Wednesday, December 31, 2008

It ain't Merry Christmas but it'll do

Instead of starting a blog about quasars or the Gaza Strip or wallpaper or God forbid Happy Holidays and having it turn into some pro-abortion cistern of bad feeling I wanted to say something about my fellow Social Conservatives here. I don't see them poking their noses into people's lives. They live by broad social conservative principles, let's say they don't have sex outside of marriage and this covers a lot of ground I never heard of a group of them conducting surveys in their local neighborhoods on your sexual habits. The chances are very very good indeed they don't know anything about what Bob or Collins are doing or what Myself is up to (if anything, I think they talk big and wouldn't surprise me if one is 18 and blogging in his basement when he needs to be cleaning his room). In my neck of the woods I have absolutely no idea who's had or been a party to an abortion and I don't see myself trying to find out. Honestly I don't think conservatives as a rule conduct sex surveys at all, wasn't it Kinsey and Masters & Johnson who wanted to know what we were all up to? I always thought the man in the M&J team looked like that guy in Phantasm with the killer ball which brings to mind what one young wag once said on the Phil Donahue show: "how come most sex therapists look like you wouldn't want to have sex with them?" Dr. Ruth may be a veritable fount of sexual knowledge but let's pretty much keep it on an intellectual level. So besides social conservatives having a broad set of philosophical and moral principles they live by or at least try to (nothing wrong with having goals) I don't see how they're poking their nose into People's Business. I'm hearing a lot of talk of late but not much backing up. Now watch this blog get a big fat goose egg for comments and I'll start a blog about stamp collecting and everybody will unload. Fair Warning though, if you want to be an asshole and post about abortion on a totally non-abortion related topic I'm gonna delete your ass as in permanently.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

I can't put my finger on it

There's a rather sizeable subgroup of people out there, they're not bad people by any stretch, you don't hate them, they don't deserve your opprobrium but there's just something about them, they're vaguely annoying, irritating in some way. Worked with a young guy once, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't even drink coffee because it has caffeine. He came to work every single day always it seemed with a good night's sleep under his belt. I talked about it one day with someone how he's always so highly alert, efficient and she said "he doesn't abuse his body" but I found him annoying anyway with his energy/vitamin drink he always carried around with him. He seemed too perfect, the kind who lived a perfect life, never even uncorked one in a pinch, probably has a minor fortune in the bank because he always did the right thing and saved his money, never went out on New Year's and got hammered. He never came to work complaining of a poor night's sleep and for that reason alone you can't relate to him, you begin to think he's hiding some vast and dark secret, dust off the skeleton in the closet oh boy! as my friend said some people will put down gays but they'll be living weird lives themselves. I remember reading a newsletter from Fr. Bruce Ritter of Covenant House fame and how he was driving one day and on came Dr. Ruth with her "evil little chortle" as he put it (good line though) but look what happened to him. So the guy always did the same thing everyday, he'd sometimes go without his lunch maybe not so much to impress but because virtue demanded it. As a Religious Extremist I should have liked the guy but he was so perfect you began thinking if you hired a crane and tore down his house somewhere beneath the ruins would be his scat video collection or hire a PI and you'd find him going into some dungeon. You don't drink you don't smoke I'm cool with that, you don't have your cup of coffee or tea in the morning and you got my curiosity up bossman,

what's your story?

As a person...

...who feels that the majority of us do not wind up in Hell as a religious extremist I'm somewhat of a disappointment. I've always maintained it's a theological mystery and have a problem when priests or ministers go out on a limb here in their sermons. I'm not dogmatic either, it's none of the pastor's business imo how many times Lino circle-jerked on a Friday night. I find it hard not to be spiritual though and if anything anti-religious extremism is a problem. When Michael Schiavo forbade the hospice chaplain from giving Terri a drink of wine as part of the Last Rites that's pretty creepy in my book but anywho let's get to the nub or the hub shall we and define this case known in the lefty blogosphere as Religious Extremism, as it stands now it's a little vague and I invite as much bloviating and ranting as possible. If you don't believe in mermaids then why do you obsess about them?

Friday, December 26, 2008

Someone once told me the brain is like a computer

sometimes it needs to be reprogrammed. From drug abuse to disease you need to have the software put in again from time to time and maybe this will be the key to understanding modern medicine in the future. Might be a better pro-choice debate as well, had to have been some acidhead to come up with a rationale for partial-birth. Some people never sleep they're so wired, you have to shut the computer off at night you know and even then dreams are Nature's way of working out issues while you're asleep. Looking at some old black and white photographs is like googling your memory or mindbank, it's a wealth of data and I've been wondering of late why so many TV series having a new season start showing repeats about half way through, shouldn't be unless the writers are on drugs, Life gives you too much material I would think. People who masturbate your mind.

The thing I find annoying about smokers

Has nothing to do with the morality or health of the issue but a woman came over for Christmas and I'm watching her. Just in the door and she lights up and I'm fine, immediately after that she lights one up again and barely ten minutes go by and she's on her third one, another guest doing the same thing. It ain't the second-hand smoke either, I allow guests considerable social latitude it's that they ain't even enjoying it like you would a fine cigar or a pipe. Chain-smoking, hell why don't they just eat them? shove 'em in their mouth for lunch, have one coming out of the nostril and both ears while we're at it. It's a vile habit in the sense there's no sophistication involved like seeing a Cannon (William Conrad) fly-fishing in a trout stream with some apple tobacco wafting out of his pipe -- now that's living.

Monday, December 22, 2008

thoughts on a cold winter's night

musing while under the influence

They say you need to get that piece of paper to make it in Life but the real problem with Higher Education is not liberal college professors indoctrinating their class in the ways of radical leftism, WGAF?, the eggheads have a right to think and talk but the real issue is the typical liberal arts curriculum is so impractical. IMO you can't force someone to like the Bard or learn calculus and I've as yet to use higher math in my day-to-day affairs. You need to hone in and zone in on what truly interests you and that's where your trade or technical school is far better. Two years of college was enough for me, I now know who Jean-Paul Sartre was so I can now drop it in my blogging and impress everybody, yip-tee-doo! Like my chef friend says in France someone who knows how to cook is revered, over here you're kind of considered a failure, you're not up there on the same par with a clinical psychologist with a built-in pool in his backyard and a tennis court. People like you, oh you can cook? but like THAT'S IT??

Thoughts during Catholic worship. Nowadays practically 95% of the congregation goes up to Communion. Me? maybe half the time, the other half I don't feel worthy, there's something about the slime of sin, nothing major mind you but these folks who go up every Sunday without fail, are they that good?? I'm not buying it. Now the ones who sit it out, the few in the back who stick out like sore thumbs, the 40-something guy in the rear, you can't help but wonder what he did. It's none of my business but I think it involves a porno.

I have a beautiful view from my window during those bone-chilling winter nights. I can see downtown Yonkers and parts of Manhattan and there's just a gorgeous view of the GW Bridge. Life is good but I don't know why.

Seems to me they should have a system in place, some kind of heating cables under our roads right now so driving in January and February would be a breeze. Futuristic you say? well we found time to put a man on the Moon but we're like supposed to be some advanced civilization no? Of course this would cut into bailout money but you know at least have a theory in place by now.

Reminds me I have to get some eggnog, special blend later.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Buffers or the value of bad workers

EVERY place needs at least a few bad workers, there shouldn't be too many of them in any one workplace of course just one or two mind you and here's the reason why. They're buffers, let me say that again, you're working with a couple of buffers. A buffer is a bad worker but who is beneficial to you, he/she takes the boss's mind off what you're doing and onto what they're doing and it's always fun to talk about the buffer anyway, it's water cooler talk and would you rather they talk about you? The buffer just called out sick and threw a wrench into the whole work schedule so the boss starts talking about Ray as usual and you put in your two cents "yeah that Ray, what's up with that? calling out sick at the last minute. In my day..." so everybody likes to complain about Ray. What you want to do is never ever see the buffer(s) get fired, you certainly don't want to be instrumental in their firing yourself, you'll come to regret it later. Yeah the buffers get canned and you're all happy the next day but then the boss starts noticing more of what you're doing, those minor mistakes they always pick up on and you don't know what you had 'til you lost it, them were the days. Once worked with a kid, annoying as hell, always coming to work late with the most flimsy excuses but over time you find you can't hate him and that's the key to recognizing good buffer material, you don't know it yet but something tells you he's valuable as long as there's not too many of them and that's also pivotal to Z's Buffer Theory as long as they're not overly common their value actually increases. You actually become very tolerant of them whereas in the past you hated their guts, I mean it's not like the whole workplace sucks and once you recognize the practical reality of the situation you can more than deal with it, hell you might even buy him a beer. So never underestimate the value of a bad worker.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

What's up with Ann Curry?

Channel-surfing last night and came across Dateline NBC and for once they weren't talking about "and her body was found in pieces in a ditch off the Interstate" and so I watched. Had on America's best known pastor after Billy Graham, Rick Warren who penned the #2 bestseller of all-time after the Good Book called "The Purpose-Driven Life." So far so good but you just knew something's up and sure enough right before the commercial break Ann promised to tell us what Rick did to "create a firestorm among the gay community" or was that "a storm of controversy"? I forget. Anyway the tempest wasn't in the straight community just the LGBT crowd and hold the mayo. Seems the Rev. Rick donated millions of his own money to combat AIDS around the world but backed California's Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage in that state so Ann with furrowed brow and darts of fire in her eyes chastised him "don't you see how you hurt the gay community?" Now I really don't care which side of the issue you come down on but I'm from the Olde School see, journalists like Curry should just give us the news straight and not get all emotional, the poor gal had that uncomprehending look as if she were interviewing some serial killer. It was purpose-driven reporting (like that?). Hey bossman what's up? why'd you piss off Ann Curry like that?

Friday, December 19, 2008

Weather dramatists

Blizzards are newsworthy, don't get me wrong but today happens to be my day off and we're supposed to get a little mess up here in the Northeast, maybe a few inches at best and more of a rain/slush mix later on than anything. So last night I'm watching the different 10 o'clock news's in the tri-state area and they're all leading off with the forecast as can be expected. Ain't no big thing so I channel-surf for a few and come back ten minutes later and Ch. 11 is still talking about it, this in a city that just had its transit fares hiked 23%! In a nation plagued by high-blood pressure can't these weather celebrities ratchet it down a notch? I went to a local library before and they had a big sign on their front door "due to the weather library will reopen Saturday at 9:30 AM" but it hasn't even happened yet, not one flake has fallen!! If there's one thing I absolutely hate it's a lack of calm, this pall of stress that falls on people because they watch too much media. Take it easy Mr. G, we'll get through it and in the meantime pop a Zoloft.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

travelblogging, my landmark is the trump building

Had the day off yesterday and we went to the Yonkers Raceway Diner, had the Irish Breakfast and he had the Country-Style. You always have to have a cup of joe in a diner, it's mandatory and so I suggest we go to the newly renovated Greenburgh Public Library which just reopened yesterday. We work our way there, it's a meandering roadtrip as always 'cause that's how we like to do it and we pass the porno guy. He's a little shop on a busy, heavily traveled commercial thoroughfare and my friend goes "what's up with the main entrance? People go to this place, people they know can see them going in. It should have a back entrance or something, you have to go to the back of the hardware store first and then go through the sewer system." "Yeah, he can meet you midway in the ventilation duct." On the way to the fresh SuperLibrary, you can feel the pull of the magnetic structure at this point and I have a slight problem with our celebrity culture and media overexposure: "Jennifer Aniston does nothing for my life, how does it help?" We go inside the library, it's modern and hip architecture all the way, a corporate look, more spatial dimensions than anything else and it's so damn quiet. I know libraries are supposed to be this way but it's more than a tad eerie. You get that very strong futuristic sense "like some android or cyborg in a white lab coat asks if he can help you" - "I'm not John Connor." Great computer lab here though, a guy can blog his heart away. The main goal of our trip now over he says let's go over to the White Plains Mall. It's easy to go to from here, just follow the Landmark. I'm not too thrilled with this place, it's rundown and doesn't even have a FYE store but he tells the story of it's one of the original malls in the country. I think it's gangster but we go anyway. The comic and graphic books store is closed though on Tuesdays, must be the dork's high holy day or something so we hit the Japanese supermarket instead. Great seafood area, a big squid on ice with its eye looking at you, 10+ lb. bluefish, red snappers, Chilean Sea Bass, blue-claw crabs. Not too keen on the butcher section though, there's some cow tongue on display, some stomachs but I'm told it's a cultural thing, the Japanese use every part of the animal, it's their way of honoring it. That's nice but I think I'll pass on the chicken feet. We were barely in the mall for half an hour, maybe a little more and the municipal parking cost us 3 dollars!! (thuganomics). Now we're right up close to the new Trump Building in White Plains, a monstrosity, a beacon, a landmark, a tribute to EGO and my friend says he can see it all the way from the Palisades Parkway in Jersey. No matter where I drive I can see it for literally miles, it could even pass for a navigational marker for extraterrestrials. We drive past the wholesale flower place we used to work at, it's a nostalgic thing but it's now an electrical supply company, nothing lasts anymore it seems, New World Order stuff. We head on home, we could get a porno air freshener but we pass. It was a good day and you kick back and you smoke your Gispert that you bought the other day at Mom's Cigars and you ponder it. The stars are out now as it's unnaturally pitch black at 5 in the evening. Goat testicles?

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

A philosophy of work

Talking with Beth last night and we got on the subject of work. Now workaholics which seem to be reproducing at quite a fast clip these days, we agreed it's hard to work with them when you don't have the same philosophy. These chipper little Republicans act like they're working in some ER or something when it might only be an office setting and a close relative of the workaholic is the taskmaster, you know when you have 15 minutes left before you go home and want to wash up a little and rap but they find something else for you to do. Now I've always been a hard worker, I pump it out and then some but like my chef friend once said why can't you have fun at work too? Work enables me to do things in my life I wouldn't otherwise be able to do if I didn't work but for me it's not an end in itself. I don't define my life primarily by what I do which seems to be the cultural formula these days and Dennis Miller once joked in one of his books if you work at only one job you're in the minority. A guy'll come up to you at work and go "so what else do you do?" Dunno, fishing, boating, photography, a little blogging here and there, why do you ask? So what's your philosophy of work? are you one of those people who have married their jobs? do your hips start pumping into the air when a little OT is proposed to you? do you punch out at the end of the day but linger as if you can't believe it's really over and tomorrow's another day? God bless ya but if you become my boss I'm giving my two weeks.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Before I blog about OTHER things

some final thoughts on the issue (for now). Reading through the latest rantings of the choicers it's become fairly obvious to me at least that the issue of when human life begins is not a part of their moral calculus. No this is not being uncivil just an analysis on my part and so for them the value of choice trumps the value of life, in other words it is vastly more important to exercise your liberty in the form of choice even if that choice may involve the snuffing out of a nascent human life. For the RTLers life of course is the overriding concern and it is this very stark simplicity that most offends the choice crowd. They seem to revel in ambiguity and moral ambivalence, to say the issue is complex is to show one's mental sophistication and to oversimplify the issue in their view shows the mind of a social Neanderthal. Theirs is the intellect and ours is the narrow mind even after a lifetime of thinking to yourself you happen in the end to come to the pro-life conclusion. Abortion will for the foreseeable future be a tremendously polarizing issue simply because for the choicers it is factors other than pure reason that decides the issue for them (e.g. the woman's financial straits, is she really in love with him? can they make a go of it? etc).

Now there are some choicers, they may be in the minority, but you can say they're pro-life in the latter stages of the pregnancy and so if they don't find fault with the pro-life position here why is it problematic in the beginning unless to provide the woman with some sort of "window of opportunity"? So with these people you might say choice is not the overriding principle or it is at least tempered with other considerations. The abortion lobby and Obama's 100% rating from them is unique in being so outside the mainstream by adopting the mantra of choice throughout the pregnancy or most of it so why should fiscal conservatives adopt the same position at least in terms of the political strategy of never talking about the issue (but I'm repeating myself here ain't I)?

A final thought, speaking totally candidly here for the moment I honestly don't respect their position so why should I expect them to respect mine? As Joe once said abortion is a non-compromisable issue and I would add once an issue, any issue becomes debateable at least in terms of its underlying philosophical concepts it's only a matter of time before the act in question becomes morally approveable, we don't discuss the pros and cons of rape after all. For me civility means you're polite to other people as human beings although you can take issue with their positions. We're talking over each other as is often said because we adhere to different philosophical principles, for me I can't imagine believing the fetus is a member of the human species and then advocate for its destruction or at least the liberty to do so, the value of choice loses its luster for me at that moment. Post what you will but try to address the points (I know I know, I'm a comedian).

Thursday, December 11, 2008

What drives me as a blogger

Vis-a-vis abortion the choicers see it as intensely personal and so case-sensitive. Let's say they may have made this crushing decision they have to live with, it's our own personal hell, don't touch it, don't go there whereas the lifers of whom I consider myself a member rightly see it as a life being taken, for the choicers this is too abstract. I've been told at times I come across as a prosecutor, a good guy at Hannityland once said I had some good points but I come across as shrill. What drives me is pure reason and this goes a long way towards explaining why I push my points more often to the breaking point of my opposite in the debate and I probably do this more than other social conservatives. I am against abortion but even more than this I am passionately against bad thinking. Put it another way even if I was pro-choice I'd still hold my side to task. Take moral relativism and subjectivism, now I understand when you're new to an issue you have the right to think it through but eventually you have to come to conclusions so I'm not against intellectual freedom and using your mind but relativism shows a deep flaw in man's thinking, a mole in his character as Hamlet might put it. With situational ethics (relativism goes by so many different names) there's no foundation to build on, there's no possibility for some real intellectual progress, it's a kind of non-position and this is celebrated as an end in itself by the choicers. It's as if subjective morality is a permanent philosophy. I absolutely hate the illogic of the other side, not them, and it's this permanent mindset that disturbs me. I hate bad thinking and abortion just happens to be a classic example of this, it's the perfect springboard for a much needed foray into logic and to address the common flaws in how people think in general. It sounds hubristic to say one is motivated by pure reason in your blogging style, you demand an answer and if this comes across as confrontational it's simply that pure reason demands better answers than the ones we've been getting and for good measure it's also a game which makes it fun. The challenge for the choicers then is this, come up with an intellectually respectable position buttressed by unassailable points although I don't think it can be done. Abortion is a Rubik's Cube and I'm not afraid to assert I'm right, again nothing personal intended.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

They doth protest too much

Daniel has made the decision to moderate the commenters over at his blog and has closed off his most recent pro-life thread "An End to Abortion." I can understand his decision so I will address those commenters like collins directly right here. I was discussing this with someone yesterday and she said people have abortions and they do this and they do that and no wonder everyone's so unhappy these days. I don't know anything about these people's personal lives nor care to but I think what drives alot of heat on the pro-choice side these days, the almost exorcistic rantings is guilt, they doth protest too much, it's personal Beth. As the woman I was talking to said "imagine you did something like this, how would you feel?" I also sense that some of the bloggers at Daniel's and elsewhere may be working for the abortion lobby, the lines are straight out of the Planned Parenthood playbook. With the notable exception of Erik who is genuinely pro-choice in my book Bob, Myself, TR and the rest of the gang reek of pro-abortionism which is their right of course but they're not really honest about it. Mention religion and they go into some kind of epileptic seizure thing, it's amazing those well into adulthood can still talk this way and it's indeed very tempting to make a personal judgement against them and the rest of the pro-abortion movement but I'll refrain, as they say it ain't Christian. None of my points were addressed AT ALL and if you said you'd pray for them they'd get even more unhinged. Also, regarding this issue and others like it civility is overrated, needed of course and you should try but a civil presentation of your views will not convince them, they're really not looking for a better tone although they may say so, they really hate you. If anything I think pro-lifers have been way too civil for way too long and should kind of man up about it and jab back if need be. It's been too often said imo that debates about abortion give off more heat than light, I say so be it it's not the light they're after anyway. And btw when you're a guest at somebody's house and have to use the facilities flush after you're done and wipe the rim, put the seat back down and leave it as you came in, you're a guest after all. Tell the owner you had a nice meal and a good time and go home. So that's that.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Celebrity stalkers

Not a week or even a few days go by it seems without reading about the latest celebrity stalker case. Now this is either a bogus issue or I'm not getting it. I scan the pages with my morning cup of joe, I see Alyssa Milano has one now so it's probably the usual details so I don't even read it and turn the page. They're now brief AP dispatches or something. Now Milano has gone on the record as saying she doesn't believe in monogamy, that it's unnatural so even if she does say yes right off the bat you have some issues, your average stalkeroon being rather ideologically inflexible. Now a long time ago you never really heard about stalkers as such so either stalking is in vogue or concern about it is, it's hard to tell which. My friend put his usual spin on things a while back, it's a sexy scenario he said, the cops protecting the woman and some of them ain't bad looking just like in the movies. Dunno if you can Munchhausen this though.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Now playing - Abortion

Back by popular demand. Pro-lifers have always borne the brunt of social criticism, criticism of the pro-choice side is scant to nonexistent. This is unfair and unwarranted like the worker who always gets yelled at while the others are doing far worse. It's always been this way as Pro-Choice is seen as the rational, the genteel position to take. It has all the courage of a non-position and when one calls themselves "pro-choice" it really doesn't tell you much at all. Simply repeating the mantra of CHOICE doesn't make one pro-choice of course just like if I recite some ancient Hebrew texts that doesn't automatically make me a Kabbalist. Choicers reflexively oppose any and all informed-consent legislation making them paradoxically into a bunch of anti-informed choicers when they should have been the ones who proposed these things in the first place. Man as a rational creature cannot knowingly fight for something evil hence those hardcore pro-choicers who can't even imagine a world without recourse to legal abortion MUST see at least some positive social good in it after all every other social movement in history from abolition to woman's suffrage to civil rights was based on fighting the good fight so the only philosophically correct description here is pro-abortion. Erik, commenting over at Daniel's latest blog about abortion comes closest in my book to being a bona-fide pro-choicer but he's in the definite minority. It's also rather ironic that it's the choicers themselves who are so obsessed with insinuating theological issues into the debate by constantly ascribing them to the lifers when the majority of them give a very logical and non-religious approach in the public square. What is philosophically so disturbing about the so-called pro-choice mentality is that it can lead to things like Nazism, chances are it won't but theoretically it can since its main premise is the scientific issue of when human life begins is no longer relevant to abortion policy or the Woman's Decision. Even Harry Blackmun, chief architect of Roe acknowledged in a footnote that should science ever prove the humanity of the unborn then of course the abortion case collapses. This is a paradigm shift in our moral thinking and it's no wonder that euthanasia is always a close cousin to abortion, it's the exact same philosophical underpinnings at work. Abortion, people deep down know it's wrong but spend all their lives trying to justify their decisions. It's an unacknowledged moral tension against Self, an erroneous mathematical formula that undermines the logic of its own premises and that's why even those choicers who chide us lifers for talking way too much about the issue talk about nothing else themselves judging by which blogs get the most hits. No matter what side we take on this controversial and troubling issue the worm of conscience brings us back to it time and again, it's the house of dark shadows and we ignore the hobgoblin in the attic making noise aka what we know in our hearts to be true. Carry on.

Friday, December 05, 2008

From a purely practical standpoint

for those of you who keep harping on why do we blog about abortion so much it certainly seems to get the most hits, the most comments going compared to some other topics and so pragmatically speaking what's wrong with it? We can blog all day about all and sundry topics especially the non-political but if abortion is what keeps the blogosphere all afire makes sense to me. Daniel hits on the theme of social conservatives, now most people equate social conservatives with opposition to abortion and so BINGO you have yourself a hot thread. Looking at my rather meager hitmeter I am almost forced to go with the topic, it's probably the only subject here that gets tao all excited. David999 recently put us all down as being stuck on stupid and that life doesn't revolve around abortion so where's his thoughts on pets, bad bosses, recipes, music, movies and blogging in general? No Dave we all know everything in life doesn't revolve around abortion but I think you like it when we discuss it anyway. If it's "oh not again!" then seems to me the best course of action would be not to leave any comments anyway on the abortion blogs, we'll see all the goose eggs and get the message.

Ya know?

Thursday, December 04, 2008

There's some very interesting programming on at 2 in the morning

A guy at work told me this when I told him about my sleep woes one day. The majority of time I sleep well, only averaged about 2 or 3 nights of pure insomnia each year for my entire adult life but lately during this past year there was an uptick, those poor sleep nights are still in the minority thank God but they were above average for me, a sign of age? Now sleep is a sensitive issue for many, in the latest survey at least 47% of Americans said they have trouble sleeping and they ranked this as the 4th hassle next to money concerns and overwork. Talk about things not going well together that overwork and lack of sleep thing is a definite problema. Basically the thing with sleep-aids that I have an issue with is it doesn't seem like we're getting at the root of why we sleep so poorly anymore. It seems the research of that wonderful psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Low is from some bygone era no longer in vogue. The good doctor counseled his patients to just lie there in bed at night with their eyes closed and you'll have to sleep at least part of those hours, early experiments proved this he said with patients who swore they didn't sleep a wink and yet didn't respond when their names were called. I would say in my own experience if you can't lose consciousness and go under simply lie there and meditate, this will lead to some sleep and there were nights I swear there was no sleep to be had and yet a little later I remembered a snatch or two of a quick dream I just had, usually work (DRAT!). Re this sleep issue the medical experts are putting more and more pressure on the poor sleeper, the formula usually varies but the stress comes into play when you see someone on TV go "the latest medical studies conclude you need x hours of sleep per night or you will suffer a heart attack" (or some other calamity). Oftentimes x=7 hours which honestly is kind of high to aim for, I'll often reach 6 or 6 1/2 so why spazz yourself out 'cause you're minus a half? In my own case I think many of my poor nights was due to simply not being tired and getting up to use the bathroom alot during the night 'cause you had to have that SuperBeverage at the movies doesn't help. So take a teasy and if all else fails get a little Charlie Rose marathon going for yourself, even alot of his guests look half in the bag. Your dreams miss you.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Waiting

My pastor gave an interesting sermon this past Sunday part of which had to do with waiting. Somehow it tied in with the readings and he said when you stop to think about it most of our life is about waiting. You're waiting for a show to begin, for Mass to start, for work to let out, for someone to come out of the restroom, for your friend. In a way it's like being stuck in traffic, much of your life is consumed by it. You may be waiting for small things or for big things, waiting for something to happen even if you don't know what it is. Sometimes what we're waiting for takes a long time in coming or it never comes at all (success, true romance, justice). People who voted for McCain may have to wait four years or even eight. We're waiting for a pro-life culture, we're waiting for social equality, we're waiting for world peace, we're waiting for this and we're waiting for that.

The theme song to Mahogany asks "do you know where you're going to?" The drifter in Two Moon Junction says "I don't know where I'm going but I'm in a hurry to get there." Some of us wait all our lives. "I can feel it coming in the air tonight. I've been waiting for this moment all my life, oh lord!" but what's Phil Collins waiting for? It's like waiting gives Life its meaning, after all we are waiting for something and this gives us a kind of goal, a destination, a framework of anticipation. Then again some of us just scrap through our day not thinking of the Bigger Questions.

Right now I'm just waiting for some of my blogging friends to get home from work. Later.

Monday, December 01, 2008

True forgiveness means

there's nothing more to talk about.

Bipolar bosses


They're nice to you in the morning, they get you a cup of coffee and a donut but by mid-afternoon they want to chew your head off. So does everyone stage what's known as an intervention? Saying to someone they need help, chances are they'll take offense, it's dicey, it's like if someone came up to you. First off they're in denial and anyway mental issues are sensitive:

Staff: "Are we saying you're NUTS?...yeah we are."

Life usually gives you enough on your plate and then there's these bipolar bastards, switch-hitting bitches to deal with. It's a redundant agony, a pointless suffering. Say your uncle has cancer or your dog just died you have to go in and deal with a psycho who thinks he's normal.

Staff member (with a sarcastic twist trying to make light): "Walgreen's just called. You forgot to pick up your medication."

A little bipolar action, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Just pass the Prozac.

Friday, November 28, 2008

What makes Christianity stand apart

In answer to the age-old question "why does God allow evil and suffering?" Christianity is the only world religion or faith system where God took on human form and suffered and died so in answer to the Question we may not have the full answer in this life but you could at least say God took part in our own suffering so to speak. Of course this all collapses if you view Jesus Christ as mere man, nice prophet and nothing more but for me the essence of Christianity is what I just said and you can't say this of the other religions. It helps make the Question bearable if not answerable and for a good read along this line read Taylor Caldwell's The Listener. It's almost as if God were saying to the human race since I gave my creatures free will I will allow evil to exist in the world but I, in the Second Person of the Trinity will also partake in the suffering it causes. Pretty profound if you stop to think about it. Now the dogmatic theologian will object that Christ died solely for our sins and to save us, that mine is an errant theology but that's my personal faith as Patrick M might say. Deep thought for the Day.

Lest we need a reminder

I am afraid to say I am detecting a pattern here, it seems the terrorists are intent on giving each individual country their own 9/11. What kind of a religion is this? Monday morning quarterbacking for a minute during the cycle of the Big Election public opinion surveys and exit polling consistently told us terrorism was very low on the list of voters' concerns, shockingly low imo and the Economy was all the rage. Now we have the atrocity in Mumbai, India and, thinking out loud here if terrorism was more properly important in voters' minds as it should have been conventional wisdom has always held that this helps the Republican side more, in this case McCain. Put another way if the collective voting psyche was different and more attuned to reality would McCain have done better, even pulled it off? 9/11 is like some unhappy island drifting off and disappearing into the fog, seems the further we get away from it the more we forget. I haven't yet yielded to the temptation to conclude the voting public is stupid but in addition to the social issues hardly making a blip on the radar screen, dunno, it's like having a big jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. It is also conventional wisdom to treat everything coming out of Joe Biden's mouth as one big guffaw, the personification of the brain fart but is it that far behind that Obama will be tested, will face some sort of crisis during the first six months of his Administration? In four years will he even want the job? The 3AM phone call, just transfer the call. "Hill on line 1."

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

soapboxgod's sex as a contract

The gist of soapboxgod's contract idea here is that a man and a woman going into the act should accept beforehand the risks and responsibilities going in. I'd go so far as to say that the very lack of the idea of intercourse as a contract is what has led to our unusually high abortion rates in the first place. Now I'm not coming at this from a puritanical angle, I've often thought in some alternative mythical universe humans would reproduce another way and sex would just be sex but that's The Way He Made It. Now sex is enormously attractive to the vast majority of us but each and every act has the potential to create new life and so you'd think that in and of itself would give us pause, some time to reflect but no. Of the personal stories I've heard about people making abortion a way of life and yes I guess people up here in the Northeast with the funky water supply just talk about these things more as opposed to the normal folk out in Ohio but it seems in all these cases it's just people doing IT whenever and wherever but liberalism would not have us poke our nose into other people's business so that's that. Say what you will but making abortion illegal whether you agree with that or not would at least force people to look at the procreative angle of sex more, as it is now we don't and the pornos only reinforce this with its circuses and flying fluids, sex as a joke...worked once with a Jamaican chef and he's hardly the social conservative type but he said to us one day "sex is the most overhyped thing there is. Don't get me wrong, it's nice, it's OK but..." I've known young men who've had a kid or two out of wedlock, yeah this ain't a great social trend as the conservatives and the pro-aborts alike are only too fond of pointing out (strange bedfellows there) but they seemed to accept the risks and responsibilities going in...SEX, it is what it is.

In short abortion is a philosophical disagreement with God about Sex or as my friend put it once "people gotta have their Pops."

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The problem with the world



A chef friend and I were talking once and he told me what's wrong with the world in a nutshell,

nobody's cool.

It's like the boss you have, you'd think that once you get to know each other he'd ease up on the workload a little and even crack a joke every once in a while but NO, or the time I took the bus to high school and the fare went up overnight and I was a dime short and the bus driver was glaring at me, a passenger grudgingly had to give up a dime and that was when the economy was good. In fact Obama should give a major address on the subject, the total lack of coolness in today's world - "al-Zawahiri, would you lighten up a little? you're weirding us out."

There are songs on the radio I'm not too fond of. Some are downright terrible, some are ok but I just don't care for them and when they come on your hand automatically changes the dial, it's a built-in reflex thing. Stations that play the same playlist everyday, they will force you to like this song, before you know it you'll think it's good too otherwise they wouldn't be playing it so much right? Pravda Radio.

Xmas Shopping

I no longer knock myself out trying to be creative and stuff. I just go to the liquor store and that takes care of half of them in one shot (Glenlivet Single-Malt Scotch Whiskey aged 12 years!), the rest I can give money to. I just get it out of the way, go out and blow a whole week's paycheck and I'm done.

Don't you just hate it when you get up to go to the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning, just a brief intermission in your sleep, you're walking down the stairs and you see it, that sliver of yellow light coming from the crack in the bathroom door. Like two ships passing in the night but the timing is off so you just pull up a stool and take a seat...few minutes later you're wide awake.

Ashley Dupre. She said to People magazine that when she had an affair with a married man it finally gave some meaning to her life what with the hooking and all. It's almost like you gotta be married to score these days or become a priest. GO AWAY!!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Flippin' through some quotes

The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (389-286BC) was one of the earliest interpreters of the religion of taoism. Googled some quotes and here's a gem: "Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness." Here's another one for Bill Maher: "Men honor what lies within their sphere of knowledge but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it." But perhaps my favorite is this:

"To say that something is chance is to deny a principle at work."

Every now and then I look back at chapters in my own life, often the odder or more enigmatic events stand out, chance meetings, funny characters, mysterious chains-of-events, the unexplained meanings of things. Worked with a guy once and maybe it's because he's of a spiritual bent but he said to me one day he almost wound up at another job but felt he's at this one for a reason. Beth feels there's a significance in us forming an online friendship and I agree, it's as if it were destined to happen. We're living in a kind of agnostic existential vacuum right now where many place no more meaning on Life's little events than accidentally kicking a pebble while walking but quotes like this fascinate me. It then becomes this - since there are physical laws in place governing matter and the universe might not there be another operative set of laws that a philosopher can discern, a kind of spiritual physics? There is something vaguely optimistic in Tzu's quote even if we can't explain why we got four years of Jimmy Carter or the Dinkins Administration in New York. Hamlet said "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew (prepare for) them how we will." So enjoy this little fortune cookie. Now if someone could just explain David Lynch's Inland Empire.

I was never into the whole wake scene


My friend's job-hunting alot lately and so we drove by a cemetery yesterday and I said in jest "won't don't you apply there?" and he said "don't laugh, gravediggers get paid very well." The thought occured to me this is one area that can never be affected by whatever happens on Wall Street, we could have another Great Depression but you'd still have a job at Gate of Heaven (now there's an optimistic title, no bastards buried there?). Here's another safe investment, toilet paper no?

pirates still exist?

It's finally gotten autumnal out here, I was beginning to think the Goracle had a point.

The Materialist Assumption

I have to work this Thanksgiving so my boss goes "everyone wanted to work but I gave it to you." No, thank you! She must think I'm some fiscal conservative, no social life.

No matter what you're into these days quality is not the norm. Entertainment, books, movies, music, doesn't matter but it's like when you find it you want to put it away in a safe place.

There's something I like about the whole diner experience. We were at some diner yesterday and I joked to my friend what if you saw Gordon Ramsay in the back yelling at people, they're filming an episode of "Kitchen Nightmares." Just finish your coffee, fold your paper in half and leave.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The gay marriage debate - what conservatives are afraid to say


On the drive over to the library this morning I was thinking of the whole gay marriage debate and why it still sticks in people's craws. Judging by the ballot box people still have a problem with it although conservatives won't state the real reason why. Sure Americans still want to protect the institution of marriage but opposition to gay marriage is not necessarily based on cold hard logic anyway, it has more to do with the loss of masculine culture. Perez Hilton on 'PLJ, Cojo on "E.T.", Richard Simmons, I'm like why are you talking like that? it's hardly an exercise in stereotyping to say that many gay men act and talk like women. The beauty of true masculinity, it's Dirty Harry jumping from the overpass on to the schoolbus being held hostage by the sniper, it's being bit by a 2 1/2 foot garter snake that you brought home when you were a kid because you went exploring in some swamp with your buddy instead of staying at home playing with a doll, it's going trout fishing and getting lost in the woods and finding your way out alone when the sun has already set. The continuing opposition to changing our marriage laws, it's just a cultural feeling, something offensive to our sensibilities. Obama saying to Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" that taking out OBL would be a top priority of his administration, say what you will that's a masculine statement, some strategic advisor must have said grow a pair already. Here's where tao is wrong, most people seem to retain at least some level of social conservatism, a large swath of the country may be pro-choice now but on a cultural level the whole gay marriage debate is offensive to them. It's like when you read Average American's blog, it just has that masculine stamp all over it, you just know Joe wouldn't go for such nonsense. I was thinking too of how feminists have emasculated the culture with their a man can only ask a woman out once nonsense, give me that all-American red-blooded male any day who makes a valiant effort to win over her heart. I don't know man, it's just why are you talking like that?

Monday, November 17, 2008

When should human life begin?


For your typical pro-choicer when human life begins is utterly irrelevant to the subject at hand. For all intents and purposes they are saying that even if human life we are willing to go along with the Woman's decision. This is a totally radical new moral formula though. Even Harry Blackmun who wrote the majority piece in Roe acknowledged in a footnote that if Science ever proves the humanity of the unborn the abortion case collapses as in totally. So in effect the choicers make no moral distinction whatsoever between contraception and abortion (I hear some protests in the audience), it's all about the Woman (or is that Womyn?). They may as well say because there is an umbilical cord I'm pro-choice.

A word about legislating morality which so many of my fellow bloggers have brought up. A very poor framing of the issue, doesn't apply in the sense that a burglar would probably feel the government is legislating his morality to take your goods. Your typical pro-choice line of argumentation is like some old piece of Melba toast that's been sitting behind the washing machine, even the ants are bored with it.

Abortion is the only subject where Logic doesn't reign supreme.

SC & FC tensions coming to a head



Like that Thanksgiving family blowup that was destined to happen the fiscal conservatives (FCs) want the social conservatives (SCs) out of their house or is that the SCs' house? Now the staunchly pro-life Ronald Reagan won two landslides so an objective observer would say when people vote for pro-life candidates they either want the abortion laws changed or they are indifferent to the issue, either way the FCs' case againt the SCs is overstated. People with no social conservative pull at all are technically known as libertarians and are a subgroup of the FCs, they are a distinct minority even within their own party and so for them to assert a certain dominance shows an inflated sense of self-importance and a misreading of the political culture, even people who are for abortion might be against gay marriage for instance. The issue is most often framed by the FCs as government encroaching upon the rights of the individual aka liberty, this is their E=mc2 or Unified Field Theory but this is a false reading of liberty. Folks voting for pro-life candidates is hardly undemocratic and if pro-life laws are ever passed in the future it is to be presumed that a consensus exists in their favor.

Then you have another species altogether, people who say they're pro-choice but that really only applies to abortion. This is your typical liberal or nanny-stater who has a constant problem with what you put in your stomach, the fact that you may smoke or own a gun and in some cases an SUV, they don't like school vouchers, they wanna protect you against trans-fats, the risque joke in the workplace and the list goes on and on. For them pro-choice is not an overriding concern, for some idiosyncratic reason it only applies to Woman's Right to Choose. Now another Z-principle is that when push comes to shove the majority of people who call themselves pro-choice are really pro-abortion, this is why they reflexively oppose proposed informed-consent legislation. Completing Z's Equation then Pro-Choice = Anti-Informed Consent so from time to time we'll be referring to them as the anti-informed choicers.

Shut up sit down and pass the scalloped potatoes already, I'm starving!

Friday, November 14, 2008

On the road again, a drive thru Disturbia


Yesterday my friend and I hit the big YO and the main drag there with its endless strip malls and plazas but before that he said take this side road and so we did. You know these areas, tucked away off the main road and all the action, full of cul-de-sacs, circles and dead ends, easy to get lost in but generally a tony part of town, upper middle-class suburbia with its tree-lined streets, English Tudors, white houses with white picket fences and those Brady Bunch homes so I says to him "nice houses, I wouldn't mind living here." He goes "yeah it's nice but there's something depressing about this place." "What?" "It oozes dysfunction, the parents are successful but the kids are potheads." The art of the rant, it's just getting started. "You probably have refined mobsters living here, not the demented types and he goes into an excellent impersonation using an older Italian voice: "yeah Sal got me a nice piece of property here." Then he goes off on people who complain alot, like about everything, it's a nonstop drumbeat of negativity and he says "it's like he was going into one of his autistic attacks" (I'm not sure what this means) "and he got me all jittery I wanted to tell him just Shut the F**k Up already!!" It's like this woman boss I had, every morning without fail and this was early when nobody is fully awake yet and nobody feels like even talking and for two straight hours she'd bitch and moan nonstop about this and that and I'm like shut up lady, you're getting everyone all twitchy. So I'm driving and he wants to get something at Nathan's and I pull up to the drive-thru and I go "just tell her what you want and speak loudly enough" so it reminded me of that old Will Ferrell skit on SNL where he has this speech disorder and can't help talking overly loud, right in my ear. These intercom systems ain't the best and the girl repeats the order as best she can but you could tell it was a little bit wrong and he goes "OK". When you really don't know what to do with yourselves there's always that old fallback place, Barnes & Noble, the alternative being prison boredom. On the way back we're talking about our jobs, some physical labor is involved and how it destroys you physically, takes its toll over the years, bad back, bad leg, groin pull and I go "in about 20 years time I'll retire with a withered arm and one nut." It's still early so I drop him home, it's only around 7 in the evening and I have trouble finding a parking space, go around the block a couple of times and think maybe I live in a community of agoraphobics, they come home right after work and hide, nobody goes out anymore, maybe they're at home watching scat videos, dunno.....The Travelblog

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Oh hell

My pastor's been talking alot about Hell lately. His theme: if there is no Hell then it really doesn't matter what we do in this life. He preaches the Devil's favorite weapon is to convince the masses that Hell doesn't exist. He's not wrong exactly but this is known as thinking out loud. He makes the strong although not quite explicit point that there are people in Hell right now, has to be, he would deny this of course so maybe that's my spin on his sermons but he's venturing into a theological mystery here, don't go there. There is imo a psychological need to believe in eternal punishment, it soothes us knowing that the people who did us dirty will get theirs in the End. Now I accept the logic and necessity of Hell but there's a part of me that doesn't quite believe in it at least in the sense of it being overpopulated (which sphere contains the Onanists and the premarital sexers?) but I have seen bad karma, a kind of Eastern version of Hell time and again. Not that long ago had a boss, a real nasty piece of work. He got a good guy fired and only a few weeks went by before he was transferred and demoted himself. Some people think they have an Exemption from Bad Karma card they carry around in their wallet.

Since we've all been blogging like mad it seems about the topic of abortion lately for me at least this all ties into what I see as a lack of fear of God in society at large, I mean if you're at all uncertain about abortion wouldn't you want to at least hedge your bets but like my friend says some people thrive on chaos. Throwing dice, uh-oh snake-eyes! How many people are pro-choice on their deathbeds? I think it's like Beth says though, people may not be committed on abortion one way or the other but want it as an option, it's kinda like a sex shop down the street, you can't help going there every once in a while.

(copyright Z-man 11/12/08, all rights reserved)

Monday, November 10, 2008

That bad thing


By now we almost universally acknowledge that

abortion is a bad thing,

at least we say it is and this pretty much goes for both sides but it's a philosophical impossibility, for all of us to say this that is. It all goes back to Religion 101, Man is a rational creature (no don't laugh) and as such cannot choose evil for evil's sake. This applies to the angels too, the hordes who fell with Lucifer felt they had some logical points to take up with their Creator, they felt they were of a higher nature than Man and were given to understand (this at least according to The Mystical City of God by the Ven. Mary of Agreda) that the Second Person of the Trinity was to assume human flesh and be born of an actual woman and they would have to worship both, no dice. So the way I was taught in Catholic high school is that man cannot deliberately choose a bad thing knowing it's a bad thing, evil has to be rationalized, somehow justified as a good. This doesn't explain serial killers of course but for the vast majority of us we're at least deluded in how we act and think.

Now here's the rub, the feminists are pretty much passionate on abortion, they're hardcore it should remain legal and then some, they're a polar opposite in the abortion wars but what I'm getting at is how can you so passionately, so vehemently and so consistently fight for something that everyone, even your own side will acknowledge is a bad thing? This kind of thinking never pertained to civil rights, to clean water and air, to equal pay for equal work, to a cure for cancer. These are all good things and so Z has the suspicion that the feminists are lying through their teeth, in their hearts they really feel abortion is a good thing, a positive social good and if feminists are rational creatures like the rest of us they can only fight for and hold onto something that they consider good, one does not protest for evil unless you're a Satanist.

Oh God my head's about to explode!

Bill Maher (I'm sorry to bring him up again)

I agree with Patrick M, for me personal faith is more important than dogma but here's another thing. The vast majority of us can, if we look hard enough, find various items of faith that we disagree with, that we may even find illogical if not wholely irrational. In the Catholic faith we have the doctrine of transubstantiation, that when the priest consecrates the bread and wine at Mass it literally turns into the Body and Blood of Christ. We also have the Sacrament of Confession and many question why we have to confess our sins to a priest if we are sorry in our hearts. BUT here's the larger point, just because we don't accept everything and btw I don't think we should, reason should never take a back seat to faith, they can and should co-exist, so just because we come across a particular religious item or two (or even three or four but who's counting?) that turns logic on its head we don't turn into little snarky Bill Mahers. We still retain our faith, just because of a couple of technical points we don't say the whole edifice of faith is wrong or somehow corrupt or doesn't have any value or useful purpose. Many people like to say they're spiritual but not religious, I don't know what this is supposed to mean. I'll cut this in two and reserve a philosophical point for my next blog.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

How much emphasis to give the abortion issue?

Pro-life doesn't seem to be a great theme here, the higher concern, the broader context is the continuing socialist narrative. While this of course is not unimportant it shouldn't have been the only thing on the table. Maybe it's because re abortion we're so settled in our ways on the issue and we see it as a distraction from the Larger Cause but I think we could have made a more effective presentation. Obama and his Socialist Agenda, folks probably don't even know what the word means, it has that amorphous ring to it but let's say Obama is a regular reader of the conservative blogosphere as well, he might be forgiven if he concludes they don't seem to talk about the a-word all that much so why should I be nudged or cajoled towards the Center on the issue? Maybe it is all about money, our money in the end only trouble is Obama the Socialist doesn't have a womb-view, a broader package. It's Ayn Rand and reading nothing else. There was a shade of grandeur when McCain addressed pro-life head on during the third and final debate but it didn't take long for the Boat to steer back on its Animal Farm voyage. Just my post-election post-mortem for what it's worth.

At one part in his victory speech Obama threw an olive branch to us, "and to those who didn't vote for me I hear your voices" but does he really? Well if he's listening we're taking notes, well some of us are anyway, for when he runs for his second term and it's quite obvious that's a given since he said it's probably gonna take more than one term to clean up The Mess. Now it is assumed that Mr. Men's Vogue is pro-choice of course, it is the only rational position after all but most folks really don't know the extent of it. He needs to distance himself from the FRINGE of NOW and Planned Parenthood, it's like the friend you need to dump, who holds you back, who pulls you down and this would finally free him up to formulate his own abortion policy. I never really got why social conservatives hitched their wagon to the Republican Party in the first place, they really don't give a damn about the issue anyway, they became infatuated with a whore. Should have gone their own way but that's a pet peeve of mine. Obama has said to pro-abortion groups that his very first act as president will be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act which would codify Roe vs. Wade should that decision ever be overturned but when he attempts to woo The Middle again in 012 it'll come back to haunt him.....

the socialist narrative will continue after these brief commercial messages.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

It was a personality-driven election anyway

McCain had a more than respectable showing, there's gonna be the usual grumblings about doing something with the electoral college and apparently Beth's homestate is the most important state in the nation. My channel-surfing was on overdrive last night, there was Bob Schieffer saying Palin was terrible during interviews, the WonderBoy over at ABC, Shepard Smith and the babes on FOX (yum-o), Brian Williams, Gwen Ifill...My id thought up a terrible joke that I haven't seen black people this happy since O.J. Simpson got acquitted but ya wanna know something? they participated in the process, my brothers were happy at work today, all was civil and there ain't anything undemocratic about it. So why should Obama govern from the center? with a Democratic House and Senate he doesn't have that leavening effect that Clinton had with a Republican Congress so expect at least four years of polar liberalism. As for abortion we've had our Republican day in the sun and abortion is still legal but regardless of the legal status of abortion if we want to call ourselves a pro-life country people need to stop having abortions. Yes I was down for a time last night when the election was beginning to take on definite contours, I'm not into getting hardcore drunk but I had an extra helping of the Christian Brothers just the same. The future of the Supreme Court is depressing and I haven't read the rest of the blogs yet but I would imagine they would say the usual in such a dire situation that we need to focus our energy and grassroots on the mid-terms. Sean & RUSH for four more years, I ain't gonna subject myself to this. The turnout was absolutely massive yesterday, a historic one where close to 65% of the country actually voted, biggest turnout in the last hundred years they said so whatever you think of the results this is heartening.

People who work off the clock during their day off even though the company doesn't want them to, the black man would never do this. People who punch for lunch and then work through lunch, the black man would never do this.

Reagan?

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

So win one for the (black) Gipper

Conservatives have even drunk deep from the Kool-Aid well, what's in it? more on that in a minute. So check it out, in today's election day edition of the New York Post we have DC Bureau Chief Charles Hurt getting, I don't wanna say, a little aroused?

"Like Ronald Reagan before him Obama began outside the party gates and crashed through them. The party establishment was aghast and his political opponents ridiculed him as a lightweight. But both men offered an optimistic (? - question mark Z's) vision for a despondent and troubled country. Obama's gauzy outlook is vague (ya think? - ed.) but so was Reagan's 'shining city on a hill'.....Like Reagan Obama speaks over the heads of the media directly to people, tens of thousands at a time, sometimes a hundred thousand or more."

Holy shit Batman, this stuff is strong!! So what have the weird masturbators put in the Kool-Aid this time? an advanced form of lysergic acid without the bad trips, something so subtle yet so potent you don't even know you're sick? Allow me to wax conspiratorial for a moment, when Obama and Hillary were duking it out in the primaries you even had some conservative commentators saying she should drop out for the good of her party but this begs the question why would a conservative worry so much that a Democrat is potentially undermining and ruining her own party? Honorable mention goes to Rich Lowry though for being a vocal and consistent conservative critic of the Obama Agenda early on but he seems to be in the minority.

I just got back from voting, did it early at 9 and got it out of the way but dunno if I can stand the election coverage which actually has been going on for two years now already, never saw anything like it in my life. Amy Fisher Caught on Tape vs. today's election coverage, yes it's that bad folks. I was always dubious about this polling thing, not that they're totally fabricated mind you but as Daniel pointed out recently polling companies like Rasmussen push the undecided into giving some type of answer and let's face it when push comes to shove when pressed for an answer they're gonna go with the guy with the most favorable press coverage. Then there's the concern of the self-fulfilling prophecy, if the vast majority of polls are so bad for McCain will this have a dampening effect for him as in why even bother? IMO the constant barrage of new polls almost becomes politically irresponsible if you will, what is the point and btw I was never polled in my entire adult life about The Things That Matter Most so who exactly are these people, the constantly polled?

It's a hot toddy kind of evening (or maybe two or three).

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

So was there a roundtable at some point...

...to define this term we use alot these days, "extremism", and how often do these roundtables meet to clarify what is extreme, moderate, conservative, liberal, politically eccentric, flaky, provocative in a charming way, radical, off-the-charts...ok kids today the Subject is Welfare.

Now in the Olde Days a person was ashamed to be on welfare, couldn't wait to get off it. Those were the truly sad cases, a woman with kids whose husband just dumped her...oh God how times have changed! Now I've had my spans of being out of work but it never even dawned on me to start fondling the Government Tit. Maybe it's the way I was brought up but during these depressing timeframes I automatically filled out a certain number of applications and wasted tons of postage sending the resumes out, this was in the days before the preferred online methods. It's just the way I'm programmed, wired, it's like breathing drinking and sleeping, you work as St. Paul says otherwise you don't eat...and so who exactly are these people who say if you don't believe in the Welfare State, the safety-net you're an extremist? Now class let's review once again z's main principle that in the end everything tends towards liberalism, even the vast majority of conservatives these days accept the need for welfare, just yesterday Sean Hannity said we still have a safety-net. I recall years and years ago RUSH said to just end welfare, just end it and people will be forced to work but you see RUSH is a bit of a paleo-con, never got with the program and while it seemed harsh to me at the time and likely to give conservatism a bad name I've lived it, I know with a strong family and a good community it's possible. This is the Marvin Olasky position which so influenced Newt Gingrich at the time when he was the Speaker of the House and got welfare reform through. Cooking is my thing not installing fences which I did at one time, you just did whatever got you through the day and blocked it out of your mind. Now some rather old radio interview has just surfaced with the self-avowed non-socialist Barack Obama saying the Supreme Court should get involved in redistributionist change, now if that isn't something out of Chiller Theatre I don't know what is. I'ma gonna vote this Tuesday of course but maybe I just won't watch any election coverage at all that night......get hammered.

retarded machismo

Watching the news yesterday evening and they spent the better part of ten minutes about some study that concluded that most men find women in red desireable,

um...cure cancer first

Sending space probes to the red planet to see if there is or has ever been even traces of the lowest life-forms, we break into your regularly scheduled programming to report to you that a paramecium has just been found on Mars...um, cure cancer first.

Scientists have just succeeded in making the world's first glow-in-the-dark cat...um, cure cancer first.

Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher are now Caught on Tape (though not with each other thank God!), taking erotica to new levels, cure the cancer thing first.

Probing the depths of Loch Ness, there might be one in the Lake Champlain too...cancer.

Making sure a man's Constitutional right to a rock-hard boner is medically ensured, Levitra, Viagra, Cialis, pumps, rods & da cancer.

the latest advances in drugged sleep, having a nice Lunesta butterfly with a chloroform rag and a needle waft gently through your room so that you don't God forbid have to get up at 2 in the AM to use the bathroom...the anti-social cell.

the Gay Brain.....

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

What's a play about Obama without a skinhead or two?

Call me cynical but it's almost like it had to happen, the feds just busted a plot involving two skinheads who planned to drive towards Obama and shoot from open windows and also for good measure to shoot up a black high school. Now I agree with Joe the Blogger who holds that Al-Qaeda poses the biggest threat to Obama, radical Muslims who hold that Muslims converting to Christianity is punishable by death but there's a point to this whole ObamaDrama with two skinheads in the dramatis personae. I caught the report on the UPN 9 News last night here in New York and there was some expert talking of course and up flashed on the screen "Keeping Tabs on the Radical Right", you know something the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) might have as a regular bulletin for concerned citizens. Now I've lost alot of respect for Abe Foxman's group over the years ever since they lumped Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition in with various and sundry hate groups, being strident or shrill or rigid is not necessarily the same thing as being hateful and plotting mayhem. It's hard to read these things when they flash up on the screen and you're about to go to bed but I caught part of a sentence that went "even on more traditional websites..."

OK, so there you have it. There is a metaphysical, mystical association between the rest of us right-wingers and those skinheads, this goes beyond the loose ties of Obama/Ayers, these are spiritual wisps in the minds of the Left. To the msm we all share the same politics but the neo-Nazis rachet it up a notch or two is all. "Keeping Tabs on the Radical Right", um no, there's the right-wing and then there are skinheads and we don't inhabit the same political universe, sorry. Same thing they tried to do a few years back with mainstream pro-lifers and the occasional abortion clinic bomber, lump us all together and I can only think that this latest episode in ObamaDrama can only help the candidate, a few independents out there may equate conservative opposition to affirmative action let's say with a couple of weirdos out in the hinterlands. You've heard of sleight-of-hand, well the media practices sleight-of-mind, juxtapose certain things on the screen when you're tired and have to work the next day, it's a political imprint and the average person ain't even aware of it and not only that McCain looks positively dull by comparison. I mean if some people hate Obama that much he must really stand for something, the only person McCain might piss off is the cashier at the local supermarket ("it says here the Metamucil's on sale"). It's all like a coloring book, pass the crayons please.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Z's Half & Half Principle

I've always followed politics of course but was never one of those political nerds, the real Hannity types who can tell you who the Senator out in Nebraska is (he probably knew who Sarah Palin was before anybody else did) but one thing has always intrigued me about politics, it has baffled me for years and it's this, as a nation we don't seem to have any lasting political identity, other countries probably don't know how to label us besides the fact that we're a democray (I know I know, the technical answer is we're a Republic). Political power is at best cyclical, some years the Republicans rule both Houses of Congress and now it's the Dems' turn, we've had our share of Presidents from both parties. I've also wondered whether the same people sometimes vote for the Democrat and other times vote for the Republican and so I've finally come up with a principle to explain all this. As I blogged about the last few days it seems one half of the country is very conservative and the other half is for something else and that something else most often involves bigger government, aka classic liberalism and so basically you come up with Z's Half & Half Principle which has as its fundamental premise that no political party has permanent power, nay it ensures it.

Alternate Theory: The American voter is schizo and swings liberal from time to time. This would explain how the country swings back to conservative after a while, maybe the country's had its liberal fill, like bad porno you always think it has to get better, a new TV fall lineup that fails to deliver, you were in the mood for a hot Reuben Supermelt but it gave you the runs. Abortion doesn't seem to animate these voters one way or the other, call them the Whatever Bloc, the Obama seems like a nice guy, I think I'll vote for him crowd.

Getting back to my Main Theory, people believe and they believe strongly no matter what side you're on. If you're a feminist you're not just a feminist but an uber-feminist. Take the Isiah Thomas case which we're all familiar with, no matter whose side you took...well let me put it this way. I was listening to the radio on the way over and Anucha Brown Sanders says she doesn't feel the least bit sorry that he OD'd the other day on 10 Lunesta sleeping pills, you see he was suffering from nostalgic depression and thought he would one day get his old job back, the one he lived and breathed for, I'm tellin' ya this nostalgic depression thing is a dangerous thing and all this hard-nosed bitch could say was he ain't got my pity vote.

The bottom line is this, Beth is absolutely right, we can undo the damage that an Obama presidency would cause, 1/2 & 1/2 makes it possible, it just takes some time and patience. In the meantime a little Kalua couldn't hurt.

OK 3rd theory: no political party has permanent power because it really doesn't matter in the end. As my other main principle states everything tends towards liberalism in the end anyway, what matter what political party is in power at any given moment? Repubs are Liberal-Lite anyway - e.g. they seem to give tacit approval to the notion that abortion should be legal but Roe wasn't the way to go about it but they won't put it this way of course, their criticism of sexual-harassment law seems to be a thing of the Past at least according to the Clintonian timegraph, and Big Government is now accepted by all. In short our goose is cooked.

Friday, October 24, 2008

So it's all Mr. Magoo's fault

There he was, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan being grilled by Democratic Rep. from CA Henry Waxman. Greenspan as we all know was in charge during the Clinton economic boom of the 90's and was a big champion of deregulation and lower interest rates and so Waxman asked him "so you would say your view of the world, your ideology was wrong?" and Greenspan said "partially" although he said that during the last 40 years he saw growing evidence that his views were right so he came to his new position rather late. What Waxman really means is that the conservative view of the world, the conservative ideology is wrong and no sane person would be against regulation of the market and most importantly Wall Street. Never mind that scores of people took out mortgages they could never pay back, to paraphrase the Bard the fault lies not in our stars but in conservatism. So here is the true essence of liberalism, as Bernie Goldberg once noted about the media and I'll apply here liberals don't really see themselves as liberal at all, just reasonable, their truths are so self-evident and so of course we can't let market forces go unfettered (the Randian view, since outdated). It's all good though, it's not that common that the issues in a presidential election become so clear and focused, this can only help the voter make a truly informed decision. We'll know how most of the country feels after November the 4th but I can feel it in the wind, there's nothing like a good nipple to suck on. If we're weaned off government too early we'll be sucking on blankets like cats taken away too early from their mothers so blame it all on Mr. Magoo if it makes you feel any better.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The thought occured


that maybe half the country is ready for the Marxist approach. Now you would expect Obama's poll numbers to plummet after he confided to Joe the Plumber that he wants to spread the wealth around but maybe that's just the point. As it stands now seems to me one half of the country thinks conservatively and the other half wants their entitlements. Incidentally I find all those egghead profs of political science who are always being quoted beyond vaguely annoying as with their sanctimonious liberalism telling us McCain's criticism of Obama's tax policy as a giant welfare state amounts to our use of racist code words. Pardon? last I heard there were more whites than blacks on the dole, folks who never miss an episode of Springer, white trash guys who circle-jerk so much they're gonna rip the head off that thing, your laundromat crowd and many of them look like they inbreed with each other. They're the ones who are gonna go for Obama and in a big way, YouTubers all who go to the library and hog up the computers scratchin' their nuts, young'ens who get themselves fired so as to collect on the unemployment but not to worry, Mommy can always wash the crap stains out of their underwear.....(count to 10).....had a minor annoying incident before, as you all know my time on the computer is limited and I'm about to post this new rant and up comes this message: Blogger is currently unavailable right now. We apologize for this interruption in service. Just a foretaste, a flava if you will of Nancy Pelosi's Fairness Doctrine in action which, in the Final Version will have tentacles and feelers reaching out into the blogosphere. Get used to it!!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Conservatives secretly in love with the demigod

Seems the topic du jour this morning on the talk shows is Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal basically saying what any good Democrat would say, that Sarah Palin is not ready to be the Chief Executive and that this reflects poorly on McCain's judgement. This former Reagan speechwriter must have had an erotic dream about Bam and you know what they say, when you dream about someone you really want that person. If Salvador Dali were alive today a classic going for many millions would be a surreal image of Bam arising out of the ocean with his giant magic phallus bestowing peace and love and brotherhood upon the whole world.

Other big or I should say overrated story is Colin Powell's endorsement of Bam. I used to work with this young liberal Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx, one of those political junkies but on the other side, might as well be blogging for the Daily Kos so anyway we're rapping one day and I throw out that I thought Republicans have done more for African-Americans in general like putting them in key spots and I brought up Colin Powell and Condi Rice and he goes "yeah, those are house niggers." He might as well have said Scatman Crothers and Corey should be janitors at the White House (W: "Corey, throw another log on the fire"). It's kind of Life's Little Ironies that a few liberals I have encountered in my day-to-day travels are far more likely to use the N-word to sprinkle their speech than us racist conservatives, because they're liberals who are for all the right programs to help blacks down through the years they carry around in their wallet next to their Sam's Club membership card and their TGIF pass a License to Use the N-Word to be renewed every three years. Now I have a diverse workplace and he'd walk around all day referring to just people in general as "these niggers and I went to the mall the other day" and his general tally for n-wording might be 10-15X a day, I kid you not, and he'd freely verbalize in front of our black co-workers as well but it was accepted. Me? if I so much as used the word "niggardly" as in "the honchos are being very niggardly with their budget this year" it'd be "Z, come to the office NOW!" and there'd be no "please" qualifier or "when you get a chance." Well anyway Colin Powell was never a conservative in the first place and I've always found him vaguely annoying, his sense of his own self-importance ("I am about to pronouce"). He reminds me of a manager at work who won't always say HI to you in the men's room, he 's better than you, he knows it, you know it, he's on the computer in his office and you walk through and go "how 'bout that game last night" and he doesn't respond.

Monday, October 20, 2008

With so much study of the paranormal going on

I have a question. Now ghosts can do all sorts of nifty things, shake a hanging coffee cup for 20 minutes when there's no breeze in the kitchen, rap on the wall, turns lights on, move your glass of water you left on your nightstand, give off smells of which you don't know the origin of (perfume and pipe smoke are common ones), sit on the edge of your bed when you're dozing off, communicate to you in dreams, the list is as long as there are ghosts but I have as yet to hear of a practical case of a friendly ghost popping up your car door lock because you left your keys in your car.

BTW I'm not afraid of dead people, I'm afraid of live people.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Drug legalization doesn't pass the acid test


Often when I'm not online blogging I'm googling other subject areas. Someone told me recently about the tragedy of Art Linkletter's daughter so I bothered to look it up. Now I wasn't aware of this and I bet even many anti-drug people aren't either but there's a very disturbing and frightening phenomenon known as "acid flashbacks", say people who take LSD and have an eight hour trip let's say and don't use the drug again for months or even a year, they can and often do have a repeat experience, sometimes more than one, very similar to the original episode, some of the crap stays in your system and affects the central nervous system so they can go through long periods of normalcy and then fog out. Art Linkletter had a daughter and she used acid but didn't use it again for six whole months and then had a flashback experience and jumped out a window to her death. Now just because we may not be winning the War on Drugs at the moment does not invalidate that campaign and here's where the libertarians' argument is very weak, not just acid but any drug use does not take place in a vacuum, the paramount issue is one of public safety. Dunno why William F. Buckley Jr. towards the latter part of his life took the libertarian position and his flagship magazine the National Review made the case time and again. The pro and anti-legalization debate has kind of settled down now, I think the advocates know it's alot like prostitution, it ain't gonna be decriminalized anytime soon but just something for your consideration. Why validate a dysfunctional society?

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Laying down the pipe


Make no mistake, Joe the Plumber will have a megachain of stores in a year or so. Mac won this one, he did good. He brought up all the important themes, Bam's barrage of negative ads, ACORN, Bill Ayers, having a balanced budget in four years time even if it means using a hatchet whereas Bam the surgeon prefers a scalpel, getting spending under control and oh yes, the issue of late-term abortions and saving infants born alive under this procedure. The consensus has it that Bam was on the defensive all night and his answer to the abortion charge was that his vote didn't really matter at the time since Illinois has a similar law on the books. Yeah but so what, why not vote for it again? Every time he got cornered he'd go into his aw shucks grin mode, it's the kind of grin you'd expect if he ever goes A-Rod on Michelle and she accuses him in the kitchen. Out of the three mods I think Bob Schieffer was the best, he warned them early on no talking points and he kept to a bare minimum of words, you didn't even know he was there, he kept out of it and let them go at it. OK, so alot of the post-reaction was fairly typical. There was presidential historian Michael Beschloss, a regular on The Newshour who didn't like it that Mac went negative especially with the Ayers stuff. Mac went negative? yeah and there's gambling in Vegas, pussy! George Stephanopolous echoed this and threw in on GMA this morning that Mac took a hard line against abortion and this may weaken his appeal to women and independent voters and I might add the ghoul-voting bloc but this is the universe these msm'ers inhabit, keep the abortion machinery up and running, change the filters, lube it up, line the kids up and pump it out. Often wondered if the Boy George has a self-portrait in his attic that's slowly deteriorating but anyway Mac's performance in last night's debate was stirring, you could hardly call TV last night boring as it was in the second debate and it will make it far easier for me to go into the booth on November the 4th and pull the lever for him but here's the difference. I'm not like the rest of you who went for him early on, I'm not a party loyalist. It was a long thought process but last night's debate was the tipping point. I'm one of those independent voters you know like Joe the Plumber and I've made my peace.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

It's McCain's to lose

He practically avoids the whole abortion issue by which he could make headway against Obama. Obama, if he wasn't a senator running for the highest office in the land could just as well be the president of Planned Parenthood. McCain should focus on his opposition to the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act" which even Hillary and Ted Kennedy supported which practically puts Obama to the left of Freddy Krueger. Also culturally many aren't in tune with modern-day feminism anymore, it's more than a little off-center and has messed up women's heads. Fems have refashioned suitors from the old school as stalker-types with the kind of funny result that women routinely go out with and even marry the porn-addled average Charlie rather than a guy who sends them roses so add feticide to their psychologically vague male hatred and you have a potent mix. Telling a risque joke in the workplace is a crime in their book but strangling a mid-term infant on a cold metal table is not. Ayers is yesterday's news, if McCain can't paint Obama into a corner with the a-word and continues on his present course he deserves to lose. It's a culture war out there and although Pat Buchanan was demonized at the time for bringing this term into our national lexicon nowadays even liberals use it. Just make the feminist link is all, tie him in with the NOW crowd and on abortion legislation he's keeping it psycho. As it stands now conservatives have too many reasons to stay home. Cojones, grow a pair!!

Monday, October 13, 2008

McCain's past ties to abortion clinic bomber

Now that I have your attention. It' s not true of course but imagine if it were! and would the msm even use that all-important adjective tangential to describe his past associations? Now I understand why Bill Moyers has guests on his show saying Obama's past...er...links? to former Weathermen Underground terrorist Bill Ayers is irrelevant, inaccurate and in bad taste for the McCain campaign to point out but everyone seems to be saying it these days like trendy Demochick and FOX News analyst Kirsten Powers. I don't mean talking about the Obama/Ayers matter for three whole hours every day like Hannity does but what I'm not getting is why exactly is Obama's past ties, however tangential, to Ayers that unimportant? and why am I a racist if it's just one of many factors entering into my decision to vote against him? We are in love with Bam, what can I say?

Sunday, October 12, 2008

ASSorted brain farts


a new series, 1st entry:

"Perhaps if Dexter hadn't come along I'd be killing people in my real life instead."
actor C. Michael Hall to BlackBook

really?

Usually after a brain fart the person realizes there was a misfire of two neurons or something and catches it so dunno here, maybe C. Michael doesn't know it was a brain fart instead of being witty. Ever have something like this happen to you? A woman came up to me the other day on my job and asked me a question but for the life of me I don't know what she said even after I asked her to repeat herself. Would it have been rude of me to say "I'm sorry but I don't speak Martian?"

stranded

Saturday, October 11, 2008

It's a vibe thing


A key difference between liberals and conservatives these days is this, conservatives may believe in smaller government but they trust the government more. Libs on the other hand of course believe in much bigger government but they trust it less (e.g. the military) and cons counter this by questioning their patriotism, enter your Asian pitbulls like Michelle Malkin. For your typical right-winger not only is a conspiracy theory a metaphysical impossibility but a sure sign of a mental disorder as well. Most if not all conspiracy theories of the government today come from the fevered precincts of the Left (I'm talking post-John Birch Society here), the most outlandish ones may not be approved of course but they are at least tolerated. When pressed about Spike Lee's charge that the federal government purposely broke those New Orleans levees to drown black people during Katrina a lib's response may as well be "yeah - oh well." If pressed further your average left-winger might explain it as "after Tuskegee all bets are off." So who knows how many coverups there really are even in our own lives? How many of you were adopted but don't know it yet? maybe you were conceived in a deli walk-in box on top of a bucket of Sally Sherman potato salad OR some psycho at work dropped some acid in your Mountain Dew in the lunchroom when you went to use the restroom but you've been seeing a shrink for the last year or so 'cause your head ain't right? They were doing a social experiment at some egghead university and had some hot Latina melonlady flash her tongue piercing at you only to reject you in order to study how men take rejection, Advanced Feminist Studies Room 307. It's not a microchip thing, I simply dub this the UMA Unified Field Theory.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Debate, numero dos


There was a cozy feel to this town hall thing last night and I swear it must have been the camera angle. Mac would be talking, the pudgester walking around the stage punching the air talking to the folk and there in the background with the calm cool demeanor and just the hint of a grin was Bam with one foot resting on the stool holding his mike waiting his turn. Didn't the whole thing remind you of letting your uncle go on and on at some social gathering when he had one too many belts and just letting him talk? ("just let him air himself out, pull the car up"). Then Bam goes to Tom Brokaw the mod "Tom, you're doing a great job btw" but wtf was that? Well he should like the media by now, my God! ya think? I can't listen to Hannity anymore, I mean I'm a conservative and all and will say my piece but I ain't into this whole trench warfare shit. He's definitely in a rut like some weird basement masturbator on a nice day when the rest of the neighborhood kids are out playing stickball. A conservative guy I know said to me the other day he wants to see Bam win just so he can see the look on Hannity and O'Reilly's face the next morning. I'm thinking pinched? pained? distracted? dazed and confused? uncomprehending? it hasn't sunk in yet? Bam had that confident look last night of it's mine and just going through the motions and judging from recent polls he can probably suspend his own campaign for a few days himself if he wished, take his wife and kids to the mall.....

My travelblog


Went up the line yesterday with my friend, on up the Taconic past Carmel NY where your ears pop, hooked up with I-84 W and up Route 9. Fishkill, Wappingers Falls, kind of a rundown town, a touch of ghetto, an element of romantic squalor. People who live here tend to work farther south towards the Westchester area where the wages are higher but live near Poughkeepsie 'cause the real estate is lower. There's a Giggles store here with its generic mind-numbing porn with a heavy bias towards the Japanese creepy stuff ("all actresses 18 or over and under duress"), seems a necessity in a depressed area, kind of in keeping with the theme and oh look, there's a Dairy Queen! don't see many of them around anymore. It was Tawana Brawley who put Wappingers on the map. There's a gourmet supermarket here by the name of Hannaford's, nice place. The main goal here was the Po'town Galleria, an ok mall as far as the mall scene goes but generic just the same with an overabundance of trendy t-shirt stores but I'm looking for practical, I really don't need a set of KISS whiskey shot glasses and a humorous set of mini-rubbers. I used to go fishing alot but now I'm a mallrat. After this we hit the Home Depot in the picturesque town of Carmel, this overall general store is so huge it's like an airport hangar, then back on 84 and on down the line. Now I just love the country but there's something about these pockets of civilization surrounded by the boondocks and these wide expanses of open field and swampland that, how do I put my finger on it? you're surrounded by woods and mountains and the possibility of a Bigfoot or two living up there in them thar hills and when the sun goes down there drops like a curtain a certain existential loneliness like UFOs can land here. A state trooper sits in his car on the divider of the highway, takes a couple sips from his hot cup of joe and a bite out of his cruller, glances up into the starry nighttime sky and goes WTF!?!, is that Colossal Man coming out of the saucer? (bleep-bleep) bb-idaho can relate but dunno, seems everything's generic these days. Caught part of the big debate last night of which I have a few thoughts, I always seem to sleep well after these things.....