My Sick Mind

While waiting for my car to finish having its oil changed tonight, I innocently thumbed through a copy of Rolling Stone magazine.  It was a rather ordinary issue, until I got to the back page.  There were a few ads that gave me some valuable insight into what people will spend money on. The first interesting product was something called a Grow Box.  It was advertised as a hydroponic system for growing plants indoors.  If your mind works anywhere as oddly as mine (pity) then you will have immediately jumped to the necessity for an indoor plant-growing system.  Not only that, but the product is cleverly disguised to look like a cabinet, stereo speakers, a computer box or a small refrigerator.  Because you wouldn't want anyone to know you are growing tulips in your den.  Right. It's a wonderful contraption, full of high-powered LED lights, hygrometers and technical growing materials for your ... um ... flowering plants.  OK.  A quick ju...

First, some background.  I am a Phillies season ticket holder and a fan since 1964.  I have seen the great, near great and horrible.  That's enough background. If I can do nothing else (and perhaps I cannot) I think I can place things in perspective.  I was at last year's disappointing game 6 of the NLCS where Ryan Howard looked at a called third strike to end their season.  From my perch in section 204 I was devastated.  I left the ballpark feeling like I was punched in the stomach and I was bitter over it for several weeks.  After that, I vowed to never again allow sports to affect my life in a negative manner.  I didn't think it would be so soon that my resolution would be put to the test. I went to the first game of the NLDS this year.  The Phillies fell behind early, 3-0 with their Ace Roy Halladay on the mound.  A couple of home runs later and they would go on to win the game.  Several of us in the stands were di...

It's fortunate for me that I like foods that are supposed to be good for me.  Low-fat, low-calorie, sugar-free ... all the stuff that marketing people and doctors tell us we are supposed to eat. Almost every day for lunch I eat a Veggie Sub, which I affectionately call a Condiment Sandwich.  Instead of lettuce, I use spinach, because it's supposed to be good for me. Besides, with all the peppers and onions on the thing, I can barely taste it anyway. I eat high-fiber whole grain cereal with almond milk every day, oatmeal, yogurt, and I take enough Omega 3 fish oils to sprout gills. I wander through the supermarket looking for things that I can eat and feel good about eating.  I have been drinking the Zico Chocolate Coconut Water for a while.  It's water from coconuts that has chocolate flavoring.  Can there be a more perfect beverage?  I submit that there cannot.  Today I found a couple of new things. I had an ice cream craving.  ...

In order to establish perspective, let me tell you:  I hate the telephone.  I don't like when it rings, I don't like calling people and I don't like getting the bill.  Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to live without one. I'm one of the growing number of the population that does not have a traditional land line .  I didn't think it made any sense to pay for a cellular phone and a land line, so many years ago I ditched the hard wire.  The problem with that is that now, people who call me expect me to pick up the phone because they assume that I'm sitting on my cell phone.  Most of the time the ringer is off or it's in a bag or on a table somewhere. "Where were you, I tried to call you?" they ask.  When I had a regular phone, they never had any trouble leaving a voice message.  Now, they expect me to answer every call.  HINT: Sometimes I'm driving on on the toilet or reading or watching a TV program.  Your call is important to us. P...

The latest list of nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been released .  Among them are Guns N' Roses, Heart, Cure and Joan Jett.  Among a list of artists who are not only not in the R&RHOF but have never been nominated are T-Rex, the Smiths, Yes, Jethro Tull, Devo, Todd Rundgren, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Roxy Music, Willie Nelson, Warren Zevon, the Replacements, ELO, Chubby Checker, Hall and Oates, Los Lobos, Black Flag, X, the B-52s, Dick Dale, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Nick Drake, Captain Beefheart, Sonic Youth and the Go-Go’s. Some people are up in arms over these omissions.  Such is life when you confuse art with competition.  The same thing happens with Emmy Awards, Oscars, Grammy Awards and Tony Awards.  Some expert opines that so-and-so has been shafted by either not being nominated or not winning.  That's a shame, but it's the issue that one encounters when one brings competition into art.  The two should not commingle, becaus...

I want to listen to music and surf the Internet on my 10-year old computer -- but I fucking CAN'T - because it's ten years old! Oh - then, can I read my e-mail on my cell phone like all the cool kids? No, you fucking CAN'T - because your cell phone isn't a SMARTPHONE , and you can't read e-mail without a contract and a data plan. Can I run this old software and read a file that I made 5 years ago? NO! You CAN'T! Your software is OLD and it's not compatible with the software we're making now! Upgrade. I'd like to buy a new cell phone, can I ... NO. The new iPhone5 is coming out and soon, your iPhone 3 will be antiquated and incapable of doing anything but ... making phone calls! HA. You are a captive of your technology. Sure -- you love your stuff. Your new laptop, your new phone, your new TV; but it's all soon to be replaced by new stuff that is incompatible with your old stuff. I used a rotary phone for 30 years. THIRTY YEARS - and eve...

What started as an innocently planned 75-mile ride with 300 people I didn't know (and 1 that I did) turned into a big bowl of wrong shortly after the start. As anybody who does this sort of thing knows, the photos that follow represent a large amount of money in apparel and equipment, not to mention the one at the end that represents a huge amount of pain and inconvenience. Kevin and I had decided to do a ride from Parvin State Park on Saturday morning that was sponsored by a local cycling group. I've done these sorts of rides before, and they attract all kinds of riders. From riders who want to finish in the shortest time possible to riders who barely know how to shift gears and ride for the food and SAG support. It had been about 3 years since I had done one of these rides, and only on reflection did I recall the vast difference in rider quality and I hadn't fully developed a plan to avoid the least experienced and/or slowest of the bunch. We started from the park, ...

According to the Hopi dictionary, the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi   is defined as "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance." The prefix koyaanis means "corrupted" or "chaotic", and the word qatsi means "life" or "existence" literally translating koyaanisqatsi as "chaotic life." First, a few facts: WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of the nation's poor have swelled to a record 46.2 million — nearly 1 in 6 Americans — as the prolonged pain of the recession leaves millions still struggling and out of work. And the number without health insurance has reached 49.9 million, the most in over two decades. No politics, no spin - just numbers. It's plain to see that more Americans are living below the poverty level than have since the 1980s. The other half of the equation is the poverty line: For last year, the official poverty level was an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four. Me...

WARNING: What follows is almost a reprint of an essay I wrote in 2006 . I don't have many new thoughts anymore. I even gave it the same title because I couldn't think of a better one. There's a lot of stuff on television. There are shows about fat people trying to get thin, people who collect junk, people who sell junk and people who try to keep people from getting fat or collecting junk. It runs the gamut. They don't show movies on network TV like they used to. We used to have "Saturday Night at the Movies" or something similar, where a network would program a 3-hour block and show a movie. Now, they take the same 3-hour block and program three shows about people trying to survive on an island , navigate an obstacle course or prove to three jokers that they can sing . Movies have been relegated to pay-cable channels. Partly because programming "reality shows" is cheaper and partly because commercial-free pay-cable makes watching movies on ne...

News Item: The Postmaster General says that the United States Postal Service will be broke by August 2012. Supposedly, if the economy doesn't improve or Congress doesn't act, our mail will cease to be delivered a year from now. Phooey! That's a classic cry for help, and he'd have been better off keeping his mouth shut. Why? Because there is plenty you don't know about the United States Postal Service, not the least of which is how they deliver the mail. A few years ago, I found myself in a Center City bar sitting next to a FedEx pilot (off duty, I presumed) who related to me the details of how anything that the Postal Service gets winds up on a FedEx plane. I started out by kidding him about how he liked the movie "Cast Away," and one thing led to another. It turns out that I learned a valuable lesson before the beer got to me. That's right kids, it pays to drink. FedEx has a partnership deal with the USPS to fly their stuff around the wor...

I was taking an online FEMA Emergency Management Course today and I stumbled across this passage: When American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, 900 responders from 50 different agencies were able to communicate with one another. Response agencies had learned an invaluable lesson from the Air Florida tragedy. Invaluable is a strange word. Webster's New College dictionary defines it as: "extremely valuable; having value too great to measure; priceless." It can be extremely valuable or priceless. Something can be extremely valuable and still have a price. If it is priceless, by definition it is "of inestimable value; beyond price." It seems like we should say valuable or priceless , and leave invaluable to people who don't really know how valuable something is. Would that sentence have been any different if it said "response agencies had learned a valuable lesson?" No. Why bother using invaluable? If they meant priceless, then s...

While I was looking over the flooding in my neighborhood on Sunday, I realized that I live near some Urban Hillbillies. I call them Urban Hillbillies because their speech pattern doesn't match the area in which they live. They pronounce creek crik , water wuter and they say things like "I swum" and have an accent that belies the fact that they live 20 miles from Philadelphia. They're fascinating, mainly because they have managed to develop their own voice and mannerisms while others around them find it strange. I saw a few of them in the local Wal-Mart this afternoon. If you hyphenate Wal-Mart, you are not an Urban Hillbilly. Urban Hillbillies call it Walmert and show up in whatever they happen to be wearing when they rolled out of bed into their pile of clothes that morning. I wandered in there because I needed Benadryl and had almost given up finding some. The Deptford Wal-Mart is relatively new. It's been there a year or so, and today wa...

Lately, I have been lamenting the absence of silence. It is nearly impossible to escape noise in our 21st century lives. The din of cell phones and the loud conversations that others have on them has become a staple in our lives. I think one of the reasons I enjoy road biking is the relative peace and quiet that comes with the road. All we hear is the grind of the gears and the tires rolling against the asphalt. As days go, it is a peace that we cannot find in the office, gym or almost anywhere else in public. We have learned to accept (or learned to tolerate ) outside noise in our lives, and the more I hear the less I need. Cell phones ring and people chatter. For some reason, they speak more loudly on cell phones than they do on regular phones or when they are speaking to each other. What is even more interesting to me is how willing people are to give up the peace and quiet of life. Almost everyone in the gym has a set of headphones plugged in. Sometimes it sounds li...

Our local weather people are so excited, there's a little wet stain on the front of their pants. By tomorrow, the wet stain will have migrated to the back of their pants. It's storm time, and nobody does storms better (or more extravagantly) than our local news teams. Already, there are reporters stationed at New Jersey shore points with eyewitness reports of wind and rain. We couldn't know otherwise what wind and rain are like if we didn't have people standing in it on camera. The local residents are flocking to the grocery stores. Why, I have no idea. We are going to be rained-in for, at the most, one day. Stores and restaurants will be closed on Sunday, so we will have to survive on the accumulated food that we can find in our pantries. Unless, of course, we manage to trip to the grocery and stock up on all sorts of things that we couldn't possibly eat in a 24-hour period. Add to that the fact that the power is likely to go down, and thousands of ...

"Exclusively and only at Raymour and Flanigan." - Kathy Ireland, from a TV ad. Language and grammar are funny things. I play with them frequently, and I wonder if a lot of it flies over the heads of readers, just as most of my physics classes flew over my head in high school. The advent of the Internet brought about a new mode of communication. No longer did people merely speak to each other. Now, they write down their thoughts and offer them in the written form more than they did in the 1960s. Phone calls were replaced by text messages, and letters and post cards are replaced by blogs and Facebook updates. Once blogs became popular, I wondered how former students who couldn't grasp the simple rules of grammar would acclimate to the Worldwide web and make their ideas palatable to those of us who find the rules of grammar akin to the way Christians view The Bible. We used to have to endure bad speech patterns and pleas of "you know what I mean....

I shouldn't use the salad bar or go to buffet restaurants, but I do anyway. I can't help but think about how infected the buffet spoons and salad tongs are as I pick them up and shovel food onto my plate. We don't give it a second thought, but I think about it when I see the end of the spoon or tong lying in the food in the adjacent container. Sometimes the entire serving device is lying in the food, which makes me think that someone should replace the serving device and, for that matter, the food that the handle has contacted. It's irrational, I know, because our immune system is built on fending off bacteria. That's why I think hand sanitizers are the biggest scam perpetrated on the American public since Lite beer. Part of me relishes the opportunity for my body to fight off bacteria-ridden salad tongs, but I am similarly grossed-out by the idea that someone's recently nose-picked finger has handled a plastic device that I am using to scoop up some c...

There is a new infestation. A race of mutants that must be stopped. At first glance, they appear to have tremendous power. In reality, they are weak and easily defeated. Their weakness is exposed as they roam our streets. They are not born, they are made. Because they have been created, they can be destroyed. It will take many years and perhaps we will have to endure loss of lives, but the loss will be worth the gain to society. I'm talking about the Walk and Text crowd. Hoards of people roaming around with their heads down, texting on their so-called Smartphones. Their self-indulgence leads them into awkward situations with the humans walking toward them. Those who are walking with their heads up can see the approaching WAT (Walk and Texter) and dutifully avoid them as the WAT's gaze continues downward. Sometimes they do not know that they have come within inches of a collision, as they never alter their downward gaze. Our duty as upright walkers is not to...

This is two days in a row I've written about baseball. Not on purpose, just because it's the game I know the most about and it's the game that has some of the most ridiculous behavior in sports. It's also a game where unwritten rules are just as important as the ones that are in the rule book. Players all know them and when one of their brethren break them, there is Hell to pay - or at least a hefty fine. One of the unwritten rules is that you're not supposed to steal a base when your team is leading by a substantial margin. What the margin is and when it is determined to be insurmountable, only the people who write the unwritten rule book know. It's a sliding scale. By following that logic, when your team has a big lead, batters should go up and just strike out, since they don't need any more runs. OK. When the Phillies' Jimmy Rollins stole second base on the San Francisco Giants while the Phils were leading by 6 is a flagrant violatio...

You can't use sports as a metaphor for life. I'm not sure if anyone has tried, but it seems to me like someone has. Sports is so far separated from life, that to compare anything you do to something a professional athlete does is just plain silly. Take, for example, the recent allegations that Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez was caught in a high-stakes poker game with some rather distasteful people. Major League Baseball said something about it, to the point that a real investigation was performed. What MLB fails to realize is that these guys have two vital ingredients that work toward odd behavior: Money and time. You pay these guys ridiculous sums of money - even the Major League minimum salary is close to a half million a year - and expect them to, what ... save it? They can't be on one side by paying the salaries that they pay and be on the other side by protesting what the guy does with the money. If you want people to behave, starve them financially...

I see how it is. Money, price and service have lost their relationship. I started to think about it when the spate of NFL free agent signings was being reported this week. The lockout is over, and teams have been rushing to pay huge sums of money to mesomorphs with athletic skills. Twenty million dollars. Ten million dollars. Guaranteed money for guys with no more skill than running fast and catching oblong projectiles. As I placed my items on the grocery store conveyor, I walked down to the end of the line to place the items in my canvas bag as the cashier rolled them over an electronic scanning device. I hadn't finished placing them all in the bag when the cashier said, "Twenty-one seventy-five," which was my cue to swipe my debit card and pay for it all. The items sat unattended while I entered my PIN and selected "Yes" and "No" to those questions at the end of the transaction. When I was finished, I completed bagging my items and the cash...