatican still packs an ideological punch.
Good news for the Pope: Christianity is the world's fastest growing religion.
Speaking of tiny countries, the only nation on earth with more personal computers per capita than The United States is San Marino, properly known as The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, with 738 computers per thousand citizens as opposed to a mere 574 per thousand in America. There are 30,000 Most Serene Marinans in a 23.5 square mile landlocked nation surrounded by Italy. This nation also boast the world's oldest Constitution, dating from 1600, and has been independent since the year 301, when they split from the remnants of the Roman Empire. That's about as much information as is needed about San Marino. More, probably.
The top of the food chain is occupied not by humans, but by the smallest of living creatures, bacteria, which eat us when we die. So much for our big brains, appetizers for microbes.
In the World's Record For Futility Department, the structure that was the biggest failure and took the longest time to build and is the longest wall ever is the Great Wall of China, 800 years in the making and completely useless for keeping out invaders, its only intended purpose. It did however, begin paying dividends in the 20th century as a popular tourist attraction.
We're #3! We're #3! As it turns out, America is not the nation with the highest percentage of fat people. Australia tops us for the #2 slot, but the real connoisseur of corpulence, the champion of chops, the lord of lard, the Supreme Leader of Eaters is Samoa, where an impressive 93.5% of the population is obese. Well done! Or rare, medium, medium well, whatever... just get it to the table and watch it evaporate!
At least the good old US of A still leads the world in teenage binge drinking, even if we are only a paltry #43 in average alcohol consumption per capita. The number one drinking country is, get this; Uganda! When you consider that the only other thing you've ever heard about Uganda is the genocidal misadventures of Idi Amin, that figure becomes understandable.
While we're doing meaningless records, guess which country has the most bicycles per capita? No, not China, but The Netherlands. When you consider that drugs are practically legal there and driving cars while really stoned is problematic, and sort of dangerous, that brings the bicycle thing into sharper focus, even if that's about the only thing in sharp focus over there.
The record for the most autobiographies is held by the late Winston Churchill, who apparently never had an unexpressed thought. While the man led a riveting life and was a major player in one of history's most fascinating epochs, you'd think that two or three "The Story of My Life" books would have sufficed, but good old Winnie figured a dozen or more (many with several volumes) would be more like it. No one recognized the man's indisputable greatness more than himself.
The person holding the record for the most Google searches ever is Michael Jackson. Second and third on the list? Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. You have to go a very long way down the list to find people like Einstein, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Caesar, Christ, Newton, Voltaire, Jefferson, Washington, Mandela and yes, good old Winston Churchill, who is hundreds of millions of Google hits behind Madonna, who has written about a dozen fewer autobiographies.
The most nutritious food in the world is seaweed, possibly explaining why whales and Japanese senior citizens are in such great shape.
The Million Man March in Washington D.C. on October of 1995 was 600,000 men short of its title, but the "400,000 Man March" is nowhere near as cool a title.
Deserts cover one third of the world's land masses, while water covers two third of the entire earth. Factor in all the swamps and uninhabitable mountain ranges and that pretty much explains why the subways are so crowded.
The movie phrase that is heard least often in real life is: "The Force is strong in this one!" The most often used movie line? "Feeling lucky, punk?"
The world's biggest ball of yarn? Who gives a crap where it is and who put it there? Nobody's making any detours to see that! There's a limit to skull space for oddball facts and bobcrespo.com draws the line at gigantic balls of yarn.
There's lots of facts about Canada, none of them remotely interesting. Again, there are limits to our curiosity and Canada is a guaranteed eye-glazer.
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