My Sick Mind

While I was trying to eat my oatmeal this morning, the good folks over at Fox News were running this show called Bulls and Bears , hosted by Brenda Buttner. It's supposed to be an opinion program about investing and economics, which is interesting to me, but somehow, the topic of conversation turned to today's Senate vote on the Iraq war resolution, previously approved by the House. Brenda led the way, saying that it was ridiculous and a "waste of time and money" to have the Senators in the Capitol on a Saturday - when they could otherwise be watching Fox News. Two of the panel members agreed (of course), but when one did not, she was quickly silenced so that Brenda could move to another panel member who would agree with her. They fell back on the usual arguments like how it would be better if they were debating real issues and how this was better because at least the legislators weren't harming the economy by wasting their time with this ... la de da . Then they ...

I'm glad you asked. I believe that, in a few short years, Sandra Bullock will have won a "Best Actress" Academy Award and will be an established star in Hollywood. I also think that the cellular phone is a fad and will soon be replaced by cups and string. We did a lot of work today. We chased the American Greetings people off of their own web site and later, they abandoned the video version of that stupid card from its spot on YouTube. Myself and others received page hits from their headquarters in Cleveland and e-mail from their PR people who tried to spin the card as some sort of comic satire. Once it was discovered that a video version was posted on YouTube by "blmountain" (clever) some noise erupted and it disappeared, like the Monster from the Tar Pits . Nice going. A doctor removed two moles from President Bush's face on Friday . They were expected to be benign. If they're looking for a malignancy, they should check the Vice President's office...

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There are three sure signs that spring is coming: 1 - Baseball training camps have opened, and players are reporting. 2 - NASCAR's biggest race, and the first of the season, The Daytona 500, is Sunday. 3 - The LPGA kicked off their first tournament in Hawaii this week. So, screw this f*** ing cold and snow. Bring on the gigantic trucks! That's right, it's a truck. This appeared in the Inquirer's sports section on Thursday. That's a man (kinda) standing next to it, reaching up to open the door. Reaching up to open the door. He is reaching up. to. open. the. door. He's Phillies pitcher Jon Lieber , and he just bought a new house ... er. .... truck. It's a Ford F-650 (what's the "F" for?). It has 47-inch tires, a 200-gallon gas tank and cost $200,000. It is either a sign of the Apocalypse , or the guy has way too much money. For the record, he makes about $7.5 million a year pitching baseballs that a majority of players find easy to hit. Op...

Dear American Greetings, Welcome to my little space on the Internet. As you know, some of us were none too happy to find that your Blue Mountain subsidiary posted a so-called greeting card that was biased politically. Something you called Love Democratic Style . While it is not generally my fashion to conduct boycotts of products, I feel that in this case it is both easy and justified. Why is it easy? Because my local greeting card emporium is loaded with cards of all sorts. Some are made by a company you may know as Hallmark. Occasionally, I like to buy a blank card and (egad!) do the writing myself. Imagine that. Some people do not need greeting cards. Whatever will you do? As for the e-greetings, e this. I can do my e-greeting via cleverly crafted e-mails or by stopping by a place like The Nature Conservancy, who will happily send an e-greeting to the r e cipient of my choice. Free too. The next time you consider putting politically biased cartoon e-greeting cards on the Internet...

I was peacefully enjoying (and mocking) 20 Million Miles to Earth at a friend's house tonight, unaware that outside in the cold distance, my car was getting nature's glazing. Yes, another shower of ice from God's great beyond. As faithful readers know, my wipers are shit in the ice, so a 30-mile drive home took over an hour. To top it off, I feel crappy since I missed American Idol . No. If you've never seen this movie, do . It isn't that it's a cinema classic, because it's not. It's so utterly ridiculous, and funny in its ridiculousness, that it's fun. It must have wowed movie audiences in 1957. It features a tiny fishing village in Sicily, where the people are apparently unaware that there is a planet called Venus - hence the continual asking, "The planet Venus?" when they are told that a mission to Venus just returned. I imagine that there is no newspaper, radio or television there, since the United States was able to secretly...

The image of Cleopatra on the silver denarius of dated to 32 BC, being displayed at Newcastle University , Newcastle , England . Wednesday Feb. 14, 2007 . So maybe Mark Antony loved Cleopatra for her mind. That is the conclusion drawn by academics at the University of Newcastle from a Roman denarius, which depicts the celebrated queen of Egypt as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin. In short, a fair match for the hook-nosed, thick-necked Mark Antony on the obverse. ( AP Photo/Scott Heppell) Not at all like Elizabeth Taylor . Yikes . Does that mean that 2,000 years from now, historians will be debating the image of Barbara Bush on the dollar bill, and wondering whether she was as beautiful as George and his drunken relatives thought she was?

As I write, my car windshield is icing over with layer upon layer of freezing rain that will require me to get up a half hour early Wednesday morning to begin the scraping process and slide to work. On my way home tonight, a favorite long-sleeve t-shirt was dangling one sleeve out the passenger side door, and when I got home, the sleeve was black with road junk and ruined beyond repair. My driver-side windshield wiper is leaving a streak about an inch wide that travels at the exact level of my eyes as they watch the road. When I got home, I poured out a nice bowl of Vanilla Yogurt Cheerios and discovered that I had about 2 ounces of soy milk left in the refrigerator. Turns out that you can eat Cheerios semi-dry. But, it could be worse. Couldn't it?

In between the "Messy Mix" (formerly known as the Blizzard of the Century) and the release of the new dollar coin falls something we humans refer to as St. Valentine's Day. I work with "men" (quotation marks intentional) and every time one of these romantic secular holidays comes around, I marvel at their total lack of commitment. Whether it's Christmas, some anniversary, birthday or other such couples event, their cluelessness astounds me. The general question: "What are you getting [her] for [event]?" The general answer: "I don't know." FOLLOWED BY THE CHILDISH EYE-ROLL, DENOTING SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF FINISHING YOUR VEGETABLES. Perhaps I shouldn't be so astounded, but my astonishment comes from the fact that they have been with this woman for enough time that an answer should come quickly, and the problem should not be what to do, but rather which of the many choices should they pick. Especially since these holidays...

The local weather people have been waiting for this for months. It's been so warm around here that they haven't had any excitement in their lives. But that's changing. It's a good thing they wear dark suits, because I bet they have stiffies as big as antenna towers - except for Cecily - her nipples are hard. Why? THE SNOW IS COMING! Finally. After months of unseasonably warm weather in Philadelphia, the groundhogs are seeing their shadows and the snowstorm is coming! Probably. On Friday night's 11 o'clock news, channel 10 had the word SNOWSTORM! (with exclamation point) in its forecast for Tuesday. Meanwhile, the storm was still forming off the coast of California, but the computer models were telling them to add the exclamation points. A bit extreme, I thought. Now, the forecasts are a bit less dire. There's a line of demarcation now. Most of the horrible snow will occur west of Philadelphia (as it usually does) while the rest of us get the fr...

Tonight, the music industry pats itself on the back. Tonight is the 49 th Annual Grammy Awards, and the instrument has not been invented that can measure my indifference to the program. I'm what most people would call a music snob. I've never been interested in popular music - mostly because it's popular. It's easy to turn on the radio and be spoon-fed music that some programmer has been paid to tell us we like. As for me, I prefer to do my own research and find musicians whom I feel are worthy of my attention, time and money. I came of age during the so-called "progressive rock" era of the early 1970s, and my favorite musicians were bands like Gentle Giant, Focus, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson and Manfred Mann's Earth Band. They were acquired tastes, and the music was challenging to listen to, but to me, that made it so much better. My Grammy hatred comes from the 1972 Awards show, when "American Pie" was nominated for Best Son...