Don't stand up and be counted, hide in your Y2K shelter!

I read an article about these idiots who don’t want to give out their information for the census. “The skeptics include Christopher B. Floyd, 40, a building engineer in Fairfax County, Va., who says he doesn't trust the federal government to handle his personal information. ‘I don't need big brother watching any more than they already do,’ Floyd tweeted Monday.” Big Brother is busy watching ten attractive, young people in a reality show. They hang out and have sex in the hot tub a lot. He’s not interested in you.

Christopher B. Floyd gave his full name, age, address and occupation to a reporter from the Associated Press, but won’t give it to the Census? And he tweeted about it? Is this really a guy who values his privacy?

‘The Census was at our church yesterday and there (were) several of us against giving out our information. My right not to.’" No, it isn’t. It’s punishable by a $5000 fine. Taking a census is written in to the Constitution. The government has to count everybody. They only ask ten questions. Get over it!

Ok, Dems are douche bags, too

Here’s partisanship at its lowest. Steny Hoyer is a top ranking Dem from Maryland. He introduced a resolution to congratulate the Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball team for their outstanding season. John Campbell, a Republican from California opposed, and used the parliamentary rules to make it really hard for Hoyer to pass the resolution. Why? Hoyer blocked a similar resolution for Campbell’s UC-Irvine men’s volleyball team. In the end, the resolution narrowly passed, mostly along party lines.

Here is where your vote is going in November. You will either support the party of people who like to be dicks and block stupid, feel-good resolutions that don’t cost a dime. Or, you could vote for the party of douche bags that introduces said legislation instead of something meaningful that will actually help somebody somewhere. The masterful beauty of it is that the Dems and Reps each introduced and blocked.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute once sarcastically designed the “’Tute Screw”. It was a screw that would go in no matter which way it was turned. No, it didn’t work, but the point was “either way, you’re screwed”.

What's the diff between Rush Limbaugh & Nazis? Someone forgave the Nazis

I like the mindless action flicks while I’m running on a treadmill because I don’t have to pay close attention and there’s a lot of noise that can be heard over the boom-boom-boom of my feet and the machine. And, occasionally, I get an adrenaline surge even with the bombastic drama. For a change, though, I got a documentary called “Forgiving Dr. Mengele”. It’s about an old holocaust survivor who has decided to personally forgive the Nazis. Yes, it says “Dr. Mengele”, but she forgave ALL the Nazis. Whoops, belated spoiler alert.

Her fellow Holocaust survivors ranged between “highly apprehensive” to “enraged”. She never claimed to speak for the group. She specifically insisted that her forgiveness only came from herself. Ironic, actually. Her version of forgiveness is a very Christian version. It is ironic because she was persecuted by the Nazis specifically for being a non-Christian. But that’s just my own insight. I’m sure that the thougth would only further outrage the other holocaust survivors.

Their argument against this woman was that the living could not ever claim to speak for the dead, so if all the holocaust survivors got together unanimously, there still would be no absolution. But the living have always spoken for the dead, so I couldn’t agree less. Anyway, it was a pretty good documentary.
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I read a Rush Limbaugh transcript where a caller asked who Rush endorsed for a primary race, but Rush shied away, citing that he had a policy not to endorse a candidate in the primary. Although, apparently, he’s free to whack the candidates he doesn’t like as he would a pinata. So, he wrapped up that little discussion with “Your question sort of puts me in hot water.” Rush admits that he’s in hot water? He made a decision that was sub-optimal or *gasp* wrong? But he segued from “in hot water” to “A tub of hot water that comes quickly and easily when you use our sponsor Rensaii© Tankless Hot Water Heaters…” Yes, this shameless sales pitch was included in his transcripts.

If I could get “in hot water” from answering an inconvenient question, why would I even need to buy a tankless heater from Rensaii©?

The general format of Limbaugh’s transcript links is this:
Caller: You’re the greatest, smartest human being since Christ himself, Rush.
Rush: I am very well aware of this fact, but your subservience is appreciated.
Caller: If I weren’t so into gay-bashing, I’d let you know I’ve got a woody right now.
Rush: Speak with impunity, vassal.
Caller: I seek your sage counsel. What is your opinion on Candidate X?
Rush: Candidate X does not concur 100% with my own viewpoints. Ergo, he/she is out of touch with the mainstream conservative base and must therefore be labeled as an enemy of America and all true Americans.
Caller: Thank you, most knowledgeable one! I was thinking of voting for X, and you have shown me the error of my ways. I shall pan through your podcasts to seek out the candidate that you do not specifically endorse, but that I must vote for due to your relative silence on his flaws.
Rush: You have learned well, serf. Now off with you as I awkwardly segue into a shill for one of our noble sponsors, without which none of this broadcast or my enormous salary could be possible.

Spawn: Graphic novel, TV series, movie - and none were good

The Oscars recently switched from 5 Best Picture Nominees to 10. The rationale, as I understand it is so they can avoid the critique of “How could the Academy possibly have overlooked my movie? It was artsy with lots of weeping and a gay alcoholic idiot savant version of King Henry V as the lead. What else could they ask for?” The only thing that this move will do is downgrade the level of movie that is being slighted. “What? They didn’t nominate ‘2012’?” They have no chance of winning, but are still disgruntled at not being in the running.

Just like the brackets for March Madness. A ton of teams that were NOT selected would protest that they should have been. They might be right in that they deserve to be counted in the top 64 in the nation, but they don’t have much chance of being #1. The NCAA, like the Oscars, doesn’t give out silver medals.

Statistically, you wouldn’t lose much from March Madness if you started with only 16 teams. Except that all important TV revenue, of course. Or, you can go the other route and expand to 256 teams. I’d actually like to see 512 teams, because then I would get to see dozens of heads exploding as they try to fill out their brackets, prognosticating the probability on 5 levels in Wake Forest meeting Gonzaga or Marquette or UAB or George Mason or ...

It would really wear down the winning teams. Hopefully, they will all get worn down to the point where no team actually wins. Somewhere around the semi-final round the teams just give up and go back to class to take their mid-term exams. Stop the Madness!

They still take classes, right? Or do they just text it in from courtside?
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When I read my rants, raves and constant griping on this blog, they seem better in theory than in practice. It’s bloviated bombast at best. Now that I write it, the name “Bloviated Bombastic Blog” would have been better than “The Gripes of Wrath”. Maybe I could have lightened it up with the equally alliterative “Hogenmogen’s Happy Hour”. But, I’d probably be sick of those, given time.
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”Bombastic” would be a good description of the Spawn graphic novel, too. I dislike repeating a vocabulary word in such close proximity, but that’s the word I was thinking of while reading. I saw the HBO animated series and the live action movie back in ’97 or so. Those were pretty interesting, but lacking an overarching plot.

The premise is that Spawn is given all kinds of cool powers from Hell and set back upon the Earth to do something. He doesn’t quite understand his assignment and neither do I. In the movie, he teams up with a previous hell spawn who didn’t follow his assignment either. In a fit of special effects, they manage to kill the Devil. Doesn’t really leave a lot of room for sequels.

In the HBO series, they introduce this Angela “Heaven spawn” that they immediately drop, having gone nowhere. In the graphic novel, they make reference to having fought some epic battle with her, but it isn’t shown. In the movie, you get neither. So much for the T&A factor.

The graphic novel disappointed me. The creator, Todd McFarlane, ditched his paying gig at the major publishers to start the Spawn project without any interference. He should have kept an editor to weed out the wall-of-text narrations and the ham handed expositions. The artwork was great, but it was used mostly to show how “badass” the character can be. For example, we’re shown an ugly, seething creature that rips out human hearts. Half of the next page is taken up with a badass picture. “Ah, one more for my collection… So says THE VIOLATOR!! “ Would anyone really say that? Does it advance the story any?

99% of the time, the book is better than the movie. This is the other 1%, and the movie wasn't that great.
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Why isn’t the opposite of “bad-ass” a “good-ass”? I never got the hang of how women judge guy’s asses. Perhaps it is tight pants and youthful, perky muscle tone. I’m not jealous of a “good ass” guy, because after he turns 30, without regular exercise, a guy’s ass will either be bloated or saggy or both. Besides, anyone over 30 wearing tight pants is a poser or a queer, not a bad-ass. With baggy jeans and other looser fitting clothing, all claims that one’s ass is good, bad or ugly are unverifiable. You could require an ass-o-gram. If a suspected bad-ass submits to an ass-o-gram in the first place, you can safely assume that he’s no real bad-ass, unless he’s a poser bad-ass. See, there are so many complex rules to this badness thing that it’s hard to lay them all out in one place.

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I’ve never sat around thinking “This moment would be perfect if only I had some Paul Williams CDs playing right now.”

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I kind of wish that we lived in a simpler world where the bad guys wore funny costumes and talked in that sneering, superior way that bad guys in cartoons do. We could just throw them all in prison before they committed any crimes, and there’d be no Al Qaeda. And no congress.

Beer and Republicans, a good mix

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/top-stocks/blog.aspx?post=1710826&_blg=1,1710826

Miller brewing is coming up with a beer that was formulated pre-prohibition. I would like to taste it. They’re getting pretty gimmicky, given the declining state of the brewing industry. Apparently, they are now putting ridges in the neck of the bottle to improve taste and aroma.

I have news. When you chill your beer to a fraction of a degree above freezing, it doesn’t taste or smell like anything. Novelty. Gimmick.

Miller, Coors and Anheuser Busch spent the last 90 years cutting corners to make the cheapest beer possible while spending billions on lavish ad campaigns marketed to the lowest common denominator. Most Americans are so shocked to get pulled out of Plato’s Cave and taste real beer for the first time that it’s a wonder they don’t do what they did to the protagonist of The Republic. Re-introduce your old-fashioned beer at your own peril.
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So last night, there was a Republican that shouted something like "Baby Killer!" while Stupak was making some comments on the health care bill. The funny thing is that Stupak is very pro-life. I wish I could shout random stuff at inappropriate moments like a Nazi with Tourette's Syndrome.

Every time some anti-immigrant Republican like Coburn speaks, "Foreigner!"
Then I'll apologize and say that I was listening to Foreigner on my iPod and I forgot that I wasn't at the concert.

Every time McConnell speaks, "Horsesh!t"
Then I'll apologize and say that I was referring to the fine equine industry boasted by Mr. McConnell’s home state of Kentucky.

Every time McCain speaks, "Dimwit!"
Then I'll apologize and say that I was trying to attract the attention of Senator DeMint, and it is your fault for not hearing me clearly enough.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1298
Michael Steele dismissed the GOP homophobic racists that shouted down the Democratic congressmen: "There are a lot of idiots saying stupid things." Can you narrow it down any, Steele? That describes every member of congress.

Politics, statistics and Brittney's ex husband

People think that the corporations pick the presidents. No, fourteen people in Iowa and a dozen in New Hampshire will winnow the herd of 18 hopeful presidential candidates down to two. The corporations only get to choose between candidate Coke & candidate Pepsi.
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I heard an interesting speaker on statistics – yeah, you read that right. “Interesting” and “statistics” in the same sentence. He says that Kentucky officials have been fretting about the decreased number of younger workers in this state, and many have called it the “brain-drain”, because anyone educated leaves. Turns out that they’re not leaving. They haven’t been born in the first place. Most parents aren’t having a lot of kids, so the population of youngsters decreases. So it’s not that Eastern KY is losing future scholars, they’re just incapable of producing them.

This statistician had a lot of charts, graphs and projections and all that. I don’t know how he makes his 50 year estimates with any reliability. He’s essentially counting the offspring of offspring that have yet to be born.

One result of this demographic shift is that you will have to work longer. I’m already planning that I’ll have to work to 75. Of course, you can’t raise the retirement age 10 years all at once. I’d suggest that you scale it maybe .25 years every 2 years or something like that. If you’re 6 years from retiring, you’d have to work an extra 9 months. Not gonna kill ya. It’s an unpleasant thought to have to work longer, but you can’t make the argument that they couldn’t be prepared.

An area of concern for the future is that the wealthy families don’t have many kids, Blighted areas have population growth. An educated parent, black, white, Latino or Asian is likely to have children who value education. Uneducated parents tend to have uneducated kids. Poor kids aren’t suddenly going to raise their academic ambitions if you remove all the middle and upper-class. Evidence suggests the opposite. Urban school districts have seen the exodus of the affluent for a generation now, and that hasn’t inspired higher achievement on the part of those who can’t afford private education.
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I got Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” from the library. “Saturday Night’s for Fighting” is a good enough song, but I can’t imagine a bunch of tough guys heading out on the town saying “Yeah, crank that! Elton tells it like it is!” And, sadly, any bar fight that little Elton would start, could only end badly. In seconds, he’d have his ass handed to him in a highball glass with a slice of lime and a little umbrella, and that’s just if he were battling your average John Denver fan.

While on the music industry, Madonna is the richest woman musician. This came as absolutely no shock to anyone but maybe Ashlee Simpson thought she was in the running. Brittney’s recent meltdown reminds me that many noted geniuses have had mild to severe bouts of depression and mania in their twenties, such as Einstein, John Stewart Mill, Hayden, and I’ll throw myself in with these luminaries and say that I had a few days in my twenties when I wasn’t manically depressed per se, but maybe a little irritable. So, that makes me a genius as much as Brittney proved her brilliance merely because of a well-timed bout of insanity.

I don’t know of any natural force that could possibly explain how you lose your kids to a guy like Kevin Federline. And, I feel bad for the kids, of course. Having K-Fed as your role model isn’t the easy ticket into the Ivy League. Yeah, they’re pretty screwed.

A day in the life

My best video “customers” are my wife’s mother and grandmother. They tell me all about how great the videos are, which ultimately make me lazy. When I watch the videos, all I see are the glitches and things that I wish I had the time to fix. One day, I plan to put together a really great 20 minutes, instead of rushing to get through it. I once had this crazy notion that I’d get caught up, you see.
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The hardest parts of my training program are the parts that have nothing to do with beating my feet on the street. Waking up early and not drinking at night are the biggest deals to me. Almost everyone that I talk to about the drinking thing says that it would be ok if I had some, but no one that I’ve spoken to is an athlete, amateur athlete, trainer or sports therapist. I hate having to forego my beer when I sit down at night. But there are benefits, of course. When I’m not drinking, my runs are a lot less difficult. Going faster and farther is a lot easier. Making it through the work day is a lot less tiring, too. Seems like not too long ago, I’d get up after 7, eat breakfast and still hit work by 8. Now I’m up at 4:00, work out, eat breakfast, get kids ready and I get in at 7:00. If you’d told me that’s how grinding my life would be, including most weekend days, I’d have said *Shoot me now.*

Craving alcohol makes me sound like an alcoholic, but I don’t see it as any more indicative of addiction than a dieter desiring cheesecake.

The worst thing you can do for training is to try too hard and get injured. The second worst thing you can do is to not try hard enough and be unprepared. So it is between this Scylla and Charybdis that the entire training spectrum exists.

Republicans in the news - never a good mix.

Yet another former Bushie has confessed to the shenanigans that went on behind closed doors at the White House. I’d love to savor this one as juicy gossip, but really, it’s something we knew all along despite all the denials. Also not so shocking is that he suddenly grew a conscience when there’s money to be made from spilling his guts. Wow. Amazing. If the staffer had qualms, he should have come out with this revelation when it really mattered, such as before the ’04 elections. Because that’s what a real patriot would have done. It takes guts to stand up to your enemies, but real guts to stand up to your friends when they’re wrong. Not so much to stand up to former friends who are out of office.

This big “reveal” is exactly what leftie columnists were saying anyway. Its like saying Bill Clinton’s book was a shocker because he admitted to an inappropriate relationship with an intern. Rush Limbaugh says: “Look at this news, folks! Bill Clinton had sex! Don’t vote for Democrats, folks! They’ll make us all have lots and lots of sex! Kinky liberals!”

I’ve been watching Harry Potter movies lately. Every year, some professor arrives and turns out to be rooting for Team Voldemort. Hogwart’s really needs to start background checks on new hires.

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Fashion mags are repetitive. How many make-up breakthroughs can there possibly be? We’re not talking about rocket surgery, where there are breakthroughs every few months. I wish that a fashion magazine editor would one day put out a final issue because it has the ultimate to say about hair, makeup and diet. “Well, that’s it! We’ve given all of the advice that there is.”

Diets can usually be summed up with “Eat less, Tubby!” There’s always a new quiz to find out if he’s loyal, he’s cheating, if you’re a bad friend or if you are more cluttered and disorganized than your peers. If you have to ask, I’m thinking the answer is probably “yes”.
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As soon as a football team loses enough to make it mathematically impossible for that team to make it to the playoffs, you should abandon them high & dry. Don’t go to the game. Don’t watch it on TV. Don’t talk about it at work. If you see anyone wearing the jersey, it’s a sign on their back that says “Give me a wedgie!”

I'm not a leftie - not all the time.

To argue for the Republicans for a moment, a tax increase won’t solve much because it won’t be large enough to eliminate the annual deficit, let alone have much left over for repayment of the accumulated debt. It’s a weight loss analogy. When you are trying to lose weight, diet trumps exercise. So, in governmental terms, balancing the books will require more budget cutting than increases in taxation. But where do you cut? Can you get those cuts passed?

The Republicans will always control the tax debate, because the Dem’s argument requires calculation, estimates and thinking. Even with the brain effort, you’ve still got to overcome the fact that everyone pays a different tax percentage, and there will always be that one guy who calculates that a minor bump in some small tax will make his business go bankrupt. Instead of working on keeping himself afloat, he can spend endless hours writing congress about his predicament.
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More right wing thinking: Why is it that lower income people tend to spend more money on beer, cigarettes and lottery tickets? What’s up with that? Making small, bad decisions over time adds up to a lower standard of living. DVDs, iPods and cell phones are not God given rights, and don’t even get me started on payday loans.

Yet, undocumented workers are paid illegally low wages, live in hovels and still find enough to send back home to their families.
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***I’m rather amused around Christmas time that the atheists have no moral qualms convincing their kids that Santa Claus is real.

Ripped from the headlines

In other news, there’s a carpenter’s union strike. Turns out that the union hired homeless people for $8 per hour to picket on behalf of the carpenters who are too busy making $24 per hour on their jobs to sacrifice their own time.

If these homeless people want health care benefits, will they picket the carpenter’s union? If so, will they charge for it?

Bionic blogging - think about it

They brought back the Bionic Woman to TV. I’d like to bring back the $6 Million Dollar Man. But for $6 million these days, you won’t get all that bionic stuff. Instead of an arm, you’d get probably just a few fingers. And, instead of a leg, you’d have maybe three toes. His extraordinary powers would be limited to flipping channels on TV – but instead of the regular flip-flip-flip, he could go flipipipipipip! My old housemate would be amazed. The bionic man would use his toes to bounce his leg while watching the one hundred eighty channels scroll by in under a minute. But he’s got bionic toes, so he’d bounce so fast that the whole building would shake. Week after week, there would be contrived plot devices that could put the bionic dude’s legendary powers to the greater good of humankind. Although he can zip his mouse around at near supersonic speed, the Bionic Man’s arch nemesis will diabolically swap out his broadband for a dial up. Then our hero would have to wait for internet pages to slowly download in between his lightning fast clicks! Oh my gosh! Cut to a commercial!

Introduction and welcome

Be forewarned. The following content will be offensive at some point to whites, blacks, Latinos, Eskimos, the poor, the rich, women, men, Republicans, Democrats, patriots, foreigners, Foreigner fans, and anyone who does not listen to the same voices from inside my head that I do. It may cause dizziness, nail biting, extreme rage, worried looks, diarrhea and vomiting of flammable, green bile. Still with me?

Well, I tried.

I wanted to try to name the blog after Elvira Gulch. She was the woman who terrorized Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. In Dorothy’s dream, she was the Wicked Witch. Elvira didn’t have magic. She was just a rotten shrew.

In 1982 I read an essay on writing from George Plimpton. His hypothesis was that people want to read from someone who is at least a little bit angry. So everyone should be dying to read every word I write, because it’s been soaked in mayhem, passion and bitter venom. The only serene parts are when I talk about running. I think those are uninteresting, but I keep them in just to show that I’m not a total d!ck.