My Sick Mind

Saturday evening found me in Wilmington, Delaware for a minor league baseball game with the Wilmington Blue Rocks playing the Lynchburg Hillcats. As they say, it was a beautiful night for a ballgame. I haven't been to the ballpark in a few years, but I used to go about five times a year. The place only holds about 5,000 people, so the game is right on top of me. The sounds of the game are audible and sometimes I can pick up chatter between the players. If you're a baseball fan, it's a great experience. Wilmington is the single-A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. Some of these players end up in the Major Leagues and some end up selling insurance. I could bore you with the fifty or so action photos I took, but they all kind of look like this, with different players. I was testing out my new zoom lens, and I must say it passed. That's the ball by the catcher's head. The ballpark is right off Interstate 95, a couple of miles from downtown Wilmington, which is pret...

We start with my favorite subject, the cat. I'm always curious as to what he is looking at, since he stares intently at something. When I turn my head, I see nothing. It's usually a bug or some noise that he hears. He's way too nervous. You can click on the photo to see it in all its glory. I used my new Nikon 55-200 vibration reduction zoom lens which, I have to say, is worth every penny of its incredibly low-low price . The only problem is that I've spent a third of my stimulus rebate, which sadly has not yet arrived. Tomorrow , it's off to a Wilmington Blue Rocks game. They're a (semi) local minor league team. It's been a while since I've been there, and tomorrow seemed like a good day to go. The ticket is 9 bucks and the parking is free, so it's hard to beat, entertainment-wise. Sunday I may venture back into the city. There's a movie I want to see, and judging from the reviews, I'd better hurry. I'll drag the camera and snap a ...

Oh, you betcha. Benzodiazepines are more commonly abused than opiate pharmaceuticals which accounted for 32% of visits to the emergency department. No other pharmaceutical is more commonly abused than benzodiazepines. Nice. Klonopin is an anxiolytic, an anti-anxiety drug and I'm guessing, given the current state of affairs, it should see a big spike in production. We're an anxious bunch these days, given to bouts of panic and anxiety over the price of things and our ability to pay for them. Generally, it doesn't take much to make me happy, which is good because I don't have much. A few bucks in my pocket and some place to go to spend them without the anxiety of worrying about whether or not I should spend them for fear of not being able to make that big cable TV bill usually suffices. Now, more than ever, people are on this paycheck-to-paycheck merry-go-round and it looks like there's no end in sight. We would really like to be able to get through the day with...

I'm so desparate for material, I have now resorted to using comments from others' blogs as fodder for my own posts. Mostly because, in moments of glibness I find that I can make sense and partly because I feel as though I should have posted the comment as an essay on my own blog. So, this is what I left on Firestarter5's blog yesterday in response to his question about the rising cost of gasoline and how it affects our relations around the world: I think (maybe) part of the problem is that we are so fat on our luxurious lifestyles here that the last straw was a big spike in oil prices. It means that we can no longer live our lives of bloated excess, and we now have to cut back on stuff that we either didn't have 20 years ago (cell phones and [big] mortgages) or have become accustomed to. I think part of the problem is that we feel entitled to stuff, and when we are faced with the grim realization that our lives are full of wretched excess, the one thing that we have c...

I continue to be amazed by the amount of media coverage that Dancing with the Stars and American Idol receive. Maybe I’m being too pragmatic, but in a country with 305 million people living in 110 million households where 109 million of them have at least 1 TV, why are we be bombarded with stories about programs that supposedly have 18.5 million and 25 million viewers respectively? To me, it seems that the much larger number of people are off doing something else . Granted, they’re the highest-rated shows on TV, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be foist upon us. I'd like to know what the other 280 million people are doing. That's probably far more interesting. Here’s an interesting fact: 18.5 million people watched the regular Dancing with the Stars episode, but only 17 million watched the “results” show that immediately followed. Am I to believe that 9 percent of their viewers turned the show off before they found out who won? Perhaps I’m a frustrated s...

I.R.S. Haiku: My payment is late. I don’t know where it could be. I need stimulus. If you’re like me (God forbid) you’re still waiting for your I.R.S. “stimulus payment”. In my case, it's a whopping great $600, which, in the shadow of yesterday's litany of bad ideas, I have been given no end of economic ideas for it, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. I wonder what the Money Kings (the high Priests of motoring) would tell me to do? Never mind. Since my last two Social Security numbers are at the high end of the range, I was originally told that I would receive the payment by direct deposit “no later than May 14.” It is May 20, and I am still waiting. A call to the I.R.S. Rebate Hotline (866-234-2942) told me that they were “experiencing heavy call volume” regarding the economic stimulus payments. No kidding. By the way, you know there’s trouble when they have to set up a “hotline”. Then, the computer enhanced female voice told me that “most direct-deposit payments ...

Two "Clash of the Titans" events are happening now. (1) It's May, which means it's "Sweeps" in the TV world and (2) Gasoline prices are higher than ever. All of which means: Stand By For Stupid Ideas Disguised as Good Advice. To wit: Here's a real sign of desperation over gas prices: When you're going downhill, moving slowly in traffic, or pulling into a parking space, the Money Kings recommend turning your engine completely off. That way, you can take advantage of the car's momentum and avoid wasting gas on unnecessary acceleration . Not only that, but you can avoid wasting time trying to turn the steering wheel, since your power steering won't work when your engine is off, and your brakes probably won't work either. They may be the Money Kings, but they're clearly not the Driving Kings. Stick to money and leave the driving to those of us who know how to do it. I wonder ... if you turn off your engine on the advice of the Money Kin...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The average retail price of a gallon of regular grade gasoline in the U.S. rose to a new record high as the cost of a barrel of crude oil price continued its ascent, an industry analyst said on Sunday. The U.S. average retail regular gasoline price rose to $3.7929 a gallon on May 16, up nearly 17 cents in the past two weeks, according to the nationwide Lundberg survey of about 7,000 gas stations . I haven't spent much time writing or talking about the price of gasoline. Partly because I think it's pointless and partly because it's like complaining about the weather. There isn't much we can do about it, so we just suck it up and pay. There aren't too many things in life that we are forced to pay for. They could charge us 8 dollars a gallon and we would pay because we have to get to work - to pay for the gasoline. The government taxes the crap out of it for the same reason, just like they tax cigarettes and alcohol. Get us hooked and screw us o...