My Sick Mind

I wish people could get as worked-up over actual issues as they do about losing Twinkies and buying Powerball tickets.  I suppose the real issues are too stressful, so they tackle the ones that are easy. I listen to sports talk radio during the day.  Usually, it's a respite from the stress of the day. A chance to listen to people discussing mundane issues.  Lately, the talk has centered around Eagles head coach Andy Reid and his almost certain dismissal.  I hear fans screaming and complaining about the team's poor performance and gnashing their teeth over their 7-straight losses.  I wonder (quietly to myself) if they would be as upset if their kid came home with a bad report card or threw a rock at the neighborhood cat?  I'd guess not. The relative anonymity of the talk radio caller is enhanced by the distance they are from the team they are criticizing.  Often, we see a bad movie or television show, and either walk out in disgust or change ...

There is yet another potential lottery jackpot available tonight. One of those "balls" lotteries is set to go off.  Powerball, Lottoball ... something like that.  I don't play enough to truly understand the thing. When the jackpot gets over $200 million, a bunch of us at work put-in two dollars each and buy a bunch of tickets.  As you can no doubt tell, we have never won. Otherwise, I'd be writing this from Sedona, Arizona shitfaced on Mai Tai's and ordering prostitutes on the Craigslist. For some reason, the work group only collects when the jackpot gets to a certain level - as though winning $50 million isn't as big a deal as winning $200 million.  It's not the 50 or 200 as much as it is the "million" part that appeals to me. I'm not a greedy person.  I could do very well with $20,000 and say "thank you."  After all, $200 million is a controversial amount of money.  When the Phillies paid Ryan Howard $200 million,...

Model Karlie Kloss (left) set off some controversy when she walked the runway wearing a Native American headdress (also called a war bonnet), a culturally insensitive faux pas that led the company to pull the footage of the offending outfit from its planned Dec. 4 broadcast . Several Native American groups called the lingerie company out for the blunder. Native Appropriations , a blog covering imagery of indigenous cultures, accused the retailer of "egregious cultural appropriation, stereotyping, and marginalizing of Native peoples." Ruth Hopkins, a columnist for a Native American news site , wrote that "after years of patronage and loyalty to the Victoria's Secret brand, I am repaid with the mean-spirited, disrespectful trivialization of my blood ancestry and the proud Native identity I work hard to instill in my children." Putting a headdress on a white model is particularly offensive, she wrote, because among the Sioux tribe, war bonnets are exclusi...

To the HOTTIE in wawa today around 845am i think you saw me checking you out if you happen to see this and you are single id love to buy you a beer! You were wearing a pair of ear phones tell me what else you were wearing so i know you are the person this post is intended for! If you haven't done it , by all means go to Craigslist and sit for a few hours and read the personal ads.  Like watching "Hoarders," it will immediately make you feel better about your life and simultaneously cause you to wonder about the state of modern life in America.  I have it bookmarked.   You caught my eye as I was ordering my Latte at the counter. You were having a conversation with the woman making your sandwich. Then you dropped your bag after checking out--I watched you leave and we caught each looking.. And smiled! I would love to know your name!   The thing that it points out to me is the severe lack of communication in a society that seems to value communication to ...

So, here it is Sunday night, two days before election day.  Here in New Jersey, we have several big contests to decide.  We will be electing a county clerk, surrogate and a sheriff.  Not a sheriff like Andy Taylor or Buford T. Justice.  A sheriff like one who rides around in a county vehicle handing out summons' and ... I don't know ... locking up stray dogs or something.  I really don't know what a sheriff does, besides collect a big New Jersey State Pension when he retires, or isn't elected to whatever his term is.  Clueless.   Oh, and yes, there's that presidential election.  Among the candidates are a Socialism and Liberation party candidate, one from the American Third Position (I thought there were more positions than three) a Constitution Party candidate, and a few others who stand to clog up the ballot to the point that their family and friends will vote for them and you will not see their vote totals posted in your local newspaper....

"I am pretty good at tennis, but I will never be as good as the wall. The wall is relentless." -   Mitch Hedberg There are a lot of things that are relentless:  The Internal Revenue Service, bills, a cat demanding food and the weather.  The weather is relentless.  When you want it to stop, it keeps coming and when you want it to continue, it stops.  Seasons change and the pace changes.   One of the things we are reminded of when the pace changes is how quickly it can change and how powerless we are to stop it from changing. It is relentless.   Last weekend we were attacked from above by a weather phenomenon that has been given the name Hurricane Sandy.  We like to name things and blame things. It's in our nature.  We can't accept that "stuff happens," we need to find out whom to blame and what it is called. It's a "Storm of the Century," "Drought of the Decade" or some such moniker that identifies it until the next mi...

My peculiar situation is that I get my Internet service from a satellite whose signal winds it way through Charlotte, North Carolina.  On most days, that isn't a problem.  However, with Hurricane Sandy (a boyishly lame name for a storm) bearing down on us, that signal has been silenced.  As a first resort, I am sitting in the Gloucester County Library with my work laptop getting caught up on my month-end bills, e-mails and miscellaneous web crawling that somehow seems necessary. I went to college as an adult, graduating in 2006.  It was necessary for me to leave the house in order to get anything serious accomplished.  Pending household chores, a whining cat, the blare of the TV and other home-bound distractions were left behind and my mind could focus on the task at hand.  Usually, it was a paper I had to write or some mathematically challenging homework. To write my papers, I used antiquated devices known as a pen and paper.  I would feve...

There seems to be no end of ways to separate us from the things we need to do. Priorities have shifted in life, and I don't think for the better. I see people walking with their heads down, typing away on a handheld device, oblivious to their surroundings.  They have the nerve to look shocked when they realize that they are face-to-face with someone walking in the other direction.  I will not alter my gait to suit them. I'm not sure about other states, but in New Jersey, drivers are required to turn on their headlights when it is raining.  It's one of those visibility things.  Our inspection stickers used to have a message on the back that said "WIPERS ON, LIGHTS ON."  I think the subtlety was lost on most drivers, as I still see at least one in five cars driving around without their headlights on. That poetic, yet stern warning was replaced recently.  With the advent of cellular communications (I will not call them cell phones, because a...

Not since William Howard Taft has there been a fatter presidential candidate than our own Chris Christie - a strange combination of names  - who was slated to say something in front of a bunch of assembled Republicans in Florida tonight. I don't care to listen because I am a resident of the state in which he is the governor, so I could probably write the speech.  I don't need to tune into CNN to listen to it.   He'll tell the world (or the American part of it) how the budget should be balanced and how badly we've done since the scourge of the Democrats have descended on America.  It's that predictable.  Politics has relegated itself to denigrating the other party and telling you how bad your life is because the other party is in charge.   That's how it has been since the beginning of politics.  But, for your lifetime, let's review:  Jimmy Carter promised to bring back honesty to the office after the Nixon/Ford nonsense.  Ronald ...

OK, so it's Olympics time. I'm fascinated by the Olympics. Partly because I like the "thrill of victory" crap, and partly because I enjoy watching sports that I won't watch again for another four years. That's the fascinating part about the Olympics - the four-year time span.  If there wasn't another movie sequel for four years, you'd say, "Gee, whatever happened to that Spiderman thing?"  But sports like archery and volleyball go four years without any updates and you glom on like it was yesterday the last time you saw them. Does anybody give a crap about gymnastics or swimming except on four-year cycles? No, and that's why the Olympics are fascinating to me.  Michael Phelps will win a dozen or so medals, his gross income will increase by millions of dollars and the last time we saw him seriously pursuing his sport was 2008.  That's a long time for society to maintain interest in something.  We lose track of television sho...

I have a Chic-Fil-A near my home, but I've never been there.  I hear they are customer-friendly and it's sort of like a cult of chicken eaters that go into them.  You're greeted and treated like you are something special, even though what you really want is a fried chicken sandwich. Lately, their CEO has come out against gay marriage (and other gay things) and the backlash has been measurable.  So much so, that there have been Twitter and (I hear) Facebook posts decrying the company and its stance against the gay thing. Is this what we want?   Do you want to base your life on what the people in charge of companies think of your lifestyle choices? If so, then maybe you should go about interviewing the CEO of every company that you do business with and how each of them deals with every lifestyle choice that comes across their desk. I'd guess that you would wind up farming your own food, flushing your own toilet into your own backyard cesspool, manufacturin...

A nice horizontal lightning strike from my back porch tonight.

  "And I'll say it again, I need a brand new friend." Jim Morrison Hyacinth House For about the tenth time in the past three years, I have abandoned Facebook.  Mostly because it has abandoned me.   Oh Facebook, why hast thou forsaken me? I know why.   It's because Facebook is a happy place.  It's a place where people can say, "Hey, Look at me! See what I'm doing!"  And mostly, I'm doing it without you.  That's where the forsaken part comes in. We have real friends (or most of you do) and we have our Facebook Friends.  Facebook friends are mostly acquaintances that we otherwise wouldn't associate with if it weren't for the Internet and its so-called social interaction skills.  Part of those social interaction skills are supposed to bring together people with like interests.  What it really does is bring us together with people with whom we have one thing in common, and Facebook software links us up with others who ...

These things usually aren't about me.   They are rants about what is going on in the world or what nonsense has affected my life that reflects on what is going on in the world. However, the recent events in Colorado and some ancillary events have convinced me that we can't change the world one person at a time.  We can't even change it a thousand people at a time.  The world is a big place, and changing it has lost its purpose.  We won't change it. We won't keep people from talking on cell phones while they are driving. We won't keep people from buying assualt weapons.  We won't keep people from throwing trash out of their car windows. [Sidebar:  I saw a Prius driver throw a cigarette out of his window. If a Prius driver doesn't get the "World-as-One" concept, what hope do we have?] We won't keep people from parking in the fire lane at the Shop Rite.  We won't keep people from singing-along at concerts.  We won't ke...

The (Men's) U.S. Open golf tournament is going on this weekend.  Among the topics being discussed is that Tiger Woods was still in contention for the win, and it appears as though a lot of people are cheering for him to win. I understood the "Tiger Love" at the beginning of his career.  He was a guy who was going to challenge Jack Nicklaus' records at a time when no golfer appeared to be able to dominate the tour.  I get that.  But in the ensuing years, he developed into a petulant brat who would spit on greens, chastize spectators and generally be a sore loser.  When he won he was gregarious, but losing turned his true personality on. Once his wife chased after him with a 7-iron, I thought America's fascination with him would have ebbed.  But instead, it waited for his return and now, when he is in contention for a title, thousands of fans line the fairways to cheer him.  That, I don't get. It is difficult to count on the favor of the Am...

For almost 5 years I updated this blog every day.  I had opinions on everything from trash to soap , and couldn't wait to get to my computer to type-in a rant.  At some point, I realized that the world wasn't changing, and in fact, it was steadily growing worse, and my thoughts and ideas were more social anathema than socially acceptable. So I shut up. Then, along came Facebook and Twitter.   So-called Social Media sites that seem to have settled into a realm somewhere between corporate marketing and personal promotion.  Companies use it to promote television shows and products and people use it to tell us about all the grand things they do with their lives - presumably without us, or else why would they need to broadcast it to the Internet? After all, I thought most people hated those Christmas cards with the "Yearly Update" letter that told us about Junior's baby teeth or Aunt Selma's sciatica.  What makes a daily Internet update more pala...

Paula Creamer's bag in the foreground while Paula putts during the Pro-Am at Seaview Country Club on Thursday.  Photo by me. Two of the least spectator-friendly sports are taking place locally this weekend. One, the Shop Rite LPGA Classic , has been going on for a week.  The other, the 28th running of the Philadelphia International Championship , takes place on Sunday.  It has changed sponsors more than most people change their heater filters.  So much so that I had to look it up.  It probably should have been called the "International Championship" from the beginning.  CoreStates bank and whatever other institutions lent their name to it had nothing to do with cycling. Golf is a goofy sport to follow.   The courses are usually in the back woods somewhere, which means that spectators have to shuttle-bus in, as though they were being taken to another world - which is the reality. Golf courses were made for golf, not for watching ...

That is a photo of an ad running on TV.   It's a loan shark outfit called Western Sky that will gladly loan you $10,000 at an interest rate of 89.68% with 84 monthly payments of $743.99.  Where do I sign up? My guess is that, because it's a "Native American-owned business" that is "operating on a Native American Reservation" they can get away with charging 90% interest on a loan.  Otherwise, they would probably have the Federal government questioning their practices.  Finally, we have closure on the whole "Indian Reservation" deal.  This is how they get even with us white-folk. It's also nice that there are "no fees for early pay off" as though you could pay off a 90% interest loan early. I wonder how many phone calls they get?   Like the kid who sells lemonade for $50 a glass, they only have to sell one.  I can't be the only person who paused his TV mid-stream to read the fine print on the ad. Or am I?

One of the themes I've been meaning to write about is the growing gap between the "have's" and the "have-not's."  That is to say, the One-Per-centers and the rest of the world.  More and more, we are faced with luxury suites at sporting events, up-scale mall stores and automobiles with more accoutrements than most of our homes have.  Disregarding that premise for now, I am left with these: Boston Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett was booed after being removed from a game, after it was found that he played golf after being disabled because of an injury.  His response: “We get 18 off days a year,” Beckett said . “I think we deserve a little time to ourselves.” A little time to yourselves?  Your work year goes from March to October.  You have more time off than schoolteachers.  Games start at 7:05pm.  What are you doing all day, besides sleeping and eating?  My cat has it harder than you. Shut up and play. Terrell Owens recently appea...

It's a lot easier to piss people off than it used to be.  Or perhaps it's the advent of social media that makes it seem that way? After all, our identity and proximity influences the volume of our opinions. It's easy to be angry and anonymous, but difficult to be confrontational in person.  Either way, making political statements on Facebook, Twitter and other such portals is the latest way to vent anger over something we find offensive. The latest one is North Carolina's vote on "Amendment 1" which defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman.  It has turned the North Carolina Tourism Facebook page into a battleground of profanity, where critics have lashed out on the measure.  Many have said that they will no longer visit North Carolina because homosexuals cannot marry each other.  That makes good nonsense. Of course, it's a tourism page, so one would assume (logically) that the visitors to the page are also visitors (i.e.: t...

While I'm listening to Cocteau Twins I am thinking about my musical influences and how I came about them. The Beatles were unavoidable.  Their music was everywhere, and even a 7-year old couldn't avoid them.  Lucky for me. Their subsequent British Invasion clones and American counterparts would shape my thought as a young person of the 1960s, and I found myself drawn into pop radio and its influences, mostly because I exhibited no independent thought.  Once I did, however, my mind wandered. Chicago Transit Authority would be later (and better) known as Chicago, and their music was foist upon me by their radio popularity and their popularity among the young hipsters in my high school. That led to bands like Focus; Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Grand Funk Railroad who became popular among my high school friends - and me, in the case of Focus and ELP.  I remember being on my school bus one morning asking a seat-mate if he had heard "Hocus Pocus" by Focu...

The National Football League is a marketing machine.  They have figured out how to make working out (The Combine) and choosing-up sides (The Draft) into prime-time television programs that run for several nights on big-time cable television stations. What is more amazing is that people watch. It reminds me of the saying:  Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public. Is he really going to have GRIFFIN III on his jersey or was that just a prop for the draft? I love the coconut water drinks that have started showing up over the past year or so.  I wonder if it's real coconut water or just a mix of chemicals designed to simulate coconut water?  I saw "Cast Away" and it didn't look to me like Tom Hanks was getting a lot of water out of those coconuts.  At least not enough for somebody to think that they could bottle the stuff and earn a profit. We're a conflicted people.  Every day (or so it seems) we hear about h...

I picked up my bag, I went looking for a place to hide; When I saw Carmen and the Devil walking side by side. I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let's go downtown." She said, "I gotta go, but my friend can stick around." Take a load off Annie, take a load for free; Take a load off Annie, and you put the load right on me. Levon Helm died on Thursday.  It prompted a lot of airplay for "The Weight," one of The Band's most popular songs.  One DJ said that hearing the song makes him cry.  I have heard the song a number of times and frankly, never had that reaction.  Mostly because I never knew what it was about. I found the lyrics online and read through them and I still don't know what it's about.  That got me to thinking. Tons of people love that song [pun] and if you asked them, I'd bet that either they don't know all the words or, if they do, they couldn't put their finger on exactly what the song means.  While it appears...

I was interested today in this story about a 94-year old billionaire who is marrying for the fifth time , to a woman some 30 years his junior. I was born during the day, but not yesterday, so I understand that the primary reason that she is marrying him is because, in actuarial terms, she feels as though she will outlive him by enough years that she will be able to enjoy her inheritance.  I'm guessing that she will attempt to kill him sexually. My interest went beyond the issue of money - because I haven't any - and transcended into the area of age and how it relates to whom we are attracted and how that attraction manifests itself into romance. I feel as though the mind ages more slowly than the body, as evidenced by the fact that I feel as though I am still in my 30s even though my body tells me that I am significantly older. That's a shame. It's a shame because neither I nor any woman I would meet at this point in my life would be interested in...

I've been thinking about updating the entries here for a while, but every time I come up with some brainstorm, I realize that (a) it's just me griping about something and/or (2) it's something I've already griped about.  I could put up a link to some old essay and be done with it, but I really don't have the interest in it and besides, if you have a horrible gripe about something in your life, you can search it in the window and up will pop a wordy version of your 30-second version of whatever you are upset about. In the meantime, I went to the Phillies' home opener on Monday.  In some ways I question my judgement and in other ways I feel the need for some sort of Internet intervention that would keep me from clicking on junk that I should just Add to Favorites and lie down until the feeling passes. Part of the reason I wanted to go was because "everyone else was going" (which, of course, was only partly true) and because I was anxiou...