My Sick Mind

The Tale of Poor Thor.

2012-01-27T19:45:00.001-05:00

The Mighty Thor, who had a bad day today. I'm posting this here rather than on Facebook because there just aren't enough characters to properly explain it all.

Thor has the gingivitis. Ever since I brought him home a little over 2 years ago, his gums have been red and his teeth are tartar stained. Try as I might with over-the-counter remedies and other such things, his gums stayed red to the point that, at his last checkup, the vet suggested I bring him in for a teeth cleaning and possible (probable) tooth extractions.

This morning I dropped him off. The tough part about that was that he wasn't allowed to eat anything after 8:00pm Thursday night. That made Thor an unhappy guy this morning when he couldn't get his regular breakfast. He whined and moaned at me and wasn't at all excited about being put in his transporter box and carted 10 miles to the veterinarian. At around 5:00pm I got a phone call from the vet saying that he was "doing tremendously" after his ordeal. But not without a few complications.

First, and as I had feared, he had a bad reaction to the anesthesia. He struggled to breathe and it got to the point that they had to insert a breathing tube to encourage him to breathe. His pulse rate and blood pressure dropped to the point that (even though she didn't say it) I'd guess that he was close to death. Somehow, I had feared that. Don't ask me why, but I worry whenever animals are anaesthetised. It was so bad that the vet said that she doesn't want to ever have to put him under again, and won't unless it's absolutely necessary.

He got through that difficulty and they moved on to the teeth cleaning part. The gingivitis was so pronounced and advanced that his bones had resorbed the roots of his teeth. When they went to clean them, they literally fell out. One after another, until all that is left are a few tiny incisors in the front. What they anticipated would be a long process took less than an hour, since the teeth gave up on their own. At this point, he's Toothless Thor.

I told the vet that I'd have dinner and pick him up at around 6:30. It's a good thing I waited. About a half hour before I arrived he started pacing the cage and moving around. Apparently, the activity elevated his blood pressure and his mouth started to bleed. Not much, but enough that there were drops of blood on his blanket and his lips were coated in thick red goo. It's better that it happened there than on the ride home and in my house. I surely would have panicked and been up all night with him.

As it is, he's staying the night at the vet's office and I'll pick him up tomorrow morning. They think (and I think) it's best that he get his medications and that he be sedated so that he rests rather than get excited about being home and try to do too much too soon. It'll be lonely here without him, but I'd rather not clean up blood droppings and lie awake all night.

The good news is that he's down to 14.2 pounds (from his high of 20) which is the weight he was when I picked him up in November 2009. They're very happy about his weight loss, since most cats who are put on these diets don't lose any weight. Mostly, it's because their owners don't do what they are supposed to do. Luckily for Thor, I have more discipline about such things than most people. At some point he'll go on a maintenance diet, but he'll need to get his mouth back in shape before I think about that.

Apparently, cats can survive quite nicely without teeth. Since his teeth were in such bad shape, it's likely that he wasn't chewing his food anyway. Most of the time, the soreness from the gums makes cats just pick up food and swallow it. Come to think of it, I never heard any crunching from his food bowl, so I'd guess that he was probably just picking up the morsels and swallowing them. I expect him to be able to go back to his regular dry food after about a week of all canned food while his gums heal.

Before I paid the bill ($450, which was actually made cheaper by the fact that they didn't have to pull any teeth) I asked to go in and see him. There he sat, in his cage with his blood droppings and a mouth that looked like Rocky after Clubber Lang got through pummeling him. He recognized me and got up to move closer, but I could tell he was in no shape to come home.

The other good news is that he'll get over this trauma rather quickly. That's the great thing about dogs and cats. They are quick to forget and ready to move on. It's a shame more people aren't like that.

We're getting closer to the end of civilization.

2012-01-25T20:41:00.003-05:00

In the trailer for the new film Band of Misfits, the Grant-voiced Pirate Captain lands on a ship demanding gold, but is told by a crew member: “Afraid we don’t have any gold old man, this is a leper boat, see.” After issuing the explanation, the sailor’s arm drops off.

Leprosy groups expressed concern that the scene could increase the stigma and discrimination felt by people suffering from leprosy.

Aardman (the animation company who made the film) has said it will change the scene in the wake of the objections.

Watch the trailer. The highly offensive material emerges at around the 30-second mark.

First of all, who even knew there were leprosy groups. Secondly, wouldn't you think that people with leprosy already know there is a stigma attached to their disease? Apparently not.

Thirdly, making a statement that "this is a leper boat" and having the sailor's arm drop off is hysterical. I think it's hysterical because (a) I have a sense of humor and (b) I'm not easily offended. And that's where I become a loser in society.

What, do you mean that people's arms don't really fall off when they have leprosy? Gosh, I had no idea. How rude. When is "Leprosy Awareness Day?" I'll mark my calendar.

In modern society, the sensitivity of the so-called "special interest groups" wins out because a few people are offended by some joke or comment made by someone who isn't a member of the group. The people (like me) who find those comments either funny or nondescript will let it go because we aren't sensitive to every gentle wind that blows. To us, it's a live and let live society, and if people believe something ridiculous, then that's their cross to bear.

Generally, it's a special interest viewpoint that has a narrow-minded view of what they perceive to be funny, entertaining or (egad) appropriate. When they complain, it would appear that they represent millions of people with a similar viewpoint when what they actually represent is a minority of people who feel that they should complain about things that they find objectionable.

It's the same reason you could never air a TV show like "All in the Family" today. But I digress...

These things include jokes about sensitive subjects, words, actions and deeds that fall in the realm of what we have come to call politically incorrect viewpoints. Those viewpoints can expand to odd special-interest groups like those representing lepers and other groups that make advertisers back out of TV shows or movies because there might be something that ten percent of the population finds objectionable. It's a strange way to do business.

Those of us who find such things entertaining aren't going to take time from our busy day to write e-mail's of satisfaction, so the advertisers are forced to bow to the 100 people who wrote angry letters. And I'd bet a week's pay that when that movie trailer was shown and that joke came up, the audience laughed heartily. Nevermind that, the lepers have spoken.

“After reviewing the matter, we decided to change the scene out of respect and sensitivity for those who suffer from leprosy. The last thing anyone intended was to offend anyone and it is clear to us that the right way to proceed is to honor the efforts made by organizations like ILEP to educate the public about this disease,” the statement said.

Of course they never meant to offend them. That's the point. What they should have said was, "Up to a day ago, we had no idea there was anything called ILEP, and maybe you should develop a sense of humor." But they didn't. They compromised their artistic integrity because somebody complained. And God forbid we offend anyone with humor.

Oh, and there is a joke about fat parrots in the film too. Let's see if the International Fat Parrots Advocacy Group (The IFPAG) stages a protest about that.

Some valuable information for future reference.

2012-01-08T11:32:00.004-05:00

SEPTA Market East Station

One of the things I enjoy about photography is making otherwise mundane things look appealing. With some fancy lenses and an odd perspective, you can bring some life to something that perhaps you haven't seen before. It's why I enjoy going out at night and using my little tripod placed on the floor.

A favorite spot for these types of photos is train and subway stations. Generally, they're kind of dingy, but with a little color they can look bright and shiny. Usually, I can do these things with only a few odd glances from the commuters. On Saturday, however, I got more than a few odd glances.

I took about a dozen photos at the SEPTA Market East station -- trains leaving and arriving, wide-angle perspectives and junk like that. The whole operation took about 15 minutes. When I went back up the stairs, waiting for me were two uniformed transit officers.

They asked who I was and what I was doing. I figured the camera bag and tripod would have been a dead giveaway, but I respectfully answered their questions and told them I was a photographer having some fun. They asked me to wait, since they had called a couple of officers to the scene.

"Real cops or SEPTA cops?" I asked. They laughed a little, but I guess they were mildly insulted. I just wanted to know if I was going to a real jail or some made-up subway jail. It's good information to have.

After a couple of minutes, two uniformed officers arrived and asked me a couple of questions. I volunteered my drivers' license (as a show of good faith) and they took down my name, address and telephone number. I was informed that in order to photograph the station I needed permission from the people at the front desk and it was made clear that they didn't care for my presence in the building.

One of their concerns was how close I was to the track, and another was some sort of security risk. As you can see, I wasn't close enough that I was on the yellow marker. I'm not stupid enough to risk falling on the third rail.

Meanwhile, you can Google search "SEPTA Market East Station" and turn up about 100 photographs of the joint. I didn't want to be a jackass (since they were being as nice as possible about it) but I wondered (to myself) if they would have stopped me from doing this prior to 9/11/2001? I couldn't help but think that the terrorists have won again, and some small part of our personal freedom is lost when we can't walk into a subway station with a camera and take a few photos.

I just happened to wander in there on one of my Photo Safaris, and felt like I was killing some time and getting some nice computer wallpaper for my PC at work. Now that they've told me that I can't do it, I have this unbelievable urge to go back. There's something about being told that I can't do something that makes me want to do it.

Perhaps that makes me a security threat?

One step forward, two steps back.

2011-12-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

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 are buying automobiles that encourage it? How many accidents will have to be caused because the driver was using his blueLink to find a local pizza place before we stop this nonsense? Motorists have no respect for the laws and it seems that the companies that they are buying their cars from feel the same.

It started with cup holders and has now evolved to this. What's next? Television on the steering wheel? Why not?

Putting us in our place.

2011-12-28T21:27:00.001-05:00

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 form (right). It's a Porsche, of some sort. To most of us, saying that we had given ourselves a Christmas present, we might be referring to a high-end kitchen appliance or a musical instrument. To those on the "followed" end of the Twitter landscape, a Christmas present to themselves is a $50,000 automobile. To most of their followers, that represents a year's salary (before taxes).

Not that we begrudge them this "gift," but the question it raises is the difference between the haves and the have-not's. We have always known there is a difference, but now that we have this social media, it is on display for us to acknowledge. The "Politeness Man" among us would say, "Hey, good for you!" but the regular person that is buried deeper would say, "What the fuck? This is what you do with your money?" Well, of course it is. If you earned $17 million a year, you wouldn't spend it on a Ford Festiva.

So, I wondered (quietly to myself) is it better or worse that we know that we are so separated from them? I suppose we've always known that movie stars, musicians and celebrities live a different lifestyle than the rest of us. What we didn't have was graphic evidence and the immediacy of the Internet to show us exactly how much different they are from us.

After all, would you rather not know about Tim Tebow's religious convictions or would you just as soon watch him as quarterback of the Denver Broncos? Recent news would say you'd rather not know all the extraneous junk.

I suppose there are some of Paula's followers who would look at this photo and not think twice about it. I'm the type of person who looks around at those in line behind me and wonders, "What do they think?" and holds the door for people behind me because I don't want a stranger to question my ethics. It doesn't make me better, it just gives me what we used to call on the softball field "rabbit ears."

I'm the type who thinks twice about everything.

Where are you going to put all that crap?

2011-12-26T17:58:00.002-05:00

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 did. That tells me that, out of obligation, they purchased things that they knew they couldn't pay for or afford, yet did so anyway. After coming to their senses, the gifts were returned and some bogus reason was conjured. That's sad.

Some retailers are tightening their return policies in advance of the post-Christmas rush. Consumerworld.org points out that Target, which used to allow 90 days for customers to return certain big-ticket items, now will only accept returns for 45 days after purchase. Toys-R-Us stores won't take back electronics if the packages have been opened. Both Target and Wal-Mart now only offer limited returns if you don't have a gift receipt. J.C. Penney, Macy's and Express require that "special-occasion" dresses be returned with the original tag still attached, in order to deter one-time wearing, and Amazon.com now has not one, but 30, different product-specific return policies.

They're onto you. I'd guess that today and Tuesday, stores will be mobbed, not with shoppers, but ungrateful gift recipients who are returning things that they don't want.

One of the lasting memories from the days when I used to partake is the din of wrapping paper being dispensed as boxes were opened and things displayed. In true "Seinfeld" tradition, the unwanted gifts were met with the exclamation of the name of the gift: "Oh -- socks!" In the pile they go.

Twenty-seven percent of people returning electronics admit that they wished they hadn't bought them in the first place. Just 5 percent of the people who wanted their money back said that the gadget didn't work -- but, after testing, two-thirds of those supposedly defective items were found to have been just fine after all.

It's a strange custom that you humans have. You work yourself into a mad tizzy for a month agonizing over what to get for that "special someone" or that someone who isn't very special that you feel obligated to buy something for because "they always get me something." I have made a giant leap this year in avoiding the holiday altogether, and I have been able to embrace my ignorance. I don't have to do what society finds acceptable and I don't have to wear myself thin worrying about what other people think of what I think.

I don't understand you people.

Share a cigarette with negativity...

2011-12-24T21:44:00.001-05:00

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 about my future. I find 30 year-old women appealing, but the appeal is not reciprocal. I'm working hard, trying to stay in shape, but the 50s are creeping in. I think 30-something's find 20-something's appealing, and therein lies the conflict.

I'm not sure we'll ever match up sexually. It's sad really. There isn't a lot of appeal in us old guys. We don't get any random "Hey, nice shirt" comments from girls anymore. I started shaving my head in the mid-1990s, when it wasn't fashionable [self back-pat] and I used to get a lot of requests from beautiful young women to touch it, as though I was some sort of bald Buddah that they had to touch, or else their lives would be meaningless. I obliged.

Now, every jackass is shaving and it isn't such a big deal anymore. What really offends me is when I see guys with otherwise full heads of hair shaving for the mere sake of it. That's a violation. I feel like I was part of a 1960s music revolution and jerks like the Beach Boys took advantage of my good work. Hey, pay your dues, then let the girls rub your head.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck in gym locker rooms with elderly guys who have lost track of the fact that their junk has migrated south with gravity. Their hanging testicles look like Chinese lanterns, they wander around with (apparently) no idea of what they are displaying in public. As for me, I turn my back on men when I change pants and I can't imagine displaying anything significant in front of them. But, I have a sense of self-awareness that escapes most people. Like those guys who wear shorts and sandals (with socks) when they should be covering their bony knees and hammer toes.

So, to you men who are wandering around with your junk hanging out, let this be your word of warning ... "None of us wants to see it" - and I think I can speak for everyone. We don't want to watch you scoop up your testicles and deposit them in your underpants. We don't need to see your hairy ass and rotund, furry abdomen on display. It isn't interesting in the least. You are better off finding a secluded corner of the locker room and dressing in private, because your privates deserve that.

It could be your New Year's Resolution. Please.

The Evil That Men Do.

2011-12-24T09:58:00.001-05:00

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 hand in a kid's pants. But that's me. I'm on Mars.

I wonder if at least some of it comes from our supressed sexuality. We resist talking about sex with kids because they are supposedly too young to understand. The problem with that is that they don't know the difference between what is appropriate and inappropriate. They know that stealing is wrong and that they shouldn't lie - we have no problem telling them that. But when it comes to their sexuality (which they will carry with them forever) we keep the "birds and bees" discussion until we feel that they're ready for it. And even then, it is approached by many with all the anticipation of a root canal.

That is never going to change. Our repressed feelings about sex and our bodies is bred throughout generations. We're a little better at it now than our ancestors, but most of it is confined to telling dirty jokes and saying "fuck" in front of people. There isn't a lot of frank talk about what really makes us tick. We're just at the front of a societal awakening on homosexuality and what rights we feel they are entitled, which is to say all of them - but that is another matter.

For now, we are confined to our pre-conceived notion of what constitutes normal behavior and when and where it should occur. That's fine, but at some point you may be faced with the difficult task of explaining why Uncle Bob shouldn't show your 12-year old son his penis.

For now, we choose to say nothing.

Thoughts and Things.

2011-12-21T20:36:00.004-05:00

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 has had his headlights off at the brink of darkness, which is now nearly 4:45pm here on the east coast. I followed one driver tonight on the mis-named "North-South Freeway" (which actually runs East-West) its entire length; their shadowy presence preceding me on my trip home. In my silent secrecy, I hoped someone would turn into them so that the court document surrounding their accident would include the phrase "driving in darkness with their headlights off." I'm a bit of a saddist sometimes.

It's three days and counting and I have managed to avoid stepping into a shopping center during what marketing people call the "Christmas Shopping Season." Oh, if I can only manage Thursday and Friday, I'll have it made! Meanwhile, I listen to radio and TV ads proclaiming that your gift tells that "special someone" how much you love [him or her]" and asking if you are "ready for the holidays." Are we ready? Well, isn't that like asking if we're ready for a two-foot snowfall? It's coming. On Saturday, mindless fools will be invading the shopping malls and the local news will be filled with stories about those "last-minute shoppers." Somehow, I feel both free and lonely.

I'm one step closer to abandoning the Christmas season entirely. This year, I have managed to avoid not only the shopping but the office Pollyanna that accompanies the season. It's simple, really. Just drive past the mall instead of stopping in. The $20 gift that I could do without will eventually go to someone else. Some would ask how I could endure spending the holiday alone. To those, I would respond that I spend the other 364 days alone, so what's the difference?

“I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?”
– Charlie Brown about not receiving any Christmas cards

... and another thing.

2011-12-12T18:36:00.000-05:00

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 course, denies the story and sidestepped around the gay issue, saying in essence that "there's nothing wrong with that" but that it would also damage "my career." Really? How would it damage your career? You earn a living tearing your shirt off and posing half-naked in a ring. If anything, I think being gay would enhance your image. She also said he abused her, but Hulk is obsessed with the gay rumor, as though the spousal abuse would be acceptable by comparison. To some, it probably is.

I'm reading that the Duggars are planning a memorial service for their miscarried twentieth child. If I am supposed to summon up any sorrow for this event, I'm losing the grip. Jim Bob told People magazine. "This is life, and I understand that we are going [through]something that many others have. You think about the what-ifs, but Godgives us strength to go on. We won't be able to see this child's lifeand the phases that we've seen for our other children, but we know wewill see this child in heaven one day. We are thankful for each child,and we are blessed to have the children we have here and the ones wewill meet someday in heaven."

Really? They named the kid Jubilee Shalom. I'd guess that's because the kid will never live to have his classmates ridicule his name and have his 19 brothers and sisters threaten to come to school to kick their ass. Otherwise, they could have named it John or Sarah or whatever name is left over from their hideously large family.

The problem with living in a so-called "free society" is that we allow people to do what they want, within the confines of our defined laws. Having 19 children is a sick and twisted abuse of that privilege. And you can bet your next paycheck that they aren't done attempting to procreate.

I think they're mentally ill.

Random Thoughts

2011-12-07T19:56:00.001-05:00

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 came forward to say that he molested them as children. I thought about how we have all done things for which we are ashamed - some morally odd and others merely socially awkward. But, never could I think of anything as low on the ladder of society as being arrested for molesting a child. I'd guess that, at that stage of ones life that you would have to throw up your hands and thank God that you didn't have much longer to live, because the life you had left would be of such a low quality as to make it merely eating, sleeping and breathing. And that's probably all you would be entitled to.

The new Kindle Fire has irked some parents, who say that it makes ordering from Amazon's web site too easy for their children. To those parents I say, "Welcome to the world." Did they think that Amazon would market a device that would make it more difficult to order from their web site? And why do they think it's so inexpensive? Seriously - put down your iPhone and pay attention. These are probably the same people who complained that Facebook's free games allowed hackers to steal their personal information. Get with the program.

The U.S. Postal Service has decided that the best way to save itself from doom is to close down distribution centers, shorten the delivery week and slow down first class mail. I know that Civil Service jobs require an exam, but I didn't know that they did not require an education. The braintrust over there has decided that providing less service in a slower fashion will make them successful. I didn't read that chapter of the marketing book when I was at Widener. You have heard that theory that an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters will eventually write all the great books? This proves that the same number of monkeys will eventually run the Postal Service into the ground. Get the monkeys back on their typewriters and put some businessmen in charge of the postal service. UPS and FedEx have done quite well for themselves. What is it that they know that the USPS does not? How to run a business, for one thing.

I read that Sinead O'Connor is getting married - for the fourth time. That puts her three times ahead of me and four times ahead of me on the "I can't believe somebody would marry her" scale. After one failed marriage, I figured that it could happen to anybody and that the failure could be either mine or hers or both of ours. If I had failed a second time, I'd start to have self-doubts about the type of person I was and/or the type of person I chose to marry. After three times, I'd think about checking into some sort of clinic to try to rid myself of the lingering longing for companionship. At marriage number four ...

Giving thanks for what?

2011-11-24T21:18:00.001-05:00

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 a 20-pound turkey, stuff it with bread and serve it with accompanying casseroles, sauces and pies? What are we really honoring? Are we giving thanks or just cooking a huge meal? As I watch news stories of families celebrating their holiday I think about the gorging that goes on and wonder if it's all necessary. If the idea is that we are celebrating something with our family, why do we need to cook more food than would feed a batallion? To me, it seems a waste and regardless of your ideals, I think you're feeding into (pun) the idea of mass consumerism that you profess to hate.

There, I said it.

TV by Candlelight

2011-11-12T10:41:00.001-05:00

"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."

The Best One Yet.

2011-11-02T18:01:00.001-04:00

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.

The Softening of America

2011-11-01T21:41:00.000-04:00

Don Rickles showed up at John Lasseter's Hollywood Walk of Fameceremony today. I had to look up who Lasseter is - it turns out he is thedirector and Chief Creative Officer for Pixar, and originally workedfor 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 and over. We didn't have DVR or VHS recorders in those days.

He would come out to that Toreador music that Doc Severenson's band would play and spend 90 minutes berating Charo, Ed McMahon and every guest he had on the show with every racial stereotypical epithet he could think of. And we laughed. We didn't think of filing a complaint lawsuit because he portrayed the Irish as boozers, the Mexicans as bandits and the Polish as meatheads - as Archie Bunker similarly portrayed them on a show called "All in the Family" that ran concurrent to Rickles' "Tonight" show duties.

You couldn't put a show like "All in the Family" on network television today. The closest we have come in the last 20 years was that William Shatner show, "[Bleep] My Dad Says," and they had to characterize the word shit with an asterisk and some other symbols, and use the word bleep to say shit. How has that progression worked? What was the point of calling a show "Shit My Dad Says" and then having to use bleep instead of shit? Why not call it "Strawberry Bricks?"

I don't know if we laughed at Rickles and Archie Bunker because we didn't know what else to do or if we laughed because everybody else was laughing. I do know that we laughed because it was (ready?) ... funny. It was funny to see this balding Jew telling Charo that she needed to get her papers stamped so that she could be on the show. Charo used to call him "Don Wrinkles." Today, millions of supporters of immigration would write e-mail's to NBC complaining that Rickles cast them in a negative light. Meanwhile, none of them could produce the "papers."

Rickles is 85. I don't know if it's his age or his cache that allows him to get away with what he says, but I'd guess that if he appeared on the scene as a 20-something comic doing that sort of humor, he would be ostracized. Such is the sad state of America. We kowtow to every ethinc group and kiss the backside of the lawyers who represent them because we don't want our kids to grow up thinking like that. Meanwhile, millions of kids who grew up watching "All in the Family" or seeing Rickles on talk shows learned the difference between humor and bigotry.

It's sad that we do not allow our children to establish their own boundaries. If they don't know where the edge is, how will they know where to stand?

What is Hip?

2011-10-29T20:29:00.001-04:00

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 I have "opened one's eyes," then I proclaim myself a hipster. Case in point: Music. I was one of those kids who stood in line for concert tickets and records. Huge portions of my free time were spent preparing to queue-up at the local record store for a ticket to the latest high-end rock show at The Spectrum. Now, I can sit on my computer and, in a fraction of the time, get the same ticket to the same show.

We bought records that we would take home and place on turntables, hoping that they would "play." If they skipped, we had a myriad of solutions to make it work. It was stressful. Now, I can order an mp3 from several different web sites and know that when I "open file" it will indeed open, without any scratches or surface noise that I experienced (and expected) as a teenager.

If being a "hipster" means that I have embraced my new lifestyle, then I welcome the change. I like being able to sit at home and order a ticket to a show, or download a noiseless file of new music. I am an aficionado of the growing scene.

Man.

An odd thing that happened while I was watching TV.

2011-10-27T19:34:00.003-04:00

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 "This whole thing is a colossal fog cue," which, if you didn't see the episode, is lost on you. Nevertheless...

As I turned the stations, I came across an Ani DiFranco concert on my local PBS station. It was a few years old, but I like Ani, so I figured it would make nice background music while I stalked Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and such.

Ani came out on stage - in her hometown of Buffalo - to tumultuous applause, as one would expect. The camera did one of those crowd pans, which gave me an idea of what would follow. There seemed to be a dearth of men in the audience, and a lot of wide-eyed women with hero worship glowing on their faces. At the very least, there was a dearth of men in the front of the auditorium where the camera was focused. I have been to Indigo Girls and Holly Near shows, so the thought occurred ... let's check the Wikipedia listing to see what is going on here.

What was going on was that Ani has admitted (an odd word) to being bisexual. So now, the show took on an entirely different meaning. As the crowd swelled and cheered with each of her proclamations, I started to get annoyed that the music did not seem to be the priority. The priority was that Ani was standing up for like-minded women regardless of her music or whatever the show was supposed to be about. Every syllable was greeted with a "whoop" or round of applause that became annoying to those of us who were tuning in to hear the ... um ... music.

Then, it dawned on me. Several of them weren't there to hear the music as much as they were there to have their beliefs and lifestyle vindicated by a celebrity - such that Ani is a celebrity. The between-songs chanting and cheering affected me to the point that, after a half hour of it I decided that I didn't need their lifestyle approved of on my television. Sadly, I couldn't concentrate on her music as much as I fixated on the pending approval of her viewpoint by the audience of sycophants.

I didn't think that's what music or entertainment was supposed to be. Perhaps there are thousands of people who need their lifestyle vindicated by a celebrity in public, but for me, that isn't the case. If the chanting approval of like-minded people is going to get in the way of art, then perhaps the art isn't the priority?

I'm just saying.

The reason I don't gamble.

2011-10-23T00:04:00.004-04:00

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 than at times some cigars showed up and some noise was made. In the end, I cashed-out ten dollars because I didn't want to sit there and miss the show.

After the show, I went back with my ten dollars and threw it into a different machine. This one had sevens and cherries in it. I pushed the "Max Bet" button a few times, and one of the times it made a lot of noise for a long time and I saw numbers going up on the machine. I wasn't sure how much actual money it was because it was all about "credits" and I didn't have the inclination or skill to divide it by the fifty cents that each bet was worth. Rather than do high-powered math, I pushed the "Cash Out" button (the smallest button - the "Max Bet" is the largest) and out came a voucher for $106.25.

Since I'm not a gambler and realize the value of $106.25, I made a bee line for the "Redemption" window (also very small), took my $106.25 and went home. Some people would have continued to gamble, thinking they were on a roll or something. I didn't expect to see anything close to the three symbols that gave me the $106.25 again, and figured I should get out while I could still rationalize the event. When I got home, I pulled $125 out of my pocket and left it on my dresser.

I win.

Some new photos while I think of something interesting to write about.

2011-10-20T21:52:00.001-04:00

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 Circle very late at night. The only sounds were the rushing water and the plaintive cries of a homeless man, ranting in his own language. I worked quickly.

My Mid-Term Exam.

2011-10-19T18:34:00.002-04:00

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 series, I'll have to find the Technician (nurse?) and cut her in on half the profits.

I don't get to the doctor much. Or at least, as much as I should as an over 50-year old male. I need tests and clinical analysis to determine whether or not I need a procedure. In the past 8 years, I have been there exactly 3 times. The last time, they had to go to the basement to retrieve my records because I hadn't been there enough to keep my ... subscription ... active. If I'm not sick, I don't go. That's my policy. The last two times I went, I had a horrible case of poison ivy and an odd infection on my thumb. Last year I didn't even have a head cold, and if it wasn't for my bicycle accident last month, I probably wouldn't be there now. So, is it fate or circumstance?

The blood test is like a mid-term exam. Pass it, and you still have a final to take. Fail it, and you can still make up the grade with a good final. So, in a couple of days I'll find out if my lifestyle (I hesitate to call it a life) has been worth the effort. I've been off dairy for 20 years. I put almond milk in my Kashi cereal. I eat veggie sandwiches for lunch. I don't drink carbonated beverages and I exercise enough that a night off is like a vacation. I'm sitting here eating whole grain pretzels, for Pete's sake.

For the three days leading up to it I kept thinking, "How can I cheat this thing?" But the sad part is that I can't. It's a grade that I've earned. Either I'll pass or fail.

I take great pride in being one of the few over-50's who is not taking any prescription medication. I had borderline high blood pressure (130/90) and controlled it on my own with some dietary modifications. My great fear now is that my cholesterol will be high enough for the doctor to suggest one of those modern wonder drugs. I'm not sure I can modify my life(style) enough to make any drastic changes, so I'm hoping that the numbers are good enough for her to say, "Just keep on doing what you're doing."

I think that's all any of us want out of life, eh?

Three things I read about while waiting for my oil change.

2011-10-12T19:41:00.000-04:00

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 jump on their web site showed me that the small one, the My Grow Buddy, sells for $399. For a more professional system, which they call the Mortgage Lifter (yep) sells for $2,495. Maybe "Mortgage Payer" would have been a better name?

They'll sell you the lights, soil and all the equipment you'll need to start growing world-class plants in your very own home. You can also buy a fan to remove those unwanted odors. Right. You don't want your house smelling like flowers. That's what Airwick is for.

All you'll need to do is run down to your local garden center for some seeds. Right.

Next, there was an ad for one of those male enhancement products. They are getting bolder with their advertising. You can buy things called Horny Goat Weed and Vein Erect at drug stores. I'd need a back door and a secret knock to even attempt to buy something like that in public. Pile the kids in the station wagon, dad is going down to the store to pick up some boner pills.

"Cool, can we stop for ice cream?"

The more interesting one, however, available online is called Ball Refill That's right. And no, it isn't helium or compressed air. It's called a semen volumizer. It is a pill that is designed to give men "mega orgasms." It's for all of you who are concerned that you're not spewing enough of yourself on ... yourself and want to prolong the clean-up process. From what I've read, women go crazy for a guy who can fill a soda can with ejaculate. It's probably why I'm still single.

In the FAQ section (the F stands for Frequently) of the web site, it says that you should "consult your health care professional before using Ball Refill." I don't know about you, but I would not want to be the guy going into my doctor's office, and when she says, "What brings you here today?" I reply with ...

"Well, I wanted to check with you to see if I could take this supplement that makes me spew like a horse."

Actually, I can't imagine how any of the questions are "frequently asked," but that's another matter. "How much Ball Refill should I take?" "Should I continue to take Ball Refill?" "What kinds of medications react with Ball Refill?"

Here are some questions I would ask: Can I over-fill my balls? What if I take so much that my bladder fills too? Can Ball Refill be used on my pets?

A glimpse of the ingredients shows that it's niacin and some herbs. It probably just jacks up (pun) your blood pressure to the point that you either ejaculate or pass out.

So, what was the third product I saw in the magazine? Just some web site where you can order a quilt made of t-shirts. What a ridiculous concept.

Putting baseball in perspective.

2011-10-11T19:52:00.000-04:00

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 disappointed in the Phillies, but would wind up going home happy.

Almost one week later, that good feeling would turn sour as Ryan Howard once again made the last out of their season, this time with a weak ground ball in which injury was added to insult as he went down with a ruptured Achilles tendon. I later found out that most fans had turned off the television before they found out that he didn't complete his trip to first base.

As I watched the game, I felt the looming doom that would eventually befell this team. The 1-0 loss did, however, allow me the time to place baseball into a proper life perspective. Baseball is different than other major sports because of the vagaries of the schedule and the players involved.

In football, basketball and hockey; teams go into playoff series with the same players that brought them there. In baseball, the key player - the starting pitcher - is determined mostly by a draw of the schedule. In a 5-game series (as the NLDS is) that draw has more to do with the outcome of the series than anything. Not only that, but if a team goes into a hitting drought, the short series is magnified, because there is less time to work their way out of it than the overly long baseball season allows. Sure, the Phillies won 102 games, but they were never faced with the prospect of having to win 3 out of 5. All that mattered was that they won their division and advanced to the playoffs.

In olden times (before the NLDS or even divisions) a team could win its division and advance directly to a Championship series. Now, there is no benefit to winning the division. Sure, you get what they call "home field advantage," but in a 5-game series, you get 3 home games. True home field advantage would mean 4 home games. In a 5-game series, having only one more home game is almost useless, as we saw. First solution: Give the team with the best record a true home field advantage and make the wild card team (the Cardinals) earn their victory by winning games on the opponent's field. Otherwise, the 162 game season is pointless. Why play all those games just to lose to a wild card team because you only got one more home game? Only in baseball.

Having the first series decided in only 5 games negates the entire (already too long) regular season. Baseball was founded on a 154-game schedule. That's because, after 154 games, the two best teams (the winners of the American and National League) would face off in the World Series. Now, teams have to win 11 games after they go through an even longer 162-game season. Does that make sense? Why make the season longer and then add playoff games? It doesn't make sense - unless you factor in television, which is the reason for almost everything in life - but that is a matter for another essay.

So, here's my solution: Go back to two leagues with no divisions. Play your 162 games if you must, but give some advantage to the team with the best record. What's the point of playing the season otherwise? Either a first round bye or some protracted home field advantage. As it is now, it's more of a crap shoot than a pure talent competition.

So, fret not Phillies fans. Your team was done in by television and modern thinking. It had little to do with talent. As we have seen, it doesn't matter what happens in the regular season. Baseball has become hockey and basketball. Just enjoy the regular season like you would a movie - it's entertainment. The real competition comes once TBS and Fox get involved and screw up your work day by putting playoff games on at 1:00pm and 4:00pm and players complain about shadows that they never see during the season. That's where television has taken over the game and the fans and teams lose control.

You should not lose control over something over which you have no control.

Good and Good for You?

2011-10-09T20:33:00.000-04:00

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. I usually go for Ben and Jerry's or some chocolate peanut butter flavor, but today I saw Coconut Milk ice cream, with the added benefit of being both soy and dairy free. Lo and behold, its first ingredient is organic coconut milk. It tastes pretty good, and I no longer have a craving for ice cream, so it works on that level too.

The other new thing is something called Kona Deep "100% Deep Sea Mineral Water from 3,000'." It says it comes from "pristine glaciers off the coast of Greenland that sank deep into the ocean thousands of years ago" from something called the "Global Conveyor Belt." Ironically, I put it on the supermarket's conveyor belt when I purchased it.

It's full of electrolytes and nutrients, so I have that going for me - which is nice. I have to admit to being skeptical of water coming from 3,000 feet below the sea, and I wonder if it isn't just purified water with added nutrients to make it the same as deep sea water. I have the same doubts about the coconut water. I guess I can no more imagine going to that extent for water or cracking open enough coconuts to get thousands of bottles of water. I only hope that the coconut water people are hooked-up with the ice cream people so that they aren't throwing coconuts in the trash. That would seem to defeat the purpose.

The reason I'm skeptical is that the chocolate water was $2.49. The coconut milk ice cream was $5.99. The Kona water was a paltry 64 cents, which would seem like a relative bargain, all things considered. Nevertheless, normal ice cream is cheaper and regular water is free. If this stuff isn't what I think it is, I'm wasting my money.

So, I'm either a sucker or I'm doing something good for myself. Or both.

Go climb a pole.

2011-10-06T19:17:00.003-04:00

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. Please hold until a representative is available.

The phone I have now is a misery. I can barely hear people and the interface is a mish-mash of poorly conceived icons and buttons that cause me to disconnect the relatively few calls I answer. When I get a text message, I have to push the "Read" button twice, for some unknown reason. I would like to throw it in the river, but I can't because I got it 4 months ago and my contract has 20 more months to go before I can cheaply replace it. Otherwise, I'd pay full price and may wind up with yet another horrible device.

I've been searching Ebay for a replacement. Each one that I find that appears acceptable has some odd issue. One has poor call quality. Another has no 3G service. One has good call quality but is poorly constructed. Another is well built but the keyboard is difficult to use. It's impossible to know from these subjective reviews whether or not I would like the phone. Most of the reviews for the phone I have were positive, so I can't count on someone else for an opinion when they think it's great and I think it is a piece of junk.

So far, I've found 4 probable replacements. Each one has a minor flaw, but the selling point of each one is that I can get them for less than $90. I'd hope that I could sell my existing piece of junk to an unsuspecting boob for about $50, so perhaps I could mitigate the cost somehow? Even so, how do I know that the money I spend for a new phone will make me any happier? Something tells me I'll be playing my own game of phone tag trying to find one that is acceptable.

You'd think it would be fairly simple to find one that has a loud speakerphone, QWERTY keypad and decent sized screen, wouldn't you? It isn't, or else I'd have one by now. The other issue is dealing with Ebay. The inexpensive ones come from China and the postings don't have any actual photos of the phone I'll be receiving. Some of them don't come in the original box, don't have the manual and will arrive just in time for my old contract to expire. And I can't help but be skeptical of a phone that retails for $300 being sold on the Internet for $80. It doesn't seem right.

But it falls into place with the giant mass of crap that accompanies the cell phone. Hidden fees, outrageous costs for texting and other charges that somehow turn a $39 plan into a $79 monthly bill . I could read through my bill, but I'd have to set aside an 8-hour block of my day to figure it out. Like the cable TV bill, we pay it. It all seems to make sense, because when we were signing up for the plan it sounded like such a great deal. Then, the first bill comes and our eyes spin around and we get a quizzical look on our faces like we just smelled something but we're not sure if it's coming from the trash can or the cat farted.

"Did I sign up for this?" And "What's a state usage tax?" But boy, they sure are fun. Texting and web surfing and all that mindless chatter. How did we ever survive without them? Quite well, as I recall. I'd get home at the end of the day and check my messages. Zero. If someone needed me badly enough, they would call me at work.

I used to know phone numbers. Now, I just look for their name in the directory. I couldn't tell you anyone's phone number except my mother - and that's because it's the same one I had before I moved out.

In the meantime, I'll keep looking for my ideal device. Meanwhile, I thought all this junk was supposed to improve my life? So far, it's cost me more money and complicated my life. There is a whole new set of rules and laws governing when and where we can use cell phones. Phone etiquette is still being learned and those of us who have it want to smack those of you who do not.

Here are two things you can do to start: Stop the walk-and-text and talk in a normal volume. Don't bump into me while you're texting and stop yelling into your hand.

Now, I'm going back to my shopping, because I know that someday I'll be happy with technology.

Art and Competition

2011-09-27T17:39:00.000-04:00

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, JethroTull, 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, because when they do, trouble follows.

Sports is a competition. There are timers and scorekeepers to ensure that the winner is the one who completes the game with the requisite amount of goals, points or time. When you start heaping awards like Most Valuable Something or any award that is voted on by people, trouble follows. That is because the worlds of art and competition have once again collided.

Soon, Major League Baseball will begin awarding its annual group of Most Valuable Player, Manager of the Year, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards. They are voted upon by people who may or may not have an ax to grind or have close ties to one of the athletes. There is no substantive measure for those awards like there is for home run or runs batted in leaders. When the awards are handed out, invariably somebody cries "foul" and debate heats up over who is more "deserving" of the award. Poppycock.

Sports are played and decided on the field. Art is excecuted in front of an audience. In neither endeavor should human priorities muddy the waters. Once a winner in sports is decided, the debate is over. When an appreciative audience applauds a performance, that debate is likewise over. We don't need "Best Actor" awards or "Best Picture" awards. Tastes differ and to one, a brainless comedy is a better film than "The Godfather." It's the purpose of art. It is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

Athletes of winning teams celebrate in their locker room. Artists who give great performances relish in them for days, and appreciative audiences reward them with praise. I'm not sure I understand why we need to give awards to athletes and performers who have already received an award - the joy of satisfying an audience.

I don't need votes and awards to tell me who won or who I like.

Pardon my language

2011-09-23T19:40:00.001-04:00

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 everybody I called answered the phone. Why? Because the phone was still the phone. We had a television hooked up to an antenna for 50 years. Fifty years! We got all the same TV programs that the people next door got who bought a brand new TV and antenna. How did that work? Because it was TELEVISION!

Then, we got cable. Glorious cable. It wasn't more than a year later that we had to upgrade to a new converter box - and every 6 months after that, a cable guy was knocking on the door to give us a new box. New box after new box ... until, they finally decided to do away with the boxes and antennas and make the whole thing digital. What used to cost us $10 a month (in 1981) now costs $120. Is this progress?

Along comes the Internet. Those beep-bap-beep boxes aren't good enough anymore. Now, you NEED DSL, cable Internet and satellite. What used to cost $19 now costs $45. It's the same Internet, only now the technology changes and we are expected to pay more for the same service.

I want to listen to music while I surf the Internet - but I fucking CAN'T, because my computer is 10 years old and the memory isn't large enough to support the two devices. I would use a CD player, but those were phased-out 5 years ago. If I want something that has enough power to run two things at the same time, I have to buy a NEW computer - and that will cost at least another $1,000. How long before that's obsolete?

We pay a lot of money for things that we never paid for. Television, Internet and telephones. And what are we getting from it? Technology that is obsolete 2 months after we get it home. Are we really happier now than we were before? All these things frustrate us and confound us to the point of making us cuss at them and raise our blood pressure. Would we be any less happy with reliable, free television and old phone service? Who are we talking to on our cell phones? Is it necessary?

Facebook changes their format. Netflix changes its pricing, and millions of people are suddenly up in arms over something that they didn't have or know existed 5 years ago. In the string of time, it's a grain of sand. How can we get so worked up over something that we did so well without? Are we so spoiled that we get angry over losing a cell while we're driving that we curse the cell provider? Is it worth $1,000 to buy a new computer so we can listen to music while we web surf? Do we need 800 cable channels for ten times the price of 100? Are we so wired-up that we need to read our e-mail on our $400 Smartphone? Are we doing anything that can't wait until we get home?

Apparently, the answer to all of those questions is in the money we have already spent on the technology.

I liked it better when I had record albums, rotary phones, 12 TV channels and a pen and paper. I don't know that my life is so improved now, regardless of how much I've spent on it.

I do know that Apple, Comcast, Verizon and Dell are doing very well.

One bad Saturday

2011-09-20T18:20:00.002-04:00

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, and rolled quickly but quietly down the sparsely traveled county roads. Saturday morning was cool but manageable, and I knew that it would soon be warm enough that we would feel better. After all, it was a 75 (or 100) mile ride, and you can't judge the first half hour against the rest.

As we rode along, on some of the faster and flat spots, the familiar cry of "on your left" was said about a dozen times as riders on their high-bar bikes strolled along at about the same speed as some could run. But they paid the same $20 that we did, so the courtesy of telling them we are going to pass seems the least we could do.
We had barely gotten 12 miles out when we encountered a herd of cyclists that were taking up the entire right side of the road. I was about to tell Kevin that we should buzz this group, when one of them decided that a small encumbrance in the road justified her almost stopping entirely, and without warning she slowed to a crawl, leaving me no choice but to run up on her rear wheel.

I saw our wheels cross, and had enough time to say out loud, "This isn't good," and in a flash I was sideways on the ground. I had hit with a force that I have never hit before, and immediately felt my head hit the pavement (yes, that's blood on my helmet) and my left arm impact my chest with a force that would end up dislocating my lung from its protective casing. I know I was almost to a complete stop when I hit, because there is no scraping on my clothes or arms - just impact points and big scars. One on my forearm, one on my shoulder and one on my upper thigh. I'd have been better off sliding. To give you an idea of the force, the impact not only dislocated my left lung, but it dislocated the left lens from my Oakley Flak Jacket frames - a feat that cannot be accomplished easily.

The medical term is pneumothorax. You (and I) would call it a collapsed lung. Subsequent X-Rays would say it was 40% collapsed, and I wound up being admitted to Elmer Hospital. They found no cracked or broken ribs, so they reasoned that it was the impact alone that caused the lung to collapse. That's a lot of impact, gang; especially from 4 feet off the ground.

Shortly after 6:00pm, I would be in surgery having a half-inch tube inserted into my left chest, through my rib cage and into my thorax to attempt to draw enough air out of it to allow the lung to reinflate and rejoin its rightful place near my rib cage. By Sunday afternoon, that mission had been accomplished, and late Monday afternoon I was released from the hospital with a ridiculous amount of gause and tape on my body

The lessons we learn from this experience are plentiful:

Pack a "Go Bag" and leave it in your vehicle, in case you, like me, have nobody at home to retrieve your belongings and you don't prefer to spend your entire hospital stay in a gown and smelly bike shorts.
Stay as far away from strange riders as possible. Not all of them (or not most of them) know the simple etiquette of yelling "slowing" or "stopping" to let riders behind them know that they are slowing or stopping. One of those two words would have gone a long way toward keeping everyone safe. I still don't know if the rider I collided with takes any responsibilty for her actions. It doesn't matter, but it would be nice to hear "I'm sorry."
When you're doing these giant group rides, pick out 6 or 8 people you know and ride with them. If you don't know anyone, find a way around the rest of them and practice "on your left" and yell it at every opportunity.
When you have a plan, execute it. Don't wait for something to happen. I had a bad feeling about the group in front - emphasized by a couple of riders with hydration packs on their back - and should have just crossed the yellow line and gotten them out of my way. Several times prior, we had yelled "car back" and they just stayed bunched up on the road. That's why motorists hate us and why I hate some cyclists.

There are probably a few more that will materialize as I sit for the next 6 days waiting for this to heal.

Life out of balance.

2011-09-14T20:00:00.009-04:00

According to the Hopi dictionary, the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi is defined as "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance." The prefix koyaanis means "corrupted" or "chaotic", and the word qatsi means "life" or "existence" literally translating koyaanisqatsi as "chaotic life."

First, a few facts:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of the nation's poor have swelled to a record 46.2 million — nearly 1 in 6 Americans — as the prolonged pain of the recession leaves millions still struggling and out of work. And the number without health insurance has reached 49.9 million, the most in over two decades.

No politics, no spin - just numbers. It's plain to see that more Americans are living below the poverty level than have since the 1980s. The other half of the equation is the poverty line:

For last year, the official poverty level was an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four. Measured by total numbers, the 46 million now living in poverty are the most on record dating back to when the census began to track in 1959. The 15.1 percent tied the level of 1993 and was the highest since 1983. For an individual, the annual income is $11,139.

Now that we have established a bench mark, consider that there are those living in poverty and those living in extreme poverty. They have measured those numbers since 1975, and they are roughly the equivalent of someone being obese or being morbidly obese. You're still poor, only now, you are so poor that we have invented another chart for you. One with an adjective.

Now that we know the numbers, something that happened today has me perplexed. Somebody named Missoni created such a buzz over his (or her) fashion designs that Target's web site shut down and the store had a rush on the stuff to the point that TV paid attention and they actually ran out of product.

It isn't as though Missoni was selling food or something that could help people. They are selling dinnerware, shoes and clothing; presumably things that we can live without, especially when you consider that large numbers of people are living below the poverty level.

Somewhere in America there are people who will jam up a web site and line up at a store in September for some designer stuff that they presume to be a "bargain." I'd guess that these aren't people who are living at or below the poverty level. So, it leaves me to wonder where the separation is and what predicates people above the separation level to behave in such a manner. I'm lower-middle class, and I had no idea who this Missoni person was until I read the story on the Internet. Am I uninformed?

Regardless of the "incredible bargain" prices that may have existed for this stuff, it leaves me wondering how a society that can produce 46 million people living in poverty could also produce a large number of people willing to spend money on stuff like that. The Hopi had a word for it. Koyaanisqatsi. Life out of balance. If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend you search your Netflix account and spend a couple of hours with it.

Is our life out of balance? It surely is. And don't call me Shirley.

Junk on Television

2011-09-13T21:18:00.004-04:00

WARNING: What follows is almost a reprint of an essay I wrote in 2006. I don't have many new thoughts anymore. I even gave it the same title because I couldn't think of a better one.

There's a lot of stuff on television. There are shows about fat people trying to get thin, people who collect junk, people who sell junk and people who try to keep people from getting fat or collecting junk. It runs the gamut.

They don't show movies on network TV like they used to. We used to have "Saturday Night at the Movies" or something similar, where a network would program a 3-hour block and show a movie. Now, they take the same 3-hour block and program three shows about people trying to survive on an island, navigate an obstacle course or prove to three jokers that they can sing.

Movies have been relegated to pay-cable channels. Partly because programming "reality shows" is cheaper and partly because commercial-free pay-cable makes watching movies on network TV kind of pointless. Originally, it was the point of pay cable. Then, they discovered that they could produce their own TV shows too.

One of them is a channel called American Movie Classics. They show movies with commercials and edit them for language and content. The part that strikes me as odd is that the films they show are indeed classics, but they choose to edit some of the very things - language and images - that made them classics to begin with.

They show films like "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Taxi Driver," and remove some of the scenes and dialogue, toss in some commercial breaks and seem to be pround of it. And for those of us who are credit readers, they have made that experience impossible. They shrink the screen by two-thirds, speed up the crawl and use the remainder of the screen to tell us which classic film is coming up next.

A lot of television involves telling us what is coming up next. There are tiny people jumping around in a corner of the screen, words flying by and ill-timed announcements of COMING UP NEXT, while we are engrossed in a delicate plot point. Note that those things never come up during the commercials. We are supposed to pay rapt attention to those. You don't want anything distracting you from the 25 side-effects of a boner drug, after all. Never mind that we're paying for television to begin with. But I digress.

It's possible now to stream movies and television shows on your laptop computer, hand held cellular device or iPad. There is a strange juxtaposition over content. On the one hand, we are obsessed with 3D, Imax and other such large-screen video. On the other, we seem to enjoy it in a format that encourages viewing it cross eyed. The gang at Netflix even charges for the privilege. For a few dollars a month you can spend two hours in front of your computer screen staring at the latest video offering. I enjoy my sofa and a large TV that I don't have to squint at, thank you.

It's all part of this grand digital age. Some of it is practical, while some of it is technology for the sake of it. I figure that the horrid experiences will weed themselves out and people will settle into where they are comfortable, and I can't believe that they are comfortable watching "Avatar" on a 6-inch screen when they can see it on a 50-inch one.

Maybe we just enjoy sitting really close to things?

Some things you probably didn't know about our Postal Service

2011-09-06T19:39:00.001-04:00

News Item: The Postmaster General says that the United States Postal Service will be broke by August 2012. Supposedly, if the economy doesn't improve or Congress doesn't act, our mail will cease to be delivered a year from now. Phooey!

That's a classic cry for help, and he'd have been better off keeping his mouth shut. Why? Because there is plenty you don't know about the United States Postal Service, not the least of which is how they deliver the mail.

A few years ago, I found myself in a Center City bar sitting next to a FedEx pilot (off duty, I presumed) who related to me the details of how anything that the Postal Service gets winds up on a FedEx plane. I started out by kidding him about how he liked the movie "Cast Away," and one thing led to another. It turns out that I learned a valuable lesson before the beer got to me. That's right kids, it pays to drink. FedEx has a partnership deal with the USPS to fly their stuff around the world. His key line to me was, "How do you think all that stuff gets there overnight?" The Postal Service doesn't have the infrastructure, so they sub-contract the work.

Tell me the last time you saw a USPS airplane. [tick ... tick ... tick] You have never seen one. That is because all air freight and international package delivery is handled by FedEx and/or the United States Parcel Service (UPS). You have seen plenty of UPS and FedEx planes, and tons of their trucks on the road. That's because the USPS is in a partnership with FedEx and UPS to handle their overseas mail and Express Mail deliveries. You didn't think that the USPS was running that stuff all over the world by themselves, did you? HA.

For some interesting exchanges and a lot of news about the subject, click here and read about how the USPS is spending their money. They have been in a partnership with FedEx and UPS for over 10 years. The next time you send something Express Mail or send a package that has to go through the air, think about it.

So, the Postmaster General is crying to the government for help. He wants them to help the USPS the same way it helped the auto makers and the big banks: A big bailout. Chances are, the general public will support such a plan (moreso than it did for the banks and auto makers) because they think that the mail is being delivered by the USPS. Here's a clue: Order something and track the package. For instance, order a pair of fancy sunglasses from Oakley. They give the package to DHL and a few days (and a few thousand miles) later, DHL turns it over to USPS and they deliver it to your mailbox. Just like George wanted credit for Elaine's Big Salad, the USPS wants credit for delivering the package to you. In fact, it's a team effort. Why Oakley turns gives it to DHL in the first place is anyone's guess. I'd guess that it's cheaper for them to give it to DHL instead of straight through the USPS. And that should be your second clue as to why the USPS is in trouble.

My guess is that the USPS doesn't want the general public to know that they have a lot of help delivering the mail. Especially now that they are crying "poor" and asking the government for help. There is much more to the Postal Service's troubles than delivering a letter for 45 cents. Their troubles run deep, and bailing them out may be a mistake. One could maintain that private industry could deliver the mail as efficiently as the Postal Service. Why? Because private industry is already delivering the mail as efficiently as the Postal Service. All that's left is giving them the mailboxes and the rights to deliver letters and those annoying catalogs and junk mail.

Perhaps then we could get the annoying catalogs and junk mail to stop. Why? Because private industry knows better than to waste their time giving consumers something that they do not want.

454 Words on Two Words

2011-08-31T15:26:00.007-04:00

I was taking an online FEMA Emergency Management Course today and I stumbled across this passage:

When American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, 900 responders from 50 different agencies were able to communicate with one another. Response agencies had learned an invaluable lesson from the Air Florida tragedy.

Invaluable is a strange word. Webster's New College dictionary defines it as: "extremely valuable; having value too great to measure; priceless." It can be extremely valuable or priceless. Something can be extremely valuable and still have a price. If it is priceless, by definition it is "of inestimable value; beyond price." It seems like we should say valuable or priceless, and leave invaluable to people who don't really know how valuable something is. Would that sentence have been any different if it said "response agencies had learned a valuable lesson?" No.

Why bother using invaluable? If they meant priceless, then say priceless. It's a dopey word to use for something that couldn't possibly have a price to begin with. A collectible car can be priceless. A ticket to a special event can be priceless because it has a price on it. But a lesson, to me can be valuable but not priceless. And you can't call a lesson invaluable because it means the same as valuable.

Every year a group of scholars gets together and decides on new words that they want to add to dictionaries. Invaluable sounds like a word that we should eliminate.

We have enough words already, and when we have one that means two things, perhaps it's time for it to go. Why do we continue to use invaluable when priceless will do? Occasionally, I'll read something about how difficult English is to learn. When I see words like invaluable I understand why. If you were a new student to the English language, you would have to assume that invaluable meant not valuable, since the prefix is the opposite of the word it is in front of in many situations. Incorrect, injustice and incomplete are the negative versions of correct, justice and complete. How can those three words be negatives with the same prefix as a word that uses it as an exaggeration?

Inflammable is another strange word. It means anything flammable. It confuses some people because they interpret the prefix in as meaning not, but inflammable and flammable mean exactly the same thing.

In fact, the definition contains the word flammable. It comes from the Medieval Latin inflammabilis, an adjective derived from inflammare ("to set on fire"). I nominate inflammable as another word that should be eliminated. We don't need two words that are barely different yet mean exactly the same thing.

Or, perhaps you think I'm being insolent?

It's all in the perspective.

2011-08-30T22:15:00.004-04:00

While I was looking over the flooding in my neighborhood on Sunday, I realized that I live near some Urban Hillbillies. I call them Urban Hillbillies because their speech pattern doesn't match the area in which they live.

They pronounce creek crik, water wuter and they say things like "I swum" and have an accent that belies the fact that they live 20 miles from Philadelphia. They're fascinating, mainly because they have managed to develop their own voice and mannerisms while others around them find it strange.

I saw a few of them in the local Wal-Mart this afternoon. If you hyphenate Wal-Mart, you are not an Urban Hillbilly. Urban Hillbillies call it Walmert and show up in whatever they happen to be wearing when they rolled out of bed into their pile of clothes that morning. I wandered in there because I needed Benadryl and had almost given up finding some.

The Deptford Wal-Mart is relatively new. It's been there a year or so, and today was the first time I had gone in. I needed Benadryl, and the Wal-Mart was my third stop trying to find the stuff. When I go into one of those places I instantly feel out of my element. The place is huge. It has a supermarket, pharmacy, a Subway sandwich place and (even though I didn't look) I think they had chewing tobacco and white tank t-shirts, but I didn't look for them.

I tend to wander in, make a bee-line for what I want and get out. Having all that stuff so close together scares me a little. OK, a lot. The Wal-Mart philosophy must be to give people not only what they want, but everything they want all in one place. Then the pile on by making everything less expensive than it is almost everywhere else. I suppose that's why they have been around since 1962.

The non-Urban Hillbillies hate the Wal-Mart and everything it represents. They claim that their low prices and product availability hurt local businesses. I suppose that is true, since people do love low prices and available products. Don't hate the player; hate the game.

Can I hate the Wal-Mart because I had been to 3 other drug stores (big chains, not the local rabble) in an attempt to find the elusive Benadryl, only to find it at the local Wal-Mart. And for a paltry $6.97 for 48 tablets. Take that, Rite Aid and CVS. You had your chance. It would have been to find an ounce of weed than it was finding Benadryl, which they tell me is legal.

Perhaps the reasons the Urban Hillbillies survive is that they don't mind wading into brown stream water and they know where to find bargains? Whatever their reasons, perhaps we can learn something from them. They're smarter than us, anyway. They know that you can wade into dirty stream water without rubbing your hands in sanitizer and they can unload a cart full of groceries and products while saving money in the process. I think the literati cal that "street smarts."

That they will live longer than us is their reward. Or their curse, depending on your perspective.

The Changing Landscape

2011-08-28T18:40:00.000-04:00

Lately, I have been lamenting the absence of silence. It is nearly impossible to escape noise in our 21st century lives. The din of cell phones and the loud conversations that others have on them has become a staple in our lives. I think one of the reasons I enjoy road biking is the relative peace and quiet that comes with the road. All we hear is the grind of the gears and the tires rolling against the asphalt. As days go, it is a peace that we cannot find in the office, gym or almost anywhere else in public.

We have learned to accept (or learned to tolerate) outside noise in our lives, and the more I hear the less I need. Cell phones ring and people chatter. For some reason, they speak more loudly on cell phones than they do on regular phones or when they are speaking to each other. What is even more interesting to me is how willing people are to give up the peace and quiet of life.

Almost everyone in the gym has a set of headphones plugged in. Sometimes it sounds like they have a head full of bees. The music is so loud that those of us on the outside can hear the buzzing. I can't help but wonder what it sounds like to their numbing head. I don't know how or when they have decided that the outside world is too distracting to them that they feel the need to infest their heads with noise, but it has happened.

I think it's why I enjoy the solitude of bicycling. The only thing between me and the outside world is the roll of my tires on the road. It's a unique noise - or I should say, a unique absence of noise - which is where the solitude comes in. I have an opportunity to think. I'm not sure we appreciate the ability to stop and think about things.

When I was in college, I would escape the outside world by going to the library and seeking out silence so that I could concentrate on whatever assignment I had. Occasionally, a boob on a cell phone would invade my world, and when I would glare at him and ask him to take his conversation elsewhere, I was greeted with a return glare and an accompanying comment that would go something like "screw you," or words to that effect. Strange behavior from someone in a library, I thought.

I remember hearing an old Bill Cosby routine about two things he would like to have in his life. Peace and quiet. The whole monologue was structured around those two words. I've carried it with me, even though it has become less desirable in today's world. We don't seek out peace and quiet. Now, we look for distractions and work toward finding noise. Every new piece of technology is built around infesting our lives with noise and distraction. I suppose we seek it, otherwise the stuff wouldn't be as popular as it is.

The next time you are in a situation where you can find a bit of silence; stop and think about it for a second. I say a second, because it's likely that a second is all the time you will have to appreciate it. Any longer than that, and you are either in a power outage or involved in some sort of fraternity prank where you have been locked in a room by yourself.

Solitary confinement. Another dream of mine.

Hurricane? It means you have to drive us to the Food King!

2011-08-26T20:14:00.000-04:00

Our local weather people are so excited, there's a little wet stain on the front of their pants. By tomorrow, the wet stain will have migrated to the back of their pants. It's storm time, and nobody does storms better (or more extravagantly) than our local news teams.

Already, there are reporters stationed at New Jersey shore points with eyewitness reports of wind and rain. We couldn't know otherwise what wind and rain are like if we didn't have people standing in it on camera.

The local residents are flocking to the grocery stores. Why, I have no idea. We are going to be rained-in for, at the most, one day. Stores and restaurants will be closed on Sunday, so we will have to survive on the accumulated food that we can find in our pantries. Unless, of course, we manage to trip to the grocery and stock up on all sorts of things that we couldn't possibly eat in a 24-hour period. Add to that the fact that the power is likely to go down, and thousands of people will have freshly-purchased spoiled food in their refrigerators. Nice planning.

That's the main concern - the power. We need electricity, and it's odd that it is so fragile a utility that some 70mph winds could knock it out for a day or so. It's worse in the winter, where no power means we will freeze. In the late summer it means that we will not have television, which seems to be a fate worse than death.

The stores around here are sold out of D-size batteries. Apparently, every flashlight in the area is dead and the already small supply of D cells was exhausted yesterday. There are plenty of AA and AAA batteries. That's because only TV remotes run on them, and since there won't be any TV, there is no use for the remote control. Nice planning.

Hurricane Irene is rolling up the east coast and the weather forecast for Sunday says "Hurricane conditions possible. Very windy." Seriously. They are scientists.

The level of panic will only be superseded by the level of media overkill. They will be on the air most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday telling us how horrible it is - as though we couldn't figure it out ourselves by looking out the window. The wind will blow, the rain will fall and more than likely you will be spared watching any of it on television because you won't have electricity to run the blessed thing.

My advice: I echo the sentiments of John Blutarsky, who told Flounder, "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily."

Exclusively and only at My Sick Mind.

2011-08-17T09:06:00.000-04:00

"Exclusively and only at Raymour and Flanigan."

- Kathy Ireland, from a TV ad.

Language and grammar are funny things. I play with them frequently, and I wonder if a lot of it flies over the heads of readers, just as most of my physics classes flew over my head in high school.

The advent of the Internet brought about a new mode of communication. No longer did people merely speak to each other. Now, they write down their thoughts and offer them in the written form more than they did in the 1960s. Phone calls were replaced by text messages, and letters and post cards are replaced by blogs and Facebook updates.

Once blogs became popular, I wondered how former students who couldn't grasp the simple rules of grammar would acclimate to the Worldwide web and make their ideas palatable to those of us who find the rules of grammar akin to the way Christians view The Bible.

We used to have to endure bad speech patterns and pleas of "you know what I mean." Now, the written form has forced us to negotiate a mine field of misused pronouns and possessives that sometimes make us turn our head like a dog who hears a high-pitched noise. We are paying the price for our contemporaries who refused to pay attention in grammar school when the simple rules of grammar were being taught.

We read your when they meant you're. They write there when they mean they're and various spellings of words like definately. It has become the new low standard of communication, and sadly, the glory of spell check does not work with bad grammar. I think the solution lies in not using contractions. Even the dullest among us surely know the difference between you are and your -- don't they? It all seems so simple.

I remember being in grammar school and having Miss Buchanan go over the to, too and two; there, they're and their; your and you're and the lesser relatives were and we're. Some of us got it immediately and pleaded for her to move along. Others viewed it like long division and just never seemed to get it. That's fine, how much could it matter to kids in the 1960s?

Little did we know that a world of text messages, where we abbreviate words that we never learned to spell - and the Internet (capital I), blogs and things like Facebook would come along to further torture those of us who learned the rules. It is like driving the speed limit while the rest of the world whizzes by, completely neglectful of the rules. Either they do not care or never bothered to learn. Either way, we suffer at their ignorance.

But the world continues to spin, and those of us who learned to type feel strangely at home behind the keyboard, while others hunt and peck - victims of their childhood. It's not like we foresaw all this keyboard work. We were told that typing would be a valuable skill, and doing it quickly and accurately would be a boon to our college career. If I only knew that I wouldn't attend college until I was 40, and by that time my research skills would be Internet-based and my typing would be corrected by Microsoft Word's precious spell check feature.

It isn't bad enough that we have masses of people infesting the Internet with their spelling and grammar, we also have professional advertising agencies (and their alleged college-educated copywriters) giving us phrases like the one above. Combine that with gems like "Save up to 40 percent, and more," and I wonder why someone's editor didn't correct it before they gave it to somebody to say out loud.

I can only imagine what we are going to have to endure from the next generation, who has the luxury of abbreviating text messages, 140-character limit Tweets and a forgiving Facebook community to live with. If the 40-something's and their work is any indication, we are headed down grammar's slippery slope.

Oddly, nobody seems to care.

Maybe I think too much?

2011-08-15T18:35:00.002-04:00

I shouldn't use the salad bar or go to buffet restaurants, but I do anyway. I can't help but think about how infected the buffet spoons and salad tongs are as I pick them up and shovel food onto my plate. We don't give it a second thought, but I think about it when I see the end of the spoon or tong lying in the food in the adjacent container. Sometimes the entire serving device is lying in the food, which makes me think that someone should replace the serving device and, for that matter, the food that the handle has contacted.

It's irrational, I know, because our immune system is built on fending off bacteria. That's why I think hand sanitizers are the biggest scam perpetrated on the American public since Lite beer. Part of me relishes the opportunity for my body to fight off bacteria-ridden salad tongs, but I am similarly grossed-out by the idea that someone's recently nose-picked finger has handled a plastic device that I am using to scoop up some chickpeas.

I'm conflicted.

A new scourge

2011-08-09T20:27:00.004-04:00

There is a new infestation. A race of mutants that must be stopped. At first glance, they appear to have tremendous power. In reality, they are weak and easily defeated. Their weakness is exposed as they roam our streets.

They are not born, they are made. Because they have been created, they can be destroyed. It will take many years and perhaps we will have to endure loss of lives, but the loss will be worth the gain to society.

I'm talking about the Walk and Text crowd. Hoards of people roaming around with their heads down, texting on their so-called Smartphones. Their self-indulgence leads them into awkward situations with the humans walking toward them. Those who are walking with their heads up can see the approaching WAT (Walk and Texter) and dutifully avoid them as the WAT's gaze continues downward. Sometimes they do not know that they have come within inches of a collision, as they never alter their downward gaze.

Our duty as upright walkers is not to avoid them, but to continue on our path and run into them. There may be dislocated thumbs, bumped shoulders or other minor injuries, but the resulting lesson learned by the WAT will be worth our effort. One by one, stories of WATs being walked into will spread amongst their legions and either they will learn to stop walking while they are using their phone or they will evolve into a race of mutants with a bat-like ability to sense motion through antennae in their forehead.

Either way, we win.

Somebody should write this stuff down.

2011-08-08T22:13:00.002-04:00

This is two days in a row I've written about baseball. Not on purpose, just because it's the game I know the most about and it's the game that has some of the most ridiculous behavior in sports.

It's also a game where unwritten rules are just as important as the ones that are in the rule book. Players all know them and when one of their brethren break them, there is Hell to pay - or at least a hefty fine.

One of the unwritten rules is that you're not supposed to steal a base when your team is leading by a substantial margin. What the margin is and when it is determined to be insurmountable, only the people who write the unwritten rule book know. It's a sliding scale. By following that logic, when your team has a big lead, batters should go up and just strike out, since they don't need any more runs. OK.

When the Phillies' Jimmy Rollins stole second base on the San Francisco Giants while the Phils were leading by 6 is a flagrant violation of the unwritten rule book. Alter Placido Polanco drove Rollins in to score another run, the next batter, Shane Victorino was intentionally hit by a pitch.

That is the retaliation for breaking the unwritten rules. By placing blame on an innocent bystander, baseball inflicts its punishments in a strange fashion. Nevertheless, the tax on doing something that makes the other team look bad is having one of your teammates hit by a thrown baseball.

The ensuing fights are strikingly similar. The batter drops his only weapon, stares out at the pitcher, exchanges obscenities and the two lunge at each other. By this time, either the umpire or the catcher or both grabs one of the two idiots and try to wrestle them to the ground. On the rare occasions where the two actually confront each other, one of them lunges at the other and they wrestle around like a couple of girls. Meanwhile, the benches empty and melee ensues.

But the really ridiculous thing that happens is when the bullpens empty. Twenty guys run out of opposite (and sometimes adjoining) areas, run 400 feet and get there just in time to have had the fight broken up and order restored. They could have fought each other in the outfield and spared themselves the effort of running the length of the field for nothing. One day, a bullpen fight is going to break out and I want partial credit for bringing it on.

The next thing that happens is that Major League Baseball hands out some lame punishment, like suspending a pitcher for 5 days when he only works once every 5 days. He's really not missing the other 4 games because he hardly shows up anyway. Then they fine other participants the equivalent of fining you or I five dollars.

But on they go. Baseball is the only game that allows players on the benches to get involved in a fight. Hockey has a "third man in" rule, and as ridiculous as hockey fights are, at least the two guys who are angry with one another get the chance to settle it. Until one of them slips and the other one loses his grip on his jersey. Baseball fights hardly even get started.

It's laughable most of the time. Two guys who had weapons abandon them and run toward each other without the slightest idea of what they're going to do once they arrive at midpoint. They're obviously too busy thinking about the fine they're going to pay and the game they're going to miss. It's all very distracting and apparently effective at curbing violence as well.

OK.

Be a Sport.

2011-08-07T18:02:00.001-04:00

You can't use sports as a metaphor for life. I'm not sure if anyone has tried, but it seems to me like someone has. Sports is so far separated from life, that to compare anything you do to something a professional athlete does is just plain silly.

Take, for example, the recent allegations that Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez was caught in a high-stakes poker game with some rather distasteful people. Major League Baseball said something about it, to the point that a real investigation was performed. What MLB fails to realize is that these guys have two vital ingredients that work toward odd behavior: Money and time.
You pay these guys ridiculous sums of money - even the Major League minimum salary is close to a half million a year - and expect them to, what ... save it? They can't be on one side by paying the salaries that they pay and be on the other side by protesting what the guy does with the money. If you want people to behave, starve them financially and you won't have to worry about them being involved in anything that involves high stakes.

Fans aren't always any better an example. Recently, some fans in Boston went through a trash can to retrieve a foul ball. Baseball is the only sport where you get to take home a physical part of the game, and fans are relentless with the balls. I think the reason you can keep a stray baseball is that they're relatively cheap, at least when you compare the cost to a football or basketball. That's what makes the souvenir baseball so intriguing. They're cheap and not all that rare, and fans have done some odd things to take one home.
I wonder what the geological limit would be for fans to reach into something to get a souvenir ball? If the ball bounced into the Men's room and landed in a soiled toilet, would they reach in and grab it? I bet somebody would.

That sort of behavior contributes to the idea that sports doesn't align itself with real life. If I'm walking behind Al Pacino and he drops his pen, I'll give it back to him. I'm not anxious to leave the scene with an artifact. The polite thing for fans to to would be to give the ball back. But the reason they go to games is to escape reality, not be a part of it. So odd behavior at sporting events can also be justified.

Everything about sports is goofy. Food prices at the ballparks are outrageous,. It costs money to park your car at an event where you're paying to get in. People go to games wearing a shirt with somebody elses name on the back. And, if you go with a shirt that has your name on the back, you are ridiculed by the fan base.

They'll justify it by proclaiming, "I paid fifty bucks for this ticket, I'll do what I want!" When you add up the whole experience, it's more like you're into them for a hundred bucks. Suppose the school said that it would cost parents a hundred bucks to come to their child's high school graduation. Most of them would pay it, but they'd bitch like Hell. Meanwhile, they'll pay to watch a team play a sport, to the extent that they'll pay well in excess of the face value of the ticket for a chance to go to a game. Of course, some of those same people are paying seven bucks for cigarettes that will eventually kill them, so it seems to be a flexible spending plan.

Our priorities are out of whack.

This is how it is.

2011-07-30T22:01:00.002-04:00

I see how it is. Money, price and service have lost their relationship.

I started to think about it when the spate of NFL free agent signings was being reported this week. The lockout is over, and teams have been rushing to pay huge sums of money to mesomorphs with athletic skills. Twenty million dollars. Ten million dollars. Guaranteed money for guys with no more skill than running fast and catching oblong projectiles.

As I placed my items on the grocery store conveyor, I walked down to the end of the line to place the items in my canvas bag as the cashier rolled them over an electronic scanning device. I hadn't finished placing them all in the bag when the cashier said, "Twenty-one seventy-five," which was my cue to swipe my debit card and pay for it all. The items sat unattended while I entered my PIN and selected "Yes" and "No" to those questions at the end of the transaction. When I was finished, I completed bagging my items and the cashier tore off the receipt and said, "Thanks for bagging," as though I had another choice. Someday, I'll arrive with enough moxie to just stand there and wait for service. But why should I have to do that?

Automobiles are advertised with all sorts of gadgets and safety features. The most extravagant safety features are reserved for the more expensive cars. I suppose that's because poor people or those who choose to drive economy cars don't deserve to be safe. If you want a lot of airbags and exclusive safety options, don't buy a Fiesta.

In Washington, D.C. (our nation's capital) elected officials earning hundreds of thousands of dollars are fighting over a way to spend trillions of dollars and placing the burden on people earning thousands of dollars. As it is with a lot of things, the people most impacted by a decision have the least amount of influence over it and are generally powerless to fight it. They have changed the way our inflation rate is calculated, which influences Social Security increases. They raise taxes and make the tax code so complicated that we have to pay to file. Whenever government spends itself into a hole they place the burden on us because we are their last resort. The trouble is, we aren't getting the service we are paying for.

There doesn't seem to be a relationship between the level of service, the importance to society and the price or salary paid. We derive entertainment from watching professional sports, but does that justify the exorbitant salaries? I suppose if we are stupid enough to pay $80 for a ticket to a game, teams are justified in paying $20 million a year for the people we pay to watch. If we continue to do the work that we pay store clerks to do, we're going to keep doing it because they expect it of us. If we keep buying expensive automobiles when cheaper ones will do the same job, manufacturers will keep making the big, less sensible ones.

If we stand idly by and watch our government tax and spend, we are getting what we are deserve. Our priorities have shifted into areas of entertainment and occupying our days with texting, Facebooking, Tweeting and mundane tasks that distract us from what is really important. It seems that the wider the gap between the rich and poor the more things we find to distract us from realizing it. We have our wide-screen television, web-enabled cell phone and mind altering prescription drugs to distract us from how far we have fallen and what we are really paying for.

Are we really any happier now?

How do you feel? I feel hot.

2011-07-24T15:03:00.000-04:00

"It's Africa-hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of heat."
- "Biloxi Blues"

It's uncomfortable for the humans. Animals and other creatures don't seem to mind much. We, however, are fragile creatures. Lizards can crawl around on rocks in the sun and not a drop of sweat. In fact, I don't know of any other animals who sweat like we humans. And certainly none who sweat like I do.

The strange thing is, our body temperature is almost 99 degrees, and yet temperatures in the 90s bother us and make us reach for the thermostat.

The temperature yesterday got to 102 degrees. That's right. The weather people said it was a "real feel" of 116. That means that it feels like it's 116 degrees, as though we're supposed to know what that feels like. It's already 102 and we're supposed to think that it's even hotter? What would it feel like if it was 116? We'll never really know what the "real feel" is because we never really feel it.

Today, it's 92 with a heat index (real feel) of 102. So, I guess if I go outside now I'll know what 102 feels like. Since it was 102 yesterday, that's what 102 would feel like if it was 92 and ... oh, I don't know what any of it is supposed to feel like. It's hot, OK? That's what it feels like.

The local supermarket had covers over the exposed milk and eggs because the air conditioner couldn't keep the place cool enough to keep the milk and eggs cold and fresh. When that happens, I'd say it's time to throw in the towel and declare some sort of state of emergency. But more than that, it makes me wonder what our parents' generation did when it got this hot. It did get this hot for them, and they didn't have air conditioned cars and workplaces. Their milk and eggs were probably exposed to deadly heat. They also didn't have the luxury of regular showers and advanced hygiene products. It must have smelled pretty bad too.

I wonder if we have softened as a society. The only time we have to do without artificial temperatures is when we are walking to our car or outdoors for some reason. In the 1950s people used to flock to movie theaters that had those signs that said AIR CONDITIONED with the little icicles hanging off the letters. Those were great times.

I grew up in a house without air conditioning, and it wasn't until I moved into my spacious 700 square foot condo that I became accustomed to air conditioning. In my youth, I'd throw a fan on and lie down for a while until the sun went down. That was before I discovered the luxury of expensive electric bills. Now, I flip the air on and it's 79 degrees inside. What a great life. I also think it has softened me and made me less able to adapt to the heat. I'm on the second floor, and without air conditioning it would be 90 degrees in here - and feel like 102.

Rather than appreciate the relative comfort, I wonder how much better my life is now than it was when I was a kid and we'd go through heat waves. And yes, it's hot, but I really couldn't tell you how it feels since I've managed to insulate myself from the outdoors during most of it. I run from my air conditioned workplace to my air conditioned car and air conditioned dwelling. I'm conditioned from the air. These past few days, I've been hunkered-in as though there was 2-feet of snow on the ground.

I cringe when I have to endure an outdoor event in 90-degree temperatures and God forbid I go for more than a half hour without air conditioning. I have a ticket for Monday afternoon's Phillies game, and it would be worth the $32 for me to give the ticket to someone and find something to do indoors. When I go to games I look around, and I don't see many people suffering like I am. Invariably, some benevolent soul decides to mist the crowd. That's just what I need, more moisture. I feel better for about 30 seconds, then I look down and see that my scorecard is wet. Thanks, Phanatic.

So we endure the summer. We complain about the heat, much as we endure the winter and complain about the cold. It's the wind chill then. How it feels when the cold wind blows on us. I don't remember all this real feel and wind chill junk when I was a kid. Some scientist figured that we needed to be reminded how uncomfortable we are in extreme temperatures. I think that's part of the reason we complain more now than we used to.

The Soccer Fans are Back.

2011-07-19T20:50:00.005-04:00

The United States women's soccer team lost their final match in the World Cup to the team from Japan. According to data, 13.4 million Americans watched the game on television. I suspect that a large number of them watched it because it was ending in the late afternoon when baseball games were ending and people were wondering, "What else is on TV?"

The backlash (what there was of it) came on Monday morning, when anxious jingoists noted that the women lost a game that most of them didn't know existed a couple of weeks ago. Mostly, I suspect they rooted for the flag (and the Republic for which it stands) and couldn't name three women on the team, but I digress.

I tried to tune in - that is to say, I turned the game on a couple of times, but as the game just wasn't interesting enough to keep me tuned-in. After all, "The Great Outdoors" was on Encore, and I always enjoy watching the late John Candy. If only he could have played soccer.

On the sports talk radio, callers repeated their popular refrain: You should like soccer. Why, I asked (quietly to myself) much as Jerry asked Kenny Banya when Kenny implored Jerry, "You should work out."

It's the 21st century, and people do what they want. They will either watch soccer or not, and no amount of coaxing will lure them in. They think we are strange because we do not like something that they find endlessly appealing, in spite of the fact that the game strangely does not tell us how much time remains. We like a time limit or at the very least, the knowledge of when the game is over. In fact, when the U.S. scored a go-ahead goal in what they call "extra time," most viewers figured that the game was over. But it was not sudden death, but soccer's version of it, which should be called "Eventual Victory."

"There are no commercials," is one of the more popular reasons as to why we should like soccer. No commercials? There are no commercials on Cinemax either, but that doesn't mean I should spend twenty bucks a month to watch movies I can rent for two dollars.

The other one is, "It's the most popular sport in the world." OK, so being popular means I should like it? If that's the case, we should all buy CDs made by "American Idol" contestants, because they're popular too - or so we are led to believe. The TV ratings tell us the show is popular, but some of us abhor it and wouldn't watch it if I got a check in the mail every month.

So now, the soccer fans' moment in the sun is gone. At least until the 2012 Olympics when, once again we will be reminded of how popular soccer is around the world and how Americans are supposed to like it. We could reply in kind...

"Did you go to that prostitute?"
"No, I don't find sex with prostitutes appealing."
"Why? Sexual activity is very popular around the world. In fact, it's one of the most popular things we humans do."
"I just don't like paying for it."
"But, they don't interrupt you and don't ask 'do you love me' or any of those other questions. It's uninterrupted, guilt-free pleasure."
"I don't like it."
"You're stupid."

What’s going on in the world?

2011-07-17T19:15:00.001-04:00

I used to write something every day. Now, not so much. Mostly it's because I find that I'd be repeating myself if I wrote what I think about what is going on in the world. It's all the same crap, just a different day. You've heard that, right?

So now, we find a guy who supposedly did the right thing by giving Derek Jeter his historic 3,000^th base hit back for practically nothing – unless you consider (as I do) a bunch of autographed junk to be "practically nothing." While some of you praised him for doing [quote] the right thing [end quote] you might be similarly appalled to find that the David Price (who threw the pitch) has signed a lucrative deal to profit from the thing. So, why shouldn't the guy who caught the ball make a profit too? After all, he has a couple-hundred-thousand dollar college loan to pay off and Price and Jeter make millions every day. Who did the right thing?

Casey Anthony was released from prison today. Usually, being released from prison is a good thing. For her, it could be a death sentence. The public tried and convicted her long before the jury reached a verdict. Now that she is [quote] free [end quote] she may be in greater danger than she was when she was in prison. The outrage that accompanied her "not guilty" verdict was strange and yet predictable. It's the same sort of conviction that the general public has about things that they know little about – like that soccer team.

The women's United States soccer team lost to the Japan team. The headlines said things like "shocking defeat," but I don't know that anyone knew anything about either the United States team or the Japanese team enough to say that the defeat was shocking or that having either one of them in the final was shocking or expected. What it was, was jingoistic crap that led us to root for a team merely because they bore the United States moniker. For those of you who watched the game – and I can't imagine who that was – what a shock it must have been for you. Really.

Needless to say (so I'll say it anyway) you don't have to do the right thing or watch the right thing in order to be considered a good person. When you get to work on Monday you might hear people moaning about the soccer team's loss today. If you say, "I didn't watch the game," you do not need to do so with regret. On the contrary, you should do so with pride. You did not watch the game because two weeks ago you didn't know that the women's team was playing soccer, let alone for a world title. You also don't have to tell people that you would have given Derek Jeter his baseball back. It isn't necessary to do things because you think that people will view you in higher regard. Athletes and other so-called celebrities do not do things because they want to be viewed in higher regard. They do things because they want to earn a living. You should make that an example for your life.

Do what you want.

A Sandwich Quandary

2011-07-13T10:05:00.005-04:00

The Wawa charges $4.70 for a sandwich with meat and cheese. I can add as many condiments as I want and the price is still the same. I'm not sure if the price is different with different types of bread, but I always get the whole wheat shortie roll with lettuce, onions and yellow peppers.

Today, I decided to get a Veggie sandwich instead of the meat. The same roll, with Swiss cheese, tomato, lettuce, onions, peppers and pickles cost $3.70. Are they charging me a dollar for the meat? Since the price for the meat sandwich would be the same regardless of the condiments I added, am I being charged $3.70 for a roll and two slices of cheese?

It seems to me that the Veggie sandwich (which I refer to as a "Condiment Sandwich") should be significantly less than the meat one – to the tune of about 3 dollars less. How much should a roll and two slices of cheese cost? It doesn't seem right that I can load-up a meat sandwich with as many condiments as I want, and if all I do is subtract the meat I only save a dollar.

Perhaps Wawa is adding-in an "assembly charge?"

My Karmic Moment.

2011-06-30T21:23:00.006-04:00

Every once in a while I get a chance to be a decent human being. I'm not sure what it will get me later in (after)life, but I can't be bothered thinking about that. All I can do is think and react.

I stopped on my way home from taking mom for a trip through the MRI machine to pick up a cold beverage for later. I decided to go fancy and chose Dogfish Head Palo Alto Marron, which, in addition to being fancy is also rather pricey.
It's good for all of us that it comes in 4-packs, since it's a hefty 12% ABV, which is also the reason it's pricey. One gets what one pays for. In this case, it's $13.49.

When the young lady scanned the bar code at the bottom of the box, the not-so-pricey price of $3.37 came up on the register. Without hesitation, the young lady asked for my "three thirty-seven." I started to hand her the twenty that I had prepared, but my conscience got the better of me.

"Oh ... that can't be right," I said. She had a puzzled look that said that the electronics couldn't possibly be right and that I should just wait for my $16.63 change and go on about my business. We called the manager over to resolve this indiscretion.
While I waited for a resolution, the dude behind me in line exclaimed, "We throw the dogfish overboard when we're fishing." Clearly, he has no idea that good beer belongs on board. Philistine.

A less scrupulous individual would not only accept the change but would go back the next day for another 4-pack, figuring that he could get another deal. I did some quick "Rain Man" math in my head and reasoned that the bar code was only scanning for one bottle rather than four. It took a little time, but the manager figured out the same thing and was able to charge me the correct amount.

I'm not particularly given to superstition or how ones actions lead to another action, but I wonder if some Karmic influence is at work here, otherwise I should have just taken my 3-for-1 discount and gone about my business. Would the big store notice the ten dollar difference? Probably not, but I'd have left the store feeling like a shoplifter. It's probably the same reasoning that allows politicians to keep things that they don't think that anyone will notice ... until someone notices. Then, they feel remorseful.

My satisfaction comes in knowing that I don't have to wonder if the cashier would ever figure out that I worked her out of ten bucks and that the next time I go in the store I don't have to avoid her. I figure that is worth at least ten dollars in today's money. It's a shame that modern politics and big business doesn't grasp the same concept as it applies to the overall scheme - which is the only scheme that matters.

So, the Palo Santo Marron takes its rightful place between the Action Wheels bike bottle and the Almond milk in my refrigerator. Everything in its place.

And, I don't really care if I get anything in return. Screw you, Karma.

Try your Lux.

2011-06-27T20:57:00.004-04:00

My ex-wife used to complain that I watched too much television. My contention was that I don't watch TV the way most people watch it. Hence:

There is a new TV ad running for a product called Fast Brite Lens Restore. It's a wax-like cream that is supposed to take your old, fuzzy glaucoma-looking car headlight covers and make them shine brighter. When I saw the ad, something looked fishy in the before and after photos.

Take a closer look and you'll see that the "Before" photo measures the headlight's illumination in LUX and the "After" measures it in footcandles (FC). It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. I noticed this while watching the ad and rewound the ad, froze the frame and took the photo you see here.

What's the difference, you ask? The two headlights aren't being measured by the same standard. I had to look it up. One footcandle equals 10.764 lux. So, the 976 footcandles shown is the same as 90.673 lux, meaning that the "before" headlight is actually brighter than the "after" one. A closer look at the photo and you'll see a "x10" in the middle of the Lux (before) reading. Interesting.

Without going into a lot of explanation, I think you'll see that you shouldn't waste your money on Lens Restore. Instead, you might actually be better off letting your headlights get fuzzy, since they seem to be brighter than a lens with this junk smeared on it. Some reading material for you:

One footcandle ≈ 10.764 lux. The footcandle (or lumen per square foot) is a non-SI unit of illuminance. It is mainly only in common use in the United States, particularly in construction-related engineering and in building codes. Because lux and footcandles are different units of the same quantity, it is perfectly valid to convert footcandles to lux and vice versa.

The name "footcandle" conveys "the illuminance cast on a surface by a one-candela source one foot away." A source that is farther away provides less illumination than one that is close, so one lux is less illuminance than one footcandle. Since illuminance follows the inverse-square law, and since one foot = 0.3048 m, one lux = 0.3048² footcandle ≈ 1/10.764 footcandle.

In practical applications, as when measuring room illumination, it is very difficult to measure illuminance more accurately than ±10%, and for many purposes it is quite sufficient to think of one footcandle as about ten lux.

The company's web site proclaims:

There are three main reasons to restore your headlights.

It will improve your driving visibility and increase safety.
It is more cost effective to restore them than buying new headlights.
Third, it's an eye lift for your car! The vehicle will look well taken care of and increase trade in or sales value by hundreds!

They're right about one of those things, at least. Your vehicle will certainly look better, and aren't we all about looks in America? I'd add a fourth reason: It will make millions of dollars for companies who sell headlight-restoration materials.

In a more practical explanation, a fool and his money are soon parted. I hope my ex-wife is reading this. Moreover, I hope that she has already visited their web site and purchased a large quantity of Lens Restore. I also hope that some consumer-rights advocate has also noticed this and you won't see this ad anymore.

I'd guess that the makers of this automotive snake oil have already made enough money to have moved out of their cushy Suite in Coconut Creek, Florida and onto a brightly lit houseboat floating offshore, with no taxes to pay.

Something about nothing.

2011-06-24T21:30:00.006-04:00

I was in my local drug store tonight, picking up supplies for a long bike ride tomorrow. Among them, sunscreen and PowerBar chewy things.

The PowerBar bag had a 50-cents off coupon stuck to it, so dutifully, I peeled it off. When I peeled it off, I noticed that it said, "Valid only if removed by cashier." Why, I wondered quietly to myself.

When I got up to the buxom young cashier I commented on how I have apparently done some of her job.
"Sorry, I peeled this off," I said, even though it didn't seem to be a situation that begged for an apology. "I didn't notice it until I peeled it off."

"Well," she replied, "There is one cashier here who wouldn't give you the fifty cents." Apparently, it wasn't her, since I got my huge discount.
"Really? It's fifty cents," I replied. "It's not like it's five dollars or anything." And then I noticed that on the bag, the residue of the removed coupon read VALUABLE COUPON REMOVED, as though I had activated some sort of nuclear weapon launch sequence.

The other thing I left with was a can of sunscreen. This stuff is amazing. It's old technology that is still priced as though an iPad2 comes with it. I jumped at the in-store special that had $12 cans of Coppertone Sport priced at an incredibly low $7.99. It claims to be "ultra sweatproof," and I plan to do some ultra sweating, so it seemed to be a perfect match. Just for fun, I read the "uses" part of the can. It looks like a bunch of stuff they wrote just so they could fill the can with words.

Screens out the sun's burning rays to help prevent sunburn. Great. That's pretty much why I bought it. Check that one off.
Provides protection from UVA rays that may contribute to skin damage and premature aging of the skin. The skin damage part would seem to be redundant, since I already know it prevents sunburn, which I would say is skin damage - but I'm not a dermatologist.
Higher SPF gives more sunburn protection. I'm not a mathematician either, but I kind of figured that one out on my own.
Retains SPF after 80 minutes of activity in the water or sweating. OK, so I admit that I didn't check that one against the lower SPF sunscreens available. I plan to be outdoors more than 80 minutes, so I couldn't help but wonder what happens after 81 minutes. Will I suddenly appear older? I'll check the mirror when I get home.

There are also directions provided, as though the Uses part didn't give me all the information I needed. I'm guessing here, but I think I spray it on my skin. That has to be right, eh? Well, sort of. The directions say "apply evenly and liberally to all exposed areas prior to exposure." That sounds like JoAnne Galloway "strenuously objecting" to a line of questioning in "A Few Good Men." Should I apply it, or should I liberally apply it? Of course they want me to liberally apply it, it's twelve bucks a can.

Then it says to "reapply as needed after strenuous activity." How would I know if I need to reapply it? If I get home and see that I have red legs I'll no doubt be second-guessing my eighty-first minute of activity and wondering if I should have brought the can along and reapplied because it was obviously necessary. On the other hand, if I get home and I am still the same pasty white color I was when I left I'll know that the Ultra Sweatproof part was more important than any of that other stuff and they made me worry needlessly about my level of skin protection.

I strenuously object to reapplying this after my activity. The can didn't say anything about what would happen if I did that.

Time to start working on your putts.

2011-06-20T20:48:00.003-04:00

As a follow-up to Friday's ridiculous stories, here is another one.

How much is a scholastic athletic career worth? According to the Washington Post, Garrett Sauls, a freshman at South River High School in Maryland was faced to answer that question in May, when the streakily talented Maryland teen won a putting contest at Lake Presidential Golf Club in Upper Marlboro, Md. For winning the contest, Sauls was given the opportunity to walk home with a $5,000 check. He turned the money down, because accepting it would make him a professional athlete by default.

"I was thinking [of taking it] because you wouldn't really get in trouble unless you get caught," Sauls told the Post. "It's like in college football, those players, sometimes they get paid.

"If you know you're not good enough, then you take the cash. I'm no superstar or anything, but it's still in my mind that I have the possibility to play."

That's right. We live in a country where a high school kid cannot accept $5,000 for winning a contest because it would turn him into a professional golfer. I hope that somewhere, somebody is examining how ridiculous that notion is and is making a move to stop it. Perhaps putting a threshold on the amount of money that would constitute being a professional would be a good place to start.
Another good start would be allowing a high school kid to wins money in a contest several years before he would be considered a golfer, let alone a professional one.

I wonder how old a kid has to be before he can accept a prize for doing something and not have it affect his amateur status. If Garrett was 9 years old and won a similar contest and accepted the money, would his amateur golf career be adversely affected? If not, then why is it wrong to accept money when he's a freshman in high school? I don't know too many people who have a job now that they dreamed of having when they were in junior high school. Why is athletics any different?

Or, suppose he had won $5,000 in a pie-eating contest? Would it be OK to accept the money for that, or would it affect his amateur pie-eating status? It's about as ridiculous as it gets. Why does it matter how he won the money or what age he was when he won it? In my judgment, if he isn't already a golfer (or at the very least in college) then he can win as much money as someone will give him.

Sometimes we carry ridiculous rules too far. Or, most times. Take the money, kid. Chances are you'll wind up doing something else with your life besides professional golf. And then, you'll realize how stupid some ideologies are and how the only thing that matters is the near future and recent past - and you've already screwed up one of those things.

What are they teaching our kids? (Well, your kids)

2011-06-17T22:00:00.007-04:00

Sometimes I'm not sure what to rant about. And then, I read a couple of news stories that make my head spin, and it all becomes clear.

15-year-old Sam Saurs, of Port Orchard, Washington not only wore a pair of spiky pumps to school, but a flowy, low-cut dress and make-up. He said he felt "pretty" that day, but the dean at Sedgwick Junior High School told him he was a distraction and to go home, Q13 Fox News reported. That prompted Saurs to tell the dean he was being sexist, the station said. That led to the boy's suspension for the rest of the school year, KING 5 reported. It was later reduced to three days. The ninth grader ended up missing the school's dance and annual trip to Wild Waves.

"If anything, it makes me want to be more out there and more spontaneous and crazy," Saurs told KING 5. The station reported the boy had been suspended before for wearing makeup and hats to school. His mother said the school does have a ban on hats, but no rule against boys in dresses.

And then, I read this...

BIG BEAR LAKE, CA - The Sheriff's Department wants all copies of Big Bear High School's 2011 yearbook returned after finding a photo in it that deputies said can be construed as child pornography. Sheriff's deputies launched an investigation Tuesday after they saw the photo, which appears to show a 17-year-old boy with his hand inside the clothing of a 15-year-old girl. "A lieutenant said the photo printed in the yearbook was taken at a dance. The (couple) are in the background of the photo and are not the intended focus of the photo," said sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman.

"When the photos were scanned and proofed by an adviser, they must have missed the photo," Bachman said. Most students have turned in their yearbooks so they can be edited, but some have not.

"At this time, anyone possessing the photograph should be on notice to turn in the photographs to school staff or the Sheriff's Department or risk potential criminal charges involving possession of child pornography," the Sheriff's Department wrote in a news release.

Child pornography? If that is the case, then the school system should be sued for sanctioning some sort of prostitution ring involving minors. I think the bigger problem is that adults have forgotten what it is like to be a kid. Putting your hand in a girl's skirt is a rite of passage for high school kids. In fact, a popular movie was centered around the concept, when Farmer Ted asked Samantha for her panties so that he could show his friends that he "did it" with her "without getting personal." The idea is as old as life itself.

Incidentally, the school is asking that the yearbooks be returned to the school. They would get mine over my dead body. If the school system can define pornography as two clothed children standing up, then I'd say I have a case to keep the yearbook with all the fond memories of what life in the United States was like in 2011.

It's bad enough that when I wear a pink shirt to work I get comments from my co-workers. If a kid wants to wear a dress to school, why should anyone object? We aren't asking other people to wear dresses or embrace their sexuality. Apparently, it isn't enough that we can ignore the behavior of other people. We feel the need to foist our opinions of what constitutes sexuality on others. If I based everything I believe on what other people found acceptable, I'd stay in my house every day because almost everything I say or do could offend one of these nitwits.

The so-called "officials" in the yearbook case say that no one has been arrested. No kidding. Are they going to start arresting kids for feeling-up their girlfriends? The only people left in school would be teachers and custodians. You can't start arresting kids for stuff that you only saw in a photo. If you weren't sharp enough to see it when it happened, admit that you were either ignoring it or too stupid to catch it and let it go.

From these two stories, it appears that the school systems in America are teaching our kids that they have to conform to society and stop reacting to their primal instincts. When they are adults they are allowed to succumb to advertising and its overtly sexual nature. Until then, they should behave themselves - unless there is a photograph to look back on. Merely because they sell skirts and high heels in the "woman's section" of clothing stores should not make them eligible to only be worn by women. If a kid wants (with the sanctioning of his parents) to wear a dress to school, why shouldn't he be allowed to do so?

Remember kids, you're Americans, and you have the freedom of speech and expression. And you'd better say what you're supposed to say and behave the way you are supposed to behave - or else there will be repercussions. We are only as free as we are allowed to be. Otherwise, you are going to have to be punished and fight your punishment in our expensive and time-consuming courtrooms. It's a valuable life lesson and should serve you well as you enter the corporate world where your freedoms are even more suppressed.

Better you learn it now than later, when it will cost you a job and money.

The Latest "gate."

2011-06-16T20:56:00.002-04:00

The official follow-up to this happened today, and one would imagine that it brought the ugliness to a close. Or at least one would hope it does.

Since no actual laws were broken, we are left only with former Congressman Weiner's confession, which predictably turned into a media circus. As a matter of fact:

Weinergate became a major story in the U.S. news cycle during the past several weeks. Coverage of the saga occupied 17 percent of the news hole between June 6 and June 12, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, finishing well ahead of the ongoing unrest in the Middle East, the economy, and the 2012 presidential election.

"News hole" is an interesting (and official) term for what went on over the past month. Another fascinating thing is how the suffix gate becomes attached to every minor scandal. It's the aholic for scandal.

People who like chocolate and shopping are chocoholics and shopaholics, even though chocohol and shopohol aren't actual things, that doesn't keep the wordsmiths among us from adding aholic to almost everything to deem one an addict. The proper (dare I say) suffix for such things is merely ic. People who love chocolate are chocics and people who like to shop are shopics. But those words, while grammatically correct, are no match for the color and phrasing of their colloquialisms which are so deeply ingrained in our speech that I should just stop complaining. But I digress.

While former Congressman Weiner exhibited questionable judgment in his actions, the fact is that he didn't break a law or even attempt to lie about what had happened. It's difficult to cover-up something that occurs in our social media. Text messages (now called Sexting - which I will not dispute), Twitter comments and Facebook comments are matters of public record. Some (if not most) people have been slow to accept that. The Internet (including this particular space) can be powerful and dangerous outlets for our emotions.

If I were ever accused of a crime or merely a social screw-up, law enforcement would be all over this blog like fleas on Fluffy. I'd hope that all they would find is a somewhat cranky individual with a point of view. However, that opinion might be shifted into whatever form they would want based on the slant of my comments and the crime of which I was accused. At the very least I'd hope that they would come to appreciate my writing style and in the official court dockets it would be duly noted, so that perhaps I could find a lucrative writing career while incarcerated. But I digress.

Perhaps the biggest issue surrounding Weiner was something over which he had no control. No, not his libido. His name. Tarred with the surname that is a slang term for the penis, he was left to be the butt of double entendre headlines and jokes. He has both his ancestors and our penchant for giggling at sex to blame for that. One wonders (or at least I do) if this scandal would have been as highly publicized if he had a more reasonable surname.

What we are left with is another gate and another disgraced politician. Those are neither noteworthy nor unique in today's world. Done in by the very technology that we embrace and use for our entertainment. Some would say that Weiner got what he deserved. Others would say that we got what we deserved.

It's a fine line.

An open letter to men everywhere

2011-06-12T19:20:00.001-04:00

There is a reason they're called "privates." Not the least of which is that most people don't want to see them, and the most of which is that nobody wants to see them. If we want to see them we know where to go and we know whom to ask, which is pretty much any guy. If you ask them, they will respond like the wind with a photo of their junk that will appear either in your e-mail inbox or on your cell phone.

The popular stories concern NFL quarterbacks and United States Congressmen sending unsolicited photos of their stuff to women in an attempt (one presumes) to woo them and/or make the women think that they are missing out on something great by not hooking up with the guys.

Almost nothing could be further from the truth. Here is the big secret guys: Women do not nor do they wish to see anything you normally keep in your pants out of view from the general public. I wish I didn't have to be the one to tell you this, but you need to hear it from somebody.

Every day I see guys in the gym doing endless biceps curls or some sort of upper body exercise that they think will entice women to approach them and ask how they got to be that way. What they fail to realize is that women (and some men) often refer to guys on the beach as "chicken legs" but almost never refer to them as "chicken arms" or chicken - other body part. That's where the disconnect starts.

Guys think that women think like they do, which is to say that they think with their privates and that some random body part affects their thinking. The thing that guys fail to realize is that women do not send photos of their privates to guys at random because women realize that they are called privates for a reason.

I'd guess that the reason guys behave like that is twofold. One - they don't know any other way to behave and Two - they think like the kid who sells lemonade for ten dollars a glass: All I have to do is sell one. If they can entice one woman who might fall for an e-mailed photo to return their call they have succeeded. Their fault lies in the millions of others who will find it offensive.

Men fail to realize that their privates are the least attractive area of their bodies. It's because they can't express their thoughts or innermost feelings. That isn't a fault of technology as much as it is a fault with the way men are made and taught to behave. I don't have time to explain that, so let's move on.

Realize (men) that the Internet and your cell phone are permanent residents of your actions. You can't take it back or recant it. The technology is more advanced than your brain and when you act on some impulse, you should know that the impulse is going to be part of your permanent record.

You should remember that warning from your days in grammar school, which sadly, many of you have yet to outgrow.

A slice of life.

2011-06-02T21:15:00.003-04:00

The power of cigarettes.

Last week, I was in a local Wawa, standing in line with my newspaper, yogurt and sundries. A woman in front of me thought I might benefit from moving in front of her.

"I have a split transaction," she said, holding out a card that looked like a gift card but was actually a debit card.

I let her go. She wanted a pack of Newport cigarettes and had some change that she had apparently pulled from her sofa cushions and car seats. The cigs were $7.35 and she had all but $1.35 in nickels, dimes and pennies strewn about on the counter.

She had six dollars in change and attempted to put the remaining $1.35 on her card.
"It's rejected," the cashier said as the bad news came up on her screen.
"That's impossible. I went down to Wachovia this morning and checked to see how much was in the account, and there's a dollar-thirty-five in there. Swipe it again."
"Rejected."

This went on a few times until the line built up to more than a few shoppers with their own sundries piled up on the counter behind me.

Finally, since I was the next in line, I felt it was my responsibility to speed the process along.
"Just add the dollar thirty-five to my stuff," I said, expecting the kudos of the group behind me. Not happening. The beneficiary seemed to appreciate it, and although I would have been mortified, she took her cigarettes, thanked me and left to smoke the smoke of the poor and dependent.

I would have felt a lot better if it had been diapers or her lunch or even a magazine, but afterward I felt like I should have just waited for her to have the cashier give up and abandon her cigarettes. I don't think she would have learned anything, though; and the necessity to move the line along took precedent over my good sense.

Then, I started thinking about the power of the cigarette addiction and how they make people do silly things like taking $1.35 from a total stranger or standing outdoors in the rain, sleet, snow and cold to smoke while the rest of us are indoors enjoying a drink or a nice meal. Cigarettes have become social anathema and the smokers don't seem to mind. If you told people that drinking a canned soft drink would have to be done outdoors, people would start drinking water or iced tea. Tell them that they have to smoke outdoors and they do it without questioning their civil rights.

I like the smoke-free environment but feel put-upon when a fellow bar patron asks me to babysit his stuff while he goes outside for a smoke. And I still think the restaurant is backed up when I see people standing around outside - until I realize that there is a cloud of smoke around them.

So, perhaps I gave that woman a dollar thirty-five more for myself than for her. Whatever, it's a small price to pay for learning so much about the humans.

What now?

2011-05-22T17:00:00.002-04:00

I don't know what gets into people sometimes. Most of what they think, say and do is harmless because it affects only themselves. Drive around without your seat belt on, smoke, drink too much and eat until you can't fit through your door - it's on you.

Every once in a while something comes along that grabs the public's interest and makes a small group of people more influential than they should be. Such was the case with all this "end of the world" talk on Saturday. There was a lot leading up to it, and even though I saw a few of the nut jobs on the streets of Philadelphia in March, I didn't make the connection until recently. Quickly, the idea became a source of national jokes.

I don't think that's what religion is supposed to be and I'm sure the people in charge of organized religion (them) cringed a little (a lot) when this idea took hold and captivated a nation. At first I thought it was sad that so many people would pay attention to something so preposterous. Then, I started to think that the joke became more important than the concept. In the end, the joke became the story.

People started talking about getting things done before the end of the world and made comments about tentative plans for Sunday based on what was going to happen on Saturday. They weren't serious of course, which is where the joke part comes in.

We believe a lot of junk that we hear. Reverse mortgages, debt consolidation and weight loss scams are abundant. One gives rise to another, and we buy into every one of them. I'm not sure if it's because we really want to believe it or because we think that this one will be the right one. We're gamblers at heart, and when something comes along that we think might be a long shot, we're all in. We're risk takers.

We're even willing to take risks with our self-esteem and personal beliefs, even when it means that failure could mean humiliation. But the humiliation isn't any risk either because the world goes on, and when it does, well ... the world goes on, and those people who believed are left to contemplate their own beliefs. The problem in this case was that the beliefs were not in any deity, but in a man. Man is flawed. To recognize that is the first step toward understanding.

We derive a lot of entertainment out of such things and we all know how important entertainment is to the masses. It's the thing that separates us from putting a shotgun in our mouths on most days. Now that May 21 has come and gone, how will we get to June?

More than you needed to know about those little packages.

2011-05-17T21:17:00.007-04:00

I bought a new lens for my camera today. It's a Tamron 70-300 zoom that should come in handy for my spy work and photos of small things from far away.

One of the things that comes with electronics and other sensitive equipment are those desiccant bags. It's the kind of thing you pick out of the box, glance at and throw away. Curiously, they always include the phrase "Do not eat," as though at some point somebody either tried to eat it whole or (more likely) placed it in hot water to make Desiccant Tea.

Since the back of the package says "Do Not Open," that makes the Do Not Eat warning rather superfluous. How can I eat it if I can't open it?

Other than its odd spelling (one s and two c's) I don't know too much about desiccant. I don't know exactly what desiccant is, but I know enough not to eat something that comes packaged in a box that contains a camera lens. It's one of my guidelines.

The bottom of the package says that it is an "Environmental non-toxic," which opens up another can of worms. How can something that is non-toxic to the environment be harmful to eat? The desiccant package has confused me.

It turns out that there are a lot of desiccants that can be eaten. Salt is a desiccant, as is rice, potassium and magnesium. Pretty much anything that absorbs water is a desiccant. I think the one in this bag is silica gel - which is a solid (another mystery) - and according to what I've read, silica gel is not biodegradable in either water or soil. So, how is that environmentally non-toxic, I wondered quietly to myself.

I went to the company's web site that manufactures the desiccant, but it's in Chinese and all I could glean from it is that desiccant packages seem to be their chief product. I find it odd that America can't get a better grip on the packaged silica gel market. The Chinese are kicking our butts.

Silica was used in World War I for the absorption of vapors and gases in gas mask canisters. The substance was in existence as early as the 1640s as a scientific curiosity. (Strangely, it remains a curiosity in 2011 - at least to me).

In World War II, silica gel was indispensable in the war effort for keeping penicillin dry, protecting military equipment from moisture damage, as a fluid cracking catalyst for the production of high-octane gasoline and as a catalyst support for the manufacture of butadiene from ethanol, feedstock for the synthetic rubber program.

Now, the substance is used in cat litter and in small packages for keeping stuff dry. Progress.

Two-Wheel World

2011-05-16T20:56:00.002-04:00

At our yard sale on Saturday, my friend Jennifer and I were talking about riding roller coasters and other such things. I'm not a thrill-seeker, and I prefer to keep my feet on the ground unless required to have them leave it.

I don't jump out of working airplanes, bungee jump, eat exotic foods or generally challenge my body to survive some extraordinary experience. I prefer the comfort of the mundane.

I watch the American Chopper show regularly. I enjoy watching people build things from scratch and I'm interested in the process of making a motor vehicle. That's where my fascination with motorcycles ends. I have no desire to buy one or ride one on the highway. In the hierarchy of vehicles, the motorcycle is at the bottom of the food chain, below Smart Cars and barely above the bicycle as a mode of transportation.

One of my co-workers was involved in a motorcycle accident on Saturday in which his wife and her sister were killed instantly when a pick-up truck crossed the line and hit them. He is in critical condition, barely hanging on to life, and it's doubtful he'll be anywhere near the same person if he manages to make it.

It's a horrible fate to ponder, but I admit that it's difficult for me to completely empathize because I cannot imagine myself being in the same position. I've been involved in bicycle crashes, but those usually occur at around 18 mph and most of us wind up on the grass. I've never been hit by a car because I don't ride in the travel lane.

When someone dies of a disease, a heart ailment or some general injury a sense of my own mortality creeps over me and I contemplate what I would do if I were faced with a similar problem. But I can't find it in me to conjure up the notion of being on a motorcycle and dying in a crash. It's a situation I haven't remotely considered.

Some things in life are self-inflicted. We willingly place ourselves in harm's way for the sake of a thrill or some experience that is out of the ordinary. There are other modes of transportation than motorcycles and all of them are safer. Add to that the idea that some riders have that they can exceed the speed limit (by a wide margin) and weave in and out of traffic and you multiply the risk for the sake of getting there before the automobiles.

I hear them speeding up and down my street and never see them pulled over by the police. When I see them, I think that all it would take is a squirrel or a bird flying at them to turn them into a sliding mess on the road.

Regardless of whether one operates it safely (and there is every indication that the riders were) it is generally the "other guy" that influences the course of events.

I'm not ready to allow anyone else to tell me how I'm going to die. Certainly not for the feeling of the wind in my face and the road beneath me. I'll die the old-fashioned way, thank you.

The Yardies

2011-05-14T18:09:00.002-04:00

I participated in a yard sale today. My condo association sponsored it, ran newspaper ads and gave us the space. All it cost was $10 for the privilege. It gives us the chance to rid ourselves of the accumulated junk that we don't have room for in our already-cramped condos.

Ebay ruins yard sales. The online experience allows bidders to price-up an item that they want and what sellers wind up with is a fair market value for their stuff. The same cannot be said for yard sales. People who attend yard sales work from the advantage of supply and demand. We have the supply and no longer demand the stuff, so the shoppers expect incredible deals for things that are worth much more than their eventual selling price. I don't know if they have an official name, but I call them The Yardies.

For example, I had a box of CDs that I no longer listen to. Either it's because I have already converted them to mp3 files or I just don't want to listen to them. Either way, the CDs are still in like-new condition, and a reasonable person would expect to be able to get $5 for them. When you consider that it would cost $9.99 to download the content from iTunes, selling them for five bucks would seem to be half price. But no.

The Yardies drive the price down. How far? I sold mine for fifty cents and heard from a few shoppers that somebody was selling them for twenty-five cents. Twenty-five cents? How about I just mark them "free" and you just take them – is what I wanted to say.

I had some nice junk that I'd have liked to unload, including an unworn pair of Nike sneakers that I was pricing between 30 and 40 dollars, depending on who was asking. At one point, I received a string of Spanish exclamations when I told a woman that I was asking $30 for them. Hey lady, try buying a brand new pair of Nike shoes for less than $80 and tell me how you do – is what I wanted to say.

The yard sale people are a strange ilk. I think of the TV show "Hoarders" when I see them roaming around with cars full of stuff that they have bought from us. My friend Jennifer sold a set of dinnerware for ten bucks. The woman who bought it had her husband carry it home in the car on his lap because the rest of the vehicle was filled with other yard sale items. They were headed for Wildwood. 75 miles with a set of plates on your lap. They are probably done having children by this point.

I wound up making $68 for the day, which isn't too bad for four hours. I had anticipated making more than that, but what I hadn't anticipated was the bargaining influence that the yard sale brings out. The concept of "fair market value" goes out the window and you have to get in the mindset of ridding yourself of things that you don't want to schlep home. For example, I sold a perfectly good DVD player for ten bucks and several DVDs for two dollars each. That's only a dollar more than it costs to rent them for a night.

And I never did sell those shoes.

The next big thing.

2011-05-05T20:42:00.003-04:00

OK, so let's look at this, from today's news...

WASHINGTON – Some of the first information gleaned from Osama bin Laden's compound indicates al-Qaida considered attacking U.S. trains on the upcoming anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. But counter-terrorism officials say they believe the planning never got beyond the initial phase and have no recent intelligence pointing to an active plot for such an attack.

As of February 2010, the terror organization was considering plans to attack the U.S. on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. One idea was to tamper with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train would fall off the track at a valley or a bridge, according to a joint FBI and Homeland Security bulletin sent to law enforcement officials around the country Thursday.

And now, this, from My Sick Mind, November 27, 2010...

We are nutty about airports because of what happened on September 11, 2001; but some of it was inherited from prior days. I suppose the reason we scrutinize more heavily at airports is because we're 50,000 feet above the ground. It's hard to run away from something that happens in a moving aircraft. I was on an Amtrak train lately, and before I boarded I had emptied my pockets and readied myself for the full-body search or at least an X-Ray device. Nothing. Just get on a train full of people with a huge suitcase.

Even though there are probably 50 times more people in a typical busy shopping mall than an airplane, we like the odds of being one in a big crowd, so we just let anybody in. And, what's the worst a train bomb could do? Two or three cars de-railed and some injuries. That's not worth inconveniencing the public.

Apparently, al-Qaida figured that out without my help. Now, I'm guessing that the next time I board an Amtrak train headed for Washington, D.C., I'll have to empty my pockets and go through an X-Ray device.

The terrorists win again.

It ain't over until ... well, it's never really over.

2011-05-02T20:05:00.008-04:00

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Americans are big on revenge. It's part of the reason why movies like "Die Hard" and those Charles Bronson "Death Wish" films were big hits. We like punching back.

While most of us were minding our own business late on Sunday night, we got the announcement that the United States had punched back. Albeit well after the wounds had a chance to start closing, but we punched back nonetheless. That resulted in a jingoistic outpouring of emotions and chanting unseen since the last time the Arabs did something big.

Town squares seem to look the same whether they are in front of the White House or in front of a mosque in Iraq. Extremism always looks the same: People with raised fists holding a flag chanting a slogan.

U S A ...U S A ... U S A.

When it's us chanting it looks good to us. When it's them, it's those crazy Arabs. Perspective is a funny thing. And yes, I realize that thinking and writing these things makes me the worst person in the community. We're supposed to blindly support the effort with liberty and justice for all, except that sometimes there is more to the effort than meets the eye and the liberty and justice are for just us.

Those of you who weren't able to congregate at the White House or the site of the former Twin Towers did your jingoistic chanting either to yourself or to friends you met later. "We got bin Laden," you'd say. Well, we got him and a half. Killed him is more like it, although who am I to quibble with semantics?

When we look past the jingoism, what we are left with is yet another world leader (yes) taken down by force. When it's one of our leaders we react accordingly - with sadness and thoughts of revenge. When it's one of those so-called crazy bastards who make our lives difficult we figure that they got what they deserve.

We don't like to have our lives altered. We like our cell phones, beer parties, weekends, various freedoms and the ability to do as we please without having to go through security or present our identification. We're Americans. If our lives aren't easy, somebody is going to pay.

So we rejoice in the death of an international icon. As with many things, perspective is the key. When one of our political leaders is murdered we vow to "move on" and continue with our mission - or words to that effect. Now that Osama bin Laden has been murdered, we seem to think that it puts an end (or at least brings to a pause) terrorist activities. We fail to see in others what we want to see in ourselves, which is the resolve to maintain our way of life in spite of the obstacles presented.

I'll sit here and wait for the other political shoe to drop, and in the meantime, I will still have to take my shoes off when I go through airport security. Keep chanting, if it makes you feel better, but realize that little has changed except that we got one of them.

One.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

2011-04-29T22:05:00.007-04:00

"This ain't England. We threw England out of here a long time ago. We don't want no more parts of England."

- Archie Bunker, circa 1971

A lot has changed since that All in the Family episode aired. A lot. For instance, I didn't use the full quote which included a term for homosexuals that could get me placed on administrative leave. Nor did I place it in its full context, in which Archie argued that the English way of life was ... well, leaning toward homosexuality.

What is interesting about the relationship between America and England is that we (Americans) somehow feel a link or kinship with Great Britian. Some of it stems from the music "invasion" of the early 1960s. Some of it has to do with the fact that we speak a similar language. That's important to Americans.

Otherwise, we really shouldn't be so interested in England, since we did actually throw them out of here, Archie's viewpoint notwithstanding. We annexed ourselves from their Monarchy "a long time ago" and at that time, our relationship with them should have been severed.

But no.

Every time something interesting happens over there, we get all moist. Like Wimbledon (which we still don't know how to pronounce), Princess Diana's death and these Royal weddings.

The talk has dominated media for a week. As for me, being a heterosexual American male, I have managed quite well without it. It's difficult though, since the media saturation makes it almost impossible to ignore. Media outlets like sports talk radio and general news shows have included it in their programming, presumably to draw in the women and ... homosexuals in their audience.

We're supposedly fascinated by the romantic aspect of it, but the romance is lost on me. The groom's family owns one-sixth of the Earth's land mass and the bride's family are self-made millionaires. I'm not sure where the Cinderella factor plays into this. People meet and marry in their own social strata, and seldom if ever stray from it. Those Prince and the Pauper stories are the stuff of bedtime stories, and you're better off getting those notions out of your head.

Sometimes, things are foist upon us because a small, vocal segment of the population (Read: Women Yenta's who watch morning television) is interested. That's usually all it takes for TV to get involved. Meanwhile, things that are interesting to single heterosexual men (like pornography and women kissing) go virtually unreported.

It just ain't right.

What do they make at a cheesecake factory?

2011-04-25T21:40:00.005-04:00

In the world of economics, there is a principle called The Everett Rogers Diffusion of innovations theory.

Among the five categories of product adopters there are people who are called Early Adopters. Those are the ones who are first in line for the newest piece of technology. They want to be the ones to try something before anyone else, and are willing to take a chance on buying something that may not be perfect.

I tend to lean toward the late majority; being somewhat skeptical and traditional. I think it has more to do with age and income than attitude, but I digress.

With that in mind, I made my first visit to The Cheesecake Factory today. It isn't that I didn't know what to expect, what with the name of the place having cheesecake in it and all. Just like Hooters, Five Guys Burgers and Saladworks; the name sort of gives away the theme.

The menu looks like a novella, so the waitress took some time to explain what was going on. As it turns out, there are "lunch-sized portions" and regular portions. I was encouraged to order the lunch-sized portion so that I could enjoy a slab of cheesecake afterward. I asked about a cup of the soup, and was told that "it comes in a cereal bowl." Any time the server gives the diner a warning about portion size, you know there's a problem. It's like when your doctor tells you there's going to be some discomfort.

The lunch plates that passed my table were giant salads, burgers and entrees that could feed several people instead of the one person who ordered it. I guess they didn't order the lunch-sized portion. Giant bowls of food that I would guess contain an entire day's worth of calories - not to mention the cheesecake that would ultimately follow. To my credit, I stuck with Miso Salmon, bowl of lentil soup and the pre-meal bread plate. That was plenty, and the ensuing food coma allowed me to catch up on some sleep.

What it got me to thinking about was the ongoing battle and lawsuits against McDonald's, where various so-called family groups are trying to get Happy Meals banned because they encourage kids to eat unhealthy foods. They say they are out to protect the kids, even though it's the parents who are driving the kids to the restaurant.

While we are supposedly battling childhood obesity, we aren't all that concerned over restaurants like Cheesecake Factory who serve too-large portions to people who are all too happy to order it, eat it and pay for it. The same parents who are trying to keep their kids from eating a hamburger and fries are ordering cereal-bowl sized soup, half-pound burgers and slices of cheesecake that could anchor a small sea-going vessel.

In the meantime, adults who once could fit into a regular pair of pants are now ordering elastic-waistband, loose fit jeans three sizes larger than they wore five years ago. They're growing faster than the grass in their front yard. I think the clothing manufacturers should start putting prizes in adult foods to encourage buying new stuff.

Is a 10% discount coupon for a calorie-laden meal the adult equivalent of a prize in a Happy Meal box? They're all enticements, but I don't see any lawsuits against restaurants who run newspaper coupons or send out e-mail's with special offers.

Maybe we're after the wrong group? Or maybe we should just let people eat what they want?

It's not the heat, it's the stupidcity.

2011-04-20T11:09:00.008-04:00

I was in Atlanta about 15 years ago. I went to the Georgia Dome, Coca-Cola museum, climbed Stone Mountain and took the tour of CNN.

Here's a travel tip: Unless you're going to Atlanta for a wedding, funeral or big-time sporting event, once you've done all the things I listed, there isn't any reason to go back.

Stone Mountain is literally a giant stone mountain (hence the name) with a carving on the side. When I say that a mountain made of stone is the biggest tourist attraction, it doesn't say much for the rest of the tourist attractions. I flew over it on my way in, and had to rub-down the goose pimples. Or maybe it was the first signs of heat rash?

The Coke museum is just a little more kitsch than you'd see at a typical TGI Friday's. The CNN tour is notable only if you get there when a big story is breaking and the Georgia Dome is an indoor sports arena. That's right.

Oh - the other reason to go to Atlanta: Your employer sends you to a business-related seminar. So, here I sit, waiting for the seminar to start; web-searching sports bars and plugging their addresses into my GPS - which is also a handy tool to have around here, since everything is named "Peachtree" "Martin Luther King" or "Jimmy Carter." The streets were probably named by the same people who were in charge of coming up with the name for Stone Mountain. I'd like to see the second choice.
Mostly, because the traffic tie-up's start early. So early, that the local news has traffic reports at 5:30am and the reporters sound excited that "I-85 is moving along nicely." Small miracles.

I've heard it called Hotlanta, for obvious reasons. It's hot. Even in mid-April, the temperatures are in the mid-80s. It's that southern heat. The kind where you sweat while eating ice cream. I'm hoping that's the reason they call it hot, because there really isn't much else hot about this place.

The photo? It's the Peachtree Center station (that's right) of the MARTA gold line. The station is one of the most colorful parts of the city. For the record, I haven't seen a peach tree since I've been here. I think I have a better chance of running into Jimmy Carter.

When can I go home? The longer I'm here, the more I miss my cat.

Understanding your true worth.

2011-04-12T22:20:00.004-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO – Amazon.com Inc. is dropping the price on its Kindle e-reader, but the change comes with a trade-off: On-screen ads. The online retailer was set to announce Tuesday that the new Kindle with Special Offers will cost $114 — $25 less than the currently lowest-priced Kindle — and include advertisements on the bottom of the device's home page and on its screen savers. Seattle-based Amazon will start shipping the newest Kindle on May 3, and it will also be sold in Target and Best Buy stores on that date.

Now we know what retailers think of us. We're worth 25 dollars. Amazon figures you'll buy a Kindle for 25 dollars less than its regular price if all you have to do to save that money is put up with some advertising. They say every man has his price. Yours has been set.

In a demo of the device, a screen saver showed a deal where customers would pay $10 for a $20 gift card to Amazon. If a user is interested in that deal, they can click to have details of the offer e-mailed to them. A much smaller ad shown across the bottom of the Kindle's home screen — the screen that shows you the content stored on the e-reader — was less obtrusive, but still clearly an advertisement. The ads will change frequently, Marine said, and there will not be any ads in Kindle books. "It was very important that we didn't interfere with the reading experience," he said.

How does an ad across the bottom of the home screen not interfere with the reading experience? Anything that happens after you turn on the device that doesn't directly involve reading interferes with the reading experience.

As some of you know, I own a Kindle DX, and I love it. If it magically started displaying advertising on its screen I would either sell it on Ebay or send it back to Amazon. We have enough advertising in our lives - some blatant and some subliminal - and we do not need more, regardless of its purpose or any so-called monetary benefit.

The real monetary benefit must be in the advertising and the retail, otherwise why would they do it? Is Amazon as interested in your "reading experience" as they are in selling more Kindles?

No. If they were, they would just drop the price of the Kindle 25 dollars and spare us the advertising.

Be a Sport.

2011-04-09T19:40:00.001-04:00

Sports is strange. Things that happen in sports don't happen in real life, and vice-versa. It's an odd thing, and strange the way some people separate sports from everything else.

Last week I went to Baltimore for the Orioles home opener. On my way out, I bought a polo shirt with the bird and "Orioles" written underneath. When I wore it to work the next day you'd have thought I was wearing a Swastika necktie.

"Hey, I thought you were a Phillies fan!"

"What's this - Orioles?"

"What's with the Orioles shirt?"

I explained that I have been going to Orioles games since the 80s, and I like the Orioles, the ballpark and I enjoy visiting Baltimore.

What I really wanted to say was, "Fuck you, I'll wear what I want. How about losing 50 pounds, tubby." Apparently, we're only allowed to wear one team's items, and we're especially only allowed to support the local teams. To me, I'm limiting myself if I only watch one team's games, but others find that practice offensive somehow.

To equate that with a life experience, suppose you normally shop at Target, but one day on your way home from work, you decided to stop at Kohl's and buy a shirt that you saw that looked nice. When you wore it to work the next day, you are asked where you purchased it. Finding out that you bought it at Kohl's, your irate co-workers question your loyalty to Target with several pointed statements.

But it's sports, and we all know how important sports is.

Which is, not all that important, really. Take it easy, folks.

Do not disturb the intervention.

2011-04-07T15:38:00.001-04:00

I watch that "Intervention" TV show once in a while. It's always the same three things:

Crack or heroin addiction
A guy who drinks too much
Some eating disorder – generally not eating enough

That's the Intervention Trifecta. Of course, there are the rare occurances of combinations of the three – in pairs or all three. For instance, a crack-addicted alcoholic anorexic. That's a series.

It is kind of boring seeing the same problems over and over. They end the same way: They follow the guy around for a while, watching him stumble, shoot-up or throw up for a few weeks (that's called enabling) and then assemble the family so that they can get that bald-headed psychiatrist to tell him how screwed up his life is and send him off to a 3-week rehab in Florida. Some of us would view that as a paid vacation.

Then, one of his family members (usually a displaced uncle or some grandparent who he pissed on a few times) gets up and reads a heart-felt letter of regret and how ashamed they are of his screwed-up life. So much so, that they have decided to put him on display.

What the show should be doing is helping someone who can help others by changing his life. Alcoholics who sit at home and swill gin aren't hurting anyone but themselves. Crack addicts die in an alley. The show needs to do more good for society in general and stop focusing on the addict.

They could do a show about a guy with really smelly feet. Or a Dallas Cowboys fan who lives in Philadelphia. Gather the family around and scold somebody because they don't know what a Yield sign means. Or a guy who refuses to shovel his sidewalk when it snows or leaves piles of snow on top of his car and drives around. Get them straightened out.

Imagine a tear-stained aunt holding up a pair of brown loafers exclaiming, "See what you're doing to us!" Their family dinners have been ruined by his foul and unpleasant odor. "You're tearing us apart!" They could even bring in a few shoe salesmen that have had to lean over his feet.

Help us, television.

Support your local government … or not.

2011-04-07T13:51:00.001-04:00

News story:
As Democrats in the Senate argue that "ideology" is the only thing standing in the way of a deal to avert a government shutdown, House Republicans are countering that's simply not true.

Hmm … point well made. They can't even agree on what is causing the disagreement.

I say, let them shut it down. Maybe we'll see how well we do without them. Or … are they afraid we'll realize they aren't necessary? If it is shut down long enough, private industry will take over many services, and probably for less cost. And then, the displaced government workers can try working a real job for a change.

Talk about culture shock.

I'm not looking out for you.

2011-04-03T17:19:00.005-04:00

I may have found a future career for myself once my working days are over. I could open a driving school. But not your ordinary driving school - oh no. This would be a driving school that would spend all of its time teaching one particular aspect of driving.

The Yield Sign.

The yield sign is the most misunderstood appliance on the highway. My driving school would spend a day or two on it, and students would not graduate (or be allowed to drive at all) until they possessed a total understanding of the sign and what it means to drivers who approach it on the road.

Certainly, drivers understand "Stop" signs and what the colored lights mean. They know that railroad crossings are for trains. They know that speed limit signs signify the "limit of speed" -- OK, so maybe they don't understand everything they see on the road, but let's take it one sign at a time.

Let's say that the yield sign is applied to your everyday life. You're standing in line at the supermarket (my favorite place) and while you're standing there, another shopper walks into your line and just places himself in front of you. That's not right. If life had a yield sign, it would keep people from moving into your line while you're waiting or taking your movie theater seat while you're walking down the aisle in front of them. It means "yield the right of way."

Sadly, drivers who attempt to merge into traffic from a highway on-ramp do not fully understand the meaning of "yield the right of way." It means that you do not have the right of way, and that drivers on the highway do not have to move over to accommodate you or otherwise inconvenience themselves for your benefit. You do not have the right of way.

Understanding what that simple concept means on the road goes a long way toward promoting highway comfort and keeps drivers on the highway from awkwardly moving over into another lane while interlopers plow themselves into traffic from an on-ramp.

Drivers on the highway do not need, nor should they move over into an adjacent lane to make room for other drivers merging - who do not have the right of way - and further inconvenience themselves and the drivers around them. Being on the highway is a particular God given right, and those who are entering need to realize that they are not entitled.

It seems so simple.

Let's Take the "Public" Out of the Public Broadcasting System

2011-03-31T15:01:00.002-04:00

A letter to the Inquirer editors on Thursday got me thinking about the Public Broadcasting System and its relevance. Apparently, there is a move afoot to strip PBS of its government funding, and perhaps that time has indeed come. PBS had its glory in the old days of three networks and (maybe) a handful of UHF stations, when commercial-free television was a rare thing of beauty and something worth paying for.

When I was a kid (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) having a commercial-free television channel was a huge deal. We were shown landmark programs like "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." We were treated to regular doses of "Nova," "Masterpiece Theater" and the more mundane "Mister Rogers Neighborhood." It was all great stuff, and unique in its element.

Now, with the advent of cable and premium channels like HBO and Showtime, the novelty of commercial-free television has worn off. Consumers get the premium channels they want (for a fee) and other cable channels (that they may or may not want) for another fee. We are all paying for television, and it is not necessary to pay for another network. In fact, one could argue that it is pointless to pay for a television network that is already a part of pay-cable. If I don't want HBO I don't have to pay for it. Asking me to foot an extra bill for PBS when I cannot cancel it is above and beyond what I should be asked to do for television.

Granted, they still have some great programs, but if there were no PBS, the producers would just take them to another network or one of the pay cable channels. Or, they could just leave them on PBS and PBS could become what HBO and Showtime are – pay for programming networks.

Television has grown in leaps and bounds (some for the better, some for the worse) over the past 30 years. PBS is an antiquated leftover, and is no longer worth the citizen's or the federal government's dollars. It is time for PBS to either join the ranks of other pay-cable channels or disappear entirely, and allow their programs to be produced by someone who can do it without taxpayer funding.

What's for dinner?

2011-03-30T20:15:00.013-04:00

I finally figred out

what I don't like about those store discount cards. It's the clique of the "store club" that reminds me of how good things came only to those who belonged. Such is the case at the grocery store.

Cashier: Do you have a [store] card?

Me: No. I'm only here because I have a gift card.

Cashier: Well, I can't give you the sale prices unless you have a card.

Me: OK.

There I was, in the checkout line. The gift card has been unused since Christmas. I decided to spend it on nonsense items - trash bags, bird seed, toilet paper and paper towels - items that are ultimately destroyed upon use. Somehow, I feel as though spending "free money" on things that will be used to be destroyed is a minor victory. Such is the state of my life.

I feed the birds. I know what you're saying, "Hey, feed yourself and f**k the birds." Well, then maybe you should help.

That giant mess to the left of the tree is a suet cake. Since the suet cake holder is a piece of science crossed with obscure architecture, I could not get it to fit inside, so I laid it on the ground for the bottom feeders. They need to eat too.

The feeder in the middle is a creation of my neighbor's son. It's a steel pole with a tray on the bottom, with some openings for the birds to peck at. Mostly, it clogs up and provides a giant tray for the squirrels - nature's scavengers. Rats with furry tails.

The one on the right is a "squirrel proof" feeder that I bought at a local pet store. The little lid on top is supposed to keep the rats away. I think it works, since I see birds on the perches. That's a plus, since it's a bird feeder.

The biggest problem is the price of bird seed. If I get lucky, I can find a bag that would fill my feeder for $2.50. Otherwise, it costs five bucks to fill a feeder. I'm not sure the birds appreciate the effort - but I'll never know.

Wait ... I see a Cardinal and three Robins. Money well spent.

The magic of words.

2011-03-28T17:35:00.008-04:00

The gang at IDT Energy sent a wonderful offer to my mailbox today - I guess. It's a little confusing because I took the time to read it. I'm supposed to qualify for some sort of rebate, but I don't know exactly how much money I can get back. I know it's something.

Is it $150 or is it more? And, if I can get "up to $150," then how can it be more? Isn't $150 the limit?

Of course, I won't get stuck with "sky high" utility bills. But how high is the sky? Can I have a sky high utility bill and more? Perhaps someone from their marketing department will leave a clarifying comment.

Sometimes I wonder if people think about things before they write them down or say them out loud.

I think about it.

Picking our battles.

2011-03-20T17:00:00.002-04:00

And you know how those guys are with their vows.

Consider this - and know that the sum total of my world politics knowledge could fill a pamphlet. However, my cynicism could fill a stadium, and that's more valuable than knowledge when we're talking about our government.

President Obama told us in December 2009 that he would have our troops (i.e. people) out of Afghanistan by July 2011. Some wondered about his timetable, and others appreciated the effort.

What they didn't know was what our government probably did know: That Gadhafi's ass was getting tight over in Libya and that those troops would be needed there by the summer. We do, after all, have an extensive foreign intelligence network, and we pay people al ot of money to take the pulse of hot spots around the world. My guess is that those highly-paid people informed Obama that he'd better get our asses our of Afghanistan soon, because we'll be fighting another war in Libya soon, and we don't have the numbers (or money) to carry on two conflicts.

So, what appeared at first to be a nice gesture by our president was merely personnel management.

He is after all, the Commander in Chief.

Where can I find a closed course?

2011-03-19T18:00:00.003-04:00

Professional driver on a closed course.

That's what the car ads say. We buy into it, thinking that the vehicle will somehow handle as well with our stupid asses behind the wheel as it does with a professional driver on a road with no other cars. If they really wanted to sell cars, they'd put some half-blind old man behind the wheel and see if he could successfully merge into traffic on the expressway. Then, the ad could say "Half-blind old man on a busy road."

Imagine how you could do.

Craving More Head.

2011-03-17T21:43:00.003-04:00

A great burden has been lifted from my life's shoulders. What, you ask? I did not fill out an NCAA tournament bracket this year. No free one online, no five dollar pool at work ... not even a scribble on the blank one that the newspaper published on Monday.

Now, I am free. It's just basketball. Sadly, I think it would die a miserable death if greater America couldn't wager on it. Like the lottery, unsuspecting non-basketball fans live with this pre-conceived notion that they can turn five dollars into a hundred by writing the names of colleges that they couldn't find on a map in spaces that they couldn't have imagined three weeks ago. It's like the lure of the Siren's song. Never what it seems to be, but who among us can resist?

I can.

Not only can I resist, but I can revel in it, and therein lies the charm. I can watch the tournament and laugh that 13 seeds like Morehead State beat big time schools like Louisville. Most bracket-fillers could find Louisville if you spotted them Kentucky, and would be stumped to locate Morehead in its state - which is not Morehead, but Kentucky. Go figure.

So take that, Louisville!

Another day's useless energy spent.

2011-03-15T20:30:00.000-04:00

I spend a lot of time typing user names and passwords. I guess we all do. If you want to leave a comment, you have to type in a user name and password - so I guess I'm more a part of the problem than the solution.

Anyway, if we think about the amount of time we spend typing user names and passwords and substitute the usefulness of that time for a different activity, we might be more relaxed or sexually satisfied - or whatever it is that we would choose to do with those minutes otherwise spent logging in.

Sometimes it's useful. For things like bank accounts and buying concert tickets. Other times it's practically useless, like when I want to get a weather forecast. I thought I might want to check on Saturday's weather. I realize that's a major stretch, since they mostly can't tell us what tomorrow's weather will be, but sometimes I surprise myself with my optimism.

Besides, I'm spending a lot of money on some revisions to my bicycle, so it's in my best interests to be able to plan for the weekend. What it brought about, however, was confusion - which is where the uselessness of typing user names and passwords comes in.

Do I believe the little drawing or the text at the bottom? Too soon to tell. Perhaps that's how they claim their incredible accuracy? Tell us a lot of things so that one of them comes true. It's like you dopes who fill out ten NCAA tournament brackets and proclaim yourself a winner if you get one close to right.

I'll log-in again on Friday.

Sunday in the city.

2011-03-13T18:12:00.003-04:00

Since Christ is going to return in a couple of months, I figured it would be a good time to go out and take some photos. There were more than a couple of people carrying those signs around Philadelphia on Sunday, so I guess they must know what they're talking about.

As for me, I'd hate to think that on May 21 the world is going to end. I'm going to miss the Orioles and Nationals at Camden Yards. That would suck, and Jesus wouldn't want me to miss such a big baseball game, would He?

I left The Mighty Thor at home to go to the big city and put the camera to work.
This is the lobby of the Comcast Center on JFK Boulevard. They spent a lot of my cable money on a large video screen. The show is pretty impressive, but I can't help but wonder why there are three indentations over the entrance ways.
I think the show would be more impressive if the screen was a large rectangle.

In Philadelphia, there is a problem with people who want to dispose of their toilet tissue in places other than the toilet. That's why it's necessary to put signs up.
This is the lobby of the Comcast Center. Downstairs, there are shops and small restaurants that were closed, because it's Sunday. My cable bill charges for every day.
This is City Hall from JFK Boulevard. There was a St. Patrick's Day parade going on nearby. It was loaded with people who couldn't find Ireland on a map.
A cluster of buildings shields Liberty Place from Broad Street. That's City Hall on the left.

The large video screen at the Comcast Center proves that people will watch anything, as long as it's on TV. The lobby was filled with spill-over's from the St. Patrick's Day parade who were sitting at tables, staring at the giant screen.

Spring forward, bitches.

2011-03-11T19:28:00.003-05:00

It's time for our annual tribute to the inadequacies of the Bush administration. As a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, it's time to move our clocks ahead one hour. It was the best idea that George W. Bush could come up with in an effort to combat the rising price of oil. Go figure.

Here we are, 6 years later, and oil is still rising. Nice fix, George.

In addition to the extra hour of daylight (unless you get out of bed an hour earlier) the Energy Policy Act of 2005 gave incentives to companies to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. I think that worked out great.

Meanwhile, we have more Daylight Savings Time than we have Standard Time. How does that make it standard? Why not just leave the clock the way it is and we'll deal with the so-called extra hour of darkness between November 15 and March 15. How bad could that be?

What are we saving, exactly?

Be the fountain, not the drain.

2011-03-09T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it is also a source of consumer fraud and scam.

I remember when personal computers (what do they compute, by the way?) started to become consumer items. The so-called experts wondered if the advent of the computer would be the eventual ruination of society. Jobs would be lost to computers and our economic structure would be ruined by computers. Computers, they said, would simplify society to the point of making people obsolete.

So they thought. What they failed to realize was that the introduction of computers would lead to a Worldwide connection that would be called the Internet. The Internet would connect society in such a way as to make humans not obsolete, but necessary.

They would be necessary because in the world-connected Internet, there would open a new way for humans to make money off of other unsuspecting humans, and nothing is more appealing to humans than scamming other humans.

The Internet made it possible to send large amounts of spurious offers to large numbers of people for free.

And that's a win-win for everybody, isn't it? Those of you who said that computers would take jobs away from people and ruin commerce are spitting in your sinks now, eh? Little did you know that it would open up a cottage industry of people who sit around in their pajamas conjuring up e-mail's encouraging unsuspecting recipients to give out their personal banking information so that the deposed Shah of Uzbekistan can retain his throne and return to power. And you can help.

So, go ahead. Live the dream.

They should just call it "The Show Where People Dance."

2011-03-04T21:10:00.003-05:00

OK, here's the new rule we're going to institute, going forward (as they say) with regard to celebrities and who we actually call celebrities. It's simple:

If you have to put your credits in front of your name, you are not a celebrity.

You don't have to say Actor Robert DeNiro or Singer Elton John, because we know who those people are and what they do for a living. That's why they're celebrities.

The 12th season of Dancing With the Stars (egad, 12 years!) is starting in a couple of weeks, and the couples have been announced. Quickly - look at that photo on the left and tell me which one is the "star" and which one is the professional dancer.

You can't do it, can you? That's because the star is somebody named Chelsea Kane. If you don't know who Chelsea Kane is, that's because nobody knows who Chelsea Kane is. The shows billing tells her that she is "Disney star Chelsea Kane," presumably so we'll know how to Google search her. And what a coincidence that she is a Disney star and the TV show is on Disney-owned ABC. Go figure.

They could have porn actors on the show and more people would know who they are. The trouble is that they couldn't get anyone to admit that they knew who they were. Middle-America doesn't like to admit things like that. And of course, they can't possibly be stars. That's why pornography is a $200 billion business in America -- because nobody watches it. Tell me that they wouldn't get bigger ratings for Dancing With the Stars featuring Tera Patrick or Nikki Benz than that loser from the Disney Channel. You know they would.

They ran out of stars a long time ago, to the point that the dancers are bigger celebrities than their partners, and being on Dancing With the Stars is a bigger credit than most of them have on their resume.

But you'll watch. Just the fact that it's been on for 12 years tells me that you're watching. The funny thing is that I'd rather admit that I watch pornography than watch this dancing show. Partly because of the way it's marketed and partly because of the hypocrisy involved in the sex business.

The people who claim that pornography is exploitative have never examined the marketing involved in big-time network television. I'm just saying - do you think it's a coincidence that some unknown Disney channel actress is on this show or that Sarah Palin's kid was on the last one? It's just a different kind of whoring, and America eats it up.

One is just as trashy as the other, but you're a horrible person if you enjoy pornography.

Planned Obsolescence

2011-03-02T23:08:00.000-05:00

My God, it's huge!

That's the new iPad 2, or whatever the gang at Apple is calling its latest tablet thingy.

For all of you who stood in line, waited or otherwise spent a lot of money on the iPad, you're about to have your bell rung by Apple. The new iPad is thinner, lighter, faster and features (egad) a camera on the front as well as one in back. Imagine that.

And it all happened less than a year after the last iPad was released, which makes me think that there isn't anything here that shouldn't have been available before - except that they wanted to plan another product unveil in a year so that the buzz would continue. It's more about marketing than technology.

Just like the iPhone, the other big techno gadget that gets just a little better every year, your money isn't well spent as much as it is merely spent. One thing it does not have is an expansion slot for SD or other types of memory cards. That's interesting, since it is probably meant to encourage consumers to buy the $800 64 gigabyte iPad rather than the $500 16 gigabyte model. After all, you can get a 16 gigabyte SD card for about 50 bucks, and Apple could probably install a slot in the iPad for about three cents.

It all sounds like a lot of fun, and creates a huge marketing opportunity for Apple, since the story makes all the big-time web pages (translation: Free Advertising) and makes the stock jump a little. Personally, I think you'd be better off spending $800 on a few shares of AAPL or some groceries than the latest iPad. You'll figure that out when Steve Jobs is standing on a stage next February telling you how the iPad 3 is thinner, lighter and faster than the iPad 2, which was really cool 11 months ago.

Ironically, it comes in black and white, but the decision to buy one isn't as simple.

You and your Oscars.

2011-02-27T21:10:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, contests aren't really contests. Sometimes, people who are winners are already winners. Sometimes, losers aren't losers.

Such is the case with the Academy Awards - and other awards shows.

That's why they say "and the Oscar goes to" instead of "and the winner is." Somebody realized that they were already winners, and God forbid we hurt the feelings of a multi-millionaire who has the world on a string by inferring that he is a loser by declaring someone else a winner.

We're big on awards. We give out Grammy's, Emmy's and other awards to people in the entertainment industry who earn more money than ten people together. We get wrapped up in who wins and loses - er...wins and doesn't win ... to the extent that we have 4-hour television shows that encourage people on the east coast to stay up until after midnight to find out which rich bastard won a Best Director Oscar or which film that already took in $400 million of your money is given the exclamation point of an award. It's an odd behavior pattern.

Is it necessary to give awards to people and things who are already society's winners? What's the point?

On Monday morning the winners will be headline news on the local newspaper, and your TV news will run a feature on the winners. Somewhere, a critic will bemoan the non-winners and say that they were all deserving.

Yeah, right.

Baseball season!

2011-02-25T19:00:00.007-05:00

As Craig Ferguson would say, "It's a great day for America, everybody!"

Why? Because I got my Phillies season tickets in the mail today. For those of you from out of town, the big story here is that the Phillies have assembled four of the best starting pitchers in baseball - Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels - and are expected to breeze through the National League on their way to a fifth straight division title and third World Series appearance in four years. On paper.

The reality remains to be seen, and as hyped-up as sports fans are in Philadelphia, the proof (as they say) is in the pudding, and the pudding is still cooking in Florida. After all, who would have said that the Giants would have won the championship last year? That's why they play the games.

I'm not the type to get worked up over anything, personal or not, and I try to maintain an even strain, waiting for the results to come in before I get excited over anything. It's a lifetime of conditioning, both as a Philadelphian and as a human who has expected greatness only to be disappointed in the result.

My childhood baseball passion started in 1964. As some of you know, it was a season of an historic collapse where the Phillies coughed up a 6.5 game lead with 12 games remaining by losing 10 in a row and yielded the National League pennant to the St. Louis Cardinals. That was when you had to win a pennant to get to the World Series. If that happened today, they would have probably made the playoffs as a wild card and still had a shot at the title.

I remember my dad telling me, "I'm going to get us World Series tickets." As a 7-year old, I was thrilled. I hardly knew what the World Series was, but I knew it was pretty cool. Dad would have gotten them too. There was no StubHub or crazy Internet ticket scams in those days.

On Sunday's we used to stop into the local sporting goods store on the way to the ballpark and pick up 2 tickets to the game and go to Connie Mack Stadium to watch Jim Bunning and Sandy Koufax pitch against each other. This Phillies team has sold out a season's worth of tickets, and my dad would probably be griping about not being able to go to the ballpark to see his beloved Phillies.

But his son would have already bought a season ticket package and would have been thrilled to be able to take his dad and promise him that he could go to a World Series game.

Sadly, my dad died in 1967 and never saw his Phillies win anything. It's the Golden Age of baseball here now, and we're trying to enjoy it. Those of us who are old enough to remember the agony however, know that nothing is guaranteed.

Nice package

2011-02-23T18:10:00.007-05:00

This 18" x 10" box was waiting on my doorstep when I got home tonight.

"What could it be?" I wondered quietly to myself. I knew I had placed a small order from Amazon, but what could be in such a large box?

A small box, as it turns out. This relatively tiny box of creatine tablets (bigger, faster, stronger) was inside, with a year's supply of packing material. I win.

Earlier, at the Wawa, a nice clerk asked me if I wanted a separate bag for my sandwich, to separate it from the fat-free chips and salted almonds that completed my order. Um ... no.

And just an hour ago at Zallie's Shop Rite (again) the cashier asked me if I wanted "all this in one bag." The all this included a bag of bird seed, box of cereal and bottle of Red Yeast Rice tablets. Yeah, I think one bag can handle all that.

My reply: "I prefer it."

Too many boxes

and too many plastic bags.

My hands work just fine.

Oh, what is it now?

2011-02-19T18:38:00.000-05:00

OK, so I know you're tired of reading about my exploits at the supermarket, but I'm not tired of writing about them - and it's my blog - so deal with it.

I was in there again tonight - as I am most nights, because it's a couple of blocks away - and I had a (canvas) bag full of stuff, as is my style. Among the stuff was some fresh chicken, rice and yogurt. Staples.

Also present was a can of something called sizing spray. Most of you are familiar with spray starch, but there is also something called sizing spray that isn't quite as drastic as starch, yet still provides a straightening method without the stiffness of starch. I know, I'm a renegade.

While the items were being moved along their conveyor, a woman began putting them in my provided canvas bag. Once she got to the sizing spray, she immediately reached for a (dreaded) plastic bag and placed the can of spray in a plastic bag to insert among the other items in the canvas bag.

I didn't want a similar argument that occurred a few weeks ago over the inclusion of a plastic bag to protect something from its assumed doom. After all, what could happen? Could a stray missile come down from the sky and randomly explode my can of spray? Would I drop the bag on my way out the door and have the can explode, contaminating my fresh chicken and rice? Whatever the reason, the bagger would probably say it was "company policy" to put that thin sheet of plastic between the spray and my precious chicken (also protected by a thin sheet of plastic) and just make me miserable for complaining. So I didn't. Complain, that is.

I just allowed her to put the can in a plastic bag and disposed of the bag once I got outside, thereby making her happy for doing her job and me happy for not making a fuss that might have landed me in the County lock-up, and rendered my chicken useless due to lack of proper refrigeration.

I can only hope that somebody at Zallie's Shop Rite reads this and discovers the error of their ways.

I can hope.

What is ... this about?

2011-02-18T18:06:00.003-05:00

I don't know.

So, there's that Newton robot thing that IBM put together to compete on Jeopardy. It won, so I hear, beating famous brainiac Ken Jennings and another guy. Jeopardy is such a fraud of a game show that it's difficult for me to get very excited about a robot made up by a huge corporation to compete on a game show that is just giving it a half hour of free advertising. It is supposed to represent artificial intelligence, but I think that Jeopardy represents artificial intelligence, so whatever the robot is doing is still a couple of steps below that as far as I'm concerned.

Meanwhile, I have this DVR thing on my cable that costs me 17 bucks a month. I finally figured out something useful to do with it. I record The Late Show with Craig Ferguson every night and watch it the next day, when normal humans are awake. He's a very funny fellow (even though he is from Scotland) and it's a nice way to end my day or night. Especially, since the biggest thing on TV now is a robot competing on a game show.

It's February, and it's not the same without Olympic curling.

Today's history lesson.

2011-02-13T16:00:00.003-05:00

Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa invented the first loaf-at-a-time bread-slicing machine. A prototype he built in 1912 was destroyed in a fire and it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, which produced their first slices on July 6, 1928.
Their product, "Kleen Maid Sliced Bread", proved a success. Battle Creek, Michigan has a competing claim as the first city to sell bread pre-sliced by Rohwedder's machine; however, historians have produced no documentation backing up Battle Creek's claim. The bread was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped."

Even now, 83 years after the Chillicothe Baking Company introduced sliced bread, we still use the phrase, "It's the best thing since sliced bread." Some things have staying power, even though there is no reason for them staying around - like Andy Rooney and "American Idol."

Perhaps it's time to abandon the sliced bread reference and update it ... say, about 70 years ... by using something that mankind has developed that might be both a more recent innovation and something just as impressive as taking a knife to a loaf of baked bread.

So, here is my modest request: The next time you get the urge to say "it's the best thing since sliced bread," instead substitute radial tires, the electric typewriter or FM radio for sliced bread, since they are all something that has been innovated recently enough to be a formidable substitute for something we have been buying and enjoying since the Hoover administration.

I don't ask for much.

Because your phone isn't really a phone anymore.

2011-02-11T19:36:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what has happened to customer service. I think it's floating out there in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Two recent incidences make me think that the old ways of doing things are fast falling by the wayside.

I'm also not sure what has happened to telephones. It seems as though the "phone" function is an afterthought, and that they are for web browsing, text messaging and running applications. Using it to actually speak to someone is a nice ancillary benefit.

I filed my Federal income taxes last night. They make it sound like the e-filing process is the easy way to do it. It is, to a point. To the point that you need to finish it, that is.

Just before I hit the "click here to send" button, I was told that I needed a PIN to file the forms with the IRS. They don't tell me what the PIN means or what its significance is, just that I need it. When the IRS tells you that you need something, you tend to believe them because there is no arguing with them. The phone number that was given seemed to be the best way to get it. After struggling with the slow recorded voice instructions, I was eventually sent back to the starting point, at which time the electronic woman told me that I could also visit irs.gov and get the PIN there.

The web site visit took me about 30 seconds, after which I had my precious PIN and quickly filed my taxes.

A similar experience occurred with the gang at FedEx. Maybe it's the "Federal" part? I have to send a package, and I needed to find the nearest FedEx location. Once again, the telephone option proved to be a nuisance, and like the IRS experience, a trip to the FedEx web site gave me the answer in less time than it took to dial the phone.

I think it's their subtle way to wean us off of actually dialing a telephone to get any sort of information. E-mail, web visits and e-everything are the cost-effective solution for companies to do business. They are conditioning us toward that, and they can do it in a way that aggravates us and satisfies us at the same time by providing an alternative to a solution to something that they know doesn't work. Slowly, they are getting us off the phone and onto the Internet as a permanent solution to any customer service or product ordering portal.

It's the kind of genius marketing that makes me proud to be an American.