My Sick Mind

I'm old enough to remember backyard leaf-burnings during the autumn. The smell of a leaf fire was a rite of passage for young people in the 1960s. We'd rake the fallen leaves into a big pile and set them ablaze, then do a gleeful little dance. The embers would scatter into the same wind that brought them to the ground. The great cycle of life . At some point in our development as a society, we decided that burning leaves in the backyard was either (or both) an environmental or safety hazard. It's as though our habit was irresponsible, and we are supposed to sit back and marvel at how we never burned the neighborhood down or inhaled enough smoke to go to the emergency room. I suppose we were impervious? Or perhaps now, we tend to think too much. When leaf-burning became taboo, it gave rise to a new technology - the leaf blower. A backpack contraption, fueled by gasoline that makes more noise than a small aircraft engine. Somehow, this is seen as being better than raking a...

Finally. Just like pulling off a bandage, you have to do it quickly, without thinking. Otherwise, the pain will be too great and you'll just wind up leaving it on until it comes off in the shower. What am I talking about? Voting. I was at my polling place at 6:35am. Number 6. I waddled into the booth, pushed a few buttons and viola ! Off to work. Incidentally, do you think that something is fishy when you sign that paper receipt with a number on it and they hang it on the back of the voting machine? I do. I think they can trace number 6 to the votes I cast and paste together my voting record. I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? It's a lot like trying to lose weight, the voting. We vote, thinking that we're doing something good, but we don't really know. It's like eating low-fat food and exercising to try to lose weight. You aren't sure if what you are doing is going to do any good, but you do it anyway. The ads that ran for the better part of three ...

Mike Fitzpatrick is going to fight against crime ... Tom Corbett is going to look after our senior citizens and ensure that the lottery money is used properly ... Patrick Murphy served in Iraq, fights for jobs and values hard work ... Pat Toomey asked for special treatment for China and wants to send American jobs overseas and is "not for us." ... Congressman Fitzpatrick lobbied Harrisburg for property tax increases ... Jon Runyan wants a tax cut for millionaires ... Adler voted against $1.1 trillion in spending and supports Social Security ... Millionaire Runyan keeps donkeys on his property , lives in a mansion and calls it a farm to get property tax breaks ... Pat Meehan puts our families at risk by allowing assault rifles on the streets ... Bryan Lentz wants the tax cuts to go to middle class families and wants to cut the deficit and balance the budget ... Only one movie in America has over 100 4-star reviews ... Career politician John Adler has "wrecked the econo...

It's election season. Specifically, it's something they call "mid-term elections," which must be insulting to the people whose terms are coming to an end - or just beginning - in a couple of weeks. The ads and attacks are running fast and furious, and my mailbox has been loaded with stuff from the local candidates who think they can save the world one township at a time. I hate to tell them the truth, especially since they probably wouldn't recognize it. What they rely on most is our short memory and the idea that we like whatever is not happening now. The latest thing is the old cry of "less government and lower taxes," two ideas that would seem to go together unless your memory is long enough to remember the elections of the late 1980s when the idea was the same. Since then, we have endured more government and higher taxes, which clearly indicates that politics have failed us. Surprised? Since Barack Obama was elected a couple of years ago, we hav...

My buddy Thor just went in for his yearly physical exam, and it turns out he has gingivitis. I wanted a second opinion, and the vet said, "OK, he's fat, too." A year ago, when I brought him home from the shelter, he weighed 14 pounds. I thought he was big then. Now, he tips the scales at 19 pounds 13 ounces. That's a good meal away from 20 pounds. It's time for him to go on a diet. I'm switching him from regular cat food to "indoor" food, which is cat food terminology for "lite." That, plus a little reduction in quantity should get him down from fat ass to big cat. The gingivitis is the bigger issue. He can't eat if he doesn't have any teeth, and having bad gums could mean he'll start losing his teeth. But I'm not sure whether the treatment is worse than the disease. For me, anyway. Veterinarians exist in a different world than the rest of us. They want us to give animals pills and other things that animals don...

It's tough to be a sports fan. Especially if you're sleep-dependant and you're trying to watch games and show up for work on time. My standard answer for almost every question I am asked is either "television" or "money." Sometimes it's both. OK, most times it's both. But the point is that television and money dictate policy for just about everything, and sports is not only the exception but the rule. It's playoff time, and the games have odd start times. Times like 7:57, 8:19 and 4:19 are common. One might wonder why, unless they know the secret "television" answer. The games have those unusual start times because TV ratings are counted in quarter-hour increments. When games start at those times, viewers are counted for the quarter hour before and after the actual time, so TV gets credit for a half-hour, even if the game is delayed by rain, earthquake, fire or flood. Advertising rates are dictated by ratings, and televis...

In a follow-up to yesterday's essay about the problems with finding quality entertainment, I present one about the problems of finding quality representation - or at least the problem with finding quality people for whom to vote. To wit: WILMINGTON, Del. – Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion. The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine. Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools." "Local schools do ...

It isn't always easy to find quality entertainment. If you want to see "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Dexter," or "Weeds" you have to pay for a premium cable channel in addition to what you already pay for cable television. If you want to listen to the radio without the interruption of commercials you have to pay for satellite radio, a prospect that fills me with dread. In order to find music that isn't mainstream or built for the masses, you have to seek it out like primitive man searching for food. It's an arduous task. Those things can be mentally exhausting, and for most people they don't want to bother, which is probably why trash entertainment is so popular. Just lie back and let it consume you. It is likewise difficult to find a good film, especially if you do not live in a large metropolitan area where such so-called "art house" theaters exist that show films that are indeed called films and not movies. You also have to ha...

Some say that the popularity of social networking web sites like Twitter and Facebook is due to the idea that we all want to feel as though we belong to something. Well, maybe I'm the one who says that, but I take liberties with the idea that perhaps more than one of us has the same thought every now and then. Anyway, I think the crux of the matter is that we don't like to feel as though we are alone in the world. Hence the popularity of those so-called "reality shows," where so-called "regular people" partake in contests and other forms of entertainment and are either judged by famous people or kicked off the show because they end up being very annoying. Either way, there are a lot of them, and it's primarily because there are a lot of people who don't like feeling ordinary, and being a part of something with national exposure makes them feel a little less ordinary - for a while anyway. Then, there are the pure thrill-seekers. Those who are ordin...

It sucks getting old. Just ask anyone who depends on Social Security payments to fund their life. For the second straight year recipients will not be getting a cost of living increase because, according to our federal government, the cost of living hasn't increased in two years. As a little exercise, go back to your checkbook or receipts from two years ago and tell me that things aren't more expensive now than they were two years ago. Take as much time as you need. The average benefit is $1,072 per month. Try doing that for a year and let me know how you make out. I'm sure that the idea of giving cost of living increases to Social Security recipients (called COLA) sounded like a good idea when they instituted the plan in 1975. Next year would be only the second year that there has not been an increase. The first one was last year. Things like that always sound like a good idea when the numbers work. When the numbers stop working (as they always do) good ideas are suddenly...

"You'd better start swimming, or you'll sink like a stone." - Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are a-Changin'" I grew up in the 1960s, and as a result of my childhood, I believe that television should be free. However, the prevailing notion is that we pay for TV now, and have since the late 1990s. My cable bill used to be $9.95 a month, and for that princely sum I got a push-button box with a lot of the same channels that I got for free, plus something called PRISM that carried Phillies, Sixers and Flyers games - commercial-free. Fast-forward to 2010, and I have invested in a high-definition television and pay $120 a month for cable TV, but I derive much more pleasure from it than I did when I paid ten bucks a month. It's strange how time changes our viewpoint. One of the many things I enjoy about the expense is something called NFL Red Zone , which in some ways defies description. Forced to describe it, I would tell you that it shows every score of eve...

Hey, remember that big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? I do . Suddenly, we don't hear anything about it. Since Chevron put the cement cap in the well the news from the area has slowed to a ... drip. As is the usual, our federal government may have withheld some information from us when the well initially started leaking, as a panel reported today : WASHINGTON - The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster. In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff describes "not an incidental public relations problem" by the White House after the April 20 accident. Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, a...

If you can't go to the DMV to people-watch, the second best place is your local doctor's office. Mom was having laser eye surgery today and yours truly was in charge of transportation. In the office, there was a sign posted that read: TURN YOUR CELL PHONES OFF UPON ENTERING THE OFFICE. IF YOU NEED TO MAKE A CALL, PLEASE USE THE HALLWAY. It might have said "Thank You" after that, but I don't remember. Either way, you'd figure that middle-America would get the point. But we haven't progressed far enough as a society that we know how to deal with the cellular telephone - hence the laws prohibiting texting while driving (duh) and the several verbal warnings about its use in public. A few minutes after I sat down, an elderly woman with a phone sat down two chairs away and picked her phone out of her handbag. Dialing, she said to her counterpart, "Talk to me," as though the other person was expecting her call and those of us in the audience couldn...

I haven't posted any photos in a while. Mostly, it's because I haven't taken any photos lately. That's pretty easy to explain. These, of course, were taken in Baltimore. I was there over the weekend to see the Orioles and a street fair called the Fells Point Festival . The population of Baltimore is around 700,000. I have no idea where everybody was on Sunday. The top photo is the famous Inner Harbor , with the USS Constellation and a building they call the World Trade Center at the left. It was early on Sunday morning, so the hordes of tourists hadn't yet descended on the place. There is a 4-story shopping mall called The Gallery across the street from Harborplace, and I thought the insides were photogenic. The stores weren't open yet, so once again, it looked a little like a ghost town. The Orioles were playing the Tigers at Camden Yards, and the players might have outnumbered the fans. The biggest cheers of the day came when the Ravens final score was ...

Impressionable utes weren't the only ones watching when Cincinnati Reds owner Bob Castellini (right) passed out victory cigars and then lit up after his team clinched the NL Central title at Great American Ball Park on Tuesday. Also watching at home on television were at least five whistle-blowers who noted that the Reds were violating Ohio's indoor-smoking ban. They called Cincinnati's health department to report the team and now the Cincinnati Enquirer reports the club is under investigation. So, apparently ice cream isn't the only thing that watchdog groups are after. Now, they're making the world safe from enjoyment. If they are caught by Ohio health inspectors, the Reds could be fined $100. That'll teach them. Meanwhile, every once in a while one of these "America's ... something " lists comes up. America's Fattest Cities, America's Most Attractive People or some such nonsense, leading us to believe that America's pop...

There is a baseball team in Tampa, Florida. You can check the American League standings to prove it. They're listed under "AL East" and they're often near the top of the list, right there with the Yankees. The problem is (if you see it as a problem) that the people in Tampa do not support the team, and that angers a couple of their players, notably third baseman Evan Longoria and pitcher David Price. "We go out there and play hard for 162 games, and for the fans to show the kind of support they're showing right now, you kind of wonder what else you have to do as a player." Longoria said in the St. Petersburg Times. Price put this blurb on his Twitter page: "Had a chance to clinch a post season spot tonight with about 10,000 fans in the stands....embarrassing" For one thing, athletes should be quicker to learn that Twitter is not helping them. Sooner or later, they're going to abandon it because all it seems to do is get them into trouble. ...

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. – Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's is dropping the phrase "all natural" from all labels after a request from a health advocacy group. The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the company confirmed the move Monday. The CSPI told the company last month it should not use "all natural" if products contain alkalized cocoa, corn syrup, hydrogenated oil or other ingredients that are not natural. So there you go. Another killjoy gang of do-gooders trying to make the world safe from corn syrup. The bigger problem is that companies like Ben and Jerry's kowtow to people like this because they're afraid of some bad publicity. What their marketing people don't understand is that people like – no, they want junk in their food. We like hydrogenated oil, salt, sugar and other additives that make food taste good to us. Otherwise, they would figure out a way to make tree bark flavored ice cream and replace sugar with beach sand. It...

I used to enjoy that "Hoarders" TV show. I enjoyed it until show after show started looking the same. It's a parade of mentally ill people collecting junk in their houses and garages. The trouble comes when it isn't just junk. One woman would go shopping and bring home the unopened packages and pile them in a room. The bigger problems are the people who wind up with a house full of trash and garbage. The sorts of things that normal people throw away without even thinking about – soda cans, wrappers and discarded food – lying around on the floor attracting bugs, rodents and finally, a TV crew. The people who have houses full of stuff used to be kind of amusing to me and in a strange way they make me feel better about myself. All it takes for me to start housecleaning is a little clutter. For those people, a little clutter is an impossible dream, and their illness no longer fascinates me. Now I find that it makes me sad. "Oh, don't throw that out, I might ne...

WASHINGTON – Six weeks before midterm elections, House Republicans vowed to cut taxes and federal spending, repeal President Barack Obama's health care law and ban federal funding of abortion as part of a campaign manifesto designed to propel them to victory in November and a majority in the next Congress. The "Pledge to America," circulated to GOP lawmakers Wednesday, emphasizes job creation and spending control, as well as changing the way Congress does business. It steered clear of controversial issues such as Social Security and Medicare, big drivers of deficit spending. Tis the season. No, not Christmas shopping. It's election season. Around here, the big race is for Governor of Pennsylvania, replacing Ed Rendell. The TV ads are coming fast and furiously, and as usual, every one of them thinks they're going to change the way government does business. If you've lived through a dozen or so of these elections, as I have, the messages start to sound the sam...

On June 24, 2010, AT&T signed an agreement with SEPTA which entitled Pattison Station to be renamed AT&T Station in August 2010. The move is to increasing advertising revenue. AT&T would give SEPTA $3 million, and Titan Outdoor LLC, SEPTA's advertising partner, would receive $2 million. SEPTA is also planning to sell rights to other stations. So, there you have it. The first subway station (that I know of) that isn't named after its address. Try telling somebody who isn't familiar with the area that they have to get off at the AT&T Station and let them figure out what street or neighborhood they are in. "Am I on A T and T Street?" No. You're in a commercial development that is represented by a corporation that has purchased naming rights to a public facility. It's almost a good idea. Give us a few million bucks and we'll confuse commuters. That seems like a fair trade. The need for money has driven otherwise sensible people to do ...