Healthiest Cities horse crap

I saw this article on the Healthiest Cities for men in the US and had to chuckle.  Do you live in one of these cities?  I don't.  Like most of these studies, there really is not a lot of concrete evidence given to validate the assertions.  Research has not been carried on for years and years and, obviously, there weren't any blind studies completed.  All you have is opinion, and we know what that's worth.  I've never been to Boise so I don't know how good the cycling is there, I do know two things,  it's a conservative state and they get a lot of snow.  Oh, and a third thing, which may be more of an assumption, they have a lot of guns out there (that can't be too healthy).

Since I've always felt runners were outstanding candidates for knee replacement surgery in their older years I ride bike.  From what they say, there is a lot of cycling going on in Boise.  Geographically, I would suspect it to be rather hilly as well, which makes the cycling even better.  As for the snow, I always tell people it's free cardio, get off your ass and go out and shovel.  Every time I see some lazy ass out pushing a snow blower I can't help but think, 'hey, you dumb shit, if you shoveled that snow you'd have more muscle mass and your life expectancy would probably be a little longer.'

Hills are good.

Harrisburg, how healthy is it?

I live in Enola, a suburb of Harrisburg, PA which, itself, lies in the heart of the Susquehanna Valley.  What this means is you have flat land on one side of the east shore for about 1.5 miles and hills on the west shore starting about 500 feet back for the shore line.  I'm on the west shore, and I have hills.  This is the place to live if you don't like climbing.  We do get snow, six inches yesterday.  My dog loved it, so did I.  So, what I have going for me is probably the same as the guys out in Boise, except for the guns, though I suspect we have a lot more in Central Pennsylvania then I might want to believe.  This means Harrisburg is probably a fairly healthy place if you cycle (or run) and like to shovel snow.  I don't believe it was even considered when the Healthiest city list was being put together.  This is kind of sad.  If you're putting together a list you should include all cities.

The NRA wants to raise your taxes!

Now I know there are some few sitting out there saying, 'hey, wait, that's not true, the NRA is conservative, they back the Republicans and they will never raise taxes."  This is, of course, false.  Thanks to Wayne LaPierre there is a big debate raging over his idea of putting armed guards in schools.  There are those who are for it and those against it.  What nobody seems to be discussing is that if LaPierre gets his way, who is going to pay the cost?  We're talking salaries here, and they can't be minimum wage pay rates, and then there are uniforms to buy, and weapons, and ammunition and training.  Can you imagine how expensive the training is going to be?  I don't suspect there are many colleges offering a curricula in "School Armed Guard."  And face it, would you want someone with just a GED walking the hallways of your school with a loaded weapon?  Any person hired into this position would need to pass a battery of psychiatric screenings because no one wants a pervert prowling around outside the classrooms.  So, let's say the cost for two armed guards and all of the crap that comes with their hiring adds an additional 80 thousands dollars of expenses to the school district.  Of course, it would be the school district's responsibility because believe me, the NRA wouldn't even consider footing the bill.  Hhhmm, and yet they have no problem making the suggestion.  And how do you think the school district is going to handle this additional expense?  Why, they're going to raise your school taxes.  If you don't think this is how the cost is going to be taken care of, well, you're rather naive.

Do you think he really cares about your taxes?

If the monies don't come from the school district they'll be disbursed by the state.  Do the math.  Multiply the number of school districts  there in your state( 200, 2000, or ten thousand, maybe) by $80k per year.  Holy Mackerel!  That's a lot of moola!  If the NRA has their wish come true the additional taxes will slowly bleed you to death.  Why is it these groups have no problem spending your hard earned money?

 

Retail and the IRS

Yes, that time of year is approaching when vast numbers of Americans file with Turbo Tax as fast as possible in order to get their return.  Oh, yes, and quite a number of Americans do get refunds.   What do they do with those refunds?  Spend them! I can tell you, I work in Retail and Retail looks forward to Income Tax Time.  Why?  Because those checks are spent on things like, appliances, and x-box's, and carpet, and a host of other things people put off buying until they get that check.  Christmas helps grow the economy and so does Tax Time.  Which makes me wonder why the Republicans are so dead set on screwing over the middle class and their tax cuts in order for the wealthy to keep theirs.  Face it, the Koch brothers don't race down to Home Depot in order to take advantage of their $37 whole house installed carpet.  Yet, if you're a middle class home owner that is something which may be high on your refund spending agenda.  I know there are going to be people in my community who will go out and buy a new refrigerator, or washer and dryer, on mattress set.  They may decided to replace that sofa which, after ten years of kids jumping up and down on it, has no spring left.  Do you think the rich have to wait until income tax time to make these purchases?  No way.  It's almost as if the Republicans are expecting to hear "hey, let me drop the soap so I can bend over."

I always like getting the check.

And, as always, they want entitlements on the table (define entitlements as social security).  Do you really think the wealthy are worried about paying their bills in their retirement years?  Are they concerned about whether their social security check will cover all of their medications and still let them put food on the table?  Of course not, but somebody needs to pay.  They prefer to penalize the middle and lower classes then those upper crusters who seem to have them on a very short leash.  I don't think they comprehend that stability is only maintained when there is a balance to the structure.

Wayne LaPierre, loon at large

I could not let the chance to mention Wayne LaPierre slip away, even though so many others have already made their voices known.  My first reaction to hearing what he said at what he called the first Press Conference by the NRA after Newtown was to burst out laughing.  Someone should have gingerly pulled him aside prior to his making an asshole out of himself and told him he was going to sound like a jerk.  Evidently nobody did.  Let's be honest, Wayne just doesn't get it.  Guess what?  He never will.  He could have tried to be slightly human, maybe could have said "one of our own used some bad judgement and trained her mentally handicapped son how to use an assault rifle, and for that we are sorry."  Instead he advocated beginning a police state.  You know, start with armed men in schools, and after a while they could have armed men in office buildings, and post offices, and supermarkets.  I think this says it all:

You need to remember the New York Post is owned by that ultra-conservative Australian Rupert Murdoch.  What does this mean for the NRA?  First of all they need to learn that just because an individual is a member his political vote is his / hers, not theirs.  Secondly, they need to begin to learn the art of the soft sell if they're going to survive.  This relying on a dead Charlton Heston cold, dead hand threat just doesn't work well little children have been murdered.  I doubt very much if they will change their attitude or belief that more guns in America, means a better America.  However, I wouldn't be surprised if in the not to distant future we see a new spokesperson. 

The Cleavers out live their welcome

A few weeks back I was watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and had a really good laugh at a piece in which he showed a clip of Bill O'Reilly lamenting the passing of family values as depicted by the Cleavers in Leave it to Beaver.  I suppose Mr O'Reilly doesn't understand this show was a sitcom and that it included a laugh track because producers felt they needed to tell the American public when they should laugh.  People were being told to laugh at a white, upper class family.  Where as the majority of Americans worked in manufacturing (because those jobs were still in the United States), Ward Cleaver worked in "an office."  He carried a briefcase.  June Cleaver always wore a dress, and those pearls.  Real pearls are expensive, maybe that's why she never took them off.  I've seen the show in repeats and while the episodes are humorous, they are not hysterically funny.  In fact, compare the show to those on air today and they seem more then a little lame.  Yet this is a family, both Mr. O'Reilly and quite a number of conservatives, want to set up as the inspiration of Family Values.  To be honest, the show was popular but never made it into the top ten during its five or six year run.

Soon to be forgotten

Let's be honest, this show would never make it on the air today without it undergoing some massive changes.  To begin with, June would have to start wearing slacks, maybe even jeans, and the pearls would have to go. Oh, and she'd need to get a job.  Ward would have to worry about his job being outsourced to Poland, or Hungary, or Lithuania.  The cast would need to include a Latino and a black and probably a gay or lesbian neighbor.  Beaver and Wally would need to deal with some serious issues, nothing as mundane as getting "C" on a report card, perhaps a friend might be arrested for possession of a controlled substance.

The show was popular and still is to a small group today.  One needs to understand, however, the world is never going to return to the simplicity of the late 1950's and early sixties.  It's time has passed.  This is why, when the show went off the air, it was not replaced by some clone.  People and their attitudes changed and because of that sitcoms changed.  To pluck out a show from the past and say "this is how we need to be" is walking down a dead end road.  As time moves on, and the generation which watched Leave it to Beaver die off, this will become more apparent to everyone except those who live for TV Land.

The hell of holiday retail

As someone who works in retail, I can tell you the holidays bring mostly hell.  First of all there is the merchandising: somebody in corporate always knows the best way to merchandise no matter whether you are a high volume store or a low volume store, or even where the store happens to be located.  After you do you Christmas set you hear from two kinds of customers, those who love it and those who hate it.  A classic example is "every year it gets earlier."  These complainers don't seem to understand that if people didn't come in and shop the merchandise it wouldn't be displayed.  If they don't like this they need to start throwing bricks as those customers busily browsing away.  This year there were some customers who couldn't wait for the display to be set.  If they buy it early, it will be put out early.

If doors are open, they will shop

This year a lot of people pissed and moaned because some retailers were open on Thanksgiving day.  This is America and American Capitalism rules supreme.  Blame the shoppers, not the retailers.  If a Wal-mart or a Target opens their doors and customers show up, those doors are going to be opened.  If the doors are open, they will shop.  All you need to do is look at history.  At one time all of these United States had what were called Blue Laws.  Stores were not legally allowed to be open on Sundays.  Then supermarkets started staying open.  After a while large retailers began to take notice, Sears and Woolworth's and Montgomery Ward's and they thought, hhhmmm, if the supermarkets are making money then so can we and their doors started opening on Sundays.  Nothing is going to change.  This is America and Americans want to make money.  If that means retailers are going to need to be open on Thanksgiving, they are going to be open.  Americans also like to shop.  They like to think they are getting a good deal.  There is no going back to the way it was.

Just For Men, unyielding color

Every now and then I like to read blogs so I can get an idea as to what all those voices out there on the Internet are saying.  Sometimes they're political but not always.  I have a great interest in health and well being, especially now that I'm passing through the prime years of my middle age.  Last evening I stumbled upon the writings of some poor gent who, to be blunt, had a problem with older people whom he described as "fat and grey."  He also claimed to be 46, which puts him on the precipice of falling into that age group.  If he doesn't think so, he should ask a 25 year old.  He also needs to understand the older some people get the lazier they become, hence the weight gain.  As for turning gray, unless you're a woman there's little you can do.  Oh, sure, there is this, but there are a number of problems.

But it only comes in five colors and you adjust the shade by timing how long it's on your beard, mustache, or sideburns.  How do I know?  I tried it.  So, even thought the box above states the color is "light - medium brown,"  wait too long to wash it off and it's dark brown.  Oh, and the color is exactly that, dark brown, there is no shading.  I suspect that for most men who try it, the result is usually darker then they expected since you can't tell how dark it is when it's gooing up your mustache, beard or sideburns.  For me the end result was something which looked nearly as artificial as the mustache on Groucho Marx.

 
He put his on with grease paint.  Just For Men dyes, or colors, the skin beneath your mustache, sideburns or beard too.  I suppose it's just part of the process.  Anyway, I thought it looked faked as hell.  It was so not me.  While I have some salt and pepper on my temples, most of the hair on my head is very dark brown.  There was no match.  My mustache looked like it belonged to somebody else.  After trying it twice, I threw it away.  Thank goodness it was only the hair roofing my upper lip I was concerned about.  Have you ever seen the guys who use this shit on their head?  They might just as well buy a can of black, or brown spray paint since it does the same job.  As for the guy who whined about older people?  I think his real problem is his own aging process.  I wouldn't be surprised if he is one of those people who is already on his way to being fat and gray.

From Secretary of State to Office Manager

I saw where the GOP has named Candice Miller to chair the House Administrative Committee.  This is a more then a bit funny.  There have been complaints for years, in fact there are some who feel it's one  of the reasons they lost the election, their women representatives have always been relegated to token status.  After Romney's loss, Fox News actually had three women on to skirt around the issue.  One of them made the point that they're only brought out when they're needed for a photo op.  That was not a very nice thing for a loyal Republican to say.  However, it is as true now as it was when McCain chose Palin for his running mate.  Of course now they say Palin just wasn't vetted correctly.  I think that's horse shit.  I'd say you can bet your bottom dollar the GOP high command gave McCain their approval.  I'm sure they thought she'd be like all Republican women, you know?  Keep their mouths shut and do as they're told.  Unfortunately for them Palin chose not to follow the script.

Candice Miller, Chairperson for the House Administrative Committee

Now they've taken the former Secretary of State for Michigan and made her, for all intents and purposes, Office Manager for the House of Representatives.  What's almost hilarious about this insult is there are a lot Republicans out there who will point to Ms. Miller and say "See, there is a place for women in our party."  You can bet those white guys in their navy blue suits who run the party are no doubt smirking to themselves, muttering, "there, that should keep them satisfied."

Blinded by the Right

So, it looks like the honeymoon is over.  How do I know?  The GOP is beginning to dig their heels in becoming, once again, the most divisive political party in American History.  They don't understand that when you lose an election you need to learn to compromise.  Instead they seem cluelessly intent on catering to a shrinking base without even considering how bad this looks to the majority.  You don't win people over to your side by handing them what they know to be a plate of shit.  For example, take John McCain.  After losing his bid for the presidency, he should have sat out that last term as a senator and retired.  He would have earned so much respect traveling the country and become "the dignified hero."  When you chose a seriously flawed vice presidential candidate, and lose a seriously flawed campaign, you need to quietly step out of the limelight.  He must have slept through that lesson in school.  Now, he has basically become the unruly guest who will not leave the party.

Sadly, his only appeal seems to be to the right wing crazies who helped Mitt Romney lose his bid for the presidency.  I understand this January, McCain will no longer head up any committee and will be relegated to, if at best, a secondary position.  He is in his decendency and hates it.  As a result he will dig in his heels and say, and do, what ever it takes to get his name in the press.  Translate this into "he will not compromise."  This is exactly what the GOP is beginning to do because they also are in their decendency.  After the election there was all of this chit-chat bullshit about how they would need to re-evaluate, how they would have to compromise in order to broaden their appeal.  Of course, we all know that is never going to happen.  For this to occur they would need to admit they were wrong, that their political drift to the far right does not appeal to the majority of Americans.  I suspect they will continue to be an obstructionist party until they split themselves asunder.  Even then they will cry out and try and blame someone else. 

I'll be honest, I like reading about health, and exercise and weight loss.  The things people either write or publish can be either be enlightening, uninformed or simply ludicrous.  I enjoy the enlightened ones, scoff at the uniformed and shriek with derision at those so obviously ludicrous.  I read one of the latter ones on the MSNBC website under health.  Going back to find the link I was amazed to find that it seems to have disappeared.  The subject was on lifting weights and weight loss.  Now most people who are overweight want to lose a couple of pounds.  You know, with this economy it's less expensive to slip into last summer's duds then have to go out and buy knew ones, and the five or six pounds you put on thanks to Thanksgiving and Christmas and simply being too lazy is going to make them a snug fit.

Oops, some one's been dipping into the ice cream a little too much

The ludicrousness became apparent in the second sentence, after the authoress complained that Cardio was not helping her lose weight after having a baby.  Then she said, "and then I noticed people at the gym lifting weights."  It must never have occurred to her that a number of people go to gyms for strength training.  Maybe she thought body builders just do it in their basements, or garages.  Her reasoning to use weights to lose weight was because "after a work out your muscles burn calories for a long time."  This makes me wonder if maybe her Cardio was only cardio.  You know what I mean.  We've all seen those boneheads bouncing away on an elliptical because they're not using any resistance, or those who get off a stationary bike after windmilling their legs for a good thirty minutes without so much as a grimace.  Let me tell you, when I get off my bike my legs usually feel like rubber because I've worked those suckers.  Maybe she didn't lose weight because she didn't really watch her diet, you know those four bowls of pasta you eat after a workout help keep the thunder in your thighs.  I'm serious, because the emphasis was so overboard on weight training the article became nearly bizarre.  A smart work out incorporates both weight training and Cardio, don't rely on just one.  But as my friend Shaun said a long time ago, "your legs are the engines of your body."  

Roswell denied

Since 1947 people have been talking about Roswell.  At first there were just mutterings, but during the early 60's, something happened, Betty and Barney Hill.  That's when the alien talk took off, so to say.  There was a movie in 75 about them and then those dear little aliens showed up in Close Encounters.  Suddenly you weren't anybody unless you happened to have seen a UFO.  Jimmy Carter saw one.  Then, of course, there were the abductions.  It was almost like "be the first on your block to be hypnotized and discover you've been abducted."  Most of this was horse shit; people needing to be recognized as having had to deal with an anal probe.

As you can tell, I'm not truly impressed by most of the so called authorities and their invented data.  This doesn't mean I don't believe there might be UFO's, in fact, I suspect there probably are, however the logic takes over.  If they are real and they are being observed, then they want to be observed.  Which brings me back to Roswell.

This is a picture of some of the debris which since been declassified by the government as some sort of weather balloon (read possibly spy balloon).  That's what it looks like.  My main problem with the whole Roswell alien crash is that what superior species would design a craft to travel light years through space only to have it crash in Arizona?  Remember, this is a superior species so the idea of their  craft crashing is a bit ludicrous.  We can't even send men to Mars, yet they can send them light years.  Maybe they used a wormhole and didn't have to worry about going faster then the speed of light.  How many wormholes do we know of?  No matter how much you want to believe, the logic thing keeps it from working.  These ideas were formulated in a much more simpler time and place.  Some people want to believe.  That's fine, what ever makes them happy.

Republican Reality

It's funny listening to the Republicans waffle.  Some of them understand there is something wrong with their party, some of them don't.  I suspect a lot of them are simply parroting what their leaders want them to say without even taking the time to try and comprehend what their words mean.  A few of them know they need to start down the path of change, but change is difficult.  They're blaming Romney for running a bad campaign, but they were all behind it.  They're blaming the polls.  Franklin Graham is blaming the Evangelicals.  This party likes to point fingers at everybody but themselves.  They like to point to past Republican presidents citing their accomplishments without bothering to note that these presidents did not lean far to either left or right but were, rather, centrist presidents.  This election cycle they tried pointing to the Founding Fathers as representing traditional beliefs without bothering to explain how Liberal those beliefs actually were, like Freedom of Religion.  They're not acknowledging that if it hadn't been for the racist vote Romney would have ended up with what, 39%?  Guess what, the racists are slowly dying off.  America is changing and they're being left behind.  Their Party Platform was so far to the right and they thought people would jump on board.  They don't understand that candidates like Akins and Mourdoch are 60 years too late.  Now they're accepting the fact that revenue needs to be on the table to avoid the fiscal cliff they helped design and they are bit happy.  Why?  Because they are all wealthy and it's their own taxes they're going to have to raise by cutting out loopholes.  That's why they stand around looking like they've been sucking on lemons.  This election has shown them just how unspecial they are.  I think Mitch McConnell looks particularly sour.  Could be he has discovered he's standing there with a diaper full of shit.

Time for a diaper change?

I saw where Mitt Romney made some sour grapes comments alleging Obama's victory had more to do with gifts to young blacks and Latinos then anything else.  Doesn't this sound a bit racist, especially when coming from an older white guy?  I suppose he must be appealing to all of those racists whose whose election night tweets were a reflection of the ugly side of America.  Like so many Republicans he is in denial.  In their minds there is no logical way they could have lost this past election which means they need to blame somebody or something.  This is quite normal with Republicans.  There is never a moment when they look at themselves in the mirror and admit to screwing up.  No, they are like that aging woman who paints her face with pounds of make up in order to convince herself she is still a porcelain beauty.  Like that old woman, they will eventually die still unaware the porcelain has cracked.  While there is some apparent bipartisanship jockeying right now history tells us the Republicans will shit it away because in their minds they can not be wrong.  If  you see anything even remotely resembling change it will only be one faction attempting to throw another faction under the bus.

Has the GOP already lost?

And you can bet they are already plotting the next presidential election.  I suspect they will run a white man for president and a token black, Latin, or woman as vice president.  Why?  Because they've tried using that playbook before:  McCain and Palin, a party ticket made in hell.  They don't understand.  For some reason they feel all they need to do is run a token to get votes.  People aren't that foolish.  They're not going to fall for the bait and switch.  Unless the GOP begins roasting some of the far right chestnuts no one is going to believe they've moved even marginally to the center.  What I suspect you'll see is more blame.  They may need to lose three elections in a row before they stop hitting the snooze button on realities alarm clock.

Is the Republican Party dead in the water?

I pretty much think so.  Do a search on "racial tweets?"  Holy crap!  I was stunned when I saw much hate there is in the Republican Party, it's like a cancer in their bones.  Now you have some 34,000 in Texas wanting to secede from the United States.  You do know these are the same people who, back when Bush wanted to go to Iraq, damned every one who disagreed as unpatriotic.  When Obama was elected for his first term, instead of taking a step back and analyzing what had gone wrong and what they needed to do to put themselves on an even keel, the Republicans moved farther to the right.  They just don't seem to understand the electorate moves right down the center line, swaying a little to the right but then back again to the left, but just a little bit.  The electorate knows if they go too far to either left or right this ship is going to capsize.  The Republicans don't understand this at all.

I was going to use a picture of the Titanic but too many people lost their lives with that one, the Yorktown is better, it was dead in the water but survived.  Actually, I believe the Republican Party needs to decided if they're going to be on the Titanic and sink or on the Yorktown and float.  If they're going to float they're going to need to something about the racism.  The only way they're going to win another presidential election is by incorporating blacks or / and Latinos and the racists, well, they'll probably have to find another party.  The GOP might split into two  parts, or three parts: social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and the Tea Party.  In order for the Republicans to put another man in the white house I suspect one of those three groups is going to get the shaft.  I'm betting it's the Social Conservatives.  

Simply put, Rosetta Stone is pretty damn difficult

A long, long time ago, when I was going to Lebanon Valley College, I had to take a foreign language.  Notice, I said take, not learn since you were not really expected to become fluent in that tongue unless, of course, you were a language major.  In high school I had tried Spanish and didn't like it so I chose French and liked it.  When I graduated I was three credits short of it being a double major.  A few years ago, after I was laid off by xpedx so they could out source my job to Poland, I took part of my severance package and went to France.  To my surprise the French I thought I remembered quite well didn't quite jive with what the locals were speaking.  I thought about this for a long time, I mean, how could I be so bad at something I had enjoyed so much.  Then I saw one of the many commercials for Rosetta Stone.

For those of you who don't know, this is what the real Rosetta stone looks like.  What did it do?  It allowed archaeologists to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs into other languages they had already translated.  This rock allowed them to understand just what the ancient Egyptians were painting on the walls of their tombs and carving into their statuary.  However, this is not what I ended up buying.

I bought this instead.  Most people have seen their commercials on television and they do make it seem like a foreign language is easy to learn.  They are, however a bit misleading.  Rosetta Stone works on the immersion theory where if you immerse yourself in, say French, comprehension will be simple.  Wrong.  For myself, I didn't find it that difficult but then I have a background.  For an individual who is starting from scratch it may be overwhelming.  They don't tell you that you should set up a class schedule or that if you're doing less then three or four hours a week you're going to fail.  There is a lot of memorization which needs to take place.  You don't hear something three times and repeat it three times and remember it forever.  The program does work.  They do, however, need to stop implying you can learn a new language in a couple of weeks simply by sitting in front of your computer.  They need to tell the unsuspecting public that if they want to immerse themselves it has to be more then an hour or so a week.  People spend a lot of money on this program with out understanding just how much work is involved.  That's a flaw for Rosetta Stone which should be fixed.

Is Jenna Lee just another brick in the wall?

I'll be honest, I don't normally watch Fox News.  Why watch conservative pundits constantly attack anything and everything they deem to be liberal?  Yesterday, I watched for about 2 hours and it was like entering into the Twilight Zone.  I unfortunately got to watch Jenna Lee in what I supposed was to be a discussion with 3 women, only one of whom was single, as to why single women voted for Obama.  One of the went so far as to say she would tell single women about all the good things conservatives have to offer.  Don't these people realize it's the things they want to take away from single women that most effected their vote?  There was also this bizarre inference that if you were married you would have voted for Romney.  I've heard more relative conversations between bricks then I heard between those 4 women.  They still don't understand why they lost the election.  Perhaps it is impossible for them to even acknowledge how off kilter they are.

Just another brick in the wall

And Laura Ingram made some sort of silly comment yesterday about the GOP possibly having to get back into the trenches.  Duh, doesn't she realize that unless there are Blacks, and Latinos, and Gays and Single Women in those trenches with them they're wasting their time?  If you take her words literally she is advocating trench warfare against every single soul who doesn't bow down and kiss the boots of conservatism, or at least the conservatism she advocates.  Instead of them saying that perhaps they should re-evaluate and possibly move a little more to the center, they seem to be driving themselves farther to the right.

Fox News is killing the Republican Party

Democrats are ecstatic and Republicans are devastated.  What else can you say about the recent election?  I'll also go so far as to say most Republicans now find themselves in a quandary; how to regroup and proceed when statistically they alienate women and minorities.  I actually work with an associate who was claiming in the break room that Obama won "because the Democrats were loading people into vans, registering them, and taking them to vote."  When I started listing voter polling results he claimed "that's all from the liberal media, who lie," though I'd actually seen the information on number of websites from the Washington Post, and Bloomberg, to MSNBC.  Oh, wait, I'm wrong, there is a bastion of Conservative Honesty on the airwaves and it's called Fox News.  As soon as this associate said that I knew Fox News would kill the Republican Party.  Why?  Ratings!

I'd first read, a number of years ago, the Republican Party playbook was based on the ancient television show Leave it to Beaver and that the family values represented by that fictional family were those they wanted all Americans to aspire to; it doesn't work.  There was a time when the Republican Party was, like the Democratic Party, more centrist.  This is where the majority of Americans sit, leaning a little right here, veering a little left there, but never really straying too far to either side.  The Democrats get this, the Republicans don't.  Fox News doesn't either.  They mistakenly believe, based on high television ratings, that the American People accept Fox as an authority.  While some, like the associate I work with, might, most Americans vote their gut instincts, not the way some news organization wants them to vote.  We are not sheep, well, most of us aren't.

As for the Republican Party?  They've sutured themselves to Fox and as a result are in a terrible dilemma.      They have shut out most Women, Black, and Latino voters because they did not fit in with their Leave it to Beaver playbook.  And, things are only going to get worse for them.  During this past election Puerto Rico voted to apply for statehood.  When this gets ratified there will be even more Hispanics the Republicans will need worry about.

Tattoo who?

A few words about tats.  I see a lot of them now-a-days and one of the first things I do is look from the Tat to the person sporting it for the world to see.  Should they have gotten it?  Sure, in some people's minds the body is a canvas on which to paint, but not all canvases are created equal.  If you're a male who's 5'10" and weighs 210 lbs don't get a tat you will need to show off.  Your canvas may be broad but it is not something one might really want to look at.  Please take this into consideration.  Let's say your wife or girlfriend or female person you hang out with has just had a baby and you're so overwhelmed you have the baby's face tattooed on your arm.  And let's say you're more then a smidgen over weight.  And let's say you suddenly loose fifty pounds.  That cute little bundle on your arm suddenly looks like Grandma Moses.  Or say the opposite happens and all that beer you've been drinking catches up with you.  Oh, shit, you suddenly have an unrecognizable melon head on your arm.

I'd advise against getting a Tat if you're over a certain age.  In spite of what you might think it is not going to make you look cool to a crowd twenty years younger then you.  They may compliment you on it, but it's not going to make you fit in any more then you already do.  If you chose to get a Tat make sure it is age appropriate.

Remember, as you age your body is going to change and as it changes so does your skin.  The Tat you get today is definitely not going to look the same twenty years from now.  If you go to the gym, you will need to go to the gym.  If you're a guy and you stop those firm pecs of yours are going to turn into saggy man boobs.  Think of this before you have some sort of massive breast plate inked onto your chest.  The same thing is true for girls.  I once worked with an eighteen year old girl who was a little on the chubby side.  She got herself a tramp stamp...a really big, tramp stamp.  Two months later she was 5 pounds heavier (she ate a lot of donuts) so uncouth me told her she needed to watch her diet other wise "ten years from now that stamp's going to be hanging down over your ass."  She was not at all appreciative.

Captured in mid-fall

Another thing, don't say you're going to get a Tat to show your individuality.  A couple of million guys said that and then went out and got Tribal Tats just so they could all look alike.  Talk about originality.

If you're a rock start you can get as many Tats as you want because you can afford it.  If you're not a rock start you're going to stand out in the crowd.

If you need to get inked, my recommendation is to practice discretion.  Think about how your body is going to look twenty or thirty years from now.  Remember, pretty colors fade and dark indigo remains and touching up can get expensive.  Most important, this is a trendy thing which is happening and unlike trendy hair styles (mullet or Mohawk?) which grow back, a Tat is going to stick around for a long, long time.  Getting them removed is very, very expensive.

Discretion is my motto

Karma, meet Lance, Lance, meet Karma

So, I guess Monday is the day when Lance officially finds out if he's being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.  Personally, I think it's pretty much a foregone conclusion, so does he, I suspect.  Is his view on reality going to change much?  I don't think so.  Do a simple search and you'll find all of his number one fans are in the same boat.  They are creating a mild roar with inanities such as "everybody else was doing it."  But everybody else didn't pose themselves off as a cancer survivor who became an honest to God superior athlete.  Everybody else didn't rake in millions through endorsements or date rock stars.  Sure, he started Livestrong, but even while his foundation was doing good, Armstrong was still cheating to win.

When I was young I was taught lots of rules on behavior, rules I remember and live by today.  One of those is "Cheaters never win and winners never cheat."  Armstrong cheated and thought he had won, now he's going to find out he didn't.  That's really bad Karma, and it's really going to bite him in his ass.    Perhaps he thought the good of Livestrong would balance out his appalling behavior.  Or perhaps another sad reality is that the foundation was just another way to feed his ego.  Now he's no longer on the board and they are going to have the unpleasant task dealing with what, ten, twelve, thirteen years of his lies.  And don't think it isn't going to be unpleasant.  He has tainted that organization.  Bad, bad Karma.

You do know what Karma is, don't you?  What goes around comes around.  I began to suspect this day would arrive when he came out of retirement to form Team Radioshack.  While all the Lanclings were cheering rah, rah, rah and I was scratching my head wondering why Hincapie wasn't on the team.  They'd seemed to have been buds for years.  Then, during the Tour, Armstrong led an attack which kept  Hincapie from winning the stage.  Even Paul Sherwin was wondering about Armstrong's actions.  Armstrong went on to blame Garmin.  Hincapie didn't see it that way.   While being interviewed he let loose his outrage at Armstrong.  When I heard that I knew the shit was just starting to hit the fan.  The way I understand it, George was one of the twenty-six who gave eyewitness testimony about Armstrong and doping.  What went around once is coming back around again with Lance Armstrong in it's sights.  That man has really bad, bad Karma.

The Job Interview and how to fail it

One of the tasks of my job is to conduct interviews; there is a lot involved, it isn't just asking questions. As always, first impressions are the most important and you have no idea how many people just fail right there.  Once I had a candidate show up with bones in his ear lobes.  I am sure he thought he was quite dashing.  He was interviewing for a Sales Associate position in our flooring department and I couldn't help but wonder if he actually thought people would say "I want the guy with the bones in his ears to sell me Martha Stewart carpet."

T-Shirts are another way to automatically fail.  I see a number of candidates coming to interview wearing T-Shirts.  If you're going to an interview you should at least try to show you understand employer dress codes.  How do you do this?  Take a walk through any large retailer, Sears, or Home Depot or K-Mart and count the number of associates wearing T-Shirts.  If associates aren't wearing them to work then don't wear them to an interview.

Failure to impress

Remember, you're not there to hangout with friends, you're trying to sell yourself as a potential employee.  At least wear a polo shirt, something with a collar.

If you're a guy, make sure you shave unless you already have a beard.  Stubble is another way of saying "hey, I've been so busy over the past couple of days I just didn't have time to shave."  This is horse shit.

If you're a female, don't wear a lot of make-up.  Oh, and if you're a chick and you think you can get away with wearing bones in your ears, forget it.  You look just as stupid.

Another thing to keep in mind, if you're a single mother don't bring up the subject.  Being a single mother is not a job qualification yet so many 'single mothers' think by mentioning this fact they're going to get a job.  Nope.  If I have 5 interviews and 4 of them toss in the 'single mother' bit and the fifth tells me her father was a house painter and he used to take her along to work in the summers when she wasn't in school, who's going to get the job in the paint department?

Getting hired is proving you are the best possible candidate for the job and you're the one who has to prove it.

The hair up Apple's ass

Let's wait for the next version

Well, the new Iphone is out.  Who cares?  Why the Appleheads around the world.  Who are Appleheads?  Those individuals who live and breathe Apple.  Every time a new product comes onto the market they upgrade simply because it's the newest toy by Apple.  This is a very good reason to question all of the press releases they dump into the media as a form of massive advertising.  At this point they're bragging about having orders for 5 million and there may be problems supply the vast demand.  That's pretty much horse shit.  No company worth it's weight in gold is going to be caught with its pants down when it comes to meeting the demand of their customer base.  Yep, that's right, Apple puts out a lot of Ho Ho Ho.  I think it's funny that this time around they took off Google Maps and installed their own mapping software which just happens to suck.  Basically they shit on their base because they hate the competition.  Now don't read this to mean I hate Apple, I don't, I own an Imac and have my music on 2 Ipods, but I also own a Dell desktop and a Dell laptop.  I use a Samsung Galaxy tablet and a Garmin phone.  Each one fills a need I have.  Too many limit themselves by deciding one product is more holy then the other.      Wrong.  The maps on the Garmin phone are better then those in Google Maps, I know because I used both to go to a Team Depot and found that Google had me wondering around on dirt roads way off from my destination.  What did I do?  Plugged in my Garmin and wow, there was my destination less then a mile away on a well traveled highway.

So why does Apple have this big hair up its ass?  Because they want to own market share.  It's all about domination.  They failed with Apple TV because, well, there is such a better selection out there.  They think they're golden because there has been no Ipad killer.  Unfortunately for them the Ipad has already peaked.  When ever somebody releases a new product they actually lose market share since those customers buying a Kindle Fire or a Galaxy note or even new Nook being released shortly are choosing those products over Apple.  The slow death has already arrived and they're doing everything they can to deny it.

What a combination, Romney and ME3

This has been a bad month on the job line for me, not because I'm losing mine, no, my schedule is all topsy-turvy thanks to meetings and classes and more meetings.  I can't wait for October to get here so things can quiet down... a little, and I can get back to a regular schedule.

On a whole I'd have to say this past week was on the funny side.  I got to watch some of the secret Mitt Romney tapes and, were I a critic, would have to call them boring and uninspired.  If you've seen any of them then you know, he rambles on and on and on totally avoiding anything substantial.  I saw where the dude who threw the fundraiser is blaming the "help."  How Republican.  My suspicion is that he, himself, taped the dinner for posterity only to discover Romney is the personification of droll.

Ann Romney's plane had to land because of smoke.  Later she whined about being a candidate's wife.  What did she think this was going to be?  A Sunday Social?

Paul Ryan got booed by Seniors and then, from one of the news clips I read, went on to lie about his percentage of body fat.

Boo, baby, Boo

Quite a number of Republicans are unhappy with the campaign, including Laura Ingram, and the want it shaken up.  I'm sure they must realize by now shaking is not going to help.  They did pay attention to their own primaries, didn't they?  Mitt basically won by default because the other candidates were just to crazily far to the right.

One of the really funny things was Ralph Reed telling Evangelicals they should vote for Romney.  Isn't that going against your faith?  Could this indicate Ralph wants a heretic in the White House?  Or, is it possible he's an White Supremacist in disguise?  Perhaps he doesn't understand that if Mitt gets elected Mormon Missionaries will swarm out of Salt Lake City like a plague of locusts.

And for all of you gamers out there, the real shocker was Bioware putting forth a statement which, and I paraphrase, states that the Mass Effect Universe is large and there are more stories to tell.  I said something similar back in... May?

Back then everybody was running around like their hair was on fire because they didn't like the ending of ME3.  Why is this funny?  Because you don't kill off your golden goose and everybody was sure Bioware had loped off its head.  I said that and nobody listened.  Now I read on Gamestop, or maybe it was Rock, Paper, Shotgun that the original team is either reassembling, or has reassembled.  Surprise.

Steve Jinks makes it permanent

With last night's episode of Warehouse 13 Steve Jinks became a permanent member of what seems to be a slowly evolving ensemble cast for the SyFy show.  As the cast evolves, so it seems, does the show.  This is what the writers and producers attempted with the doomed Eureka, their problem was with all that extra talent the only thing they could think to do was focus on relationships; every body needed to banging somebody else, or that was all they could think about.  As a result it died a sad, lonely death.  This does not seem to be the case with Warehouse 13. where it seems they float "test" characters first before casting.  They floated Claudia for a while before she made the jump to permanent cast member, the first step in the show's evolution.  As a result you have minor characters who show up for a story arc ( like H. G. Wells) and then disappear and you have major characters who appear in every episode.

Welcome aboard buckaroo!

For years the linchpin for the SyFy Channel was the Stargate franchise.  It ran for years and had a number of incarnations long after the original was off the air.  Believe me, everybody wants to create the next Stargate, which is why I think the writers and producers have chosen to grow their show in a way where relationships, other then friendship, are not the focus of each and every episode.  They are working with mystery and intrigue.  Believe me, nothing builds an audience like mystery and intrigue.  One of the most famously watched episodes on television was the "Who shot JR" episode of Dallas.  The audience was not tuning in to see cast members fantasize about banging one another.  They were watching because they wanted that damn mystery solved.  This is the smart way to evolve.  This, I suspect, is what they're doing with Warehouse 13.

Watching the Republican Party is like watching a horror film

You know what I mean, when you have one of those "don't go in that room" moments.  Even though, as an observer you know death is waiting behind that door, nothing you can say or do is going to stop the victim.  He or she is going to open that door and step into that room.  The Republican Party isn't going into any room but they are still going to be a victim because they keep moving farther and farther to the right.  After Romney's latest blunder the only ones cheering him on are those about as far right as your can go.  He evidently doesn't understand the votes are not where he's going, no, they're somewhere closer to the middle and it seems he has no problem turning his back on them.  You can see it in his face, cluelessness.  This is not at all like running a company.  He's getting push back from all directions and he doesn't know how to handle it.  Romney is used to sitting in a room with maybe 4 or five other people and making a decision and having carried out.  Those decisions were never examined by both the media and the public.  There was a time when he could chose to outsource jobs overseas and only those immediately effected would care.  Now everything he says and does is being scrutinized and making National news, and he isn't even president.  You want to say to him "don't go in that room," but he's going to because he's a schmuck.  He wants to be the first Mormon president so he's going to open that door.  To make matters worse, the crazies on the far right of the Republican Party are all standing behind him whispering "go in the room, go in the room."

Dr Who, science fiction icon

A long time ago, back when I was in college, I turned on the local PBS station one rainy Saturday afternoon just to pass the time discovered Dr. Who.  I'd heard vague mentions of it on campus among the Anglophiles but had never really had any interest in this British Science Fiction series.  To my surprise, I liked it.  That was during the Tom Baker years, the fourth doctor.  While in the UK the show was telecast as a half hour syndicated series WITF played an entire story arc in one sitting, so I watched 2 hours of the doctor.  This happened every Saturday and the station was wise enough to play catch up telecasting most of the episodes of the previous 3 doctors.  I was hooked and continued to watch it until they ran out of episodes because the show had been cancelled.  The writers had started running out of creative steam when Sylvester McCoy took over the roll.  Actually, it had begun its downward spiral during the previous doctor's run, played by an actor whose name I can not remember.  If I missed a show it was "who cares, nothing important was going to happen."  When the series was rebooted and was aired on the SciFi channel I thought I'd give it a chance and to my surprise it was fairly good.  This did not mean I set my alarm clock.  Then David Tennant took over the roll and something happened.  I still wasn't setting my alarm clock, but surprisingly they had a doctor who reminded me of Tom Baker, not in appearance, but in adventurous spirit.  This was a doctor who had purpose.  I wasn't the only one who took notice, a lot of people did and the show became so popular BBC America began airing the episodes the same day in the US as in the UK.  The explanation was to keep viewers from downloading it.  I suspect it had more to do with the knowledge they had an international hit on their hands.  How rare is that?

My first doctor

Today there are fan sites galore.  Search Dr. Who and the results are simply amazing.  There is an overload if information.  Episodes have been deconstructed to the the point where analysis is almost lost.  Even the most minute detail about previous shows has been made public.  I don't go to fan sites nor do I go to conventions where if the doctor isn't there you can bet you'll get a chance to see one his companions, new and old.  I don't think that all those years ago when someone decided to begin putting this show on the air the were creating an icon, but they did.  It isn't popularity that keeps it going, it's durability.

Rockem Sockem Politics.

The conventions are over and I suspect a lot of political junkies on both the left and right are hyped up for Rockem Sockem campaigns from both parties.  If you thought the Super-Pac negativity ads were bad before, hold on to your hats, there are going to be so many below the belt punches a vast majority of the American people may have problems walking.  Not me, I rarely watch commercial television so I will not have to endure 7 minutes of hate separating the funny parts of my favorite sitcom.  Talk about a stimulus package, all those billions of dollars being spent should do more then jump start the economy.  I am surprised that the Conservative Republicans are asking their devout, Christian base to do the most liberal thing possible:  vote for a non-Christian.  This sounds so much like what the Democrats would do, not the Republicans.  What I remember most from their primaries was that not one of the potential candidates could satisfy their base.  Santorum was too, too crazy religious, Bachman was just way, way out, and Romney was a Mormon.

Now these two candidates are going to be duking it out.  I think it's  pertinent one of them is red and the  other is blue.  Unlike the game, however, this campaign is going to hurt, both the candidates and the American people.  We, who want to show the world how civilized we are, will be doing just the opposite.  If Obama wins the Republican House will be all the more partisan, another great example of American politics in action.  The more stumbling blocks they put in his way the easier it will be for them to win in 2016, at least that's what their plan will be.

Why aren't companies hiring?

The Democratic Convention is in full swing and I'm not watching it.  Even though I'm a registered Democrat when casting my ballot I'm Independent, you know, those people Republicans try cater to but really don't like.  Both parties say they know how to create jobs.  Here's a little tidbit about why companies aren't hiring.  Of course this isn't news.  Any American with average intelligence should have figured this out a long time ago.  What we have is an employers economy, one in which employers make all of the rules.  If your productivity dips they'll can you and hire someone who keep up with the pace they demand.  As long as the money keeps piling up in their bank accounts nothing is going to change.  If they can get twice the work out of two employees why should they hire a third?  Jobs aren't being created because they aren't worth the expense.  All tax breaks do is put more money to their bottom line.  Oh, sure, at some point down the line they will hire that third employee, but not until it is absolutely necessary, not until they've worked their employees to the bone.  When that will be is anyone's guess.  One thing is certain, Wall Street is doing just fine with the unemployment rate as high as it is.  Recovery is going to continue to be slow and nothing is going to speed it up.

Successful Business do not create jobs!

Today is Labor Day and I'm working.  I'm in retail, an ASDS in a Home Depot store.  I wasn't always in retail and for a vast majority of my adult life I had off every labor day, until September of 2009 when, at the height of the recession, xpedx, a subsidiary of International Paper decided it was fiscally prudent to outsource my job to Krakow, Poland.  And it wasn't just me, every one in my department lost their jobs, a the height of the recession (notice how I repeat myself?).  To add insult to injury they paid to fly in our Polish replacements so we could train them.  These decisions were made by a successful business man name John Feraci.  For some time now we have been fed this notion that if you're a successful business man you know how to create jobs.  That's nothing more then pure horse shit. Successful business men trim fat, they cut programs, they kill jobs in order to be successful.  When they're successful they don't decide to suddenly get fat again.  They want to stay trim because that's what makes them money.

Meg - compassionate or callous?

Take Meg Whitman, she made a nice fortune running Ebay.  She then ran for the position of Governor of California, spending some of her own money to have the voters reject her.  The people of California decided she was unfit to be Governor.  Now she's running Hewlett-Packard and cutting 27,000 jobs.  She's going to make Hewlett-Packard successful.  Does she care about the people who are losing their jobs?  Hell no.  She's getting paid another fortune to make that company make money, not to demonstrate care and concern.  That's not part of her persona.  She doesn't want to be Mother Theresa.    She wants to be in charge.  This is true for all successful business men, it's not about creating jobs, it's not about about controlling people's lives, because people don't matter to successful business men. 

Leviathan - who cares

When Mass Effect 3 ended there was nothing else to say but "that's all folks!"  Except gamers were so upset with the ending EA released a Free DLC which detailed the ending, making it more complete for a lot of people but that didn't mean they were satisfied.  I didn't down load it.  Instead I watched a walk through on YouTube.  I mean, why take up space when nothing was going to change.  On Tuesday a second DLC was released and I didn't pay to download it, some did, probably a lot did but not me.

Yesterday I watched a walk through and at least three times during the 14 minutes it played the comment was made "but nothing is going to change."  That's the hard truth for anybody who thinks other wise.  Characters who had died were suddenly brought back to life but who cares, they're still going to die.  This is a big problem for EA.  With the first two installments there was always the knowledge a third segment was in the works.  According to EA there is to be no 4th installment, it was a trilogy and nothing more.  So if the story line is dead, like a lot of the characters, why pay for additional content?  Nothing is going to change.  

Paul Ryan - dishonest

One of the big things to come out of the RNC Convention is the public dishonesty of Paul Ryan, he makes things up and changes facts.  I thought it funny watching Conservative reporters dance around this subject, pretty much saying that at a convention facts could be subjective and not objective.  Of course, this is something the party has been doing for years.  It was the Little Bush who said "if you repeat something often enough people will start to believe it."  So, when Ryan blames a Obama for letting a plant close while the Little Bush was president one can only wonder if he doesn't understand veracity.  Or, perhaps the truth is he hits the confessional booth on a daily basis.

The problem with Ryan's lack of honesty is people are checking his facts.  People are tired of politicians just out and out lying.  One of the latest facts to be checked was Paul's claim to have running a marathon in under 3 hours.  Hhhmmm.  Serious runners, and those not so serious, dug deep.  He did run a marathon.  But then the truth runs out.  Independent voters find this chronic lying offensive, doesn't the Republican Party understand this?  I guess not.  

Clint speaks!!!

No, I didn't chance to hear Clint Eastwood speak during the Grand Finale of the Republican Convention, though when they announced a surprise speaker his is the name I thought of first.  Why?  Because party organizers knew he would hit a home run right into the waiting gloves of all the young Republicans watching the final nights coverage.  Actually, that's not true at all.  A lot of young people, Republican and Democrat a like, will recognize the name but will not be able to put it to a face.  Their parents are the ones who went to see "Dirty Harry," not them.  If you say to them "make my day," they look at you clueless.  If they wanted these kids to vote, the organizers should have put as many young, vibrant Republicans on that stage as possible speaking as often as they could put a microphone in their hands.  Instead, they enlisted a quiet spoken, octogenarian who evidently spoke to an empty chair.

Every Which Way But Loose

Who knows what they were thinking?  Maybe they wanted to appeal to the loyal Senior Citizen vote.  Of course, in Pennsylvania the new Voter ID law is going to keep a lot of loyal seniors from voting because at a certain age they stop driving.  This means the Republican party will save a lot of money since they will no longer need to bus Seniors from their nursing homes to their polling stations.  Of course the real reason Clint was their was because he's white, and rich, and familiar to the 50 something crowd.

Chris Christie - porker deluxe

Well, the Republican convention is in full swing and conservatives, both young and old and far right and not so far right, are celebrating.  I don't watch conventions.  Too much of the hoopla is geared specifically for swinging Independent voters and because of that you get very little substance.  I did have to laugh the other evening when I saw a clip of Ann and Mitt Romney and she said he buys his shirts at Costco and "just the last night was ironing his own shirt."  Seriously, Mitt is in the 'upper class' and if his friends thought he actually went to Costco they would smirk at him silently, well, maybe not so silently.  And the idea of him ironing a shirt?  His walk-in closet is probably the size of a modest ranch style home and no doubt at least one room is completely devoted to shirts.  Evidently Ann spoke again last evening as well as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  His name was bandied about quite a lot as a possible Vice President.  Conservatives love his no nonsense approach.  He does have one flaw though, and it's a big one.  Chris Christie is fat.

Porker deluxe

I would not be surprised if that was the main reason he was not asked to be Mitt's running mate.  One can only wonder how many medications he is on:  blood pressure, cholesterol, probably one of the anti-coagulants because humans this size are more likely to have a stroke or heart attack.  Doesn't he know there is surgery which can help solve his problem?  If he ever wants to posture on the world's stage he's going to have to slim down, a lot.  Paul Ryan needs to get him excited about P90x!

Wanna be P90x spokesman

Well, it's probably going to take more then P90x.  When you're as fat as Chris Christie you've spent a life time building rotten eating habits and have never really bothered to exercise and, at this point in his life, it's probably way too late to change.  Just think, if he were 200 pounds lighter he might have been Mitt Romney's Vice Presidential candidate.