My Sick Mind

A field of flowers south of Salem, NJ today. (photo by me) NEW ORLEANS – BP began burning oil siphoned from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday as part of its plans to more than triple the amount of crude it can stop from reaching the sea, the company said. BP said oil and gas siphoned from the well first reached a semi-submersible drilling rig on the surface of the Gulf around 1 a.m. Once that gas reaches the rig, it will be mixed with compressed air, shot down a specialized boom made by Schlumberger Ltd . and ignited at sea. It's the first time this particular burner has been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico. BP officials previously said they believed the burner system could incinerate anywhere from 210,000 gallons of oil to 420,000 gallons of oil daily once it's fully operational. Work to optimize the new system was still ongoing, and the company did not say how much oil it has burned so far . Is burning the oil a great idea, or just the last-ditch effort ...

The news coming out of big colleges lately is that many of them are jumping from one athletic conference to another for ... anyone ... money. That's right. Texas is staying put, however, Of course, it's not love of conference or tradition or anything as sappy as that. The good folks at Fox TV are paying the Longhorns somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million per year while still allowing Texas to form its own, all-Longhorn network, an option it probably wouldn't have in the Pac-10... Sweet deal. I find it odd that the same NCAA that puts schools on probation because they may have paid a student-athlete's rent or bought him a nice dinner could sanction the school making a financial deal with a TV network. It's OK for the school to make the money but not OK for the students. Not all of the players are going to sign big NFL contracts. Some are actually attending school for an education, and it might be nice to have a decent meal once in a while that you don'...

There is a new VISA commercial with a huge tie-in to Disney's "Toy Story" movie, complete with requisite Disney VISA card. In the ad, a group of the Toy Story gang are running around a store. Buzz Lightyear's action figure is selected by a kid and the happy character watches the kid embrace the toy Lightyear. Throughout the ad, it's tough to tell whether it's an ad for Disney or VISA. I suppose that's the point of cross-marketing. The thing that struck me as I watched the ad was, why do we get so upset when advertising targets kids the way they do with other products; but we don't say anything when kids are used to sell a product. A happy kid with a toy is a happy kid, even though it winds up costing the parent a hefty 22% service charge. Just don't target fatty foods to kids by marketing Happy Meals . We have determined that to be bad. I'm seeing more ads than usual for Father's Day this year. Maybe I missed something, but suddenly, the...

I'm never sure what is supposed to go in this space. Sometimes I have a coherent thought that spews out onto the page rather easily. Sometimes the page is left open for hours until I can string together 500 words that make both grammatical and logical sense. It ain't always easy, gang. Today, I think I'll just spew at random, if you please. The oil is still gushing out of that pipe in the Gulf of Mexico. You've seen it, right? The incredible thing to me is that the oil has enough built-up pressure to continue to leak out of the pipe without being pumped. That's amazing to me. It would have been great if they could just turn off a pump, but the earth is spitting it out at a pretty nice pace. I'd think that the earth would be interested in keeping it in, since it's a form of slow suicide. It is barely being collected faster than it is coming out, and it will be until Tuesday before another effort is made to stop it. The mind boggles at what effect over 100 mi...

Ashley-Madison founder Noel Biderman sent a letter to the CEO at New Meadowlands -- obtained by TMZ -- declaring, "At this stage, we are prepared to make a preliminary offer ... of $25,000,000 for the Naming Rights for a five-year term." He adds, if the stadium gets better offers, "We would be pleased to match any such superior offer." The offer (which works out to $5 million a year) is pretty big, but it's still below the average for other stadium sponsorships -- Bank of America pays $7 million a year to sponsor the Carolina Panthers stadium and FedEx drops $7.6 a year on the Redskins stadium in D.C. So, let's see if the gang at New Meadowlands is willing to sell naming rights to a web site that promotes infidelity. That's the real test, isn't it? To see if a professional sports franchise is honest enough to take money from a company that may not align itself with conventional thinking. Would they sell the naming rights to a company for less if ...

Geez. First of all, thank you to the thirty of you who have taken the time to follow me on this little Internet voyage. If you feel like the rantings get tired, there are 4 years of stuff to search. Start going back over the things you missed since you joined me and you might think I was either (a) funnier or (b) the same as now, only older and more tired. Either way, It's been an interesting time, and I wonder where my pent-up rants would have wound up if it weren't for the Internet. I haven't written much about the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Partly because I figure that you're already aware of it and partly because I'm at a loss to describe how I feel about it. I think I said that it would make the Exxon-Valdez look like "a Bounty commercial," but it goes beyond that now. The thing I can't figure out is how BP didn't have a plan for a pipeline break. As a driller and a major player in the oil industry, you'd think that they would ...

Site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, seen from just in front of the monument off Hurd Road in Bethel, NY. (Photo by me) I was almost 12 years old in August of 1969. My recollection of the Woodstock music festival is enhanced by television and movies, and I'm not sure how much I remember and how much I learned over the years. I had a nice record collection as a kid, but almost none of the artists who appeared at Woodstock. The music of my childhood was limited to what was played on Top 40 radio, and almost none of the music of Woodstock was Top 40 stuff. I was in Saratoga Springs, New York for a Dave Matthews concert over the weekend. The return included a side trip to Bethel, the site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair. The town of Woodstock is about an hour away, but it's too boring to tell you why it was called Woodstock . Just go with it. The photo above shows the site of the concert. The stage was where the gravel area is to the left, and the hoards of people st...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Cadmium has been discovered in the painted design on "Shrek"-themed drinking glasses being sold nationwide at McDonald's, forcing the burger giant to recall 12 million of the cheap U.S.-made collectibles while dramatically expanding contamination concerns about the toxic metal beyond imported children's jewelry. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission , which announced the voluntary recall early Friday, warned consumers to immediately stop using the glasses; McDonald's said it would post instructions on its website next week regarding refunds. Ironically, the cadmium-infested glasses are the third-most nutritious McDonald's menu item. Tobacco smoking is the most important single source of cadmium exposure in the general population. It has been estimated that about 10% of the cadmium content of a cigarette is inhaled through smoking. The absorption of cadmium from the lungs is much more effective than that from the gut, and as much as ...

Screws fall out all the time. The world's an imperfect place. - John Bender, "The Breakfast Club" Screws fall out, things break, people fail and umpires make bad calls. In case you dropped out of an airplane today and missed the big news, an umpire blew a call and a kid in Detroit lost a perfect game because of it. Now, people who otherwise wouldn't know who Armando Galarraga is are trying to get him something that he lost, after first base umpire Jim Joyce missed a call with two out that wound up costing the kid his perfect game. It's a shame it had to happen to him, but baseball, by its design is human-element prone. Players make errors, batters strike out and umpires make mistakes. None of them happen at the best of times. Sometimes, they happen when the situation is the most crucial. However, we can't make exceptions when the bad call or error costs the team some place in history. A win is a win, and a "perfect game" means more than just the ...

I like Twitter better than Facebook, because I'd rather have followers than friends. I'm not sure what the attraction is with either of these "social networking" sites, but I cling to them like lint to my fine fabrics, which isn't always a good thing. The thing about Twitter, I find, is that there is a social hierarchy to it. In other words, the higher up the social (or political or entertainment) ladder one is, the more followers one has, and the less one has to devote time to the followers. As a leader, you post your thoughts and the others read them and listen. There are probably @ replies , but the leader isn't necessarily obligated to reply because, after all, he is the leader and you are the follower. You are put in your place. That's the part of Twitter that bothers me, since I find social hierarchy disturbing. By default, what a celebrity (or leader) Tweets is more interesting than what I do, and that isn't always the case, especially the w...

It's the unofficial start of summer, a big day for barbecuing, a great day to find a cheap piece of furniture or grab a big sale somewhere and a day off from work for most of us. However, the disgusting abundance of retail businesses that are open today is a concept I don't quite grasp. While I realize that there is more money to be made by being open on a holiday than not, I would think that a sense of history and respect would prevent it. Maybe it is because so many businesses are owned by non-native Americans that keeps them open, I don't know. I could assume it is simple greed, and I would at least be partly correct. In the United States, today is Memorial Day, which we have been celebrating in one form or another since 1866. It used to be called Decoration Day, but was officially declared Memorial Day in 1967. Until 1968 it was celebrated on May 30, but the U.S. Government passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, and it was moved to the last Monday in May. And therein lies...

President Obama: "Hey, come here and smell my finger!" OK, so it isn't very funny, but then again, neither is thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. You know you're in trouble when three people in business-casual clothing are walking the beach with police tape in the background. That's the shitty part about being president, or the CEO of British Petroleum for that matter. Somebody makes a big mistake and you're left walking the beach picking up clumps of washed-up oil trying to think of something to say to the American public that won't make it sound like the Gulf coast is about to become the world's biggest waterproof beach. Such is the peril of delegated authority.

That's the view from behind the Mars rover called Opportunity. Tracks laid across the Martian landscape will be there for centuries. Things like that make me think. You're not surprised. Centuries ago, Galileo peered at Mars through his telescope and declared that there were canals on the planet. He surmised that they were once waterways that had since dried up, and since, scientists have wondered if there was ever water on Mars. Reasonable men may differ. So now, we have sent a robot to the planet to roam around and explore, leaving tire trails in its wake. Centuries from now, will astronomers be peering at Mars through their telescopes and wonder if ancient civilizations existed on Mars? Suppose records of life on Earth are destroyed by an asteroid or comet, like in the movies, and there is no record of us sending a probe to explore the planet. Wouldn't that make Galileo look even smarter? Perhaps we're all just as intelligent as the time allows? Isn't that wh...

"To you I say, it is only with adversity that we even have a chance at greatness. Adversity is your opportunity." - Ann Curry One of the downsides of expansion - be it sports or media - is the dilution of talent. More teams or more networks translates into more opportunities to hire nitwits and incompetents. Now that there are a thousand news outlets and only so many eligible talking heads, one wonders what the talent level has become for big media. Ask no longer: After taking the stage to launch into the school's 175th commencement address, "Today" show co-host Ann Curry sought to drive home the inspirational content of her speech by ticking off the names of a few of the school's more illustrious alums. Among the entries on the Curry honor roll : " 60 Minutes " correspondent Lesley Stahl , evangelist Billy Graham, slasher-film director Wes Craven, and United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer . There was just one problem: Apart from St...

The History Channel is branching out. No longer is it enough to show Hitler documentaries and profiles on our American presidents (usually during President's Day weekend or July 4). They have expanded to shows about pawn shops and junk collectors. One such program is called American Pickers , which I suppose is to highlight the American part and appeal to historians because these guys go around picking trash for a profit. There are two aspects to the program that are interesting. One is the idea that people collect things in their homes and garages, and it sits there for some reason or another. The Pickers guys come along and offer money for it in the hopes of restoring it and re-selling it at a profit. That's where the American part comes in. The other aspect is the extent to which we (you) retain the junk of our (your) past. In the show I saw tonight, a guy had a house full of old cigar cutters, big-wheel bicycles and advertising signs doing nothing but collecting dust in...

It looks like another loop-job is running for office. Rand Paul is a Republican from Kentucky, and while I normally don't care what happens in Kentucky, in this case I'll make an exception. Here's what he had to say about President Obama on "Good Morning, America." "What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Paul said. "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen." Un-American? Hey Rand, what does the big "B" in BP stand for? British. You're right that accidents sometimes happen. Sometimes nitwits are elected to office. Let's hope the gang in Kentucky can figure you o...

"If Johnny jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump off too?" Hell no, it's too far to the water. That's the view from the Yankee Clipper, a ferry that shuttles baseball fans from north Jersey to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, making a hundred stops in between. However, with a bar on board, the 90-minute trip seems to flash by! Part of the seminar I attended in Newark on Monday included a trip to Yankee Stadium to see the Yanks/Red Sox. Unexpectedly, the walkway from the ferry stop to the ballpark included the rubble of old Yankee Stadium, and fearing that I'd lose contact with my group I neglected to take a photo. Nevertheless, the memory is etched in my brain and even though I'm not a Yankee fan, I do appreciate the history and it saddens me to realize that an historical landmark is now a pile of concrete next to the new palace. It's unofficially "baseball week" around here. Monday's Yankee game was soon followed by the Tuesday nigh...

This is the beauty of Newark, NJ as seen from my hotel window, with the lovely view of the roof and air conditioner vent. I'm in the garden spot of the Garden State attending a conference. Fortunately, I have Internet access courtesy of my company at the bargain rate of $9.99 per day. So, I'm under a little pressure to make the content worth the price. Fat chance. The first thing I saw when I flipped on the TV was the Miss USA pageant, proudly proclaimed as being broadcast "LIVE" from Las Vegas, Nevada - seemingly the last place where a beauty pageant could be tolerated. I really thought we had progressed as a society beyond such mundane rituals, but sadly, we have not. Donald Trump is the sponsor, which should tell you everything you need to know about the content. However, it was made to look like a MENSA convention by contrast when I changed channels and saw "Survivor" contestants stacking dishes on a stick. What has happened to TV? I had it on long eno...

In 1978, Saturday Night Live did a sketch called "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave," where John Belushi played a house guest that overstayed his welcome to the point of aggravating his hosts. That's what I feel like every time Sarah Palin speaks: WASHINGTON — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday that "mama grizzlies" will help Republicans win this November, sweeping away the agenda of President Barack Obama and the Democrats. Addressing an anti-abortion group, the potential 2012 presidential candidate also said she understood how some women might consider abortion, citing her own experiences as the mother of a child with Down syndrome and the parent of an unwed teen mother. Last year, Palin said that "for a fleeting moment" she considered having an abortion when she learned of her son Trig's prognosis. Hmm ... yeah, and then she considered her political future and decided to use her millions of dollars to raise the kid. Nice choice, bitch...

I was interviewed via e-mail (my favorite kind of interview because I don't have to speak) by a web site called Blog Interviewer.com . A fitting name for a blog interview web site. They claim to be devoted to discovering the most interesting bloggers on the Internet and their reasons for sharing their thoughts with the world. I admit to being interesting, but I'm bad at self-promotion. I have no idea how or why they picked me, but after some soul-searching and scraping about for reasons that they could possibly be scamming me, I submitted an interview. There's a link on my sidebar to my interview and a place where you can vote for my blog. According to their e-mail: At the end of May we'll be giving away over $1,000 in prizes to the top 15 rated bloggers for the month. To vote you and your readers must come to the blog interview and click on the "Vote Now" button. The top rated blogs are also showcased on the sidebar of the site for everyone to see. I'm...