Grammys

Now I know why I never really watch any of those major award show extravaganzas on Sunday nights at least not in their entirety. I skim and surf them at best but when it comes to the music awards shows like the Grammys it always inevitably devolves somehow into black/urban music aka rap/hip-hop which isn't really my thing and from what I saw somehow combining that with Imagine Dragons didn't work imo. Beyonce & Jay-Z, you know if we stopped helping celebrities trend on Yahoo everyday they might not be the massive ego-trippers they've turned into. Help them out will ya, google a major disease instead. Lots of parents and others are up in arms over Jay-Z and his wife's raunchy routine last night, what is it somehow classier when Beyonce twerks instead of Miley? and oh yeah there was some type of gay mass weddings going on although I must've missed that part. I've never liked the mixing of politics and any type of major awards show from LA but they all do it and that's usually when I change the channel to a NutriBullet infomercial or a Sanford and Son rerun. I honestly don't even know who won I was so turned off.

I don't know why we expect like we still have privacy

Maybe BB can explain why the Government needs to collect 200 million text messages a day. What a banal undertaking! The operative principle is despite ethics or legality Government does what it wants. This aside what is the practical value of this NSA program called "Dishfire"? none that I can see. Obama as usual fails to inspire or lead.

Send your laundry bill to the Port Authority

Imagine being stuck in traffic on the GW Bridge for four hours! I wonder how many car seats were ruined. If I ever have to commute this way I'm gonna head out with some Depends first. You know if you're gonna deliberately close four lanes on the GW at least have the human decency to spread out a few Port-o-Sans here and there. I agree with NJ Assembly Deputy Speaker John Wisniewski who said Christie is simply "not believable" and how could his deputy chief of staff have planned and done this all on her own? They say an email is forever and my mother always said don't put down certain things in writing. I guess that Port Authority executive David Wildstein is discovering that. Look I never liked Christie as much as some folks here, was never taken in by his NJ bluster and always thought he was somewhat overrated. He said a curious thing during his press conference yesterday that Ft. Lee NJ Mayor Mark Sokolich was never even on his radar. What is that supposed to mean? it kinda implies something else, that if he was on his radar the whole thing may have been plausible. I don't see how in hell Christie becomes the GOP standard-bearer in 2016. In retrospect maybe the whole lapband thing was a waste of time.

Cheech & Chong MD

As you know NY is only the latest state in the union that wants to jump on the medical pot bandwagon. Well actually it's Gov. Andrew Cuomo who wants to by reactivating some kind of dormant pro-medpot law that's been on the NY books for some time now so it's more of a fiat thing but there's something unintentionally funny about a bunch of 60-70 year-old patients on the cancer ward toking together in the midafternoon in the sunroom overlooking the river. It is in my view a very paradoxical and contradictory public health message to be drumming into our skulls on practically a daily basis the unmitigated evils of tobacco use and yet somehow pot under certain circumstances may even benefit you healthwise. Even if it does help some folks manage certain types of chronic pain better risk/benefits ratios should be better explained by the health establishment which they don't seem to be doing imo e.g. maybe you'll live with your glaucoma better but you might do some damage to your brain. Over on the free speech front I was reading over on Drudge today how Fox News' Megyn Kelly got in some hot water for saying Santa was white. I'm always of the view that you should be able to say what you wanna say and anyway since we wanna do the right thing we can make Ole St. Nick black if you want, have him divorce Mrs. Claus because he's been a closet gay all his life and also put a roach in his hands.

A status check on feminism

Last night I was watching an always interesting local program here called Chasing NJ and there was a segment on the increasing number of women who are getting breast augmentation surgery without the benefit of general anaesthesia. The host had asked one woman what was her motivation, after all we're not talking a critical and life-saving operation and she said so she can feel more "confident." So I got to thinking about the apparent increasing cultural irrelevancy of modern feminism, the guys want a nice ripe soft breast to handle so wouldn't want to disappoint the boys would we? So who's more sociologically relevant here Hef or Gloria Steinem? Now before you get on my case I actually agree with a few points of feminism our society's overemphasis on beauty and physical perfection being one of them but you have to ask yourself whether feminism as an overall life philosophy has ever really caught on. I mean are women demanding larger and thicker penises? It would seem for all the talk of women's empowerment these days we're still at heart a bit of a patriarchal society. Thanks gals.

Liberals' Palin Erotomania

They still talk about her even though she's in a kind of semi-retired mode and not running for anything. Liberals get all stalkery about her when her biggest political aspiration these days is to take to Twitter. The Obsession even led Martin Bashir off the deep end who wanted to go all Gothic on her. It's a political psycho/sexual mystery far surpassing their Bachmann fetish.

& then there's this

The lust is clearly off the apple. A notable quotable from Barbara Walters on the Piers Morgan show. Even our Earth Goddess Oprah has cooled towards Obama who's lately been reduced to becoming a running infomercial for the ACA and taking selfies at important occasions like Nelson Mandela's memorial service. Oh well he still has BB, Saty and Chris Matthews but as for me with every passing day he's going more and more into the Jimmy Carter category. Maybe he can pick up a hammer and bucket of nails with Bob Vila and do some Habitat for Humanity after his second term runs out.

How reliable a source of knowledge is Wikipedia?

What's missing in this picture is the laptopper on the park bench, they're all at the public library. Do a typical google search on any subject under the sun, say twerking or the Skunkape, and wiki is ALWAYS the first or second entry. Is this scholastically justified though? It's like the Amazon.com of Knowledge, links leading to hyperlinks, a veritable feast for the mind but is the whole enterprise shaky?

The 50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination

While I wasn't even born during this tragic and historic event I was born on 3/14/64 which would make me well along in my mother's womb on that fateful day of 11/22/63. The specials are starting to churn out with PBS leading the way. Watched NOVA's "Cold Case JFK" episode last night and just as I suspected all the more mainstream and respected programs are gonna go all establishmentarian on us, not really gonna give serious fodder to any conspiracy theories. On the show after that narrator George Clooney intoned "when Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository" and I got to thinking but that was never exactly proven in a court of law now was it because nightclub owner Jack Ruby wasted no time in gunning him down. While growing up I had a slim purple bound volume of the famous Warren Commission Report on my bookshelf and was weeding out books one day and it was such an easy decision to just chuck the thing out. The House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 went with it was probably a conspiracy and I'll go along with that but I haven't decided on which theory yet. I'm kind of guessing BB's establishmentarian POV here but let's open it up for debate anyway.

Turns out all that Rt-Wing Propaganda was right

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have now gotten cancellation notices from their health insurance companies in the mail. The Obama M.O. - get people off insurance to get them back on again, the running carousel. Presidential flackey Jay Carney has said they were substandard policies anyway. The NYT has opined in one of their trademark by now way out there editorials that Obama didn't outright lie when he said oh about a hundred times you'll be able to keep your doctor and your health-care policy, he simply misspoke. The happy and breezy young girl of the government website is no longer there either. Maybe that's because she too has recognized that ObamaCare is going down as one of the biggert clusterfucks in American history. When Biebs finally comes down with the Brazilian clap he doesn't have to worry but the rest of us as the song says don't come from money, we're not royals. Dems are stuck with this and it'll be real interesting how all this plays out in the 014 midterms.

Obama's continuing war on Privacy

The NSA, the Atlas Shrugged of spying - bulk is better. There's intelligent spying and then there's the indiscriminate, haphazard, random and promiscuous spying as practiced by the NSA...now it's tapping into Yahoo and Google links overseas. Just what in hell were we supposed to learn from Angela Merkel and the Pope anyway? Welcome to President Obama's dystopia.

ObamaPetCare

I don't think people should talk about pet health insurance yet when we can't even get human insurance off the ground. 5 million lines of code......

I need another TMI closet

Robin Thicke told Howard Stern he and his wife Paula Patton have done nearly everything. I know all about Sandra Fluke's monthly birth control expenses and how Michael Douglas got his cancer. Katie Couric once had her colonoscopy filmed and John Mayer has had coitus with Jennifer Aniston. There's older stuff like Bob Dole's erections, Bill Clinton's crooked member. Some quite dated Johnny Carson stuff and Frank Gifford has a thing for smelly women. I don't know where to keep all this stuff. Maybe I'll go to Home Depot and get one of them sheds.

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:)

A part-time nation with health insurance

This is pretty much what the social/economic landscape is gonna look like when ObamaCare gets fully rolled out. Gold, silver or bronze plan your choice. On the plus side you'll be covered you just might not be able to afford the latest smartphone or HDTV. Look full-time work can exacerbate your illnesses and ailments, better to Kindle with a mug of hot cocoa and rest your back. I've been wondering of late though if HillaryCare would've been any better or maybe they're the same thing. Happy exchange shopping - is there an app for that?

The liberal(?) Pope Francis

He gets around town in an older Renault with 190,000 miles on it. Asked on a plane about gay priests and he says "who am I to judge?" Now he says clerical celibacy is not a dogma of the Church and says it can be discussed. Unlike the more foreboding and stern ex-Benedict he's the softie in the Entenmann's box, friendlier and more personal around the edges. I got no problem but if the liberal media starts to like you then there is a problem. I think you have to balance your softness though so as to appear you stand for something, you're not throwing out doctrines and morals. Coolness though cool is not a teaching. My view on priestly celibacy is it may be a blessing in disguise, you never experience having your heart broken but I also think it should be an option. All things considered though I'm getting the faintest whiff, just the wisp of a curl of a liberal pope with more liberal things to say in the near future, dribs and drabs stuff on planes in cars on sidewalks and in interviews. Is he down with Pro-Choice? he might vague the issue. On the Syrian question he's not even discussing the Church's time-honored since Aquinas just-war doctrine he's just tweeting the typical pacifist platitudes. The point's been made the Church needs to eventually move with the times, the Zeitgeist but is the times always worth moving towards? I don't have a firm impression of this pope yet and some feel Jesuits are a problem. I'm trepidatious and hopeful at the same time. As an interesting aside what's in some of those Vatican archives? Keep the theological sleuths busy.

Bush put boots on the ground in two wars...

...and conservatives by and large eagerly supported him. Obama wants a limited strike on Syria and he's a weak and confusing leader. Is there a Tea Party Spark Notes to explain all this?

Ronald McDonald vs. Cheech & Chong

Some issues have come up in a couple of recent posts namely that eating at McDonald's is extremely bad for your health but pot is somehow ok. In the following 3 month experiment which group do you think will come out on top in terms of general overall health? The first group will eat what they consider to be a healthy diet, work out at the gym and all that good stuff but they'll smoke a couple of joints a day 'cause that's what they do. The second group will eat at McDonald's everyday, just once daily is enough and it doesn't have to be a hamburger and a soda. They can go for the healthier options on the menu like the salads, the wraps, the yogurt parfaits and a bottle of spring. I believe they even have some apple thing. So this group does that but they're not into pot and won't smoke it and they can jog too just like the first group. OK so at the end of the 3 month period who has damaged their health more and who will be happier? I once knew a guy who was really into his health, kept detailed charts of his cholesterol levels, plotted this and plotted that on graphs and reports but was a real pothead and was always devising new ways of toking like making a funnel out of Reynold's aluminum foil which I would think your fingers would get hot. He also unplugged all his appliances like the tv before leaving home for the day because he explained there's the trickle-suck effect of the plug simply being in the outlet and even that uses juice. What I want to know is at what point in time do you turn into Howard Hughes?

The very liberal NYC Mayoral race

The very not-afraid-to-say-it liberal Bill de Blasio is leading the Democratic pack to replace Bloomberg. You'd think Stop 'n' Frisk were the most important issue facing NYers as they're all running ads against the practice but de Blasio is also touting in commercials he's gonna tax the rich more in order to pay for after-school programs. The thought occured though doesn't he need the rich vote too as there's quite a few of them on the upper sides of the Island? Christine Quinn the Speaker of the NYC Council is second or third in the polling I've seen and Bill Thompson is right there with her and because he's black he's gotten certain major endorsements from other key blacks like the Rev. Calvin Butts. Anthony Weiner is one of them lower-tier candidates always around 8% although he has interesting positions like stop the ban on gay men donating blood at the same time touting the conservative position of more discipline in the public schools. I really don't think NYers are all that jazzed up about the Republican side with Catsimitidis of Gristedes fame and former MTA Chairman Joe Lhota who said he wouldn't hold up the subway lines for a couple of damn kittens. For Comptroller all Scott Stringer has to do is put ads against Spitzer saying "I'm the normal guy." Oh God though am I glad to see Bloomberg go! can't you just picture him on one of them court shows?

Today's fast food protests and why I plan to eat at all three

Growing up I never went to work at a McDonald's, it just wasn't for me and I knew going in the pay was low. The pay is still rather low because Mickie D's is basically an entry-level job for teens and other young people first entering the job market. Other people however don't see it that way. The federal minimum wage is now at $7.25/hour and I've never made the case you could survive on the minimum but if you're 42 years old with or without kids why are you even working at a Wendy's or Burger King? Of course many people who have started at a McDonald's are now managing at a McDonald's but all this socialist unrest is not gonna cause me to eat less at any of the Big Three, in fact I think I'll go out later. Everybody has a political statement to make these days it seems and personally I much prefer to work it out through blogging rather than hitting the pavement and causing social disruptions. I'm not the bumper sticker type but I do break for animals.