My Sick Mind

Try as they might to get people to stop using their cell phones while they're driving, our legislators are fighting a losing battle against the automobile manufacturers. This is the dashboard of the 2012 Hyundai Veloster .  It features something called blueLink, which synchronizes your smartphone to the car to allow you to navigate and communicate with your fellow drivers as you speed along the highway. Every day, states are sponsoring legislation to make it illegal to keep drivers from texting while driving and some are outlawing using the devices at all.  Some have said that it is hazardous to use hands-free devices as well. While lawmakers claim to be looking out for our greater good, it is the duty of the auto makers to provide people with what they want.  Apparently, what they want is a cell phone in their car. Perhaps our government needs to switch its focus from the driver to the manufacturer?  Why outlaw the use of cell phones when we ...

The "social media" thing has been quite interesting.  As a migrant from being "pen pals" and actually speaking on the phone to someone, I have watched this revolution in personal communications and marvelled at the relationship between being personal and impersonal simultaneously. The most interesting (debatable) part of it is the relationship that us commoners have with the so-called celebrities.  In the Twitter language, we are "followers."  On Facebook we are "friends."  I think that's what separates Twitter from Facebook.  On Twitter you are either followed or a follower.  On Facebook, there is a friend relationship that at least places the participants on a somewhat equal footing - even though one or the other might know it isn't so. Take, for instance, a recent Tweet (a strange sequence, to be sure) from my "friend" Paula Creamer, in which she discloses her " Christmas present to myself " in Twitpic ...

Over the weekend, I saw a lot of photos of wrapped stuff under trees (both real and artificial -  trees, not gifts) and wondered about the wretched excess that this holiday has become.  Rather than find that one thing that you think might make the holiday special, you have chosen to over-compensate and grab a bunch of stuff in the hopes that something will hit the target. We buy people one birthday gift, yet we splurge on Christmas with tons of crap.  Explain.   Perhaps it reeks of sour grapes from my end, since my holiday contained neither tree nor wrapped stuff.  Nevertheless, it seems as though we (you) spend a lot of money on things that people either do not need nor want, and that is disconcerting. The latest story from the Internet says that this holiday season might set a record for gift returns, costing retailers almost $47 billion.  One of the reasons they cite is that consumers decided that they didn't want to spend as much as they d...

I know, at the age of 54 that the best half of my life is gone.  It's a simple mathematical work.  I could give you great odds that I'm not going to last 105 years, and I can also safely assume that the last 25 or so of my years will be spent in some hunched-over, problematic knee pain, hard-of-hearing-lost-sight-body-fat-gaining sustenance.  It's difficult to imagine now, but unless I'm some Jack LaLanne clone I don't see it ending any differently. I have to look back, at this point, and assess the events of the past and reflect - both negatively and positively - on their impact. This isn't some New Year's resolution-type thing, just random junk ... My gym is filled with 50-something year-old guys with tattoos and unsightly body hair.  It's what makes me wonder what guys find appealing in other guys.  I find nothing appealing about hairy asses and paunches - but reasonable men may differ. So there's that.   And I'm left to wonder ...

Victim number 7 has emerged in the Bill Conlin child sex abuse case, and victim number 12 in the Sandusky case.  I guess we're supposed to be shocked and appalled, but I'd guess that we've heard from maybe ten percent of the potential victims. This isn't like trying Sushi or skydiving.   You don't do it once and say, "OK, I got that out of my system."  It's not a Bucket List item that gets checked off.  It's recidivist behavior, just like adult sex.  It's perverted potato chips. On the grand scale of human behavior, I understand sex between consenting adults.  I even understand it between adults of the same sex, because we have opposable thumbs and reasoned thought.  But, when it comes to fondling 7-year old boys, that's on Pluto. People on Neptune are laughing at them.  "Wow, we like a lot of strange shit, but we aren't that bad." I can't figure out what climactic sexual thrill is derived from putting your ha...

Somebody should have Bill Conlin on suicide watch.   I'm just saying. I cut my baseball teeth on his Daily News columns in the 1970s and 1980s.  Who knew the deep secrets he was hiding?  Nobody, which is exactly the point.  Football coaches, filmmakers, musicians and writers perform their craft to our admiration, while we go about our daily lives.  They are awarded Grammy's, Pulitzers and are admitted to various sports Halls of Fame, all the while concealing their hideous private lives.  It's long past time that we stop admiring people for their so-called worth to society and start looking at their work - and their work alone - when it comes time to awarding them.  Does it make Bill Conlin any less a sportswriter because he enjoyed fondling young boys and girls?  No. What it does is make him less of a human, and that is something to which we all should aspire to overcome. Every night this week I have been on the road with a driver who...

Tim Tebow's Denver Broncos won another game on Sunday.  The reason, we are led to believe, is that Tim is a Christian.  God looks out for Christians and he bestows them with superhuman traits, such as the ability to get a football team far enough down the field so that their kicker can make a 59-yard field goal to win the game in overtime.  He also encourages the opposing team to fumble and allow the Tebow to go on that 20 yard game-winning drive. It is in times like these that I question what year this is.  Are we really superstitious enough to believe that all this is some sort of divine intervention?  Aren't there Christians on other teams?  Why would their God want some to succeed and others to fail?   What about all the Satan worshippers?  Isn't Satan trying? Now, there are rumors by his ex-wife that professional wrestler Hulk Hogan had a homosexual affair with another wrestler, the aptly named Brutus Beefcake.  Hogan, of c...

If I've learned anything from Twitter and Facebook, I have learned to communicate ideas in a condensed form.  So, I will eschew the long-form essay in exchange for some Facebook-suitable paragraphs: It's baseball Winter Meeting season.   That means it's free agent signing season.  The salary numbers being reported for guys like Jose Reyes, Albert Pujols and Jonathan Papelbon would run a small country for several years.  In a time when state governments, our Postal Service, banks and many U.S. citizens are struggling to stay afloat, throwing millions of dollars after athletes seems to be a bit misguided.  But then, philanthropy is a lost art.  One wonders what these millionaire team owners could do if they decided to sell their team and actually do something that furthered society.  I suppose merely considering that makes me old and cranky? I saw Jerry Sandusky being escorted out of his home in handcuffs this afternoon, after two more adults c...

I guess I'm supposed to get behind this whole "Thanksgiving" gig and relent to it being some sort of family style pseudo-religious holiday where commercialism is tossed out the window and we are left with what is supposed to be a pure holiday, devoid of crass association with anything capitalistic. Phooey. Thanksgiving, for all its alleged non-biased glory, is yet another corrupted holiday.  Families all over America have just finished gorging themselves over a kitchen full of food.  They have collectively fallen asleep over a television full of football and are secretly planning their assault on "Black Friday" sales at their local shopping mall. And if I see one more reference to tryptophan and its sleep-inducing effect I'm going to strangle someone.  There  is more tryptophan in cottage cheese than in turkey.  You want to sleep because you eat an ungodly amount of food.  The turkey isn't your problem.  You are. Is it necessary to cook...

"OK everyone, hold the candles long enough for the TV and newspaper guys to get their photographs.  We need to show everyone that we aren't just concerned with the football team, and this should do it.  When your arm gets tired, just switch hands.  Five minutes should do it.  See you at the game!  Don't forget to buy your blue t-shirt so we can throw some money at a charity.  That should be enough."

I get a lot of these.  They generally show up in my Spam folder.  This one creeped into my Inbox, encouraging me to open it and read it. This is a good one.  It has the corporate logo and everything.  Featuring an actual signature of a "Senior Vice President" of something called the Online Banking Team. There is even a link to what I am supposed to believe is the Chase Online web site, where I can rectify any alleged account problems and return my life (and credit card) to its original health. My favorite part comes in the bold lettering at the bottom (their bolding, not mine).  Where it says that if I fail to provide them with the required information, my account will be "automatically deleted from Our [sic] online database." OK, go ahead and delete my account.  Along with the money I owe you. Go ahead.

Don Rickles showed up at John Lasseter's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony today.  I had to look up who Lasseter is - it turns out he is the director and Chief Creative Officer for Pixar, and originally worked for Walt Disney Studios. Anyway, Patton Oswalt Tweeted some of Rickles' lines from the ceremony.  They made me laugh because I read them to myself in Rickles' voice and imagined him saying it:   "I look around today, and I'm the biggest star here." - Don Rickles, at Lasseter's star unveiling. "Suck up to your dad, boys. He's gonna leave you a bundle." - Don Rickles, to Lasseter's kids. "Last thing Disney said before he died: 'Get me a Jew to be in my cartoons." - Don Rickles.   When I was a kid (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) I'd stay up late to watch Rickles guest-host the "Tonight" show.  I recorded them on my cassette recorder and would listen to them over a...

Hipsters (also scenesters ) are a subculture of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with musical interests that appeared in the 1990s.  Hipster culture has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behaviors." The term itself was coined during the jazz age, when "hip" emerged as an adjective to describe aficionados of the growing scene.   Although the adjective's exact origins are disputed, some say it was a derivative of "hop," a slang term for opium, while others believe it comes from the West African word "hipi," meaning "to open one's eyes."   Nevertheless, "hip" eventually acquired the common English suffix -ster (as in spinster and gangster), and "hipster" entered the language. I have opened my eyes.  If hipster means that I embrace long-ago lifestyles, then no, I am not a hipster.  If it means, as I think it does, that...

When I come to someone with an announcement of a new technology or practice that I have adopted, I often get the "You'd be better off ..." response.  You know the type.  "I just got a new Droid phone," you announce. To which they reply, "Oh ... you should have gotten an iPhone." As if that was an option or something you would have considered. The proper response would have been, "Oh, that's nice. Great!" Or something in that vein.  We do not announce our life's decisions with the idea that they will be greeted with anything but approval.  We want our decisions to be confirmed by our peers. It's one of the things that separates us from the spiders and lizards.  We have politics. Which brings me to my television viewing habits and the reasons I turn the television off sometimes. I was aimlessly tuning around the thing after Wednesday's usual awesome episode of "Modern Family," which included the line "Th...

I don't understand the slot machines.  They are all different, take different amounts of money and use different symbols on the wheels.  Instead of cherries, sevens and cigars they should just say "win" or "lose."  I think that would make it easier for us to understand. I went to the Golden Nugget  in Atlantic City tonight to see Kathleen Madigan .  She's very funny, even though she is very tiny and from St. Louis and a Cardinals fan. I'm not a gambler and I only go to Atlantic City when I'm going to a show. Otherwise, the whole thing could slip into the ocean and I'd hardly notice.  Because I was going, I stopped at the ATM and pulled out $120, thinking that I couldn't possibly drink and gamble that much money.  Well, at least I couldn't gamble that much. I sat at the bar and had a few beers before the show.  I waddled into the casino and threw $40 into a slot machine.  I'm not sure what it was all about, other tha...

The famous LOVE statue. I popped the flash and was surprised at the glow that it rendered. I'll go back and get another one that isn't quite so grainy.  Or maybe that's the look? The Philadelphia skyline from the South Street Bridge.  It's one of the better spots to capture it.  They are nearly finished the rebuilding of the bridge, although it still shakes like the old one did. Rittenhouse Plaza, which I'm guessing is some sort of high-end residence.  It's conveniently located near the Apple store. Or maybe the Apple store is conveniently located near it? City Hall and the tents.  I saw more bicycles parked around the city than I had ever seen.  I think that's a good thing. City Hall from Broad Street near Chestnut.  The island makes for a nice set-up spot. The City Hall courtyard rimmed by tents of the Occupy Philly squatters.  I'm not sure what they want and from what I heard, I'm not sure they know either. Logan Cir...

I went for bloodwork today.  I'm not sure why I was nervous about it, but I was.  It barely took 10 minutes for the needle and two vials of my vital fluid and I was out the door. In the meantime, I chatted-it-up with the Technician (nurse?) over my reticence to have needles stuck in me.  "I don't even watch on TV when someone is being stuck." "Me neither, but it's because their technique is bad," she said.  "I see them pull the sheath out of the needle with their teeth and I think, 'I don't need your germs all over this thing.  It's bad enough that I have Joe Plague to deal with.'" I said, "Wow, Joe Plague!  That was my favorite comic book as a kid," completely copping on the Joe Plague concept.  It was at that point that we started developing a film about a Superhero, Joe Plague; who has no real super-powers, but everyone is frightened of him. If I ever develop a Joe Plague character and produce a play or TV se...

While waiting for my car to finish having its oil changed tonight, I innocently thumbed through a copy of Rolling Stone magazine.  It was a rather ordinary issue, until I got to the back page.  There were a few ads that gave me some valuable insight into what people will spend money on. The first interesting product was something called a Grow Box.  It was advertised as a hydroponic system for growing plants indoors.  If your mind works anywhere as oddly as mine (pity) then you will have immediately jumped to the necessity for an indoor plant-growing system.  Not only that, but the product is cleverly disguised to look like a cabinet, stereo speakers, a computer box or a small refrigerator.  Because you wouldn't want anyone to know you are growing tulips in your den.  Right. It's a wonderful contraption, full of high-powered LED lights, hygrometers and technical growing materials for your ... um ... flowering plants.  OK.  A quick ju...

First, some background.  I am a Phillies season ticket holder and a fan since 1964.  I have seen the great, near great and horrible.  That's enough background. If I can do nothing else (and perhaps I cannot) I think I can place things in perspective.  I was at last year's disappointing game 6 of the NLCS where Ryan Howard looked at a called third strike to end their season.  From my perch in section 204 I was devastated.  I left the ballpark feeling like I was punched in the stomach and I was bitter over it for several weeks.  After that, I vowed to never again allow sports to affect my life in a negative manner.  I didn't think it would be so soon that my resolution would be put to the test. I went to the first game of the NLDS this year.  The Phillies fell behind early, 3-0 with their Ace Roy Halladay on the mound.  A couple of home runs later and they would go on to win the game.  Several of us in the stands were di...

It's fortunate for me that I like foods that are supposed to be good for me.  Low-fat, low-calorie, sugar-free ... all the stuff that marketing people and doctors tell us we are supposed to eat. Almost every day for lunch I eat a Veggie Sub, which I affectionately call a Condiment Sandwich.  Instead of lettuce, I use spinach, because it's supposed to be good for me. Besides, with all the peppers and onions on the thing, I can barely taste it anyway. I eat high-fiber whole grain cereal with almond milk every day, oatmeal, yogurt, and I take enough Omega 3 fish oils to sprout gills. I wander through the supermarket looking for things that I can eat and feel good about eating.  I have been drinking the Zico Chocolate Coconut Water for a while.  It's water from coconuts that has chocolate flavoring.  Can there be a more perfect beverage?  I submit that there cannot.  Today I found a couple of new things. I had an ice cream craving.  ...

In order to establish perspective, let me tell you:  I hate the telephone.  I don't like when it rings, I don't like calling people and I don't like getting the bill.  Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to live without one. I'm one of the growing number of the population that does not have a traditional land line .  I didn't think it made any sense to pay for a cellular phone and a land line, so many years ago I ditched the hard wire.  The problem with that is that now, people who call me expect me to pick up the phone because they assume that I'm sitting on my cell phone.  Most of the time the ringer is off or it's in a bag or on a table somewhere. "Where were you, I tried to call you?" they ask.  When I had a regular phone, they never had any trouble leaving a voice message.  Now, they expect me to answer every call.  HINT: Sometimes I'm driving on on the toilet or reading or watching a TV program.  Your call is important to us. P...

The latest list of nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been released .  Among them are Guns N' Roses, Heart, Cure and Joan Jett.  Among a list of artists who are not only not in the R&RHOF but have never been nominated are T-Rex, the Smiths, Yes, Jethro Tull, Devo, Todd Rundgren, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Roxy Music, Willie Nelson, Warren Zevon, the Replacements, ELO, Chubby Checker, Hall and Oates, Los Lobos, Black Flag, X, the B-52s, Dick Dale, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Nick Drake, Captain Beefheart, Sonic Youth and the Go-Go’s. Some people are up in arms over these omissions.  Such is life when you confuse art with competition.  The same thing happens with Emmy Awards, Oscars, Grammy Awards and Tony Awards.  Some expert opines that so-and-so has been shafted by either not being nominated or not winning.  That's a shame, but it's the issue that one encounters when one brings competition into art.  The two should not commingle, becaus...

I want to listen to music and surf the Internet on my 10-year old computer -- but I fucking CAN'T - because it's ten years old! Oh - then, can I read my e-mail on my cell phone like all the cool kids? No, you fucking CAN'T - because your cell phone isn't a SMARTPHONE , and you can't read e-mail without a contract and a data plan. Can I run this old software and read a file that I made 5 years ago? NO! You CAN'T! Your software is OLD and it's not compatible with the software we're making now! Upgrade. I'd like to buy a new cell phone, can I ... NO. The new iPhone5 is coming out and soon, your iPhone 3 will be antiquated and incapable of doing anything but ... making phone calls! HA. You are a captive of your technology. Sure -- you love your stuff. Your new laptop, your new phone, your new TV; but it's all soon to be replaced by new stuff that is incompatible with your old stuff. I used a rotary phone for 30 years. THIRTY YEARS - and eve...

What started as an innocently planned 75-mile ride with 300 people I didn't know (and 1 that I did) turned into a big bowl of wrong shortly after the start. As anybody who does this sort of thing knows, the photos that follow represent a large amount of money in apparel and equipment, not to mention the one at the end that represents a huge amount of pain and inconvenience. Kevin and I had decided to do a ride from Parvin State Park on Saturday morning that was sponsored by a local cycling group. I've done these sorts of rides before, and they attract all kinds of riders. From riders who want to finish in the shortest time possible to riders who barely know how to shift gears and ride for the food and SAG support. It had been about 3 years since I had done one of these rides, and only on reflection did I recall the vast difference in rider quality and I hadn't fully developed a plan to avoid the least experienced and/or slowest of the bunch. We started from the park, ...