Thoughts on the gun control debate (yet again)

It's amazing how fast time is going. Looking over the posting date of my last post I hadn't realized so much time had elapsed before coming up with a new idea. Sorry to my handful of fans. Liberals act like if they were in charge tragedies like the recent newsroom shooting in Maryland wouldn't have happened. Then I'm reading some hyperventilating political/social commentators extrapolating from one weird individual living in his own self-contained weird mental universe that there's some kind of male rage/war against Women. Well as one conservative blogger here said some time ago back in the day re Newtown sometimes bizarre and tragic things happen and there's almost nothing we could have done about it, nothing that could have prevented it so the whole gun control debate becomes a kind of cosmetic discussion imo. Then there's this thing about some revenge porn law that seems to have gotten stuck in the New York State Legislature that won't pass and folks are blaming Google. I'm no attorney but isn't it already illegal to post say nude pictures of myself without my consent on the Web not that you'd want to see? In our zeal to pass new laws based on the latest tragic social circumstance we should first check what's already on the books that maybe need to be better enforced. If you're having sex maybe don't leave the smartphone out? Here's the problem: reality itself is weird and bizarre and tragic things happen, sometimes rarely and in the case of guns for some reason in cycles. There are bizarre and odd individuals walking amongst us right now. All I can say and offer is don't make eye contact:)

It's not that I don't care about the Hillary e-mail scandal, it's that I don't care

Conservative commentators are sure riled up about this one and it doesn't even involve Sex. I have the barest skeleton knowledge of the scandal and that's because, well the title says it. For me it's like a scandal totally revolving around some technical violation like a worker not washing his hands after he comes out of the stall. Now there are still people who won't vote for Hillary Clinton because they feel the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered but at least this is more interesting subject matter. Look I watch quite a few of them true-crime shows like Snapped on the Escape channel and cops today are pretty sophisticated in these matters. A few of them are quite good at sniffing out the vaguest, the most subtle wisp of a major crime what with advanced forensics and all and believe me if there was really something there we'd hear about it. A couple conservative commentators are focused on Russell Brand's porn addiction and his new anti-porn stance (now there's an old subject I thought was kinda settled) but conservative commentary in general has been well-dispersed in its topics over the years. Instead of focusing on the things that really matter you'll get one that really goes off on a tangent, say Maggie Gallagher who starts ruminating about all things marriage and why this demographic group that never married is gonna be more unhappy and...it's just gets tiresome and all like this is gonna defeat ISIS. OK so about the scandal tell me why I should care.

When dorks become dangerous

Bored with masturbation and stalking the girl next door they've turned to malicious code. Turns out my techno-problem is fairly common and yahoo'ed it yesterday. Others say too they can't sign into their blogs from their smartphone apps even though they're using such premium browsers like Google Chrome and Opera. Last night I had a fairly long web session on my phone, wasted more than a few minutes but judging from the various sites I visited I came to the fairly strong conclusion we're in the middle of a kind of minor cyberattack. I mean you're trying to download a Kasperskey antivirus scanner but what gets downloaded instead is Spicy Games, c'mon. Tech support forums, imo most don't help the user to resolve his or her particular problem. It's usually the same old pat techno-answers probably by some guy in Rangoon (clear cookies, cache or go to Settings and get a signed browser, works better) and in the end the gadget-user still has the problem. It's like with tinnitus, most mainstream doctors will tell you there's about four or five main things that cause it only it doesn't explain your tinnitus. So whether it's the doctor who can't just admit ignorance and bafflement or one of them techno-advisors it's always our analysis of the problem HAS TO be right, try it again. So the moral of the story is there are alot of sucky sites out there only Healthcare.gov is the most prominent and gets the most press. Blame those Chechen contractors if you like.

Have YouTube and Twitter gotten out of control?

Al-Shabab the Somali offshoot of al-Qaeda has or had an actual, authentic and official Twitter feed and boasted online of the horrific massacre they pulled off at the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Now one of the most viral videos out there is the one on YouTube involving the hordes of psycho motorcyclists on the West Side Highway in NYC and the only way it got on YouTube was one of the moto-psychos was wearing a helmet cam at the time and recorded the whole thing from before up to and including the motorist who ran over one of his fellow bikers and then the biker gang chasing him down for miles and beating him up in front of his wife and young daughter. Facebook isn't much better with gangbangers having profiles and regularly boasting of their day-to-day and I got to thinking these three major and popular sites have TOS sections that you have to agree to when you first sign up right? A key section usually involves not breaking the laws and not inciting to violence and threatening and harassing people and similar caveats no? From terrorists to common thugs and garden-variety criminals it seems everyone has a site or linkup or feed these days and they're so teched up to the gills that even during the commission of their diverse crimes and atrocities and general social mayhem one of the things foremost on their minds seems to be going online later. Is the omnipresence of Technology doing something to the Brain? or to put it another way does the mixture of criminals and technology make things worse? call it Techno-Porn:)

Anthony Weiner aka "Carlos Danger"

It's a real Weiner roast here in NYC with three of the current candidates for Mayor telling him to as the Daily News put it BEAT IT (that's so clever).  Then there's former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer running for Comptroller and if I had to choose between the lesser of two pervs I'd go with Weiner since with Weiner it's just the compulsive addictive sexting but with Spitz in addition to the 'hos you also got steamrolling over political enemies, overinflating charges against Wall Street etc. or maybe that was just his way of celebrating.  I'm actually not joining the swelling Chorus telling Weiner to drop out of the Mayor's race and the way I see it he actually didn't have sex with anyone.  It'd be like going to Hell over masturbation, looking at dirty pictures, subscribing to Penthouse.  Clinton had actual sex in the Oval Office while President and Dems pretty much backed him to the hilt whereas more and more Dems are telling Weiner to drop off the radar so what gives?  I mean the guy never even got a handjob.  It is shocking though that these latest sexting revelations are about new sexts after Weiner's resignation from Congress in 2011 even a year later, maybe he was depressed or as Devo has said "when a problem comes along you must whip it."  His most recent sexting partner though, this 20-something woman/progressive activist seemed pretty willing at first at least from what I've read, what'd she re-envirginate herself? so aside from being a problem for his marriage it doesn't seem to be a crime.  Huma Abedin, I kinda liked it that she spoke at that press conference the other day, broke the mold and speaking as a conservative don't we have too many divorces in this country anyway?  Aren't they being more faithful to their marriage vows than, oh I don't know Rush Limbaugh?  According to the most recent polling data half of NYC voters seem willing to give Weiner a pass and he is leading or at the top of all the polls and I think this has to do with they do similar stuff too, it's a different age after all.  I mean how do you get on Weiner's case when you're downloading porn yourself?  You know I was reading the other day about Blogger's Content Policy and this really surprised me but Blogger allows you to use sexually explicit content in your blog if you so wish but they'd appreciate it if you'd label it Adult.  I just hope Weiner doesn't take up blogging.  

St. Francis with an iPad

The Backlash Against Technology -- Lately in conversating with some old-timers there seems to be an anti-technology feel out there, a kind of anti-modernist vibe.  It irritates me at first, can't these codgers get it that you can't have the '50s forever but then I ponder for awhile and there's a point to be had also.  Some are fond of saying we were better off before the TV but as a device the TV is neither good nor bad.  It's not the TV's fault that most of what's on is pure crap, it's not the apparatus that's evil.  Texting and driving and cyberbullying, it's not the technology that is good or evil in itself it's how you use it.  Just 'cause your relatives or friends come over with their iPads and smartphones and start using them instead of honing their social skills well that's just incivility plain and simple and in the right hands tablets and Androids are wonderful devices.  There's Internet porn and bomb-making recipes on the 'Net of course but for every negative on the Web I can point to a positive, it's a yin/yang thing.  I recently learned some online groin pull/sciatica stretching exercises that I'm convinced fast-tracked my road to recovery so for every old-timer who says technology, the Web/smartphones, whatever is not good for your mind I would point out the ability to increase knowledge in a good way is right now at your fingertips.  I also had this thought today, I think we're in for another bubble bursting down the road, the smartphone bubble.  Half the population has these gizmos it seems and it no longer seems to depend if you've been wise with your money throughout your life and have made responsible decisions to allow you the finer luxuries.  I had to wait for my prescription yesterday in a lower-income part of Yonkers and you get to observing.  You got teens coming out of rather seedy apartment complexes with smartphones, not cells but smartphones and I'm thinking besides the cost of the device itself there's coverage right so how can these young'ens afford it?  I think something has to give down the road, it's natural economics but for now at least everyone's a technodude.  The new Pope even has an iPad and the other day I saw a photo in Catholic New York of some prelate showing him how to use the new Vatican app.  Point in closing -- if the dark side of Technology bothers you so much make the decision to use it for Good.

A kind of an afterthought on the Petraeus scandal

It kind of bothers me that the FBI spent so much time on this.  Yeah that FBI the one that is supposed to fight crime and domestic terror.  It'd be like Batman going after the Mayor's mistress instead of doing battle with the Joker.  Some women simply like men in uniform, think Cop Sex.   I think the interesting thing with Obama is that his right-wing enemies and they are legion can't even seem to approach the merest whiff of an aroma of a sex scandal and don't think they haven't been trying.  I think Obama has deliberately lived his life according to those porn disclaimers re safe sex - "we highly recommend the Surgeon General's accepted guidelines of monogamy and/or abstinence or at a minimum..."  Bill Clinton being warm-blooded got caught up in Monicagate but I think Obama being so intellectual is beyond even this and knows well the practical importance of living a chaste life the better to push through liberalism without the usual distractions.  Since time immemorial women have destroyed powerful men and all their medals and honors and accolades go out the window.  Oh I know I wasn't gonna do a Petraeus blog but I somehow feel less safe with the FBI devoting such massive amounts of manpower to basically a noncrime, I mean was a law broken? but then again it's something J. Edgar Hoover would have done:)

The Obama Platform is what exactly?

I mean when things finally get down and dirty between him and Mr. Romney what is it shaping up to be or to put it another way why is it self-evident we should reelect the man? He can't run on the strength of his first term because there wasn't any at least that's not the word that comes to mind I'm sure even among his most ardent supporters. His main achievement would seem to be health-care reform and a majority of Americans are hardly behind him on that one so should he push it even if the SCOTUS strikes him down? He can always trot out of course the OBL Card but even here that video the news networks keep showing of bin Laden talking and the other one of him watching the boob tube wearing a wool cap looks like some B-actor out of a bad spoof (he found time to watch porn too?), too SNLish to have the gravitas of a world-master terrorist at work and maybe if I were the networks I'd keep it in the can. There's Obama's race to consider naturally and the nostalgia born from the historic and emotional moment of this country finally electing the first black president hasn't worn off and this is understandable, it was a good moment historically and it's like you want Tiger Woods back in the game. You can make the case that he played a major role in Khadafy's demise but even here he has been pretty much laid back on Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad. I believe at last count the death toll there of the citizenry stands like 9,000 or something so maybe when it reaches 10,000 he'll get off his duff. Taken as a whole, snowballing it altogether is all this reason enough for those who voted for him the first time to do so again? Of course for Shaw et al. it's a no-brainer but why would you not have a Democratic primary season especially when your main guy is so weak? My Dad who served in the Navy during WW2 and is as rock-ribbed conservative as they come said to me one day Hillary would've been a far better president than Obama. All you liberals out there make the case here because I'm not getting this one, it's way over my head:)

Why the social issues ARE important

I'm getting the distinct impression from recent comments from BB, Dave Miller and Shaw that President Obama should not be judged on the poor state of the economy. That's just my take but if we are not to judge a president on the economy because there are certain economic forces beyond the control of his Administration, a kind of theory of economic fatalism if you will then by this standard Jimmy Carter was a great president. BTW I think Saty and Shaw keep coming back here because they like the challenge and even when Saty was recently seriously ill and had to rest in the living room before making her way to the kitchen feebly clutching the drawer and knocking all the silverware over while sucking on a bag of ice chips she still found the time to visit the site. OK so all we hear about these days, the new conventional political wisdom even among many conservatives is take the social issues totally off the table so as to better focus on the economic theme which seems to be the only thing of interest to them. This is certainly BB, Dave Miller's and soapie's position but can anyone tell why this analysis is so dead wrong exactly, way off the mark? Think for a minute, no you still don't get it?...well it's because everyone's narrowly defining the social issues as being only about abortion and gay marriage but oh there's so much more, a real treasure trove of social concerns out there. The very phrase "social issues" has the word social in it, we're a Society right? Drug abuse is a social issue, an important one so is broken homes and families, divorce. Gang violence while largely a law-enforcement issue is also a social issue as is crime in general as read about any 82-year old grandmother killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx. Say a porn store wants to open up shop next to a church and a school well there's your social issue right there and it ain't even related to abortion or gay marriage and if you're a local politician you'll be forced to take a stand no matter how much you may want to talk about the economy and chances are very good you'll come out against the porn shop. How can you NOT discuss the social issues? Obama despite running as a uniter has divided the country more than ever and well maybe because some folks believe the economy is beyond his control anyway he can afford to lay back and throw another log into the fire of the culture wars on things like birth control (been there discussed that). As for soapie's legendary consistency, apparently a part of his sexual charisma for Shaw and Saty that oozes out of his every pore I say you have the right to be inconsistent. As I see it there's a certain stridency to his philosophy which may be off-putting to many readers, it's one worldview his and Ron Paul's and if you don't agree apparently you're part of the same Cosmic Problem the growth of Leviathan and the loss of Liberty. Oh yeah smoking is a social issue too, a biggie. In fact if I listed all the social issues of relevance today it'd take up the whole page and maybe the better part of Page 2 so just wondering why liberals see everything through the prism of abortion and gay marriage. It ain't an evangelical thing you know:)

You see this is the reason the people don't like celebrities

The Most Important Birth Since Christ

There was no room at the inn but they had Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. They took over a whole wing, some folks weren't happy, you know the 99%. Beyonce's mahogany suite with the bulletproof glass which one can expect some minimal anti-paparazzi measures but C'mon! and some guy couldn't even see his twin preemies in the ICU. The NYS Health Dept. investigation into the Matter went the way of the Natalie Wood reprobe, actually that one lasted longer. One hopes the Blessed Child develops some gender-identity issues later on in life and embarrasses the proud parents, a little Chaz Bono action (Sonny hit a tree skiing and couldn't live to share in the Joy) or else becomes a porn star like Laurence Fishburne's daughter but Jay-Z does seem to be really in love with her, it ain't no sham - a Kardashian marriage not. A nursing note: why so many C-Sections?

(lite agitating fare - about 230 calories)

Happy Black Friday!

Let's face it, it's not so much Happy Thanksgiving as you can't wait to go out to Kohl's or Walmart. It's no longer even 4AM on Friday morning but in many cases 10PM after you've just made your turkey sandwich from the day's leftovers. Oh God I am so not a herd mentaliter, did the bulk of my Xmas shopping at a more leisurely and enjoyable pace starting in early November, just a couple more people on the list. Never got the atheists this time of year, even porn shops celebrate Christmas. Ah the joyless crowd. Never forgot the story my mother told and this was many a moon ago when she didn't even know what Black Friday was. My Dad and Mom decided to go to the Danbury Mall, a quite nice ride from the big YO and she figured it's the day after Thanksgiving, folks will be relaxing the day ater recovering from their meals and maybe even a hangover or two so her first reaction was who the hell are these people and the rest is history. SUCKERS!!! all I gotta do is my wrapping and it's done. I hope nobody gets stampeded to death this year but even then it'll probably wind up on some sick website like that poor guy who got pummeled by some teen thugs on the subway with nobody coming to help. Sat seems to feel I'm devoting too much time to Natalie Wood, it's distracting fluff from all the Real Problems and Issues our country and society faces but I say this. Even if we got rid of all the distractions, forgot about the Bieber and K-Dash, say suspended X Factor for a time so we could as a nation give these critical issues our undivided attention wanna know something? They ain't getting solved, there's too much corruption in high places. Just look at the Super Committee and speaking of X Factor Astro somehow feels he's obliged to win otherwise it's just some cosmic conspiracy against young black rappers from Brooklyn. Lakoda Rayne looked cute last night, oh I forgot that's a Distraction. Sorry, gotta go home now and do my recycling:)

A Herman Cain/Kim Kardashian blog

Herman Cain, shades of Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill. Look this is what happens when you're a conservative uppity nigger who thinks for yourself.

Things went downhill ever since Kris Humphries had to sit on that plane next to Ray J, he of the original Kardashian sex tape. Kim comes across as nominally more intelligent than Paris Hilton and somewhat less annoying than J-Lo who loves herself and she even has a line of something at Sears or Macy's. Andrea Peyser of the New York Post calls her a fame whore. I don't get all that worked up about it, for me it's just to pass the time while reading the morning paper. Word on the street is Justin Bieber may have gotten a girl pregnant. He's dipping and Kardashian is back on the market, hey ya never know. You know what gets me about Montel Williams who tokes the medical cannibus on a daily basis is he doesn't look or act like he has MS, bopping around on that infomercial with the juicer and he did do that talk show all those years, didn't look the worse for wear. Despite years and decades of steady medical and scientific advancements you mean to tell me the only thing that can manage your pain is pot? c'mon! I think he's fronting or as they say in England fron-Ting. A word to the Madoffs, next time try jumping:)

The priest shortage

While we're on the subject of faith this topic came up recently in our parish because our parochial vicar was just reassigned upstate and now our pastor is running the parish all by himself basically and saying most of the Masses with only an occasional helping hand and btw the priest who was just sent upstate will be running that parish by himself too which seems to be the trend these days. In the latest bulletin our lone priest/pastor now gave statistics on the priest shortage, only one new priest ordained in the whole Archdiocese of New York in the month of May and he further gave the numbers on how many parishes in Westchester and surrounding counties are now being run by one priest. Suffice to say quite a few in fact but this begs the question as unfair as it may seem to him and others and make no mistake saying that many Masses is hard work but isn't this the marketplace in operation? The vast majority of men do not opt for the celibate lifestyle which is still a requirement for the Catholic priesthood so you can pray for vocations all you want and petition God on a weekly basis but that still won't change the marketplace or the reality. Of course for too many men these days who aren't even priests there is the depressing matter of involuntary celibacy, those existential drought periods of poor gas station porn and carpel-tunnel syndrome but even for these poor souls caught in the orbit of Outer Darkness sex or meeting someone or eventually falling in love is still a goal if not reached in this life then the next. Deliberate celibacy has always struck me as somehow going against Nature but be that as it may my pastor acts like a bunch of us men are supposed to just stop what we're doing after maybe a lengthy period of reflection and spiritual introspection and sign up to be priests. Ain't gonna work that way, there's too strong a pull in the opposite direction. Change the rules and you'll get more priests:)

Once you go black sometimes you go back - Sarah Palin's jungle fever

Joe McGuiness has written a new one, The Rogue, a kind of unauthorized bio of Sarah Palin. Now every book has to have what they call a hook these days to sell, in Barbara Walters' case it was her affair not that I care and so in this case we learn of Sarah Palin's past coke use (presumably we're not talking about the classic American carbonated beverage here) but even bigger is (brace yourself all you racist teabaggers out there, got a chair? sit down)......seems when she was a junior in her college days she had a one-night stand with some 6'10" black basketball player by the name of Glen Rice (he's trending right now as we speak). Now as a husband you don't want to hear this stuff, your spouse's past episodes of high sluttery when they do come out are bad enough but Sarah back then was 5'4" or 5'5" or something and the African-American gentlemen was 6'10" so you know some really freaky stuff went down. Sure that was back in the day but that toxic crap really gets in your psyche I don't care what you say, it's lurking in your mental attic somewhere in some cobwebbed corner with the baseball mitts and the Flexible Flyer (permanently emblazoned images of your beloved churchgoing wife guzzling it down like a milk shake, getting bopped in the head with IT). The other thing is some of today's biggest conservative women moralizers have been yesterday's biggest cat-bitches in heat (e.g. Dr. Laura) so maybe they should be the first to get this stuff out, just sayin' but what I think Mr. McGuiness is doing here and he's known to not like Republicans but he's masturbating the Tea Partier's mind which he sees as most liberals do as lurking in the racist fever swamps, some gap-toothed old red-headed farmer who sneaks into his daughter's room at night telling his wife hey get a load of this, Sarah Palin once fucked some big black buck. He's niggerizing the debate, agitating the political discourse never that high to begin with and maybe somebody should start writing unauthorized biographies of all the unauthorized biographers out there. Start with him, Kitty Kelley......but damn I just thought of something, what if there's a Sex Tape out there? Michele Bachmann dear, I hoped you lived a fairly clean life:)

A kind of closet environmentalist

Yesterday I took my long customary walk from Woodlands Lake in Ardsley, Westchester County NY all the way up to Rte. 119 in Elmsford figuring maybe the beavers moved downstream after all these years. When we were kids my Dad took us to Warehouse Lane in Elmsford off 9A where UPS is and where the Saw Mill River meanders its way through on its eventual destination in the Hudson River and we observed the local beaver population busy at work building their lodges and dams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver). Now there's much more industry here, there's a Sam's Club where the drive-in theater used to be and Masters Department Store has been replaced by a huge multiplex showcasing the latest in Hollywood dreck. Warehouse Lane, home to a huge Coca-Cola plant, FedEx, Conway Freight, Nestle Foods (Poland Spring and Deer Park trucks parked outside), a tire and auto place and San-Mar Laboratories, the Elmsford Animal Shelter and other assorted places of business. Over down 9A a bit by where you get on 287 is a Romantic Depot, an overpriced porn hut. Browser packs, a clown fucking some fat woman or maybe that's Giggles. It kind of melds together in your mind after awhile in one big existential landfill but I mean at least strive for Art. Wendy's, KFC, Grainger's, Rosedale Nurseries more in Hawthorne where the Saw Mill is very picturesque here and quaint like something out of a jigsaw puzzle. If Rush lived here he'd probably think it's all good, a hustling and bustling area, good population and jobs galore but you'd think a beaver population would be special, a kind of nurtured and protected area. Do we have ANY sense of the environment anymore? Does that make me an environmental wacko? maybe in his book but I'm just someone who would like the Dads of today to be able to take their kids there and learn something about Nature, about this special rodent that had been so heavily and tragically decimated back in the day, to see something they don't teach in school anymore because they're too busy learning about the Gay Lifestyle instead. Been meaning to ask btw, Powerwalkers with their weird arm movements, what's that supposed to do for you?

Thoughts on Jaycee Lee Dugard

It was Compelling TV. I wasn't gonna watch all of it but I did, the Diane Sawyer/Primetime Live Special with the first exclusive interview with Jaycee Lee Dugard who in 1991 was kidnapped at the age of 11 somewhere in CA and held captive in a nightmarish world for the next 18 yrs. by the charming Phillip and Nancy Garrido couple. Now during the latter years of her ordeal she had ample opportunity to escape with the two daughters Mr. Garrido helped sire with her so why didn't she??? They were at an amusement park couple of occasions, there was Phillip's new printing company (what Hallmark Cards with a pervy twist?) which gave her access to the Web and the chatter inevitably turns to Stockholm Syndrome or some variant thereof and yet why do so many of us stay in bad jobs, forms of corporate slavery, endless mindgames, manipulative bosses, the alternate reality of the Office, the Hell on Earth that is the 9-5? They say there is a soulmate for everybody and Nancy fell in love with Phillip Garrido while he was serving time in prison for earlier sex crimes. She went to visit an uncle then something must have happened, a romantic spark, the lust on the apple or maybe it was just his eyes, those psychotic baby blues. This husband and wife perv team, this existentially creepy couple, him with his quirks hearing angels' voices and making some contraption to commune with God and her holding the kid down in the backseat of the car, this 1/2 Manson who made her life a living hell yet somehow didn't kill her, fed her and gave her kittens in between molesting her...and yet so many nice men out there who can't seem to find Someone and conjugate with them who eventually spiral down into the circle-jerk hell of bad gas station porn and Jose Cuervo. The second half of the special had Chris Cuomo's investigative report on why the federal bureaucracy didn't work in this case. I mean how could parole agents have visited that fantastic Garrido compound on 60 separate occasions and not notice anything even remotely peculiar? took two amateur female campus security officers to get things rolling. Chris needs to seriously bone up on his Peter Principle, this is the way a bureaucracy is supposed to function. Jaycee came off well and poised for a gal who's been through so much and her book or memoir comes out today. I can't believe I'm living:)

The world will end not with a bang but a whimper

I hardly noticed, I mean the seamless transition was so smooth. The phrase comes from poet T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and I'm gonna make a bold prediction here. The world will end when the Sun runs out of fuel. I haven't worked on the calculations yet but it involves literally millions of years. According to 89-year old preacher Harold Camping the World As We Know It was supposed to end this past Saturday at 6PM. Went to work the next day and the place was unusually slow for a Sunday afternoon in a food place so I says to a co-worker you know why it's slow right? All the good folk have been Raptured up and you're always going to Giggles (you have to be around these parts to get the joke). He said to me "you have five months." Yeah go through your hardcore I said and start throwing the shit out, softcore too buddy before the angels with the flaming swords start knocking on people's doors. I'm not against the world ending, it should but you have to be a fool to predict when. One of the readings this past Sunday had to do with only the Father knows when the world is going to end, apparently He didn't share this info with the Son. That's interesting and one of the curiouser passages from Scripture along with those unforgiveable sins against the Holy Spirit. Of course the world doesn't have to end per se, more likely humanity might just kill itself off by then. Think Charlton Heston in front of the Statue of Liberty (fave line from that movie: "you damn dirty ape!"). Our Lady of La Salette said "in the Last Days Rome itself will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist" and then the Three Days of Darkness and the earth will renew itself and mankind will start over basically with the unrepentant in "the everlasting chasms of Hell." I think the Protestants especially the evangelical crowd take the End Times more seriously than the Catholics, Catholics only care if they can get a last game of Bingo in. As I said everything after bin Laden is anti-climax, we have to have something to fill the weekly newscycle. Religion and Sex lately:)

I'm really not getting anything out of all this bin Laden coverage

Everyday it's something new. A diary, bin Laden porn and you don't even know if it's all true or not. Long Island Congressman Peter King has said he saw those pictures. Apparently there's some small cell of a room select Senators and Congresspeople go into and it's like the Third Secret of Fatima. You have to leave your cell phone outside so you can't send an image to the outside world. Mr. King said part of bin Laden's forehead was blown off which begs the question how can we positively identify him now? not that anybody's tallying all the contradictions. Then there's all the versions of the Story. Please can we settle on one positive official White House version of the Events for all posterity even if it is wrong? Let's say he was reaching for a strap-on harness and they thought it was an AK-47 ya know?

Porn in Brooklyn, just don't light up

Apparently it is now OK to view porn on public library computers in any of the 200+ branches in New York City if you're a grown A-dult. "Customers (?) can watch whatever they want on the computer" said Brooklyn Public Library spokeswoman Malika Granville. "In deference to the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech the New York Public Library cannot prevent patrons from accessing adult content that is legal" said New York Public Library spokeswoman Angela Montefinise. The libraries provide for extensions on the sides of the computers for privacy, no mention if they provide spackle buckets too. Libraries that only get federal funding have to install filters on the public computers to block content that is illegal like obscenity (?) and child porn. Maybe someday we'll get around to actually nailing down the definition of obscenity but if a barely 18 girl with braces and a couple of zits is circle-jerking three guys and it's straight down the hatch and she's blowing bubbles does that qualify? I give great preference to the First Amendment in most cases but this is kind of skeevy. You already got your societal castoffs playing card games by themselves, your homeless set, druggies, young dorky stalkers, older men who form a kind of male bonding club and spend all day at the library because their wives don't want 'em around the house. Do we really want to downgrade the clientele even further? I feel like an immigrant in my own country. As my friend once said New York City is violently weird:)

The World's Biggest Egotists

Now it's good to have a healthy sense of self-esteem but these outsized egos are out of all proportion to their actual contributions (can you Supersize that?), I mean none of them have cured Cancer. They see themselves as so integral to the Progress of Civilization, so pivotal to the Race of Man, well here's a partial list by no means exhaustive: Hugh Hefner - actually let's throw in Charlie Sheen here too since together they form a kind of hybrid creature called Don't You Wanna Be Like ME? which even if you thought that would you say it? Now Hef sees himself as a kind of cultural icon/hero who helped Society break off from the iron shackles of sexual repression (the World didn't enjoy Sex until He came along) but the culture would have gone whichever way with or without his help. They say Charlie Sheen is actually a crystal methhead in which case he's a goner, just sayin'. Glenn Beck - makes the list only for pro-forma reasons, so many people think he should be there although I'm not sure how many egotists (or is that egoists?) talk about their past alcoholism and how they messed up their lives. For me Bill O'Reilly looks like he has the bigger ego the type that would give the deli clerk a hard time ("I said THINNNNN!!!"). Then there's Keith Olbermann - never got those lists of his, THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. One week it was Rush Limbaugh. You don't have to like the guy, I really don't care but Worst Person on the Third Planet from the Sun Keith? that'd probably be Moammar Khadafy with Robert Mugabe running a close second. Barack Obama of course with his messianic complex. Has a bug up his ass about the rich, he sees it more as the problem of wealth and it's been bothering him his whole life but you're somehow an extremist if you don't see him as a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. His Saviorhood has been somewhat tarnished by his rather dismal performance in office thus far but as a Kool-Aid drinker at work told me the other day give him some time, he only got his feet wet. Donald Trump - probably heads anybody's list but I'd still vote for the guy, actually I'd vote for Ryan Seacrest if he ran against Obama. Diddy (past names Puff Daddy, real name Sean Combs) - actually most rap stars but YOU made it that way, all those white suburban kids who somehow gravitated away from Rock over the years. Once arrested on a gun charge they become semi-respectabalized as time goes by, look for Fitty to be doing Eugene O'Neill on Broadway. Egotism is like a weird drug trip and to me never made any sense. I mean I've done so many dickheaded things in my life it'd be hard to be that way. Doesn't seem like the natural state this overinflated self-deified condition but that's just me. The Lady Gaga - Here's how it works. In Madonna's case she was like a monkey swinging from the trees, she discovered Morality and now she's swinging from the trees again. Look for Gaga to have a moral arc somewhere in the middle, settle down, have a couple kids and then go back in the jungle again. Gaga's talents which I will concede are eclipsed by her antics and I like what my friend said once. We were in a Target store looking at the magazines and we seemed to be in the young adult section, Miley Cyrus on the cover over here, the pale guy from Twilight over there, Avril Lavigne, whoever and he takes one look at them and says to me they're all full of shit:)