Random Acts of Pondering

Is That Chip on Your Shoulder a Political Agenda or a Race Card?

2008-03-02T01:39:00.003-06:00

Some people just need to have something to complain about. I wish they would stop, because my head hurts from spinning around so much in utter awe at the pettiness of it all. The Washington Post had a story that proves my point.

Apparently, there is a minor stink on the internet, because of the fact that Saturday Night Live is using the white-Asian comedian, Fred Armisen, to play Barack Obama in its sketches. Hey, he does a great impersonation and he’s funny. No one complained when he played Prince. And, no one complained when Darrell Hammond played Rev. Jesse Jackson for years. The hypocrisy can only be attributed to the political agendas of the complainers. Politics just seems to bring out the best in people ;) If you saw the show earlier tonight, you certainly wouldn’t think they were Obama bashing. Hillary Clinton definitely got the less favorable role in the opening skit. My impression was that SNL put on an equal opportunity show when it came to mocking the two candidates.

I don’t recall anyone complaining when Eddie Murphy played the old Jewish guy in the Barber Shop scenes. He was just damn funny! So to all of the complainers, I say, “Find something important to complain about, like the service at the drive through or why commercials are 10 times louder that the shows on TV.

Tonight's Debate - Finally Some Foreign Policy?

2008-02-21T15:50:00.008-06:00

I've been waiting for this to happen for weeks. So far it's been all social issues and political rhetoric. Clinton and Obama talk about heath care, education and the middle class. McCain and Huckabee talk about the war on terror, who is more conservative and occasionally border control. Ugggh. A fine collection of calculated, safe pandering to the voters. The reality, at this point in the process, is that the candidates all sound like the teacher in a Charlie Brown TV special, wa, wa, wah, wah. Most people already have there opinions fixed in their minds.

So what have I been waiting for? Do any of the candidates have any grasp of foreign policy? Musharraf's loss in Pakistan elections. Castro passing a token torch to his brother. Kosovo declared independence and now there is a riotous backlash in Serbia. In previous election years, the Russians or China would have used this as a prime opportunity to invade some small country, conduct questionable weapons test, or implement a new "crackdown". Especially if the U.S. was already up to its necks in another war. A lame duck president and a bunch of candidates afraid to take a stance in unfamiliar territory usually have many questionable foreign leaders licking their chops at the opportunities. Perhaps they are waiting until the race is down to two, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong-il see how far they can push the envelope at some point.

Either way, I would really like to see the moderator put the "screws" to Clinton and Obama with some serious foreign policy quesitons. In any case, we may still get catch phrases like "create an open dialogue" and "consult with our allies." Solutions that are a bit late when it's already hit the fan.

The Ultimate Polical Ad

2008-02-18T22:34:00.004-06:00

(30 second ad. candidate comes on the screen)

I'm (candidate says name) and I approve this message...

(for 23 seconds we see a Still Shot of the candidate accmopanied by total silence)

(candidate comes back on the screen)

I'm (candidate says name) and I stand by this message.

Art with Nails

2008-02-18T09:31:00.006-06:00

This is very inspiring! I wonder what da Vinci would have done if there had been a hardware store down the street. Click on an image to view the full size version.

The Race for the Least Annoying Candidate

2008-02-15T18:33:00.004-06:00

Well, it's started. The presidential candidates have come to Wisconsin and it's amazing how fast The Race for the Least Annoying Candidate has hit full stride. The he said/she and he said/he holier than though local TV news interviews, the political ads, and the constant changing of the “message” to always be focused on the opponents strongest support issues is, at best, tiresome. Only on this topic, would I ever be able to , or even consider to, slide down the speech writer’s drool into the literary abyss and paraphrase the immortal words of Mr. T, "I pity the fool that is actually swayed by this dog and pony show of smoke and mirrors.” Whatever, since I am stating the obvious, I will shut up, lest I start annoying the reader. Oh, that the candidates would be so wise.
Ponder that.

Art Predicting Life

2008-02-11T19:42:00.001-06:00

I had to laugh at one of the headlines in the news today, "Artificial Sweeteners Could Make You Gain Weight". I had to laugh. A study by scientists at Purdue University on laboratory rats showed that those eating food sweetened with artificial sweeteners ate more calories than their counterparts whose food was sweetened with normal sugar (read the story).

Now when I think about some the great writers that were very adept in predicting the future in their stories and essays, a couple of my favorite authors come to mind - Aurthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. But, when I read the headline above it reminded me of some lines from one of my favorite movies, Woody Allen's 1973 classic, Sleeper. If you have not, well, that's your loss. Anyway, the basic premise of the movie is that Woody Allen's character, Miles Monroe, was frozen in liquid nitrogen in 1973 after a ulcer operation goes bad and he is revived in 2173 to find a very absurd society.

Now you might not think of Woody Allen as one of the great prognasticators of our time, but when I read today's headline, it was the 2173 diet that got me thinking. Here's a piece of the dialogue from the movie.

Dr. Melik: (listing items Miles had requested for breakfast) "... wheat germ, organic honey, and... Tiger's Milk."
Dr. Aragon: "Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties."
Dr. Melik: "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?"
Dr. Aragon: "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."
Dr. Melik: "Incredible!"

dialogue source Wikipedia

So going on the theory that things - good or bad - tend to come in threes, first Dr. Atkins dies and now, sweeteners are fattening. So what comes next? Perhaps they will find that in clinical studies with primates, a vegetarian diet, especially one made up of broccoli and cauliflower, causes clogging of the arteries. Or, maybe they will find that adding large amounts of butter to the diets of elephants, causes a significant reversal in memory loss. Incredible!

So I'll have six eggs, sunny side up, with rye toast, bacon, hash browns and a side of pancakes. And, for desert I'll have creme brulee and piece - no make it two pieces - of baklava. Pass the syrup and butter, will ya?

Art With a Single Sheet of Paper

2008-01-20T14:19:00.000-06:00

Do you feel there is an artist inside of you just bursting to get out, but you don't know where to start? Why not start with a piece of paper?

The pictures below were entries in a contest - date unknown - at the Hirshhorn Museum and Scupture Garden, the Smithsonian's museum of international modern and contemporary art in Washington, D.C.

Each artist was allowed to use only one sheet of paper per piece of artwork.

Note: The images below came to me in an e-mail. I did a fairly exhaustive search on the internet for anyone claiming a copyright on these images. I found these images posted on other Blogs, but nobody claimed ownership. For this Blog, these images are intended only to entertain and, perhaps, inspire.

Great Lyrics #1

2008-01-17T14:57:00.000-06:00

I must admit that when I started writing this Post about 24 hours ago, it was purely to vent. But, as I am on a spiritual journey of remebering, I am trying to get better at taking the path less travelled. Damn that unconditional love concept! :)

At the time I was ready to vent, one of my favorite lines from a song kept running through my head:
He's tellin' her the world is full of freaks and geeks and simples...

Do you know it? If not, then it's a sad day in Mudville. No peeking below either. You'll just have to wait. As my mood mellowed, I did get the lyrics to the whole song (which I already knew) off of the internet just for old time sake.

All writers know - or should know - the their words are rarely interpereted exactly as they were intended. And as it turned out, quite ironically, my interpretation of the words to the song in question basically hit that nail on the head for the topic I would liked to have vented on. Specifically, I'm referring to all of the "Richards with ears" that are in charge - be it the boss, the head of the company, heads of state, the waiter at the resaurant, the taxi driver picking the route, or the guy behind the glass at the drive through (and we know what they do to you there).

So without further ado, let us raise the curtain and move on. Drum role please. Tah-dah!

Martha's Madman - Manfred Mann's Earth Band

Martha has a madman

Standing hidden in the shadows

He's got a long curved Turkish dagger

With a bejewelled handle

He's tellin' her the world is full of freaks and geeks and simples and he's

Hiding like a leprechaun under stones and in the ripples

In the pool of time she thought she knew it - but someone threw a stone into it

Which breaks up the surface and it's making her nervous and it's true

What can she do --- yes it's true

What can she do ---

Martha yes I guess you'll have to wait around - another thousand years

So who is the madman? To me it's not a who, but a what. It's power, the absolute power that corrupts absolutely, the power that follows no rules but it's own, the teflon that no wrong doing can stick to, the underhanded tactics, the ability to side step the system or any process, the retrubution, the scapegoating and the behind closed door coniving and crafting of stories. The tactics are deceptive (the alluring, but deadly dagger) - draw you in, all of the bases are covered, make you feel safe and then throw you to the lions. The madman is telling you that everyone else is a fool, so you might as well play the game for the winning team. You see the truth through all of the coniving and try to make a difference (cast the stone, ruffle some feathers), but then you are afraid for yourself. The madman might come after you - what is a truth and what is part of a plan. At that point, you know you are helpless to stop the evil machine (what can she do). The eternity that you wait for, when the consequences eventually catch with the madman will seem like a 1000 years.

Now that is one hell of an uplifting story. None the less, a great song.

So, instead of a vent you get a small Literary review. How's that for turning a negative into a positive?

Lusting for Miss P

2008-01-09T16:42:00.000-06:00

I saw Miss P again yesterday. For the first time, in person. As always, time froze (along with most of my bodily functons). She was stopped at a red light and I was a mere pedestrian; not even "just another face in the crowd" or a momentary blur on the periphery of her awareness. I had the staring role in a zen koan, "If you are not noticed, do you even exist?" None the less, that eternal brief moment with Miss P stayed with me for the day (and night). Oh, cold hearted orb. You provide little companionship in the early morning hours.

Miss P is no ordinary creature. She posses the classic simple elegance, grace, beauty and self -assuredness that makes comparisons to Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn seem woefully feeble. Age fears her, because she seems to drink it in and effortlessly blossoms even more. Oh, Miss P, my dreams!

To be sure, Miss P also possesses great taste and discretion. She does not chase fame and has no desire to. The paparazzi do not even bother to follow her, because they know that the tabloids will pay millions of dollars for pictures of farm animals, but not a penny for an original Monet or da Vinci. Oh, the nights without sleep!

Her movies are few and far between making the longing and the mystery that much more unsettling. She has exquisite taste in roles, but there is nary a leading man alive that can match her skill of the craft or presence on the big screen. One rarely sees Miss P on the television - and never in commercials. She does print ads, but only in the magazines where Rolex watches and the latest private Lear jets are advertised. All the worse for me, because I can not afford those publications much less fathom the lifestyle of a person that gets their Christmas gift ideas from them. Oh, cruel world! I am a worker bee and Miss P is the queen. She is my Black Widow Spider. At least I could have a moment with her. Then my life would be complete and I would pass with a contented smile.

I am Shakespeare's Romeo and Miss P is my Juliet. I am Goethe's Werther and Miss P is my Charlotte. She is the heroine and the villain in my nightmare that is always just out of my grasp. One my climb Mount Everest, but can one ever set their sights on scaling the tallest mountain on Venus? Oh Miss P, the Grand Canyon is but a ditch compared to the expanse that separates us.

I know I should stop this self-torment. Miss P is beyond me, above me, nowhere and everywhere. I am doing myself no good. I could bear my soul a million times more and it would not make anything other than how it is now. I am the dog poop that is missed, left to rot, being eaten up from the inside out by the larva of despair, longing and lust.

Oh Miss P, I know what I must do. One final act to end this madness. I must tell somebody, anybody, who you really are. I will excorcise the mystery. I will let the pen tell the paper and it will be done. Don't you know already? I know that you have seen her. She is the no longer lusted after 1975 Porsche 911 Carrera - silver, of course. Good bye, Miss P.

Don't Mess with Christmas Trees

2008-01-05T01:20:00.000-06:00

The other day I was driving by the local garden center and their message board outside was advertising a sale on 'life like' Christmas trees. I was a bit boggled by this, because for the last 40 years of my life, we had always known the plastic conifers as 'artificial' Christmas trees. Clearly this was the work of the word smythes in the advertising industry, but the change makes no sense to me. The silver or blue Christmas trees are definitely not 'life like' - 'artificial', 'ugly as sin', 'tacky', or "white trash" are certainly more accurate adjectives. Why not 'faux' or 'imitation' Christmas tress? Apparently someone thought this would help sell more 'non-real' Christmas trees. I can just see the commercial now. The husband is reading the paper, looks up and says "Hey honey! They have these new things called 'life like' Christmas tress now. Maybe we should pass on the 'real' Christmas tree this year and get one of those." The wife comes over, sits on the arm rest of the chair and looks at the add. She responds "Oooh, that sounds neat! No needles to clean up. No fire hazard. Let's do it!" Did you get goose bumps, too?

Perhaps I'm being a bit hasty in blaming the jingle meisters. It could be that there is a group of people that find the word 'artificial' to be derogatory to their heritage; much like school mascots changing from the Warriors to the Golden Eagles in order to keep the American Indians happy. Goof balls, couldn't they see that it was not derogatory but instead a compliment. Nobody names their team the 'butt heads' because of it instills lofty competitive and victorious pride in ones team. No - I'm going to have to blame this one on the suits. The odds are that some Marketing executive had enough market research - accompanied by colored pie charts and graphs - to make the case that a 'life like' Christmas tree reasonably meritted a 10 percent price hike.

Last time I checked, they are not doing research with computers in 'life like' intelligence. Ironically, medical science must have found 'life like' to be derogatory, because they went right from 'artificial' limbs to prosthetics. A little game of liguistic leap frog in the evolution of medical science. Do we now need to buy 'life like' food coloring to make Christmas cookies? Perhaps there will be a 'peach' color. Try these caucasion ginger bread men. Yuck! A bad Crayola flashback to childhood.

Ironically, my wife and I had already decided that we were going to retire our seven year old "artifical" tree. It has served us well and next fall it will be replaced by one of its own - 'artificial' and green. Now that's Christmas spirit!

New Year's Resolutions - Why?

2008-01-03T19:46:00.000-06:00

Did you make a New Year's Resolution this year? I don't want to sound like a curmudgeon, but why?

Did you come up with your resolution on New Years Eve when you were already half in the bag? Or, did you make it on New Years Day when you were horizontal on the couch and looking like the Poster Child for acetaminophen? Did you just borrow someone elses resolution becuase it "sounded" like a good idea. Good luck with that. Let me then ask, what made one of those two days different from the other 363 days in the year when you could have made the same resolution? How many resolutions did you make? Are there enough of them to make sure you'll probably dumb luck your way into accomplishing one of them?

I hope you get where I'm going with this. New Year's Resolutions are about as effective as Hallmark cards on bosses day. Perhaps you'll find a four leaf clover next time you cut your grass.

Just something to ponder.

some thoughts on snowflakes

2007-12-30T07:45:00.000-06:00

a snowflake is unique until it joins the others
if a snowflake is not moving it ceases to be itself
snowflake - the momentary persona of a tiny timeless bundle of energy
some snowflakes dream of being glaciers, others are content to be
no one is just the snow and no one is just the flake, the combination of the two yields a individually unique creation

A Condiment for the Condemned

2007-12-21T08:40:00.000-06:00

The next time you go to the movies, go to the concession counter and you will probably see a few giant vats of yellow goop (butter?) with an automatic stirrer hypnotically rotating inside. Clearly, they want us to buy lots of popcorn. A marketing gimmick that is tapping into our genetic code by scratching our itch to have massive coronary disease at some time in the future.

Then look closely at the label on the side of the vat - "Artificial Imitation Butter Flavoring". Huh? Which is it, 1) Butter Flavoring, 2) Imitation Butter Flavoring or 3) Artificial Imitation Butter Flavoring? Or put more accurately, 1) Fake Butter, 2) Fake, Fake Butter or 3) Fake, Fake, Fake Butter. I think that it just might be safe to say that the consumption of Real Actual Genuine Butter will not be taking place during the viewing of the Feature Presentation (or the commercials). Perhaps the synthetic golden honey was the brainchild of some Bio-chemistry stuedent working on his Masters Thesis. The bi-product of sleep depravation and a bad case of the munchies.

That stuff must have a profit margin of 3 million percent. So why IS the popcorn so expensive. Popcorn costs less than the goop and only slightly more than the grass clippings in my yard. Then I am brought back to reality. We are subsidizing George Clooney's latest villa in the south of France. And, the Ivy League tuitions for the children of just a few cardiologists.

So, the next time you go to the movies, get the "jumbo womper stomper" bucket of popcorn with "extra" yellow stuff - lots in the middle and more on top. After all, there are unlimited free refills. Oh, and don't for get to put on a pound or two of salt. Gently tap and shake and then add more. Now turn off those cell phones please! Sit back and let the clogging - I mean the show - begin!

Just something to ponder ;)