I don't watch 'em. The only two movies I saw last year was Inception and Wall Street 2 - Money Never Sleeps. I had this thought though, Italians seem to be the only ethnic group happy with their portrayal in the movies (Jersey Shore doesn't count) and btw I'm not talking about official Italian-American spokesgroups just folks you work with and hang with every day (I had to add this because I know BB is hunting up a link right now). I asked as least three Italians at work how many times they saw The Godfather and they all said so many times they lost count. Goodfellas, another popular flick second only to Marlon Brando, ripe for discussion. All other groups - the Irish don't like it when they're portrayed as drinkers, Puerto Ricans don't like it when they're drug dealers and OF COURSE Muslims don't like it when they're cast as terrorists - the other ethnicities and tribes all have their issues but
The Godfather
the best movie Of All Time hands down and you can bet they own the Trilogy. You don't hear them talk about Citizen Kane for instance or The Maltese Falcon or The Ox-Bow Incident and as one Italian guy I work with noted "every time you watch The Godfather you pick up something new that wasn't there before." That's quite a work of Art. Of course this is just another one of my over-generalizations as Shaw will no doubt point out, maybe it's just the ones I work with and oh, watch what you say about Frank Sinatra. The two mozzarella boys made a delivery to us a few years back and my co-chef said something about Frank Sinatra that was less than glowing and while the boys were busy hustling 'n' bustling, they had to make their rounds they both stopped dead in their tracks and just looked or rather glared at the guy and there was silence in the kitchen. I told him ya gotta watch what you say about the Chairman of the Board. The black guy at work said they don't get offended by gangster flicks because they know it's true. As for the Awards you're free to discuss, I just won't know what you're talking about.
Life may be a tough row to hoe but enjoy the trip anyway or as that wise philosopher Yogi once said when you get to a fork in the road take it. Life is too short to be mean. Don't hate, participate. If you see Life as one big Gravy Train you ain't livin' right. I'm just a squirrel collecting my nuts.
Monday, February 28, 2011
An Oscar thought
Labels:
art,
crime,
drugs,
entertainment,
free speech,
humor,
movies,
music,
political correctness,
race,
religion,
terrorism
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Evolving President
Now if I were a gay man I'd be kind of offended by the President's recent statements that his views on gay marriage have evolved and are evolving but more on that in a minute. Do you want a president who evolves or who has firm convictions? That's not to say that evolving is always a bad thing but how come he doesn't evolve in a more conservative direction? I mean if all bets are on the table and seems to me the AG Eric Holder should at least be defending the DOMA law in court for now as I think it safe to assume most liberals would expect a future Republican president to uphold health-care reform. Now picture yourself a gay man and re gay marriage the president, your president says his views are evolving on the matter maybe even in your direction as seems to be the political consensus now on Obama. Well what do you mean exactly that you are evolving, are we somehow an acquired taste? Is there something distasteful about the whole thing? It took you that long to like us and you're still not there yet? They say Obama is the best friend gays have at the moment but I would think it would be not just social conservatives who would be disturbed by his evolutions of thought:)
Labels:
gay issues,
health care,
law,
politics,
sex/sexuality
Friday, February 25, 2011
Gadhafi, Gaddafi, Khadafy, Qaddafi or Qudaffi?
Of all the nutty things he's said in the past al-Qaeda being behind the uprising in Libya is, shall we say not out of the realm of possibility but only time will tell if we see actual democracies sprouting up in the Middle East or Muslim States. Reagan bombed two of his sons in a tent back in the day. Obama, the Hamlet of foreign policy, hesitates before issuing his statement. Khadaffy's other son Hamid is in charge of the 32nd Brigade and they say they have some state of the art weaponry as compared to the protesters who have found caches of stuff from the Soviet era so the experts say it's kind of a mismatch. Gadhafi goes way back, it'd be like if we still had Idi Amin around, keeping it psycho but doesn't eat folks. It's like a bad sitcom but all I knows is every week I fill up the gas tank it's going up:)
Labels:
africa,
foreign policy,
history,
international news,
Israel/the Middle East,
politics,
religion,
terrorism,
war
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Oh let me guess, the ad is......controversial?
Some black ministers put this up in Soho just a few blocks from a local Planned Parenthood clinic.
"Oh this is the big one. I'm coming to join you Elizabeth! Lamont!"
Here in the Tri-State area it was a BIG story last night and led all the local newscasts, you'd think Glenn Beck just jerked off in public. Moammar who? but anyway your good old-fashioned classic liberal used to get it, that is if abortion is to remain legal by golly we're gonna give you every right to criticize it and you even get a shot at trying to talk women out of it. It's a kind of social agreement if you will that something as ugly as abortion, if we're gonna have it, well the old-fashioned traditional lib you could say was reluctantly pro-choice and, well porn comes to mind for some reason. IF we're gonna have it you have the right to chime in and say how bad it is. Society just needs that moral tension is all otherwise we're just a bunch of pervs running around aborting our kids, Jamal plowing some chick on the sofa with Springer on in the background and YOU get to pay for it...ummm just seems like a no-brainer free speech case to me but now there are calls for the billboard to come down as somehow being offensive to women. NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn says the ad will frighten women about a legal medical procedure, reproductive choices, yada yada so clearly she doesn't get it. I'll keep it brief, it's damn HARD living in New York.
Labels:
feminism,
free speech,
political correctness,
politics,
pornography,
pro-choice,
pro-life,
race,
society,
the media
Friday, February 18, 2011
Liberal diversity of thought on abortion?
Not as I see it. Saty believes overall that conservatives all share the same political opinions basically whereas liberals do not and she believes, actually believes this applies to abortion as well. Well obviously it doesn't because while liberals may wax poetic about our nation's diversity and pluralism their overall conclusion is exactly the same re the practice notwithstanding the occasional oddball like Nat Hentoff. That conclusion is that abortion should remain entirely legal, they wholeheartedly support Roe in other words. Now if you had some libs saying abortion legal only during the first few weeks, others saying maybe 4 or 5 months and still others advocating parental notification laws and others not, IF you had one hearty group of libs saying yeah we're pro-choice but the legal framework behind Roe really sucks and needs to be overturned or at least revisited and another group saying no 'tis fine, these and other finer shades and nuances would indicate liberal diversity of thought on the issue but you lose on this one Saty, oh boy do you lose!
Now if I were a liberal Democratic strategist I would counsel the Left distance themselves from abortion. Push the green issues, labor issues, the rights of dissidents in foreign lands and whatever else floats your boat but to chug away at something that is by its very nature ugly makes no eminent practical political sense to me. It's a creepy brand imo (make that creepy-cubed when you throw in Terri Schiavo). There doesn't seem to be that great a diversity of thought on gun control either or immigration for that matter. I'd go so far as to say that overall liberal and conservative thought tends to be fairly homogeneous over time and that is to be expected since liberals have roughly the same ideals as other liberals and conservatives share generally the same ideals as other conservatives and there's gambling in Vegas. So for Saty to tout liberals as somehow being the Great Thinkers of the Age on what planet?
Have at it. I'm pumped and primed and when it comes to splitting hairs and parsing language I already know your next move. I wasn't going to do an abortion blog so soon but her misguided encomia to modern-day liberalism cannot go unaddressed. BTW when it comes to liberal diversity of thought on abortion I want copious documentation and quotes:)
afterthought: You know here's a weird thought, there actually is more conservative diversity of thought on abortion than liberal diversity of thought on the issue. Conservatives also from what I've been reading in the blogosphere and in organized punditry these days also have differing views on gay marriage, Jonah Goldberg is rather all over the map......hmmmmmm......
Now if I were a liberal Democratic strategist I would counsel the Left distance themselves from abortion. Push the green issues, labor issues, the rights of dissidents in foreign lands and whatever else floats your boat but to chug away at something that is by its very nature ugly makes no eminent practical political sense to me. It's a creepy brand imo (make that creepy-cubed when you throw in Terri Schiavo). There doesn't seem to be that great a diversity of thought on gun control either or immigration for that matter. I'd go so far as to say that overall liberal and conservative thought tends to be fairly homogeneous over time and that is to be expected since liberals have roughly the same ideals as other liberals and conservatives share generally the same ideals as other conservatives and there's gambling in Vegas. So for Saty to tout liberals as somehow being the Great Thinkers of the Age on what planet?
Have at it. I'm pumped and primed and when it comes to splitting hairs and parsing language I already know your next move. I wasn't going to do an abortion blog so soon but her misguided encomia to modern-day liberalism cannot go unaddressed. BTW when it comes to liberal diversity of thought on abortion I want copious documentation and quotes:)
afterthought: You know here's a weird thought, there actually is more conservative diversity of thought on abortion than liberal diversity of thought on the issue. Conservatives also from what I've been reading in the blogosphere and in organized punditry these days also have differing views on gay marriage, Jonah Goldberg is rather all over the map......hmmmmmm......
Labels:
gay issues,
guns/gun control,
immigration,
law,
politics,
pro-choice,
pro-life,
Terri Schiavo
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
President Obama gets slammed for throwing our longtime and Israel's ally Hosni Mubarak under the bus but he would've gotten slammed for not throwing Mubarak under the bus and not siding with the protesters. First Tunisia and Egypt now they're saying the next dominoes to fall will be Yemen, Iran and Libya and the concern here is whether this will augur in a new wave of democracy in the Middle East or the rise of the Islamic fundies. The brutal sexual assault against CBS News correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo, this would be like if the civil rights marchers of the '60s then engaged in hooliganism and thereby tarnished their own mark in History. Even from a pragmatic standpoint WHY would you do this unless of course that's WHO you are?
Mankind at its finest
According to a new book those 33 Chilean miners who were heroically rescued on international tv wanted and got pot, pornography and blowup dolls and thought about eating each other. Actually it is my understanding that the last item was denied as they didn't have enough to go around and the guys would've been fighting over her but be that as it may it's amazing to me that in such a situation where you're staring Death in the face one of your first thoughts is Sex. We'll even forget the reefer here but when I was lost in Clarence Fahnestock State Park here in Putnam County for the better part of a day with no food and water and night fast closing in let's just say my immediate thoughts were not of a sexual nature. Folks who seem to go out of their way to fulfill their own stereotypes, blogged about this a couple times back in the day. The Latino Horndog, when sticking your face in the very Jaws of Death jerk off first.
Sad to see Beth's last political blog but I can understand where she's coming from. I've been away from blogging for all of two days now but I'm a'ight. Tuesday I had off with my friend and couldn't hit a library and yesterday went to work after a bad night's sleep and figured just go home after it's all done. Now I don't know if this was a factor but the night before I had some gin and was browsing through the mammoth history classic The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester who also wrote Death of a President. You've heard the name Krupp of course, well the Krupp dynasty goes back centuries and officially ended with the death of head Alfried Krupp in 1967. Turns out Alfried helped bankroll Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and ran concentration camps himself during WW2 as a form of mass slave labor for his steel/iron/armaments industry which in turn greatly helped Hitler's military thuggery around the world. One concentration camp was expressly for children and in another adults were either severely beaten when they couldn't churn out the work product or else put into this tight little cage which was so horrible many inmates opted for the beatings instead. Now Alfried Krupp was finally convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and his entire assets, holdings and property were confiscated. He was released a few years later by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy who apparently felt bad for one of Europe's leading industrialists if not the leading industrialist of the day. Now the Ole Gray Lady was biased even back then and despite the excellent reportage of one of their women writers they practically buried Alfried's Nuremberg trial which lasted about as long as Adolph Eichmann's but anyway after his release from prison and his livelihood restored back to him he became the leading mover and shaker in the European Common Market. A disturbing, depressing and shocking read but important for the historical record and you might wanna go easy on the gin 'n' tonic here, you won't be sleeping too good. So good luck to Beth but I have a feeling she'll be back and have to say Saty gave me a really good laugh when she said conservatives all hold the same opinions whereas liberals encourage real diversity of thought and I was thinking of all the real liberal diversity of thought over abortion let's say or gun control but I'm gonna have to cap it here:)
Mankind at its finest
According to a new book those 33 Chilean miners who were heroically rescued on international tv wanted and got pot, pornography and blowup dolls and thought about eating each other. Actually it is my understanding that the last item was denied as they didn't have enough to go around and the guys would've been fighting over her but be that as it may it's amazing to me that in such a situation where you're staring Death in the face one of your first thoughts is Sex. We'll even forget the reefer here but when I was lost in Clarence Fahnestock State Park here in Putnam County for the better part of a day with no food and water and night fast closing in let's just say my immediate thoughts were not of a sexual nature. Folks who seem to go out of their way to fulfill their own stereotypes, blogged about this a couple times back in the day. The Latino Horndog, when sticking your face in the very Jaws of Death jerk off first.
Sad to see Beth's last political blog but I can understand where she's coming from. I've been away from blogging for all of two days now but I'm a'ight. Tuesday I had off with my friend and couldn't hit a library and yesterday went to work after a bad night's sleep and figured just go home after it's all done. Now I don't know if this was a factor but the night before I had some gin and was browsing through the mammoth history classic The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester who also wrote Death of a President. You've heard the name Krupp of course, well the Krupp dynasty goes back centuries and officially ended with the death of head Alfried Krupp in 1967. Turns out Alfried helped bankroll Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and ran concentration camps himself during WW2 as a form of mass slave labor for his steel/iron/armaments industry which in turn greatly helped Hitler's military thuggery around the world. One concentration camp was expressly for children and in another adults were either severely beaten when they couldn't churn out the work product or else put into this tight little cage which was so horrible many inmates opted for the beatings instead. Now Alfried Krupp was finally convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and his entire assets, holdings and property were confiscated. He was released a few years later by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy who apparently felt bad for one of Europe's leading industrialists if not the leading industrialist of the day. Now the Ole Gray Lady was biased even back then and despite the excellent reportage of one of their women writers they practically buried Alfried's Nuremberg trial which lasted about as long as Adolph Eichmann's but anyway after his release from prison and his livelihood restored back to him he became the leading mover and shaker in the European Common Market. A disturbing, depressing and shocking read but important for the historical record and you might wanna go easy on the gin 'n' tonic here, you won't be sleeping too good. So good luck to Beth but I have a feeling she'll be back and have to say Saty gave me a really good laugh when she said conservatives all hold the same opinions whereas liberals encourage real diversity of thought and I was thinking of all the real liberal diversity of thought over abortion let's say or gun control but I'm gonna have to cap it here:)
Monday, February 14, 2011
cultural notes
Politicians masturbate your mind. They're shaking your hand with one hand and jerking you off with the other.
New York City is violently weird.
Had a job interview once and the manager brought me over to the department head and I catch his eyes darting up and down constantly, not side to side but up and down. Kind of bothered me so I asked my friend about it and he said he has an opinion of you.
Back in the day Britney Spears was an innocent whore, now Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian are. They have that perfect blend of the wholesomeness and whorishness thing going then you got your touch-me-nots like Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks and you have some people in your day to day who just have a touch of I don't want to help you. Priests, lawyers, unions -- you go to them with a problem and they have a retarded clown look on their face like I can't help you.
Only watched the first half hour of the Grammys last night to catch Gaga's performance of her latest, kind of a tranny song but with a good melody going. My friend watched a movie once, forget the name of it but one character was a tranny and he didn't know it right away but he says they have a kind of weird beauty. So Gaga includes one line about "the religion of the insecure" but she's insecure about the whole being born in Yonkers thing where the nation's first sex-change operation was performed on Ludlow Street. Go figure.
Does anyone watch 60 Minutes anymore? They've tried to make it more trendy and sexy by getting rid of the fossils but occasionally I still watch it but I change the channel whenever Andy Rooney comes on.
Brother-in-law and I used to go fishing down the Hudson and whenever the occasional rubber would wash ahore with the tide he'd call 'em Coney Island Whites. He lost alot of weight once and a guy asked him what diet he was on and he said Don't Eat. We were driving around Carmel NY once in pursuit of some fine ice fishing and he has his window rolled down halfway and there was a midget on the sidewalk and he tells me loud enough so he could hear "hey look at the midget!!" There goes five years of intensive psychotherapy for the small guy to successfully reintegrate back into Society down the drain.
I'm not afraid of dead people, I'm afraid of live people.
It's a great life if you don't weaken:)
New York City is violently weird.
Had a job interview once and the manager brought me over to the department head and I catch his eyes darting up and down constantly, not side to side but up and down. Kind of bothered me so I asked my friend about it and he said he has an opinion of you.
Back in the day Britney Spears was an innocent whore, now Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian are. They have that perfect blend of the wholesomeness and whorishness thing going then you got your touch-me-nots like Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks and you have some people in your day to day who just have a touch of I don't want to help you. Priests, lawyers, unions -- you go to them with a problem and they have a retarded clown look on their face like I can't help you.
Only watched the first half hour of the Grammys last night to catch Gaga's performance of her latest, kind of a tranny song but with a good melody going. My friend watched a movie once, forget the name of it but one character was a tranny and he didn't know it right away but he says they have a kind of weird beauty. So Gaga includes one line about "the religion of the insecure" but she's insecure about the whole being born in Yonkers thing where the nation's first sex-change operation was performed on Ludlow Street. Go figure.
Does anyone watch 60 Minutes anymore? They've tried to make it more trendy and sexy by getting rid of the fossils but occasionally I still watch it but I change the channel whenever Andy Rooney comes on.
Brother-in-law and I used to go fishing down the Hudson and whenever the occasional rubber would wash ahore with the tide he'd call 'em Coney Island Whites. He lost alot of weight once and a guy asked him what diet he was on and he said Don't Eat. We were driving around Carmel NY once in pursuit of some fine ice fishing and he has his window rolled down halfway and there was a midget on the sidewalk and he tells me loud enough so he could hear "hey look at the midget!!" There goes five years of intensive psychotherapy for the small guy to successfully reintegrate back into Society down the drain.
I'm not afraid of dead people, I'm afraid of live people.
It's a great life if you don't weaken:)
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celebrities,
entertainment,
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movies,
music,
politics,
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Saturday, February 12, 2011
This has to be a joyous occasion
Occasionally you'll hear or know of a person who is actually underweight, maybe even very underweight and their goal is actually to gain weight as per doctor's orders. I am thinking of Michael Douglas who after all his chemo he's been through is severely under his ideal weight and is happily working on getting it back. Now this is really COOL that you are now officially sanctioned to pig out,
"pass me more bread please, and oh the butter"
if only for a brief period of time, a few weeks, a couple months like you just had a hearty meal and couple hours later you go oh let me hit a McDonald's. A Nirvanic window of opportunity, a quirk in the normal flow of Life. Enjoy!!!
Scales are weird. You'll have one day when you did everything exceptionally right. You really put in the exercise that day, not only that you ate purely for nutritional purposes, no going over, no overeating (it's actually amazing when you do this you see as if in stark relief how everyone else engages in totally unnecessary eating throughout the day) and so you do all this and step on the scale at night and you actually, what is that? gained a couple of pounds?!? Now here's the other thing and doctors never explain it, when they talk about your ideal weight should you weigh say X amount of pounds even after having a decent meal or what exactly is the definition here? The thing with losing the weight is maintaining your weight and you always, but always sense a little creepup. Had a nice cheesecake slice at work the other day, pondered it but said what the hell and so wouldn't you know it and this was at night and into the next day too probably plussed another pound. I don't obsess over it but I can see why this is such a frustrating area for so many people. Then there's the Inversion of Values by people who resent you for some reason like the guy delivering the meats yesterday who says to me "oh you lost weight, was it deliberate?" I like somebody who
Gets to the Point,
I can dig it but no dude I didn't put some bad dick in my mouth or finished off my round of chemo/radiation. So what part of "my weight was related to some blood pressure issues and so I decided to finally address that" don't you understand? People act like this dieting thing is some type of vast Mystery for the Ages but it's really all about discipline and since so many people fail at that, in fact the failure's expected that somebody who actually sticks to the Program is outside-the-mainstream I guess but talk about beating a subject to death! The horse wants to be buried already. Guy at work, I guess he's trying to lose the weight and so he always asks for Weight Watchers bread to be used on his sandwich every day but imo he got it all wrong. It ain't that, he just needs to get his boots on and climb up Mt. Spitzenberg in the middle of this wonderful winter we're having, that'd be a 545' summit in the middle of the Peekskill woods here and do this once or maybe twice a week. I guess it's easier to go with the special bread than the North Face and the frozen snot though:)
"pass me more bread please, and oh the butter"
if only for a brief period of time, a few weeks, a couple months like you just had a hearty meal and couple hours later you go oh let me hit a McDonald's. A Nirvanic window of opportunity, a quirk in the normal flow of Life. Enjoy!!!
Scales are weird. You'll have one day when you did everything exceptionally right. You really put in the exercise that day, not only that you ate purely for nutritional purposes, no going over, no overeating (it's actually amazing when you do this you see as if in stark relief how everyone else engages in totally unnecessary eating throughout the day) and so you do all this and step on the scale at night and you actually, what is that? gained a couple of pounds?!? Now here's the other thing and doctors never explain it, when they talk about your ideal weight should you weigh say X amount of pounds even after having a decent meal or what exactly is the definition here? The thing with losing the weight is maintaining your weight and you always, but always sense a little creepup. Had a nice cheesecake slice at work the other day, pondered it but said what the hell and so wouldn't you know it and this was at night and into the next day too probably plussed another pound. I don't obsess over it but I can see why this is such a frustrating area for so many people. Then there's the Inversion of Values by people who resent you for some reason like the guy delivering the meats yesterday who says to me "oh you lost weight, was it deliberate?" I like somebody who
Gets to the Point,
I can dig it but no dude I didn't put some bad dick in my mouth or finished off my round of chemo/radiation. So what part of "my weight was related to some blood pressure issues and so I decided to finally address that" don't you understand? People act like this dieting thing is some type of vast Mystery for the Ages but it's really all about discipline and since so many people fail at that, in fact the failure's expected that somebody who actually sticks to the Program is outside-the-mainstream I guess but talk about beating a subject to death! The horse wants to be buried already. Guy at work, I guess he's trying to lose the weight and so he always asks for Weight Watchers bread to be used on his sandwich every day but imo he got it all wrong. It ain't that, he just needs to get his boots on and climb up Mt. Spitzenberg in the middle of this wonderful winter we're having, that'd be a 545' summit in the middle of the Peekskill woods here and do this once or maybe twice a week. I guess it's easier to go with the special bread than the North Face and the frozen snot though:)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
travelblogging
Did my 3 mile walk on the South County Trail from Farragut in Hastings-on-the-Hudson to Lawrence Street in Ardsley, not an easy trek by any stretch due to the snow-and-ice but the trick now is to maintain my ideal weight, that'd be 200 for those folks at work wildly entertaining notions of some type of weird ABC Afterschool Special eating disorder. Of course some dog or creature, maybe it was a Sasquatch left quite a movement there right in the middle of the path and so I did my thing and headed on up the line and stopped at the Brewster Rest Area on 684 for a kind of preemptive piss before hitting the FYE store next to the Danbury Fair Mall in CT to search for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (is part of your midlife crisis reverting back to your childhood?). The Brewster Rest Area along with the Bedford Rest Area going south, both notorious gay hangouts if there were a Frommer's Guide to such a thing. I never got this and I put it into the whole category of Port-o-San Sex, whatever you're into you'd think personal hygiene is the 1st order of the day. I mean semen, piss, blood, feces, formaldehyde, I'm not getting it. Now FYE stores around here seem to be going extinct, the one in the Palisades Mall just closed down so I wanted to get there in time but of course they didn't have the flick but they did have Jess Franco's cult classic Erotic Rites of a Virgin so I read it briefly and put it back, passed the omnipresent Justin Bieber poster you come across these days (there's a guy who's gonna OD some day with a whore in a back alley) and headed on up to the Borders bookstore on Federal Road right across the street from Stew Leonard's down the road from
Widow Brown's Cafe. That there is a very interesting title for an eatery but as expected Borders didn't have the Ray Harryhausen classic either so hopped on I-84 and drove West towards the historic hamlet of Carmel (historic for some Revolutionary Sybil Ludington chick is my guess) and stopped at the Kohl's on Rte. 312 looking for some men's pajamas which OF COURSE they didn't have but they do have some cool loungepants if you're of the Hef set (don't worry, when Hef finally hits the hay I got an obit all lined up). Not that long ago, a couple of years in fact I was driving with my friend in this area with its miles of freshwater reservoirs and he spotted a bald eagle overhead at the intersection of 312 and 6. The yearly Eaglefest here started on Feb. 4 at Croton Point Park and they say a good spot to see 'em is in Montrose on 9A but I usually just head on up to the Bear Mountain lookout where I park the car with my Bushnells. Just up 9D here is a place called Little Stony Point Park with its cool paths down by the River and abandoned mine shafts, kind of creepy on a nice sunny day in a retro 70's sci-fi way and in Cold Spring you have Whistlin' Willie's Grill (why do I have the image of some Scatman Crothers dude in white garb cleaning up the tables after a bustling night?). Troutfishing many many years ago on a stream that crosses Rte. 6 in Baldwin Place heading towards Mahopac and could have sworn I saw a cougar's face on the opposite side of the stream looking at me, didn't know what to make of it at the time since cougars are supposed to be extinct in New York State...Oh God I just love talking about shit I know!:)
Widow Brown's Cafe. That there is a very interesting title for an eatery but as expected Borders didn't have the Ray Harryhausen classic either so hopped on I-84 and drove West towards the historic hamlet of Carmel (historic for some Revolutionary Sybil Ludington chick is my guess) and stopped at the Kohl's on Rte. 312 looking for some men's pajamas which OF COURSE they didn't have but they do have some cool loungepants if you're of the Hef set (don't worry, when Hef finally hits the hay I got an obit all lined up). Not that long ago, a couple of years in fact I was driving with my friend in this area with its miles of freshwater reservoirs and he spotted a bald eagle overhead at the intersection of 312 and 6. The yearly Eaglefest here started on Feb. 4 at Croton Point Park and they say a good spot to see 'em is in Montrose on 9A but I usually just head on up to the Bear Mountain lookout where I park the car with my Bushnells. Just up 9D here is a place called Little Stony Point Park with its cool paths down by the River and abandoned mine shafts, kind of creepy on a nice sunny day in a retro 70's sci-fi way and in Cold Spring you have Whistlin' Willie's Grill (why do I have the image of some Scatman Crothers dude in white garb cleaning up the tables after a bustling night?). Troutfishing many many years ago on a stream that crosses Rte. 6 in Baldwin Place heading towards Mahopac and could have sworn I saw a cougar's face on the opposite side of the stream looking at me, didn't know what to make of it at the time since cougars are supposed to be extinct in New York State...Oh God I just love talking about shit I know!:)
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humor,
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Monday, February 07, 2011
Overtime vs. Leisure Time
This constantly amazes me, that most folks seem to see the opportunity for increased overtime as somehow being more important or desireable than more leisure time. Had to leave on time yesterday and the next guy wasn't in yet but because it was slow I said to the older gentleman I was working with I'm goin' and he said but you could get some overtime in. Now here's a very partial list of what the average person has to do on any given day: haircut, oil change, laundry, renew driver's license, visit sick relative in hospital, pick somebody up at the airport, food shopping, exercising, reading, doctor's app't, blogging, cultivating friendships.... I ain't getting it but the biggest practical reason why I now philosophically opt for the leisure time over the OT is the IRS. Make enough overtime and you'll be pushing yourself into a higher tax bracket and will probably owe the IRS some dough, they'll see you as wealthy. Now if we got rid of the income tax entirely then the philosophical argument for OT over leisure time becomes more compelling but until then you're just a bunch of fools folks.
Charlie Sheen
Martin must be so proud,
& finally a Philosophical Question
Ever have a day at work where something can be right in front of you and you ask for help and somebody says over there by the ... and you still can't find it so I jokingly says to the guy yesterday don't yell at me because I'm a little retarded. Now this is not meant in a disparaging way but if you know you're retarded then you can't be retarded just like if you know you're insane you can't really be insane or if you know you have the Alzheimer's then you really don't have it. Are the people under these conditions always unaware of their situation? It's like this is rare but a few times I had a dream and while dreaming I knew I was dreaming. Since this is becoming a little Convoluted
Oh hell let's throw in a Political Point too
Re the proper role of Government in our lives what with racial and economic disparities, the lack of educational opportunities and health care and all the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune my conclusion is this: Saty's overall philosophy resonates with me, she taps home but Beth is right on the merits. I think they're both basically saying the same thing that we should lend a hand to those in need, to help those less fortunate than ourselves but Saty sees the government as a prime mechanism here and Beth sees it instead as I do as a whole Biblical/Christian mandate kind of thing whereas Ayn Rand resolved the whole thorny philosophical dilemma with Fuck Charity. So soapie what you have done to give back??? Good day folks!
Charlie Sheen
Martin must be so proud,
& finally a Philosophical Question
Ever have a day at work where something can be right in front of you and you ask for help and somebody says over there by the ... and you still can't find it so I jokingly says to the guy yesterday don't yell at me because I'm a little retarded. Now this is not meant in a disparaging way but if you know you're retarded then you can't be retarded just like if you know you're insane you can't really be insane or if you know you have the Alzheimer's then you really don't have it. Are the people under these conditions always unaware of their situation? It's like this is rare but a few times I had a dream and while dreaming I knew I was dreaming. Since this is becoming a little Convoluted
Oh hell let's throw in a Political Point too
Re the proper role of Government in our lives what with racial and economic disparities, the lack of educational opportunities and health care and all the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune my conclusion is this: Saty's overall philosophy resonates with me, she taps home but Beth is right on the merits. I think they're both basically saying the same thing that we should lend a hand to those in need, to help those less fortunate than ourselves but Saty sees the government as a prime mechanism here and Beth sees it instead as I do as a whole Biblical/Christian mandate kind of thing whereas Ayn Rand resolved the whole thorny philosophical dilemma with Fuck Charity. So soapie what you have done to give back??? Good day folks!
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Thursday, February 03, 2011
Reflections on the current blogging season
Blogging is definitely unpredictable and it's like when you have a day off and the sun is shining and everything twinkles and you head on out and the day doesn't go quite the way you planned. It wasn't wasted by any stretch but you're left perplexed. I sometimes get the sense at times that others disagree on principle, just to disagree and all of us it seems to me treat mere opinions, POVs which we all have as established facts, metaphysical certitudes (e.g. the global warming crowd) but the other thing is it's not just that we as a nation are polarized between Right and Left, conservatism itself is polarized. Most modern conservatives seem perilously close to espousing a modern Work State, at least that's my take judging from some recent discussions here. I work with a self-avowed conservative Republican co-mgr. type, if I were a liberal I'd probably call him a house nigger and he makes fun of any worker who doesn't report to work because of current weather conditions, in fact it's reflexive on his part and this is only one small symptom of what I mean, the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Not that long ago, it seems like just yesterday in fact conservative pundits were all calling the French a bunch of slackers for enjoying their traditional 35-hour workweek and got all gaga for Sarko because he promised, ahem certain "reforms" (to work longer). What care we what the French are doing? It's not who I am as a conservative, God knows there's more to Life, much more than simply punching in every day and (didn't know how to word this so I left this part out) but you'll have to take this up with the pro-boss wing of my party. There are also fellow bloggers out there, kindred spirits usually but who are entirely unpredictable. If for example I posted a blog about how I was out driving today reasonably and safely imo and got a traffic ticket for a moving violation to fulfill some (always fictitious) quota system some conservative commenter out there would post that I in fact deserved the ticket (w/o knowing all the facts). Actually this didn't happen and even if it did I don't think I would blog about it but I use it to illustrate a point, you never know what to expect and that's cool too but it just throws me off my game a bit. Anyway if you want to boil it down our political disagreements in their distilled form (4X distilled if you want) amount to the proper Role of Gov't in our lives and range from soapie's anarcho/libertarianism to Patrick M's softer shades of libertarianism mixed with other things (his erotica to soapie's hardcore, probably a blip on Napolitano's radar screen by now) to those of us of the lesser-guv'ment bent but with social concerns (Beth and I) to Saty's calls for constant intervention to right Life's wrongs and this includes the Earth which is a living personality, what have you done for Her lately?? (OK whom did I piss off today?). I'm in a bit of a blue-funker the last few days but it's all good. I'm in an open thread kind of mood today so have at it, there's some Entenmann's crumb donuts over there and some Yodels on top of the breadbox and I'll get the coffee rockin':)
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