Thursday, July 31, 2008

Lame Brain McCain


First it was the mental recession thing and now the spanking new McCain ad comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and posing the question: Obama's "the biggest celebrity in the world but is he ready to lead?" This is an excellent, a superb framing of the issue if coming from a blogger, it's pathetic and a sign of a campaign in disarray coming from a presidential candidate. Let Z or Beth or obob make the colorful analogies about this largely media-driven Cult of Obama, what we need from MacDaddy are details, what differentiates his agenda for the Nation from Obama's? In Z's view this difference ain't exactly a chasm, second question being what kind of advisors does McCain have? It's like dressing a man in the dark turning the light on saying you look fine and off to work you go. So Obama's the biggest celebrity in the world right now, what's this to McCain? Let us bloggers see what ingredients are in the Kool-Aid, you have a campaign to run and leave the driving to us.

Personal faith vs. dogma


I recently visited Patrick M's blog and he was talking about religious and other matters and I made a point with which he agreed and he said for him personal faith is more important than dogma. As they say we're on the same wavelength, the same page. Been Catholic all my life but if you asked me if a person of the Catholic faith is really really really sorry for all the sins he's committed if he doesn't formalize it in an official trip to the confessional will he go to hell for all eternity I'd have to go with a no even though this is in fact what the Church teaches. Rapped about this with a friend at work once and he was raised Catholic too and his 2 cents was that it's a control issue, whatever. On another matter all Christians have been taught that death came into the world after Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree but here's another angle to consider (thinking outside the box is so much more interesting). God allows death so as to ensure that the reign of evil people is limited, not only dictators of course but imagine if you will laboring under the same bad bass for at least 500 years!! In other words suffering has a natural limit and those that cause it are limited as well, all this not so much in quality as in duration. Think of a timeline and invert that popular expression and you come up with "all bad things too must come to an end." The most megalomaniacal tyrant has to wind up with a bad ticker sooner or later. Personal faith vs. dogma, put it this way, I vastly prefer to think. You can worship your Creator on a mountaintop as well as a church, I do both but won't condemn to hell the person who prefers the mountaintop. It's personal.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

My beef with the culture


It's not just that you're checking out at the supermarket and staring you in the face is the upteenth issue of Cosmo telling women how filthy his mind really is, it's not just the Page Six insert in the Sunday New York Post eagerly reporting on how married women hook up for a quickie affair at the office in the middle of the afternoon, it's not just my spam promising me a looksie at the farmgirls, it's not this per se or that per se, what gets me is people who

open up your head and take a dump in it,

other than that swing from the trees people just leave my head out of it. Your cell phone conversation while I'm in line at the bank, don't need to hear it & please don't come to church 15 minutes late and ask me to move over, you stand in the back. If the express line at the checkout says 12 items only don't come with your week's supply of Fancy Feast and act like you didn't know while I have a bag of ice cubes for a boating trip. If you've sat in that nice big cozy butt-numbing chair with your favorite magazine at Barnes & Noble for at least an hour GET UP and let somebody else park their duff there, this ain't your living room.

that's all

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Are the dice loaded?


Many years back I was in the mall and had a hankering for a good movie and so I went in and saw Magnolia. Commuting by bus in those days I sat through most of the movie but had to go and so I recently bought a DVD of this intriguing film and watched it in its entirety. 'Twould be too time-consuming to give a complete plot summary here but there are about four or five vignettes, characters who weave in and out of each other's lives and of particular poignancy is the Jason Robards character. He fell in love with and married his high-school sweetheart but cheated on her every chance he got and abandoned her when she became ill with cancer and her son, played by Tom Cruise, had to take care of her in her pain and last moments. The father makes endeavours to get back with his son towards the end as he's dying himself from brain and lung cancer and just as the son is really letting him have it a literal rainstorm of frogs starts falling from the sky. In the movie the frogs symbolize divine intervention as another frog falls through the skylight of a house and onto the gun of another man who is about to kill himself. OK, so that's the general intro.

The narrator of this wonderful movie makes the point are the events in our lives, particularly those strange and puzzling ones, mere chance, coincidence or is there something more at work here? Are the intricacies that make up the fabric of our lives events of mere random chance? not in the opinion of this narrator he says and so gives examples. Ultimately each character goes through a kind of redemptive purgatory. Reminds me of this physics book I read once when I was young about Einstein and his theories of relativity, I was really into that stuff back then and the space-time continuum was shown as some type of elastic fabric and every bit of matter from the minor to the major planets effected that fabric in some way by creating its own force field, small or great, that effected all the other bodies in the area. So with the events in our lives, the people we interrelate with and events that bring us together in the first place. As Hamlet once said "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew (prepare for) them how we will." The Good Book reminds us a sparrow does not fall but the Father notices so is it all some meaningless play of no import or are the dice loaded?

Friday, July 25, 2008

Pro-choicers and their obsessions


Microsoft founder Bill Gates got wind of NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed global anti-smoking campaign and kicked in a few mil of his own. The idea is to get governments in the developing nations like Africa to adopt a tobacco-control policy. Bloomberg has gone on the record as saying we should use capitalism to effect changes in human behavior such as raising the gas tax to get more people to commute by mass transit. Well besides the fact that unless you've been living in a cave lo these past 40 years you pretty much know smoking is bad for you. We've also come up with some reasonable accomodations like you can't smoke in public places so what more can be done without infringing on people's personal liberty and free choice? For better or for worse people have pretty much made their lifestyle decisions one of which includes smoking. It's also a working theory of mine that many smokers don't care if they die in their early 50's, a kind of quasi-suicidal lifestyle you could say without the religious opprobium and so no amount of global advertising is going to impact the life's a bitch and then you die crowd. Pro-choice is really only pro-choice about one or two issues, yeah that one and the so-called "right to die", we'll throw in hardcore while we're at it too. SUVs, gun rights, home-schooling, school vouchers, the government subsidizing faith-based programs, teaching abstinence in school, teaching intelligent design in the class, creches in the park, smoking of course, what kind of humor we're allowed to laugh at (which is pretty much of the why did the chicken cross the road variety these days) and the parameters of discussable speech on talk radio which shrinks by the day. You might even say conservatives, with the exception of abortion are far more pro-choice on most issues than your average liberal which is not very much at all. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The two Joes

I have a question.

You work in an office with two managers named Joe, one of whom is white and the other one black. You don't quite have a handle on the black guy's last name yet and the phone rings and you pick it up. It's for Joe the African-American. If you say on the intercom "black Joe pick up line 2" is that considered racial? Conversely you can also say at another time "white Joe line 1" OR do you just say "Joe pick up line..." and let them both pick it up?

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Nailing down the definition of autism

Looked this word up recently as you hear so much about it and it goes something like this. I always equated it with some type of learning disorder but apparently there's more, stunted social skills and interaction, most importantly living in a dream world. Now z, being a passionate idealist, has been living in a dream world most of his adult life and proudly so. If you don't want to come along for the ride you're a bit dull and too pragmatic for my tastes, as Mr. Serling used to say "you unlock this door with the key of imagination." Since I started blogging I've always complained that Life should imitate Art more, think the ending to The Graduate, and so since one part of autism is not living in the Real World can you blame them? If the Real World sucks why would you want to live in it? It sure as hell needs something, a poetic script for starters but there was Michael Savage on the radio the other night opining that autistic kids are really "spoiled brats looking for attention." Now my first thought upon hearing anything controversial or provocative is Free Speech baby, don't have to like it but it's what it's all about, it's why McCain fought for our country but anyhow the next night Savage was more calm and explained it all in a more intelligent fashion saying "what would be in it for me going after the autistic?" As a self-professed expert on the vitamin world who's written scores of books he maintains that the power of the Sun, yes evil Old Sol, with its Vitamin D is very important to one's health and could very well be a boon to the autistic community. Now the ancients revered the Sun as a god, for the Egyptians he was Rah, but for most of Modern Man these days he's a demon responsible for causing various maladies at least according to the medical experts. Pale Nation, get that absolute minimum of the Teshman-mandated 8+ hours of catlike rest and Stay Out of the Sun...SAVAGE

Monday, July 21, 2008

Has McCain lost his mojo?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show "Late Edition" on Sunday that Obama being the first African-American nominee of a major party is "great for our country. I do think it says we've come a long way." She said she's made her decision who to vote for but wouldn't reveal the answer and denies rumors that she wants to be Obama's VP. She'd be a great choice though. Picking Hillary would only be a reminder of Obama's traditional liberalism, since he is now under the powerful vortex of Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal Condi is the ONLY way to go. Yes, Hillary is sooooo yesterday she's not even assured of the VP slot anymore, you got the black chick in leather boots who has strode the colossus of the World and who can greatly offset his inexperience in the foreign policy arena. An Obama/Rice administration even has, let's face it, a certain sex appeal for those bored with all things McCain and don't worry, she's pro-choice. Won't even be close, it's Kama-Sutra vs. Straight Missionary after a highball, it's the modern Shakespearian version of Batman as opposed to Adam West and Robin and the Batcave, it's Maroon 5 doing a song with Rihanna, it ROCKS!

These chicks have issues

"I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up 4 wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seat
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires
And maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."

(Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood)

"And don't tell me you're sorry when you're not
Baby when I know you're only sorry you got caught."

(Take A Bow - Rihanna) ~~~btw I always thought this would be a great line a state trooper could use when he pulls you over, he could even sing it~~~

"I learned the hard way
That they all say
Things you want to hear
And my heavy heart sinks
deep down under you and
Your twisted words your help just hurts
You are not what I thought you were
Hello to high and dry."

(Love Song - Sara Bareilles)

I detect a theme here. They really should make this into the Men Suck World Concert Tour of 2008 so I say let the chicks vent. I have to say though I like the Bareilles song, for starters the singer has a very clear voice and you can make out every word without googling lyrics, something I have to do with Fergie and others from time to time. Take it away.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Shades of Gray

From a recent blog of napqueen's at http://www.napqueenspress.blogspot.com/ under "Are Conservatives Stupid? "Liberals can see the gray areas of an issue while conservatives see only black and white and are too stupid (emphasis mine) to see the gray."

Ah yes! I've been patiently waiting for this moment of ultimate clarity. It's the Peter Principle applied to moral philosophy and the result is moral relativism or agnosticism, a marked inability to come to final moral conclusions about things. We've reached our level of incompetence, our Final Placement, we can' t figure out Right from Wrong and we're never to be promoted...and we're happy about it! It's a Cohiba moment.

Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal

A rather potent force in politics, in Life in general and here's how it works. A typical conservative will say something like liberals are pro-abortion or in favor of destroying the unborn. The lib says "oh no that's not us. We're not really for abortion, in fact nobody is, in what universe?" It also works the other way. A typical liberal will say conservatives don' t care at all about the poor and the poor conservative will reply "yeah but we give more." So criticism, especially political criticism, by its very nature exerts a powerful inward pull towards the direction of the position of the critic. So the law of criticism or negative appraisal is for the target to deny the point and then to move gradually towards the critic's stance so all I have to do is make a critical point and look what power I have! Liberals may be from Mars and conservatives from Venus but we take each other's points personally, to heart. This is why Obama has of late made great strides at least towards the political center in his rhetoric, it's all that name-calling in the past that he's a hardcore lib. Of course the exception to Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal are all the left-wing bloggers out there who live in a universe all their own who can't understand one of their own being subject to the same laws of political gravity as the rest of us.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Banks


When you put your hard-earned money in the bank is it really yours? Judging by the historical tragedy of the Great Depression I get the vague and uneasy sense it's really not. This was the great immorality of those depressed years, that many folks lost their lifetime savings and many even killed themselves. This was a crime of huge proportions and yet historians still don't question it and in these economically shaky times it's good to reflect on it. Makes more sense to keep your money in a fireproof safe in the basement. As for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae let 'em go, this Federal Reserve guy Ben Bernanke keeps propping up a bad system.

That Cartoon

The now classic New Yorker cartoon with Obama as some sort of anti-American Muslim and his wife as a Black Panther type, McCain was predictably outraged, "tasteless and offensive", but it would have been nice if he had said:

"You know something folks, I have the intellectual capacity to get it. It is so over the top it is obviously intended as some sort of social satire, a parody of right-wing fears of Obama. In fact let's use this as a watershed moment to get rid of Political Correctness once and for all. This PC regime of ours, it's not why I fought for our country. We're all adults here so grow up! BTW Jesse Jackson can't cut these out because they're made of brass."

Alas!

Friday, July 11, 2008

What the hell is a "mental recession" anyway?


To hear John McCain's economic expert Phil Gramm tell it we brought the blue-funk mood down on ourselves, it's all in your head folks. It ain't the true state of the economy, we just need a Wellbutrin is all. In what parallel universe? maybe Stephen Hawking can explain. Dude, this ain't gonna cut it across blue-collar America, I don't know how you expect to win. So I guess if the Stock Market ever crashes again that'd make it a mental depression, eh?

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The LAW says go digital

So very early next year you'd better have a digital tv or converter box to convert the signals in your old tv to the new digital format otherwise you just might lose everything brother, not only this it's federal law. Now I'm hardly some techno-nerd but I read somewhere it has to do with using up all that "white space" on all those blank channels or something but already the conspiracists are whispering Big Brother will be watching you. Dunno, I'm more into reading again, Chef Ramsay can only do so much bleeping in one whole hour before I start channel-surfing again, I'm still wondering why The View is an important show basic to the Republic and why Oprah can talk about salacious topics that Stern got in trouble over on mainstream radio. As the bumper sticker goes

WHATEVER

Just something to blog about

Obama told a group of people the black father has been AWOL. Jesse Jackson was doing some show and didn't know his mike was still on and said "he talks down to black people. I wanna cut his nuts off." I don't know, sounds pretty gangster.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

I honestly didn't know this

That there are now two, count 'em two, conservatives running in the presidential race. McCain of course and Obama. Obama recently came out for gun rights in D.C., says the ole death penalty can and ought to be used in some restricted but extreme cases (must have boned up on a couple of Dirty Harry DVDs), now says wiretaps without warrants is cool with him so long as there's some kind of Congressional oversight, said something about late-term abortions...let's see what else? That's good to know though and reassuring that no matter how the race turns out we'll have a true conservative in the White House.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Skiing down the slippery slope of gay marriage

The gay marriage deal, it's not so much what they do but the slippery slope. Let this one go and it's bro and sis who wanna get hitched, polygamists, the farmer in the dell.

Modern urban angst. So my friend and I are in this ritzy mall the other day and we're in a very manly Swiss Army type store and I'm just taggin' along, drifting away and then coming back to my pal and so he's paying for something at the counter and the clerk goes to me "you're together, right?" Now two things, I thought of saying something with a pinch, a dash mind you of the old sarcasm as in "no, I'm just following him around" to counter our little urban neuroses in this the age of Jack Jordan or (b) maybe he thought we were a couple ("hey Shaquila, look at them, they're sweet"). Whatever, put it away in the fridge, it'll keep.

Three days without blogging, I feel like there's a squirrel in my head that wants to get out. This weather man, you wake up in the morning and it 's soupy and muggy and just this gray blah sky out there and so you look forward to a day of gliding and sliding. I'd rather be chilling and grilling or waking and baking. So far this summer sucks.

Don't these people ever think of world hunger?


Hey bossman if you're bored I'll buy you a monkey.

TMI ALERT -TMI ALERT - TMI ALERT

Christie, my TMI reading is way off the charts here, it's smokinnnnn'

I'll bet three weeks salary that any future husband of Ms. Brinkley's will not so much as look at an S.I. swimsuit issue.

So you're on your deathbed, you lived a full life, you even scaled Mt. Everest and have a photo album of yetis taken with your digital camera, you had brockwurst and sauerkraut with the pope, Beyonce even left Jay-Z for you, you accidentally stumbled across the cure for cancer but you never masturbated in front of a Webcam. DAMN!!!

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

I'm grateful for the little things

having a good night's rest, a family that helps you, a kindly phrase or gesture, a well-turned gam, finding some spare quarters in some pay phone, a girl who will give you the time of day, going to Wendy's during a lull period and five minutes later it gets busy, parking at a meter with alot of leftover time that somebody didn't use, going north on the parkway when the southbound lane is clogged for some reason, driving during July and August without school buses, going to Barnes & Noble with your magazine and actually finding a nice comfy chair without a duff in it and going through a whole day without skid marks.