Popping Out

Here are Friday ramblings about some of the crap ... er, I mean, mentally stimulating headlines ... that hijacked my TV this week.



1) Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.



Because I am still on furlough, I have plenty of time to now catch up on my daytime television, and that includes seeing President Obama speak yet again because - God knows - we just never get to see him anymore. Now, I am an Obama supporter. Still am. But when I heard he won this thing, my first reaction was, "Oh jeez, more ObamaTV." Now, in five minutes, he's going to speak to us about how humbled he is by the committee's decision. And then, tonight on all my news channels, we'll get to listen to everybody telling us what he said and it what it meant because we're too stupid to figure it out for ourselves, apparently.



My thoughts on why he won? When he hasn't yet, well, really done anything? Easy. No, it's not because he's black and managed to get elected (although I sure wish I had a dollar for every conservative who's already suggested it.) And it's not because he deserved to win on his achievements, even though I do feel he has what it takes to achieve great things. I feel he won because the international community wanted to kick our unbeloved former President Bush in the crotch one last time, and Obama's historical presence gave them the perfect opportunity.



2) David Letterman Can't Keep It In His Pants.



Blackmail/extortion is a crime, and I'm not blaming Letterman from going to the police. I'm also not annoyed with his sleeping around on his wife. Should he have done it? Of course not. But, like many self-absorbed celebrities, self-gratification is a big deal for him and adultery was seemingly his drug of choice. I'm sorry for his wife, but she's not the first to have a cheating husband, and that's an issue for them to resolve. And, as for the big "workplace harassment" issue that's automatically raised when a consenting boss has sexual relations with a consenting employee - ladies, give it a rest. If she consented to it (and apparently none of these women are indicating they were pressured to screw him), then there's no "harassment." I have yet to hear one argument that can convince me. The most popular line of reasoning I've heard up 'til now is, "Well, if he's sleeping with one employee, why wouldn't another woman working for him deem that she's been treated unfairly because she isn't?" I don't buy it. First, employees are treated unfairly by their employers for a VARIETY of reasons. Are we going to start demanding that male employers only hire homely females so that there can be no perceived favoritism toward an underling who's wearing D-cups? Second - here's a newsflash - LIFE IS UNFAIR. The most any of us can hope for is that, occasionally, it be unfair in our favor.

But I DO blame Letterman for bringing this crap - and continuing to bring this crap - onto his show. During the Clinton impeachment hearings, I was one of those liberals who insisted that what happened outside of Clinton's job was none of my business. So, by by bringing it to work, Letterman made it (and continues to make it) everyone's business, and he needs to knock it off. He's paid to entertain us, and none of this garbage is entertaining, Dave.

3) Jon and Kate are Splitting, and Jon is a Big Fat Jerk.

Let's see ... how do I put this?

I have no clue who these people are.

There - I said it. Anybody else have the courage to admit it? Yeah, yeah, I know they were on some reality show and they're dysfunctional people with kids. That's about the extent of what I've picked up from Google and Larry King. Otherwise, seriously, I have no clue who they are. These are two huge nobodies who are, for some reason, all over my TV and I really resent their presence because they're not relevant to this planet in ANY way. How do we make them go away?

4) We blew a Hole Into The Moon Today.

I know this has something to do with finding water. I know there's a reason that I should care. But did we all really need another ho-hum space mission? Look, I was just a little child when a human first walked on the move, but THAT was a big deal. There was a time when Space was Exciting. We even got some pretty good TV shows and movies out of all that excitement. But lately, what has NASA done? I mean, when I lived in Orlando, I never went to one rocket launch because it was always some mission that was all about replacing a spark plug on the International Space Station, or something equally enthralling. "Today, boys and girls, we're sending people into space to blow up an old piece-of-junk satellite that stopped working." Oh boy - cool beans, Captain Kirk! Yawn. Even Mr. Spock would have died from boredom.

Now, maybe if we could blow a hole in the moon with a rocket carrying Jon, Kate (and her new lover, David Letterman), that would be newsworthy. And I think the person lighting the match under any rocket sending ANY of these bozos into outer space would be well-deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Hooray for Chicago!

They didn't get the Olympics!



Which is MUCH better than their having gotten it.



Yes, I know that Mr. and Mrs. Obama - as well as Ms. Winfrey - wouldn't agree. And let me just emphasize that I still think Chicago is the greatest city on earth. I always try to go back to visit at least once a year so I don't kill myself (last week's pilgrimage was, of course, delightful).



And I really need to emphasize that Chicago - wonderful, glorious heaven that it is - should be thrilled to death they didn't get The Big Show.



Here's why -



1) Millennium Park. This should pretty much say it all - this thing was dreamed up in 1997 (when I first moved there) and, when I moved away in 2005, it still wasn't done. It is finished now and is heralded as a great architectural achievement. Me, I think it looks like a giant cosmic cat was scampering through outer space, accidentally swallowed the Space Station, and then hacked up a giant metallic hairball onto the western shore of Lake Michigan. Then the people who lived there figured they might as well plant some trees and put in an amphitheater. Millennium Park is at the top of my "Favorite Things To Miss If You're Visiting Chicago and Running Out of Time" list. But the central point here is that it shouldn't have taken years and years to create this thing...but if Texas is the state where everything is bigger, than Chicago is the City Where Everything Takes Longer. If they HAD won the Olympics, nothing would have been finished by 2016, trust me.



2) I didn't talk to one person living there who thought it was a good idea to have it. Now, as Jay Leno (I believe) once said, "While New York is the city that never sleeps, Chicago is the city that never shuts up." Trust me, EVERYBODY in this town has an opinion, and the opposition to having the Olympics was far, wide, and loud. For one thing, why spend good money on this? Chicago already has a diverse, international community, so bringing in another diverse, international community really wasn't a big selling point. Chicago is already overrun with tourists (and residents) who don't speak English, and everybody who does speak it doesn't want to lose the tiny advantage they already have. And the El is already too crowded. Seriously - I think most of the people there saw the Olympics as being one huge, unnecessary pain-in-the-ass, and they're right. Chicagoans may be vocal, but they're also sensible.



3) Chicago is already a top tourist destination. It has some of the best shopping, restaurants and museums in the world. And the World knows this. Chicago doesn't need the Olympics to bring up its self-esteem, because it already knows how fantastic it is. A city like Cleveland or Detroit, on the other hand, could use the business and the hoopla. There are plenty of towns that could use an international pat-on-the-back, the building of an Olympic village, and an influx of business. Yes, Chicago has been impacted by the recession, no doubt. But I was thrilled to see that in my old neighborhood, rents have gone up, not down. Property values in some areas of the city continue to rise. So, relatively speaking, Chicago is probably hanging in there better than most and doesn't need the world's mercy.



4) We've had plenty of cities in the U.S. who have hosted these games: LA, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City, just to name a few. But heck, I had no idea South America - and entire CONTINENT - had never hosted the games. About damn time they did. And I'm glad they will!



And Chicago? Don't feel sorry for them. They would just laugh and laugh if you did.

Lewd, Crude, Rude = star quality

Anybody see Obama on TV yesterday?



(If you didn't, your TV is probably broken.)



I saw him on Stephanopolous, and I wondered, when I woke up this morning, if anybody out there would zero in on my favorite part of the interview.



Happily, Politics Daily did:



http://tinyurl.com/ktughf



I, for one, am sick to death of rudeness being glorified in this society. The more obnoxious you are, the bigger your five minutes of fame. And it's not just the media shamelessly creating "news" stories out of morons flicking boogers (which is all it amounts to). Ad space in newspapers and magazines is their life's blood, and it's pretty hard to come by in this economy (and with new technology sending print media the way of the dinosaurs.) Back in the late 90's, when I worked at The Wall Street Journal, we used to turn advertisers away because there was no more room for their ads. Good luck gettin' those days back.



Also, computers have drastically reduced our collective attention spans, so if you're gonna grab someone's attention, you'd better make a strong impression with your 10-second sound bites. "Have a nice day," isn't gonna cut it - nobody cares if someone is being nice to somebody else. Yawn. But try screaming "You lie!" at the president or crap all over someone's acceptance speech on an awards show, and that spotlight is YOURS. And a bigger nobody out there watching your madness will think, "Hey, I can be an even bigger asshole and then, cool - I can be somebody too!"



I thought it took a lot of courage for Obama to speak the truth about this mind pollution to the very agents who are dumping the sewage into the river. There are intelligent people (like George Will or Donna Brazile) who understand that to disagree with someone's ideas or policies doesn't mean snarling at your opponent or throwing a 2-year-old's tantrum at the Kmart. I applaud pundits who can maintain their dignity while respectfully debating one another. But Joe Wilson is not of these. Racists parading around the streets with Obama witch-doctor signs are not of these. Ignorant screamers at town hall meetings - who seemingly have no attention span for facts, yet hang onto every word of right-wing hate talk comin' out of Fox and Limbaugh - are not of these.


And the media needs to stop making them fashionable. The house is burning down and, instead of figuring out - uh, quickly - what we all have to do to distribute the water, we're too busy watching the next 10-year-old who can pop off an arm fart.

Depression and the Pursuit of Happiness

I love it when I hear a "news" story that doesn't surprise me at all...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32883786/ns/health-mental_health/

So, to recap here ... 19 to 25 year-olds think about suicide than any other age group.

Am I the only pop-head who can't figure out why this would surprise anybody?

First, let's consider why these whipper-snappers possibly think that life isn't worth living:

1) Schools do nothing to prepare them for a world that doesn't revolve around them,
2) Most parents keep perpetuating the lie that it does, even into their children's college years, and
3) These kids' realities aren't as exciting as what they see on "reality" shows or in video games.

Basically, we're raising bubble kids - kids who are living inside a massive, technologically enhanced lie. They're being taught that nothing is more important than their own individual "happy meters" - so, if they're not living the Hannah Montana Disney dream 24/7, there's something wrong. If they can dazzle the world as guitar heroes but still fail to succeed in real life, there's something wrong. If they can't have immediate, self-glorifying gratification in all things - "I need to make a phone call RIGHT NOW AND THEN I NEED TWITTER THE WORLD THAT I JUST ATE MY BREAKFAST" - whoa, there's something wrong. And boy, if they're not thin, clever and rich, there's definitely something wrong.

Now, let me just stop here and say that I have friends who are terrific parents and have managed - in spite of society's best efforts to screw it all up - to raise great, grounded kids. They know that being happy and beautiful and wealthy isn't why we're here. Many of them are serving their country in the military or in college seeking to find their critical missions in life. They are - in the midst of this hideous economy - finding inner strengths they hadn't known existed. They're out there.

Are they the minority?

I hope not. But I fear they are.

I think that the first thing over-thirties need to do to help the under-thirties is accept that we have, to our own degree, been sucked into the same brainwashing. How many over-thirties have, while pursuing that happiness our founding fathers encouraged us to seek, instead turned to some type of legal anesthesia (pills, booze, smokes, gambling, food, pick your fave) because dammit, WHERE IS IT? I'm supposed to find happiness! If I'm not happy, something's wrong! I'm depressed - cure it! Give me another pill! Honey, you're making me miserable - I want a divorce! I need to be happy! Screw the kids! Screw you! I'M GOING TO DIE SOON AND I MUST BE HAPPY!

During this past week - while I've been "furloughed" from my job (the fancy shmancy government term for "temporarily laid off") - I've been unhappy. I made a decision, over a year ago, to move back to Ohio so that I could better care for my family. I have two elderly parents - each with their own separate hell-on-earth issues - and an older brother who's slowly (let me emphasize "slowly" and add "painfully") dying from alcoholism. I spent much of my summer watching the clocks on the walls of the emergency rooms in two different hospitals. And, because I took a reduction in pay to take the job I currently have, I am now working two jobs which has me working seven days a week. I am blessed that I love one of them, and am not repulsed by the other. I am even more blessed that I even have ONE job. But am I happy? No - I'm exhausted and I'm broke and torture myself with my memories of Chicago and wanting desperately to move back and just live for me again. I have other torture tools as well - the memories of dead relationships, the fear that I'm more than halfway through life and haven't yet accomplished so many things I hoped to do. I could go on. I can always find more.

So can you, when you look at your own life.

No, I'm not happy. And I'm not going to take a pill that fools me into thinking I am. But I'm starting to accept that it's okay to not BE happy, because I think - right now - I'm pursuing something a lot better than happiness. Maybe it's my own salvation? Perhaps, but I know when I see it on my Mom or Dad's face that it's a worthwhile pursuit.

Besides, in 350 B.C., Chuang-Tzu said, "Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness."

I'm still learning to master this concept. Perhaps, if more of us could pursue THAT, we could convince our children that they, too, could give up the pursuit of happiness and pursue something more worthwhile than their own self-destruction.

Slapping, Spanking, and Other Stuff That Will Get You Arrested

Consider the following from the Associated Press:

http://tinyurl.com/qrbdmc

Okay - so now we have another person who's been arrested for disciplining someone else's child.

Of course, there should be zero tolerance when it comes to any stranger touching someone or someone's child without their permission. I'm not disputing that - nor would anybody with half a brain. Yet most of the comments that have been posted on this story are outraged pontifications about the evils of disciplining someone else's child.

When are we going to address the real problem?

Misbehaving children are a public nuisance. They're a disturbance. And, as such, they need to be properly managed by the parent or designated child-handler.

If the handler can't handle or refuses to handle the disruption, authorities need to be called and tickets need to be written.

At the very least, store or restaurant managers should be encouraged to evict these parents - and their rotten little angels - from the premises.

I love other people's children the way I love other people's dogs - housebroken and properly trained. If the child or pet pees on a public floor, or starts yapping uncontrollably, I expect the parent - or owner - to correct the problem. If the parent or owner is too lazy to do so, I expect the person to at least have enough sense to take the child or pet away to an obliging pooch park or playground where such behavior is acceptable.

When I was a child, my parents kept me at home until I was able to behave properly in society. By the time I was old enough to accompany my parents to the store or out to eat, I knew it was a great privilege I had won and that to keep it I had to act in a certain way.

When my sister came home to visit this summer, we went out to lunch at a lovely restaurant in Lakewood. Our experience was ruined because someone's screaming (yes, SCREAMING) child was permitted to run loose; in fact, the idiot father who had spawned the toddling nightmare thought the Babe in Annoyland was CUTE. The wait staff all looked like they wanted to commit mass suicide, yet were probably fearing the inevitable, "I'll sue you!" if they dared approach the Loud Family and asked them to leave.

Bottom line - this crap has to stop. I know we've got parents who are lazy and stupid and breeding the next generation of The Lazy and The Stupid, but they need to practice their L & S far away from me, because my rights - hell, my sensibilities - are being violated. Local governments are going broke and need some quick money - so start writing out those citations, boys in blue.

Our towns will be richer and most of us will be a LOT happier. At any rate, I think we could all use some quiet.

Queasy Rider?

Have y'all seen this one?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0331091stool1.html

If you haven't, put down your coffee, click on the link, and take a look. The photo alone is priceless.

So ...this guy in Ohio gets arrested for driving drunk on a bar stool ...but I think people are really missing the point here. No, it's never good to ride drunk on anything. I had an ex-boyfriend who used to suck down a couple of beers (okay, 17 or 18 - for him, that was "a couple") and then ride his bicycle to the 7-Eleven to buy more. I was never so proud as when I would see him weaving his way back down the street, steering with one hand and toting a case of Bud with the other.

My point here is that it's never good to do anything like this, because drunks are delusional. Stan (not his real name, but it'll do), was NEVER drunk. Never. In his view, he wasn't drunk because he wasn't falling down. He was merely "buzzed", and "buzzed" was a good thing. It was the desired state. He used to get mad at me because I didn't live my life in a constant state of buzzitude. I tended to be a special occasion sort of drinker - you know, the sort who generally only drank when I didn't plan on driving a car home that night or to work the next day. This didn't make me any better than Stan (after all, wasn't I choosing to call this person my boyfriend?), but it did prove that my healthy respect for personal injury and courthouses was still intact.

But I digress.

When I saw this photo of this lunkhead, my first thought wasn't, "What a moron." That was my SECOND thought. My first thought was, "Wow, isn't he inventive?" I mean, I've known plenty of drunks. I lived in Florida. I've been to Daytona. And at least half of them were always swilling down cases of the juice while tying up their car mufflers or installing bigger tires on their trucks. One must applaud their ability to multi-task, but not one of them could have turned a bar stool and a lawnmower into a vehicle capable of going 40 mph down the street.

While I was living in Florida, I dated Stan for a year. He had this truck sitting in his backyard that never went ANYWHERE. It was capable of going ZERO mph because the thing was never in one piece. I think there was a colony of rats living underneath it ... heck, for all I know, there was a secret doorway to a lost city hidden beneath the chassis. A lost city with Gold. Money. More beer!

So let me be one of the few to stand up and applaud Kile Wygle, The Smoking Gun's "fool on a stool." He dared to be different than those run-of-the-mill, redneck drunks tinkering with their Hot Wheels. He invented something new. He made it work. And he stayed drunk doing it.

How American can you get?

What Have Those Rotten Kids Done To My Candy?

Seriously, man .... I'm ready to pop.



When I was a kid, and went out trick-or-treating on Halloween (which was quite dangerous, given that dinosaurs were then roaming the neighborhood), my all-time favorite candy in the entire candy universe was "Smarties", those little cellophane rolls of colored, tart-ilicious sin. There wasn't a candy bar in my plastic, smiley-faced pumpkin that could stand up to the sugar highs I got from ingesting the best legal kiddie drug on the streets. Even now, as an adult, I get all nostalgic when I see bags of those cheerful candy rolls on the shelves of the Giant Eagle. And then I get shaky. And then I flash back to those inevitable sugar withdrawals that would surely set in by Thanksgiving.



Ah, that was a simpler time ... before the maker of the candy came up with tropical flavors, mammoth-sized wafers and "extreme" sour varieties that blistered my tongue when I stupidly tried one. A simpler time, before school kids decided to take my favorite little snack in the world and ruin it.



According to an article that ran in last week's Wall Street Journal, the latest craze among school-kids is "smoking" Smarties. Seriously ... kids apparently take out a roll, smash the dickens out of it, pulverize it into a fine powder, put the whole thing into their mouths (cellophane included) and then blow the sugar "smoke" out through their noses. It makes it appear that they are exhaling without the benefit of a having to buy cigarettes.



My very first thought - when I read the first paragraph or two of this news story - was that there must be SOME kind of high the kids were getting from inhaling vs. swallowing it. Was the sugar absorbed more quickly through the inner membranes of the nasal cavity? Did the dust somehow get sucked up into the skull, causing possible brain damage (which always renders any given drug that much more attractive to the apprentice junkie)?



There had to be SOME benefit to this bizarre practice other than, "hey, don't I look cool?



Nope ... not one ...unless you count pissing off parents and school administrators. But there's no buzz at all. No hallucinations. No bursts of creative genius. Not even delusions of grandeur. Nuttin'.



Even the possible side-effects aren't all that enticing. No, no brain damage. But you might get one stuck up your nose, where it will slowly have to melt before you use that particular canal to breath. There is some risk of choking to death on the wrapper. Or, even better, doctors have warned that the presence of sugar in the nasal cavity can attract maggots.



***

And while on the subject of sinuses ...



If you do get a Smartie stuck up your nose, may I recommend NeilMed Sinus Rinse? My sister (the Consumer Queen) turned me onto this stuff, and it's really fantastic. If you're anything like me, and perpetually snotting and sneezing (or chain-smoking powdered candy and fearful of hatching flies), it's a really refreshing way to flush out your sinuses so you don't have to go through life breathing through your mouth and being labeled a geek.



Because it's not about comfort, it's about looking cool.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123750945477390601.html



http://www.neilmed.com/