Date: April 8, 2007
Time: 22:22
Place: In my apartment with the heat cranked up and not happy about it
I'm fending off a bit of a head cold. Roosevelt Island was where they quarantined Typhoid Mary and apparently some woman on the tram last week was doing one of those "historical reenactments". She sat there next to me hacking away. So I did damn little today other than walk down to our "Starbucks", watch TV, sneeze off about 25% of a box of Kleenex, and surf the web.
I've always been amazed at the demented, reactionary hatred of Al Gore. The press coverage of him in 2000 was too loony to be believed and it was also largely in the "liberal" press. Read the Daily Howler website for the "War on Gore" articles. I was over at the Rodney Anonymous Tells You How to Live (the former lead singer of the Dead Milkmen if you haven't been paying attention) arguing with a bunch of Nader supporters how, yes, it IS Nader's fault that Bush is President. Gore lost Florida by less than 600 votes, Nader got 97,000, the lowest estimate is that Gore would have gotten 12,000 of those votes.
Most of these people identify themselves as Libertarians. How loony and pathological is the hatred of Gore? The allegedly environmentalist Green Party would aggressively spurn him in favor of a consumer advocate with slim environmental credentials; and Libertarians, who profess to eschew government regulations, would vote for a consumer advocate lawyer from the environmentalist party.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Friday, April 6, 2007
I got skills
Date: Apr 06. 2007
Time: 11:50
Place: By the banks of the Suir that rolls down by MoonCoin
I hate to disappoint those looking for insightful Master's commentary, but the winds have died, Augusta is back to itself, and I do believe the US will rise again desoite Phil Mickelson's ridiculous showing on the 11th hole.
And how do I know? Because I am a soulful individual and an award winning poet.
Okay, I can't prove the former but I did win a "First Prize" in the Murphy's Stout Limerick contest which wil be attested to by Mark Brown who tends bar Friday nights at "THe Grandstand" on Grand Ave just off Queens Blvd in Elmhurst and Ronan Conlan, proprietor of the Banc Cafe and Antartica,downn around 30th St and 3rd Ave in Manhattam.
Anyhoo, I submitted two and I'm not sure which one won.
It was a very restrictive form of poetry, much more so than Haiku. IT had to start "There once as a man from Cork", it had to mention Murphy's Stout, and eschew profanity.
My two entries. one of which won an award
There once was a man from Cork,
Whose poor pet pig was made pork
He felt down and out
Til he drank Murphy's Stout
And yelled "Somebody bring me a fork"
The second, perhaps too politically hot entry was
There once was a man from Cork,
Off a tryst with the Duchess of York (these were "Fergie" days)
Said "gwan pound the turf,
Stay away from me Murph's,
And good luck you don't hear from the stork"!
Time: 11:50
Place: By the banks of the Suir that rolls down by MoonCoin
I hate to disappoint those looking for insightful Master's commentary, but the winds have died, Augusta is back to itself, and I do believe the US will rise again desoite Phil Mickelson's ridiculous showing on the 11th hole.
And how do I know? Because I am a soulful individual and an award winning poet.
Okay, I can't prove the former but I did win a "First Prize" in the Murphy's Stout Limerick contest which wil be attested to by Mark Brown who tends bar Friday nights at "THe Grandstand" on Grand Ave just off Queens Blvd in Elmhurst and Ronan Conlan, proprietor of the Banc Cafe and Antartica,downn around 30th St and 3rd Ave in Manhattam.
Anyhoo, I submitted two and I'm not sure which one won.
It was a very restrictive form of poetry, much more so than Haiku. IT had to start "There once as a man from Cork", it had to mention Murphy's Stout, and eschew profanity.
My two entries. one of which won an award
There once was a man from Cork,
Whose poor pet pig was made pork
He felt down and out
Til he drank Murphy's Stout
And yelled "Somebody bring me a fork"
The second, perhaps too politically hot entry was
There once was a man from Cork,
Off a tryst with the Duchess of York (these were "Fergie" days)
Said "gwan pound the turf,
Stay away from me Murph's,
And good luck you don't hear from the stork"!
Thursday, April 5, 2007
I must be physic!
Date: Apr 06, 2007
Time: 22:50
Place: In the wolf-zone
Something made me write that "Dumbo's Ears" post a few days ago. I've certainly never forgotten Wolfowitz, he even stands out among this administration for brazen incompetence and stupidity, and that takes some doing. I heard about this http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/4282 today. Apparently, as head of the World Bank, Paul has managed to bump his girlfriend's salary up past the 200K mark, which is a very high number for such positions.
My personal take on this is that he realized that his trumped-up war will not kill as many people as Robert McNamara's did. The competive juices probably started flowing thick enough to moisten 200,000 combs (ref: Farenheit 911) . He had to do something conspicuously worse than McNamara at the WB, having failed to worst him at the Department of Defense. This seems pretty tepid though. Unless you know (alert Dan Brown) --> the code <--. When the large bank I work for had some sloppy cases of managers dating underlings, we all went to training about what was legal in this area. The class was called "Respect At Work" thus the acronym RAW. As anyone who watches pro wrestling on cable knows, RAW is WAR, or at least if you spell it backwards. So Wolfowitz has finally trumped McNamara at disastrous war! It may seem a contrived stretch, but remember, this is the moron who said the occupation of Iraq was going o be like the occupation of France after WWII. http://www.lossless-audio.com/usa/index0.php?page=982808416.htm
Time: 22:50
Place: In the wolf-zone
Something made me write that "Dumbo's Ears" post a few days ago. I've certainly never forgotten Wolfowitz, he even stands out among this administration for brazen incompetence and stupidity, and that takes some doing. I heard about this http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/4282 today. Apparently, as head of the World Bank, Paul has managed to bump his girlfriend's salary up past the 200K mark, which is a very high number for such positions.
My personal take on this is that he realized that his trumped-up war will not kill as many people as Robert McNamara's did. The competive juices probably started flowing thick enough to moisten 200,000 combs (ref: Farenheit 911) . He had to do something conspicuously worse than McNamara at the WB, having failed to worst him at the Department of Defense. This seems pretty tepid though. Unless you know (alert Dan Brown) --> the code <--. When the large bank I work for had some sloppy cases of managers dating underlings, we all went to training about what was legal in this area. The class was called "Respect At Work" thus the acronym RAW. As anyone who watches pro wrestling on cable knows, RAW is WAR, or at least if you spell it backwards. So Wolfowitz has finally trumped McNamara at disastrous war! It may seem a contrived stretch, but remember, this is the moron who said the occupation of Iraq was going o be like the occupation of France after WWII. http://www.lossless-audio.com/usa/index0.php?page=982808416.htm
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Dad gum cockeyed falcon sons of benches
Date: Apr 04, 2007
Time: 21:40
Place: The f-bomb shelter
Several years back, MAD TV did a skit about the Pax Network (a stridently family friendly enterprise) showing the Sopranos. They'd start bleeping every third word, and they cut away as soon as Big Pussy walks in the door. The announcer comes on and says, "Join us tomorrow between 9:00 and 9:04 for the next episode of the 'Sopranos' on PAX. "
I just flipped past A&E showing the "Sopranos" and the effect was not that much different. I'm sure there is some word like "sibilant" for "s" sound and "percussive" for the "p" sound that applies to the letter "f". The utterer must force upper teeth against lower lip so there is a strong visual indication of what the person is saying. The short "u" requires a distinctive drop of the jaw. The point here is that one can amuse oneself by counting the bleeped f-bombs and the bowdlerizations that are substituted. They're fond of "freakin'".
At work, we like to parody the network TV version of "Glengary Glen Ross" by ginning up pointless arguments and then yelling "Forget you!".
Battlestar Galactica liberally sprinkles "frak" throughout the dialogue. For those readers of this blog who've linked to Nina Gordon's cover of NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" and share my dismay at the closer of BSG, can you imagine if that was the song the unwitting Cylons heard in the ship's walls? ... An AK47 is a tool, don't make me play the mother-frakkin fool ...
Time: 21:40
Place: The f-bomb shelter
Several years back, MAD TV did a skit about the Pax Network (a stridently family friendly enterprise) showing the Sopranos. They'd start bleeping every third word, and they cut away as soon as Big Pussy walks in the door. The announcer comes on and says, "Join us tomorrow between 9:00 and 9:04 for the next episode of the 'Sopranos' on PAX. "
I just flipped past A&E showing the "Sopranos" and the effect was not that much different. I'm sure there is some word like "sibilant" for "s" sound and "percussive" for the "p" sound that applies to the letter "f". The utterer must force upper teeth against lower lip so there is a strong visual indication of what the person is saying. The short "u" requires a distinctive drop of the jaw. The point here is that one can amuse oneself by counting the bleeped f-bombs and the bowdlerizations that are substituted. They're fond of "freakin'".
At work, we like to parody the network TV version of "Glengary Glen Ross" by ginning up pointless arguments and then yelling "Forget you!".
Battlestar Galactica liberally sprinkles "frak" throughout the dialogue. For those readers of this blog who've linked to Nina Gordon's cover of NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" and share my dismay at the closer of BSG, can you imagine if that was the song the unwitting Cylons heard in the ship's walls? ... An AK47 is a tool, don't make me play the mother-frakkin fool ...
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Insert your own Yes pun here
Date: April 03, 2007
Time: 22:22
Place: In the court of the crimson kiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggggggg
And who doesn't love pretentious 70's art rock. I think Adrian Belew spent his life trying to atone for that crap. One of my pet personal theories is that this is the way punk started. How does one respond to "In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky and they stand there" other than "gabba gabba hey". When they try that hard to sound artsy smart, jiu-jitsu suggests you go as dumb as possible.
That "in and around the lake" drivel was from the song Roundabout by a band called "Yes". To make matters worse, they had this truly annoying vocalist named Jon Andersen who threw down the ersatz Elizabethan rhymes in a high pitched chortle. To see a very close-on parody by "They Might Be Giants" go to http://www.tmbg.com/venue.html and click on the Dallas tab, wait for John Hodgeman to finish, and enjoy. Yes had a very similar song about telling the moon and the March hare that made far less sense.
Another problem was that the musicians in Yes, aside from a merely very good drummer, were some of the best of their day and they practiced really, really hard. Behind the chortling bs coming out of Andersen were intricate scales being played at a furious pace. These guys made Cream and Hendrix sound like slobs. "Heart of the Sunrise" would be the greatest instrumental track ever recorded except it wasn't an instrumental. True to form, the song stops while Andersen bleats out "Sharp .... Distance" because I suppose he felt he had to.
Again, for the garage band, this was unapproachable. You could practice all your life and never be that good. You could however, sound pretty close to the Ramones in a few weeks.
Time: 22:22
Place: In the court of the crimson kiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggggggg
And who doesn't love pretentious 70's art rock. I think Adrian Belew spent his life trying to atone for that crap. One of my pet personal theories is that this is the way punk started. How does one respond to "In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky and they stand there" other than "gabba gabba hey". When they try that hard to sound artsy smart, jiu-jitsu suggests you go as dumb as possible.
That "in and around the lake" drivel was from the song Roundabout by a band called "Yes". To make matters worse, they had this truly annoying vocalist named Jon Andersen who threw down the ersatz Elizabethan rhymes in a high pitched chortle. To see a very close-on parody by "They Might Be Giants" go to http://www.tmbg.com/venue.html and click on the Dallas tab, wait for John Hodgeman to finish, and enjoy. Yes had a very similar song about telling the moon and the March hare that made far less sense.
Another problem was that the musicians in Yes, aside from a merely very good drummer, were some of the best of their day and they practiced really, really hard. Behind the chortling bs coming out of Andersen were intricate scales being played at a furious pace. These guys made Cream and Hendrix sound like slobs. "Heart of the Sunrise" would be the greatest instrumental track ever recorded except it wasn't an instrumental. True to form, the song stops while Andersen bleats out "Sharp .... Distance" because I suppose he felt he had to.
Again, for the garage band, this was unapproachable. You could practice all your life and never be that good. You could however, sound pretty close to the Ramones in a few weeks.
Monday, April 2, 2007
I been lied to ....
Date: April 2, 2007
Time: 22:22
Place: In NY for a while to come
I was watching Countdown tonight and they had the list of the top 16 foolish people of 2007. Mel Gibson wound up tied for 5th with Dick Cheney. The reason I mention it is for one of his memorable quotes from that fateful evening. It wasn't the rant. There is little point to ranting, because none of them can ever compare to http://www.lyricstime.com/dead-milkmen-stuart-lyrics.html whether set to music or not. No, the quote of which I am speaking is his inquiry of a female officer, "What're you looking at, sugartits?"
At some point in their history, the Kentucky counties just south of Cincinnati (whose airport is in Covington KY) let a bunch of drunk fratboys name their towns. There's Sugartit (near or part of Florence) and the Big Bone Lick state park. The way I became aware of all this was not from a pamphlet from Pueblo, Colorado (see lyrics to "Stuart") but Citibank was threatening to move me and my colleagues there. The genius who decided on this course of action was sumarily canned last November after crippling the division and getting into a disastrous contract with an Indian outsourcer (side note: NY Times columnist Tom Friedman is wrong about the flat world, wrong about small companies solving the energy crisis, and was laughably wrong about Iraq. Then again, his league has Brooks, Dowd, and Rich). The relocation was stopped dead.
Anyway, in this Dilbert-esque world in which managers don't admit mistakes, just this past week the CEO of Citibank announced how well the site consolidation to the Cincinnati area was going. Actually, I think the shareholders are getting ready to move him there.
Time: 22:22
Place: In NY for a while to come
I was watching Countdown tonight and they had the list of the top 16 foolish people of 2007. Mel Gibson wound up tied for 5th with Dick Cheney. The reason I mention it is for one of his memorable quotes from that fateful evening. It wasn't the rant. There is little point to ranting, because none of them can ever compare to http://www.lyricstime.com/dead-milkmen-stuart-lyrics.html whether set to music or not. No, the quote of which I am speaking is his inquiry of a female officer, "What're you looking at, sugartits?"
At some point in their history, the Kentucky counties just south of Cincinnati (whose airport is in Covington KY) let a bunch of drunk fratboys name their towns. There's Sugartit (near or part of Florence) and the Big Bone Lick state park. The way I became aware of all this was not from a pamphlet from Pueblo, Colorado (see lyrics to "Stuart") but Citibank was threatening to move me and my colleagues there. The genius who decided on this course of action was sumarily canned last November after crippling the division and getting into a disastrous contract with an Indian outsourcer (side note: NY Times columnist Tom Friedman is wrong about the flat world, wrong about small companies solving the energy crisis, and was laughably wrong about Iraq. Then again, his league has Brooks, Dowd, and Rich). The relocation was stopped dead.
Anyway, in this Dilbert-esque world in which managers don't admit mistakes, just this past week the CEO of Citibank announced how well the site consolidation to the Cincinnati area was going. Actually, I think the shareholders are getting ready to move him there.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Dumbo's Ears and Nothing Between
Date: April 1, 2007
Time: none for foolin'
Place: In high dudgeon
I speak of course here of Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual force behind the early Bush Iraq policy. This is almost as funny a title as his neocon ally Bill Kristol's claim to fame, the "brains behind Dan Quayle". That's like having the best teeth in Britain.
Apparently his father-in-law got him a job as the dean of the Nitze School of International Studies. I hear it's still accredited, probably due to lazy oversight.
Paul was the under-secretary of defense who said the war would pay for itself with oil revenues. He also said that JCS General Eric Shiseki was "wildly off the mark" with the estimate of several hundred thousand troops to occupy Iraq. Why he said this is a mystery, for when asked (shortly after the "Mission Accomplished" photo-op) by noted commie Republican Senator Richard Lugar whether there was any concensus in Iraq to stay one country, he replied that he didn't know, we'd have to wait and see.
He'll go down in history as having locked up the dumbest thing said in the 21st century only three years in, by proclaiming that the occupation of Iraq would be like the occupation of France after World War II. Don't let him in your Lotto pool!
Time: none for foolin'
Place: In high dudgeon
I speak of course here of Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual force behind the early Bush Iraq policy. This is almost as funny a title as his neocon ally Bill Kristol's claim to fame, the "brains behind Dan Quayle". That's like having the best teeth in Britain.
Apparently his father-in-law got him a job as the dean of the Nitze School of International Studies
Paul was the under-secretary of defense who said the war would pay for itself with oil revenues. He also said that JCS General Eric Shiseki was "wildly off the mark" with the estimate of several hundred thousand troops to occupy Iraq. Why he said this is a mystery, for when asked (shortly after the "Mission Accomplished" photo-op) by noted commie Republican Senator Richard Lugar whether there was any concensus in Iraq to stay one country, he replied that he didn't know, we'd have to wait and see.
He'll go down in history as having locked up the dumbest thing said in the 21st century only three years in, by proclaiming that the occupation of Iraq would be like the occupation of France after World War II. Don't let him in your Lotto pool!
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