Thoughts on money

Had a debate once about you can't take it with you with an older person, said why not spend it while you can and have a good time and she made the point that bequeathing it is more important on down the line so I got to thinking let's put this into practice,

the children have been left their fortune by Mom and Dad, sharing the same guiding philosophy as they did they hardly spend it either so they grow old and make out their will and the succeeding generation does the same thing and so on for 5 generations but it just sits there, meanwhile Iran now has the nukes and Putin's successors have teamed up with China and they're threatening the West so yes, it IS important to have a nice nest egg,

"the money's there, don't worry but you can't touch it"
"why is it there?"
"I really don't know but it's important that it's there and it stays there"
"Can I take some out?"
"Of course but just a little bit at a time"
"Is that a mushroom cloud I see?"

A common male attitude

You'll often hear a married man or just one who has a steady girlfriend say this among the boys:

"Going to a strip club and getting a lap dance or two is not really cheating."

In a strictly legal sense, ok, if you define cheating as having intercourse (my my, how Billy Boy has corrupted the country, you asked for a legacy pal, you got it, thanx brotherman!), but in z's book it's cheating in a spiritual sense and anyway

if you really dug her you wouldn't be going there.

Like I'm not sure what's supposed to happen here

Worked in a deli once and the guy just went on his lunch, a nice young man with an eye for the ladies, and it's kinda slow, early evening and this attractive young lady approaches the counter, looked like Teri Hatcher, and so I very casually saunter over ready to take her order when a blur of color whuuushes past me, the guy's back from lunch and he does her order instead of me and I'm like

wa'happened?

and so, in his head the pretty young woman married to a corporate lawyer, they're both just back from Rio and she's getting the cold cuts, is ready to risk it all and have an affair with a 20-something deli clerk because he was exceedingly nice to her and got her a 1/2 pound of Boar's Head Ovengold Roasted Turkey Breast sliced razor-thin of course, he had to get his micrometer out and a 1/4 lb. of yellow American,

I had more to offer though, much more. I know how to make quiche but he scared her off.

I don't know how to break this to my folks

Sociologist or cultural professor or whatever she is, Christine B. Whelan, writing in yesterday's New York Post, says studies show that the college-educated fare much better in the romance and marriage stakes department, they are less likely to divorce than those without college degrees and far less likely to have kids out of wedlock than us uneducated yokels (presumably those with degrees never use drugs or watch porn either). The degreed also attract more members of the opposite sex, the Educated Man is more likely to be seen as a good provider (Dr. Laura's apologia for Social Darwinism).

I'm concerned. You see my Mom and Dad have been married for over 50 years now. Dad was a Navy WW2 vet and then drove a truck for almost 50 years, Mom never had a degree, both are now happily retired (or are they?) with full pensions and Social Security. How do I tell them they're on the road to ruin?

The bee-itch

You may have heard, a woman on one of John McCain's campaign stops asked him "so how do we beat this bitch?" to which he replied "that's an excellent question." Usual denunciations, now if you make the case the sitatution was highly inappropriate, well ok, I won't argue with you there, just seems to me in a more humorous, less pc age it would all have been so hilariously funny. McCain's from the olde school, for cryin' out loud the guy was a POW for 5 years, can't have a little fun?

Ever walk out of the store at the mall and forget where the hell you parked? So you're walking with your bag and you don't want to look like an idiot, all the silver Honda Civics begin to look alike - "Mommy, who's that man who can't find his car? Is he on drugs?" - and you begin to think your car was stolen until you finally find it and vow it will never happen again but it does.....

A poem.....

Be patient suffering soul, I hear thy cry
The trial fires may glow but I am nigh.
I see the silver and I will refine
Until My image shall upon it shine.
Fear not, for I am near, thy help to be
Greater than all thy pain My love for thee.

The New York Post

A friend of mine says he hates this paper but he's hooked on it. There's the high politics and commentary section to give it a somewhat respectable gloss and then there's the

SMUT

like some 18-year old pasty-faced porn geek is writing and editing certain sections and masturbating while he does it like yesterday's millionth sex survey about how New York City's women rank at the top in terms of kink.

I cannot endorse this paper anymore and I know Phil Mushnick feels the same way but he can't say anything. It's like watching Ron Jeremy, you have to take a shower afterwards.

The Camille Paglia theory of Britney's meltdown

Dr. Phil says it may be a wise thing to have her involuntarily committed, she may even pose a suicide risk the theory being that Owen Wilson, look how normal and happy-go-lucky he was and what he did so what would a kooky person do? I'd love to have Britney's life though, I mean the good aspects, you're being creative and artistic and don't have to put in your 9-5 like most of us paeons. Even if she never put out another CD and called it quits on her touring she has enough of the dinars to live happily ever after so

wha'sa problem?

I gotta go along with feminist writer Camille Paglia though. In any good investigation you can create a timeline and a linear clue quickly emerges, her life began to, ever so slightly, spiral out of control the day she and Madonna liplocked at the Video Music Awards on MTV, Paglia calls it her kiss of death. So maybe it's not so much what Dr. Phil says or the Brooke Shields theory of post-partum depression (is this responsible for the situation in the Middle East too Brooke?) but it may have everything to do with her moral compass. You look at that other problem child Lindsay and you feel her hopes are better, she at least seems very aware she has a problem and is actually more likeable than Brit who recently served her own Mom with a court order to stay away from her own grandkids while she's on her meds and don't blame it all on the paparazzi either, these people want fame but they don't want it but they still want their picture in the paper.

I personally don't believe Britney deserves all this coverage, a one-year blackout on all things Britney might be a good thing. Last I checked we had a War on Terror going on.....

The new breast cancer/alcohol link

The neo-Puritan movement will come up with anything these days.

Drink up gals!

Rudy courting the NRA

now it's getting downright creepy

very Nosferatu-like, like the undead Danny Glick boy in "Salem's Lot" floating up to the bedroom window of his friend and tapping on the glass

"right-wing base let me in
right-wing base let me in"

Ahmadinejad - I want you to want me

The leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at Columbia University yesterday, introduced as a "cruel and petty dictator" by President Lee Bollinger of whom you may have heard. Lee came on strong right out of the gate so as not to have that screaming mimi, Michelle Malkin, write a column about him and about the precincts of the radical Left in academia that he inhabits. Forget about Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial, his nuclear ambitions, his call for Israel to be wiped off the map. Re gays he said this: "There are no homosexuals in Iran like in this country."

This is not good.

(In fact, this is serious stuff)

Holocaust denial. I had a neighbor once, an older gentleman and he gave my Mom some literature. I always thought he was a regular right-wing kind of guy, pro-life, opposed sex education, but there it was, "documentation" that the Jews invented the Holocaust to keep the $$$$$ rolling in. Now a respectable conspiracy theory I'm all for, mainstream ones like JFK's assassination and I'm all ears, but in order for the Holocaust to never have happened you'd have to have all the major historians in on it for starters. Wouldn't one of them say "I ain't gonna be a part of this"? The mind boggles,

Anyway

Fidel Castro is now the most respectable tyrant on the world stage, remarkable for his wondrous health-care system, no cruel and petty dictator he or, as Michael Moore believes

you scratch my nuts and I'll scratch yours.

What Confucius didn't tell you

Even if your life is not all that you'd like it to be, it's a failure in artistic terms, everybody is at least able to do one thing well and this gives some purpose to your life. For some people it's gardening, for others it's mechanical ability, some have an artistic bent and paint. No matter how my life is going I like to be known as the guy you go to if you want to make quiche. Confucius said "if you enjoy what you do you'll never work another day in your life." I was on a recent visit to the famed Culinary Institute of America (CIA for short) in New Hyde Park, New York just past Poughkeepsie and there was an energy in the air, young students in various classes learning the finer aspects of the gustatory arts. There is even a portrait of Paris Hilton's grandfather in the lobby, granddad must be proud up there. What Confucius didn't tell anyone is that in a few years time these aspiring chefs will be working some very long shifts, 12-14 hours a day for 6 days a week on average in some very hot kitchens where civility is not the norm. The flip side to Confucius' maxim is that you can quickly hate what you used to love to do.

There is a line near the end of the movie Wild at Heart where the fairy godmother in a vision of some sort tells the Nicolas Cage character, Sailor, "if you're truly wild at heart you'll fight for your dreams. Don't turn away from love." These are really some profound words, it's my whole philosophy of Life and even if you fail at your dreams you put up the good fight and it ain't over 'til your friends finally send you off with that cold-cut platter fringed with the olive loaf and the mortadella (no wonder this country is so fat, we're fixated on eating even while we're in mourning). Fight for your dreams even if others don't agree or put roadblocks on the path to your Happiness. Boredom is the bane of existence or, as the final line in the mystical poem "Manhunt in the Desert" says "take life by the root."

Let's touch on lab animals

Not much of a debate anymore but in its heyday animal experimentation to cure diseases was a hot topic. During such lulls we can look at these controversies with more of a level head and so I've been wondering, millions and millions of assorted creatures, from rodents to monkeys, have given their lives so let's posit that the researchers are morally correct, the larger goal is saving human lives and so some egghead psycho causes a tumor in a white rat, hey that's cool but

where are all the cures? (I'm not a vegan btw)

Next time you use some big word at work, well not really that big a word but big to them, and they say how smart you are ask them why they're so dumb. Next time someone says you're over their head say WHY? It's chic to be dumb, call them on it.

Why is it assumed, in a male-dominated work environment and you're a man, if you don't talk about your sex life you're not getting any? It's like do you want me to keep a diary? Poor Man's Kennedy's son wants to know.

Americans have a weird way of mourning, no matter how tragic the death, say your best friend gets hit by a Budweiser truck, everyone's obsessed with food, even before the death invites go out it's catering at your local deli. What? can't mourn on an empty stomach?

Hillary the Panderer

So much for Dick Morris' political strategy of triangulation which Bill Clinton followed with some success. Hillary at this point is not even pretending to appeal to the vast swath of conservative voters out there, it's full-throttle Left, to take a line from Dennis Miller as applied to Rush Limbaugh Hill is like a shopping carriage with a bad wheel that just constantly pulls leftward. Take the Jena 6.

In Jena, Louisiana 6 black high school students have been arrested and were to be prosecuted for attempted murder following the vicious beating of a white teenager, the charges have now been downgraded to battery. Seems a black student sat under a tree that was reserved for some white trash and three nooses appeared in the tree soon after. The white student was hospitalized and is now on the mend and an appeals court dismissed the conviction of one black student who was tried as an adult.

Now I don't for the life of me, maybe I'm dreaming, but I don't get how the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are referring to this sorry episode in race relations in this country as the next Selma but there she was, Madame herself, on Sharpton's radio show:

"I know you and I don't condone violence of any kind but this situation raises very serious questions of injustice and inequality (what injustice? if 6 whites had attacked a black they'd get at least 20 years and rightly so - z). And it shines a bright spotlight on the disparate treatment (emphasis z's) that happens all too often in our country still today in affecting African-American young people in the criminal justice system" (you mean thugs Hill whom respectable blacks don't even want to associate with? - editor).

The only relevant question here is this - did all these African-American young people who are allegedly receiving disparate treatment at the hands of our legal system guilty of the crimes they've gone to prison for? Hillary seems to be saying no otherwise her statement makes no logical sense so this would be a massive national scandal indeed, our country throwing innocent blacks in jail by the millions day after day BUT a little bird sat on z's shoulder the other day and told him that Hill is just

pandering (this happens when you take Timbaland's money)

If counting to 10 worked we wouldn't have Prozac

As everyone now knows Sally Field, during the Emmy broadcast, said this: "If mothers ruled the world there would be no {gd} wars in the first place." In her syndicated column of yesterday ("Sally the Sheep - This mom doesn't buy Fields' folly") the Asian pit bull of the Right, Michelle Malkin, writes that Field is your stereotypical Hollywood liberal and permissive parent:

"She's the mom who buys her teenager beer, condoms and a hotel room on prom night because she'd rather give in than assert her parental authority and do battle."

Now we don't know if the Flying Nun would hold underage drinking parties in her own home, I'm betting that she wouldn't, but this is slanderous and Malkin may very well have to eat some humble pie real soon.

Later on Malkin quotes a mother whose Marine son has already served three tours of duty in Iraq, a Ms. Deborah Johns. Re anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan Johns says: "She has never spoken for me. And she will never speak for me...We are not going to let the domestic enemies at home defeat us like they did during the Vietnam War" (another strain of the "We Almost Won in Vietnam if We Just Stuck it Out Longer" brigade). You see this is the overarching theme of the conservative movement, social and political stability which it turn leads to never questioning your own government, conservatives have made a religion out of conformity. "Domestic enemies", aka those '60s radical protestors of Vietnam, very McCarthyite indeed.

Like with cops so immersed in their own world (remember the FBI profiling of the late Richard Jewell) some, nay most, conservative talking heads are so immersed in their own world that they develop a kind of political tunnel vision (ditto for liberals btw). You have to understand that with Malkin if you in any way oppose the war you are in effect on the side of Evil and this is her starting point in all of her writing. Now I never thought awards shows like the Emmys should be given over to politics of whatever stripe but the way I look at it is this is still America and not Amerika and Gidget does have a perfect right to her opinion and to express it and to sue Malkin for libel and personal defamation if she so chooses.

A good rule to go by though is what I call the Bob Newhart Rule. Bob says that while he has strong views on things himself he always felt it was his thing to entertain and not educate. I didn't watch the Emmys 'cause I don't watch most TV these days, I have to rely on Tasmanian Devils like Malkin to fill me in.

For the love of work

Some people love the work experience, me? I love the leisure experience and here's where I differ most markedly with most conservatives these days, I haven't made a fetish out of work yet. I do believe in the hammock. Some people just love the adrenaline rush. I worked with a chef once in a supermarket and he went back to the restaurant scene, probably got bored with the somewhat more leisurely pace of a food retail outlet. For them they have to keep producing something, work for them is like what the Big O is for others, me? I like cogitating and meditating and mast, masturblogging. The workaholics, when they die are your poltergeists, restless spirits who can't stay six feet under. The chef ones have to knock the peppermill off the shelf when you're cooking, see, you should be using that. People who have lockers at work, isn't that getting a little too into it? which leads me into my latest dream sequence:

I'm on an old familiar bus route and I'm rapping with the oldsters on board but in the back of my mind is I drive a car so why am I taking the bus? There's some anxiety in the dream 'cause I have to transfer to another bus to get home and then I have to walk up a hill. My interpretation, I will most likely retire with just SS to live on since I get tired of working for the same company after a few years. I get frustrated with the overworkload, the corporate culture, the sameness of it all, the whatever so in my dream that's why I'm riding the bus, no pension to pay things like car insurance.

That new fall series about the Geico Cavemen, who said this would be a good idea? critics have seen early releases and panned the thing. They worked better in commercials. I say instead of a failed TV series do more ads and then compile them all on DVD.

Many times when a person says so-and-so is doing well they're not doing well at all. This happens often when someone leaves a job abruptly or moves out of the neighborhood and everyone starts inquiring how he or she is doing. A co-worker who is friends with the person who left will say "oh, I hear she's doing really great" even though she got tired of her family life and quit her job with no Plan B and left for another state and is living in an apartment with her girlfriend supporting her. Oh, she's doing great? What as, a prostitute? Like the guy I know who works two full-time jobs and boasts he always has time for a little "tapping." Gay.

A seminar I'd like to attend

When I can I go to my main library in the big YO, it's usually on my day off. Sometimes I go twice a day, I will go after work on occasion. You notice things, libraries are magnets for certain kinds of people, a subgroup being the ones who don't work. On my day off I'll go there when the place opens at 9, there's always a healthy looking, 40-something man there waiting for the doors to open. He drives, not a jalopy either, so somehow he finds a way to pay his car insurance. He doesn't look like he's missing for a meal either and he jumps on the computer as soon as the doors swing open and he'll be there later too. In between he reads the paper. Now my day off varies but he's always there so you can safely draw the conclusion that he's not brown-bagging it pulling off a 9-5. Maybe he's making wanksta movies (uncle booty productions, who knows?) but then there's another man, slightly younger but also of a hale and hearty complexion who parks himself in one of those cozy butt-numbing soft chairs they have for reading and he tackles a novel every day, Robert Ludlum, you name it, just like the snake plant on the circulation desk he's always there.

I myself haven't figured out a way yet to make ends meet without working and believe me I've been trying. I'd be real interested to know if any of these gentlemen are holding any type of seminars soon, I'd like to sign up.

Liberal commentary on the Cho matter

The latest is Marc Fisher's piece in yesterday's New York Post, for the sheer inner workings of the liberal mind it can't be beat. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's review panel charged with investigating the Virginia-Tech shootings came out, apparently heads are not gonna roll over this one. Is everyone mental? I mean there's a real crisis going on and they're talking about the, get this, the e-mails should have gone out faster. I'm sorry but if there's a psycho on campus getting ready to rock you get on the intercom, the loudspeaker, the bullhorn and get the people the hell out and lock the place down. Maybe we're too obsessed with the computer these days, it's like it's our only frame of reference even in an emergency ("Grandad's having a heart attack, e-mail your brother.")

But what I'm really getting at is the liberalism behind all the punditry. Now the reader may recall all the apocalyptic moral denunciations of Don Imus, you may have heard, but Cho was a sorry character who slipped through the cracks who didn't get the help he needed (kinda our fault as usual). At least he never chopped on black basketball players like Jimmy the Greek did once, a topic sportswriter Phil Mushnick is still obsessed with. And what's the deal with this quiet loner line already? Over 90% of whatever you want to call them probably wouldn't even shoot a deer, can we get over the defense of social cliques already? Few years ago criticism of cliques was all the rage, now it's a crime to not be in one.

Bottom line is Don Imus is still more evil than the Virginia-Tech killer, no talk of chemical-imbalance there. At worst Cho had issues, liberalism holds, as Mr. Fisher demonstrates, that he was mental but not evil. We reserve that phrase for the politically incorrect (Whoopie, watch your back).

I'm going to chuck it all and become homeless

To hear conservatives tell it the homeless have the life. There's a homeless man in the big YO, a late 30-something blond guy with raggedy clothes who walks along that endless shopping plaza known as Central Ave. and who drinks coffee from cups that people throw away outside of Barnes and Noble. So one day we're driving along and my Republican friend, God bless him, says to me "look at that guy, he doesn't have a care in the world." Now I will admit sleeping under the stars on a 10 degree night does have a certain romantic appeal to it but I think this is why the Republican, whoever he is, will lose the next election to HillObama, that and lack of health insurance for millions of Americans. Now I understand the government paying your medical bills amounts to a form of European-style socialism but what is Republicans' alternative? It's like they don't even talk about it, it's not on their radar screen

WAR WAR WAR

so who better has their finger on the PULSE?

Memo to John Stossel, they're still pervs

"20/20" is slated tonight to have a special expose of Chris Hansen and his NBC Dateline series "To Catch a Predator." Now early on in my blogging I did raise questions about the aggressive nature of this show, what if somebody is later found innocent? what about entrapment? but by and large those e-mails are pretty straightforward and, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud sometimes a perv is just a perv.

Libertarian Stossel needs to go easy, every once in a while, every blue moon or so people do care what other people do in their bedrooms.