Month: May 2008 (Page 1 of 2)

After weeks of anticipation, last night Megan headed into Boston with 3 (natch) girlfriends to see “Sex in the City.” The clickety-clack sound of her heels on the hardwood floors told me she was just about ready. After all, it is a show about shoes, right? I think that’s why guys, well, straight ones anyway, aren’t into the show. I can only speak for myself, but my shallow self rarely gets to the shoes. What I’ve discovered is that women know this, and the shoes aren’t for us. They buy the shoes to impress their girlfriends. As I sat getting a haircut yesterday, Kristie confirmed as she cut. Yeah, she’s a sample of 1, but I’m pressed for time here…

I also don’t know where I’m going with this. I tease Megan about her being “Carrie,” but aside from her physical character portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker, I don’t really know anything about her (see shallow, above). Time for Wikipedia wisdom…

OK, so Carrie Bradshaw has a shoe fetish and a tendency to dress like a gourmet, pot-luck supper for lunch or cosmo’s with her girls, and is “at heart, old-fashioned and deeply romantic. She is on an endless search for true love, and refuses to settle for, as she puts it, ‘anything less than butterflies.’” Let’s look at her pals…

• Charlotte York “is the most conservative and traditional…”
• Miranda Hobbes has “extremely cynical views on relationships and men…”
• Samantha Jones is “a seductress who avoids emotional involvement at all costs…”

While most women of any complexity probably wear pieces of each character like gold from a jewelry box, my Megan does most resemble the glittering Carrie. She also has the hope of Charlotte and hopefully will never wear the cynicism of Miranda. Of course she’s never had sex, so Samantha… Uhhh… Can I just take a pass on that part? I’ll go with she’s got most of the good and maybe some of the bad of each imperfect character. That makes her beautifully unique.

And don’t ever settle for anything less than butterflies…

Tami Silicio’s photo of flag-draped coffin
By WeMeantDemocracy on Flickr
© All Rights Reserved.

This long weekend is brought to you by the thousands of American men and women who died carrying out the policy of their government. Policy they neither formulated nor necessarily endorsed. They deserve our acknowledgment and respect. This week I received the following email from a guy I greatly respect:

As we all know Memorial Day is coming this weekend. This is a time when we should remember all who lost their life while serving their country. As has been my custom for the past few years, I go with a few others and place new flags at each Veterans headstone at the cemetery here in Medfield. After we have finished, it’s quite humbling as we look across the cemetery and see so many flags waving in the breeze.

This year you might notice some changes if you attend a Memorial Day parade or ceremony. The President signed into law this past January a slight change in the code of conduct for Veterans as well as active duty service men. It is now proper for all veterans and active duty servicemen to salute the flag while dressed in civilian clothes. You might notice this occurring now.

Another effort that is being promoted is for Veterans to proudly and openly show pride in having served in the Military. They are being encouraged to wear their Medals on their hat, shirt pocket, lapel or jacket on Memorial Day as well as Veterans Day. You may also begin to notice others who will choose one of their medals and wear it daily or on special occasions.

If you can, find the time to attend a Memorial Day Ceremony near you. Attending a ceremony is one way of assuring the perseverance of the true reason this holiday is observed.

I admire Ron’s intent and know it’s genuine. What irks me is the subtle war promotion driven by the chicken hawk Bush administration in the middle two paragraphs. It’s pretty much a subliminal way of manipulating those who sacrificed into promoting the neocon militarism that’s sinking our country. This is Memorial Day, a solemn occasion, not a Soviet style Victory Day of promoting military might.

Rant over. Here’s a list of Massachusetts events honoring those who died following orders.

Memorial Day 2007
Memorial Day 2005

7:42 – Kyle and I just got back from dinner. Veal Parm and Chicken Frances at Il Forno. That place just isn’t the same, and I don’t mean better.

7:43 – That brunette in the Caddy CTS commercial is quite lovely.

7:45 – We’re watching “About a Boy” as a Celts pre-game. A scene just opened with U2’s “Zoo Station” from “Achtung Baby” which Amazon tells me was released over 16 years ago…

8:02 – Cate Blanchett as Russian Irina Spalko was about the best thing in today’s matinee of the new Indiana Jones flick. When’s the last time Stephen Spielberg made a great film?

8:07 – Sir Stevie’s “Munich” (2005) was short of great, so it looks like it’s been a decade since “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). Let’s hope for some magic with “The Trial of the Chicago 7” due in 2009.

8:25 – My Dad just called. He’s got bronchitis, but seems to be doing OK otherwise. He’s planning a visit in late June.

8:34 – I can really do without the “Hollywood” introductions of home teams in the NBA. Although the Pistons Chauncey Billups really can do an entrance…

8:42 – Celts up 8-0. That’s like the old Sox being in first in May…

8:49 – 13-4 C’s, but back to the finish of “About a Boy.” The kid is about to sing Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.”

8:52 – Poor kid is getting jeered, but Kyle and I agree Kyle is a vastly superior singer to this kid. Now the cheesy Hugh Grant is on stage with a guitar. Kyle just “Avardra Kadavra’d” the Grant character. Not sure why.

8:57 – 15-12 now, plus KG and Ray Allen are both on their asses with 2 fouls. Time for Kyle’s meds a face scrub and bed for the boy…

9:05 – Sam Cassell just threw up a lead brick followed by a Rasheed Wallace second effort bucket. 13-0 run and a 17-15 Pistons lead.

9:43 – While I’ve been searching for a better Johnny Most clip than this, the Green has built a 19 point lead.

9:46 – While the Pistons are hosting the Celtics, the Red Wings are also home for game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. They’re also faring better than the boys from Auburn Hills: Wings 1, the plural of Danny DeVito’s character in a “Batman” flick 0.

9:58 – Just saw a promo for a new ripoff ABC series called “Wipeout,” that’s clearly a fax of the classic MXC, hosted by Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship. Right you are, Ken.

10:29 – Sweet pass by KG and a 22 point bulge!

10:36 – Isn’t Coldplay just a U2 tribute band?

10:50 – What is up with Ray Allen in these playoffs? Slump or done?

11:09 – Paul Pierce just fell very awkwardly and so will the Green if he’s out.

11:12 – I’ve never seen “Lost,” and the 34 commercials for the “2 hour season finale” won’t get me to.

11:13 – The Celtics are trying to give this one away with poor charity stripe shooting.

11:15 – Nope. They picked a good time to snag their first road win of the playoffs. As the “Couz” would say, they “increased the defensive intensity” to win this one.

11:22 – Wasn’t that an exciting Saturday night? Uh, yeah.

This cool test is from the PerthNow news site Down Under…

Evidently, most people see the woman turning counter-clockwise. Not me. Through my prism she’s spinning in time, an indication I’m Right-Brain dominant.

I see traits on both sides of the ledger, but right rules. The last two italicized entries came from Wikipedia and brought me back to high school. There I struggled to get B’s in Algebra, but easily aced Geometry while most of my peers struggled. That provides a sliver of evidence to the claim that only 5% of right handed people are also right-brain dominant.

But what does it all mean, Basil? I have no idea, but it gave me an excuse to post a hot spinning naked chick. Blame it on my “fantasy based” right brain.

Today Mrs. Clinton suggested she’s staying in the race because, well, you never know, “Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June…” Maybe she figures one of her “hard working white supporters” will step up and remove this black obstacle. How freakin’ twisted is this woman? “Obliterate Iran.” “assassinate.” She is so hungry for the power of that office it is truly scary. She just sealed her legacy by throwing a white pointed hood over it.

The first time she whispered in my ear…

My procrastination led to outright insistence….

Resulting in this morning’s guest blog…

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She’s cute and she can write!

From the darkness that produced “1984,” George Orwell didn’t conjure up blogs, yet they are a voluntary means for Big Brother, Sister or anyone else to “plug into your wire.” Recently LinkedIn presented me this link on my home page, which happens to be the same view all my co-workers see…

I thought, “Hey cool, I just wrote a blog titled ‘Goodbye Fr…’ WTF? THERE’S A LINK TO MY POST ON THE FRONT PAGE OF LINKEDIN???” Of course I had to read it once again, this time to make sure I didn’t write something that could get me fired… Then I wondered, “what could I write that would cause me a problem at work?” What about political views? Hmmm… No, really, I think John McCain is an American hero and I’m on a waiting list for “Fantasy Hunting Camp with Dick Cheney.” What’s really scary is that based on the traffic I’ve seen, many of my co-workers are reading this space and I’m concerned it will appear like an episode of HBO’s “In Treatment.” Whatever. It doesn’t even end there.

Yesterday I was interviewing a candidate to replace my Aussie friend and he said, “I read your blog.” “Really? And you still decided to come in?” He went on to tell me he has a similar site, but that he “scoured it” prior to beginning his job search… It’s on hiking.

Oh well. There’ll be no such purge here if I decide to go job hunting. Well, maybe for a sweet gig with Exxon or Halliburton…

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – “1984” by George Orwell

You may have heard about the video circulating the net featuring self-described bloviator Bill Orally. What you may not have seen are the dance mix and the behind the scenes producer-side of the event. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time… Enjoy!

Billo Dance Mix:

Behind the Scenes Producer Commentary:

People at the airport I departed yesterday like to say, “Austin to Boston” with a little ring to it. The female attendant at the JetBlue counter did it, followed by a woman at an all-UT store where pretty much everything they sold was burnt orange with white longhorns. A post 6th Street post was in the works, but I’ll just summarize: When in Austin, go to the Broken Spoke and have the chicken fried steak for dinner so you’ll be impervious to alcohol and can stay out late and see lots of bands and other um, sights.

Long after this blog is in digital dormancy and I’m dead, “Dubya” will be in the history books as the worst president in the history of the republic. His remarks this week about “appeasement” shine a light on a subject he should have left off, like the dim 40 watter barely blinking in his head. Actually, he just plays a dumb puppet sitting on the lap of corporate ventriloquists, and his crimes of appeasement are far worse than the well intentioned classic blunder of Neville Chamberlain. For those of you playing at home, as British Prime Minister, Chamberlain led one of several countries, including France and Italy who signed the Munich Agreement, ceding a part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in an effort to halt his European expansion efforts. It failed as Hitler said, “danke” and kept the Nazi Panzers rolling all the way to Paris.

Appeasement. In my mind, George Bush was implicating Barack Obama as an “appeaser” of Iran with his comments in the Israeli Knesset. Simply talking to a party with goals counter to our own is not appeasement. It is the giving away of something that defines the term. For example:

• No national health insurance plan appeases drug companies and health insurance providers at the expense of, in some cases, the lives of uninsured Americans.
• A pathetic record on CAFÉ auto emission standards appeases both the US automakers and the oil companies at the expense of American families and the environment.
• Lack of regulation and oversight appeases a greedy financial industry at the expense of thousands of American families losing their homes.
• Finally, the crowing achievement of this dreadful administration appeases the likes of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Corporation with no-bid contracts at the expense of over 4,000 American lives, thousands more Iraqis, lower standing in the world, and billions of wasted dollars.

An honest mistake is Neville Chamberlain’s legacy. The inexcusable weakening of our nation by appeasing his corporate friends is the legacy of George W. Bush.

On my Westward commute last night I caught a NPR story on the earthquake near Chengdu, China. Reporter Melissa Block was in the province conducting a recorded interview when the 7.9 quake hit. She stayed cool and just described what she felt and saw. Then she witnessed the devastating aftermath at a nearby middle school. The entire NPR page is here.