My Sick Mind

Cathy Guisewite, the creator of the Cathy comic, said Wednesday that deciding to end the comic strip was "excruciating." The comic has won several awards, including a 1992 National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 1987, and at its height appeared in 1,400 papers. "It's just been really unbelievably agonizing to make the decision," Guisewite said in a telephone interview from her home in the Los Angeles area. Can somebody please explain how this horrible comic strip survived for 30 years - and won awards, too? "Unbelievably agonizing" is how I would describe my attempts to read the Cathy strip over the years. Thirty years of dealing with the same whining, dopey, self-abusing character has taken its toll on readers as well as its creator. My only hope is that newspapers do not choose to run "tribute" strips like they did with great comics like Peanuts and For Better or Worse . A...

After losing my Internet connection due to a bad phone line, I am finally back on the air. Since the good folks at Verizon were going to take 4 days to dispatch a repairman to my home to fix my line, I shitcanned them. Subsequently, I signed up with Clear, but had some problems hooking up the air card to my PC. A quick fix and a few swear words and I'm back on the air. Soon, I'll be mobile-blogging, once my new laptop comes from the gang at Dell who, I'm sure, are busily building it as I type because they know how important it is to me. Anyway ... what did I miss? Oh yeah, that oil spill in the Gulf is almost gone - to hear the people at BP tell it, anyway. What happened to the oil? Most of it evaporated, they say. Here's a little experiment you can try in your backyard. Open a quart of oil and leave it on your back porch. Tell me how long it takes for a quart to disappear into the atmosphere. While you're at it, throw in a few shrimp and some fish just to...

I get a lot of e-mail. Most of it is advertising that comes from some web site partner I once bought something from. Some of it I actually want to read and some of it I read because I think I should. The interesting ones have that Fwd mark on them, and when I open it I see a string of receipents followed by the text of the message. One came today. This one had two Fwd's and the heading "2011 W-2 Tax Forms and Obamacare." That piqued my interest because I figured that it was one of those scare-tactic messages that people forward mindlessly, without reading it. This was the message (after the lengthy recipient list and subsequent forwards) It shows up in 14-point bold type, but I'll spare you: Should you want to verify this, go to http://www.thomas.gov/ , enter "HR 3590" in the search box and look for "CRS Summaries." This is what you'll find. Title IX Revenue Provisions - Subtitle A: Revenue Offset"(Sec. 9002) requires employers to inc...

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – Key ships stationed over BP's crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to evacuate Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie , and engineers have grown so confident in the leaky cap fixed to the well head that they will leave it closed while they are gone. Tropical Storm Bonnie,, which blossomed over the Bahamas and was to enter the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend, could delay by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud and cement, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and BP officials conceded. Even if it's not a direct hit, the rough weather will push back efforts to kill the well by at least a week. "While this is not a hurricane, it's a storm that will have probably some significant impacts, we're taking appropriate cautions," Allen said in Mobile, Alabama. Significant impacts? You betcha. What are high winds and storm surges going to do with all that oil floating on the surface of the Gulf? I don...

I don't read as much as I write. I read the newspaper every day, but rarely indulge in a book or anything longer than a magazine article. I suppose it's my child of the 60s-induced short attention span that limits my interest to anything shorter than an average television program, whose length has grown shorter over the years as well. I recently purchased the first season DVDs of Newhart , the Bob Newhart sitcom where he owns an Inn in Vermont. I watched a few episodes (before becoming interested in something else) and noticed that the commercial-free programs were between 24 and 26 minutes long. By contrast, DVD episodes of last season's Parks and Recreation are around 21 minutes long. Both programs occupied a half-hour of network air time, but have gotten 5 minutes shorter over the span of 22 years. How long will it be before the program is shorter than the commercial breaks? By those standards, it will take 44 years. Lucky teen aged readers have that to look forward t...

“We’re going to be wearing a bulls eye . But that’s what you play for,” Dwayne Wade said. “We enjoy the bulls eye. Plus, there’s going to be times when we lose 2-3 games in a row, and it seems like the world has crashed down. You all (media) are going to make it seem like the World Trade is coming down again, but it’s not going to be nothing but a couple basketball games. Dwayne Wade apologized for that remark. Why? Because it was seen (or heard) as being offensive to people who remember the events of September 11, 2001. We call it Nine-eleven around here. "In an interview yesterday , I attempted to explain how some people may view the Miami Heat losing a few basketball games in a row during the upcoming season. It appears that my reference to the World Trade Center has been either inaccurately reported or taken completely out of context. I was simply trying to say that losing a few basketball games should not be compared to a real catastrophe. "While it was certainly not m...

DETROIT – General Motors Co. is guaranteeing the battery in its Chevrolet Volt electric car for eight years or 100,000 miles in an effort to inspire confidence in the new technology. The guarantee is better than warranties on GM's conventional car engines and transmissions, which are five years or 100,000 miles. The rechargeable Volt is due in showrooms this November. The vehicle can travel 40 miles on battery power before a small gasoline engine takes over to generate power so the car can go longer distances. The Volt is expected to be priced around $35,000 but will probably cost less after federal tax credits. Other automakers are rolling out electric cars. Shortly after the Volt goes on sale, Nissan Motor Co. will begin selling the Leaf, which the company said will get up to 100 miles on a single charge. By the way, notice how the GM designers put a grill on the car, even though it probably doesn't need one. OK, so that's nice. GM is selling battery technology for $3...

I'd be derelict in my duties as both a fan and a blogger if I didn't mention that my favorite athlete, Paula Creamer , won the U.S. Women's Open on Sunday. It was a popular win with the golf world as well as my world. Since Annika retired and Lorena Ochoa left earlier this season, the search has been on for the next player to dominate the game the way those two did for several years. Would it be Christie Kerr, who won last year's Open and has both the game and the temperament to be the best player on tour? Would it be Suzann Pettersen, who has the talent but not always the fortitude to come through and win when it counts? Or would it be one of the Asian players who seem to have taken the game by storm over the past 5 years? The main reason Paula's victory was so popular is because she is so popular. She has a great attitude toward her fans and seems to be thisclose to winning almost every time she walks on a course. The past few years have been fraught with di...

We're a spoiled bunch. We have more technology than we can understand and require more to keep us busy and entertain us than our parents - or even us when we were young. We need Kindle readers, Wii game consoles, laptop computers, iPad's, iPhones and other "i" devices that focus the pleasure on the I and not so much the us. It's all about you ... er ... I. Such wasn't the case a generation ago, when magazines, radio and television seemed to keep us entertained. Were we happy with that or were we waiting around for something more stimulating? TV and magazines were gateway drugs to the entertainment industry, and now we need a bigger fix, but at what cost? It is certainly expensive to keep us entertained, and I suppose part of the expense is the stimulation that we're supposed to get from all those fancy devices. I'm not sure the expense always lives up to the hype. All those fancy apps that we keep hearing about aren't free, you know. B...

LOS ANGELES – Three executives at a stuffed toy manufacturer were arrested Friday on suspicion of laundering millions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers, authorities said. The arrests followed a two-year, multi-agency probe into the Angel Toy Corp., located in a downtown warehouse. "It's no small irony that a multimillion-dollar company which promoted itself as retailer of cuddly stuffed animals was allegedly acting as a financial linchpin for drug trafficking operatives," said John Morton, director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two co-owners of the business, Meichun Cheng Huang, 57, and Ling Yu, 52, were arrested, along with chief executive officer Xiaoxin Ju, 48. Is there any other use for these 1- inch square baggies than this? I mean, seriously. Somewhere there is a little baggie factory (probably in China) turning out these tiny things. There's even an adorable little plastic strip to seal it up nice and air tight, away from ...

Thermostat now displaying "WTF?" Not even sure how that's possible. - from Howard 's Twitter and/or Facebook page. We're a funny bunch, us humans. There are certain places where we hate to perspire and other places where we love to. That's where we call it sweat, in the places we love to. The temperature around these parts rose to over a hundred degrees (102 at 4:54pm, when you'd figure it would be starting to cool off) and according to the weather guys, it "feels like" 102. That's great, but do you know what it really feels like? It feels like I got stuck in a big plastic bag and somebody turned on a huge sun lamp...for 8 hours. Doesn't it feel differently in the sun and the shade? Of course it does. They measure the temperature in the shade, so how can being in the sun "feel like" the same temperature? That's where these scientists come down to Earth for me. When it is this hot, I lose all interest in outdoor activiti...

Sports and entertainment are funny businesses. They don't behave like real life businesses and the people involved aren't treated like real life people. Take, for instance, the Tiger Woods affair. Or affairs. Our area just finished hosting the AT&T tournament at Aronomink just outside Philadelphia. The local papers were full of coverage on the event, since big time golf doesn't come to our area often. Those of us who follow the game have gotten used to headlines like "Tiger 12 shots off the pace" or "Tiger third going into final round" where there is little or no mention of who is leading the tournament. Tiger got the ink. Since his ignominious fall from grace, not much has changed. The first two days, when he was in danger of missing the cut, the paper lead with that story. Who is leading the tournament? See paragraph three. It seems that no amount of personal shame or degradation could keep his name out of the headlines or his followers from t...

I had some idea what I was going to write about today, but in between that and turning the computer on, I've lost track. The Independence Day weekend is winding down, and I'm one of the fortunate few to have Monday off, so I can spend a few minutes in quiet contemplation. Showing fireworks on television is one of our stranger customs. Most of the lure of fireworks is the expanse of the explosion over your head and the shock of the explosion when the boom rattles your stomach a little. I don't sense any of that on TV. Television compresses the event to a screen-wide view, and the accompanying music is always louder than the explosions - not that it would help much. My TV sound isn't going to rattle anything. The other big event around here is traffic. One of the reasons I'm up at 3:45 working on this mess is that I made a late-night trip home from a friend's and wound up in shore traffic at 2:30am. 2:30am. am. I was in traffic at 2:30am on the Atlantic City ...

I was watching the Mets vs. Nationals game on Fox this afternoon, and noticed how distracted television is sometimes. The game was on the screen, but also on the screen was a yellow box running an ad for the upcoming All-Star game (on Fox) that we were required to read, I assume. While all this is going on, the play-by-play announcer was entertaining us with a random baseball story that had nothing to do with either what was happening on my TV screen or on the playing field. I think that the only way Fox could have created a more mentally distracting sight would have been to run loud music over the entire thing. That, or they could have tilted the screen a little so that I would have to move my head. Now they have another new idea. And then, there was an ad for a Dodge truck whose big selling point was that it had a cargo bay "capable of holding 5.5 pounds of chili." Really, that's what he said. It's gotten to the point that chili storage is a positive trait in a v...

When I was married, my wife would often complain about my penchant for watching television. While she viewed it as a boring past time, I saw it as a learning experience. I told her I don't watch television the way most people do. Every so often I get the chance to explain that concept: I was watching a My Name is Earl episode called "Cost Dad an Election" on CW Philly tonight and noticed something strange. During the episode, there is a wide shot that shows the sky. In the background was a Wawa billboard, which I found odd. Wawa is too regional a brand to show up in a Hollywood-produced show, so what's with the billboard? Since I have the DVD, I popped it in and voilà , no billboard. CW Philly had it added in. The photo shows the DVD version, with the blank sky. I wish I had the presence of mind to rewind the show while I had it on, but take my word for it, there was a Wawa sign back there. And then I heard that the episode was sponsored by Wawa, so the shameless t...

From Blogs and Stories by Randall Lane : In an era of epically wrong financial predictions, boisterous Jim Cramer's declaration that "Bear Stearns is not in trouble!" a week before its March 2008 collapse, rated among the most moronic, or at least the most infamous. But it turns out that Cramer made one call far worse: He decided to make a stock-picking star out of a mumbling former Major League Baseball All-Star named Lenny Dykstra, giving him a high-profile column and ultimately an expensive "premium" newsletter on Cramer's site TheStreet.com. How did Dykstra return the favor? As I reveal in my book, The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane , Dykstra took money—$250,000 worth of secretly issued stock—in exchange for recommending that stock to TheStreet.com subscribers. He also promised access to Cramer in exchange for the stock, which he apparently hid under his brother-in-law's name. We love the experts. We love to hear t...

Tonight saw me at another Wilmington Blue Rocks baseball game. One of the charms of minor league baseball is the proximity to the playing field. A treat for a baseball geek like me is to go down toward the bullpen and watch the starting pitcher warm up before the game. From there, you can see his grip on the ball and watch it head toward the plate. That's Blue Rocks pitcher Chris Dwyer on the right. He pitched 5 innings and gave up 2 runs. The best thing about being at a baseball game is that it makes me forget about what else is going on in the world. NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Tropical Storm Alex veered away from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Saturday but experts warned that strong waves and winds could still upset efforts to halt the environmental disaster. With oil continually gushing into the fragile waters after 68 days, President Barack Obama's pointman on the disaster cautioned that volatile weather conditions could set back oil recovery operations for up to two...

Every once in a while, I like to impart some wisdom on the masses. Something that maybe you didn't know, but would find useful in your everyday life. Such is the case today. I got a new ATM card from my bank yesterday. You have all gotten new credit cards in the mail, and with them, you have received a sticker on the card that includes a phone number that you are told to call to "activate your new card." My sick mind has always wondered if the activation process was worthwhile. When I received the new ATM card, I wondered (quietly to myself) if the phone number to activate the card was legitimate, as I do when I receive a new card from any of my creditors. But, like the zombie that I am, I call the number and allow " Suresh " to activate my card, even though I have the feeling that he is typing imaginary numbers on an air-keyboard in India that allegedly activates my card, while attempting to sell me expensive balance insurance or other such credit-induced fee...

Americans are fascinated by the Drive Thru. Drive Thru - anything . (And not through , mind you. Thru.) I heard a radio ad for a drive-thru pizza place. Drive thru pizza. Or self-delivery, take your pick. I guess the idea goes back to those old car-hop restaurants, where you eat the food in your car off a tray that sits on your window. I don't get that either. There's nothing like the smell of gasoline and leaking coolant to spice up a night out for the family. I think the parents were using the gas fumes to get the kids to go to bed earlier. But then, somebody figured that we'd rather sit at home in front of the TV and eat not-quite-as-hot-as-it-would-be-in-the-restaurant food instead of sitting around outside. Genius marketing. Then, they figured that if we like grabbing food out of a window we would enjoy making other transactions through windows, sometimes with the aid of a pneumatic tube, to make it more fun. If you have coins, take them inside. Since we're kind...

This is about as bad as it gets. Those are recent images from the Gulf of Mexico where a breached oil well has been spewing oil into the Gulf for two months non-stop. Non-stop. It is estimated that 125,000,000 gallons have flowed into the water so far, with no end in sight, Kevin Costner notwithstanding. Imagine being a turtle or a sea bird and waking up in the morning (or whenever turtles and sea birds wake up) and finding your home awash with a substance that is the direct opposite of the water that gives you life. You look around and it is everywhere. The more you swim, the worse it gets, and you find that as you struggle your work is harder and it appears that the very work you do to extricate yourself worsens your dilemma. As an inhabitant, you are rightfully confused. What you call home is now a poison to you and it is killing you. To accurately place yourself in their position, imagine that from above, millions of gallons of oil were poured into your house while you were...