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......

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:)

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:)

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!

The crisis in Egypt and its implications for the geopolitical consortium

(Disclaimer: I don't know WTF I'm talking about here)

Sometimes certain major topical events pose a type of dilemma for the average blogger. I am not an Egyptologist, the Mideast is beyond my pay grade and yet I feel rather compelled to open up the crisis in Egypt for discussion. It's one of those topics you have to google or bing so as to appear semi-literate ("Mubarak's 30-yr rule", "Anwar Sadat assassinated in 1981", "Suleiman for VP", "40% of oil to Europe flowing through the Suez Canal"......) but you'll never rise to the rank of university professor rapping with Jim Lehrer (the reader will note I didn't have much to say on Tunisia of late). It seems to me Mubarak has to go, even his own generals are against him (how am I doing? OG I wish I could blog about Charlie Sheen right now!) but Mubarak kind of reminds me of Pinochet, our kind of dictator about whom we can look the other way at least for a time. Did the looters get to the Pyramids yet? there's a curse on that sort of stuff you know. I have to give my blog some heft with an occasional foray into foreign policy, people are still starving in Niger you know, but as Wikipedia would put it this article can use input from an expert or scholar in the field. BB?:)

The snow/climate change connection & some other Notes

Oh God I was homebound yesterday not because I couldn't go out but I didn't want to lose my parking space, the space I spent a good hour shoveling out (garbage cans are so yesterday). The 7th snowstorm of the season up here in the Northeast, snowiest January on record for Central Park where there was 19" of the white stuff on the ground yesterday. This is the time of year when you browse through large swaths of the conservative blogosphere and you'll see the predictable large-scale photo of the latest blizzard with the title "What Global Warming?" and a few potshots at AlGore so yesterday there was some Japanese scientist on the Today Show saying maybe this all has to do with global warming. Seems there might be more moisture in the Gulf of Mexico these days colliding with that rush of Arctic air coming down from Canada and you really have to love the sheer philosophical tenacity of the global warming crowd, whenever you're theorizing and encounter contrary evidence spin it your way. Now I've been theorizing my whole life about people, things whatever but you're bound to encounter things that don't always support your theory every now and then. Some people become more devoted actually when this happens and have an uncanny ability to work the odd stuff back in but that's not good theorizing imo. It's like with the few people and they're not in the majority by any stretch but when you lose alot of weight your co-workers think you're sick but when you tell 'em two or three times the deal they still stick with the erroneous theory ("Z-man has been losing alot of weight lately. It can't really be all that fish and veggies and exercising, must've been sucking some mean dick. I mean does he ever talk about a girlfriend?" chatter chatter) You know persisting in bad theories is, well just plain bad and can cause all sorts of trouble, a real snowjob you could say. Now I'm more open to theories of climate change than your average conservative but a snowstorm a week beginning the day after Christmas is still a snowstorm a week beginning the day after Christmas and if we had glaciers forming on top of skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan we'd still have the same Japanese scientists blaming it on some jetstream of warm air down south. So temperatures are rising folks but expect more snow. Yeah I thought of doing a blog on Obama's SOTU and his reemergence as a conservative (did he actually say something about unnecessary regulations and parts of the health-care law being bad for Small Business?) but this latest commentary on the winter we've been having up here in the Northeast is just too rich. BTW re this work thing soap feels you should work during a blizzard if you're scheduled to go in and Beth feels in general if you're scheduled X amount of hours during the day you should work those X hours. I just feel you should be able to use your last ten or fifteen minutes to wash up and rap and you have to use your own personal judgement about the weather. My position can best be summed up: in this here 21st Century there should be a more rational way to work. I challenge anybody on this stuff but if you want to talk about the SOTU instead I got no problem. BTW if you're driving in the City and your car gets stuck Bloomberg says you may be towed at your own expense. This guy STILL doesn't get it!!:))

American Idol - Season 10

I liked it, it worked. The new team of Randy Jackson, J-Lo and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler proves that a show doesn't have to be cruel to be interesting. Not having Simon is like getting out from under the yoke of a bad boss and the proceedings were much more pleasant this time around. Got the impression they let a few more go through to Hollywood than were warranted and imo a few were let through because of their compelling personal stories alone which kind of made up for their less than special renditions but whatever (you gonna say no to the guy whose Dad just survived throat cancer or the young Kosovar girl?). That 17-yr. old from somewhere in Jersey had me fooled, didn't look the part but crooned his heart out like Frank Sinatra. Benson somebody and I think the judges agreed he was the best so far, look for him to go a long way in this competition. That overemotional chick who works in a shopping mall who they had pegged only for Broadway they let through after she begged and pleaded, a decent enough voice but she definitely needs to reign it in. There was the 16 yr. old girl chock full of Personality and a good voice for her young age who said "yo yo dawg" to Randy and overall I enjoyed the evening. I'm sure you're gonna get your tv critics to nitpick the thing (Linda Stasi) but I have to say it was a'ight:)

Do liberals and conservatives share the same goals?

The fashionable answer is yes and I've been hearing alot of this lately but it really is a rather vague statement and is it even true? I'm gonna go with a no. Do liberals and conservatives both agree on you keeping more of your hard-earned money? Do liberals and conservatives look at the wealthy in the same way especially regarding the previous question? Do liberals and conservatives view Big Business and Labor the same way? I daresay liberals have a problem with Walmart and conservatives want you to work your ass off for even peanuts because by so doing you're setting yourself up for a mansion and Lamberghini down the road (HAH!!!) Do liberals and conservatives share the same goal of making abortion rare? Again the fashionable answer is yes but just saw on Yahoo News abortions increasing in major cities and in NYC it's almost like an Olympic Event so what have liberals done for us lately?......do liberals and conservatives view your right to self-defense the same way? Does this include the right to bear a firearm? Do liberals and conservatives view RACE the same way? (do liberals ever ask blacks why they commit so much crime?) our nation's security? war & peace? the cops? God and faith in general? SEX? (that there deserves its own blog) and so on down the list. Name any political issue and is the basic goal the same? Of course your personal health not to mention health care deserves another blog but I'm gonna go with libertarians just wanna be left alone and liberals would rather you eat an apple instead of a Funny Bone and seem rather obsessed about it at times. The same goals? I just don't see it.

Bankruptcy

Some of the soapster's most recent comments about Big Government got me thinking and instead of directly responding to his previous remarks I thought I'd do a blog about how far back the problem really goes and today we're gonna focus on this thing called Bankruptcy. Now I always have First Impressions of everything, gut feelings, call it my Primeval Conservatism at work and if you provide a good or service for somebody and you don't get paid and that person or company or corporate entity does not have to pay you after hiding behind a bankrupty filing well that just seems immoral and unjust to me. Of course your initial reaction can me modified by other factors as I feel credit-card companies charge usurious (there's a word you don't hear anymore) interest rates and so the person legitimately trying to pay off his debt gets shafted. Now I'm no lawyer and don't know all the intricacies of bankruptcy law, there's this chapter and that chapter and a few subclauses but you take a large company that has gone into 3 billion dollars in debt let's say and then they get protected by the Bankruptcy Court and get a chance to reorganize their gangster outfit and even get a bailout or loan for their troubles. Well HOW exactly did they go 3 billion dollars into the hole in the first place? At what point in time did nobody notice what was going on? Where was the company auditor in all of this, asleep at the switch? Was there corruption, were honchos putting their hands in the till? The people who were responsible, have they been held to task and if need be prosecuted or at least told to look for other work? Well in our fictitious example (or maybe the better word is factitious) all these questions become moot as they in effect get rewarded for their past bad behavior. Now I have a few philosophical issues with Ayn Rand but at least in her vision if a company deserves to go out of business they deserve to go out of business and in a pure laissez-faire marketplace system businessmen would be forced to be more careful and then there's the question of how is a bankrupt company gonna pay off a government loan (well actually a bank loan but the government is somehow involved as always)? So a couple of immoral things have happened, the vendors who provided certain goods and services won't get paid and the company gets rewarded in effect for their past bad, irresponsible or even corrupt behavior by getting a loan because it's been deemed by Big Government they're too big to fail.

The Republicans "reformed" bankruptcy laws, the Dems want to swing back but I say we need to start at Square One again. IMO it's the bailouts that drive the Tea Party. I give you something, you don't pay me and the government protects you and even arranges to get you more money. If you don't see the dysfunction here then you're not a true conservative, maybe a neocon at best. President Obama in his speech at the AZ Memorial Service spoke briefly about what he called "the forces that divide us." Well no Mr. President it's the forces that disagree with you and your vision of what government should be but this old old polemical device seems to be a favorite of his. So in effect we are left with failing companies that have run their course, should be out of business by their own doing but are being propped up by the government. Remember when the Five & Dime (Woolworth's) went out of business? THAT'S the natural course of events or used to be and it may be Destiny's way of telling you you need to be doing something else with your life, accept it. The Question Before the Board today: should we get rid of ALL bankruptcy laws?:)

On the shooting

In the tragic wake of the shooting last Saturday in Arizona where Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded you could almost have written the msm's script for them (actually strike the word "almost"). Channel-surfing last night and stopped to browse a little at "Meet the Press" (but only a little as I can't take much of this stuff lately) and caught key words like Tea Party (what did they have to do with it?), free speech, we have to watch the words we use, Sarah Palin (but of course!) etc. etc. This is the usual framing of the issue by the msm after such a tragic event and follows the narrative arc set by the George Tiller murder which is basically that right-wing rhetoric is ultimately responsible for these happenings. The young shooter, Jared Loughner is known to be anti-government and as soon as I read that in my morning paper the day after the massacre I already knew what the media spin would be. Now many people and groups have been "anti-government" down through the ages and many were lauded by the Left (e.g. Vietnam) so when did all of a sudden being against the government or anti-government if you will become

a bad thing?

Used to work with a Jamaican chef back in the day, always struck me as being very intelligent and he felt AIDS was invented by the U.S. government which when you stop to think about it why should there be a new disease? You had the CIA's MK-ULTRA's social experiment dosing unsuspecting citizens with the mind-altering LSD, a documented conspiracy so who's to say where one's grasp on reality ends and paranoia begins? At any rate the Moral of the Story is that assholes exist, have always existed and will always exist. It is said the Columbine shooters were obsessed with the movie The Matrix, does that mean the movie should never have been made or we can't enjoy it (although the sequels were existentially painful)? So to kind of drive the Point home here the Tea Party ain't the real problem or Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or O'Reilly or Sarah Palin or your right-wing mailman......the simple fact of the matter is the existence of the asshole a problem eternally perplexing to Mankind that dates back to the Stone Age. I don't know what makes the Asshole tick and they can wreak all kinds of havoc but if Leviathan Government uses the case of the asshole who takes matters into his own hands to say you shouldn't criticize Leviathan Government and if the media backs them up then I see that as kind of a bigger problem and I think that's the whole point actually of the predictable media commentary (I almost said coverage, 'twould be nice if the msm could just get back to coverage). It's using such tragedies for political ends and then the second point after they're done bashing conservatives becomes Gun Control. It's really why I've been reading field guides to mammals lately:)

Maybe it's me

but lately I just find people downright insufferable. I ain't blogging that much politically because really, if you get a boner over Boehner I can't help you. The real downside to John McCain losing the presidency is his omnipresence again on the Sunday morning political roundtables, frankly I 'd rather watch Gadget Girlz. I'd sooner do a blog on Buddhism than this current political season. I'm a misanthrope who can't even get off on Politics anymore. God if I read once again about how we can make the Tax Code better for everyone, just chuck the damn thing in the circular file already and be done with it. Can somebody tell me why Kim Kardashian is important? I ain't getting it. You know I mean this in all seriousness, I'd rather read a Field Guide to the Mammals than any of the current political bestsellers out there. A Self-Defense Guide will stand you in better stead than any of the crap churned out by Ann Coulter or James Carville. I'm going to services now, see you tomorrow or Monday:)

and protect us from all anxiety

One of my favorite lines in the whole Mass occurs around the time of the consecration when the priest says "and protect us from all anxiety." It's an unusual line in that it's not overtly religious in the sense of save us from the fires of hell and that sort of thing, hell theology itself causes anxiety and for me the thing right now is this free-floating anxiety out there. Had a pretty good blast of Ole Man Winter day after Christmas and so folks hit the food stores before in droves, pounded the area delis pretty hard and so that's the thing with anxiety, it's hard to define but in your head when mixed with a healthy dose of imagination it takes on distorted dimensions. Now I'm sure a few people actually needed food but I think in many people's minds they had visions of being homebound for a week slowly starving to death. Never quite got this but anyway I was scheduled to work the night shift yesterday but after a couple hours shoveling out my car made what I thought was a very educated decision on my part to just call work and tell 'em I'm not coming in. The plow came through very late in the day as I live on one of those side roads on top of a hill and the tipping point for me was that in my neighborhood it's very hard to find a space at night in such situations and so the co-mgr. picks up the phone and you always get this, it's like from a playbook or something -- Me: "There are too many problems in my neighborhood (yada yada)..." Him (tooting his own horn): "We all have problems but I made it in" but I remained firm and he hung up. Bears mentioning he's a self-described Republican and I'm telling you your average Republican is not good on labor issues, is not on the side of the worker which is why we need a kind of fusion politics these days, recognize the shortcomings of whatever political side we fall down on and combine the best ideas from both although I do realize this deviates from the enemies' camp approach and is problematic for many who seem to revel in a kind of political trench warfare. Dad became sick right before Christmas so nobody was gonna visit there, kids might get sick and so all things considered it was definitely one of those off-center holidays. Talked to my best bud last night and we really don't critique each other about how we may fall short in the friendship department, that ain't true blue and he deals with the same shit at his job and so we rapped about that. It takes too much energy to hate but I'm telling you civil service people have it good, too many flakes falling from the sky and they just head on home, no conservative boss trying to lay a guilt trip on you either. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, never was and if you're gonna do something no better time like the Present and so while most people vow to lose weight after the Holidays been there done that and no I didn't lose those last nine pounds all in one week, got close and decided to round it off and today I'm at that ideal weight I've talked about but that's probably because I shoveled so much of the white stuff yesterday. Truth be told I know this correction guard and he used to be a husky guy until I went to a party one day and barely recognized him, thought he had the cancer or something but he simply decided to lose the pounds although imo it's better in his line of work the way he was. OK so last post before the New Year's and let's stop causing each other anxiety, Life's too short anyway. Adopt an animal, chill back and if someone gets offended because you refuse to marry your job that's their problem. Me? my main thing today is trying to find a use for anchovies:)

From Don't Ask/Don't Tell to TMI

President Obama is gonna sign the thing and allow gays to serve openly in the military. I really got no problem here and nondiscrimination means they should have the same opportunity to serve in stupid wars as the rest of us but for me it's always been a matter of TMI. You enroll in the military, WHY would you tell anyone you're gay?? You enroll in the military, WHY would you tell anyone you're straight?? So you like to have a schnitzel shoved down your throat, the issue wouldn't seem germane just like that Jets coach foot fetish. To serve "openly" in the military for me anyway conjures up images of hardons in the male showers, spreading your ass cheeks, whatever. There's just something wrong with the issue or how it's framed:)

2010 - a strange year

but Happy Holidays just the same. So I pretty much have thrown off those few extra remaining pounds so am pretty much ending the diet thing today but got to thinking about our nation's obesity epidemic and here's why it won't get any better: we get contradictory medical and social advice. Now this really should be one of the happiest times of my life, I set a goal for myself and reached it but little did I know at the time but it would also be one of the most annoying times of my life and that's because Folks-at-Large don't know how to think about this issue, they get spooky. So the country's obese among us are counseled to lose weight sooner rather than later but ALSO make sure you eat enough since running parallel to this Important Issue in the msm for the past few years has been eating disorders like anorexia and so you're a porker getting these contradictory signals and so the human mind is naturally going to still err on the side of eating a little too much and then you'll bitch about how hard it is to lose weight but not to worry because Dr. OZ tells you to nosh all day and so the cycle just repeats itself because you can't think for yourself or God forbid out-of-the-box (what's that?). What the fuck is with all the crime shows on TV? I mean you always gotta have a couple and if I were to choose I'd go with Hawaii Five-O but it's everywhere, serial killers eating Cap'n Crunch out of skulls and I hear the UMA stalker has been arrested again for bothering her. What I don't get about the whole celebrity stalking craze is where in hell is the attraction to these vapid celebrities in the first place?? I blame E.T. and Access Hollywood. Mean People Suck, you know the type, always prepared with the cutting remark like a nail file or hanky to be whipped out at a moment's notice. It's reflexive like on my first job. You know when you and a person walking from the other way don't know how to pass each other? who knows why it happens but you feel awkward and so I try to pass this old crank coming into the lounge from the other way and she goes "I sure hope you don't drive" (shooooooppp, social dart firmly embedded in neck, thank you). It's weird but you'll remember this stuff years later usually when you're drinking. I already mentioned I lost all this weight but you feel like you did something wrong. I think we're an overmedicated country right now and so you have to put up with your bipolar boss every day because she has the right to be that way. Just give me a good Charles Bronson movie at night and I'm good. Have a good one and may the New Year be even stranger.

I found this fascinating

Woke up this morning and didn't know what to blog about exactly, different thoughts in a kind of formless mass. Since others' loved ones having health issues is a recurring theme I looked up some stuff from an old book I once read to kind of refresh the old memory base and before long I became absolutely absorbed. This is from the book Beyond MS: It's All in the Image by Nancy A. Bent, Ph.D (Brandon House, NY - 1995) and it's from the Introduction by Dr. Akhter Ahsen called "The Art of Restoration":

"...(Eidetic Image Therapy) is meant as a procedure of return to the natural state of health, not as an emphasis on disease...As was said earlier Rembrandt's 'Night Watch' turned out to be a painting not of the night, as was thought, but of the morning, just the opposite. It had so much varnish on it and had accumulated so much dirt over the years that it only looked like a night scene. That is an apt metaphor for what a patient usually is - a night scene...It is the person's own psyche that moves the limbs and not another individual who externally moves around or massages the body muscles because the true knowledge of movement and healing is only procurable when the person deeply initiates the activity from within."

Here, you can read the whole thing at: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-MS-Its-All-Image/dp/0913412848#reader_0913412848

Think about it and it's true, during the course of your day it's your own Mind which moves your limbs and your body in ways that you want without you even thinking about it. I think that is part of the gist of the passage I just quoted and for me points to Rene Descartes' ghost in the machine. The original functioning of the organism according to its DNA blueprint, that is the goal of modern eidetics. The part about Rembrandt's classic Night Watch (1642) is most interesting. Here was a painting that was commissioned by Captain Banning Cocq and several members of his civic guards as a kind of group portrait and was originally 13' X 16' and had 34 figures in it. It had so much dirt and varnish on it over the years as that is the nature of art collecting that only after WWII was it properly restored according to the artist's original vision and became known as Day Watch.

Every now and then we're gonna get a little culture under our belts.

Conservatives who know more about porn than you do

L. Brent Bozell III in yesterday's NY Post writes about some porn actor who got AIDS on the set and is upset, makes the point that folks don't like to see condoms used in these films and so they really don't care as much as they should. Says Vivid Entertainment had a mandatory condom policy for seven years and saw a 20% drop in sales.

I didn't know that.

I'll betcha porno pete didn't know that either. Anytime I gotta do a research paper on the topic I'm gonna go to my man Brent.

The Existential Blog

The fishbowl known as work, the personal questions. Usually there can't be that much work to do if they're grilling you. My Life is fucked up OK? I don't know how I got here. You embellish your answers which is tricky when you're not ready and haven't rehearsed but lurking underneath is The Judgement and you quickly extricate yourself by making a beeline for the Men's Room. When you lose weight people act strange around you. Friend knows I've been dieting and I told him before I picked him up the other day I just had a McRib but he buys me a cheese danish anyway so I ate it to be polite. When you're shedding the pounds real quick there are counterforces at work, the Counter-Conspiracy so we're eating at Stew Leonard's and I'm by the salad bar getting my tuna and whatever else and he's packing it on at the hot food buffet as if to show me and he goes "I'm not judging you" which is fine but why'd he say I'm not judging you? It's we're either all gonna lose weight together, simultaneous-like or not at all. Obama's extending the Bush tax cuts, good for him. Well absinthe is back on the market, a little Van Gogh/Wormwood action. Now just the other day at work everyone was stupendously happy which is fine but more than a little strange for your typical go-back-to-work Monday and so the woman packs out the blue cheese crumbles in their containers but prices them all as roasted porkloin. Get that thujone rockin' for the Holidays!! Wikipedia -- no fan of Assange but you can't tell me those rape prosecutions aren't politically motivated. Let me play catchup and see what I missed. BTW I cracked the 3rd Secret, we're all going to Hell.

In the interests of fighting terror we have to know the size of your penis

Why doesn't Janet Napolitano step through the thing? 'tis the creepy season. Whatcha got up your bunghole buddy?? Anything is theoretically possible of course but I don't think a bladder cancer survivor with a urine bag is gonna blow up a plane. The TSA says 90% of passengers are behind the patdowns and full body scans, that's an awfully high % for any poll don'tcha think? OMG is that Ron Jeremy?!?

The Trojan Pope

Many years ago when I was more active at Catholic religious forums I recall a hot theological topic at the time. Catholic theologians were beginning to carve out a narrow exception for licit condom use, that of a married couple where the husband is say HIV positive. No big deal I thought at the time so the other night when I'm groggy and getting ready for bed I heard something on the news about Pope Benedict saying condoms can be ok in certain cases and I thought again no big deal as he's finally resolved this quirky theological problem. So the next day in my morning paper I read that in some book he wrote he was actually referring to male prostitutes. Last I checked many people still have moral problems with the practice of prostitution, certainly the Church has never endorsed it. So what to make of all this?

More and more rather than relegating Fatima to the dustbin of History recent events have made this prophetic message more relevant than ever. The prophetic element having to do with some sort of antipope towards the End who would lead the Catholic masses astray drawing away 1/3 of the Church hierarchy with him (i.e. 1/3 of the stars of heaven), the wave of diabolical disorientation to come well you have to say putting the most positive spin on things maybe Benedict wants to make a point about all this. The Vatican is denying this is a revolutionary change in Church teaching of course but it is, not the part about an HIV husband but the male prostitutes and first and foremost if a Pope teaches in error you have no duty to follow him. It's disturbing though and what other revolutionary changes in Church teaching are just around the corner although they won't be termed such? Make no mistake, this is one pope I am not following and that is the inherent problem in Roman Catholicism, always has been and that is blind obedience to a pope who can teach in error thereby putting into jeopardy his flock's salvation. It sows confusion in the minds of the faithful but on a happier note Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

A word about the Election

Optical Scanners - made the decision to go vote with my folks and an elderly neighbor and so we go in the place and the first thing I notice is where the hell are all the voting booths?!? Then ya got these DMV-type workers (liberal cousin: are you trying to say they were all black?) who hand you the sheet and a black marker with no verbal instructions whatsoever from Uniqua and Pumpkin and so everyone is helping everyone else and my Mom's sheet got crumpled in the machine somehow and so the lady takes it and scribbles VOID over the top and sets it aside and the thought occured WHERE THE HELL IS THE PRIVACY? Back in the day, yesterday in fact you went in the booth and closed the curtain and you didn't have to tell a soul about it afterwards if you didn't want to, could've left some jizm in there now everyone including the janitor knows how you voted. Well I hope the NY Post is proud of themselves, Andy Cuomo is now the Governor here in NY - WTG!!! I mean I get it that they didn't endorse Paladino although I disagree with it but to push for a liberal Dem from the only purportedly conservatve rag in Town? It's clear State Editor Fred Dicker has a thing about social conservatives, I think that's what animated his reporting if you could call it that all along but anyway so the Repubs took back the House which just goes to show the ancient wisdom of the old Z-man Rule that no political party has permanent power although to hear the liberal chattering classes in Washington talk about it after Obama's Rise to Power. It's like the American Voter is schizo or something, no firm political identity they just make one chamber into Republican and the other chamber stays Democrat. It's clear though Obama doesn't see his Agenda as being at fault and I really wasn't that jazzed up about it all 'cept glad to see Nancy Pelosi having her gavel taken away. What's your take? I just think everyone is on drugs.