Joe's pissed again, find out why

Hi, and welcome to What's Joe Bitchin About Now? This is sort of my version of a blog, just a collection of rants, complaints, reviews, thoughts and random musings best read while having trouble falling asleep.

The Hot Chick of the Week is on hiatus pending more Hot Chicks wanting to get on here, in the meantime
Go here to see the the previous weeks Hot Chicks.

Also for you Hot Chicks fans,
I have posted some of my best photos (well, the non-naked ones anyway) to my MySpace page. Come on, go there, be on my friends list. Wont you be my neighbor?

If YOU are a hot chick and want to be hot chick of the week, contact me and we'll set up a photo shoot.

Bizarre search term of the moment

Here's something I bet ya didn't know. When you put a search into Google or any other search engine, not only does it keep track of the terms, it tells any site you visit what the search terms were that got you there. So, every day I get a report telling me what people were looking for when they found this site. I'll update this as new and better searches show up in the report.This was an actual search someone conducted that somehow got them onto the Valves website,
I swear I'm not making these up.
And the winner is?

very very fisted broken asshole shit vegetables fully loaded

A note to my sweaty brethren at the gym

I've been going to the gym daily now for about 6 months or so. I've been trying to lose weight, get into shape, control the diabetes. Mostly though it's because I heard that for every 30 lbs you lose, your penis gains an inch, so I figure if I can get down to a normal weight, I'll be hung like John Holmes.
Since I started there, a few thoughts have occurred to me and I wanted to share them with you, so that our mutual daily gruntfest can be more enjoyable for us all.
To those of you who work at the gym. What the hell do you people do? Every day I come in and the same girl is sitting at the front desk, surfing the web, talking on her cell phone, or more often both. I've never seen her do anything else. I couldn't even tell you how many others work there, at most I've seen maybe 4 at a time, usually also congregated around the front desk babbling, or in some side office also cruising the net. I've never seen them helping anyone, demonstrating how to use a machine, working with somebody or much of anything else. They don't seem to go out of their way to clean the place, that's for sure. There are personal trainers there who don't appear to actually work for the gym, but I think it would be a nice touch if someone at the gym actually did more than just look at you with a faint air of amusement at the audacity of a fat slob coming in to try to exercise before going back to their ongoing and apparently endless search for the best Myspace profile.
To the musclebound jocks. Those muscles must have come from somewhere, so how is it that all I ever see you doing is blabbing to each other and preening in the mirrors? I have to assume that you're lifting something at some point in the day, but I'll be damned if I've ever seen it happen.
And what's with you guys who don't take a shower before you leave? I'm not one to analyze what people do in the locker room, but it's hard not to notice when your sweaty ass walks in and you just towel it off, change clothes and leave. I'm not exactly world famous for my incredibly stringent personal hygiene, but I mean, seriously. Unless you're planning to drive through a carwash with your convertible top down or the clothes you're putting on have some kind of special germ fighting solution built in, what the hell kind of sweaty fuck just tosses on some clothes over their sweaty funky asses and walks out into the real world?
Speaking of sweaty fucks, that brings me to the worst of you. If you're going to use the sauna, bring a goddamn towel you fucking sweaty assed freak! I see certain guys in there all the time, one of them wears a shirt but no pants, others don't wear anything at all. A shirt but no pants? So you're worried that someone will notice your man-boobs but the fact that your sack is laying on the bench and slowly oozing onto the floor is just fine? Nobody wants to be the next person in there to have to sit in a puddle of your scrotal stew you sick, sick bastard. When you get up, do you surreptitiously glance at the shape of the pool of man grease you left behind with a sense of pride? "Yeah man, my balls made that, look, you can see where my sweaty anus left it's little asterisk of dew! Hey look, today my man-ooze looks like a bunnyrabbit!" put some fucking pants on or at least sit on a towel you greasy assed scuzzbuckets.
Finally, to the big fat people who are in there everyday huffing and puffing as they walk on the treadmill at .5 mph. More power to ya, I have a lot of respect for you. Making a change isn't easy. I'm going through the same thing and I know how it is to get the dirty looks or the smiles of contempt from all the buff "normal" people as they watch you struggle up the stairs. We'll all show them though, when we've dropped a collective half ton and suddenly they want us to go to their cookouts and sleep with them. Yes, we'll show them alright...

What do all these people have in common?

Tom Hamilton

Geddy Lee

John Paul Jones

John Entwistle

Tiran Porter and James Jamerson

Roger Waters

Bootsy Collins

Paul McCartney

No, it's not that they dress flamboyantly and it's not that they all have a secret squirrel fetish. Yes, you've guessed it. They are all bass players. and so am I. There are times when I stop and think about that and even after all this time, it sort of amazes me. When I was a kid, I would see bands on TV or wherever and I would see the guys playing guitars. I didn't even know what a bass was, but I always liked the long guitar, cuz it looked cooler to me. Same thing when I waled into a music store. The basses were so long and lean and just looked so cool compared to the puny guitars. I never actually wanted to play bass though, I wanted to be a drummer. There's a big part of me that still wants to, and I sneak in a little drumming whenever I can. But, my father had played bass before I was even born, and so we had a bass in the house, so bass it was...
Most of the time, it's not something I think much about, it's just one of those things I've been doing for a long time, like driving a car or typing. But every so often, I'll be on a stage someplace and I'll look down and see this really beautiful piece of wood and steel hanging there and I'll watch my hands moving around on it with some purpose and it's almost like watching someone else.
The people in the pictures above are the people most responsible for how I play, if I have any kind of style at all, but beyond that, they are responsible for the fact that I play at all. I grew up in a house that mostly had country music and opera records in it. I didn't really get exposed to rock music (unless you count my sister's Partridge Family album as rock) until I was relatively old. I heard it on the radio, but it was just something peripheral to my world when I was a kid. It was a chance trip to Maine that changed it all. My father borrowed a car from a friend and it only had an 8 track player in it. There was also only one tape on the car. It was "Toys in the Attic" by Aerosmith. It was literally like nothing I had ever heard before. It completely changed music for me. At that time, I had just started taking bass lessons (mandated by my father). I was about 11 at the time. The lessons didn't last long, but they didn't have to. Once I heard that tape, suddenly I wanted to play. I had never wanted to play before that, it was something I did to placate my parents and to keep me from having to play football. But that tape entered my brain. I stole it from the car and from that point, I listened to it daily. I had a small portable record played in my room and for Xmass that year, I asked for all the Aerosmith albums there were. I got them too, all wrapped up in a single block. From the first album through Live Bootleg, which had just come out. From that day forward, for a long time, I would come home from school, pick an album (most often, Rocks or Get Your Wings) and I would slowly dissect each song, one note at a time. I couldn't read music (I still can't) but I would listen, over and over and move my hand around the neck until I found a position where I could get to most of the notes most easily. Every day, a different side of an album. I still think I play a lot like Tom Hamilton,and I still credit him as the single most influential bassist in my life. Not long after starting this, I was invited to be in a small band with some school kids, and the guitar player had this book, "The Beatles Complete". So my next teacher was Paul McCartney.
Once I started playing in bands, I was suddenly exposed to a much wider range of music and a much larger circle of influences. The next band I was in did a lot of 70s classic rock stuff, so I got to know a lot of Doobie Brothers and I liked the style of Tiran Porter, the DB original bassist. Some bass players stick very close to the root all the time, others move all over the place, a few, like Porter and Hamilton draw a line down the center and do both. Holding the bottom, driving the groove, but without being dull or repetitive. It was that style that attracted me and it's that style I still try to hold now.
I don't remember who it was who first introduced me to Rush, but that was another thunderbolt out of the blue. Lots of bands had drummers who could play a million hits a second, and lots of bands had busy bassists. Few had a bassist and a drummer who could be both incredibly complex, and at the same time heavy and solid as hell and play TOGETHER all the time, even when doing the most ridiculously complicated stuff . Rush had that, and I found myself thinking of what bass could do as an instrument in whole new ways after locking myself away and learning every Rush song I could get my hands on. Learning Rush had a side benefit too, when you're 14 in 1978, and you can play 2112 or Hemispheres all the way through, you gain a certain status among the other 14 year old wannabe rockers! Listening to both Geddy Lee and Neil Peart was both exhilarating and sort of humbling, because the bar was raised in so many ways at that point for me. I was never really the kind of player who could be happy going "bomp bomp bomp" all night, they showed me you didn't have to.
All the players above had an impact on my playing in one way or another. Some more than others. I was probably about 12 or 13 when I saw "The Kids are Alright" with John Entwhistle, and at the time I had been hanging my bass down somewhere around my knees. But there he was, playing the heaviest shit imaginable on that awesomely cool Alembic with the spiderweb inlays, with his bass up around his chin. I literally got home from the theater and raised my bass up that day. Not quite as high as his, but a hell of a lot higher than it was. My playing improved instantly by about 200%.
As I got older and played with more musicians, they would turn me on to new bands, new songs, new approaches. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd became huge for me in my later teens. Again, there was that mix of solid, low, but interesting and identifiable from both Roger Waters and especially John Paul Jones. I would go through bands one at a time. Led Zeppelin? Trip to Al Bums to buy every used Zep album they had, take them home, and learn it all. Pink Floyd? Trip to Al Bums, buy the albums, learn them all. Every time I learned a band's catalog, I learned something new. Music is about discovery, and I looked forward to always finding new things, new details. Hey, this song sounds sort of like that one, but in this part, the bass goes THERE instead of THERE. That's cool, maybe I can use that trick in this other song too. Everything added a piece to the puzzle.
I had mostly ignored Motown and R&B Funk and Soul through my younger teens. I was very much into hard and progressive rock, but on an urge, I picked up a CD someplace that was "25 hits from Motown". Once again, revelation time. All these songs I had heard as background music in department stores were suddenly revealed to be a lot more than I had ever imagined. Subtlety in rhythm, in groove, in approach. I got into my "funk period". The Ohio Players, Commodores, PFunk, Bootsy Collins, bought more Motown, listened to James Jamerson and the Funk Brothers lay down one amazingly simple yet incredibly perfect groove after another. I learned more.
So, what's the point of all of this? There really isn't one other than a kind of gratitude I have. Every so often, someone will take a picture of me playing, and I'll look at it and see that bass hanging there. And the thought will come to me that I can play that. I know what the strings do, I know where the notes are. If you had asked me when I was 10 years old if I would ever know how to play a bass, I would have thought you were nuts. That takes talent, skill, dedication. I have none of those thing.So when I see the photos above or others of these guys, who I grew up trying like hell, not to emulate, but to learn from, to absorb, to take pieces of and add to myself, I can think that I'm one of them. I'm not in their league, but I'm one of them. Nothing can ever take that from me, I'm a bass player, one of a zillion who are out there, but I still think of us as a small group. Bass players don't get the chicks the way the guitar players and drummers do, bass isn't typically the instrument to learn if your goal is to become a big solo rock star, but we get the loudest most powerful amps, and we get to make the walls and floors shake, and that's a pretty cool thing in itself.
I don't know what I would be doing now if I hadn't started playing music when I was a kid. It's now been the center of my life for something like 33 years. Not long ago in a conversation with someone, she had said that she was "as good as she was ever going to get", but the truth is, you're never as good as you're going to get, you always learn new things. I learn something new everytime the Valves learn a new song.Always problems to solve, new approcahes you have to take. It never ends. That's one of the things that makes it interesting.
When I go to a music store, I see these young kids playing the guitars. Not many of them playing bass, but there are always a couple. I wish them luck. They are in for an incredible adventure if they stick with it. Someday, they too will see a photo of themselves holding one of these beautiful pieces of carpentry with all the knobs and machine heads and hardware and think "Wow, I can actually play that thing". For all those kids who have decided to learn the bass, welcome to the Club! It's an amazing feeling, I recommend it to anyone.

Can you hear me now? Bastards

I've decided that I have to get a cell phone. I've avoided it for a long time because I hate seeing people walking around with these stupid things glued to their faces, but it's becoming difficult to get by without one, so I'm going to bite the bullet. I had never really looked into cell phones before, I had seen the ads on TV, but it's not something I paid much attention to. Now I've spent the last week looking at phones and reading reviews. What I have found is that this is the most fucked up, idiotic system I think I've ever seen. As soon as I started looking, one phone stood out to me, the G1. OK, fine, I'd like a G1. What do you mean I can't get one because of my zip code? T-Mobile doesn't sell phones to people in my zip code? Then put it on Verizon, all my friends say T Mobile sucks anyway and I should use Verizon. What do you mean I can't do that? I can only get that phone on T Mobile? Well, Verizon must have one like it, right? They don't? WTF??
This is the most asinine system I think I've ever seen. Every phone that I like is on some mickey mouse carrier that only seems to have service if you live within 100 yards of 495. Everyone tells me to go with either Verizon or AT&T. OK, Well, AT&T has the iPhone, that's supposed to b pretty cool. AT&T has a plan for 70 bucks a month, unlimited data, ok, I'll go with that. What? What do you mean if I want an iPhone, the cheapest plan I can get is 100 bucks a month? Why? It's the same talk time, the same unlimited messaging, the same fucking data! What am I missing here? If I pay the extra 30 bucks a month, does it come with a free hooker or something? Then what the fuck am I paying extra for? Just for the priviledge of having that friggin phone? Is this a joke?
I simply can't believe how idiotic and byzantine this system is. Can you imagine looking for a car, and deciding on a Mazda, only to be told "Well, this car is only available to drive on side roads. If you want to drive on 290 or 495, you have to pick a Toyota but if you need to use the turnpike, you'll have to get a Lexus. Oh, and if you want to go faster than45 mph, it will cost an extra 50 bucks a month and a radio is another 10, and if you want to be able to steer it, you'll need the special steerable edition which is $3000.00 more up front and 40 bucks a month."
You are also stuck with whatever you get for 2 years. So, if I say screw it, and get a phone I don't really like, and next week a much better one comes out, oh well, jokes on me I guess. Unless want to cough up a ton of dough, I'm stuck with it. I've been trying to think of any other product that has as idiotic a sales model but I haven't been able to. It makes no sense to me that you can't get whatever phone you want on whichever network you pick. The network doesn't even make the damnphone.HTC makes the G1, wouldn't they stand to make more money if you could get it and assign it to whatever network you want? And yes, I know there's a way to get an unlocked phone, but they cost WAY more than they're worth, and even then, the unlocked phones aren't the same as any of the network phones. It's ludicrous. I guess I would have had much less aggravation this week if I'd just gone on with life, blissfully unaware of the incredible stupidity involved with all of this. Oh well, live and learn. All I know is, if I get one of these damn things, there better be hot chicks calling me every two minutes and e-mailing me naked self portraits daily, because otherwise, I'm going to be really pissed off!

Reposting for a friend

A close friend of mine has recently started stripping again after having taken some time to do other things. In her honor, and as a small favor to all the other hard working dancers out there, I thought I'd repost my famous

Joe's Guide to Strippers

OK, so a lot of you know that I do "glamour" photography (See my photo of the week for an example). It's also no secret that a lot of the girls I photograph make a living as exotic dancers. Over the years, I've gotten to be quite close to a lot of dancers, and I see what they go through every week, so I thought I'd put together a little guide to the right way to approach and deal with strippers.
1. Always remember that these women are human beings. They have feelings and they can be hurt, same as you. It takes a lot of guts to do what they do, and the fact that they're on a stage in front of you does not give you the right to insult them or discuss them like they don't exist. Yes, they can hear you. If you think a girl is not attractive, no one is forcing you to sit at her stage (and if you are sitting at the stage, put some money up. It's not a free show. I've seen guys actually get pissed if a girl walks past him when has no money on the stage, for the life of me, I can't figure out the level of stupidity involved to sit there and not expect to tip). Clubs hire all types, and your type will be along soon enough, in the meantime, saying you think a girl is too fat, or flat or old, or has stretch marks or whatever isn't going to make you any friends. Everyone has flaws. Let's strip you naked and see what the assholes will say about you!
2. Stripping is a job. They are there to make money, not to listen to you drone on for an hour about how much your job / wife / girlfriend / truck / motorcycle / etc sucks. Most girls will be happy to spend time with you, and get to know you, but make no mistake, they are expecting to get paid for their time. If you have no money, be honest about it, but don't lead a girl on for an hour and then just leave. Their time is valuable. Dancers are not paid by the hour, in fact they are paying the club to work there, and every minute spent sitting with you is time they could be making money with someone else. It's not a personal insult to you if she gets up and leaves, she needs to make money. She is also not looking for a boyfriend. If she seems interested, always remember that that's part of their job. They are a fantasy, they are there so that you can spend some time with a beautiful woman and enjoy yourself, but don't ever make the mistake of thinking it's more than that. Sure, occasionally a dancer may end up dating a customer, but it's rare and in any case, it's not going to happen the first time she meets you.
3. They are not doing anything wrong. One of the more misunderstood aspects of a dancer's life (believed in large part due to the media, which always seems to portray them as victims) is that most people assume that they all hate what they do. This is not true. Sure some do, there are always people in any job who hate it, but the vast majority of dancers are there because they enjoy it. They like the exercise, the music, the attention and of course, the money. It's actually a pretty good job if you can handle it. They set their own hours, get paid in cash and on a good day can earn a hell of a lot of money. The reason I bring this up is to deter what some girls call "White Knights". These are guys who will come in and start saying things like "You're too good for this place" and "You don't have to do this" or worse, and will try to get them to leave the club for some other job (Some will try the "you're degrading yourself" route too, as if sitting in an office, typing numbers into a computer for 8 hours for 6 bucks an hour isn't degrading in it's own way). These kinds of remarks are usually taken as an insult. The implication is that dancers are too stupid to understand what an "awful" situation they are in and need some help to get out. I know dancers who are making over 50K a year at 19, 20, and 21 years old. They work when they want, leaving time to be with their children (yes, many of them are mothers) or go to school or just live a life while the rest of us are trapped in the 40 hour grind. They do not want or need you to be telling them that they are so beautiful that they should be sitting in a cubicle someplace. Think about it...
4. Don't Touch! At least not without an explicit OK. Some clubs allow contact, some don't, but even if they do, it is up to the dancer to decide what her boundaries are. Every girl is different, some will allow more than others, but it is up to them to make the choice. You'll figure it out pretty quickly, but in the meantime, don't just go sticking your fingers all over the place, and for God's sake, keep your pants zipped! If she pushes your hands away, keep them away. Inappropriate contact is one of the quickest way to get a girl to blacklist you. At the very least, it will piss her off and she'll back out of reach, at worst, it will get you thrown out of the club.
5. Don't be a stinky slob. Dancers by the nature of their job have to get closer to other people than what would generally be considered normal. As a result, most dancers (ok, not all, but MOST) are almost preternaturally clean. While they don't expect you to be "Just Got Out of the Shower Springtime Fresh", it wouldn't hurt you to take the time to wash up before you go there. If you've just finished doing that valve job on the Jeep, don't show up at a club covered in grime, wearing grease and oil covered pants and a sweaty T-shirt expecting all the girls to give you a big hug and hop in your lap. Keeping a supply of something to help your breath isn't a bad idea either. One last thing about appearance and clothing. This may sound stupid to you but if you're going to a club that allows lap dances, try to wear soft pants. No corduroys or rough jeans. Sweat pants work well for this. You'll get a better dance out of it, and she'll be a lot happier to not be sitting naked on something a step above sandpaper.

I've met literally hundreds of dancers since I started my photography 7 years ago, and what I've come to learn is that they are like everyone else. They come in all sizes, flavors and colors, but they are normal, down to earth people with lives doing a job for which they get little respect and a great deal of grief. To become a dancer takes a lot of courage. and many of the biggest detractors are people who would never have the guts, much less the ability, charisma or appearance to do what they do. They also take a toll outside of work in dealing with the stigma society puts on exotic dancing in general. How sex and nudity came to be considered such an evil thing in this society is something I will never understand, especially when violence is fetishized into a high art. It's my opinion that they actually perform a public serVice, there are a lot of very lonely people in the world, and sex is one of the strongest drives humans have. If the rabid moralists of this country had their way and eliminated all the strip clubs and porn the way they wish, I believe there would be an increase in violence that would boggle the mind. All you need to do is look at countries where it is banned, and you will see misogyny and repression on a level that women here couldn't even comprehend.
Bottom line: Be good to them and they will return your kindness. Treat them with respect, they deserve it, but don't kid yourself into believing that you are the center of their universe. Play along with the fantasy, help them out financially and you'll both have a great time.

I have a new bass!

Several months ago, I broke a string onstage. it was the first time I had had that happen since sometime in the early 1980s and I didn't have a back up bass with me. Luckily, I did have strings, but it takes quite a while to change a bass string. So, the set had to stop while I took the time to replace it. I decided that night I needed a back up bass for gigs just in case. Now, I had 6 basses at the time, but only one was a 5 string fretless, which is what I've been playing for several years now (A Dean Edge, for you gearheads out there). My first thought was to just find something cheap but usable, like a Brice but I started thinking that, here I am, a bass player for over 30 years and I've never treated myself to a really great bass. Not that I'm complaining about the ones I have, they all have their own characteristics and there are things I love about all of them, but they were also almost all bought used or were just kind of cheap. The Dean was an exception, that was a gift from a dear friend and was and is one of my most prized possessions, but I obviously can't use that as a back up to itself. So, what to do?
I don't have a lot of dough, but once a year, I get my tax refund and it's my one and only chance to splurge on something relatively expensive. I decided that this years tax refund was bass money. I started looking around to see what was out there and I was sort of stunned to find just how rare a decent 5 string fretless bass is. They seemed to come in two types: Super cheapo version like the Brice and SX, and ridiculously expensive, like Tobias, MTD, and all these small custom made things. There was also another problem I hadn't considered. The Dean has a fairly narrow neck and the strings are closer together at the bridge than they are on a 4 string bass. However, the vast majority of 5 string basses have the same string spacing as a 4 string, which means the necks on those basses are like the deck of an aircraft carrier by the time you get up around the 12th fret. I have kind of dwarfishly small hands (with all that that implies) and so I needed to find a bass with a neck and bridge more or less the same as the Dean. One last thing I really wanted was a bass with no fretlines on the neck. I honestly don't understand why anyone who plays fretless wants little white lines where the frets used to be. I don't watch my hand much when I play and even if I did, you mostly see the side of the neck, not the top. The lines always just seemed superfluous to me, not to mention kind of ugly. So, of course I come to find out that almost every mass produced 5 string fretless also have lined necks. Bastard! The last disappointment was finding out that even Fender, the grandfather of the electric bass doesn't even make a 5 string fretless bass at all. I was particularly annoyed by that because I have a Fender 4 string fretless that I love.
There was really only one company that seemed to have everything i wanted and that was Carvin. Carvin is a company in California that only sells equipment direct through a catalog or website. Their guitars are made to order, so you can pick out what you want for a finish, body wood, neck, hardware, all that stuff. The downside is there is no way to play one before you order it. If you get it and don't like it, you can return it, but since it takes weeks for them to make one, it seemed like kind of a pain. In the end though, they were my only option to really get what i wanted. For weeks leading up to tax time, I spent time on their website configuring basses and options and getting prices. But, it kept coming up as a but more money than I really had. I had almost given up when wonder of wonders, a bass turned up on Ebay that was about 85% of what I wanted. A Carvin 5 string fretless, no fretlines, narrow neck, in mint condition. And, to top it off, the price was literally half of what a brand new one would have cost me. It didn't have Carvin's built in Piezo bridge, which I really wanted, but in the end, it was buy that bass or end up with nothing so I got it. This is what it looks like

This is NOT a photo of my bass, I haven't had a chance to take any yet. But, this is pretty much what it looks like. Solid walnut body, maple neck through body. It's a natural oiled finish, which I've never had before, and it smells great and it's very smooth. I always had reservations about Carvin. The fact that you couldn't play one before you bought it always made me sort of uneasy, but it is built like a piece of fine furniture and sounds amazing. If any of you are considering a Carvin, don't even hesitate, it's far nicer than I would have even thought possible.
So, not too shabby, eh?

So, you want me to buy an American car?

First, you have to define what makes an American car "American". There are people driving Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas etc that were all made in this country, many of them are probably not even aware of it, and there are people driving Chevys, Cadillacs, etc that were made in Canada or Mexico, not the US. So having a car made by one of the Big 3 is no guarantee for or against having a car made here. There are 3 reasons why I don't drive an American car: First, with only a couple of exceptions, they are really ugly. I don't know who styles the cars these days, but GM in particular makes some of the ugliest things on wheels. Chrysler has at least some stylish cars, but if you want want of the nice ones, you better be prepared to pay through the nose for it, and Ford, well, Ford has the mustang, which is a rip off of the Mustang they were building in 1971. All their other cars are as ugly as GM. Second, the price, There is simply no good "American" inexpensive car. There are a few that are cheap, but cheap is different than inexpensive, which brings me to three, reliability. When I was a mechanic (and I was a mechanic for 8 years, and worked for GM and Chrysler dealers), I always thought it was odd that you would have a car like, say, the Dodge Omni and the Chrysler LeBaron, which might use the same basic engine, yet for some reason, it was the Omni that would be having constant problems with things like broken crankshafts. At some point, you realize it's no coincidence, They were deliberately taking substandard parts and using them in the cheapest cars. The more expensive the car, the better the parts you got. Can you imagine Honda doing this? They were also ridiculously badly engineered. I can remember a GM engine that had the oil filter mounted at the top of the engine upside down, so every time you removed the filter, dirty oil would pour out all over the exhaust manifold. Brilliant. There was a certain Cadillac made so that to replace the spark plugs, the engine had to be removed. Genius!
Having said all of that, I have a solution to getting people to buy these cars again. You want me to buy from you GM? Chrysler? Ford? Then give me a bumper to bumper warranty that covers everything, and I mean everything for 10 years or 100,000 miles. Since you appear to be incapable of making a car that won't break down all the time, then you fix it when it breaks. Making something inexpensive enough that I don't have to take out a ten year loan would be helpful too. Let's face it, nowadays, the average person who buys a car is taking out a very long loan. That car should be covered, completely covered for as long as I have to pay for it. So, put your money where your mouth is. You want me to believe that you've changed, that quality is job one or whatever other marketing bullshit you're peddling, then lets see you live up to it. Maybe if you were on the hook for all the repairs, you might take engineering and building them more seriously. Until that happens, I and a lot of other people, will have to buy foreign econoboxes. I'm not happy about it, my current car is nothing to write home about, but it works and I don't have to worry about a fire starting every time I change the oil. So, there you have it. I would bet that if you were to really warranty every part, every system for 100,000 miles, people would start to think differently about your cars. Till then they will retain the stigma they have now of being substandard junk and unfortunately, it's a stigma that they mostly deserve.

An open letter to National Floors Direct

I can appreciate you wanting your ads to feature real customers talking about your products, but it would be a lot more convincing if you weren't hiring actors from the Googly Eyed Overacting Amateur Hour drama company to do your ads. Also, the use of so many camera angles and quick cuts just reinforces the idea that there were multiple takes used. I can only assume a LOT of takes, Imagine how many it took to get some of those wannabe movie stars to look even relatively like normal human beings. Just tossing that out there for you, good luck with your floors.

Give me some sugah baby!

So, it turns out I have Diabetes. There's nothing quite like finding out one day that you have an incurable chronic disease, but it could have even worse, I could have gotten what the Elephant Man had (there are some who would say I already have that). For those who don't know, type 2 Diabetes, which is what I have, is when your body can no loner respond correctly to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that your pancreas produces that basically acts as an intermediary between the sugar in your blood and the cells of your body. All of your cells run on sugar (a specific form of sugar called Glucose). When you eat food, sugar and carbs in it are broken down into glucose and put into your blood to be transported around your body. But if you have no insulin (like type 1 diabetics) or you've grown resistant to it, the sugar can't get out of your blood and into your cells. This means your cells get starved for energy and that your blood turns into a syrupy mess. It's the syrup part that's the really bad thing, because your blood literally thickens to the point where it has a hard time moving through your smallest veins and capillaries and so as it tried to push in there, it can break through causing blindness, nerve damage and all kinds of other fun things.
So, now I get to poke myself till I bleed a few times a day and check how much sugar is in my blood, which is fun. I also have to be very careful about how much sugar and carbs I take in. I basically stopped eating anything with sugar in it the day after Xmass, when I first suspected that I might have diabetes (and for those of you looking t lose weight, I lost 20 lbs in a matter of weeks JUST from stopping sugar intake). But, there is some form of sugar in almost everything, so you have to always be aware of what you're eating.
It's not a lot of fun, but I'm trying to put a positive spin on it. It's my own fault after all, you can't eat giant hershey's chocolate bars for supper without consequences. I've needed to lose weight and get my shit together physically for a long time but always found it difficult to stay motivated, but when someone says "Do this or you could wind up with no legs" well, you get motivated. I'm on a special diet now, but it's unlike any diet I've ever been on. I'm losing weight, which is nice, but it's no longer really about that anyway. It's a diet I can't stop, I can't just say "Man, I'm sick of this, I'm going to the buffet". It's like dieting with a gun to your head. My biggest fear is going blind. Not a lot of braille strip clubs, you know what I mean?
If you're like me and you live on soda, candy, twinkies, white bread and the rest, watch your ass. I never thought I could get this, I suppose I didn't even know what it was. Now I'll be dieting one way or another for the rest of my life, checking my blood, on medication etc. forever. Its not a lot of fun. If you even think you might have a problem like this, get checked out. All it requires is a blood test, but it's the kind of thing you could have and not even be aware of, so make sure you're getting tested once in a while. End of sermon...

Where have I been?

Well, mostly I've been stuck at home. See, we had this ice storm on the night of the 11th. About 1:30 Friday morning, some icy branches on a tree outside our house hit the transformer on the pole and started a fire. The fire then spread to the base of the pole and almost lit my neighbors car on fire. This was the scene between 1:30 and 3 am while the fire dept was there.

Just a few minutes before these were taken, the power lines themselves came down in a pretty impressive display of flashes and explosions, starting a few more fires. A few hours later, a large branch came down ripping all the wires from our house and leaving the meter lying in the grass. This is what it looked like by about 6 am

If you look closely, you can see that it was still pouring rain when this was shot. Anyway, it took about a week before we got our power back on, and another few days for the phone to be restored. But thanks to those fast moving people at Charter Cable, it took over 2 weeks to have our cable restored, and since I can't update this site without cable internet access, well, that's why there have been no updates. So, there you have it. Since I'm like a crack addict when it comes to the internet, this has not been an easy week for me. Any hot girls out there who feel sympathy for me are welcome to send me naked pictures of themselves they've taken with their cellphone, as I understand that's a the new thing these days. It would be appreciated.

Send me 50 bucks and I'll name a star after you

Just in time for Xmass, I thought I'd explain something to those of you who think Kanye West is talented and that The Girls Next Door is compelling television, in other words, not too bright. ALmost every day I hear an ad on the radio for this outfit saying they will name a star after your loved one. For about 50 bucks, these people say they will save your unsuspecting SO's name in "book form" in the US copyright office and send them some kind of crap explaining where "their star" is.
I would dearly like to think that anyone who comes to this page is smart enough to know this is a scam, but in case you were actually thinking about doing this, a few facts. First, the only body on planet earth that can officially name a star is the International Astronomical Union (IAU). I assure you that the IAU is not in the business of selling star names to anybody. As for putting names in book form in the copyright office, this is a pretty transparent attempt to pretend that there is some kind of legitimacy to this stuff, but the fact is, you could do this yourself if you wanted to. Write someone's name on a piece of paper and send it to the copyright office. Go ahead, I'll wait... There, you just did the same thing as they will do and it cost you about 25 bucks. What does it mean legally? Nothing. A name can't be copyrighted, and a list of names can be, but all it means is that no one else can legally write the exact same list of names exactly the same way. Whoopdeedoo.
So, in the end, you will have purchased a few scraps of paper, a map of the stars that someone has stuck an arrow on, and if your relative or friend isn't a complete idiot, he or she will smile wanly and realize that you're an idiot who was taken in by a scam. For the record, there are only about 10,000 stars visible to the naked eye from earth on a very dark night, so all of them have probably been "named" by these scam companies about20 times each. 500 years from now, when the first interstellar warp drive ships are leaving the earth to explore the universe, none of them will be leaving for a planet orbiting the "Babs Kozinski" star system.
If you want a gift for someone who loves stars, how about a nice book about them, or a DVD of Cosmos, or maybe membership to a planetarium. Just don't fall for this crap, or if you really insist on it, send me the 50 bucks. I can just as easily pretend to name a star after them as anyone else can. For a hundred, I'll rename Jupiter after them.

No Speaka De English?

If you all haven't figured it out my now, I tend to be pretty liberal about most things. One of the few things though that I tend to agree with my angry little friend's on the right about though is that I think that anyone planning to live in this country should be able to speak english. I don't think you need to be able to write victorian prose, but to be able to clearly string a sentence together I think is pretty helpful. I think my reason for feeling this way is due in large part to my grandparents. On my father's side, they were from italy, and they struggled with speaking english all their lives, but they not only did it, they did it ALL THE TIME, even in private, because they wanted their children to be AMERICAN, and they wanted them speaking english, not Italian. To this day, my father and his whole family (and it's a big family) cannot speak italian at all. Now, perhaps my grandparents took that a little too far, I don't think closing their kids off to the whole italian thing was necessary. They did get some of the culture in other ways, especially through cooking and that sort of thing. The point it that my grandparents didn't come here expecting english as a second language classes, they didn't come here demanding that all the ATM's, instruction manuals, TV channels, books, videos, the education system and everything else be printed in Italian, they made the decision to come here and part of that decision was to learn the language. That's true of almost every group to come here, polish, greek, french, russian, whatever.
So, what brought this particular rant on, you may be asking yourself? Drive throughs. Look, if you don't want to speak english here, I guess that's really up to you, but could we maybe save the jobs working the drive through windows to people who can speak and understand english clearly? It's hard enough to hear and understand what someone is saying through these things, but lately, it seems everywhere I go I also have to decipher what's being said by people who have accents so thick they could qualify as a speech impediment. If I'm at a drive through, I'm there in part because I'm in a hurry, so I don't need to hear "Gmoreenink help you maybe, yes?" and then have to repeat everything 6 times because it's unclear if you understood anything I said. "You want chessburg fried wit large meelk double tripple three coke too?" WTF? I actually don't blame the person working the window for this, they need a job and that's great that they found one, but to whoever is running these places, how hard is it to stick someone who can E NUN CEE ATE on the goddamn speaker?
Really, the point of this entire thing is, Don't stand between me and my donuts.

You want some cheese with that wine?

I keep hearing an ad on the radio for some place called the Boston Wine School. This pretentious dick comes on to talk about how a nice merlot goes so well with gouda and has that sweet citrussy tang from the eastern slopes of Tuscany or some equally bullshit laden crap. Does anyone really fall for this pseudo cultural claptrap? Wine is alcoholic grape juice. That's all it is. You crush some grapes, add some yeast and let it rot for a good long time. MMm Mmmm!! For people to constantly blow it up into some kind of amazingly complex beverage that you need to pay a school to tell you the right way to smell it and how the white kind only goes with pork cracks me up. If you want to drink wine, have a blast, but admit up front that you're drinking it for the same reason you drink Nyquil, because it has alcohol in it and you want to get buzzed. And if you pay any money to go to a wine school, you really need to have your ass kicked and then be force fed a box of Boone's Farm that's been sitting out in the sun for a week

The dumbing down of America continues

When I was a kid, I loved dinosaurs. Most kids nowadays love dinosaurs, it wasn't as common when I was younger though. There was a particular book I used to always be taking out from the library on dinosaurs. I don't remember what it was called, but it wasn't a kid's book, it was in the biology section. It was a beautiful book, but I was too young to understand most of what it said. I tried to though, that book more than anything else gave me a love of science and learning that I still have today. I'd love to get that book again today even though it's now pretty out of date.
Dinosaurs were fascinating animals that undoubtedly lived complex and fascinating lives, and you would think that just learning about those lives would be enough to keep people interested, but apparently that's not the case. This is why the people at the History Channel have made a spectacular contribution to the teaching of paleontology airing tonight, "Dinosaur Fight Club".
You heard right, "Dinosaur Fight Club". Why try to teach about paleontology, biology, evolutionary theory, or anything that might risk someone learning something they didn't already know when instead we can show a bunch of CGI dinosaurs fighting and killing each other? That's the important stuff anyway, right? Who cares about the rest of it, it's all just useless facts anyway. We want to see pixelated blood and guts!! All science should be reduced to the level of a Hulk Hogan wrestling match, otherwise someone watching it might have to think about something instead of just guzzling a few brewskies and eating cheetos. I think the next subject the History Channel should tackle might be a show featuring nothing but all the rocket launches that blew up on the launchpad, or how about a show that reduces the history of WWII into nothing but one on one tank battles! It would be great, BANG BOOM BANG!! Ooooh, that one blew up, wow, look at the flames. NEXT! I think all science should be reduced to the equivalent of watching a stock car race composed of nothing but crashes, that's what we all want to see anyway, right?
Dinosaur Fight Club, because facts are stupid things!

Goodbye to a legend

This week marked the deaths of two people who have been institutions in their respective fields for decades. One of whom you've now heard about almost endlessly since his death was announced, the other, not so much.
First was Tim Russert. At this point, I have seen and heard endless eulogies for this guy and while I sympathize for his family and friends at this time, I'm getting incredibly sick and tired of listening to what an amazing newsman he was and how he was this incredible interviewer. Let's have some perspective here, shall we? If he was the amazing interviewer that everyone claims, then where was he in the lead up to this debacle we are in now? Where were the questions to Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the rest of the lying bastards who put us in this mess? Where was he during the Valerie Plame investigation, where he was an integral part? He has said straight out that he considered all conversations with people in power "off the record". Sorry, that's notjournalism and it's far from heroic conduct. Perhaps if he had done his job the way he should have, there might be 4500 american soldiers alive today, not to mention tens or even hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilians. I'm sorry that he's dead, I'm not unsympathetic, but I'm just really tired of hearing the countless attempts to whitewash history and to raise him into this lofty perch of journalistic sainthood. He was either gullible or another administration stenographer, just like so many others in the modern media who don't seem to feel that it's their job to question authority, just regurgitate what they are told and wave the flag.
The greater loss is someone many of you may never have heard of. Stan Winston was an artist and engineer who was responsible for many, if not most of the mechanical creature effects seen in movies for the last 30 years. If you have seen the robotic skeleton of the Terminator, the creatures from Aliens, Predator, The Thing, Edward Scissorhands, A.I., and perhaps most memorably, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, then you have seen his work. And that's only a small part of what he did. He started back in the late 70s along with John Dykstra, Joe Johnston, Dennis Muren, and Ben Burtt among others were beginning the new wave of special effects that began with movies like Star Wars, Close Encounters, Star Trek the motion picture etc. At that time, there were no dedicated effects houses, each studio had it's own in house departments. This relatively small group of people began a revolution in the way visual and mechanical effects were to be done and those ways continue today. Stan Winston's specialty was in creating creatures, monsters, mechanical puppets of incredible detail and intricacy. Pop in a DVD of Jurassic Park sometime. It's well known that this was one of the first films to use extensive computer graphics, but while most people assume that the majority of the dinosaurs in that movie were computer generated, the truth is, most were mechanical, created by Winston and his crew. Watch that movie again and see if you can tell what shots are CG and which ones use his puppets. It's not as easy as you might think, and many shots feature both at the same time.
I certainly have nothing against computer graphics, I do computer graphics for a living, though not on the scale that they use in movies. But when I was a kid watching these movies, a big part of the experience for me was in watching spaceships that I knew were beautifully hand made models move across the screen and incredibly detailed creatures moving around. I would have loved to have been a part of those early days of Industrial Light and Magic, when they were still building space ship models using bits and pieces of submarine kits for details. Stan Winston is gone and eventually all of these guys who were the pioneers in that kind of mechanical and film based special effects will be gone and here will be no more wonder about "How did they do that?". We'll all know how they did that, someone sat down at a computer and moved some numbers around. When that happens, some of the magic of movies will be gone and that will be a shame. RIP Mr. Winston, thanks for giving my imagination a work out all these years.

Stupid Ads part IIIV

What is with the ad for free credit report.com with the stupid kid singing about how h couldn't get the cool car he wanted because he didn't know his credit score? Exactly how would knowing his credit score resulted in his getting a better car? Do you get bonus points with the finance agency if you can tell them your credit sucks before they find out themselves? If your credit sucks, it sucks, getting a free credit report isn't going to prevent that, so you'd still be driving off the lot in a used subcompact and being laughed at by hot chicks even if you got a free credit report every single week for a year in advance.

I never noticed it before, but Barbie Doll sounds just like Barbitol, the first barbiturate drug. Coincedence?

New entrant in the worlds worst commercial jingle department: The new radio ad for carzforkids. Good god, who wrote this thing? It starts with some kid singing along to a horrible backing track that is so simple minded that it makes the songs Mr. Rogers used to sing sound like Stockhausen. Then to make it even worse, it's repeated with some guy singing it who sounds like a cross between some shaky voiced folk singer from 1914 and a really nervous contestant in a first time karaoke talent show. To maximize the pain level they of course sing it once more with both the kid and mr. shaky voice. Few jingles have made me lunge for the tuning knob faster in history. Good work guys, you win worst advertising jingle possibly in history.

Mind Boggling Stupidity

Dunkin Donuts has recently averted a full on right wing nutjob riot by removing an ad featuring the bubbly, perky, incredibly annoying and murder inducing "celebrity" Rachel Ray. Why were the loons upset? Because she was wearing a scarf. That's right, a scarf. This scarf to be exact:

They claim that this scarf somehow was identical to or resembled a kaffiyeh, the head covering worn in the middle east. most recognizably by Yasser Arafat. You heard right, Dunkin Donuts was forced to remove an ad because these complete morons saw a paisley scarf and made the Evel Knievel like jump that because they saw some vague resemblance to a type of head covering worn in the middle east for thousands of years, that somehow Rachel Ray was trying to secretly show her support for islamic jihad, because we all know that no one likes their iced coffee more than aspiring suicide bombers.
What's really depressing about this story isn't that the lunatics could look at a scarf and see a symbol of fundamentalist terrorism, or that they know so little about the middle east in general that they assume that anyone who wears a kaffiyeh is a wild eyed member of al quaeda one step away from strapping on some dynamite and taking out a used camel lot, I expect that kind of stupidity from those people. No, the depressing thing is that Dunkin Donuts was actually frightened by these brain cell deprived whackjobs into removing the ad. If it were me, I would have removed the ad because it features rachel ray, another in a long string of completely talentless individuals who somehow managed to out-perky the other 500 smiling happy-zombies at the "Let's find america's next bubbly mouthpiece" auditions, but to really remove your advertising to appease people with the IQ of a paddleball shows a complete lack of any sort of backbone. This kind of thing only encourages these idiots, and they will badger and complain to anyone who doesn't kowtow to their moronic worldview and shape their every move so as not to risk angering the pasty faced mouthbreathers who spend their day eating cheetos and searching google for something to get outraged about. Better watch out Dunkies, I mean, if you squint and look at a weird angle and really use your imagination, I mean, doesn't a donut sort of look like a suicide bombers dynamite vest? Stick a barbie doll in there and it becomes obvious, surely donuts are evil symbols of terrorism everywhere. Aren't bagels, you know.. ummm. jewish? Aren't you selling new flatbread sandwiches? I'm pretty sure they eat stuff like that in Iran!! You must all be terrorist sympathizers if you eat flat bread, real american's would eat peanut butter and jelly on wonder bread!
I dream of the day when common sense takes over and people like michelle malkin and her right wing rage junkies will be marginalized and put in a nice soft room where they can't harm anyone but themselves, but it's not likely to happen in my lifetime. This is the same country where 16% of the high school science teachers think the earth is less than 10,000 years old, so I'm not holding my breath,

Let them be miserable too

So, they said that California has to allow gay marriage now too? Good for them. Unfortunately, as always happens when these things are announced, it will pull all the self righteous right wingers out of their particular mud puddle so they can puff out their chests and act all indignant. Of course, they will try to use morality and claim that it somehow damages the "sanctity of marriage" and all the usual crapola they spew. I especially like all the references to a "traditional marriage". These people always act as though the institution of marriage is something that somehow goes back in history to when the first male and female euglena crawled out of the primordial ooze and found an amoeba in a silly collar and hat and asked it to put the blessing of the lord on their holy union. Truth is, marriage as we know it today hasn't been around for too long. Marriage was originally more a way to transfer whatever the bride or bride's family owned to the groom's family. It was a simple legal contract, all the holy moses claptrap was added later. Even today there are parts of the world and even isolated parts of the united states where men do what amounts to selling their daughters as a way to make money, pay off debt, or incur favors from the powerful. There are men all over the world right now happily handing over their 10 year old girl to 30 year old men in exchange for whatever the going rate is in that area. In some places this comes right after the wonderful sacred tradition of carving up her genitals with a rusty knife just in case there might be the possibility that she might actually enjoy sex at some point instead of just being a convenient moist cave for the husband to plug into once in a while. Wonderful traditional values there kids. Speaking of kids, that's the other part of this eqution. Ho horrible to think that gay parents might want kids, oh lawdy lawdy! I guess it's only the gay parents who beat their kids up, leave them in the car while go buy lottery tickets and hang out in the bar. Hetero parents are all exactly like Ward and June Cleaver, right? (well, even Ward and June had issues, how many times did she try to hint around that there was "something wrong with the Beaver". He got his nickname in a vain attempt at her trying to find a subtle way to tell Ward that he was a little too quick in the sack). Kids are being put up for adoption, taken away from completely hetero, traditionally married idiots who use them as punching bags, drug mules, sex toys and worse. How often do you hear the people who demonstrate against gay marriage at state houses all over this country talk about any of these things?
Truth is, the reason these people don't want there to be gay marriage is because they think gay sex is icky. Well, they think man to man gay sex is icky, I think even they probably agree with most of us that two girls getting it on is pretty hot. On the other hand there are lesbian couples who resemble Madeleine Albright and Julia Child and I don't think any of us want to be imagining that. But that's really all this is about in a nutshell. About 30% of the people in this country either hate sex or are scared to death of it, and if they can't have fun with it, they don't think anyone else should either, especially if the people having the fun in the sack both have matching plumbing.
I'm not gay (though if I stay single for a few more years, I might just have to switch teams. I think there tend to be more chubby chasers amongst the gay male population than there are among the smoking hot female supermodel population. My loss). Anyway, for many years, I had an extremely close friend who is a lesbian, and if there's anything I learned from seeing her go through relationships is that it's no different for two women to love each other than for a straight couple. The only difference is in their desire to employ vaguely missile shaped buzzing implements on each other, but hey, who hasn't wanted to do that at some time in their life? She went through every stage of a relationship that everyone goes through, attraction, infatuation, love, deep love, jealousy, mistrust, handcuffs, cheating, screaming, pissed offedness and of course, finally, "I hate you get the fuck away from me asshole". Straight or gay, relationships are all the same. So, Let them get married and have families and contribute to a happy societal fabric. No one is forcing you to watch them at night and see what they are doing with the KY, so if it bothers you, try not to think about it, the same way they avoid thinking about our pasty flabby asses sitting on a couch watching everybody loves raymond. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I suck and I want you all to know it!!

I had some time to kill before band rehearsal last night so I thought I'd stop in to the local Guitar Center and maybe try out an amp or something. Upon walking in, I was immediately hit with a blast of feedback and noise that Pete Townsend would have found excessive and sent Jimi Hendrix diving for the earplugs. I don't know if it was a field trip from the Stupid School or what, but plunked down in front of every amp was a different 16 year old kid with a guitar plugged in and screeching away at full volume. There must have been at least 30 different kids, each trying his damndest to play some riff from Metallica or Poison or Guns and Roses and each failing more spectacularly then the last. To add his own personal touch of audio garbage to the mix, there was one kid on the only the only bass amp in the place (and what the fuck is that about??) grinding away on a Fender knock off with a pick and sawing away across all four strings at once. I saw his left hand moving around on the neck, but I really only heard one note the entire time he was doing it, and oh, did I mention he was doing this the entire time I was there? yeah, about half an hour or so at least. After a while, I got the impression that all these musically incompetent waifs somehow knew each other but it could be that they just all subscribed to the same theory of Suck. As I watched one pudgy little future "I wannabe a rock star but will instead end up doing oil changes at Speedy" do his best to do finger tapping on the neck of a Les Paul and manage to miss every single time, I was forced to think back to my own teen years and my own suckiness at that age. In doing so however I remembered a basic truth. While it's almost a certainty that I was just as craptastic a player at some point in my life, it's also true that I didn't go into giant music stores full of people and put my suck on display at full volume for 45 fucking minutes! Even now, lf I go to a music store to try something out, I will play just long enough to make a decision about whatever it is. I feel no need to put on a clinic for anyone unlucky enough to be nearby and I certainly am not going to blast at full volume while showing my awesome ability to copy a Geddy Lee lick without hitting myself accidentally with the neck and tripping on the cord. I can only imagine that each of these kids actually thinks that they are great and therefore it's incumbent upon them to prove to everyone around them how amazing they are. I was hoping to check out an amp while I was there but a salesman was not forthcoming. I found them sort of huddled together at the center of the store, and while it was sort of annoying, at the same time it was hard not to feel sympathy for them all. After all, I could leave whenever I wanted to. Were I to be stuck in that store listening to little Johnny try over and over again to perfect that intro to Enter the Sandman for a few hours, you might be reading about me in the papers the next day:
"Fat bitter bald man arrested in Music Store Massacre"

Things that make you go "Duh"

On the radio yesterday I heard a piece from a speech given by a former politician regarding tax cuts. There was nothing really new in the speech, but he phrased something in a way that I hadn't really thought about it before, but it was one of those things that make you go Hmmm... This person was discussing all the recent tax cuts for the extremely wealthy. Now, if you're not aware of this, you should be. Virtually every tax cut put through by the current administration has been aimed at the very rich. Not just a little rich, I mean the ultra top super duper rich. The people who either hang out with Dick Cheney or the people George Bush desperately wants to pretend he's like even though they laugh at him behind his back. A good example of this is the estate tax, or as the republican's like to say "boo" with, the DEATH TAX! Duhn duhn duuuuuuuhn!
Here's something I'm guessing you didn't know about the "death tax", it only applies to a person who plans to leave more than 2 million dollars. 3 million if it's a married couple. How many people do you know who will be leaving behind 3 million dollars? Now, maybe you still think that's an unfair tax, I don't, and we could argue about that, but that's not really the point. The point is, they administration and their ass kissers in congress and the media have almost certainly convinced most of you that this somehow applies to you, or someone you know. There are all kinds of Rush Limbaugh worshippers who are convinced that the "death tax" means that the government is going to come knocking demanding half of the "Plates of the States" collection that they plan to leave their daughter on the way out. "Oh my, we'll lose family farms and small business!!". This is nonsense of course, small business and family farms have their own loopholes and protections and lets face it, there aren't many individuals worth that much who are owning a "small business", since at some point a small business becomes big business. What it all comes down to is the lie that letting rich people "keep" their money, it will result in what Ronnie Reagan called "trickle down economics", the theory that you give all the tax cuts to the mega rich, they will buy things and that will result in jobs being created and eventually you'd get some of that tasty tasty money as it oozes down from on high. This theory was disproved pretty dramatically while reagan was still in office when, despite the myths you may hear these days, he was forced to raise taxes because of course, trickle down economics didn't work at all. Now they are trying to do the same again, only this time we have the added bonus of being at war at the same time. The results are about what anyone would realize if you spend more than 30 seconds really thinking about it, the deficit has gone to some level only astronomers can see and every single possible social program from education on down have been cut to shreds in ways that would make Freddy Krueger jealous. There are many different reasons why the whole trickle down thing is nonsense, but a couple of the larger problems are:
A big part of this theory assumes that, given a smaller tax burden, the richest among us will go out and spend spend spend. They will buy all sorts of interesting things, and this huge increase in buying will mean that jobs will have to be created in order to manufacture all this cool stuff that the rich are going to buy and that means we;lll all have cool jobs making yachts and espresso machines and flying cars, which means we'll then have money we can use to go out and buy more cheeseburgers so that the homeless guy living in the subway station will be able to get a job at Burger King and pick himself up out of poverty and become a right upstanding citizen. Oooh, it's so wonderful on so many levels, everything just magically fixes itself, isn't it wonderful? Except of course that it's complete nonsense. In that scenario, the only people likely to really make any money are the CEO's and upper management of the companies who have since shipped all their manufacturing to China and Indonesia. The people who will be making the leftovers are the women being worked for 14 hours a day in sweatshops in Malaysia. There's very little that the mega rich are likely to buy that is still made in this country, american corporations by and large are simply a lot of people with MBA's and their secretaries pocketing bonuses for finding new and better ways to lay off people here and build new factories in places where 30 cents an hour is big bucks.
The second part of this fallacy is the one that the speech I heard on the radio brought up. The man giving the speech had been a big city politician about 20 years ago who went on to become a national television celebrity and he's now pretty wealthy. Not oil company CEO wealthy, but still doing pretty well for himself. What he said was the simple truth, if a rich person wanted to buy something, they could do it now. They're rich, after all. if you are taking in 20 million dollars a year, chances are pretty good you already own whatever it is you'd like, or that if you don't, you're not sitting by the mailbox waiting for your income tax refund to go out and buy it. The sad thing is that if you are poor or middle class, making an extra grand a year is a big deal, but if you're the chairman of General Motors, another million give or take isn't going to change your spending habits too much. This whole concept that the mega rich would start blowing wads of cash on American made products if only the damn government would get off their backs and stop insisting on taking a piece of their latest 10 million dollar stock sale is ludicrous on it's face, and yet there it is. The conservative economic plan in all it's glory. There's really not much more to it than that. Let the rich get richer and somehow it will all work itself out. Remember that the next time you hear these idiots talk about the death tax and all the rest of this crap. They are not trying to help you or me, in their world we're peons, we exist to carry their golf clubs and wash their cars. That's all. These are people who honestly believe the middle class consists of people making $200,000.00 a year.
Oh, and the former politician and now talk show host that made me start thinking of all this? Jerry Springer...

That's Thinking Ahead

I've been hearing a lot recently that many of Hillary Clinton's supporters are saying they will vote for McCain if Obama is nominated, and that Obama's supporters are saying the same thing. They are willing to completely abandon any and all principles they supposedly possess and will vote to install in office the person most likely to continue policies that they are supposedly 100% against in a hissy fit of a tantrum that would make a 2 year old roll their eyes in disgust.All I have to say about this is, I don't care who you're voting for, but if you're willing to vote for someone who is the complete opposite of what you want and who is most likely to inflict everlasting damage on this country just because your team didn't win the game, then you're a fucking idiot. Nuff said...

Brandie Update

For anyone who voted for Brandie and wanted to know what happened, she didn't win. That's not unexpected, but I have to say the way she lost was pretty sleazy. It's pretty clear that the people running the contest knew who they wanted to win and did everything they could to make it happen. One girl was getting more votes than anyone else by a factor of about 1000. She was literally getting upwards of 300 votes a second, every hour of every day. So they sent around an e-mail to all the models saying that there was cheating going on (no, really?) and that the cheaters would be disqualified and the winner would instead be chosen by "judges". So, of course, the winner was announced about a month later, and who was it? Yes, Miss "Million votes more than anyone else". There is zero chance she wasn't cheating, she had more votes than there were hits to the page. So did they disqualify her? Obviously not. I don't think Brandie would have won anyway, for one thing, they picked easily the least flattering photo of her they could (though it was her fault for sending it in with the rest. Important safety tip, never send a photo to a contest if you don't want it used) but it still would have been nice if the contest hadn't been rigged from the start.

This is Teri

Teri is the Viola player in Route .44. They are now selling this T-shirt along with their CD and some other stuff on their website. I thought I'd mention it, and also point out that I took this photo, isn't it pretty?

The Menagerie

I went to see The Menagerie last night in a local theater. For those of you not in the know, or those of you with a life, The Menagerie is an episode of the original Star Trek. Well, actually it's two episodes. It was being shown in a theater for two nights only as a way to celebrate (aka advertise) the release of the new remastered Star Trek TOS DVDs. Once again, for those of you who aren't Trekkies, or Trekkers or fat, basement dwelling, junk food scarfing lowlifes and don't keep up with these things, the original Star Trek has been undergoing a face lift for the past year or so. In order to be able to release them on HD DVD, it was decided that they needed to be cleaned up and made to look better, and so they went and got the original prints from 1966 and put them in a computer, cleaned off all the dirt, tweaked the color, and just for the hell of it, replaced most of the special effects shots with brand new ones. I've been generally in favor of this. I've been a Trek fan all my life (well, technically, it first aired when I was 2, so maybe not ALL of my life). I can remember watching it when I was a kid. It was on some UHF station that barely came in on our TV and so for years, all my Trek watching was through a blizzard of snow. I was probably in my teens or even older before I ever saw Star Trek on a clear TV screen. As with a lot of kids, I fell in love with the Enterprise. When you look around at old TV shows and you see what was the general "spaceship" design theory at the time, it's still amazing to me that Matt Jeffries and Robert Justman were able to come up with something so original, elegant, and iconic as that design. Years later, when they released "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", a lot of people complained about the long scene at the beginning where Scotty takes Kirk on an external tour of the ship, lingering for minute after minute on close ups of the shuttle bay doors or the deflector dish. Not me though, I was in heaven. I love the Enterprise. I still think it's the most amazing piece of sci-fi design I've ever seen. So, I was looking forward to seeing the old, original ship, remastered and on a giant screen in all it's glory, and I have to say it didn't disappoint. There's talk that in the new movie being made, that they will be redesigning the enterprise in some way, to make it more "modern". I hope not. With the exception of the relatively minor changes made to it for the first couple of movies, every attempt at a new enterprise since then has been a disaster. The next generation? Easily the ugliest of ALL the designs, with that ridiculously huge saucer, little flat sausage stub engines. I remember the first time I saw that thing, being amazed that they could have designed something that hideous on purpose. Absolutely disgusting. There was the Enterprise B, shown in Generations, again with a big bulky saucer, ugly engines that look like misplaced subway cars and this colossal "thing" that joins the saucer to the rest of the ship. Have any of the people who designed these things ever even seen the original show? Finally, they almost redeemed themselves with the Enterprise E, as shown in First Contact. It at least has some style, some grace and a feeling of size and power that the other new ships lacked. But it still just wasn't right. Nothing yet has matched the original as a ship, and as sculpture. So anyway, there it was last night, plastered across a 20 foot screen and it looked amazing. I don't see why they feel the need to redesign it at all. It's simple, it's functional, and it's beautiful. If it aint broke, don't fix it. It's the friggin Enterprise for christ's sake, leave it alone!

So, as to the show itself, well, what can be said about The Menagerie. It was never the best episode anyway, it was basically a way to take the original unaired footage of the failed pilot and make something that could be put on TV. Susan Oliver looked great, especially during the green orion slave girl dance (banned in the South when it was first aired). It's always interesting to see the difference in Spock from that pilot to the series, and I noticed for the first time that Leonard Nimoy is really limping badly for some shots. The main thing was that it was BIG, and it was clear. Clearer than I could have ever imagined it could be when I was a kid peering through the snow on channel 38 or whatever it was. The only negatives were that the entire thing seemed too dark, as if the projector wasn't turned up high enough, and that if you looked close, you could see the pixels. This was a digital projection, the first I've seen. It won't be long before all movie theaters will be this way. No film to load, basically just pop in a HD DVD and go. The job they did cleaning up the original episode was astonishing. There was no dirt, no little flecks or hair or scratches, it was absolutely clean. The images themselves seemed a bit soft, but suspect that the original negatives are probably getting worn and it may even have been that way when they were new, given the level of technology in the cameras they were using. Overall I had a good time. It makes me feel once again how great it would be to see more old shows and especially old movies in a theater again. I hope that now that digital projection is getting more common, the studios will realize how easy it would be to do that. Theaters could have a different old movie every week. Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I know there are lots of movies I'd happily go see again if I could. If I had the money to do it, I'd buy my own little theater, digital projector and do it myself. Never mind second run, like the Elm Draught House, how about a theater showing nothing but classic movies? The technology is there to make it easy, come on somebody, get out there and make it happen.

This is a project being done by some friend's of mine. At some point I may also get involved with doing some photography for them. Check it out.

Whose Home?

Burger King has these new "Homestyle" sandwiches out, and one of the "ingredients" is "Homestyle Sauce". What exactly is Homestyle Sauce? Whose home? I can't find anyplace where they actually define what homestyle is or what's in this stuff. If it were homestyle the way my mother makes things, it would probably be some mix of baked beans, spaghettios and cake frosting. Or is it more of a "home" in an institutional sense? Like the Home for Little Wanderers? Maybe the Home for Retired Basket Weavers? It could be from something like the Home for Recalcitrant Puppy Abusers. I can see why they would shorten that to just Homestyle. It still doesn't tell me what's in it though. It sort of implies that everyone's home had some kind of common homemade sauce that they poured over everything, but all I know of anyone pouring on a hamburger is maybe ketchup. A few more adventurous souls might put on A-1 or barbecue sauce but I don't see many people saying "Hold off on cooking those burgers until I have a chance to whip up a batch of my favorite burger sauce."

And yes, I know this should have gone with the previous post on stupid ads, I forgot about this one, so sue me...

More Stupid Ads

As we have all learned by now, I hate stupid or lame ads. Seems to me that if you've got the dough to put an ad on TV, you should spend a few minutes actually thinking about what you're doing and try to make something that doesn't just make people want to gouge their eyeballs out every time it comes on (or maybe drilling through your eardrums would be more efficacious,, since radio ads can be just as horrible). Here are a few that are irritating me at the moment:

• A bunch of people running around an office screaming that some chick has a knife. The boss walks over and asks why she has this knife that's panicking everyone and she calmly looks up from her lunch and says "I'm eating KFC, it's real food, which requires a fork, and a knife". So, why does this ad bother me? Because I've scanned KFC's menu a few times and I can tell you that THERE ISN'T ONE GODDAMN THING ON IT THAT REQUIRES A KNIFE TO EAT. What exactly is she cutting? The mashed potatoes? the corn? Does she use it to scrape the skin off the chicken? Then the snide remark that "real food" requires a knife? So is she saying that KFC's potato wedges aren't real food? The Macaroni and cheese? If that's really true, then they are pretty much shooting themselves in the foot here, since, once again, THERE ISN'T ONE GODDAMN THING THEY MAKE THAT REQUIRES A KNIFE TO EAT. The added bonus of her saying this with a tone of voice that suggests that everyone who isn't using a knife to eat their mashed potatoes is somehow a fucking moron isn't helping their cause. I notice I haven't seen this ad as much recently, possibly because someone at the KFC office sat down one day with a knife in his hand and thought to himself "Hey, Wait a sec..."

• What the fuck is with Bob's Furniture and the singing fat guy? Apparently some employee of Bob's won karaoke night at the bar and Bob decided that he'd build an entire ad campaign around this guy singing these absolutely horrendous songs all about how cheap their furniture is with music that would have sounded dated in 1956. The guy's voice is excruciating, and the fact that they often pair his voice with this horrid stop motion photography that makes it look like it's the couches and bureaus singing doesn't help, or even worse, the little animated Bob running around. Regular bob's ads are pretty sucky, with his whiny voice and his sidekick, this shrill blonde chick who is still bitter at having lost out on her audition to good morning america to Katie Couric. Every time one of these things comes on, I thank the powers that be that I'm not looking for furniture, because it saves me from heading to bob's with a pitch fork and torch on principle. Bob, the fat guy can't sing. The fact that he often makes these songs whre he sings not only a lead vocal but often has backing vocals that he also sings, sometimes with several parts, just multiplies the pain. Perhaps the fat guy is Bob's brother in law and having him sing gets his wife to allow him a bit of peace for a few minutes a day would explain the incessant use of this no talent singing migraine, otherwise there's just no excuse.

• To the guy who owns Ragsdale Chevrolet, buddy listen, buying a cowboy hat and wearing a buckle the size of the main turbine on a 747 doesn't make you a cowboy. To be a cowboy means you need to go out west where they have these big herds of large, somewhat docile herbivores called cows and actually be involved in raising them, keeping track of them, and moving them from place to place. Ragsdale Chevrolet has been around this area for years and years and you're the son of the owner, so unless you're the illegitimate love child that he accidentally pumped out when he banged that ranch hand in Texas, you're not a cowboy. You're some kid from Spencer who got caught up in the line dancing craze of the 1980s after hearing one too many Billy Ray Cyrus songs while you were drunk off your ass and for some reason you seem to think that everyone else around here still finds the whole "cowboy chic" thing interesting or original. It's not, and you look like a kid dressed up for Halloween. And it it weren't enough that you actually walk around like that, you've actually built your ad campaigns around it? "Buy from a cowboy"? Which cowboy would that be, cuz it sure as fuck aint you. Look, wear boots and a hat and fucking spurs if you'd like, whatever gets you off, but that snickering and muffled giggles you hear as you walk through the service area aren't an illusion, and for the rest of us out here in TV land, it's just an embarrassment. You could grow your hair down to your ass and hold a guitar and pretend you're a rock star, or put on a spacesuit and say "Buy from an astronaut" and it would have as much authenticity, so do us all a favor and put on a normal suit, or even regular street clothes and leave the cowboy shit for when you and the misses are playing "Custer shows the indian maiden his Bighorn". You'd be doing us all a favor, seriously.

• On the plus side, I have to admit that I find myself actually liking the song that the fruit guys sing in the fruit of the loom ad for the blue underwear. "I had a dream that my whole world was blue" or whatever he's saying. You know the one, they are walking in slow motion, and everything aroud them is going backwards. That music has a cool retro vibe that reminds me of something from the early 70s. I don't care if it's about underwear goddamn it, it's a good tune.

Sorry Sorry Sorry

Yes, I know it's been a while since I've written anything here. Truth is, I've been really busy, I've done a bunch of photo shoots over the last month and a half, incuding a wedding. For me, taking the pictures is only the first step in a process, and that process can take some time. After the shoot itself, I go through every picture, decide which to keep and which are crap, and then go through all the keeps with a fine tooth comb, removing anything I don't like, adjusting color, contrast, etc. This can take quite a while, sometimes more than a half an hour per image. If I decide to go further and create a fantasy image, like a fairy or something similar, it can take several hours. In any case, I've gone through well over a few thousand images in the last 5 weeks or so and it has taken all my spare time.

So, by way of apology, here are a couple of shots from my most recent shoot. I think it was worth the time.
Special thanks to Leesa and Mia

There are more pictures from this shoot and a bunch of others on my Myspace page. Check it out.
http://www.myspace.com/iphotographbabes

Our Future Ladies and Gentlemen:

Ooow, The Stupid!! It Burns!!!

You can never have enough fascists, Mmmm good!

It goes without saying that I won't be voting republican next year, but I think even some republicans have to be a little amazed at how the primaries are shaping up on that side. So far, the two top contenders are a pro choice, pro gun control blue state city mayor and the former governor of the most liberal state in the country who is also a Mormon. What do they have in common? About the only thing I can see is that they are both empty suits willing to say or do absolutely anything to get a vote (which makes them equal to every other politician in the world) and what appears to be an almost fanatical devotion to the pope, I mean an almost fanatical desire to be the most strident fascist asshole. After all that's happened, you wouldn't think the majority of republican voters would be thinking "Boy, that George Bush sure has done a great job, who can I vote for that's just like he is but with just that extra touch of insanity and has got what it takes to stop all this hemming and hawing and get down to the serious business of finally making the US into the fabulous police state we all know it can be". As far as I can tell, the only thing Giuliani has going for him is that he happened to be the mayor in New York on 9/11. He didn't do anything else. he certainly did nothing to prevent it, and he actually made the situation worse by going against the advice of every single person who knew better and putting his emergency response office IN the World Trade Center after it was attacked the first time. He gets a few points for not sitting and doing nothing for 10 minutes after the attack happened and then flying aimlessly around the country for a few hours, but beyond that all he really did was head into the area after the event, make a few speeches and then go watch the World Series. Listening to him now, you'd think he single handedly flew to Afghanistan and captured Osama Bin Laden with nothing but a spear gun and a bar of soap and that if anyone but him is elected president, the muslim hordes will form a human bridge between Iran and the California coast and swarm here blowing up everything and converting everyone in their path. Romney, on the other hand, is like a walking Ken doll criss crossing the country making sure that he's absolutely, resolutely, in favor of whatever YOU are in favor of at that particular moment in time. His campaign has made a pretty big deal about his winning a straw poll in Iowa, and it sounds pretty impressive until you realize that he spent about $600.00 for every vote he got. No one else running even bothered to try. He can't be elected anyway, southern republicans are the most racist people this side of the International Date Line, and there jes aint no way they's gonna put one of them there Moeman's in office, it jes aint rite. I find it strange in the least though that so far what has driven the entire republican election cycle has been the candidates willingness to try to scare the hell out of everybody. 9/11 sucked. I think we can all agree on that. But it was also the act of a small group of people who in many ways got lucky. These people weren't special forces, they were able to take flying lessons, get into this country, and get on those planes without being detected mostly because Mr Bush and his lackeys decided that being on vacation and clearing brush was more important that doing something about warnings they were given. For these people to keep holding this up as if it were some incredible huge international plot being staged by criminal masterminds as if the country were being held hostage by Doctor Evil is ludicrous. I also find it amazing that 6 years later, the people who planned the event are still roaming around free and alive while we're stuck in the quicksand of a country that didn't attack us in the first place. It would be as if Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor and our immediate response was to go and bomb Lithuania. Let's face facts. There is no War On Terror®, because you can't have a war against a tactic. it's like saying there's a war on bad taste in movies. Instead, what we have is exactly what George Orwell had nightmares about. An excuse to wage a perpetual war against an always changing target. Terrorism is a way for small groups of assholes to fight larger groups, but you will never end terrorism any more than you will stop the networks from making cheesy sitcoms where fat ugly guys like Jim Belushi get gorgeous hot wives, Every time you cancel one, another one will pop up, and yet they will cancel a great show like Arrested Development.. assholes... Sorry, I digress. The point is, the primary motivator here is money, oil, and power. Do you really think anyone in our government gave two tiddly winks how many people saddam hussein killed? Hell, we've probably already killed more than that just since we attacked. The War on Terrorism© gives the people in power the opportunity to sell weapons, grab oil, and remain in power so they can sell more weapons and grab more oil. That's all it is. Read the article linked to below for some examples of this. There's as much chance of a giant muslim attack on this country as there is for a giant eskimo attack here. Will there be bombings here? Probably. More attacks in this country? Most likely, but is what we are doing going to stop it? Absolutely not, and is almost certainly making things worse, not better. So, my republican friends, vote for Rudy, or vote for Mitt. If either of them win, we move one step closer to becoming Airstrip One (and if you don't know what that means, read 1984). But, before you pull that lever, step back and really think about whether or not you really want another 4 years of this. The Democrats are nothing spectacular either, but at least with one of them, we can HOPE that something will change, and at this point, that's good enough for me.

Had your cup of Really Pissed Off yet?

Read this and you will be

Short Attention Span Theater

Last weekend I didn't have much to do, so I thought I'd go to the local thee-A-tor and see a movin picture show. I haven't seen Transformers yet, and I thought it would be a good way to spend a few hours. Transformers just came out ab out a month ago, so imagine my surprise when I found out it's only playing once a day... at night. It hasn't been that long since they built the 30 screen super-mega-giganta-plex not far from here. All those screens and they are not showing a movie that's been out for less than a month. So, what is playing on them all? Another movie, one that just came out this week. So, rather than give anyone a choice, they've somehow decided it's smarter to show the same movie on all 50 screens at once. This is idiotic on so many levels. I realize people like to see new movies, but is it really necessary to have it on so many screens that the same show starts every 6 minutes? This brings me to another bitch about movie theaters. Why do they never show old movies? Every year, bands dating back to the 1950s go out and play hits that were in the top 40 before I was born, and people happily pay to see it. Has it not occurred to the movie industry that people might be willing to pay to see their favorite classic movies in a theater? A few years back, the original Star Wars was rereleased to the big screen and it became the second biggest selling movie that year. I'd think this would make the suits in movieland sit up and take notice. Maybe it's just me, but I would pay to see Star Wars in a theater again. The entire first trilogy in fact. And Close Encounters, Alien, a whole list I can think of. I'll bet there would be an even bigger market for the real old time classics. Gone with the Wind? Casablanca? The Wizard of Oz? Abbott and Costello? Yes, you can buy all these on DVD (and I have most of them) but it's not the same as going to a place with a 40 foot screen, 2000 watts of surround sound and the rest of the theater experience. I can buy all the Pink Floyd albums there are too, but I'd still pay a hell of a lot to see them live again. I keep reading about the movie business and how it's losing money, but they stick "blockbusters" on every screen in the theater for a week, then the next week another "blockbuster" comes out and last week's movie gets moved to purgatory. You have all the screens, all those seats, how bout a little choice? How bout some classics? I want to be able to go out on a saturday afternoon and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark on a big screen. How about it?

You won't see this on CBS

For a fake news show, the Daily Show somehow manages to put together information better than every "real" news show on television. Have you ever seen this explained as clearly anywhere else?

Highway Masturbation

No, not that. I live right near I-290, and they are re-surfacing the part near my home right now. So what? So, this is something like the 5th time they've done this in the last ten years. They also just replaced all the lights, lights that by the way were working fine and dandy. I swear they do this just for something to do. There was nothing wrong with the road before. The entire roadway isn't that old, I can remember them building it. How much money is wasted every year by these people doing highway projects that just aren't necessary? In the meantime, you look at a place like Kelly Square, voted worst intersection in Massachusetts, and think, why the hell don't they spend a few bucks redesigning and rebuilding that? I'm guessing it has something to do with I-290 going through Suburbia while Kelly Square's best known tenant is the Hotel Vernon.

Speaking of wasting money

How much do you figure a State Police car costs? It starts out as a car that's 40 grand or so and then has about 10k worth of additional crap including more lights than Edaville Railroad at Christmas, and this is for each car. So, can someone explain to me why State cops get to take those cars home when they are not on duty? I see them all the time, parked in driveways, just sitting there. I know a State cop (nice guy, btw) but I've never asked him why he has a State police car in his garage when he's not working. Maybe I should. So, is each car somehow personalized? Do they each have custom fitted seats or something? Is there some reason why a cop working the opposite shift can't use it? Or does each cop get his own? This makes no sense. I don't think Bus drivers get to take their buses home, fed Ex drivers don't get to put their Fed Ex truck in the driveway overnight. This means that at any given time, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of very expensive police cars sitting in peoples driveways doing nothing. Am I really the only person to notice this and wonder what the deal is?

Van Who-len?
So, Van Halen is supposedly going to do a reunion tour, eh? Well, maybe it's just the bass player in me talking but without Michael Anthony playing bass, it's just not a reunion. So suck it Ed and Dave, I give the whole thing about 2 weeks before they hate each other again and call the whole thing off anyway.

Sucky Sereal

Let me just be the first on record to report that new Chocolate Chex sucks almighty ass. I don't think I've ever tasted anything in my life that tastes less like chocolate. Beef tastes more like chocolate than this, Beets taste more like chocolate, I could have put a bowl of purina puppy chow in the bowl and poured tomato juice on it and it would have tasted more like chocolate.
I'm just sayin...

J'oh!

Priorities

So far I've seen endless coverage of the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota. I'm not really complaining about that, I'd rather they do wall to wall coverage of something like that than of Paris Hilton's latest hangnail, but there's been at least one thing I haven't heard yet. This bridge has been listed as being in bad shape for about 20 years. There are hundreds of bridges in this country listed as being in worse shape that people drive over every day. Conservatives have done a great job over the last 40 years or so of painting the government as the enemy. Of being incapable of doing anything positive in any way (Except of course for the military. That's NEVER big enough and can do absolutely no wrong). They've painted it as a huge bumbling bureaucracy that should having nothing but scorn and contempt thrown at it and done everything possible to starve it of money by giving tax cuts to multi-millionaires so they can make it small enough to "drown in the bathtub" as one of the leading rightwing nutjobs Grover Norquist has said. Well Grover, you're getting your wish. The government is failing. The infrastructure of this country is going to hell thanks to people like him. So, when you see images on TV of this bridge that's younger than I am sitting at the bottom of the Mississippi river and you wonder, how can something like that happen, remember that the price of replacing that bridge (not repairing, replacing) would have been something like less than a quarter of the bill we pay every 24 hours in Iraq. We have no problem going over there and blowing billions and soon to be trillions of dollars, but if someone in this country wants to replace something as basic as a bridge or a tunnel or other critical infrastructure, well, that's the damn government trying to waste your precious tax dollars and screw them, goddamit!! I only hope that someday it's Grover Norquist who finds his ass being crushed under a falling bridge someplace. Then he and the government can drown together.

Thunderstruck

I love thunderstorms. When I was a kid, whenever there was a thunderstorm, my mother, sister and I would join our upstairs neighbor out on the front porch of the three decker we lived in and watch the lighting and the rain and listen to the thunder. It's one of my clearest childhood memories (and since this was when I lived in Worcester, I was no older than 5-6 at the time). I've always been glad my mother did this, because it left me without fear of lighting and thunder my entire life. There is something calming to me about thunderstorms. Every time there's a hot, humid day, I hope for that cool breeze in the late afternoon that could signal an approaching storm and I'm disappointed if it doesn't materialize. I hate when you get a thunderstorm warning on TV and then watch as the bright red splotches on the radar somehow miss our town.
We had a hell of a storm here a couple of nights ago, the best thunderstorm I can remember in a while. Almost nonstop lightning. rain in buckets. I did what I usually do during a storm like that, I went out and sat on the porch and took it all in. Watching to see the bolts of lighting, counting down to see how far the lighting actually was (I don't even remember the formula, something like 5 miles for every second).
As I watched the storm go by, I was struck (no pun intended) by the cars driving by, everyone going about what they always do. The idea of lightning is so bizarre in a way and it's sort of fascinating that's it's so taken for granted. If someone were to pluck you off this planet and stick you somewhere else and then say "You will soon be in a place where miles long streams of white hot 50,000 volt electricity will be slamming into the ground all around you, randomly hitting the trees, the rocks, the fields, starting fires and probably killing most anything living it touches" I think most people would be pretty freaked out. But lighting comes and goes and is pretty much ignored except by the people who cower in the closet and the people like me who view it as a huge fireworks display.
For me it's a reminder that this planet has been here for billions of years and that it will be here for billions more, and whether humans are on it or not makes no difference. The lighting will continue to strike the same way it did before there was enough oxygen in the atmosphere for anything resembling terrestrial life to exist and it will still be striking when humans have either succeeded at their apparent goal of eventual self immolation or have evolved into something unrecognizable like the Morlocks. The universe goes on, and I find myself counting the seconds till the thunder and just relaxing.

Why no signy?

OK, so our guestbook has been online now for several months. According to our statistics, it's the most visited page on this website, and yet almost no one signs it. I'd like to know why. Come on kids, are you telling me none of you can think of anything to write? Just say hi! Tell us if you've seen us, did we suck? were we good? Where was it? How did you find this site? Looking for porn? Were you dissapointed that there isn't any? Should I add some? Who's the cutest Valve? Do you like the songs we have on the music page? Why not? What do you mean? Well, who asked you? Look, just sign the stupid thing. Yes, I know you have to enter a little code to do it, wow, tough gig, entering a few letters. I had to put that there so the whole guestbook wouldn't be filled with spam and weird autobot crap, that's all.
Seriously, I want to know. Is there something about the guestbook that makes it hard to use or what? We get a decent amouont of traffic here, but almost no one takes the 10 seconds required just to say they were here and say hello, so come on people, show us da luv. Otherwise I'm going to take it away. We just can't have nice things here.

Congratulations to Ashley

Ashley, the spunky blond ponytailed waitress from The Yard in Manchester NH has just won my brand new "Hottest Waitress" award, for being the hottest waitress in any club we've ever played in. Congratulations Ashley, you win a free photo shoot with me any time you want one. Contact me here and we'll set it up.

A Steve LeCLaire guest rant
What crap is on your mirror ??

There’s all kinds of crap to personalize your driving space these days. All of it illegal by definition. Recently I’ve seen Stewie in a diaper, a naked Homer Simpson, Yoda, Darth Skywalker or whoever flying the Aluminum Falcon, a Hibiscus lei from Muffy’s latest spring break vacation, Mardi Gras beads, you name it. A big pickup truck with a Dale Earnhardt #8, baby!! Tell me that doesn’t induce speeding and bouts of road rage from someone with a Bobby Labonte #43 Cheerios logo on his mirror.
Did you know it’s actually illegal to hang anything in your car that blocks your field of vision? I understand you can’t even legally hang those little air freshener thingies from your car’s rear view mirror. You know the ones that look like a pine tree, and smell like Jasmine, Cinnamon or Vanilla? It will impair the driver’s field of vision. So what I want to do is, design an air freshener that looks like a handicapped placard. No one will ever know! Then my car will smell good, and I’ll be able to park in all the good spots as a bonus.
And what’s with handicapped placards anyway? Here we have the DMV telling a dude who’s driving ability is already impaired - that he should further impair his driving by hanging a big blue and white sign in front of his face, - and that it’s OK! But I can’t hang my little pine tree. Damn….
How about fuzzy dice? Shouldn’t those actually be considered a safety item? They are soft and plushy, better than air bags I’d imagine, if you got the really big ones. I bet quite a few pair of fuzzy dice kept the Betty Lou’s of the 50’s from smashing their pretty little faces into the windshield of Johnny’s hot rod while crashing at dead man’s curve. Nope, not allowable now according to the DMV.
Graduation tassels? I see those all the time. Some car insurance companies give “good student discounts” but you can’t hang that graduation tassel that you earned by giving the best fourteen or fifteen years of your childhood. Those are only cool for the 1st summer anyway. Then it’s like, “Come on dude, give it up. You still don’t have a job yet?” A 30 year old bald guy, still sporting a graduation tassel from his mirror is not cool. Sorry. Wedding day garters are a no-no too. Those are probably more of a mental distraction than a visual one, on oh so many levels. I think it’s funny when you see the really BIG garters, rather than the ones we guys could wear around our wrists. Too bad for you Bubba!
The talisman that I really don’t get is the woman’s panties hanging ever so delicately from the rear view mirror. What exactly is the car owner trying to say here? It may be merely an extension of the garter thing, but I’m not so sure. On one level, panties are saying “I’ve scored. I’ve deflowered. I’m a MAN now! See me display my testosterone laden hunting trophy! Unnnghhh! “ On another level, it’s saying “My wife/girlfriend/sister/daughter is a total skank and is driving our other car without any panties. Right now.
Best one I’ve seen yet wasn’t actually hanging inside the vehicle, but from the trailer hitch of a big, huge, overdressed hot rod custom pickup truck. The owner had taken two tennis balls and put them inside a heavy pair of flesh colored nylons, and tied this apparatus to the trailer hitch. One ball sat slightly and suggestively lower than the other, and the resulting wrinkles and folds in the material were extremely life like, albeit slightly larger than life size. They swung there in the breeze of the highway. I came up behind this pickup rumbling along in the right lane, and laughed when I saw the “balls”. I signaled, and went around the truck to pass, as well as to see who might be driving. I half expected to find an overweight redneck in a sleeveless shirt like Larry The Cable Guy. However, I was surprised to see a petite little blonde woman behind the wheel. Alone. She caught me looking, and grinned a knowing smile. Now that’s a statement.

Editors note: I lost my High School tassle when someone broke into my first car and stole my rear view mirror. They took nothing else, just the mirror.

Worth every cent

Any time you read an article about the music business these days, it's usually a complaint by them about how everyone is downloading music and no one buys CDs anymore. They have a whole list of reasons for this, that people are dishonest, that they don't understand how amazingly expensive it is to produce a good CD, that they have to make up for all the sleazebags illegally downloading stuff etc. I have another possibility that they usually overlook, how about greed? How is it that I can buy a major motion picture, along with 6 hours of documentaries, commentary tracks, multiple discs etc. for 12 bucks, but if I want to pick up a new copy of Dark Side of the Moon,an album originally released in 1973, I have to cough up close to twenty? Do these companies not realize that people see this discrepancy? I just ordered "The Critic" on DVD a couple of days ago. It cost me about 30 bucks for it. Now, when I say I ordered The Critic, I don't mean I ordered an episode of it, or even a season of it. I ordered the entire series, for 30 bucks. I recently got the entire Invader Zim series for about the same amount. That's close to 12 hours of programming for the cost of one copy of the White Album. Ironically, you can usually buy a multi disc special DVD of a band you like for less than the cost of one or two DVDs. Rush 30 has 3 DVDs of live performances and all kinds of extra stuff. It costs 35 dollars. To get the rough equivalent on DVD you would need to buy maybe 5 or 6 CDs at a cost of between 13 and 18 bucks each. Most of my best CDs were stolen several years ago, and as much as I want to replace them, it just irks me to think I have to pay an amount so ludicrously inflated to do it. Ironically, it's often the same companies selling both CDs and DVDs, and I find it hard to believe it costs 4 times more to make a CD of an album that's existed since Nixon was president than it does to create a DVD of a movie that was out 6 months ago. So, do I download songs? Damn straight I do. The funny thing is, I really would buy CDs if they cost what they are actually worth. I'm an audiophile at heart, and CDs do sound better than an MP3, especially since most MP3s you find online aren't encoded very well, but if I head to Best Buy with my 20 bucks and I have a choice between replacing "Toys in the Attic" for 17.95, and getting a great but dated album that I've already owned on vinyl and CD at least once and that comes with absolutely nothing that it didn't have with it in 1974 or buying the 2 DVD special edition of Alien with 4 hours of special features, well, which really makes more sense in the long run? I can buy Alien and then go home and download pretty much everything from Toys in the Attic and in the end, all I'm missing is the Album cover art, which they had pretty much destroyed when the made the CD cover anyway. So, I have no sympathy for record companies crying about how no one buys CDs any more. You want me to buy a CD? Make it worth the money or make it cheaper, it's really that simple.

Guest Rant by Steve
JESUS’ DOG

Joe M’s latest editorial, “What is Heaven ?” got me to thinking. Did Jesus have a dog? I’ll bet he did. The Scriptures don’t say all that much about His early years, beyond all that fallderah at the manger. But anyone born around all those animals must have had a dog for a pet as a kid. Joe and Mary Christ were probably a bit below minimum wage as a family, but I’ll bet they could have sprung for a dog to keep little Jesus company while Joe was busy building houses and Mary was trying to explain that whole immaculate conception deal to the grandparents. I can just hear Mary one night yelling, “Oh for HIS SAKE Joe, get him a damn dog! What…, you want him hanging around the temple with all those old men for the rest of his life?!”
So Jesus probably had a dog. For the sake of argument, I’ll call him Phillip. (Unless it was female, in which case I’d call her Dorothy, but Jesus would never have had a bitch…) I wonder if Philip had magical powers too. Imagine playing stick with a dog that could walk on water. How cool would that be? Fetch, Phillip…Fetch! Across the Sea of Gallillee he’d go, rompity romp…without getting wet, wagging his holy little tail behind him. Hanging around the kiddie pool behind the manger must have been awesome too, when Phillip would walk across the top of it. Peter and Judas and all those neighborhood kids must have been damned impressed. Then again, I’ll bet Philip The Holy Dog just got in and splashed on hot days, because they all lived in the desert.
When Jesus turned water into wine, did Phillip turn his Alpo into a T-bone steak? Probably when nobody was around, or looking. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, I’ll bet little Phillip was right there wagging his tail and licking the old beggar’s leprosy sores. During that loaves and fishes incident, did Phillip conjure up a bunch of Milk Bones for all his doggie pals?
Jesus was no wimp. He was a carpenter without power tools. So, I imagine Phillip was a pretty impressive dog. No wimpy little Poodle or Chihuahua for Jesus, no sir! Some sort of Shepherd probably. Not a Pit Bull like that snotty Beelzebub kid who thought he was so tough.
Poor Phillip never got to stick his head out a car window and let his ears flap in the breeze like modern dogs enjoy. I’ll bet Pilate’s dog got to do that on the royal chariots though. The Christs couldn’t afford a chariot, and the family Ass didn’t run fast enough.
I wonder if Jesus’ dog was a leg humper. He could have worn the hair off Jesus’ leg; horny little bugger. I bet that didn’t go over too well around the marketplace. Poor Phillip. Did he sit around, licking himself, embarrassing the whole Christ family when the Three Wise Men came to visit? I hope Jesus never kicked him for doing what came natural.
There’s an old adage that says, “Outside of a dog , a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” My theory is that man created dog in His own image. That’s why we have Manfred The Wonder Dog, Peabody, Under Dog, Astro, and even Scooby Doo. We like our dogs in His image. Dogs do their best to help us save the world. And of course, God spelled backward…..

Holy Shih-Tzu!

Joe adds: If Christ really had a dog, I bet he could have used his Halo and had the world's first ever game of dog frisbee.

You Go Girl!

I played Black Sabbath at 78 speed man....
Oh yeah? And then what happened?
I saw God, man....

What is Heaven? Have you ever thought about that? Most people have, because most people have been told essentially since birth that if they are good boys and girls, they will go there after they die. But what is it? What's there? While the majority of religions on the planet profess some kind of Heaven after death, pretty much none of them ever go into any kind of details about what it actually is. It's just generally some vague blabber about paradise and perfection and angels and it's got pearly gates and lots of clouds and things. But what IS it? My guess is that if I were to go out and find 50 people at random who professed a belief in heaven, that I would get 50, possibly vaguely similar but fundamentally different descriptions of what they think it is.
Is it a place where you meet up with all your dead relatives? If so, for how far back? I mean, you might think, wow, it would be nice to see my dead parents again, but then of course, they wanted to see their dead parents, who wanted to see theirs and so on for countless thousands of generations, so how would that work? And that's not even counting brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. How old would they be? Is everyone in heaven like 30? is everyone the age they were when they died? If so, it must suck to die when you're one, or 96. Imagine being 96 for eternity. no fun for you. Then again, is there fun? What is considered fun in heaven? In the bible it seems like heaven mostly consists of worshipping god the whole time. If there's a god, well, I guess he might be worth some worship, but all the time? for eternity? Jesus! (Don't even get me started on the level of insecurity you must have to need such overwhelming constant praise and adoration)
What about living? Do you eat? If so, can you eat whatever you want? I mean, is there like cheeseburgers? Or is it like Manna or some kind of holy food? And if you do eat, do you shit? Are there heavenly toilets? And if there are, who cleans them? Do they clean automatically, or are there janitor angels? Maybe Hell is having to be the people who have to clean Heaven, you were an asshole when you died so you have to work in the heavenly laundry room for eternity. What about sleep? Staying awake for eternity seems like it would kind of suck, especially if that means you do nothing but the worshipping thing 24/7. Can you have a pet? Would I see my now deceased dogs there? or do they have a heaven of their own (Whenever our dogs shit on the floor, my mother would threaten them with doggy heaven, was she more right than she suspected?).
No sex I'd imagine. It's sort of frowned upon by holy types here already, I can't imagine there's a lot of boinking going on in heaven. Do you end up with the genitalia of a Barbie and Ken doll? This of course means the whole 72 virgins thing for the muslims becomes kind of a sick joke. "Good job with that whole martyring thing, here are your virgins. The bad news is, they stay that way, because there are no heavenly wangs". Course, if there is sex in heaven, then I would have to ask how the 72 virgins feel about being handed over to some guy who just blew himself up. Do they have a say in it, or is that hell for them? and let's face it, getting to screw 72 virgins would be cool for about a month or so, but what happens when they're not virgins anymore? Eternity is an awfully long time, at best you could maybe make 72 last for what, maybe 6 years? Once a month you have a cherry popping party (the ones already.. um.. spent, would probably not enjoy that party much) What then? And what about babies? Can you have babies once you're there or is everyone instantly sterile? if the rabid right wingers are right, then life begins at conception, but what if you're conceived and then stillborn, I guess if we go back to the whole "You stay whatever age you were when you died" hypothesis, then there must be a whole section in heaven reserved for fetuses that never quite made it. There would be like a whole wing of heavenly blastocysts and pharyngula. Imagine being a fertilized egg for all eternity! No Heavenly cook outs for you.
I heard some fundamentalist recently talking about how he couldn't wait to get to heaven and spend time four wheeling with his family.Can you go four wheeling in heaven? Do they make their own vehicles or are they somehow imported? Maybe after they go through a crusher at the junkyard they are lifted to heaven and rebuilt. What if your favorite thing in the entire world was fishing, are their lakes up there? What about the fish, are they already dead? Are you catching ghost fish or is there a separate fish heaven? Maybe you can get a pass to go to fish heaven and catch fish. That would be a pretty sucky heaven from the fishes point of view though.
Would I still be fat in heaven? What about bald? That would suck, because if it turns out there is sex in heaven, then I won't be getting any up there either. I've heard talk that you become some kind of glorified body, perfectly healthy in every way, does this mean that if I go there I'll look like Mitt Romney or Mel Gibson or George Cloony? or does it just mean I'm thinner but with the same dwarfishly small hands (and all that that implies)?
Is there entertainment? I would miss my favorite movies and TV shows. Or is it like Rome where people have to put on plays and amuse each other more directly. Speaking of Rome, what is the technology level like up there? You would have people mixing together from all throughout human history, so either everyone up there has been following along all this time and heavenly tech is just like it is now on Earth or maybe it's frozen in time somehow. In the Bible everything in heaven seems to pretty much reflect the way things were at that time, what with the sandals and robes and everyone talkng like Charlton Heston. Did they stay that way? That would be a bit odd. Are there other planets with life on them? Was it made by the same god? if so, do they get their own heaven or would we also be mixing with all kinds of aliens?
How do you get in? No one is without sin of course, and I suppose it's up to the heavenly equivalent of simon cowell to decide who gets in. I have this image of everyone throughout all of history watching your entire life on a huge screen, watching every single moment of your life (remember, we have eternity to do this, so even if it meant watching every second of everyone's life who ever existed, it would still only take a small fraction of eternity to get through them all) anyway, I see everyone you know watching every time you ever lied to them, cheated on them, fantasized about them (oh yeah, they can hear what you're thinking too) and pretty much having every single person ever created watching you masturbate every afternoon while you're watching Saved by the Bell. Wow, that would suck (It would probably suck more if you were doing it while watching something like Sesame Street or Family Affair), but hey, at least when they were done with you, you would get to watch all of them do it too. I bet you'd see some freaky shit.
On the other hand, maybe heaven is an idealized thing for each person, maybe it's whatever you wish it was. In my case, my idea of heaven would be the ability to move anywhere I wanted in time or space and watch dinosaurs and the formation of galaxies and see into the future and the past and explore planets on the far end of the universe, and of course, to come back once in a while to jam with some great musician's and get a lap dance from a hot chick (there's got to be hot chicks there or what's the point, and are you going to say there isn't a single girl anywhere who doesn't dream of giving lap dances for eternity? Well, ok maybe not. Back to the 72 virgins scenario.
I don't believe in heaven or hell. I think this is it. I wish more people thought like that, I think we would be less cavalier about throwing lives away on wars and pointless violence if everyone knew this was all you get. But if there is a heaven, frankly, the more I think about it, the less it seems like it would be a particularly nice place to spend eternity anyway. Lot's of bowing and scraping and glorifying and praising but not a lot of living. I wonder though, how many of the pat robertson's and jerry falwells of the world really have spent any time actually thinking about the implications of the stuff they dish out every week. I wonder how many people, who spend their entire lives in fear of going to hell, and praying to get into heaven, ever really stop to think about what it is, what it means. it can't be the same for everybody, because your heaven is always going to be somebody else's hell.
For me, heaven is looking into the eyes of a truly beautiful woman. Nothing else in this universe to me is as beautiful as a really beautiful woman, and if I die and there's nothing after this, well, I've had the chance to look into some incredibly beautiful eyes indeed and that's all that matters. All the rest is window dressing when it comes down to it. On the other hand, if I'm right about any of this, I don't want to hear any snickering when it comes to the masturbation stuff, I've been alone for a long time, if you get my drift, ahem... . Let he who is without sin cast the first bottle of baby oil

Maybe we can edit that part out

The greatest waste of a killer guitar tone in rock music has to be in "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum. One of the nastiest, coolest, grungiest guitar tones, playing a really cool lick leading you to think that what follows will be a slammin piece of low down heavy metal sludge worthy of Vanilla Fudge but instead quickly morphs into some quasi religious clap-trap featuring female back up vocals that sound like they were done by a couple of old ladies taken from a late night bingo game at the rest home. It should be noted that Mr. Greenbaum has said that the song has no particular religious significance and that he was simply trying to sell more records by tapping into the religious zeitgeist (sound familiar? I'm looking at you Scott Stapp). In any case, every time that song comes on the radio, I can only think of what that lick and that awesome sneering lowdown guitar sound could have been in the hands of a Page, a Beck, a Young, an Iommi, hell even Steven Stills could have done something more useful with it.

Runner Up: Go All The Way, by The Raspberries. Another killer guitar intro that quickly devolves in Eric Carmen wailing like a 13 year old girl singing the song she wrote about her football jock first crush (Oh He's sooo dreamy!!). That song comes screaming in like a herd of pissed off banshees and you just want to be able to put your fist in the air and come screaming in with FUCK YEAH!, but no. Hopes are dashed into a wall of lush harmonies that would have had the Hollies screaming "FUCKING PUSSIES"!

Is it hot in here or is it just me?

OK, the thing I don't understand about people who don't believe global warming is happening is why they are so vehemently opposed to even taking precautions. Some of these people sound like a 10 year old being accused of writing on the bathroom wall, and using every ounce of strength they have to deny it, becoming ever more emotional and detached from reality as they try to find ways to explain away what everyone can pretty obviously see.
Global warming is happening. Whether you like it or not, it's happening. Period. There is no debate about that among anyone who is even a little tiny bit remotely qualified, and all you really need to do is look at satellite photos showing regions that have been frozen solid for centuries now quite melted and watery to see it for yourself. What the question is, is whether or not humans are part of the reason for it. Now, I happen to think the science regarding that is pretty overwhelming too, as do, again, pretty much everyone who is remotely qualified and doesn't also happen to get paid by oil companies. But, even if the evidence weren't as overwhelming as it is (and it is overwhelming despite what Rush and Fox news are telling you) the real question is, isn't it worth doing something about it even in the off chance that maybe, just maybe, we might be having even a little tiny effect on it? There are only so many positions to have here. Either you think there is no global warming at all, or that there is, but we're not responsible for it, or there is and we are responsible for it, or at least some fraction of it.
So, the choices then are do nothing, or do something. if we do nothing, then nothing changes. We still pump millions of tons of pollution, carbon, methane etc into the air, we still burn through oil that we get mostly from the middle east, we still remain at war with countries primarily over who gets to control that oil, and eventually we run out of oil anyway because there's only so much of it and it's not being replaced anytime soon. The big three car makers continue going out of business by making crappy gigantic cars that no one can afford to drive anymore and refusing to do what Japanese and other foreign car companies seem to have figured out 20 years ago and adapting to the world instead of crossing their fingers and hoping for a bail out.
On the other hand, if we do something, we reduce the amount of pollution, carbon, methane CFC's etc going into the air, which I think most sane people would say is a pretty good idea whether there is global warming or not. We start making cars, trucks, power plants, airplanes, boats, factories etc more efficient, less wasteful and less polluting, again something that you would think would be a good thing whether it affects global warming or not. We get the Detroit nitwits to move away from making junky behemoths and into creating new paradigms for power systems and drivetrains to make it so that cars get more and more mileage or better yet don't rely on gas or oil at all, thereby eliminating our need to send troops all over the place to secure oil (and lets face it, that's why we're there in the grand scheme of things. If Iraq had no oil, Hussein would still be in power and we'd be paying as much attention to him as we do the mayor of East Bugstump Arkansas). All of these things would help slow global warming assuming it's happening, but even if it were somehow proven that there was no global warming at all, all of those things would still have a ton of benefits unto themselves far beyond anything that can even be imagined today. So, what's the downside exactly? Wouldn't it be better to be safe than sorry? All of those things and more will have to be eventually, because they all rely on materials and political systems that will simply not be around forever. it HAS to happen, there is no question about it.
Last night, "Apollo 13" was on TV and as I watched it for about the 20th time, I started thinking about the way things were then compared to now. President Kennedy gave us 10 years to get to the moon. Starting from scratch, they were able to do it in less. They had to develop entire new branches of science to do it, entire industries were created virtually overnight to make the Apollo program possible, but they did it. Are you telling me that we can find a way to land people on a rock 300,000 miles away but we can't build a car that averages 100 mpg? Bullshit. The reason we don't do it is because companies like Exxon, GE, ADM, GM, and all the subsidiary companies that leach off of them and all the banking systems and stock markets that depend on them to manufacture wealth have got a complete and total stranglehold over the government here and they have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. But the shit is going to hit the fan one way or another. We are running out of oil. The planet is getting warmer. There is less safe water every year. The stability of half the world's governments are questionable at best. The shit is going to hit the fan and no amount of money Exxon or GM or AT&T can bribe politicians with is going to stop it. it's inevitable. Whether you believe in global warming or not, don't you think it might be a smart move to err on the side of caution here? We don't get a do-over.

No, I prefer them on the floor, they do less damage there

To the girl working at Ronnie's yesterday; when you accidentally dump half the french fries I ordered all over the counter and the floor while packaging them, it's not really necessary to ask me if I want them replaced, I think the answer is pretty clearly, yes, yes I do, since having them all over the floor of your kitchen pretty seriously detracts from their value to me as a consumer. I think it would be a safe decision on your part to just go ahead and replace those puppies rather than hand me a half empty box (as you did).

It's Hell, they say your room is almost ready

Back when Dick Cheney was told to cough up the list of people he secretly met with for his energy "task force", he claimed he didn't have to do that, because he was part of the executive branch and so had "executive privilege". Now he's being asked to conform to a law that says all "executive branch" personnel have to show how they handle national security and secret information, and he's refusing to do that because, conveniently, now he's NOT part of the executive branch, but wouldn't you just know it, he's part of congress instead. Now, I could go on and on about what a total and complete sleazebag this guy is and how he and his idiot hand puppet dubya have come closer in 6 years to destroying everything this country represents than 230 years of wars, spies, and terrorists have done, but instead I ask a simple question; Why does he do it? Dick Cheney is an old man, and not a particularly healthy one. He makes more money in a week than an average person will make in 30 years, far more than he can ever spend. He doesn't need to leave it to his kids, as he's made sure they are all set up in high paying wink wink nudge nudge payola gigs. He has as much power as anyone in the world could have at this point. What is the joy in waking up every morning and thinking of new ways to subvert the constitution or greasing the skids for corporate america to control even more of the world? I will never understand the mentality of people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the ultra conservative nitwits including Scalia, Tom Delay, Gingrich etc. This feeling that somehow the best thing you can do, the best way you can use the power you have, the best way to run the country and the world is to do everything in your power to make life easier for corporations, polluters, banks, or the powerful in general. It simply boggles my mind that anyone can strip provisions from a bill that would reduce some tax breaks that amount to pocket change to a company like Exxon in order to try to help get this country off it's dependency on foreign oil and then go to bed at night thinking you've done some great thing for humanity. Dick Cheney spends his life meeting with people who run huge multinational corporations and listening to them explain what he can do to help them make even more money and control even more of the world and he thinks this is a good thing. I'm not exactly a raving philanthropist, but the kind of brain dedicated primarily to making the rich richer, the powerful more powerful, and the world more of a fiefdom with the vast majority of the population serfs is something that just will never make any sense to me. The fact that virtually all of these people claim to be super duper hardcore Christians is just another piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit anyplace either. But sometime in the not too distant future, all of these greedy sleazebags will be on his or her deathbed and I wonder how many will go to their deaths with a big smile and a feeling of having accomplished something great for the betterment of humanity and how many will stare into the void suddenly realizing that they can't take it with them. For people like them, I wish that the vision of the afterlife given in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is accurate, because they would each spend eternity wearing a steel chain the size of the whole planet wrapped around them, and one would hope something to keep their mouths shut for eternity too, sitting in their shackles and forced to watch the people they shit on and exploited their whole lives enjoy whatever paradise supposedly awaits them. Payback's a bitch, and it can't come soon enough to all of the scum who base their entire lives on finding loopholes in laws or new ways to turn fellow humans into dumb animals so they can prop themselves up, puff out their chests and stab each other in the back over champagne.

Work Work Work...

In about a half an hour, I'm going to take a shower, get dressed, and head off to my job. I I hate my job, I think most people hate their job. For every person who does exactly what they want to do, I imagine there are about 40,000 who do whatever they can just to stay alive. What has always amazed me about work in general, is that it's always been taken for granted, for as far back as society goes, that it's normal to spend most of your life doing something you really don't want to do, mostly to benefit someone else. It's considered a virtue to use the majority of every day, for the majority of every year, mindlessly making widgets or filling out forms that have no direct bearing on your life. Somehow, wasting most of your time engaged in doing really awful boring things is not only considered normal, but expected and even celebrated. Every day, millions, if not billions of people, get out of bed at a time not of their choosing, go to some dreary place they would rather not be and for the next 8, 10, 12 hours or more, do something they honestly have no interest in in order to be paid by someone else who is almost certainly making far more by taking the greater amount of profit from the result of whatever it is they all do. This is just one of the (many hundreds of) reasons I don't believe in god. Any supreme being who creates humanity simply to put us all on this idiotic treadmill of pointless labor for life doesn't get my vote. On the other hand, I sometimes imagine that if there were a heaven, the kind of conversations that would go on once we got there.
"So, I have given you 68 years upon the planet earth, what did you do with this gift?"
"Well Sir, I spent 45 hours a week operating a machine that stamps out little foam rubber dinosaurs that were then sold through gumball machines in department stores"
"45 hours a week? What else did you do?"
"Ummm... well I went home and ate a TV dinner and then watched American Idol in bed, then slept"
"Didn't you at least do something on the weekends?"
"Well your uppityness, I hated my job so much, I didn't want to get too busy on the weekend, because then it would make the days go by too quickly and I'd be right back stamping foam again"
"Well, that was a senseless waste of my gift of life, I'm sending you to hell just because you annoy me. I hear they stamp foam there too"
As any of you regular readers know by now (if I have any regular readers), I have often defended strippers, not least for the idea that they are only "using their bodies". But the truth is, most of us only use our bodies. The vast majority of workers in the world aren't hired for their amazing cognitive powers, they are hired to lift boxes, pick lettuce, press buttons, drive vehicles, enter numbers on a keyboard or any of a huge list of mindless physical drudgery. At least strippers are paid well.
There is no solution to this, unless you're one of the few who are able and have the resources to really do what you wanted to do when you were a kid. And, despite what we're told from day one, it's simply not possible for anyone to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" and be whatever they want. That's feel good bullshit used by the few on top to keep the many on the bottom from slitting their throats. There are only so many openings for movie stars, choo choo train engineers, firemen and princesses.
So, today I'll go to work, and I'll listen to 50 people say "Wow, really nice day out there today" as I sit in my dreary little office trying really hard to think up my excuse for when I get to heaven.

If I were only prettier... and drunk... oh, and really rich...

Paris Hilton, who's claim to fame is being a rich drunken skank, is going to be paid one million dollars when she gets out of prison for an interview discussing how hard it was for her to be in jail for 20 days. I think this is great on so many different levels, I mean what better message to send to her younger fans than that being a public drunk who believes the law doesn't apply to her and puts other's lives in danger by being a selfish bitch can easily make more money for whining in jail than most normal people make for working their asses off for twenty years? This is America after all, and we've all learned that the rich should be treated like royalty. Lie to a grand jury? Who cares, break law after law and claim executive privilege? Why not? If you've got enough money and enough rich friends, you have nothing to worry about. Even if you go to jail for a week or two, I'm sure some news network someplace will pay you a ridiculous sum to sit and have some vapid airhead ask you if you found god or something equally ludicrous when you get out. Yes, this is truly the land of the free.

For limited time only

I picked up a can of room freshener recently and noticed that it said it was a limited edition. Is there some group I'm unaware of who collect room freshener? It's not limited to that of course, almost anything you can buy now comes in some kind of limited collectors edition. I know I want to make sure I'm eating only special edition corn flakes and whiping away those corn flakes 12 hours later using only limited extra super collectable toilet paper. Thank you corporate marketing for making me feel special and unique by allowing me the chance to be the proud owner of one of only 60 million cans of anti-stink spray. It makes my life so much more fulfilled knowing I'm breathing limited edition extra special perfumed CFCs. Your special edition products are just what I need to feel fulfilled!

Sure it's educational, just stop thinking

Recently a $27 million dollar museum opened in Kentucky devoted to showing that the earth was created according to a strict literal interpretation of the bible. Now, there are all sorts of things I could say about this, but I think I'll let them speak for themselves. This is the text that greets you as you begin your adventure in ignorance:

“Don’t think, just listen and believe”. [..] Human Reason is the enemy and God’s Word is the hero. Descartes represents Human Reason, saying “I think, therefore I am”. But God tells us there no need to waste your beautiful mind, for God says “I am that I am”.

Got that? Knowledge, logic, intelligence... They are the enemy. Blind faith? Now you're talkin', keep that beautiful mind spotless and empty!!

The Hot Chick of the Week

Brenda
Courtesy of Steve "I don't care how cute she is, I'm going to kill her eventually" LeClaire

Bad News

I just tried to watch a story on Yahoo news about how 1700 guitarists played Smoke on the Water in order to break a world's record. I had heard about it on the radio as well, but they had not played any audio from the event on the radio. So I waited through an ad, and then the clip came on. And what did I hear? Was it the sound of 1700 people playing Smoke on the Water? No, it was the sound of some overly cheery news bimbo telling me about it. In the approximately 40 second clip, she didn't shut up for so much as 2 seconds so you could hear what was going on. This is something I've noticed more and more on the news and online, news stories that never actually show or tell you what they're talking about. Every so often a story will show up on CNN online or someplace similar about what the Cassini probe has found on Saturn or about some new dinosaur discovered in Wyoming. I have an interest in this stuff, so I'll usually go to the story, but almost invariably, the story will be accompanied by some stock image they pulled out of a library someplace instead of a picture of what the story is talking about. Leading a story with the headline "New moon discovered among Saturn's rings" I would think, by definition, come with a photo of the damn moon in question, wouldn't you? But no. To make matters worse, they also almost never link directly to a place where you could see the image in question if you wanted to.
While it's unlikely to be the case, should any of you actually be responsible for producing the news, I have a suggestion, how about you actually show whatever the hell it is you're talking about, without talking over it, without assuming we only want your personal opinion of it, and withoout hinting about itbut keeping any images or sounds of it to yourselves. I don't need some nitwit describing it to me, I want to see it myself. I know enough to go to JPL if I really want to see something about the Cassini probe, but I'm a geek like that. Most people don't, or wouldn't bother. What's the point in reporting a story about Saturn if you're not going to show what you're talking about? What's the point in showing video of 1700 guitarists and then having Bimbo McCheerful babble over it the entire time? Next time you wonder why your ratings are going down the shitter and why a site like Youtube is becoming so popular, I hope you'll finally have a little light bulb go on and give yourselves a well deserved bitch slap. "Hmmm... Show what the story is about... what a novel concept..."

Torture porn

At the republican debates held so far, the question of whether the US should be torturing prisoners came up, and at both, every candidate except one has not only said torture was A-OK with them, but were basically frothing at the mouth to one up each other on how steely eyed thier resolve is and how they just couldn't wait to twist some guys nuts off with their bare hands to save Disneyland. It comes off like something you might see in a Naked Gun type parody, except it's completely real. These people are clinically insane, as are the people applauding uproariously in the crowd and the people who will vote for one of these maniacs in the election. They all wanto imagine that is is some made for TV movie and that they're Barry Bostwick. Suddenly you can't be "serious" about the "War on Terror" unless you think it's a good idea to stick battery cables up someone's asshole. The United States has managed to make it for 231 years without torturing people, or at least without it being condoned by the people running the country. Isn't it amazing that we could get through a whole bunch of wars, and even had our country threatened by instantaneous nuclear annihilation without feeling like we just really had to torture someone just in case they might know something? The problem with torturing someone (aside from the fact that you're, you know, torturing someone) is that it doesn't work. If someone is torturing you for hours at a time and asking you for names, you know what you're probably going to do? You're probably going to give them some names. Are they real? Are they the names of actual terrorists, bombers or whatever? What the hell do you care, what you know is that if you babble out some names between the screaming, the pain might stop. This is a proven fact, it's been proven time and time again. All torture does is make people screech out whatever they think you want to hear to get you to stop. Why is it these people cant understand this? Well, one of them does, McCain does. Why does he understand it while the rest don't? Because he was fucking tortured, that's why.

On a related note, a movie comes out this week called Hostel 2. I regularly go to a website called Aintitcool.com which has a lot of info about movies, and they have been pushing this flick relentlessly lately, so I know a lot about it. It's the story of 3 girls who are kidnapped in some eastern European city and sold off to rich people who buy people so they can torture them to death. Now, I'm not a big fan of horror movies in general, but a movie like this crosses a line for me. This isn't about ghosts popping up to shock you, or about evil space monsters or zombies, this is about coming up with an excuse to show a pretty naked girl helplessly secured somewhere and then slowly and methodically, and of course, very very graphically cut to pieces. How do I know this if I haven't seen it? Because the director boasts about it. I try not to be a prude about a lot of things, and if you want to see this, well, have a good time I guess. I would really love to know the pathology of a society that can take a movie like this and give it an R rating but if any of the characters in it took 5 minutes for a quick on camera fuck, it would get an X. What does that really say about us as a culture? If you have an hour of happy people getting naked and fucking and sucking themselves into a sweaty pile of bliss, it's filthy and disgusting and should be banned or put into one of those theaters where the guys in trench coats go, but if you take the same people, rip there eyes our, hang them over a bathtub and disembowel them while they scream in agony well then, that's ok, just don't let the kiddies see it. Which of these things is truly pornographic? Which of these things has the potential to really disturb society. And while it's not proven that watching Movies really influences people to do things, would you rather influence little Johnny to go out and get laid, or go out and kidnap little jane and flay the skin off of her and then light her on fire? All I know is I won't be seeing Hostel 2 or any other example of this crap, and if you do plan to go, don't tell me, because I'd rather not know that anyone I know gets off on this shit.

A long time ago, in a theatre not that far away...

Friday marked the 30th anniversary since the day Star Wars was released. I was 13 when Star Wars came out. I didn't see it on the day it was released, in fact I didn't see it for quite a while. I can remember there being this huge buzz about it, magazine articles, stories in the paper and on TV. I can remember seeing pictures of Chewbacca and wondering how he would talk. I remember seeing a picture of Princess Leia and thinking she was incredibly beautiful (which is a big admission from a 13 year old). The first time I saw it, my father took me to White City and we got there late, so I missed the iconic shot of the huge star destroyer moving down the screen for what seemed like hours. I did see it eventually though, because I ended up going to that movie something like once a week for the entire time it was in theaters, and it was in theaters for a long time. It's strange to think about nowadays where a movie makes all it's money opening weekend and then quickly vanishes. I can remember Star Wars playing at White City, and then moving to Webster Square, where it stayed for so long they actually had the logo on the sign outside. From there it moved to Lincoln Plaza, where for one showing I watched it, then walked into the lobby and milled around with the people waiting for the next show and went in and watched it again.

What was it about that movie that made it what it is? Well, that's something that's been debated endlessly by everyone from dorky kids to philosophy professors. I think it's important to remember that there had not been anything like it, ever, anywhere before. One of my favorite movies back then (and to this day) is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that was the science fiction movie that all others were judged by at that time. Star Wars was different though, Star Wars wasn't something you just watched, it was something that happened to you. For me the greatest single shot I've ever seen in a movie is the shot of Luke looking out across the desert at the twin suns of Tattooine. It's an amazing shot for a number of reasons, but first and foremost it's because it looks absolutely real. There's nothing goofy about it, it doesn't draw attention to itself, there's nothing obvious about how it was done. It's a kid looking out at sunset from his home. That there are two suns is something he takes for granted and after a second or two, so do you. For a while, you're watching him arguing with his uncle about farming and all seems normal, and then that beautiful shot quietly reminds you that you're not in Kansas anymore.

A friend of mine's 12 year old son recently saw Star Wars for the first time. He liked it, but he wasn't that impressed with it. I actually felt sorry for him in a way. No one seeing Star Wars now will ever get that sense of amazement that you got when you saw it for the first time 30 years ago. Up to that time, science fiction movies mostly involved silver colored featureless disks hanging from wires, sometimes with smoking sparklers for exhaust, or men in awful rubber suits lurching about. Even the best examples of the genre, like Forbidden Planet and the Day the Earth Stood Still, used the spotless silver disk spaceship motif. Any time the future was shown, or an alien world, it was generally spotlessly clean, sterile, a utopia of some kind. Star Wars was the first to show that even a completely alien world would be dirty, used, dusty and composed of old and new technology. Star Wars was the first movie to ever draw me in completely. My friend's son grew up watching movies where digital characters are able to do pretty much anything and even crappy movies can usually have decent special effects, but when I was a kid, special effects meant flying saucers hanging from a string with colored smoke pumping out the back. To see that first shot of the Star destroyer slowly moving down the screen, to watch the escape pod blast away, leaving behind a little cloud of particles, just like in NASA footage of the real moon rockets, walking through Mos Eisley, where almost everyone was a droid or an alien and everyone was dirty and dusty and looked like they belonged there. That was all new stuff then, and when I watch it now, I realize just how few people have been able to do it convincingly since. Even Lucas seems to have forgotten a lot of what made Star Wars the experience it was. I thought one of the more brilliant ideas Star Wars had was in having alien races not speak english. The fact that Han Solo could understand Chewbacca and Greedo and Jabba the Hutt just added to the character of Han Solo and also added to the atmosphere of the movie. In the newer prequels though, everyone speaks english, even if it's idiotic semi-jamaican Jar Jar speak. The same with the humor in the movies. In Star Wars, if anything comes off as funny, it's part of the story, it's not some idiotic slapstick sight gag that looks like it was improvised on set because someone decided the scene needed to be lightened up. And what's with the battle droids talking like they all just sucked helium? Ok, I could go on and on about the faults of the prequels.

I've seen a lot of great movies, but I don't think there will ever be another one like that first Star Wars. Looking over at IMDB, it doesn't look like anyone is even trying. The new thing appears to be torture porn, showing people held someplace and slowly hacked to death isn't my idea of a good time. So instead, once in a while I'll get out the Star Wars DVDs and sit back and be sucked into a galaxy far far away and watch the good guys win and then lose and then win again and a green hand puppet become an iconic figure and freeze frame Leia in her slave girl bikini and Darth Vader be revealed as a pale old grandpa and I'll love every minute of it... except the fucking Ewoks, they can all just fucking die!

A Guest Editorial by Steve

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS

My dad is 78, and although he’s not an “in your face” jarhead ex military type, he quietly and proudly displays a nice big American flag at the ol’ family homestead, on the ol’ family flag pole. Just because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. The flag flies year round, except in really bad weather. It’s always nice, and reassuring to see it flying in the breeze there. Dad served in the US Air Force, and retired as a Major, doing his stint in the reserves for the required number of years. He receives a nice pension from the government, thank you very much, but doesn’t do the parades, or hang around at the VFW in partial uniform. He was lucky to never have served during war time, but was stationed at a base that trained the pilots that eventually ended up in ‘Nam. He doesn’t talk about those days much unless asked. I guess it’s just over and done with and put behind. Not bad, not good, merely long ago.
My first attempt at displaying a flag at my own home ended rather badly. I purchased a rather large cotton flag, and hung it on the front of my barn. It was a thing of beauty – 8 feet on the short end, and perhaps 16’ the long way. It was a big ‘un. I hung it vertically, with a 2x4 stretched across the short end, high up on the gable of my barn. It looked spectacular! However, I had stupidly hung it on top of the driveway spotlight, which turned out to be a halogen light. For the uninitiated, halogen lights give off large amounts of heat, as I son discovered. One night, the breeze blew the flag up around the light, and it wrapped there tightly. In seconds, the heat from the lamp ignited the flag, and it burst into flames, thereby igniting the front of my barn. Good thing the neighbors saw it, and alerted us. The fire department, police, and half the town showed up for the impromptu yet unintended flag burning. Luckily, there was not much damage except to my pride. It was not a happy evening at our house, and I have not thought about having a flag since.
I was talking with my dad this week, and he was relating a story of his efforts to buy a flag recently, in preparation for Memorial Day. It seems he felt the old one was getting rather faded and tattered, so he turned it in to the Legion for the proper disposal. His major gripe, however, was with not being able to purchase a new flag anywhere. He had gone to Khol’s, Target, BJ’s and Home Depot looking for a flag. In only one store, - I forget which, - was he able to find a small 3x5 plastic/nylon flag, which was made in China! Yes, an American flag, made in China. We both were shocked that 4 huge chains that now blight every single community in the region could not find it in their cold corporate hearts to carry and stock appropriate American made flags. Dad, not one to ever voice opinions on such things, was fairly disgusted, and actually pretty upset about it. He hadn’t been to Walmart and was reluctantly considering that option when his sister’s husband (a Navy Veteran) advised him to order one through the VFW. He placed the order last Monday, and received it Thursday, and was thrilled.
I guess my point is that we were disappointed, but not all that surprised at this tale. Nobody flies the flag anymore. Sure our country is going to hell in a hand basket, but it’s still a pretty damn good place to live when you get right down to it especially compared to the alternatives. There is a LOT wrong with the leadership in this country lately, but the country and our way of life is basically pretty damned good. We should fly the flag for THOSE reasons, merely because we have the freedom and choice to DO so.
As I helped Dad pick up the family boat from the marina yesterday, I hooked up the trailer to the hitch on my Jeep while Dad went in and paid the bill. When he came out, he had his receipt in one hand, and a small box in the other. In the box?? A small American flag to fly from the light staff on the back of the boat. Thanks Dad, for all you’ve taught me, and have a great Memorial Day.

So, don't be coy, tell us how you really feel

I don't generally agree with Hitchen's, I think he can be a pompous drunk dickhead, but he just hits this right out of the park.

I have no sympathy for Falwell, he was a fraud who was one of the architects of the idiocy we see in our government today. He's also responsible for inflicting Liberty University on us, a "University" where you can get a degree in Geology while believing the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood. A place that recently advertised for a biology professor to teach there but required that person to only teach that the earth is 6000 years old. And people wonder how we've lost our leadership in the world.

Something to think about

Oil is created by life. It generally forms in areas that were once dense rainforests, oceans and jungles that were covered over millions of years ago and compressed under tons of weight. All the carbon based materials, cellulose, protiens, all the dead decaying plants and animals essentially squished into oblivion creating this goo that when put through a refinery becomes gasoline, motor oil, diesel fuel, and all the other hundreds of crude oil based materials we know of. All of the oil fields that exist today took literally tens if not hundreds of millions of years to form. It's been sitting there, underground, undisturbed while our ancestors came down from the trees and learned to make tools, clothes, shelter, boats, weapons, and developed into thinking beings with towns and cities, languages, customs. It was there when the very first words were ever written. It was there when the first cave dweller painted the first buffalo on a wall. It was there when the Mayans and Egyptians figured out independently how to build pyramids. It was there when Shakespear was still learning how to diagram a sentence. It was there when Nero fiddled, and it was there when every major religion in the world was just getting started.
So I find it stunning to think that close to all of the oil that has ever existed and ever WILL exist, has been used up within the last 150 years. There was almost no use for crude oil or anything made from it until around 1855. Within only a couple of generations, we have managed to suck out and burn almost all of it. Geologists for the most part believe it will all be gone sometime in the next 50 to 100 years. Just think about that for a minute. It's been literally sitting there since way before the dawn of man, and it will be gone possibly within the lifetime of kids who are in school right now. It's not being replaced, there is no oil factory somewhere making more. I'm not an ecologist and I'm not a tree hugger, but the idea that we have managed to completely use up something that took that long to produce in such a short time really boggles the mind.

Spiderman 3, Suck or No Suck?

Spoiler Alert:
If you have not seen this yet and plan to, then don't read this!!

I've been looking forward to this movie for a while. I'm not a huge comic book fan, but I thought the first two Spiderman movies were done really well. So let's get right to it, Spidermanaged to not be so great. I hate to say it, but this is a movie with a lot of issues. First off, it was sloooow. For a flick that eventually had so much going on, the beginning seemed to take forever to get off the ground. Once it got on the ball however it had some really good stuff happening in it. Like Spiderman 2, some of the action stuff went a little overboard to the point where it was sometimes hard to tell exactly what the hell was going on. I have to say too that after seeing Spiderman stop a train weighing tens of thousands of pounds in the last movie, it's always weird to see him punch someone and have them react as if they were in a bar fight with some drunk. You would think that with strength enough to single handedly stop an entire train, his every punch would be lethal to anyone less than Superman.
The story, such as it was, was pretty inconsequential and was mostly an excuse to introduce some new villains and play through what happens between peter parker and Harry Osborne and of course, between him and Mary Jane. The problem is, while they give the villains some back story, in the end they get finished off too quickly and in the case of Sandman, in a way that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. The entire movie shows him as a guy who's not bad by nature, but desperate to save his dying daughter, so exactly what happens to her? It's never said, he just sort of drifts into the sunset. This was the single most annoying part of the flick for me. After building up this story with his dying kid, in the end there is no resolution to that part of the story at all. I expected to see Spiderman find the girl, promise to care for her, do SOMETHING, but no, she is just used as motivation for this villain and that's it. The villain most fans were waiting for was Venom, but he wasn't really in the movie long, looks a little ludicrous when talking and gets killed off pretty quickly. I'm actually surprised they killed him as quickly as they did, given the number of comic books he was in.
In fact, by the end of the movie, there are an awful lot of dead people, hurt people, crying people. The entire movie is kind of depressing in a way. You generally expect movies like this to take the hero into some bad places but pull him back out at the end, but by the end of this movie, you really feel like there are an awful lot of loose ends and an awful lot of hurt people and not much in the way of resolution.
So, did I like it? Well, yes, it certainly had it's moments. Unlike the other two however, I don't think I would pay to see it again. The whole thing plays like some weird middle chapter of a novel, the part that you have to slog through to get to the end, the part that makes you sort of wish you hadn't started reading it to begin with. Given the money it's made, I'm sure there will be more, let's hope the next one spends a little less time on depressed people. When it was over, my friend Deb looked at me and said "Well, that was kind of a downer", and I have to agree, it was definitely not the feel good hit of the summer, not by a longshot.

Yeah, I'm sure that's why she did it

Anyone reading this page for any length of time already knows that I love exotic dancers. I've certainly made no excuses for that, I have a huge amount of respect for them and what they do. Which is why I was so pissed off when I heard them reporting on the radio that a "Former Stripper" was in court because she had been caught passing herself off as a psychologist. Why did this piss me off? because she was no longer a stripper while this was going on. What purpose did it serve to mention her former job? And it didn't end there, not only did they feel it necessary to report that she had been a stripper in the past, but they even made certain to give her stage name, I guess so any of her former customers would know who they were referring to. It's funny, but I don't often hear the news reporters breathlessly mentioning how the person caught carjacking last night was a "former fry cook", or how that person arrested for breaking and entering was a "Former bus driver who his passengers called Mitch". Of course, once the "news" story was over, you could count on the hosts of the show right afterwards to spend the next half hour twittering about the stripper and how the stripper must have used all her magical stripper powers to pull off her amazing crime.
I'm not embarrassed or ashamed in any way to say that many of my closest friends either are or have been strippers. Through both friendships and my photography I've had the chance to get to know more exotic dancers than the average person and I think I can say with reasonable authority that they are, in fact, human beings. They have all the same attitudes, issues, feelings, problems and emotional highs and lows as anyone else. I get sick to death of hearing them constantly portrayed in the media and elsewhere as either mindless victims being manipulated and exploited or as drug and disease infested money hungry sluts. They have a job, they do their job. Are there strippers who take drugs? Absolutely, just like there are construction workers, cops, waitresses and politicians who take drugs. Are there strippers who are cold heartless assholes who only want to use people? Sure, just like there are teachers, chefs, librarians, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers who are cold heartless assholes who only want to use people. But there are also teetotalling, anti-drug nonsmoking health conscious vegan strippers. There are strippers of every faith, every walk of life, every shape, color, age and personality type, as in any other business. Some strippers I know are among the most down to earth people I've ever known. They do what they do because it's a way to earn a good living without having a set, fixed schedule, so they can be there for their children when they are on school vacation or to take care of sick parents or go to school or just enjoy life while they are still young enough to do it. One of my closest friends became a stripper after spending years doing data entry in an office. Somehow it was considered alright for her to spend 8 hours a day sitting in a chair in a cubicle mindlessly typing numbers she knew nothing about into a computer for 8 bucks an hour, but it's societally unacceptable to take the same body and remove the clothes from it in front of an audience for the equivalent of 60 or 100 dollars an hour because THAT'S exploitive and degrading and she's only being used for her body. How being made to type numbers for a living isn't also being used for your body I don't understand, it seems to me it's simply being used for a different body part.
For reasons not worth going into, I don't spend much time in strip clubs anymore, but I miss it, and I miss many of my friends there. But they are still my friends, and I still get angry whenever strippers in general are not given respect. If you have an issue with what they do, then the hang up is yours, not theirs. I have said before that if you were to completely ban strippers and adult entertainment in general, you would see an explosion in violence and misogyny that would boggle the mind, one only needs to look at what happens to women in countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to see what I'm talking about. Whether you want to admit that women in this business perform a social function or not is up to you, but at the very least, give them the respect owed to any other human being and leave it at that.

Brown Sugah

When Mick Jones of the Rolling Stones died, he was replaced by Mick Taylor. Immediately, Taylor was considered a member of the band, he was in all the pictures, album covers, credits of all kinds. He was A Rolling Stone. When Taylor quit the band and was replaced by Ron Wood, Wood was instantly considered a member of the band and was in all the promo pics, album coveres, credits etc. So, why is it that when Bill Wyman quit the band and was replaced by Darryl Jones, Jones wasn't considered a member of the band? At this point, Jones has been playing bass for the stones for years. He was playing for them when I saw the Stones in the mid 90s and had been for many years prior to that and still is to this day. Am I the only one who finds it odd that he is almost never included in band photos, credots or promotional materials? or that even if he is, he's always treated as some kind of temporary fill in session guy and not a member of the band? Not sure why this bothers me, maybe because he's a bass player, but it just strikes me as a little odd. Just sayin...

Concepts in Advertising

OK, so I complain a lot about advertising. but lets face it, most of it sucks and just seeks to annoy. Recently, one advertiser has started annoying me slightly more than most, because the concept of the ad is just screwed up. Every day, on multiple websites I see ads for Match.com consisting of a girl, usually bouncing around on a couch or something similar getting down to chatting in front of her web cam, or scolding someone for staring at her boobies or ass or something along those lines. The chatters look flirtingly at the camera, trying ever so hard to look sexy and available. The implication of course, is that if you sign up for Match.com, you'll be inundated with young hot single women with webcams who just can't wait to get into their panties and jogging bra and chat and flirt and soon do a private strip show just for you, because of course, that's what all women on dating websites are like. They just want to chat, which of course, eventually leads to cyber sex, which eventually leads to the phone, which eventually leads to phone sex, which eventually leads to meeting in person which eventually leads to questioning my hygiene AGAIN... It just never ends the way you think it will. The first problem with these ads is that none of these women are attractive. If you're trying to get me to sign up for your service based on the super hotness of the flirtatious babes who use it, shouldn't you make an effort to actually find some super hot babes? These girls all look like they were just a little too butch for the college field hockey team. Whenever I see them look at the camera (something they do constantly, with knowing looks and lascivious smiles) rather than interest me, it makes me feel, you know, icky, as if the ad had some shirtless college guy and instead of what is supposed to be a turn on just makes me feel awkward.
Of course, the second reason this ad doesn't work is because it's so totally dishonest to begin with. Despite the rugged masculinity of the supposedly hot babes in the ads, let's face it, the woman at the other end of a chat line on a dating site like this is far more likely to be sitting at her computer with her hair in curlers, a half eaten pizza sitting on the desk alongside while a cigarette hangs out one side of her mouth and a Drake's Yodel hangs out the other side. In other words, a female version of me, minus the curlers and the cigarette (but double the pizza and yodels). Anyone who would sign up for a service like this because they think that they will soon have a hot chick flirting with them on a webcam is in for a shock. Assuming you joined and actually got an attractive woman on her webcam, one would assume they would expect you to have a webcam as well, at which point she would be able to clearly tell why you had been forced to join a dating service to being with. So, enough with the softcore semi-porn ads with the knowing looks at slutty smiles. You're not fooling anyone, I hope, because if you are, there are some monstrously stupid people out there. Course, this is America and there ARE monstrously stupid people out there, so I imagine these ads will continue for quite a while.

Priorities Priorities

Am I the only person thoroughly amazed and disgusted that the very first thing our illustrious president had to say about the shooting in Virginia, is that he believes "there is a right for people to bear arms"? Thanks for sharing that with us assface, I'm sure it really helped the situation. I'm sure that check from the NRA will be along shortly.

Lack of posting excuse

I know I know, I haven't been posting much here for a while. I also realize that for some reason, there are people who actually come here and read this annoying drivel for reasons that escape me. The reason for the dearth of posts is personal, but I will just say that in the past year I've gone through a bad time and lost someone very very close to me for reasons that are still hard for me to comprehend and it's made it difficult for me to find humor in things or even get as pissed off about trivia as I had been. A lot of things have been forced into perspective in a rather unpleasant way, and ever since, whenever I started writing something here I would stop halfway through wondering why in hell anyone would give a shit about whatever it is I picked for a topic. So, I shall endeavor to come up with things to post about and if you like it, terrific, drop me a line, let me know, and if you hate it, well, fuck you, who asked?

Sure I look bad, but I don't do it on purpose

I don't usually get too involved in what's fashionable, after all, my own dress is based more on which clothing manufacturers use the most fabric per article of clothing than on style, but there is one piece of clothing that just annoys the hell out of me. Please, for the love of all that's holy people, take off the goddamn cowboy hat. Cowboys make up less that a hundredth of a tenth of a millionth of a percentage of the population in this country, assuming there are actually any left at all. Cowboys once roamed the range, taking cattle from place to place on long rides cross country. The hats were possibly necessary back then to protect them from the ravages of the pre-sunscreen high noonish sun. But that hasn't really been the case since about, oh, 1902. Let's face it, 99.99999993% of people wearing cowboy hats now do it in the mistaken idea that it somehow looks cool. In all the foofara about Imus, I kept seeing shots of this guy doing his radio show in this big ass dumb cowboy hat. Was that supposed to look cool? Show his manly man status? Because to me it just made him look like a moron. A lot of kids play cowboy and indian when young, but for some odd reason you don't find a lot of them thinking it's still cool to wear feathers and warpaint to work when they hit their 20s and 30s. Even real native american's don't do that. But every day in this country there will be some sartorially challenged nitwits wearing a cowboy hat to the office. In Worcester, there's a guy who does ads for his car dealership wearing one. God lord man, why? First off, you're the son of the guy who owned the dealership for probably 50 years before he croaked and handed it over to you, you're as much a cowboy as I'm a ballerina. You're not fooling anyone. I'll go so far as to say a real cowboy would most likely want to take the damn hat off when he was done working. Do you ever see a fireman wearing his firehat around when he goes out to eat? When was the last time you ran into an astronaut wearing his space helmet while trying to pick up chicks at the bar? I guess it's fortunate that most of the guys who do wear these things tend to congregate in the same places, like the country bars where they can pick up some little filly, spit tobacco and line dance (because nothing says "I'm a macho man with the spirit of freedom and independence of the wide open prairie" than getting in a line to do the same bunch of prescribed two step clomping as everyone else is). The bottom line is, there are only two kinds of people who can wear a cowboy hat and get away with it, one is actually cowboys who ride the dusty trail and save the ranch from the evil land baron, and the other is strippers who wear one with the little leather bra and matching assless chaps. if you don't fall into one of those two categories, take the damn thing off. We're all laughing at you when you turn around, seriously...

Anna Nicole Smith is Still Dead

Here's a question for you, why is Anna Nicole Smith's death news? Why does anyone care? I'm so sick and tired of people being famous for being famous. I'm sorry that she died, I really am. I'm sure it's a big deal to the 2 people in the world who really cared about her and the 15 or so who had hoped to make her their meal ticket. For the rest of us, not so much. This was a woman who's primary claim to fame was that she was a fat playmate. That's it. Somehow she got past Hef's style patrol and managed to pose naked while chubby. 12 women a year are in playboy, only Anna Nicole somehow managed to turn that into a lifelong career. So she married a rich guy, he died, they went to court, she won some money. She deserved whatever she got frankly, I suspect screwing him was something along the lines of sticking a marshmallow into a piggy bank (in more ways than one), so great, give her the dough. I can even understand how her death might be worth a story in the style section or People magazine, but was it really worth wall to wall overage by every news network in the US? For days? And days? And days? How many soldiers died in Iraq over that same period? How many civilians? The people who decide what is news in this country need to all be fired en masse and replaced with people who have some sense of perspective. When a space probe built by humans recently took amazing pictures of the planet Saturn, did you see it on the news? It may have made a 2 paragraph article on CNNs website or something, but that's about it. On the other hand, we have an "astronaut" who wore diapers for nine hours and tried to mace some other nobody and that's the headline for an entire week. Every day there's some idiotic story that should at most be a blip if it's worth reporting at all that gets wall to wall in depth coverage, meanwhile most of the US is kept in the dark about little things like how the government is slowly and steadily being turned into a fascist dictatorship. But hey, why worry about that? That's not important, we have chunky chicks having babies and then checking out. That's much more important, right? It won't be long before news about what's really going on will be censored anyway, then all the networks will be all chunky dead chicks all the time. I guess they're just getting warmed up.

Hey Boston... BOO!!!!

So, someone sees a small sign lit up to look like something out of Pac Man, and the city of Boston implodes. Incredible. I tuned into the news yesterday to see the news people doing their best to disgrace any concept of journalism by acting indignant and harrumphing like a woman scorned over the fact that someone had dared to leave little light up signs around the city without first posting billboards warning people to be on the look out for little lightbright cartoon characters. This was such a crock of crap from the first minute. How much money do you suppose Boston has gotten for anti-terror training and protection since 9/11? 100,000,000? 200,000,000? And the cops who went to the scene of the first one of these couldn't tell within 30 seconds that it wasn't a bomb? You must be joking? How safe and secure do you feel now? These things were in Boston for 2 weeks and no one noticed them, then someone sees one and the entire city collectively curls into the fetal position and sucks it's thumb. I've seen one of these signs, there is absolutely zero chance it could be mistaken for anything but a hunk of plastic and a couple of batteries. Hey Boston Police, I'm not an expert the way you have supposedly been trained to be, but I'm pretty sure a bomb has to have a couple of components, and one of the real biggies is EXPLOSIVE. Not going to get much of a bang without EXPLOSIVES. Then to make it even worse, the news media goes into full 24/7 coverage of the thing as if a nuclear weapon were found at Logan Airport. Couple of things guys... first, this was NOT A HOAX! I've heard this thing reported over and over again as a hoax. This was no hoax, a hoax would have been if someone had actually made little fake bombs and then called the fire department. Second, I heard a nitwit refer to it as vandalism. He was indignant that his news shows had gotten e-mails from people who DARED to point out the obvious overcoverage of this non event. His reaction was that he couldn't believe that so many found vandalism acceptable. Another newsflash for Edward R Murrow, this was NOT VANDALISM. Vandalism would be if they had spray painted the characters on a wall, or broken a window and then put the sign in a storefront. Vandalism means defacing or damaging something, not leaving an easily removable sign to be picked up and thrown away. I'm also not interested in your opinion of the people who did this. Dan Rea was so full of puffed up indignant anger I'm surprised he could still talk with his chest all pumped out like that. Hey jackass, you report the news. No one gives a shit what you think about it. Your job is to say "this is what happened". Leave the snarky little asides to yourself, no one cares. This morning there was a whole lot more indigation, first about the two guys who were arrested for daring to have a sense of humor about the whole thing and the second about how much damage this had done to all those poor merchants who had lost money because of it. Once again morons, they lost money BECAUSE of the POLICE, not because of the little signs. It was the police who's expertly trained bomb squad tactical he-man's brigade didn't bother to spend two seconds actually looking at one of these things before blowing it up to find out what it was. It was the police commissioner who, hours after Turner Broadcasting had come out and said exactly what they were and exactly who put them there, and where they could all be found, still stood at a news conference acting as if this were the crime of the century and he would leave no stone unturned to find the culprits and bring them to justice. They knew who the "culprits" were before noon and this idiot is on TV at 4 o'clock still totally oblivious. Either that or he realized he hadn't gotten his face on TV long enough yet and so decided to keep the panic going a little longer. And Menino? Just shut the fuck up. You over reacted, you, your police commissioner, the whole friggin government. I could not help but feel, as I watched this all unfold, that both the state government and the police and the news media were all really pissed off that it really wasn't bombs. Man, what a great story that would have been, a terrorist attack right in Boston? "Wow, we'll be the center of attention of the WHOLE WORLD for at least a couple of weeks, why, I'll be on TV ever two minutes, the Today show! Fox News, maybe Bill OReilly himself will interview... umm.. what? Little plastic signs? Are you sure? Shit... are you positive? Could the be radioactive or something? No? Christ... now I just look like an idiot! I better lash out big time!!!" Fucking idiots, the whole bunch. We better all hope that these clowns know more about terrorism than they are letting on here or we're all doomed.

New Porn Sucks, and not in a good way

I watch porn. All guys watch porn, no matter what they tell you. A lot of girls watch it too. I'm a big fan of porn, I think it's fun to watch and helps keep down violence in society (think I'm kidding? Check out any country where it's banned, afghanistan anybody?). Anyway, I prefer old porn, movies made in the 1970s. No, it's not because I have a thing for chicks with a bush that starts at her belly button and grows like the amazon rainforest down to her knees, it's because in the 70s, porn producers were desperate to at least try and make movies that had heart. They were often very funny (Check out "The Devil in Miss Jones part Two" if you want to see a funny porn movie), and sometimes very avant guard (Barbara Broadcast anyone?) and even if they weren 't funny or artsy, you could tell they were at least trying. Sure, the acting was usually crappy, and the lighting and film stock were nothing to be proud of, but they were trying and you can sense that they were having fun and really trying to make something interesting.
But sometime in the 1980s, porn went through a change. Some bright producers figured out that you didn't need a story, humor, a script or even more than one camera. All you needed was a hot chick you could stick on the VHS box and the things would sell themselves no matter what was on them.
There was a long phase where the big thing was "Amateurs", people who would send in videos of themselves humping whatever was at hand. Some of these could be cute, it's always a little weird to watch someone who is extremely self conscious try to look sexy and fail at it pretty convincingly. But even the cuteness of that didn't last. As the producers felt the market thinning out as everybody and their sister (sometimes literally) decided they could put out their own self made sex fests they started to fight back by doing "Pro-Am", movies made to look amateur but featuring somewhat recognizable people, at least recognizable to porn fans. People like Nina Hartley (who happens to be a friend on my Myspace Page, aren't I lucky?).
Then the internet happened and suddenly anyone could make a porn site and so everybody did. I ran one for several years for a friend who was a beautiful blonde. Did I make a fortune with it? No, unfortunately, the number of sites multiplied like a virus and so she was just one in a heaving sea of hot blondes who couldn't wait for you to check out her naughty bits for the right amount of cash. As I became friends with a lot of strippers and started photographing them, my interest in porn waned, what's the fun in watching some anonymous "porn star" when you could walk into a club and all of your closest friends were hot naked chicks who were actually fun to be around?
Anyway, I had a chance to watch a fairly new flick the other day starring Jenna Jameson. To be honest, I was sort of curious, because you see her name everywhere. She's a huge porn star and has managed to cross over into mainstream culture in several ways, but I had never seen her "in action". She doesn't really do anything for me in the sense that I don't find her any more attractive than the other 6 million bleach blond california girls who do porn, but I was curious as to what the fuss is. Having watched the movie, I can honestly say I STILL don't know what the fuss is. The movie (I won't bother to give the title) was awful. It was basically an hour long music video, featuring wall to wall pointless slow motion, quick edits, all kinds of weird useless jump cuts, all of the things you find annoying about watching almost anything on MTV. It was difficult to know at any time exactly who you were looking at. Even during a scene that supposedly had only two people in it, there would be cuts to what were obviously OTHER people. The music was a non stop barrage of hip hop drum and bass synth sequencer crap that could have been written for any nintendo video game. The movie had at least 8 "stars" in it, but I'll be damned if I could tell any of them apart. In 70s porn flicks, there were people you could recognize, who you would see in different movies and know a little of their personality. The best porn stars to me still come from that time. Annette Haven, C.J. Laing, Constance Money, Joanna Storm. You watch a movie with them in it, you knew who the hell was who.
So, I guess I have to stick with the old classics. Or maybe start making new ones, any hot chicks out there up for a remake of Behind the Green Door?

Hey, he whacked that guy! That's hysterical!

Watching the end of the Patriots game last night, and they showed Bill Belichik walking across the field to say hi or whatever it is they do to the opposing coach. Said coach was surrounded by photographers and Bellichick, evidently feeling that he's One Important Dude© proceeds to grab one of the photographers and yank him out of the way. Now, maybe it's because I'm a photographer too, but my first thought was that he could have caused serious damage to the guy's camera. Whether you're aware of it or not, a typical camera with lens used on the field for something like that costs somewhere upwards of 7 grand. My second thought was that if it had been me, I would have punched the shit out of Bellichik, I don't care who he is. But, my last thought was how everyone on the television, the hosts of the patriots game, the people discussing it on the news afterwards, in fact every single time it's been shown, has been acting as if it were somehow hysterical. Oh, ha ha ha, look at the coach, he sure was anxious to get through there. Yeah, look how he just shoves that annoying photographer who's there to do his job out of the way, ho ho hee hee. How is that funny? This dumb ass jerk millionaire coach is in a rush so it's funny how he just grabs some poor schlub doing his job like he's some kind of leper? That's funny? I hope the guy sues, I really do. I'm so sick of people who get some money or power feeling like they can just do whatever the hell they want because they're untouchable. I used to think Bellechik was a decent guy, but from now on, I will always see him as a lowlife thug.

Tits and Ass vs. Blood and Guts

I happened to catch a part of a show on Bravo that was about the "30 bloodiest moments in film". Frankly, it surprised me because they were showing in full graphic detail the goriest scenes from the goriest movies ever made, including the endings. Blood, intestines, severed limbs.. nothing was too graphic to put on the air. Except... except? Except a scene from Clockwork Orange where a woman is raped. Oh, they had no issues with the rape itself, that was fine, but the moment the woman's tits popped out, there came the "fuzz". I mean, this is America, the most culturally advanced country on the planet (That was sarcasm) and we couldn't possibly show tits on the telly! There are severe issues in a culture where showing a guy cutting his own tongue out in graphic detail is not an issue but a woman's tits are taboo. How screwed up is this? I don't have kids, but frankly, I'd rather have my kids sit and watch "Co-ed orgies volume 3" that to sit and be de-sensitized by watching this god-awful blood and guts torture fests that pass for horror movies these days. if my kids are going to be tempted to copy something they see on screen, I'd rather they be good at cunnilingus than disemboweling. Seriously, we've had women removed from airline flights for breastfeeding but if the inflight movie featured a woman having her tits cut off and put in a blender, I suspect no one would have an issue, just as long as the breasts weren't shown in any way prior to being put in the juicemaker. Am I the only one who thinks this is totally screwy?

Give me a big frosty glass of who gives a shit

Gerald Ford is dead. Now, explain to me why his funeral took a week and a half and was plastered all over the TV for day after day. This guy was a zero when he was president, and he more than a zero afterwards and his chief claim to fame is giving a full pardon to the second biggest criminal ever to occupy the white house. I understand he was president, he deserves a little respect, but I mean jesus. Does it really require day after day of pseudo-mourning? Every day, american soldiers are getting blown up in a foreign country to support an insane foreign policy and to make sure Bush Junior doesn't have to admit he screwed up. How many of them get more than a passing mention in their local newscasts? And we need wall to wall coverage of putting a president who most American's think looked like Chevy Chase and tripped every time he stood up? How about a little perspective here.

Nitpicking It's A Wonderful Life

I love "It's a wonderful life". Along with Rudolph, it's the one thing at xmas that sort of defines the season for me. This year was a crappy one as far as xmas TV went. I can remember when almost any given day between thanksgiving and xmas, you could find some great old xmas movie or special somewhere on the tube. I didn't see a single version of a Christmas Carol this year, not one. Anyway, I DID see It's a wonderful life. Having seen it about a hundred times though, I started mentally picking things out that had me scratching my head a little. In no particular order:

Mary has no job that I'm aware of, yet somehow she managed to buy a house on her wedding day without her husband George, the only with a job, knowing about it. No getting a mortgage? Credit checks? Did she just move in assuming no one would throw her out?

When Clarence comes to earth, couldn't he just have saved a lot of BS by saying "George, I'm your guardian angel, I've been watching you for years and Uncle Billy left the $8000.00 in the newspaper he gave to Mr. Potter"?

When his rich friend tells him he has a great investment that can make him rich, why doesn't he do it? ok, so he's upset about Mary and his brother getting a job, but jesus. He's not supposed to be an idiot. Was it an offer that was only good for 30 seconds? Couldn't he get up the next day and think "Gee, maybe I ought to look into this".

What's with the kids wearing the creepy santa masks? Was that a common thing in the 40s?

At the end of the movie, when all the money is pouring in, he gets a telegram from Sam Wainwright sending him up to 25,000 dollars. At that point, should he have just let everyone else take their money back? Did he keep all of it?

The thing on the stairs that he kept pulling off... Hello? Elmers glue?

Clarence said that every time a bell rings and angel gets his wings. Does that mean there was a huge increase in the angel population after the invention of the telephone? Would there be a new angel for every phone call, or every individual ring? So, if I don't answer the phone, I alone could be responsible for the creation of 8, 9, 10 little angels?

Clarence says he's reading Tom Sawyer, then tells the bridgekeeper "You should see the new book Mark Twain is working on". How would he know anything about the new book Mark Twain is working on? Did he spy on him? Was he reading it over his shoulder as it was being written?

I don't know about you, but if my kid was working in a drug store and the druggist hit him till he bled, I'd be down there with a baseball bat.

What's with the housekeeper Annie? Does she live there? Does she get thrown out when the father dies? If things are so bad, how can they afford a full time maid? And no one has a problem when the youngest son smacks her on the ass?

When the run on the bank happens, George uses his own money to keep the building and loan open till 5. Apparently, if it closes, it will be closed for good. So... what happens the next day? The story says the bank is closed for a week. All he has left at the end of the first day is two dollars, so what do they do for the rest of the week? Cross their fingers and hope no one comes in?

According to Clarence, he's 293 years old. Assuming that the movie takes place just after WWII, that means he died in approx 1653. This was the year New Amsterdam (to become New York) was first incorporated. Shouldn't he have had a somewhat different speech pattern?

ok ok, I could go on, and yes I know it's a movie, but when you've seen something as often as I've seen that, it just makes you wonder.

You make a better door than a window

I went to see Bodyworks at the Boston Museum of Science recently. I recommend the exhibit if seeing dismembered bodies isn't something that makes you queasy. There were a lot of people there and I was struck once again by the level of rudeness otherwise normal people are capable of demonstrating. Here's an important safety tip: If you're at a museum, seeing the same exhibit at 600 other people in a relatively small space, you might not want to BLOCK THE GODDAMN DISPLAYS WHILE BABBLING TO EACH OTHER FOR TEN MINUTES! That's right, I was the guy behind you as you and your wife, girlfriend, mistress, screwtoy, whatever stood still, blocking the entire display discussing the finer points of christ only knows what. Yes, there is a reason I was giving you dirty looks, the reason was because you were making it impossible for me to look at anything else. I didn't pay 24 bucks to stare at the back of your ugly ass balding head unless it had the skin and bone removed to show me the warped little pea brain you possess. Mind you, I'm not talking about one couple at one display, I'm talking ab out a variety of couples, there seemed to be one stationed at every single major display there, loudly discussing whether Uncle Fred's tumor looked like the on on that guy there. Everywhere I turned, some rude bastard would b making sure to block every possible view, and if I were finally able to get within visual range of one of these things, someone would inevitably step in front of me as if I weren't really there at all. These imbeciles have no idea how close they came to becoming part of this exhibit themselves, as my patience has limits and I was in a stranglin mood.
As for the exhibit itself, it was indeed interesting, though frankly, didn't live up to the hype. For those of you unfamiliar with it, a doctor in europe discovered a way to preserve human bodies by essentially making them into a kind of plastic, and so the displays consist of once living humans who have now been turned into anatomical statues showing muscles, veins, internal organs etc. The problem is, he did such a good job at making them plastic, that you always sort of had the feeling that they were fake, there wasn't much about them that made you think "Hey, this person was alive and breathing not too long ago." Still, it was interesting and I recommend it if you're into that kind of thing.

A Jingle I Like

I bitch a lot about advertising, and with good reason I think, but it's only fair that if there's something in an ad that I like, I mention it here. I'm kind of embarrassed to say it, but I find myself liking the song that they use to sell Fruit of the Loom blue underwear. For the life of me, I don't understand why they would need to advertise a specific color of undies, but they do. The ad itself is made like a music video, where everything is going backwards, which is frankly more original than half the crap on MTV these days anyway, and the song has a sort of late 60s early 70s vibe to it that I think is groovy, and far out, and I dig it. If it wasn't about underwear, I might even buy the CD.

Worthless

I did some photography a while back for an event. I won't say here what it was, but I shot quite a bit over the course of two days. I then went home and spent several hours doing the usual touch ups and my typical photoshop kind of things to them and making prints. I showed the prints to the people in charge of the even and they were suitably impressed. Recently, they contacted me and said they wanted to use the pictures for their marketing effort. Fine I thought. So I wrote back and asked what they needed, all the while assuming they were going to pay for the usage. Any photographer will tell you that there are guidelines for the use of photographs. They can be bought outright, they can be licensed for a period of time or even indefinitely, or there can be a flat fee to do the shoot and hand the pictures over afterwards. In every case, there is money involved. So I asked them what their usual practice was as far as licensing, and I was sent a contract. The contract said basically that I was handing over to them the photos and that they could then do whatever they wanted with them until the universe itself was a blackened cinder. They failed to mention anything about money though. Now, I'm not generally a vain person, but I've been doing photography now for several years, I've invested literally thousands of dollars in equipment and software and books and put hours into learning what I'm doing and I like to think I'm fairly proficient. I was not demanding thousands of dollars (a professional photography would have charged upwards of a thousand dollars a day just to be there,. and then hundreds of dollars per picture plus royalties for future use). Anyway, they said nothing about money, so I asked again, this time being more direct. Again, I assumed that this company (and it was a company, not just some guy) had some standard deal that they would offer to any third party photographer or at the very least, a marketing budget. A heard nothing back for a day or so and then was finally told that since "other amateur photographers" were there taking pictures too, they would use theirs instead of mine. Well, you get what you pay for, so if they would rather have Aunt Bee's polaroids, I guess that's their decision. It pissed me off though. I did not demand money, I simply wanted to be treated fairly. While I'm not Ansel Adams, that doesn't make my pictures worthless. If they had sucked, I assume they would never have contacted me. As most of you have figured out by now, I mostly photograph women, usually extremely beautiful women. Now,. an extremely beautiful woman would have no issues at all in finding any number of people willing to photograph them for free, but they come to me and even pay me. This is not bragging, it's just the truth. So I think if a 21 year old girl can cough up some dough to have a set of pictures done, it stands to reason that a corporation with a marketing budget should be able to come up with at least as much. Instead they seemed pissed off that I would even suggest it and stunned that I wasn't willing to donate them to the cause because I'm such a nice guy. Well, surprise, I'm not a nice guy and I could really care less about your project. Everyone involved in it got paid, none of you were doing it for the glory. If I were donating them for cancer research or something, maybe it would have been different. The lesson here it to remember that if you have an ability, it should never be treated as if it were meaningless. Once you get the reputation for doing everything for free, people will always expect you to do it for free. Well, Homey don't play dat anymore. Anyway, I ended up refusing them permission to use the photos. Did I make a mistake? Maybe, who knows, but at least I don't feel like I've been ripped off.

Do you have one in more of a Khaki?

I'm starting to get sick of celebrities going to 3rd world countries and adopting kids as if they were shopping for sausage down at the Stop & Shop. American's have a bad enough image in the world without some rich assholes going to Africa every other week to sample to destitute buffet. The most recent episode was particularly disturbing. I heard Madonna on Oprah saying that she was soooo sorry now that this had attracted so much negative publicity because, gosh darn it, fewer people would now go and adopt poor african orphans. The problem with this particular line of reasoning (apart from the concept that Madonna was sorry that she had stirred up controversy, right, and I'm sorry I ate a family bucket from KFC last week..) is that the kid she decided to liberate wasn't an orphan. An orphan has no parents, the kid she picked has a father who had no intention of giving him up. So instead, they sent a team of lawyers to talk this poor guy who can't read, write or speak english to give up his kid. What they did was incredibly cruel when you really think about it. Talk about a choice, what would you do if you were living in a mudhole someplace and someone gave you the choice, you can give up your kid forever or you can keep him yourself and the kid loses out on growing up to be a multimillionaire instead of taking over the family mold farm when he grows up. So naturally the father is now saying he wants to send his kid away forever, otherwise it would be like telling the publisher's clearing house prize patrol to go fuck themselves when they show up at your door with the giant check for 100,000,000 dollars. The point is not what the father should have done after the fact, it's with what Madonna did to begin with. There are probably a million kids in Africa alone with NO parents, who are truly orphans and who could really use a family, so what did she do? She picked out a kid who already has a family, albeit one in a difficult situation and then do everything she had to do to take that kid away from his only surviving relative. Do you think for a minute that this guy really wanted to lose his son forever? This is selfishness on an amazing scale. She picked this kid out of tens of thousands because apparently she though he had nice eyes or something equally insane. Madonna, Angelina, and the rest of these rainbow kid collectors claim they are only trying to help these poor children. Well, it seems to me if you really want to help, do what Bono is doing, and try to actually improve the lives and the situation of the people as a whole there, don't go in and pick and choose to bring home one at a time based on how well they match your curtains. You all have enough money to set up foundations, charities, health clinics, or any number of other things, but the truth is, that's not what you want to do at all. In Madonna's case, I have absolutely no doubt that her motivation in doing this was that she thought she would be able to hold this kid up to the world and tell Oprah and Larry King what a wonderful person she was for doing it and now she's pissed that it backfired on her. We don't need more reasons to be hated by the world, so if you really want to save children, do it for real, no one is falling for your BS you self centered bitch.

I couldn't have said it better myself

This space is Myspace, this space is Yourspace...

So, I joined Myspace. Not sure why, a friend talked me into it. If you want to see my Myspace page, it's here. The most common thing I hear from people on Myspace is that they're addicted to it. I was too at first, but I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to be one of those people who have 35,000 "friends". I rarely get messages and when I do its usually some kind of spam. I actually haven't completely figured out what the whole point of it is. It seems mainly designed to get people to add as many friends as they can to their list, but lets face it, few people actually know the people on their friends list. I had some woman contact me recently who wanted to be on mine. Why? I have no clue. My Myspace page is mostly devoted to my photography (and yes, it has hot chicks all over it, sorry, but that's what I do) and apparently; she just liked the pictures. I also have bass players who want to be on it as well. I've never talked to or exchanged messages with any of them, but it seems that we are all a big bass player fraternity and so any time they see a bass player they want to add them as a friend.

When I signed up, I originally took it very seriously and wrote reams of crap telling my whole life story there, but I soon realized that almost no one does that, so I wrote a bunch of facetious crap on it and decided that if it wasn't going to be real, it should at least be somewhat humorous. Unfortunately, some people can't seem to tell the difference. The main part of my profile is a fake classified ad. A friend had been going to a lot of dating sites and I just decided to write the most ludicrous classified ad I could and post it up there. It's intended to be satirical, but I've had at least one person think it's real. I don't know if that says more about me or about her, but it's sort of funny in a headslappin way. I've also had at least one person call my page pornographic, which also makes me wonder about the mental health of a portion of society. Look, I'll be the first to admit that not everyone can look at my photos and come away from it thinking it's "art", but pornography? You've got to be joking.

The main activity on Myspace seems to be filling out endless surveys. I get a couple a day usually, sometimes I fill them out, sometimes I don't. Most ask the same questions "What do you like to do on a date?" as if I'd know, or "What's your best feature?" as if I have one. Still though, it breaks up the day and it's always a little exciting when you go there and the bright red "New Messages" indicator is lit. And I did exchange an E-Mail with Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel and King Crimson's bass player) through it, which was pretty cool. I feel a certain unease however when I know that there are people who spend their entire day there desperately hoping for contact from someone.

Well, I'd like to keep writing about this, but I have to go check Myspace and see if that hot blonde from California added me to her friend's list, I sure hope so.

As soon as I'm old enough... POW

Today on the radio, I heard an interview with some ultra-granola chick singer who was prattling on about her latest record (this was on NPR, which means that only her and about 6 others on the planet will ever actually hear it). In any case, she mentioned that one of the people "singing" on her "record" was her 6 year old daughter "Story". AT first, I wasn't sure what she said exactly, but then she repeated it "My daughter Story". Her daughter's name is Story... hmmmm

I don't have kids, and probably never will (from the neck down, I'm one of the world's most efficient birth control devices) but if I did, I can be pretty damn sure I wouldn't name her Story, why? Because I wouldn't want her to grow up hating my guts, that's why. Was it it with parents who name their newborn bundle of joy something that can only guarantee a lifetime of humiliation, sniggering and possible violence? For 500 years, we've gotten by with good old names like Mary, Bob, Bill, and Brenda, and suddenly we have a rash of Apple, Venice, Vickigail , Rumer, Pixie, and Fifi. Fifi is a dog's name for christ's sake, do you have any idea the pain and anguish you are forcing on your kid by naming her (or god forbid, him) Fifi? I have several friends currently who for some reason beyond my scope of comprehension, have named their son's Max. Max? Is there any name, aside from maybe Bluto or Brutus, more likely to get the shit kicked out of your kid after school every single day? "Hi kid, what's your name", "Max", "Max? You think you're tough Max? Wanna fight Max? Hey Max, pull my finger". You might as well hang a sign around his neck with "Kick me" on it. I can't even imagine what would happen if little Max decided he wanted to take ballroom dancing instead of Karate. Even the teacher would be saying "Max? Wouldn't you rather be taking lessons in boxing or ninja training?"

It is not the business of the state to regulate baby names of course but I should think that parent's expecting a baby would put a little more thought into the name they are saddling another human being with for life. Somehow scanning the national enquirer to find out what Brad and Angelina have renamed their newest Adopt-A-Lucky-Bastard lottery winner. They will grow up with 100 million dollars and a staff of sycophantic bodyguards, your kid won't. Did you really want to send your little son Fable to public school without body armor? And enough with naming them after "things". How would you like to grow up with a name like "Canon, Timberland, Porsche, Mustang, Gouda" or "Raspberry"? It happens. It's like the mother and father are sitting in the delivery rom, the mother panting and gasping, new baby crying for the very first time and the father starts scanning the room "Hmmmm, I don't know honey, what do you think of "Heart Monitor"? Or ummm... Enema? No wait, Scissors, that could be a cool name" or else before the actual delivery, in a subtle attempt to come out as drug users by coming up with names like "Pastel, Paisley or Pops Vibrant".

I can't say I've ever liked the name Joe, and I despise the name Joseph, but at least I know I'm not going to get the shit kicked out of me for having it. Having lived with a common name all my life though, I'd like to think of something more original if I ever have a kid. Like most modern parents, maybe it should somehow reflect my interests because god knows, your kids always grow up thinking just like you. How about something like Bassy McChickphotoguy? Sounds great!

Tiptoeing towards a police state

Today will mark a terrible day in the history of this country. After today, the president of the united states will be able to have anyone he can claim to be an "enemy combatant" arrested and locked away for any length of time (including life) for any reason without bringing any charges or evidence, and once there, that person will be able to be tortured indefinitely with no hope of reprieve. On the news just now, the bubblehead reporter claimed that the law would "Give the president the right to interrogate terrorists", but they have always had that right. No one has ever once said we can not interrogate prisoners, only that we have to adhere to international guidelines that have been in place AND WORKING for decades. Laws which, by the way, have nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the right os "terrorists", as you have heard so often in the past week. The Geneva convention was written to protect ourselves. It apparently doesn't occur to the mouseminds in charge that once we say we can do basically whatever we want, that means that anyone who captures our troops or arrests our citizens can do exactly the same thing. That is what they are for, do not listen to the propaganda mill who talk tough against terrists. We are putting Our soldiers and our citizens abroad at risk of torture, indefinite detention and death. It's astonishing to me how the ultra right wing in this country has been able to use fear and the general apathy and ignorance of the majority of the population of this country to push through one horrendous law after another but this brings the situation to an incredible new low. There is NOTHING in this law which says that only convicted "terrorists" may be tortured, or only the guilty or only foreigners, despite the bleatings of nitwits like rush limbaugh. Anyone, including US citizens will now be at risk to be disappeared, whisked off the streets and sent to a government, controlled gulag with no hope of trial, no chance to hear what they are accused of or evidence to back it up. Think I'm exaggerating? Read the bill. Suspension of Habeas Corpus is a BIG DEAL people, it literally means that if they take you, you have absolutely no right to know why, they don't have to have anything at all, just the mere whim of commander codpiece and the claim that you are somehow an enemy of the state. Right now, in theory, that means "terrorist", but it is by no means limited to that. How long before an "enemy" will be anti-war activists, reporters who don't give the party line? How long before anyone who isn't a supporter of the president's version of the "War on Terra™" finds themselves being accused of sympathy for the enemy? This country has survived wars with enemies far more dangerous and far more powerful than a few thousand nutjobs armed with car bombs (ALthough that number grows daily thanks to the idiotic decisions made by this administration since 9/11) and somehow we managed to defeat the nazis and communism and survive nuclear annihilation without needing to suspend our most basic constitutional rights, not to mention basic human rights. 19 nutjobs crashed some planes, 19 nutjobs who, by the way, were not from Iraq, the country we invaded anyway (For those of you with limited comprehension, that would be like invading Scotland after Pearl Harbor) and if they could see what was happening they would be pissing themselves with glee over what they've done. Not blowing up two buildings and killing some civilians, that was a tactic to them, the end result is exactly what they and the people who sent them (Including Osama Bin Laden, remember him? We were going to get him "dead or alive" as I recall... strange how you don't much hear that anymore) wanted. A country cowering in fear throwing away our freedom left and right in the name of security. And a political party led by some of the most corrupt officials in this countries history using it as an excuse to scare the rubes into letting them build a police state little by little. If these people are allowed to stay in power (and given that they seem to control the voting machines, that seems likely) I shudder to imagine what this country will be like in ten years. This was all predicted in the bool 1984, if you have never read it, I strongly encourage you to do so.

"We are at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia"

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

uhhh, Paramount?

I've been a Star Trek fan going back to when I was 5 years old and had to watch it on a snowy UHF station where you could just barely make out what the hell was going on and I've seen every episode maybe 50 times, so I was pretty excited when it was recently announced that all the old episodes were being remastered, cleaned up and restored. More than that though, it was announced that the special effects were being completely redone using state of the art technology. I love the old effects, there was something very endearing about them despite the fact that they never really looked "real". The Enterprise itself was and is a work of art. In the 40 years since, no one has yet to improve upon Matt Jeffries design. It is elegant and stylish, yet always retained a certain "Gee, it makes just enough sense that you could almost believe it would really work" quality to it. Redoing the effects using CGI meant being able to see the Enterprise along with other ships, planets, etc in whole new ways.

Well, the first of the newly remastered shows was on the other night (and I DO mean night, Paramount, for some reason I can't begin to figure out, decided to just dump the new shows with virtually no advertising or marketing to TV stations that don't seem to care one way or the other. Locally, that means the new show is on a 2:05 AM!!!). The episode was "Balance of Terror". This is the episode that first introduced the Romulans as an arch enemy of the Federation and revealed that, hey, they look just like Spock! It's a good show, loosely based on WWII submarine movies, with neither side able to see the other and relying on the ability to outguess each other to win. Of course, the main question was, what about the new effects? Well, unfortunately they were a little underwhelming. I had read that it was the desire of the people doing them to "retain the spirit" of the originals. Well, they didn't just retain the spirit, they dug up the body. Virtually every shot was an exact duplicate of the original, to the point where for the most part, if you didn't know it was being done, you wouldn't even notice it. There were a few short shots where they took a step or two away from the original, but not often enough, and there were a few spots that really cried out for new and better effects and just didn't get them. For example, there are new shots of the Enterprise firing phasers, where now the light from the phaser beam actually reflects off of the ship. That's the kind of thing you never even noticed before, but it definitely looks cool. But then, those same beams explode (exploding beams? ok, it's science fiction) but the explosions are virtually identical to to flat unrealistic flashes of light as in the original show. How hard would it have been to make them have some dimension? AT the end of the battle, the Romulan ship self destructs, but this is never shown. Instead, Kirk is shown looking at an empty starfield. Wreckage? Explosion? Cloud of crap? Anything? Nope, blank.

Look, I love the original Star Trek as much as anybody, and I too don't want to see them go berserk and suddenly have WWII dogfights, but I mean, come on! If you're going to do this, take advantage of it. SHow some new angles, fill in some blanks, show things that they WOULD have shown in 1966 if they had been able to. Otherwise, what is the point of doing this? I'll keep watching the new shows (taping them of course, thanks to WCVB deciding that it's not worthy of showing when most people are awake) but I really hope they decide to let loose a little with this stuff. I want to
Boldly See What No Fan Has Seen Before!

Nothing to see here

I left work a few days ago, anxious to get home and continue with my hobby of collecting rare and valuable odorless gasses. As soon as I got on the highway, I realized that my vial of anhydrous methyloxate would be totally evaporated by the time I got home thanks to the stop and go traffic. Did I say stop and go? Well, it was mostly stop. As I often do in those situations, I wondered idly what catastrophe could have occurred to cause all traffic within visual range come to a virtual standstill. A traffic accident? Would I eventually come upon a scene of gruesome carnage? Body parts hanging from overhead signs? Maybe it was a fire? Maybe I would see a fuel truck explode, because as anyone who has ever watched TV knows, if there's a fire on the highway, the full fuel truck can't be far away. Did they need to land a helicopter on the highway? What about a blimp? That would be cool. Why would they land a blimp on the highway? Who cares, blimps are cool. In an alternate life, I'm a blimp pilot. Some people would say I'm already piloting a blimp, every time I walk around. har har, very funny, asshole... ummm where was I? Oh yes. So, It's 20 minutes later and I'm 50 yards further along that I was. Maybe someone jumped off an overpass. Maybe they had to scrape him off the road after he was hit repeatedly by multiple trucks. Maybe it was the same truck over and over because the truck driver was a jerk. Hmmmm, I'm over the crest of the hill but I still see nothing but backed up traffic. Damn, I'll be stuck in this for a long time. I had a gig that night too. I was going to be late. WHat could possibly be the hold up here? Maybe they were holding a charity road race. On the highway? Well, why not, stupider things have been done in the name of charity, like Red Sox karaoke, that was pretty stupid. Maybe playboy is doing a shoot. "The Girls of Worcester". A bunch of naked centerfolds draped across the 190 overpass. That would be awesome, do I have my camera with me? No I don't. Shit, I hope that's not it. Man, this is soooo sloooow. Wait, what's that up ahead? Flashing blue lights! Police! I knew it, someone robbed a bank and they've been caught! Hmmm, as I get closer, I'm not seeing anything, just these police cars. The closer I get, the more obvious it is that there is nothing here except two police cars. No accident, no bank robbery, no naked chicks, no blimp, just two cops standing at the guardrail talking. What are they talking about? IT DOESN'T MATTER, GET THE HELL OFF THE ROAD! Seriously, I'm not one to dump on the men in blue, but there is absolutely no way these two couldn't see that their conversation was holding up traffic for 10 friggin miles! I never understand exactly why a cop on the side of the road can make people slow down to a crawl anyway, but come on officers, you can discuss the baseball game down at the donut shop like everybody else. I finally made it past them, whereupon of course, the traffic immediately increased to it's normal suicidal speed. And as I finally arrived at the gig and hour later than I had planned, I thought back to my time on the highway waiting in traffic for an hour while two policemen discussed the finer points of socratic theory and wishing it had been a blimp. That would have been so cool.

The Worst sounding songs ever

As someone who is interested in recording and production, I have a sort of mental list of songs that I consider to be among the best sounding records ever made. This includes classic albums like Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon and more recent works like Jeff Buckey's Grace. But I have to endure some idiot "classic hits" station while I'm at work and I hear a lot of the same old crap daily and it got me to thinking about the worst sounding songs I've heard. This is by no means a complete list, but here are a few that deserve special mention:

Already Gone-The Eagles. If this song doesn't have the worst guitar sound ever recorded, I don't know what does. There are at least three guitar tracks, and all sound thin and brittle and metallic. It's like listening to a band playing a song using a fork on cheese graters. It makes my filling hurt everytime it clacks onto the airwaves.

E.L.O. - Everything. ELO is the worst produced music ever, end of story. Everything they do has the same overly dry sound that makes it all sound like the instruments were packed in cotton wool for the entire recording process. Add a healthy dose of chorus or flanger on absolutely everything and you have a recipe for sound that makes my ears bleed, and not in a good way. The cherry on tope is Jeff Lynne's monotonous off key singing. The amazing thing is that most of this was recorded using a lot of the same equipment and personnel as the Beatles and Pink Floyd. Just goes to show that who's running things really makes a difference.

Brown Sugar - The Rolling Stones I'm not going to dump on this entire recording, just the sax. The sound of the sax in this song is as close as I ever want to get to hearing a recording of someone playing a kazoo or tissue on a comb. Absolutely horrible. So dry, in your face you can almost feel the spit as it lands all over the mic.

Black Betty, Ram Jam This song has the worst edit ever to make the top 100. Right after the first chorus, the entire beginning of the song, from the intro all the way back to the chorus is copied and hacked in, sounding like it was done with a pair of hedge trimmers and pieced together with ducttape.

Foghat - anything not live This could go for Bob Segar and probably a few others as well, but some bands just don't seem to work in the studio. If you ever get the chance, listen to "Fool for the City" from the studio album and then listen to the live version. The studio version is dry, lifeless, uses too much flanger and sounds unnatural. The live version sound tight and ballsy and has energy to spare. How they managed to drain all the energy between the band and the tape is beyond me, but there it is.

We built this city-jefferson starship OK, this is fish in a barrel, easily one of the worst songs ever made, but it's also just really bad sounding. Synth everywhere, lifeless, mechanical. This song makes tape loops sound fresh and original in comparison. Just the worst in paint by numbers production values.

Well, there are lots more and I'm out of time, maybe I'll add to this list, then again, maybe I won't. SO there.

Note to PBS

Using a Pink Floyd concert to raise funds is probably a pretty good idea. Using a Pink FLoyd cover band to do it... not so good. Almost every night for more than a week, I've seen the same fundraising blitz on PBS, all featuring some Pink Floyd cover band from Australia. They have a huge stage with lighting, a movie screen chick back up singers, almost everything the real Pink Floyd has. The question is, why? I've seen Pink Floyd, and it was easily the best concert I've ever seen, but would I pay money to watch some band of unknowns pretend to be them? Who would? There are a lot of tribute bands around, and that's fine to some extent, but I think you are crossing a line when you take over their entire stage production and are essentially being sold AS the band you are imitating on TV. I have to wonder how many morons have seen this show on PBS and thought it really was Pink Floyd. It's not as if the original members show up in People magazine every week, how many have heard Dark Side of the Moon 600 times but have never seen a picture of Dave Gilmour? I generally support PBS as one of the few remaining places where you can get TV and radio that's not wholly owned by GE and Exxon, but this is just dishonest on their part.

Beniffer Brangelina Vaughniston

First, who the hell is it that thinks up these names, and why does anyone feel it's necessary to do it and can I find them and kick them in the teeth with hard metal spikey shoes?
Why does anyone care about this? So, Mel Gibson is a racist asshole, Lindsey Lohan is a drunk slut, Brittney Spears is redneck trailer trash, Paris Hilton is an attention whore (not to mention the other kind)... Who cares?
I have certain relatives who shall remain nameless who actually subscribe to all these entertainment magazines and every week they spew exactly the same crappy stories about the same rich overpriviledged idiots, many of whom appear to only be celebrities because these magazines call them that, but don't seem to have actually done anything involving a job in the entertainment field. We've been at war now for several years, thousands are dead, but all it takes is for some reprobate celebrity to get caught jaywalking and WOOOSH, the front page of every newspaper in the country is updating their headlines with the scoop.
You wanna news flash? How about
"American Public are Morons with short attention spans!"
, or
"Prurient Public Picks Papers Pursuing Paparazzi Pics of Pickled Personalities". Our entire society has become a big game of gotcha, where teeming masses can't wait for some rich nitwit to screw up so they can tut-tut and shake their collective heads in disapproval. Everybody grows up wanting to get rich and famous, but once someone actually gets there, it becomes a guessing game to see how long before they get caught making a porn video with the lawn guy and his vibrating leaf blower so we can all act collectively disgusted as we burn up the servers at Google trying to find the clearest video of the event, and hoping it wasn't shot with night vision.
Are a lot of celebrities idiots? Sure. The question is, why is that front page news? How many hours of TV time have been devoted to Mel Gibson being a racist drunk? How much ink has been used up talking about the "Feud" between Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchy, or between Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, or between Paris Hilton and her pet monkey? Every week it's the same stories with different names plugged in. Oh My God, insert name is cheating on insert name, insert name is buying a wedding dress, insert name is NOT buying a wedding dress, insert name breeds Pit Bulls, insert name has gained 25 pounds, insert name is going to be a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, insert name had her stomach stapled, insert name was seen buying ice cream and vodka, and we All know what THAT means, don't we? insert name caught on film in a slightly ill fitting bikini!!! With stretch marks!!! and Acne!!! Our 800mm telephoto lenses have seen it!! We have video of insert name burping, BURPING, DO YOU HEAR ME??? !!! Stop the presses!!!
And so, the bored masses sit in cigarette burned lawn chairs on the astroturf covering the back porch that overlooks the cesspool vent, the cage for the pit bull and the 1983 Ford Escort with the Lamborghini flip up door hinges in the driveway while wearing ill fitting bikinis, eating ice cream in vodka, rubbing Jessica Simpson acne cream on their pale puffy stretch mark ridden asses reading the enquirer while entertainment tonight is on the portable TV in their lap with a contented leer on their fudge ripple smeared pasty faces cackling into the spit and nicotine coated phone to their best friend how awful it is that these celebrities have no class and feeling a sense of smug moral superiority as they take turns burping the alphabet.
Hey, at least we're not like THEM!

Spam spam spam spam

What is the purpose of spam? I'm not talking about the weird meat by-product in a can spam (though I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of that is either), I'm talking about the kind you get in your e-mail. I get a lot of spam, as I'm sure all of you do as well. The question is, is it effective? Does anyone really get spam from someplace and read it and think "Wow, that's a great idea, I'll buy that" or visit any of the websites advertised there? One of the main things I get seem to involve stocks. Ok, let's say for sake of argument that I have ten grand to invest (and believe me, this is hypothetical, I haven't got enough money to buy used bubble gum), am I likely to invest in an anonymous e-mail that comes my way? Does anybody? Are people really that stupid? Well yes, I suppose they are. That's the really scary part of spam. If you're like me, you delete it as soon as it shows up in your inbox, but somewhere out there are morons who are responding to this stuff and evidently sending money to these people. It pains me to think that there are really people in the human race capable of such monumental ignorance, but then I remember the results of the last election and the fact that Ashley Simpson sells millions of records and I'm forced to acknowledge that the human gene pool is as deep as the layer of sweat on a naked Norwegian in January.
Being a more or less typical american, my second thoughts on spam (the first being that everyone who sends it out should be ripped to shreds by teams of angry housewives who've just discovered that Dr. Phil has been cancelled) is how can I join in and make money off the stupid people too? I think we have more than enough people who are dumb as a post for me to get my cut. Maybe I could sell those 3D pictures, you remember the kind that looked like a pile of paint chips unless you stared at them long and hard, and then it would look like a pile of paint chips except in the shape of a horsie? I was thinking, maybe pornographic ones. People love porn (I know I do) and what could be better than 3D paint chip porn? How would I make these? That's the great thing, I don't have to. I tell people that they just have to keep looking, and if they see nothing, it's their own damn fault. I might even suggest they buy more, as that will increase the chances that they will see something really really dirty!! But, that would still require me to actually SELL something real. I need something totally intangible, something that would result in people sending me money without me having to do anything at all. I guess it will take more research. If you would like to help fund my research, please contact me and I'll let you know where to send the money. I prefer cash....

Dope is for... uh... what's the word?

So, once again, somebody wins the Tour De France, and once again, he fails a drug test right after. So, I guess my question is, why don't they do the drug test BEFORE the friggin race, before the guy has a chance to win it and cause all the ruckus? I can't imagine that whatever it is that he's taking is something he injects 30 seconds before the race starts, the crap has to already be in there. How hard could it be to test the guy beforehand and disqualify him?
Better yet, why not just allow the drugs? I for one think it would be sort of amusing to see all athletes gradually increasing in size over the years. Eventually you would have an entire breed of artificially pumped up semi-humans with heads the size of a watermelon and genitals like crushed grapes overtaking every sport. The main competition would go from seeing who could ride a bike or hit a baseball to seeing who could stand for the longest without the weight of their huge misshapen heads causing them to lose balance and fall over. Basketball dribbling would become less about the ball and more about the saliva drooling in great pools around the bench. And why stop at steroids? Wouldn't it be fun to watch an all LSD hockey game? Instead of fighting, the players would skate around aimlessly, sliding into the walls while talking to anyone nearby about "The colors man, the colors!". You could thin out the number of runners in the Boston Marathon by having a big pot party beforehand, when it was all over, you'd find 3/4s of the runners would be too laid back, saying things like "Hey man, it's too groovy to run today, give me that slice of pizza, will ya dude?". And of course, if we allow drugs, we should allow alcohol too. How about drunken Nascar? Let's face it, the pot bellied rednecks watching are all hammered anyway, why not the drivers too? People are mostly watching for crashes, and this will ensure plenty of 'em. I think each driver should start sober, but drink Jack Daniels throughout the entire race, that way they could at least get around the track a few times before the mayhem, starts. I say, let's do it. Drugs should be legalized anyway, and what better way to integrate them into society as a legal and even healthy alternative for those wishing to partake than by having their favorite athletes show the way. Now, pass me that pizza, will ya dude?

More Bitching...