Archives for September 2021

Tuesday September 14, 2021

We are now past the high point of hurricane season. Not to say there won’t be more, but the season usually peaks on September 10th.

I am still thinking about the MTV video awards. I sent some links to pictures of the awards to a friend. What was interesting to me was that most of the people weren’t identified in the pictures. I have concluded that the reason being no one knew who they were! Yes, Madonna and Megan Fox and Little Nas but after the really big names – no. I looked at the list of presenters and clicked on their names. The people pictured in the bios looked nothing like the people at the awards.

Then there’s still the “what were they thinking?” aspect to it all. The guy in the green hair with Avril Lavigne – wtf? Avril’s rhinestone encrusted bra didn’t look as blue in the pictures as on TV last night. There was a full length picture of Megan Fox’s getup. It appeared to be a white triangle bottom thong and a sheer see through full length … full length what? – dress? I mean what was she thinking? Then there’s the “I don’t know how to act” behavior. And the “I don’t know how to talk” speeches. I am still stunned that Megan Thee Stallion gets away with her gross behavior and they call it an act or a song. Now it is infecting the rest of the female acts. 

The funniest part of the night was as they hit the penultimate prize – video of the year – given to Little Naz, in the middle of his speech they cut away to commercial. Surely, they were going to come back? Nope. They went to a rerun of The Goldbergs. Time’s up. See ya – bye.

Ah me. And in California they are having their recall election. Now the Republicans aren’t even waiting for the ballots to be counted before they are screaming fraud. 

Mike Pence – remember him? – yeah, well he’s now okay with the people wanting to hang him on January 6th. 

Hospitals are full in most of the south and in Idaho. The governors are taking action trying to figure out what they can do to kill people faster.

Ah yes. Much is going on. 

And a buddy of mine wrote me and hoped his skills in shopping cart shoving would come up to mine so we could compete. I had to point out that it is not a competition but a way of life. 

PS The kid at Angkor Wat. In the Khmer religion doorways represented entering a new realm. Psychologists have figured out that this is true. When you walk through a doorway, or go upstairs you often forget why you came to the place you are currently at and have to return to the former location to remember. Hence, doorways to expression. (Or something like that.) Remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life!  Peace and Love. OMG! WTF? Got to, got to – Get away. (Who sang that line?)

My goal is to become the Bruce Lee of shopping cart shovery. A ninja of sorts. It is a path and a way. Much to do and learn.

Monday September 13, 2021

We got through 9 11 twenty years after. Sixty Minutes devoted their show to telling the stories of the fallen firefighters, their devotion and struggle on that day, and of the children of those fighters who have taken up the reins. The thing no one had counted on was those towers collapsing. Maybe a few floors, but not the whole building.

I spent last night after watching that show aimlessly clicking between the football game and the annual MTV video awards ceremony. I’m glad that Mathew Stafford has moved out of Detroit and is with another team, the LA Rams. It seemed his talent could not really be shown off at Detroit for whatever reason. Remember when Detroit was a powerhouse? The city, not the team. It’s so sad. Death knells were attempted to be delivered by the Republican Governor, but the city has withstood and rebounded somewhat.

Now onto the MTV video awards. I have the same questions every year: “Can we see the video?” “Where can we see the video?” and “This isn’t music, right? It’s something else.” I now have concluded that it, the awards show, is a giant bad taste party held by people who don’t know how to act. Not “act” as in acting, but act as in behaving.

First you’ve got the announcers. The women are competing to see who can wear the most outrageous bad taste getups. The men are older and kind of hoodlum-esque/aging rapper. Regardless, the intros are the same. For the women, there is mention of hard work. The men stress how many awards the talent has. Then they say “give it up for” and the yell a name which they trail off. It’s kind of like a Doppler effect sound. “Give it up for SSSSENNNNNdaaaaaayyyyyah” or whatever. I can’t tell you who most of the people were because I couldn’t understand the name. This didn’t matter because everyone in the know knew. It would have been helpful to display the name in a graphic, not only of the performer but the announcer too.

But now we get to the highlight fo the evening. The really bad taste in fashion. Who told Avril Lavigne that wearing a bright pink plaid suit cutaway to reveal a clashing bright blue bangle encrusted bra was a good idea?

Then there’s the intriguing “you can’t look away” competition for boob holding and reveal, and reveal in general. This was mainly a competition among the women, however some men or quasi-men, I’m not sure, got involved. 

There was the woman with the English accent wearing the black bra and grandma panties draped with Stevie Nicks black veil stuff.

There was the woman with the red pleated dress whose top was a red piece of twine around her neck from which other strings came down to hold her sagging boobs in two bikini like triangular bags. 

There was the woman who had a hip length half skirt that revealed an vertically and horizontally banded leg. Kind of an Iron Maiden style get up with similar upper torso encasing.

But my favorite was a young woman in a stunning white dress. It was almost as sheer as vinyl but not quite. Her top was a band of this material that ran around her neck and came down in a two inch wide strip over each breast. Her breasts were cute ample and lovely. Not bowling ball size, more like duck pin, but they looked terrific. If ever there was going to be a wardrobe malfunction, I was hoping for one there.

There was also a side stage somewhere that they cut away to, I guess when they needed to set up for the next act. A guy name St. John was performing several times. He sang his hit song, “Sucks to Be You,” so nice. Also, “Tank” great lyrics to be sure.

It seems no performance is complete without a crotch grab. Man or woman, doesn’t matter. Also, some marching sync rhythm routines are de rigor. These are the grand children of Michael and Janet Jackson. Also, for the women the influence of Megan Thee Stallion is evident by the need, if you have a fat ass, to show it off in the least appealing way possible. Typically, this is a side shot straight back bend with ass flip. But the ultimate is to put your back to the audience and bend over like a stripper to show your thonged crotch. Very tasteless.

Obviously, these shows are for young people that can get away with such antics. Old people are anyone over about 35. Busta Rhymes did a bit. He’s a rapper who at least doesn’t try to say words fast but instead concentrates on the beat with his vocal work. And who is the guy beside him? They pranced around, did their thing, but they looked old. Speaking of old, Tommy Lee was hauled out and he like so many of these people got goofy and laughed at his own ineptitude. The high light of the old people was David Lee Roth, who looked more like a Charlie Watts stand in than the kid who could high kick a balloon.

Little Nas did his homo-erotic dance stuff. And then, near the end, we gave it up for “AWFAD:JEJPJooooo!!!” I don’t know. Some woman who came out with her dance troupe. She was dressed in white silver sweatpants and a silver metal looking top swooped to one side.  Whatever she was doing it seemed to be dance moves punctuated with her saying/singing a phrase softly. The number ended with a woman being rolled out on stage strapped to a kind of crucifix like device. The arms of the cross were set down at about 45 degrees so it looked more like a rocket ship in outline. There were ladder rungs to either side of this woman. The singer approached and ran her hand up the center of the strapped lady’s rib cage. Then the singer climbed the ladder and after passing her body close to the crucifixed woman stood over the woman’s face with her crotch close. It didn’t leave mush to the imagination. The singer climbed down a rung on either side, put her legs through the rungs and hung upside down trapeze like. The number ended with the two women’s torsos forming a head up, head down formation. The song ended. The crowd applauded, like they did for everything. 

A woman came out at one point to announce something or other in what I can only describe as an over stuffed Egyptian Queen pharonic costume. Her head poked out from a huge rounded set of pleated rolled up elongated cloth sausage like things surrounding her head. It was quite stunningly comical. I  thought of Kanye on Saturday Night Live when he was dressed up as a vegetable. And the award for whatever she was announcing went to her and another woman. This was Doja-Cat! Wow, who knew? I had that name mixed up with Dua Lipa. I was very confused. A black woman who was in the song with her came up on stage but never got to say much. Then there was some musical number and old Doja came out after, stripped of her Egyptian look but wearing a red chair turned upside down on her head. Yeah, what can one say? After two rounds of that Doja took the chair off her head and sat on it. 

Machine Gun Kelley won something and most people were wondering how he scored with Megan Fox.

I was surprised to see Megan Thee Station was up with Doja for WAP, which was so last year. But then again we needed more fat ass flappery.

Shelby had told me that Martin Short walked in on Selena Gomez reading the lyrics of WAP to Steve Martin when they were rehearsing their new show. Imagine that!

Ah me. The only band and the only musicians I saw take the stage were the Foo-Fighters. The did their number, got their award and got the hell out of there.

Billie Elish presented it to them. She was quite tame in her no green streak blond hair and black phone booth like dress and accompanying black boots.

But enough. Or should I say, “Enuff!”?

On to what you’ve all been waiting for – Robot Sex, and the philosophic and social implications of same.

I got a robot vacuum cleaner. It vacuums the upstairs, and I gotta say it does a much better job than we humans do. One, it does it several times a week and two, it can get under the bed with ease. Yesterday I discovered it had climbed up on top of the weigh scale. There it died. Like Rocky (as in Nelson) it died in the saddle. This raises the interesting question as to what would the offspring be? Would I end up with a vacuum cleaning weigh scale? Much like the alarm clock on the night stand next to the radio that melted together decades ago to form a clock radio, would a similar fate await these two objects? Hard to say.

Back to the music awards, Justin Bieber won artist of the year. He was dressed in a black hoodie pulled up and worn under an unflattering huge sports jacket and similar wide pants. It’s amazing to me that these kids don’t know how to talk. It’s also amazing to me that the Beebs found a beautiful woman that seems infatuated with him.

Then there was the performance by the global Latin super star who I had never heard of. He wore a pink rhinestone jockey looking outfit complete with matching cap. He actually sang and the song was a catchy Latin number. His dance team was dressed up like teddy bears. The kind that you try to win in a vending machine with the three claws. To make the point he had a giant backdrop of that sort of machine stuffed with teddy bears. While he sang a giant three pronged crane descended into that pit and extracted a large teddy. It then proceeded to move it over the crowd. Fortunately, the claws were stronger than those ones at the game arcades. It didn’t drop the giant teddy onto the crowd below.

Lastly, I got an email from Greg Palast. He’s an investigative reporter who fashions himself in the style of the old 1940s style working stiff newspaper reporter. He had an interesting take on Afghanistan and I found it food for thought. He pointed out that in the last year no soldier in Afghanistan had died in combat. We had reached a state of stasis with the other forces in that country with 3,000 troops on the ground. Hum. Maybe it wasn’t costing us the $300 million a day anymore. Maybe we could have just maintained a presence and kept thing in a state of check? But Trump changed all that. Hard to know because none of the people and sources are that close to the situation.

Carry on.

PS The picture is a recreation of the actual situation. I grabbed the vacuum off of the scale before taking the picture and had to recreate it here. Notice the bathmat was an accomplice.

Sunday September 12, 2021

It was twenty years ago today…

And a day.

What a day yesterday was.

A day of remembrance and tributes.

A time to think of where you were when you heard.

But also a day to watch one of the greatest tennis matches in history.

It was the women’s final of the U.S. Open.

Two young women, teenagers, had defeated seasoned pros to ascend to this stage.

Two, three weeks ago, no one knew their names.

But here they were. Both born in Canada. One now claiming British citizenship.

Both born of immigrant parents and both having parents from different nationalities.

It gives one hope.

Maybe the world is changing?

I think about the women in Afghanistan who say they aren’t going back.

Will they succeed?

Will the Taliban try to govern in a reasonable way or will they try and force people to their extreme doctrines?

One can hope. It is said that the Taliban succeeded because they had twenty years of fighting the U.S. to learn what to do and not do. Certainly, they succeeded politically within their country. Once again, as in Vietnam, the U.S. experts and smart money were wrong. 

I read an article that said that Iceland had had a terrible rate of alcoholism, smoking, and drugs among young people. The folks in charge looked at what caused this and found that one could get the same stimulation from art and dance. So they implemented programs of art and dance requiring students to take such classes for a prescribed period of time and then the students could choose whether to continue. The rate of smoking, drinking and drugs plummeted. It gives me hope.

After 9 11 we had a time when we were all one, united with the world. We squandered it. 

Al Sharpton made a terrific point yesterday. He said the people who attacked us didn’t attack a particular race or religion, they attacked Americans. They attacked all of us.

Can we come together as a nation? As members of the human race?

Many are hoping the young people can do that. What can we do to help them? Give them opportunities and a stage. Support them. 

Moving on, I have a boffo plan to get us well. First, everyone must get vaccinated. I have a two fold strategy. First, develop local teams of people qualified to vaccinate within their communities. This is an expansion on my earlier idea of empowering the orange one as The Head Vaccinator and having him have people vaccinated at his rallies. Maybe, get the Proud Boys or The Oath Keepers to administer the shots. They are always looking to get physical. Why not?

The other fork of my two prong strategy is to isolate the unvaccinated and let them die. Put them in internment camps.

I know it’s a mild mannered approach but I don’t want to get too radical.

And a big shout out to Idaho. Way to go! They fired their chief health care guy with years of experience in epidemiology all because he told people to wear masks. They voted in a guy who calls getting vaccinated “needle rape” and wants to poison people with horse dewormer. The state’s hospitals are at capacity due to Covid with infected unvaccinated people. They are having to ration care. Telling people with life threatening problems, like cancer, that they can maybe make them comfortable while they die or better yet just go home and die. Many are going to Washington state for care. But isn’t this the Republican health care plan? Hurry up and die? One commentator said that what the state officials are doing is putting gas on the dumpster fire and then pressing their foot to the floor. (Double bad analogy.)

This isn’t stupidity. This is obstinance in pursuit of denial of reality.

But that’s the world we’ve created. Much of what we are seeing unfold is because one of our underlying unspoken principles is becoming false. I’ll call it “the good reasonable people principle.” I think lawyers have a term like this too. We see it in trials as “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But there is also a “reasonable person” standard. Unfortunately, we have left that idea of reasonableness behind. We have media empires built on the exact opposite – unreasonableness. There have been studies that show that anger is addictive. Once hooked you want more. You need to feed that monster and there are willing pushers. 

They get rich off of it. In Paraguay there are medicine shamans who will chant and cast spells over people dying of cancer. What do these same shamans do when they get sick? They go see a doctor, a real doctor. 

I’ve heard everyone on the Fox staff has been vaccinated. If so, they know the truth. They just don’t tell people because it’s not in their interest to do so.

We now have a Supreme Court loaded with unreasonable people. What will happen? It might take another twenty or fifty years to undo that damage. Have we reached a point where it’s too late? 

The chance of a bill to pass in Congress, a bill that everyone wants is thirty percent. A senator must raise $45,000 a day every day to have enough to win their next re-election. They spend 70% of their time raising money. When was the last time you saw or even heard of a Democratic and a Republican senator talk about how to solve a problem? I can’t recall it ever happening. 

It seems we have tied ourselves in knots and we can’t figure out how to fix it. This will be the end of our democracy if we can’t or the generations after us can’t. 

Becoming inbreed is a problem. It leads to weakness and idiocy. Has this befallen our country? It seems so. However, when I see two young women represented by four parents of different national backgrounds competing for one of the biggest prizes in tennis, it give me hope.

PS Sunrise at Bantaey Srei temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Friday September 10, 2021

Tomorrow it will be twenty years.

If you have to ask then you are too young to remember.

I remember the days after the attack, the whole country came together in stunned unity.

Then Cheney hijacked it.

What good could have come from it was lost.

Finally, we are out of Afghanistan. 

A country that was last conquered by Genghis Kahn’s grandson.

It’s been a pain in the ass to countless larger countries and empires.

It will be interesting to see if the new rulers can get away with the same garbage they tried twenty years ago.

And now our President has said enough.

Enough to the stupidity and ignorance that is endangering all of us.

Personally, I’d like to see the idiots die off by their own ignorance and obstinance, but unfortunately they endanger the rest of us so we have to get them vaccinated. I still like the idea of roving gangs of vaccinators. Maybe, recruit The Hell’s Angels? That always works out well.

Sean Hannity was moaning that this is the end of health care as we know it or some such stupidity. I heard a rumor that everyone at Fox has been forced to get vaccinated. If true, oh boy!

There’s a rally planned to support the rioters of Jan 6th. This time the Capital is preparing. I hope they round them all up and spray them with Covid. I mean – get them vaccinated.

Imagine if we could inject stupid people with a little microchip and make them smart?

Meanwhile, one hurricane after another churns up either ocean. What happens if a second hurricane hits Louisiana this season?

Back to Biden and the mandates. For those moaning the Federal government can’t do such a thing, let me just say, “Yes they can.” In fact, that’s the job of the federal government. Who has done mandates before? Hum, Harrison, FDR, Johnson, Nixon and probably more, but those are the ones I know off the top of my head. Who screamed and cried each time? Conservatives, business tycoons, gadflies – the usual bunch of either idiots or folks who thought it would cost them. (So what if brakemen lost their hands while coupling railroad cars, it wasn’t their hand. Why change?)

Now we get to the Texas abortion ban. First off theirs a simple graphic that explodes the whole anti-abortion thing. Boiling it down to its essence picture this:

An Egg.

With the caption “This is not a chicken.”

Now a zygotę.

Can you come up with a caption?

How about “This is not a human? (Baby?)” take your pick. Yes, yes, Of course. And if that hen sits on that egg. But if the egg is snatched out of the coop? 

Okay, The Texas anti-abortion bill is being challenged by the Justice Department. Interesting argument. “You can’t pass a law that violated the Constitution.” Hum. Really? Well, this has already been settled by the Supreme Court earlier. Will the Justices that have no business being on the court twist themselves in knots to they say, “No, it’s okay?” We’ll have to wait and see.

But hopefully this will get to a Federal court by the end of this month and the heinous Texas law will be stayed.

Speaking of which, well, speaking of abortions. This law will not stop abortions in Texas. It will just stop safe abortions. 

However, we can all be glad that there will be no more rapes in Texas because the governor has said he will eliminate them. This from a man who doesn’t understand biology, and now he’s demonstrating a lack of understanding about crime? Oh wait, I know. We’ll round up all the potential rapists and put them in jail under “suspicion.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I wonder what will happen when a Republican state senator’s daughter gets pregnant by either boyfriend or rapist what’s going to happen?

We have friend who lives in Idaho. The hospitals in the norther part of the state are now rationing care. Only 5% of the people coming into those hospitals are vaccinated. Our friend said she knew someone who had stage 4 cancer. The hospital told them they couldn’t do anything. They were full. The person went home and died.

Freedom!

(Unfortunately, the “Dom” part of this billboard fell down. Too bad. But the creepy part remained.)

Wednesday September 1, 2021

Quick Recap:

War in Afghanistan Ended yesterday saving us $330,000,000.00 a day.

Ida has decimated southern Louisiana.

Texas has figured out a way to stop women from getting abortions.

Wildfires out west have turned the skies orange.

But the thing I most want to talk about is the reporter who got accosted by some guy while the reporter was talking about the effect of the hurricane. I happened to catch it live. The reporter was standing on a strip of ground and I saw this white truck pull up two hundred feet behind the camera. This middle aged overweight white guy gets out of the truck and comes running toward the film crew and yells, “Tell the Truth!”

I wasn’t sure what he was yelling, but that was apparently it.

They now know who this guy is and have an arrest warrant out for him for assault.

Frankly, I like the idea of more violence on TV. I’ve been for it for years. But I think it should be more focused. Not in these cop dramas or crime shows but rather it should be integrated into game shows, reality shows and competitions, and certainly news and opinion shows.

I want to see losers on a game show chased off the set by folks with whips and flails.

I want more electric shocks in folks running gauntlets.

But most of all, I want more violence on TV news room and opinion shows. I want to see someone wrap their hands around Ann Coulter’s neck and scream in her face, “Tell the Truth!” Or what about Steve Ducey and those idiots on the Fox sofa? Wouldn’t a bunch of guys that look like the machete actor who came rushing into the studio screaming, “Tell the Truth!” Wouldn’t that be better than whatever nonsense they are spouting.

Or what about Rand Paul? Man, how would you like to see how fast he can run from a howling mob screaming, “Tell the Truth.”

Okay, now to solve the problems of the day:

Offer to fix the broken helicopters we left behind in Afghanistan for a few things we want. Like women being allowed to wear mini-skirts.

Redirect hurricane remnants to the west to put out the fires.

Look up anti-abortionists and file lawsuits against them saying they wanted to get an abortion. If they don’t show in court you get ten grand.

Okay, that does it for here. Back to the traffic copter.

PS Rock Moose. (Or is it plastic?)