My Sick Mind

If there was ever a doubt as to the pre - conceived nature of that American Idol program, one need look no further than the latest Internet sensation, General Larry Platt . Somehow (we are supposed to believe) he was allowed through the audition process even though the "rules" prohibit anyone over the age of 28 from being a part of the program. Then he goes and does some ridiculous pantson the ground rant/song and it's the "latest thing." OK, I get it, you're starved for attention, and since William Hung isn't available, you'll make the most of it by promoting an old guy dancing around. That's TV. Gee, how did he ever get through he screeners ? We're so easily entertained. Big earthquake in Haiti. It's all over the news. And as a result, there are hundreds of charitable organizations who are willing to lend a hand, or so we think. Be careful where you throw your money, folks. Remember the Katrina thing in New Orleans and how a lot...

Speaking about the disaster during his program “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pat Robertson said that when Haiti was still a French colony its leaders “swore a pact to the devil” to get out from “under the heel of the French.” “They said, ‘we will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal,’” Robertson claimed, as was recorded and sent around by the liberal group Media Matters. “But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other,” he continued. “That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle on the one side is Haiti the other is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts. Haiti is in desperate poverty.” First of all, I wasn't aware that "The 700 Club" was still on television. Maybe that's why Robertson saw fit to start flapping his gums over the earthquakes in Haiti? Anything to get your name in the media. I...

The Mall. I used to do a lot of wandering around in malls. Now, not so much. Mostly because I'm not 20 years old and partly because I don't have a lot of money to spend, which is most of what you do at the mall. I went on Tuesday after work because I had a gift card to spend. Of course, we never spend the gift card - we spend more than the gift card, which is why I think stores like selling them so much. They do research on junk like that. The first thing to do at the mall is find something to eat. Our local mall has a nice food court, but it wasn't that long ago that malls didn't have food courts. I think you have to be over 40 years old to remember that. Generally, they had a pretzel place or some kind of fast food joint, but now there is an entire wing of the place devoted to food - including a pretzel place and a fast food joint. I ate at the Chinese place. It's kind of noisy in the food court. That's because there is a new-fangled video music thing c...

My neighbor's hobby is researching her family tree. Last week, she did some research on my father's family, and she came up with a 1920 census report that showed that my grandfather came to America from Italy in 1896. The house they were living in was at 1109 Wolf Street in south Philadelphia. I took a little trip there today. It's the one with the green awning. Imagine 9 children (ages 18, 16, 14, 12, 8, 7, 3, 2 and 8 months - yes, they were Catholic ) and two adults living in that tiny row home. Dad was 8 months old when the census was taken, so this is the house where he lived when he was born. I don't think it looked like this in 1920. It probably looked more like the ones on the left side of the photo. My grandfather (also named Anthony) owned a barbershop, but I don't know where it was. Chances are it isn't a barbershop anymore. Two of dad's sisters were buttonhole makers (Makes buttonholes for shoes: Sets button fly of quarter against gauge of ma...

My alma mater, Widener University recently banned smoking on campus. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer came out in support with these words , among others: Kudos to Widener University for taking steps to ban smoking on its campuses, both indoors and out. Other area colleges and universities should follow Widener's lead. For that matter, so should other institutions, including all hospitals and government facilities. The move would help promote public health and reduce health-care costs. Inhaling secondhand smoke is estimated to cause 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in the United States each year. Secondhand smoke is also thought to increase the risk of breast cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma. Most researchers say there is no safe level of secondhand smoke. Kudos indeed, but why are we so worked up over secondhand smoke when the real culprit is firsthand smoke? Government has taken steps to eliminate the dangers of secondhand smoke by isolating smokers fro...

OK, so the camera finally arrived. Curiously, it came via the U.S. Postal Service who had taken it from FedEx after it's strange journey from New York to Edison, NJ to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. What is strange (among other things) is that it took 5 days to go the 116 miles from NYC to Pottstown and only 2 days to go the 75 miles from Pottstown to my workplace in southern New Jersey. I still wonder why they would ship it via FedEx if FedEx was only going to hand it off to the USPS. Mine is not to question why. It's a Nikon Coolpix S570. It's a nice little camera. It takes 12 megapixel photos which are way too large (5.5 megabytes) to post here, so I had to shrink one down to post. Of course, it's my goofy cat in repose. Nikon says that the images are capable of enlargements up to 20" x 30". We'll see. One of these days I'll take it out for a run and have one blown up. On a lighter note... In response to my friend from Canada who recently posted an i...

Do you remember that scene in "Cast Away" where Tom Hanks is berating some Russian FedEx employees because they don't seem to understand the concept of "on time package delivery?" Sure you do. He put a timer in a package that came from the United States and opened it to reveal the exact time it took for the package to arrive from the States to Russia. Then he started screaming about getting some packages on a truck and getting to wherever they were going. It was a nice commercial for FedEx, right in the middle of a movie. The whole movie is pretty much an ad for FedEx, except for the part where the plane crashes into the ocean and the packages start washing ashore. I think FedEx would have preferred they left that out, but it's kind of the point of the movie. Last Tuesday I ordered a little camera from my favorite Internet camera store in New York City. What I have found out in the interim is that I should be in the package delivery business - or at leas...

With the wind blowing at about a hundred miles per hour, the last thing either Thor or I wanted to be doing was making a trip to the veterinarian on Sunday, but trip we did. The day started innocently enough, with me waddling around the place wondering whether I'd stay in and watch football or go out and do something constructive, when I noticed the little guy scratching his right ear like a mental patient. Thinking back, I had noticed him shaking his head for a few days as though he was trying to lure something loose - like I do when I think about my social life. I had wondered about that, but since he hasn't been here very long, I figured it was a strange tic or something odd that he does. But, when I thought about the ear scratching I figured it was something more than a strange habit. When I took a look at his right ear, I noticed that it was kind of red and irritated from all the scratching. I grabbed for the phone and called the vet, hoping they could take him on a Su...

I'm never quite sure what we're supposed to make out of this New Year deal. Other than having to remember to write 2010 on things, I don't see that it matters much. As usual, the gym was packed today with new members. People who have chosen January 2 to develop a new lifestyle and alter the way they do things. That choice will become irrelevant sometime in February or March when they revert to the way they have been doing things for the other 40-something years of their lives. I have seen it every January for the past 25 years and I suspect I'll see it for 25 more if I'm around long enough. That is to say, it's human nature and we're susceptible to numbers and we feel as though the "first" of something is more significant than the ninth or twenty-third of something. It's why we overly celebrate even-numbered anniversaries of things and pass over the odd-numbered ones as though it makes a difference that it's the "Tenth-annual" ...

From your career path to your amorous adventures to just life in general, Astrology.com takes a good, long look at what the stars have in store for you this year! Click on your Sun sign to get started with your 2010 Yearly Overview, and then check out the stellar insights into Your Career in 2010 and Your Romantic Life in 2010. Woo hoo! It's nearly 2010, and at least one yearly horoscope is doing the look-ahead to see what's in store for people who were born during some Sun cycle or moon phase or whatever nonsense horoscopes are based on. They are based on something , right? I find it fascinating that the date my parents copulated could have such an influence on who I am, and even more fascinating that some people swear by this junk. Curiously, with this being the 21st century, people still rely on this to the point that newspapers run horoscopes every day, and I suspect that if they stopped doing it, they'd receive angry letters from people who would otherwise have no...

I really should take notes. Things pop into my head during the day and I think, 'i need to write about that' only to find that my head hasn't the data capacity that I would like, and out it goes as easily as it came in. I was thinking about all the pomp surrounding the Tiger Woods scandal and how his sponsors dropped him to the point that he decided to take an 'extended leave of absence' from golf. I was thinking, how many of the executives in the companies that dropped him as a sponsor were out doing the same types of things that got Tiger dropped? Plenty, I'm guessing, and if their wives found out they'd be dropped as quickly as Tiger. But, it's a one-way street and since Tiger is their meal ticket, he's out on his ass. I was reading an article on the Internet that some states are considering putting referendums (referendii?) on the ballot to legalize marijuana, and I remembered that I once wrote that when states run out of ways to generate ...

That's what 24 hours of rain does to 24 inches of snow. Compare and contrast. Nature is goofy. She's ruined the last 2 weekends - one with snow and one with rain. That leaves locusts and famine. Wake me when it's over. I had an nice dinner at the local Chinese buffet on Christmas. A woman at the next table asked for chopsticks. I'm fascinated by the people who ask for chopsticks. The restaurant has plenty of forks and knives (and they're courteous enough to place them on your table) but they insist on wooden sticks. I think they're showing off for their friends, since I can't think of a practical answer as to why an American would choose to eat with two sticks instead of a utensil with stabbing capabilities and another that cuts. I'm also a little puzzled by the food. They offer pizza and French fries as part of the buffet. Who goes to a Chinese restaurant and eats pizza? Maybe Chinese people? Besides, the pizza isn't very good. It's probabl...

Charlie Brown : [Charlie Brown and Linus stop at a wall on their trip to the pond for ice skating] I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel. How are we supposed to feel? I had the TV news on tonight. On Christmas Eve, it's always the same 3 stories: 1) Christmas Eve mass at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, 2) NORAD supposedly following "Jolly Ole' Saint Nick" on his trek around the world and, 3) Last-minute holiday shoppers being kicked out of local malls because it's 6 o'clock and they should have thought about this stuff a month ago. The same old, same old. The other underlying theme of the local news is that "Christians everywhere are celebrating Christmas" as though Christians are the only people decorating trees and exchanging gifts on Friday. That's a load of crap. Mostly because to the media, the group of "Christians...

HARRISBURG, PA - Gov. Rendell yesterday upped the ante in his bid to balance the state budget, saying that without a table-games bill he would have to close the State Museum of Pennsylvania and some state parks in addition to laying off at least 1,000 more government employees. Rendell last week said layoffs of 1,000 more state workers were "imminent" if no gambling bill was on his desk by January 8. The bill - the final unresolved part of the state budget the governor signed in October after a 101-day impasse - would bring in $250 million in license fees and taxes that Rendell said is necessary to keep the government running. When government runs out of ways to find revenue they invariably turn to gambling. Something that was so abhorrent when times were good now suddenly becomes a panacea. Strange how desperation works, eh? So now the governor has held the threat of closing valuable state resources over the heads of the citizens if he doesn't get his gambling money....

This is Thor - full face. He's a little screwy, but lovable.

The snow is as high as an elephant's eye . Well, maybe. I've never really seen how high and elephant's eye is, so the hyperbole will have to do. Actually, it's about two feet , which is barely higher than my cat's eye. As times of the year go, I hate this one. The days are short, and in order to get anywhere, one needs to add 25% to whatever time frame one thought would suffice. That's because hoards of shoppers are clogging the roads fetching their nearly last-minute gift items from the local shopping malls. Our fragile infrastructure wasn't made for this nonsense. Tonight, for instance. The little town of Deptford was chock full of Urban Assault Vehicles (generally with one person inside) making a bee-line for the mall . My usual 40-minute ride home took more like an hour, partly because of the traffic and partly because I forgot what day it was . The snow-induced lost weekend manifested itself in a big rush to the stores on Monday night, lest lit...

Once I started driving my love affair with snow ended. It's nice to look at and it used to be fun to play in, but when it becomes work, that's where I stop enjoying it. Add to it the fact that it screwed with an entire weekend and it's on my short list of things I could do nicely without. It took over an hour to dig my car out of it's snow tomb this morning, after nearly 2 feet of snow (23.4 inches officially) fell Saturday and Saturday night. The silent killer. The good thing about condo living is that the sidewalks were cleaned early by a team of shovelers and snow blowers. They were out at 4:00am waking the neighbors and cleaning our stairways. The downside is that we don't have a garage, so the plow runs through the parking area and builds a nice wall of snow around us. It's kind of powdery and light, but there's still 2 feet of it, so the weight isn't much consolation. I dug a path wide enough to get my car out and parked it in one of the cleare...

This might be as far as I venture out today.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy with snow showers developing after midnight. Chance of snow 60%. Saturday: Windy with snow of varying intensity. The snow is more likely to accumulate during the afternoon. High around 30F. Snow accumulating 2 to 4 inches. Saturday night: Windy with snow, heavy at times. Low 23F. 5 to 8 inches of snow expected. Sunday: Mostly cloudy with snow showers around in the morning. High 34F. Chance of snow 70%. We have been through this before . The Storm of the Century is headed for us and we should run, panicking in the streets for the fate that awaits us. Uh-huh. It was March 1, 2009 the last time they told us to be afraid of the snow. A foot, they said. Some of us rushed out to buy a shovel which, I'm happy to say, still sits in my storage area as shiny and new as the day I brought it home (April 30, 2009), and they tell us that I may finally get to use it. Uh-huh. It's coming. Thousands of people have already rushed out to their local shopping malls...

Yesterday I posted a rather brief and cryptic analysis of the death of Oral Roberts, self-proclaimed healer via God who died from ... some disease. For his trouble he collected millions of dollars from people who believed him because - well, we want to believe I suppose. It's the same reason we want to believe in Santa Claus, or more accurately, why parents want their children to believe. They say it's childlike wonderment or some junk, but it's really our parents perpetuating a myth on our young minds that has its roots in a belief in some healing power or that we are somehow not just amorphous blobs of protoplasm wandering aimlessly - which of course, we are. And we're too young and naive to realize that not only do good kids get stuff at Christmas, but the kid who beat us up in the playground and the one who cheated on his math test got stuff too. Nicer stuff than we got, too. Maybe Santa isn't as diligent as we were led to ... um ... believe? Another fine life ...