Reality to Earth

iCame, iSaw, iLeft in on the Shelf

2012-09-17T08:50:00.002-07:00

       It's all a matter of taste, iSuppose. iJust didn't feel the need to run out of the house and wait on line overnight because the folks at Apple decided it was time to reveal the new and improved member of its little electronic family, iPhone 5.
       You, Frank? Once one of the people other people used to come to at the place you worked begging you to help them make their spotty, brand new tech work like it did on the commercials?
       Yes. Let's first of all realize one small, but important fact. I'm not going to be left so horrifically behind the times because iDidn't rush out to get this latest bauble. If iWanted (BIG if, by the way) to get wrapped up in the world of Apple, I only have to wait a little while before iPhone 6 arrives, a piece of technology which you can damned well be sure is already at least six months in the development channel, sitting next to buddy the new New iPad and the other new and improved buddies in the iTech aisle designed to maintain Apple's position as a highly profitable entity.
       While browsing the aisles at the local "Buy More" electronics shop a few month ago, iHappened on a display of the '4', which was being pored over wide-eyed by this young lady and her family. iWas standing next to my wife and happened to remark to her, in my best smart-ass (I do speak Smart-ass, stewardess, as well as Jive) that the countdown towards iPhone 5 was going to start any day.
       You would have thought iShot Bambi in front of her . . . While telling her Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and leprechauns didn't exist. She was sure there was no way a new phone was going to come out so close to the release of the other one.
       Nice lady. Not a history major. But she knows not of Apple's Way . . . The way of introducing new products which make the old products almost immediately drop in value . . . The way of producing new software and operating systems which don't have upgrades, and instead must be bought as completely new in order to have their 'new, improved, advanced' options made available . . . And heaven help you if you have an older machine, because it probably won't be able to work on one of 'those'. (By the way . . . There have been 3 iPad models, right? . . . Why are they getting ready to release their 6th Operating System?)
       iFinished. See you soon. Same iTime, same iChannel. To be iFair, however . . .

Hypocrisy in Sports or 'Just Another Olympics'

2012-08-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth - Rule 40 prohibits an athlete from partaking in any promotions during the course of the Olympic Games . . . That's The Olympic Games, which is probably the largest promotional event anywhere on the planet.

Down in the pool, an American man-child who just happens to swim like Flipper and has taken home the most medals ever . . .

Read that again. Most. Medals. EVER.

There's a rumbling somewhere below the surface that in his off time during the Olympic games, Michael Phelps took part in a Louis Vuitton advertising campaign, having photos taken for a promotion to be released after the Olympics . . .

I don't mean to be picky, but read THAT again. To be released. AFTER. The Olympics.

And thanks to the fact someone LEAKED the photos during the game, UNOFFICIALLY, there's word they want to take back the medals which make Phelps the top Olympic gold-miner of all time owing to RULE 40, which is a NEW rule to help prevent anyone who hasn't bought in as an official sponsor to get a taste of the billions of dollars being passed around the table. (Is it serve from the right, pick up from the left? I'm always getting confused.)

Somewhere in between the dreams of Baron Pierre de Coubertin in creating an Olympic committee for the modern amateur games and today, more than a few cogs have been slipped in the administration of this event. It is rife with questionable bidding wars for sites, more promotional product tie-ins than one could reasonably shake a stick at, and professional athletes of every form finding a place to ply their individual trades.

Tennis, anyone? That's just an example, but check the starting line-up at the US Open and match it against the opening seedings for the Olympics competition. No one seemed to mind the star power there, did they?

It's always the athlete whose gone that extra mile in training to do his or her best who'll have someone throw the flag (or red card) in their face. Now the person, clean of any other possible infractions, they've practically anointed the best of the best for his work IN THE POOL, is possibly going to get his hand slapped for something which happened OUT OF THE POOL.

Once upon a time readers, there was a track and field athlete who was considered the greatest of his day. He won the decathlon and pentathlon in the same games, but because he played Carolina League Baseball for a pittance for a few summers, he was stripped of any medals and statuary he'd been given. This was in 1912, and the athlete was Jim Thorpe, who, as time passed, became one of the first members of an organization originally known as the APFA, which is now known as the NFL. In 1983, thirty years after he passed on, the medals were reinstated, (Despite the previous objections of those such as his former teammate and IOC President Avery Brundage) but the fact we're still discussing stripping an athlete of the medal he's won for non-sports related reasons a century after the fact shows there's still a massive hypocrisy involved in the structure and rulings of this so-called amateur event.

It's a sports competition. Let the fair play on the field decide who gets to keep their medals.(And for crying out loud, can I not be made to look at so much as the shadow of a synchronized swimmer or rhythm gymnast for the next four years? Just asking.)

Looking Through the Glass

2012-08-17T06:22:00.003-07:00

Reality to Earth - Falling off the horse is always easier than getting back on. Saddle up.

And welcome back to the dusty corners of a writer's mind in the midsummer of an election year. Let's see, what's sitting on the back burner?

- The donkeys and the elephants are in full swing, each trying to prove their hot mess is better than the other sides hot mess, with the donkeys' hot mess currently in charge of a hot potato he's dropped so many times it's mashed. (Guys . . . A Chicago politician? Really? And all this surprised you?)

- Major movie events have joined the ranks of 'Things Crazy People Interrupt With Obscene Violence", thanks to some red-hair-dyed nut case in Colorado. I'm not sure if gun control is the answer, because it's the illegal guns which cause too much of the violence and people have the right to protect themselves, but I do think when someone orders a veritable shitload of ammunition, maybe a red flag should be thrown up somewhere. How about it?

- Prices are rising in all areas, yet the Consumer Price Index, which for as long as I can remember had been dragged to the front page and held up like a dead mouse by a proud cat every time it went up on someone else's watch, goes virtually unspoken on the nightly news. (Here's a clue - It's up, but let's not tell all of those nasty old curmudgeons on Social Security, they might actually want some more of the money they paid into that insurance system back to make up for the changes.)

- In sports - Part 1 - An Olympics has come and gone with the usual mix of feel good stories, overt over-marketing and accusations of cheating. BMX biking is in while baseball and softball are out, synchronized swimming is just as silly as ever, but on the plus side, gymnasts are looking more like athletes and less like candidates for 'Toddlers and Tiaras'.

- In sports - Part 2 - The NBA had one of the ugliest partial seasons you'd ever want to see, with games stacked end to end following a labor mess which could have been avoided, and the NHL, which had possibly one of the better season and post-seasons in recent memory, is about to do them one better by crashing a part or their whole 2013-14 season because the job they did seven years ago doesn't allow them to keep losing franchises in cities which can't support them. (Note to the commissioner - Shutting the doors four times in one term isn't anyone's idea of how to do your job properly. Figure it out or resign.)

- I'd still rather watch USA Network than NBC. Someone out there doesn't get it.

- Nice pictures from Loch Ness. Still doesn't tell us what's down there, but the unidentified swimming object in the new pictures is a lot nicer looking than the unidentifiable swimming object in the last pictures.

- On a personal note - It should take less than two years to decide 'yes' or 'no' on publishing a book, shouldn't it? Just venting, kids . . . The Business of Writing is less fun than the process of creation. By a lot.

Now that we've gotten some housecleaning out of the way, the next trick is to look over the field and see which target deserves a good harpooning. Maybe I'll add an unidentifiable picture of it.

April Fools Day (And Halloween) Must Be Early This Year

2012-01-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

Reality to Earth . . . Did I just hear you right? You're bringing back WHAT?

I know things are going badly over at NBC (The president of entertainment at the network as much as said so to reporters on Friday), but when you hear something like this one brainstorm you wonder if somebody's leg was being pulled right out of its socket in the meeting during which this idea came up.

Then you do a little research and realize they're taking it seriously and seem to be suggesting you might want to do so as well. The NBC network is reaching back into television's spoof-laden past to come up with . . . Drumroll please . . . A "visually spectacular reinvention" of "The Munsters" as an hour long drama. (I believe, given the fact it's being woven together by Brian Fuller (!), the same character who worked on the late, lamented "Pushing Daisies", and Bryan Singer (!!), who led the X-Men onto the screen, a dramedy with a bit of action is a more likely outcome.)

That's "The Munsters", folks. If you have any connection to a place where syndicated TV shows filled part of your childhood, you probably remember them. The show had two singularly goofy seasons on CBS in the 60's, along with a few movies and telemovies, and a late 80's syndicated reboot to its name. This came with the aid of a rather genial group of actors in classic movie monster make-up, interacting blithely with the 'normal' societies they were wrapped up in.

Sometimes lately I watch television with the same fascination some people watch auto races; to see when things go spectacularly wrong. NBC as of late qualifies as an auto race in which the track is littered with wreckage while some of the pit teams seem to have been diverting ideas from the main grid and saving the entertaining stuff for USA Network, where the short-season programming and the odd fun concepts NBCUniversal are generating seem to be doing a hell of a lot better than what's being splashed out onto the senior circuit. Perhaps they should be getting this one instead of the network, or it should be sent to one of their other wings, SyFy, as it would be the only way to assure the show would last long enough into the slash-and-burn festival NBC calls a television season to find out what they've gotten themselves into.

Are the networks running out of ideas? It's a good question without a definitive answer, but "Grandpa" Al Lewis standing down in his dungeon and mixing various potions might never have reached for an ingredient like this to throw into the mix. In any event, stay tuned ladies and gentlemen. Whether it makes sense or not, it's happening. I only shudder to think what's next.

Is it Over Yet? A Holiday Primer

2012-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, all. It's January 3rd, ladies and gentlemen. The hangovers of the world, both liquor-driven and holiday-prompted, should have faded by now enough to get back to whatever it is you do best, whether student or office drone; outdoors, indoors or behind closed doors.

In the world of commerce, it's been a better year for the shopkeeper, most especially if he or she is working at a distance from the consumers they've been courting. More people have been using the internet as an option, and while many use it as a convenience, I find there's a considerably larger reason for using the shipping departments of the world to handle Holiday Shopping; a reason which, had it existed in the 1840's, would have scared Ebeneezer Scrooge out of his mind in a way the three ghosts of Christmas never could have . . . And probably for the worse.

The opening of the shopping season has been, for the past few years, the scene of cavalry charges at the openings of stores which make "The Valley of Death" the "600" rode into look like Sunday afternoon on a merry-go-round. When people start talking about injuries and death tolls, something's wrong here, folks. There have been instances in the past few years where some loose end was carrying, and I don't mean boxes and bows, and someone was shot as a result. K-Mart has had to change its way of doing business since one of their people died in a stampede (Humans, not cattle) in 2008.

The latest example of this holiday spirit involved $180 sneakers, the Air Jordan XI's, where fights broke out in at least ten states where the footwear went on sale, with subsequent E-Bay resales tripling the price.

Seeing the holidays the way they're currently run, I have no doubt the old man would have sent Tiny Tim a check via Paypal, his family a turkey via Peapod and other gifts via Amazon, e-mailed Cratchit his promotion and raise with a request he run the office, and then crawled under the comforter on his four-post bed to await the ghost of Christmas yet to come. If he made it through to New Year's Eve, he would have needed to keep off the roads on Amateur Night, when most of those who drive shouldn't, especially drunk.

As is to be expected, most of us live to tell the tales of Christmas and New Year's, both good and ill. Let's get back to whatever it is we do well with the understanding that this year, maybe we'll do it a little better. It's quite possible . . . Even in a election year.

Happy Purple Finger Day, Egypt

2011-11-28T17:46:00.001-08:00

See it in your mind as I see it in mine. It's just after 9PM in Cairo, and a curious ten year old child, for these purposes we'll call him Abdul, is being settled into bed and is staring at his parents' index fingers, or more accurately, at the indelible purple ink which will be staining those fingers until it finally washes off completely . . .

Happy Purple Finger Day. With smiles on their faces, as you could judge by the camera images broadcast around the world, Egyptians are working slowly through the process of choosing a new government for themselves, a government they earned the right to choose by standing up and requesting it at the top of their lungs until the government in place read the writing on the wall and gave up the ghost of their regime. It wasn't easy, and as anyone on this side of the Atlantic will be glad to tell you, it isn't going to be easy. Down the road in Iraq, another group of smiling, purple fingered citizens could tell them that just as easily . . . Although the threat of being locked in a cellar with a reasonably psychotic gentleman with various painful implements for putting an "X" in the wrong place is no longer an issue.

They're taking there time with the process; watching it closely to make sure there's no cheating and telling the rest of the world it should take until mid-January until things run their course and a Parliament is chosen. It sounds like a plan to me, and someday, when little Abdul starts turning his finger purple on a regular basis, they'll probably be able to do it faster, all things progressing as the people want it to.

The boy is looking to his mother and father, and asking about the what the purple fingers mean. What they might be able to tell him is that the idea is simple. The image of Egypt is not to be what Pharaoh decrees, or the King demands, or what the current corrupt head of state arranges to have happen while he strips huge chunks of the country's riches from it. It is to be what they decide it will be. Everyone with a purple finger.

I Have Seen the Enemy, and He is Us

2011-11-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

I've spent a little time away from the land of opinion the past few months while life was going on. It's good to see you again, although under these circumstances I might have just been better off alternately shaking my head and burying it in the sand. Somehow, WMAM (White Middle-Aged Male . . . Ooh boy children, ain't that scary!) that I am, I seem to be the enemy of most everyone on the planet . . . And I'm not even one of the ones with money.

Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who created a strip called "Pogo" used the intentionally grammatically incorrect statement which titles this peace to make a point over forty years ago, and I find it no more and no less accurate than it can be seen today, in our land of the pointed finger. Put a "Tea Party" member in the room with an "Occupy Wall Street" member and though both of them see massive problems with the current system, want things to change and are protesting against the status quo, there's a good chance you'll need a WWE referee, the National Guard and at least one particular photogenic 'gentleman' from the UC Davis area to separate them.

Neither side is happy. Neither am I. Anyone who has tried to navigate the island of Manhattan in the past months knows what I mean (Hey! Is your getting around and people making it to their jobs on time more important than our message?), and anyone who sees the headaches some of the more extreme forms conservatism can engender in a society knows what I mean. (Can't you see what's happened to our world? Our anti-establishment is better than their anti-establishment any day! Those naughty Democrats!)

One of the more interesting parts of living in a free society is the right to express an opinion in a public forum (Like this one). Keeping people from getting to work to get on with their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, or suggesting business executive pledge not to hire anyone until the supposed 'war against business' ends, is another.

One of the little sidelights in my life in acting, and locally I had a chance to take part in a production of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", which is often held up as not only a dramatization of early American witch hunting, but of the later ills of the McCarthy era in hunting Communists. If you think we've grown out of this sort of thing, look around. I see a lot of hands out with their fingers pointed in dozens of different directions, and they are crying 'witch' again everywhere they point.

You are pointing at us, we are pointing at you, and everyone needs to put their fingers down, pick up their shovels and start digging their way out of this shit. It's an old school kind of solution, but it has been known to work.

The East Coast - A Little Wet Today

2011-08-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . There are some times when overreacting beats all Hell out of under-reacting. This is one of them.

Just ask the folks down south who are still putting their lives together years after everyone with the power to do a better job of protecting them screwed up if that's true.

New York and the East Coast, for those of you with a limited knowledge of where to find the Weather Channel, got hit with a storm named Irene which ranged from a Category Two Hurricane down to a tropical storm. This means some people who aren't used to seeing more than a puddle of water in their front yards are currently looking out their doors at Sea World.

From the start, most of the people whose sole purpose in life seems to be finding a way to stay in the offices they've been elected to jumped to life as if they'd been hit in the backside by a defibrillator paddle. Public transportation was stopped before the storm got here, activities were cancelled and low-lying areas were ordered evacuated without a moment's hesitation.

The Governor of New Jersey, who has more than a few miles of shoreline to worry about, demanded it cleared, and was more than a little pissed off when he saw surfers and beach-goers going about their business of Friday. I quote:

"Get the hell off the Beach in Asbury Park and get out. You’re done. It’s 4:30 PM. You’ve maximized your tan. Get off the beach. Get in you cars and get out of those areas.”

As you might guess, the man isn't considered the shy, retiring type, but he had a lot of company on the local level, with everyone getting on their horse and sounding the battle charge. It may seem like overkill, but before we call this a 'Chicken Little' story because it's not turning out to be a mass destruction event, let's face facts, when it comes to major tropical storms (And this one weighed in at 650 miles across), the New York Tri-State area isn't high on the list of targets, meaning we don't have so much experience as they might have in, let's say, Florida. They did what they thought best and it was a bit . . . Loud.

The bitching would be a lot louder and the casualty list a lot longer if the powers that be were laid back on this one. Believe it.

The Market Is Standard And Its Victims Poor

2011-08-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . "Well, as of this moment, they're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION! " - Dean Vernon Wormer, Animal House, 1978

Or, as Standard and Poor put it recently, instead of Triple A, we're making you Double A plus!

Oooh . . . Aaah . . . Let's all panic and drop over two billion in value in the stock market because someone took away half of an A. If you need any further proof the people in charge of money and policy need to have their heads examined, and us for putting a good deal of them in place, there you have it.

And just in case that doesn't do it for you, realize that a healthy chunk of the money which was pulled out of the stock market yesterday went, for the most part, into financial instruments of the very same debtor who was downgraded; the US Government.

The losers in all of this? The people who trusted the solutions coming out of Washington for the morass they've delivered us would keep the markets from panicking, and the government itself, who by listening faithfully to Standard and Poor and making it policy to only purchase securities with Triple A stamped on it made the rating an important mark, with anything less seen as a dismal failure.

The winners, as usual, was anyone who held aside enough in the way of liquid assets during the debt ceiling bacchanalia to be ready when its consequences hit the ground in financial America. The market dropped over five hundred points in a day last week and over six hundred thirty yesterday. That made stocks a bargain, and so the bargain hunters came and bought enough to move the market up a robust four hundred thirty points today.

Double secret probation made more sense than those who tend the current financial structures in this nation, and he was what would be referred to in this era as a complete tool.

That's the problem in Washington, come to think of it. All tools and no able carpenters.

A Deficit of Common Sense

2011-08-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . Quoting the great Gorilla Monsoon: "A pat on the back is only eighteen inches from a kick in the ass"

And now we come down to the wire and our politicians have decided to loosen a notch in the belt before the whole belly goes critical and causes us to "default".

"Default" is ours, ladies and gents. We elected them.

And make no mistake, the fight over whether to raise the debt ceiling is more about elections than finance; there's no greater evidence than the little fight which took place earlier in the process when the Republicans proposed a stop-gap which gave us a figure which would insure another round of gamesmanship occurred in 2012 while the Democrats proposed a higher number which would shove this mess into 2013. One side wanted to throw this mess into the view of the voters again just before the next presidential election and the other side was hoping to shove it under the rug until afterwards.

Anyone who tells you differently is selling you something. Somewhere the ghosts of political machines past on both sides are shedding tears of joy over the way their descendants have used the lessons of the past to screw over the voters of the present and call it statesmanship. And while a deal is in the offing as of this writing, the deal isn't done yet and they're dislocating their shoulders patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

This is what they're doing. They are their own bank and they've said they're raising their own credit limit to continue doing business while trying to figure out ways to undo mistakes both sides have been making since the Ford administration and stay in office . . . Mistakes like the one the Carter administration made by taking the only government agency which was firmly in the black at the time (Social Security) and turning what was conceived by FDR as an insurance program (Yay!) into what is now seen as an entitlement program (Boo!).

Only these yahoos could make old people getting the benefits they spent a lifetime paying for seem like wastrels for actually having the stones to ask for their benefits to be paid when it's their turn. (Dirty rotten baby boomers turning 65 and asking for their money . . . For Shame!)

The lot of them want you to forget little details like this when it's the last thing you need to do. Let me make this plain. There are no winners here. There are no heroes here. There are only politicians here, doing what politicians do best and then calling it rain. They'll fix things now alright . . . Just ask any dog or cat what the term 'fixed' means to them and you'll get a good idea of what's coming.

Quantities May Be Limited Due To Insanity

2011-07-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . Just for a laugh, can we try to keep deadly weapons from being acquired by crazy people?

Automatic rifles . . . That's a good start. Can we keep automatic rifles out of the hands of lunatics, just to make life a little less interesting? Or to possibly make life spans in the general vicinity of these lunatics longer?

I'm not entirely sure what level or brand of crazy we should limit this restriction to, but until we can be sure, until some government ciphers can spend too much money on a definitive study, how about all kinds? If you're certifiable, and especially if you're writing 1200 page manifestos quoting the Unabomber and railing against any of your neighbors (Race, color and creed notwithstanding) you shouldn't have province over a weapon capable of rapid fire against a group of unarmed civilians.

Just saying, folks. And while we're at it, how about restricting the sale of everyone's favorite horse manure replacement, ammonium nitrate fertilizer, to people who actually have large plots of confirmed farm acreage which are producing crops and feeding people? True, in the case of the Oslo bombing this past weekend we had a crazy farmer at work, but that's the exception rather than the norm. You don't need drums of highly explosive materials to fertilize a backyard. Let those weekend grass-cutters stick to something which can't take out half of an office building when mixed with other easy to find materials.

I know if I'm going to hear it from anyone, it'll be from those who believe in the right to bear arms. I'm here to tell you I'm pretty big on the free speech elements of the same document that comes from, as well as the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we all agree is a good thing. And I'm also sure someone bearing arms could have stopped the madness the other day . . . Just not someone crazy with an automatic weapon.

Common sense doesn't seem to always mesh well with what we perceive to be reality, but let's shove the two of them into a room together for a while (Unarmed would be nice)and see if we can make them get along.

Some Lives Will Not Be Saved

2011-07-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

The headline out of England was as sad as it seemed inevitable. There was another talent, both brilliant and out of kilter, who wasn't going to see the somewhat mystic age of 28.

When I was a youngster, I saw the train wreck which was Amy Winehouse acted out at least twice for public consumption with The Pearl, Janis Joplin, falling to heroin on an October day in 1970 which was only two weeks after Jimi Hendrix dies choking on the contents of his own stomach. Back then it was treated as the inevitable tragedy which happened when the 'scourge of illegal drugs' was involved . . . What's commonly referred to as a cautionary tale.

Cautionary tale . . . Warning. There are those who will not be warned and eventually join the ranks of those who could not be saved. John Belushi, who could draw laughter with a smile, a flick of an eyebrow and a samurai sword, and didn't have a bad Chicago blues growl either, crashed into the ground with the impact of a mile long meteor; an impact which said 'This is what you could do to yourself. I'm Dead' with very little room for misinterpretation.

While I detest the sort of tabloid paper which leads with this kind of headline, it has to be said. The title of this warning goes 'They tried to make me go to rehab, and I said, No, no, no . . . And then I paid the price.'

Trying to save every life which runs down this road is a fools errand, but one which has to be undertaken, like it or not. Some won't be saved at any cost or any amount of effort, but the ones which are saved cut the sting of those losses, however many that turns out to be.

If people have the talent to grab a corner of the world, shake it, and make people pay attention . . . Take it from someone who most days is scratching around on the outside of that snow globe looking in . . . There's no greater creative gift. I'd like to see more people make that their drug.

The Legal System Will Drive You Crazy (When It Works To Design Specs)

2011-07-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Reality To Earth . . . Reasonable doubt is a good idea. Even when it seems it isn't.

There are plenty of other examples, but for a lot of people in my generation it goes back to the trial of OJ Simpson. Months of testimony, tons of evidence, gloves that wouldn't fit and a whole other pile of things which a jury seemed to magically distill in only four hours of sitting together in a room. The word was not guilty, the innocent dead all these years later still haven't had some form of justice done for the crimes committed against them, and a defendant those of us sitting on the outside looking in considered as guilty as could possibly be determined walked away.

The wrath of public opinion and righteous indignation have found a new "What were those twelve people thinking" watermark in the trial of a smiling, somewhat smug defendant and a dead innocent, a doe-eyed two year old who practically redefines the term. From what the evidence shows, we can only hope she never knew or never suffered due to what was done, but there will always be that underlying, nagging feeling she might have.

I've resisted writing on this subject for a few days. I wanted to see whether the 'lay of the land' was much the same as during the trial, with public opinion coming down like a hammer on the prosecution, the defendant and the jury.

I think the outside headline "No Justice" and the interior "Monster Mom beats Slay Rap" in Wednesday's July 6th's NY Daily News pretty much crystallized what I've been seeing since. The only people who seem to have doubted the defendant was guilty of murdering her daughter were the twelve whose opinions counted in this case. They saw the evidence presented, they weighed it, and they came to a decision which was largely based on the phrase every judge charges a jury with . . . "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt".

There are two thing no one can consider beyond that reasonable doubt. One is that Caylee Anthony is dead. Casey Anthony, amidst the clouds of stories, obfuscation and defenses walks away with time served. Just as with the case which I began the column with, the service of justice has been relegated to the court those of faith consider the final one, as there's little chance of anyone else being charged with the crimes.

The second fact, even if it currently irritates us, is that the term reasonable doubt is set within the legal system to protect the innocent accused of crimes in this country, if not always the innocent who are the victims of crime.

Stated simply . . . If the umpires blew the call, the ones they don't miss are what keeps the game on the field fair. And if I'm resorting to sports analogies, it's time to call a -30- to this entry.

A Fore Which Has Nothing To Do With Golf

2011-07-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . The summer of the superheroes just took an ugly turn.

I have very little problem with people who take sides in an issue, no matter how odd the issue might be. Taking a side in an issue means taking the time to stand up and be counted, and God knows we need every cerebral cortex out there firing on all cylinders to help steer this planet in the right direction.

That said, I think we could probably do with one or two less of the ones we have. Out in San Francisco there is a current movement to ban circumcision within the city which, in itself, is a legislative intrusion on an issue of choice made by a family . . . A very un-San Francisco item given the counter-culture history of a city which believes in the rights proffered by constitutional amendment . . . And that means all of them, including freedom of religion.

What started as a attempt to prevent circumcision by something called the "Intactivist" movement has gone from a complex civil issue to a monumentally ugly subject, as in Anti-Semitic ugly, as in . . . And I swear to you on my blessed keyboard as a fiction writer I didn't make this up . . . "Monster Mohel vs. Foreskin Man" ugly.

Look it up, ladies, gentlemen and kiddies. A comic book called "Foreskin Man" (!), in its second issue, depicts a bris as a religious ceremony taking place under the auspices of a vicious, blank-eyed psychopath with two yarmulke-wearing thugs at his beck and call. The father who insists upon it is considered strange and the mother doesn't survive the 'evil onslaught'. The child in all of this is taken by the good guys to be raised "Intactivist" as burning circumcision equipment forms the movement logo in the background.

Really, people? You're kidding me, right? This is, and always has been, a choice the parents make, whether it has to do with religious tradition or medical maintenance. This may also be the rare occasion you can put Jews, Muslims and Christians in the same room, have them point back through time to Abraham and say "Yeah . . . This we agree on." (Even if in Christian circles it's a medical option rather than a religious ceremony.)

If you have a problem with circumcision, and I can certainly understand having a problem with any form of elective surgical procedure, don't have it done to you and yours. There, OK? I solved things for you. I offered a simple, bottom line solution. The constitutional amendments apply to your choices just the same way they apply to mine.

Indulgence in blatant anti-religious propaganda, however, is where you not only lose me, it's where you put me and the "nipped before I knew where my bud was" subject of this rigmarole on the line against you. I have a son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter and someday I'm probably going to have a grandson, to all of whom any form of Anti-Semitic garbage is or will be one hell of a personal issue. That makes it a personal issue to me, and I find the people on my side a lot better equipped for this kind of argument than the ones on yours; people who seem to literally and figuratively be unable to do anything but go for the groin.

Take your hate and go away. Go far away. Stay there.

$olving a Problem by Admi$$ion

2011-06-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . No this isn't about Weiner and his True Confessions. It's all about the money.

For $25 there are a lot of things you can still do in this world, many of them fun, or filling, or just plain necessary. Looking to add to the list are the people who are looking to take the area below the World Trade Center memorial and turn it into a museum about the site, the legacy of 9/11 and, hopefully, who we are as a people in regards to how that event changed the face of our world.

And now for the numbers . . . All of this is to come at the price of $25.00 per person per visit (Suggested) or $20.00 (Mandatory).

The person who brought this costly ($60 Million dollars annual operating costs) little brain child to the fore compared the museum to MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art, if you're not familiar) or The American Museum of Natural History. Both of these cultural giants charge nominal admission, but to be fair, they also have membership plans which allow an individual annual unlimited access to their sites for as low as $75 and $70 respectively. (Lower per person if you take a family plan, Higher if you want all of the perks of becoming a friend or donor.)

There are other considerations to be made, especially if they wish to compare their orange with two of the giants of The Big Apple. I find it unusual, first of all, to have the WTC museum below ground, when the very essence of the site was always its presence for New Yorkers and visitors above the ground, reaching into the sky. The overall space they would also need to hold as much in display on the subterranean site as either of the aforementioned museums hold would require them to dig down far enough to cut through the site’s ‘bathtub’* and practically hit magma. (It’s a bit of poetic license, friends. This is a figurative gag, not a literal estimation.) Also, these two museums are standalone organizations, and don't have a 1700 foot tall real estate beast and other buildings going up as part of the same site, all of which are fully capable of assisting in generating the revenue required to open their doors.

To charge admission of some sort for a museum, suggested or not, is not an unreasonable request, but the price ‘suggested’ seems out of touch with the fiscal reality of its potential visitors. To visit the memorial will be free. I find it hard to believe the museum space beneath will be getting as much use or as many visitors as it would take to keep it open. That would be 2.4 million people a year (suggested) or 3 million people a year (mandatory) . . . An average of over 8200 visitors per day. It’s the paradox of pricing, but the prices which will help increase attendance are going to have to be lower; low enough to bring the most possible visitors.

The bottom line to this story of bottom lines would be to take a good hard look at how the people putting this museum together are making their decisions. It would be a damned shame to get something this important wrong.

* Subterranean concrete wall sealing off the site within the original landfill.

Le End of Le Season

2011-06-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . Miami Heat, I watched George Steinbrenner at work for well over 30 years. You are no Yankees.

Last night proof was handed down in a rather emphatic manner that sometimes buying a championship team isn't as easy as signing the paychecks. Since the "Lebron-In" which preceded NBA training camps, it had been a foregone conclusion in many eyes that the Miami Heat had done just that, working within the salary cap structure to build a team with three All-Stars up front and in the starting line-up.

The Dallas Mavericks have an All-Star, a former All-Star, a load of team players, a slightly crazy owner* (Oops, forgot . . . He's rich so he's 'eccentric') and a plan to weave all of the other elements which make up a winning team together into one capable unit.

Ask the Heat if they succeeded. Ask the Lakers if they succeeded. Just don't ask me; I'm not a particular fan of either team, but I found myself smiling because the guy with the sinus infection and high fever for a few games was holding up the championship trophy. To be fair, he had a rotten first half in yesterday's game, but there was that 'team' thing going on with Dallas, so he had plenty of time to get his act together before it was time to take his bows in this little drama.

The other team . . . Wasn't. I've seen my share of championship teams, and the Heat, for all their talent, isn't one of those; not yet, at least. Great teams not only have great groups of players; they know how to win the big games.

Dwayne Wade? He's got the ring to prove he can be part of a team which can get the job done. Chris Bosh? A lot to learn yet, but not a lot of time to learn it. Lebron James . . .?

Everyone's going to be piling on, so I won't add much to the debate, but I will say this. If he's to be the best of the best, he's got to be all-in when he hits the stage. The game we saw wasn't a match for the stage he played it on, and if he doesn't want to be "The Man" he isn't going to do that team a hell of a lot of good in the long run.

We all know who "The Man" is (Or "The Woman" depending on the team). It's the player with the talent to either back up his mouth or to do the talking for him, and he's a vital part of any championship team. He steps up. He takes his game to another level, no matter what that game is. He wants the rock in crunch time (See the pantheon from Bill Russell to Michael Jordan), the puck in a tie game with time running down (Howe, Richard, Gretzky and a particularly forceful Messier come to mind), the ball handed or passed to him with the Super Bowl on the line (I could name a few dozen and we'd be here all day), or the bases loaded in the ninth with two outs and his team down a run (And to be fair, George bought a lot of those, and raised a few from the minors up).

I didn't see that person on the Heat. If they want the trophy, someone has to find that person in him (If there's a season next year). You don't win a title by just showing up. You have to take it.

Dallas took it.

*Don't take offense, Mark. I've seen the Monday Night Raw wrestling footage. If you're a bit crazy, you at least have fun with it. ;)

Reality TV 1 – Really, Ladies? Really?

2011-06-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . Don’t expect me to believe anyone would want to intentionally call themselves something ending in ‘Zilla’ unless they’re a hundred feet tall and breathe radioactive fire.

Let’s be precise about what you’re seeing here folks. I’m talking about an odd little corner of the world of Reality Television and I want your opinions. For what I see here, I honestly prefer the term ‘unscripted television’ and if you want me to believe something’s real, I’d like to see an effort to take the patently astounding and make it a little more believable.

The itch in my hitch today comes from a jaw-dropping creation known as “Bridezillas’, a parade of fluffy car wrecks which has its season premiere this Sunday on the “WE” (Women’s Entertainment) network. Like many car wrecks, be they NASCAR or INDY car, I find a certain vulgar fascination at what I see on the screen, so long as no one gets hurt, but while I can believe there are people who will act like one might see them on this show, and there are some who are so bold as to do so on camera, I cannot figure out for the life of me how the producers get the ladies on this show (Seven seasons down, the eighth on approach) to agree to appear on it, knowing they’re going to be held up as the apex of bad pre-marital behavior . . . Complete with a cute, snarky voiceover narrator whose obviously having fun in the studio while watching another Weddingeddon go down.

Just how do they find them? Is there a nationwide network of wedding planners, dressmakers and caterers who keep their eyes open to cull the herd, giggling with their phones in their hands and contacting the producers when they find one of these shy, retiring darlings? Or is it an all-volunteer army, with the brides contacting the network with the enticement ‘Bring the cameras; you ain’t seen nothing yet?’*

“It is puzzlement” as the King of Siam (with his dozen or so wives) sung in his musical of years gone by; as is the ability of the husbands-to-be to resist the urge to run for the nearest available hills during the wide range of histrionics displayed. Love and patience only accounts for their hanging in so much . . . I’d love to see the green room where the Valium dispenser is kept.

One thing for sure, the divorce rate can't be very high for this crowd. If they get past the wedding, I quake at the thought of what it would take to split them up.

* For those who know the answer to this mystery, please share it if you're not giving away a trade secret.

The Advent of the Weeping Politician

2011-06-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . What a wiener!

The same old tune has come around again, in its usual sequence and with all of the notes we expect to be hit in such a song. It goes as follows:

"I'm innocent, I'm innocent
(Though I may be slightly guilty)
I'm innocent, but it was not my fault.
Alright, my dear constituents, in fact I really did it!
And now it's time to cry my tears of salt . . ."

Representative Anthony Wiener, who's been accused of displaying the casings on his sausage through his twitter account, as well as a few dirty jokes to the young and pretty who didn't mind seeing them, started out by crying 'hacker' with the sort of brio the boy who cried wolf . . . Cried wolf with.

In short, he lied in public. He tried to get away with something which, while of certainly questionable taste for a recently married man, wasn't particularly illegal. The problem with this, of course, is that by his actions he simply reinforced the image of 'Politician as lecherous, lying sack of slag' . . . As if we needed further reinforcement of the image when it's been, to be quite frank, done better. (The hot dog puns will stop here.)

In watching the public self-flogging, complete with the sort of eye-wiping, wife-praising insincerity we've come to expect in these cases, a certain boredom at the representative's performance starting to overcome me; a sort of "Yeah, we get it, you're sorry, now can we get back to watching the real news now?" feeling. Politics or not, I've been watching this show for years . . . Saw the Tidal Basin Bombshell case, saw Teddy when his driving skills failed him, saw Clinton after Monica, even saw Falwell carry the Ark of Tears after he sinned . . . Been there, done that. Now get it over with and go tweet yourself.

I'd like to say I don't care about this sort of thing, but there is something deep down at the base of this which bothers me. People voted for this nimrod, just like scores of other nimrods; placed their trust in him to do his job for the period of his term. They didn't sign on for this. They asked for two things when they elected him; to do his job and not make them look like morons for trusting him with the seat.

Maybe that's the problem. A good deal of the elected officials of this, and to be fair, other countries, don't seem to give a damn about how their personal behavior reflects on the people who put them in office. I'm not saying they have to act like perfect little "Miss Manners" robots while they're on the job, that's not going to happen, but maybe they should be reminded of their responsibility when they swear to uphold the constitution on the day they take office.

How about that? When the public servants we elect take the oath of their office, a line should be added somewhere in the text where they promise not to make grand, tear-stained asses of themselves and embarrass the people who trusted them while they're on the job they were elected to fill. I think I'd be willing to follow the leader willing to raise his right hand to that.

To be sure, no one's going to take the initiative on such a measure. That would involve the usual finger-pointing nonsense and a session or two of barking across the aisle at them. It would also require a level of common sense few in the political arena seem to want to display. It would be nice, though.

A Little Addendum - The Veruca Salt Driving School

2011-06-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . You're making my point for me. Stop it, will you?

Local news put a slight twist in my recent tale of poor driving and people who must have gotten their licenses as golden tickets out of a Wonka Bar. I'm drifting through an eleven o'clock newscast when I hear what's an unfortunately common occurrence; an accident where a small child was killed near a stop sign which was taken as more a suggestion than a potential breach of traffic law.

The typical story points were hit; among them how the neighborhood has been trying to do something about the fact people weren't stopping at that particular sign, and then comes the coup de grace . . . As the local reporter is standing near the sign talking through the story a series of cars passes the sign, many of which did so without pausing, hesitating or, as one might hope right after an incident at the same spot, stopping.

On camera. I hope they got a few license plates in the footage. It's another example of something that's funny about something that's not funny.

When you're out on the road, you might want to consider it's a good idea not to hit anything when you're out driving. A lack of blood smeared across the hood keeps the finish on your car looking good, and in case you're thinking of ignoring something larger, not having another car's front fender engine come through your side door does wonders for vehicle life.

We're supposed to know better. Give it a try.

It's the End of the World as We Know it . . . Part 52.

2011-05-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

Saturday at 6 PM Eastern Standard Time on May 21st has long since come and gone, along with the end of the world which didn't happen and the general ennui of the public which did once they checked the floor under their feet and found it mostly intact.

We can credit an old preacher by the name of Harold Camping for this particular Chicken Little exercise, but let's be fair . . . It's not the first time the world has failed to end on schedule as interpreted by a man of some cloth (and even more cheek), and hardly the first time the person whose been wrong came up with an excuse. What ticks me off grandly is the one he's chosen.

This one's a beauty. While we were waiting, we've all been judged silently. Which means the judgement part of our final exam is over, but the death, destruction, earthquakes and other stuff he warned us about will happen during the next end of the world on October 21st. In essence, without so much as blinking, he's told us "Oops, did I say May? I meant October . . . Let's just reschedule."

I'm here to tell you exactly what my perception of the problem is, ladies and gentlemen, and you're welcome to comment as you please, agree and disagree, visit the advertisers and stay for a while to give me a piece of your mind. Just not too much of a piece, especially since that's the problem in the first place.

As a species we can conceive of the idea of God, listen to the words we've had attributed to his prophets and believe that following the varied good laws of life handed down through the ages will bring us the rewards outlined in each of the many religions that have been created as a delivery system for those laws . . . But we're too stupid to understand the word of God.

The IQ just isn't there yet, fellow travelers, and we're not just stupid, but as deaf as a bag of bricks at the bottom of the sea. The fact we don't know this is the problem. We feign knowledge of the grand design and ultimate plan while we muck around here on our pretty little blue planet, fighting over who's right making interpretations two people of the same religion on different sides of the planet couldn't completely agree on under penalty of death. Some of the most brilliant minds on the planet can believe in multiple dimensions of time and space and don't believe one of them could be heaven. There are times you wonder who could blame them as there are inconsistencies to every last argument we advance on either side of the story, and if we can't get past that, how do we expect a being who can encapsulate the entire cosmos in his mind (or hers, to be fair to those who believe in a Great Mother) to do anything less than shake the head containing said mind when we try to get a grip on things and miss not only badly, but with such great certainty that we were right in the first place. Seeing us, I have faith there's a greater intelligence to the universe. The thought we're anywhere near the apex of thought is just too damned depressing to deal with.

Let's even consider the value in limiting things for a second. I want you to imagine it's last Saturday at God Inc. when the Earth's divisional head goes running through the halls of heaven to check Godsoft Outlook and see if he's got an End-of-the-World event scheduled for 6PM EST.

"6PM Eastern Standard . . . Midnight in Jerusalem? On Sunday I'm supposed to destroy a planet? Apocalypse? Now?"

So the world will end someday. So what? Nothing is forever except forever. I get that. I'm not going to even hazard a guess as to when it'll happen, but I surely hope we've matured enough as a people by that time to not make such a damnable mess of the run-up to the event.

An old saying goes "Take care of the little things, and the big things will take care of themselves." I suggest we take it to heart, keep our little hamster cage Earth nice and clean and take care of ourselves and our neighbors without worrying about things like Judgement Day which are best left in more capable hands.

Oprahpalooza

2011-05-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . If a talk show falls in the forest and everyone's around to hear it, does it mean it was more than a talk show?

The Oprah "I'll See You 'til I See You" World Tour comes to an end this week, ladies and gentlemen, leaving a one hour scheduling abyss in syndicated markets across the country* and at least three other talk show spinoffs in its wake . . . Along with a roar of trumpets which would have make the blast which took down Jericho's walls sound like a jazz quartet's last set at 3 AM.

Hyped much? The final shows, no matter what happens during them, couldn't possibly live up to the over one year roll-up which preceded them, even if they needed Chicago's United Center to film two of the three. Being sort of an aficionado of the art of television last calls**, I find myself curious at what's going to be going on in this final week, but I don't expect life to stop on this somewhat busy little sphere because one host decided to move on with her life.

If we got over Johnny Carson retiring in favor of Jay Leno, America, we'll get through this.

Don't get me wrong. A lot of interesting television went on in the 25 years Oprah Winfrey held court in her studio (And beside that, it wouldn't be smart for any writer to gnash teeth at someone who A. Puts literacy high on her list of priorities and B. You'd probably consider choosing from a selected list of felonies to do work for), but it's a bit much. Especially when you consider that when the fallout settles from this telenuke, I expect we'll see the lady coming back to the airwaves in some way, shape or form.

I preach patience Oprah fans, for Oprah II is out there somewhere in your future. The truly creative never completely leave the stage, they just recharge their batteries and find new ways to dazzle you the next time they pop-up . . . Especially those creative people with a brand-spanking new cable network at their disposal.

*New York's Channel 7 seems to just be shaking its head and filling the space with an extra hour of news. Normally I'd pan them for their lack of creativity, but as their network, in the past month, ash-canned two hours of daytime soap programming (Both of which have been automatic programming plug-ins for over forty years apiece!) in favor of a new cooking show and a new reality show, they get a pass to grab a mop and bucket and clean up in the aftermath.

**Someday, if the silly season in this country slackens for a few days, I might walk you through a tour of a few personal favorite, or somewhat infamous, last calls. These include both a literal middle finger to the network which cancelled a show and a somewhat cute figurative one given in another case.

The Confusinator

2011-05-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . We've heard of this miraculous invention called zippers. Do any of you people keep them closed anymore?

The one problem you run into about talking about things which make you tilt your head in confusion is sometimes, well, they're confusing.

I thought that among the list of answers for the question "What do you give the man who has everything?" the answer would almost never be a child, especially if the man is married to someone else at the time and they're perfectly capable of having children of their own. Four times over, in fact.

There's plenty of blame to go around here if one wants to get into that, but I'm not even sure why anyone should care about blame at this point. We know about celebrities like the Governator and the people who float around them, living within their somewhat unstable auras, and as a result, things are invariably going to happen which they're going to have to try and shake off like water on a wet dog.

People get hurt though. Real people with real feelings get hurt, and just because someone with a big, er . . . Ego thought it was perfectly alright to play 'Upstairs, Downstairs' (Both at the same time) doesn't mean he had the right to do it. There was a consummate lack of common sense involved on the part of both Ahhhnold and what is to be referred to in any future divorce actions as 'the correspondent'.

George Carlin, in his monologue "I Used to be an Irish-Catholic" referred to what constituted a sin as " . . . Wanna. Ya gotta wanna. Hell . . . Wanna is a sin all by itself." The idea of sin notwithstanding, wanna, in this case, made people who didn't do anything to deserve it sad, left a wife hurt, (If not confused for long, given the legal reaction) and it left a lot of people shaking their heads, confused again. Most of us will shake off the confusion, but there are kids who are going to have to live with the results of the adults in their lives going through the usual motions of dealing with unthinking behavior after the fact. This includes one who probably found out all of the details the hard way in one large lump and has to deal with it.

This is one thing The Eraser can't erase. He can only pick up the pieces and make things as right as is humanly possible. Maybe someone will learn a lesson before the next time, or maybe the idea of someone learning a lesson is just my way of dealing with the confusion.

I think I'm going to look for something truly silly for the next time I make contact, fellow travelers. Funny ha-ha beats funny strange any day.

IMF - Uh . . . That's NOT What Those Initials Stand For

2011-05-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . Indiscretions Are One Thing, Raving Lunacy Another

There are certain things you expect from the rich and/or powerful, and in certain instances they rarely disappoint you. You expect an overdrive of hungers for the best things in life, to the point where they spend money on things that make you ask if you'd do something similarly crazy if you had the money. You expect marriages by the dozen, divorces by the truckload and news articles following the merry-go-round of their lives arriving by oil tanker. You expect the indiscreet; with leanings towards the sensational.

Rich men chasing maids down the hallway? Possibly, if it's in one of those fluffy post-Victorian class comedies where everything comes out alright when one is actually caught and marriage to the rich fool is in the offing.

That's not what the director of the International Monetary Fund, a man with the nickname "The Great Seducer" is accused of. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was thought to be a contender for the presidency of France, when finding a maid entering his suite in the early afternoon, is said to have chased her through the suite naked and forced himself on her. He then hit the bricks in what has been described as a big hurry, to the point where NY-NJ Port Authority Police had to pull him out of his first class flight home and drag him off to "La Bastille Americain."

Having had an affair with an IMF staffer previously, and in admitting it apologized for an error in judgement, I wonder what sort of response he's going to make for (excuse the pun) a boner like this.

I also find myself wondering just what state of mind you have to be in to act like that. At the base of this, I see a rich man in New York who wants something, and either isn't halfway smart enough or just too damned lazy to go out and get it in a way which doesn't involve committing a felony. (A misdemeanor possibly, but not a felony.) A hotel maid, or any other woman in any other profession, has the right to go to work and not assume some twit playing master of the manor is going to think he can get away with whatever he pleases just because . . . Well, it pleases him. And at the top of this, the behavior is coming from one of the men in charge of a major part of this planet's monetary policy.

On the up side, if he's guilty as charged and convicted of the crime, not any more he isn't. If he isn't smart enough to stay out of trouble on multiple occasions in the pursuit of getting his rocks off, France and the rest of the world doesn't need him in charge of anything more important than his own pocket change.

Mamma Mia!

2011-05-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . I Think the Mother of the Year Award is Sewn Up

At the start of any endeavor, it’s rare when we suddenly find ourselves standing at the top of a mountain looking down. It’s hard to imagine finding a place which crystallizes a purpose in one perfect jewel of an idea. It’s like starting a marathon one hundred feet from the finish line. It’s the feeling the character Max Bialystock in the movie “The Producers” has when he’s looking to find the worst play of all time and opens the first page of a disaster called “Springtime for Hitler.”

You want to see a full break with reality? I’m here to deliver a beauty for you, dear readers. I give you a San Francisco woman named Kerry C. and her eight year old daughter, Brittany.

Brittany is a lively looking, round faced little girl who’ll do anything mommy asks, happily involved in the wild, self-image warping world of child beauty pageants. (And yes, I’ll call them beauty pageants as I don’t want to waste a single iota of written sarcastic sentiment on the term ‘scholarship pageant’, especially in this case.)

Brittany will also lie down on a bed while mommy injects Botox into her face to keep her little dimpled face from showing wrinkles. That’s Botox . . . A muscle-paralyzing agent which is known popularly to be dispensed by plastic surgeons for wrinkles, but also has a series of beneficial uses including treatment of migraines, forms of muscle stiffness and axillary hyperhydrosis. That’s Botox . . . A derivative of botulinum toxin. (That’s the tox part, folks.)

Where do I start with this? Let’s go with the practical elements. First, if not particularly foremost, this is a prescription drug and the mother isn’t a medical professional . . . If she were; any state board in the country would yank her license for an act of this nature so fast they’d take half her arm with it. Second, in the interview which introduced me to this story, she’s visibly reluctant to supply information about who supplied her with the Botox, which screams procurement by illegal means, either on her part or that of her supplier; perhaps both. Third . . .

The HELL with it! She’s a PARENT introducing a TOXIN to the growing, mostly unformed body of an EIGHT YEAR OLD to prevent WRINKLES to win a CONTEST. Never mind the short term stupidity of the act itself; no one knows what this will do to the child in the long run . . . The mother doesn’t seem to care, she just wants her little Sardonicus* to have her face frozen wrinkle-free for pageant purposes. The professionals who use this on stuff on adults agree it shouldn’t be used on a minor. Read the label, which is available through the producer . . . As with most prescription medicines, this one comes with a list of warnings which would make most people seriously weigh the options.

The child, who shouldn’t be weighing the options required in making this kind of decision, informed, misinformed or otherwise, is dutifully doing as she’s told because she doesn’t “think wrinkles are nice on a little girl.”

That’s coming on a direct feed from the mother’s mouth, of course. At eight, even on the most precocious of children, opinions of this type have been shaped within the confines of the environments provided by the parents.** Without a load of therapy, I would bet this kid is going to have a fear of the natural aging process and self-image problems for the rest of her life, especially when her supply of face-freezing botulinum is taken from her which, as I write this, is a process which the city of San Francisco’s health services department is gearing up for.

Don’t spare the horses on a slam-dunk like this one, ladies and gents. From the horrific failures of varied child service agencies I’ve had to watch cross my newspapers and TV screens in the past forty or so years due to mishandled abuse cases, I’ll admit there were times when you weren’t my favorite people on the planet. I’M rooting for you, so that maybe in a few years; at least one child will still be able to smile as a result.

*Look up the image, ye of the strong-stomached. It was a nasty make-up job in a b-movie about a noble whose face froze in a death's-head when he grave-robbed a winning lottery ticket. Cheesy as it may have been, it made me jump as a kid.

** Take it from someone who’s been through the process twice. Once they take your base attempts at development at a young age and launch themselves whole cloth into independent thought later on, anything can happen. :)

The Veruca Salt Driving School

2011-05-11T08:41:00.002-07:00

Reality to Earth . . . Watch out before you kill someone . . . Me, for one.

In the past week I would like to thank whatever arm of providence has seen fit to allow the reflexes I had as a teenager to suddenly and miraculously make a few guest appearances, not only by the ability to cut the speed of my car in a timely manner, but also by practically mind-merging me with my steering system to keep us both intact in our factory-original pieces.

I would also like to offer warnings to certain outside agents, like the driver of the black car in the center lane the other night who cut across my lane to get to an exit at over 60 miles per hour and missed my front bumper by all of six inches . . . Like the nimrod in another black car who ran a red light in New Rochelle, New York last Friday going the wrong way on a one way street. (I was quicker on that one. He missed me by a foot) . . . To my two "friends" on Sunday who thought a road full of mid-Mother's Day traffic somehow resembled the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and shot past me from right to left, changing lanes without signaling at about 80.

Once again . . . Six inches.

And they were only three examples. I could go on further, but the point is made. Outside of the racer boys, who need to find a track where throwing a ton and a half of steel and plastic around a high speeds can be a diversion best kept to themselves, I find myself thinking of one Veruca Salt, or at least an image of the child actress in the red dress playing her. I can see her, having made it to the age of driving, howling at her father/driving instructor "But I want to get there NOW, Daddy!"*

Getting there now involves getting there. In one piece. Intact.

I drive at a pretty good rate of speed, staying with, ahead of, or out of the way of the flow of traffic, depending on which tactic the situation requires. I'm not the guy doing forty in the fifty-five zone, not by a long shot. To be fair, they can drive me almost as nutty as the guy who passes me and cuts across three lanes of traffic right-to-left at eighty.

It's crazy out there, ladies and gents. Gas is expensive, but lives are a lot more precious. Listen to a traffic report on your local news station almost any day and you'll be amazed at what's going on. Example - A cluster of accidents occurred in near-comic sequence inside of only a five-mile span and completely screwed up traffic in most of the state of Connecticut for a time this past weekend. To my knowledge, no one was carried away from them under a sheet, but almost 33000 people last year weren't that lucky.

Maybe it's possible we're heading for the right track; that was the lowest number in 60 years, but it's still a sobering figure which can be dropped a lot lower. The crackdown on driving drunk helps. Let's really go for it by eliminating driving stupid.

*For those of you into the trivia, Julie Dawn Cole, the original Veruca Salt from the 1971 "Willy Wonka" movie, grew up to be a distinctly, pleasantly non-bratty looking actress who currently teaches children her craft in England. (In beautiful downtown Blog-World, you check things like this out sometimes to make sure specific people haven't had bad experiences with the things you're talking about.)