Books N Movies Rants

On Turning 40.

2007-02-08T16:44:00.000-05:00

I realized today that I have been having sex longer than my intern has been alive.

I have decided that turning 40 is going to suck.

Big time.

Like a Tim Burton film.

Updated List

2006-06-16T08:57:00.001-04:00

Movies
Star Wars: Episode 4 A New Hope - First movie put on the list - 5 votes
Lord Of the Rings Trilogy - 5 votes
Casablanca - 4 votes
A Wonderful Life - 2 Votes
Blade Runner - 2 Votes
Clerks - 2 Votes
Star Wars 5 - Empire Strikes Back - 2 votes
Exorcist - 2 Votes
Ghost Dog 2 - votes
Gone With the Wind - 2 votes
Jaws - 2 votes
Manchurian Candidate (original) - 2 votes
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - 2 Votes
Rashomon - 2 votes
The 10 Commandments - Original with Charlton Heston - 2 votes
The Godfather - 2 votes
The Sound of Music - 2 votes
Wizard of Oz - 2 Votes
A Fish Called Wanda
Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein
Animal House
Aliens
Apocalypse Now
Barbarella
Battle of the Bulge - Henry Fonda
BeastMaster
Bells of St. Mary's
Bowling for Columbine
Brain Candy
Brazil
Bridge of the River Kwai
Bridges of Madison county
Children of Paradise
Citizen Kane
Clash of the Titans
Contact
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Die Hard
Dogma
Dracula (Original with Bella Ligousi)
Dune
Fantasia
Fight Club
For a Few Dollars More
Forest Gump
Galaxy Quest
Goldfinger
Goodfellas
Heavenly Creatures
Hello Dolly
High Fidelity
Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Kung Fu - David Carradine, Made for TV
Manchurian Candidate (remake)
Matewan
Memento
Modern Times
Moulin Rouge
Nightmare Before Christmas
North By Northwest
Office Space
Out of Africa
Paris, Texas
Princes Bride
Project A - Jackie Chan
Psycho
Re-animator
Rear Window
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn
Royal Tenenbaums
Say Anything
Schindler's List
Silence of the Lambs
Seven Samurai
Singing in the Rain
Sophie’s Choice
Star Wars 6 - Return of the Jedi
The Big Lebowski
The Cocoanuts with The Marx Brothers
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover
The Godfather 2
The Great Race
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Incredibles
The Matrix
The Passion of the Christ
The Quiet Man
The Ring
The Seventh Seal
The Shining
The Thin Man
The Thing (original)
The Usual Suspect
The Way We Were
The Wolf Man
The Zero Effect
Texas Chainsaw Massacarre - (original)
They were expendable
West Side Story
Young Frankenstein
Zatoichi

Now for the Books
Lord of the Rings Trilogy - 5 votes
Moby Dick - Melville - 5 votes
Dune - 3 votes
Ulysses - James Joyce - 3 votes
100 years of solitude - Garcia Marquez - 2 votes
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - 2 Votes
Animal Farm - Orwell - 2 Votes
Any book by Kurt Vonnegut - 2 votes
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 2 votes
Geek Love - 2 votes
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling – 2 Votes
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - 2 Votes
Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae - 2 votes - First book to receive multiple votes & first book put on the list
Junkie - William S. Burroughs - 2 Votes
Odyssey - 2 votes
Silence of the Lambs- 2 Votes
The Stand - S. King - 2 Votes
The Stranger - Albert Camus - 2 votes
The World According to Garp - 2 Votes
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett - 2 votes
Watchmen - 2 votes
Wuthering Heights - 2 votes
1984
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A Civil Action
A good biography on Abraham Lincoln
Alone---Byrd
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Anything by Dick Francis
Anything by Kipling
Anything by Cussler
As Told at the Explorers Club
Athletic Shorts - Chris Crutcher or anything else by him
Battle Cry Freedom
Belladonna - Karen Moline
Beowulf
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Bodyline Autopsy by David Frith
Borstal Boy
Catcher and the Rye - Salinger
Circle of Gold
Civil War - Shelby Foote
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Collected Star Man comics - James Robinson
Collected Stories - Franz Kafka
Collected Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
Confronting Silence - Toru Takemitsu
Cosmos - Carl Sagan
Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters - John Waters
Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
DareDevil - Frank Miller
DK Atlas of World History
Don't smoke grass on my father's lawn (son of Charlie Chaplin),
Dreadnought - Robert Massie
Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Fahrenheir 451 - Ray Bradbury
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
Flyboys---Bradley
Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel - Groucho and Chico Marx
For Whom the Bell Tolls---Hemingway
Foucault's Pendulum
Foundation Trilogy
Fountainhead
Getting Things Done
Girlfriend in a Coma - Douglas Coupland
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Gone with the Wind
Good Earth
Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Great Gatsby
Green Arrow, Archers Quest - Brad Meltzer, Phil Hester
Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Gulliver's Travels
His Dark Materials Trilogy – Phillip Pullman
How The Dead Live - Will Self
I know why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Iliad - Homer
In Dubious Battle - Steinbeck
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat - John Gibbons (non fiction)
In the Heart of the sea---Plhilbrick
It - S. King
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Kane & Abel
Kite Runner
Lance Armstrong's first book
L.A. Confidential - James Elroy
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Life on Earth by David Attenborough
Love in the time of Cholera
Madam Bovary
Maltese Falcon
Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Monkey, A Journey to the West
Neuromancer - William Gibson
No Ordinary Time
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
Old Man and the Sea - Hemmingway
On the Road
Oxbow Incident
Paradise Lost
Pharmakopia
Poetics of Music - Igor Stravinsky
Portable Beat Reader - many writers (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs)
Rose Madder - S. King
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
Science and Human Values - Bronowski
Shackleton
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Snow Ghosts (also called The Snowstorm)
Still Life with Woodpecker - Robbins
Swamp Thing - Alan Moore
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Abs Diet - David Zinczenko
The Big Book of Conspiracies - Robert Anton Wilson
The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
The Collected Calvin & Hobbes
The Cousins' War
The Dark Is Rising - series by Susan Cooper
The Dilbert Principle or The Way of the Weasel - Scott Adams
The Firm---Grisham
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Great War and Modern Memory
The Heart is Deceitful Above All things - JT Leroy
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Illuminati Papers - Robert Anton Wilson
The Pirate Lafayette,
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
The Prince
The Proud Tower
The Rites of Spring - Madras Eckstein
The Secret of the Unicorn/Red Rackham's Treasure by Herge
The Son Also Rises - Hemmingway
The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Tipping Point
The Trial - Kafka
The Wizard of Oz series - Frank L Baum
Three Musketeers
Tom Sawyer - Mark Tawain
Tomb of Dracula - Marv Wolfman
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Walden - Thoreau
Warriors of God
Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
White Noise
Winnie the Pooh
Winter Soldier - Robert Ketchum
Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
Zen and art of Motorcycle Maintenance

And Now for the Worst Movies
13 Ghosts - The remake
30th Anniversary Night of the Living Dead DVD - they recut the film.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Batman - Another Tim Burton movie
Bill & Ted – both movies
Blue velvet
Boxing Helena
Casino Royale (1967 starring David Niven)
Destiny Turns On the Radio
Die Another Day
Double Agent 73
Eraserhead
Family Stone
Howling 2
Howling 3
Howling 4
Howling 5
Interview with a Vampire
Ishtar
Jaws 3D
Mars Attacks
Meet the Fockers
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Planet of the Apes - the Tim (I have to wipe my ass on really good things) Burton remake.
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Something about Mary
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Starship Troopers
Surf Nazi's Must Die
Tarzan the Ape Man – The Bo Derek movie
Top Gun

Sith at work

2006-06-16T08:57:00.000-04:00

I was complaining about a major shake up at work, until I found out that the new guy my boss would be reporting to is a former employee of my boss and they have a mentor/student/Sith thing going on. Here is how a buddy of mine responded.

Sith thing? Does this mean he killed your boss and took his place? Always there are two. Are you are the new Apprentice? Have you shed Dave Mielcarek to become Darth Malevolence? Does the hatred of your commute make you strong in the Darkside? Young fool. Only now, at your bosses end do you finally grasp the power of the Dark Commute! With each passing mile the Dark Side grows in its dominance of your destiny! The commuters are defenseless. Take your weapon - strike them down with all of your hatred; the blood dimmed tide will be loosed and the bus will fill with the scent of a butcher shop as you wade through their ichor to exit at your stop. Only then will your journey to the Dark Side be complete! Bwahahahahahaha...

Solar Fleet

2006-04-17T14:51:00.000-04:00

Ok, some times at work I like to piss away time. So if you want to help me earn some credits click the Solar Fleet link below.

Cool game.

THX

Join the battle for the stars in SolarFleet!

Updated Lists

2006-03-30T10:08:00.000-05:00

We have updates to the lists:

First The Best Movies:

Star Wars: Episode 4 A New Hope - First movie put on the list - 5 votes
Casablanca - 4 votes
Lord Of the Rings Trilogy - 4 votes
A Wonderful Life - 2 Votes
Blade Runner - 2 Votes
Clerks - 2 Votes
Star Wars 5 - Empire Strikes Back - 2 votes
Exorcist - 2 Votes
Ghost Dog 2 - votes
Gone With the Wind - 2 votes
Jaws - 2 votes
Manchurian Candidate (original) - 2 votes
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - 2 Votes
Rashomon - 2 votes
The 10 Commandments - Original with Charlton Heston - 2 votes
The Godfather - 2 votes
The Sound of Music - 2 votes
Wizard of Oz - 2 Votes
Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein
Animal House
Aliens
Apocalypse Now
Barbarella
Battle of the Bulge - Henry Fonda
BeastMaster
Bells of St. Mary's
Bowling for Columbine
Brain Candy
Brazil
Bridge of the River Kwai
Bridges of Madison county
Children of Paradise
Citizen Kane
Clash of the Titans
Contact
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Die Hard
Dogma
Dracula (Original with Bella Ligousi)
Dune
Fantasia
Fight Club
For a Few Dollars More
Forest Gump
Galaxy Quest
Goldfinger
Goodfellas
Heavenly Creatures
Hello Dolly
Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Kung Fu - David Carradine, Made for TV
Manchurian Candidate (remake)
Modern Times
Moulin Rouge
Nightmare Before Christmas
North By Northwest
Office Space
Out of Africa
Princes Bride
Project A - Jackie Chan
Psycho
Re-animator
Rear Window
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn
Royal Tenenbaums
Schindler's List
Silence of the Lambs
Seven Samurai
Singing in the Rain
Star Wars 6 - Return of the Jedi
The Big Lebowski
The Cocoanuts with The Marx Brothers
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover
The Godfather 2
The Great Race
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Incredibles
The Passion of the Christ
The Quiet Man
The Ring
The Seventh Seal
The Shining
The Thin Man
The Thing (original)
The way we were
The Wolf Man
The Zero Effect
Texas Chainsaw Massacarre - (original)
They were expendable
West Side Story
Young Frankenstein
Zatoichi

Now for the Books

Lord of the Rings Trilogy - 5 votes
Moby Dick - Melville - 5 votes
Ulysses - James Joyce - 3 votes
100 years of solitude - Garcia Marquez - 2 votes
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - 2 Votes
Animal Farm - Orwell - 2 Votes
Any book by Kurt Vonnegut - 2 votes
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 2 votes
Dune - 2 votes
Geek Love - 2 votes
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - 2 Votes
Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae - 2 votes - First book to receive multiple votes & first book put on the list
Junkie - William S. Burroughs - 2 Votes
Odyssey - 2 votes
Silence of the Lambs- 2 Votes
The Stand - S. King - 2 Votes
The Stranger - Albert Camus - 2 votes
The World According to Garp - 2 Votes
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett - 2 votes
Watchmen - 2 votes
Wuthering Heights - 2 votes
1984
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A good biography on Abraham Lincoln
Alone---Byrd
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Anything by Kipling
Anything by Cussler
As Told at the Explorers Club
Athletic Shorts - Chris Crutcher or anything else by him
Battle Cry Freedom
Belladonna - Karen Moline
Beowulf
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Bodyline Autopsy by David Frith
Borstal Boy
Catcher and the Rye - Salinger
Civil War - Shelby Foote
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Collected Star Man comics - James Robinson
Collected Stories - Franz Kafka
Collected Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
Confronting Silence - Toru Takemitsu
Cosmos - Carl Sagan
Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters - John Waters
Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
DareDevil - Frank Miller
DK Atlas of World History
Don't smoke grass on my father's lawn (son of Charlie Chaplin),
Dreadnought - Robert Massie
Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Fahrenheir 451 - Ray Bradbury
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
Flyboys---Bradley
Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel - Groucho and Chico Marx
For Whom the Bell Tolls---Hemingway
Foucault's Pendulum
Fountainhead
Getting Things Done
Girlfriend in a Coma - Douglas Coupland
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Gone with the Wind
Good Earth
Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Great Gatsby
Green Arrow, Archers Quest - Brad Meltzer, Phil Hester
Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Gulliver's Travels
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
How The Dead Live - Will Self
I know why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Iliad - Homer
In Dubious Battle - Steinbeck
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat - John Gibbons (non fiction)
In the Heart of the sea---Plhilbrick
It - S. King
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Kane & Abel
Lance Armstrong's first book
L.A. Confidential - James Elroy
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Life on Earth by David Attenborough
Love in the time of Cholera
Madam Bovary
Maltese Falcon
Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Monkey, A Journey to the West
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
Old Man and the Sea - Hemmingway
On the Road
Oxbow Incident
Paradise Lost
Pharmakopia
Poetics of Music - Igor Stravinsky
Portable Beat Reader - many writers (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs)
Rose Madder - S. King
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
Science and Human Values - Bronowski
Shackleton
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Snow Ghosts (also called The Snowstorm)
Still Life with Woodpecker - Robbins
Swamp Thing - Alan Moore
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Abs Diet - David Zinczenko
The Big Book of Conspiracies - Robert Anton Wilson
The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
The Collected Calvin & Hobbes
The Cousins' War
The Dilbert Principle or The Way of the Weasel - Scott Adams
The Firm---Grisham
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Great War and Modern Memory
The Heart is Deceitful Above All things - JT Leroy
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Illuminati Papers - Robert Anton Wilson
The Pirate Lafayette,
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
The Prince
The Proud Tower
The Rites of Spring - Madras Eckstein
The Secret of the Unicorn/Red Rackham's Treasure by Herge
The Son Also Rises - Hemmingway
The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Tipping Point
The Trial - Kafka
The Wizard of Oz series - Frank L Baum
Three Musketeers
Tom Sawyer - Mark Tawain
Tomb of Dracula - Marv Wolfman
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Walden - Thoreau
Warriors of God
Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
White Noise
Winnie the Pooh
Winter Soldier - Robert Ketchum
Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
Zen and art of Motorcycle Maintenance

And Now for the Worst Movies

13 Ghosts - The remake
30th Anniversary Night of the Living Dead DVD - they recut the film.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Batman - Another Tim Burton movie
Blue velvet
Boxing Helena
Casino Royale (1967 starring David Niven)
Destiny Turns On the Radio
Die Another Day
Double Agent 73
Eraserhead
Family Stone
Howling 2
Howling 3
Howling 4
Howling 5
Interview with a Vampire
Ishtar
Jaws 3D
Mars Attacks
Meet the Fockers
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Planet of the Apes - the Tim (I have to wipe my ass on really good things) Burton remake.
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Something about Mary
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Starship Troopers
Surf Nazi's Must Die
Tarzan the Ape Man
Top Gun

Here are some of the comments people submitted with their best and worst picks.

First the worst picks:

Planet of the Apes - the Tim (I have to wipe my ass on really good things) Burton remake. What a monumental piece of crap. I have had hemorrhoids that I enjoyed more. And the ending - what the ever living fuck was that? The movie contradicted itself so many times and in so many ways it makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. Do not see it. First movie with 2 votes.
30th Anniversary Night of the Living Dead DVD - they recut the film. Check out this great rant http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=4397 - Best Rant about a bad movie ever!
Batman - Another Tim Burton suck fest. I have to admit I saw this twice because the first time I could not believe how bad it was. I figured "Well I am a fan of the Batman comic, so maybe I am just being really hard on the film." So in all fairness I saw it again. Still sucked
Blue velvet - Imagine Salvador Dali directing "Abbot & Costello meet Marilyn Chambers". Now make it unfunny and boring. I was more interested in the coat of the guy sitting in front of me than this movie. I think if a date drags you to a movie that sucks this bad she ows your a BJ.
Boxing Helena - Another film that even though there is a lot of nudity, and hot nudity at that, it does not matter - nothing will ever save this movie. When I and the audience left the movie we told the people waiting on line to go see another film. When someone responded that it could not be that bad, we all looked at each other and in unison said "It's a dream sequence". Everyone on line went to another movie.
Destiny Turns On the Radio - One of the most boring movies ever made. Quentin Tarantino guest starred as a favor to his no-talent director buddy. A complete waste of everyone's time.
Double Agent 73 - This is a soft core movie where secret agent Chesty Morgan has a camera inserted in her breast so when she wants to take a picture she whips it out and squeezes. I was going through puberty when I saw this movie and even all the nudity could not save this movie.
Mars Attacks - In the long, long list of awful, fake-artsy Tim Burton movies, this one sucks the most ass. Quite a feat there, Tim.
Something about Mary - Cameron Diaze would have to actually give blowjobs in the theater to get me to see this waste of time again.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - Shatner finally gets to direct one and boy is it an ass wipe of a film. The plot involves Spock's long lost never mentioned brother. But the main reason he did it - the final fight of the movie - Kirk vs. God. And Kirk wins.
Surf Nazi's Must Die - The shittiest of all the shitty Troma movies. Granted, that's like comparing which is worse: leprosy or ebola. They both suck, but which would you rather die from?
Tarzan the Ape Man - This convinced me that Bo Derek sucks. In fact, everyone involved with this movie sucks. I suck for sitting thru it. Boring soft-core porn for people who are afraid to watch the real thing.
Top Gun - Jingoistic Tom Cruise bullshit with an annoying, awful soundtrack. This movie is why the 80's sucked. Really. It's solely responsible. It ruined the decade for me.

Now the good movies and books:

Clerks – This is a movie about what my life could have been. I had a friend that worked in a comic shop who was a lot like Dante and there is always a “Randle” at a comic store. Another buddy and I used to hang out there. I was the Silent Bob to his Jay. Hell I used to date girls who lived in that town in New Jersey. Scary how much it got right.
The Passion of the Christ - Haven't seen it but read the book. I have noticed it's effect upon people and add it to this list based on that. A lesson in love that has a greater impact upon one's thinking than the common viewer recognizes.
The Greatest Story Ever Told - The story of Christ; done well for film. (Trivia: John Wayne plays the Centurion. He has one line: "Truly this was the Son of God." You recognize that voice instantly.)
Dune - The movie is not as good as the book but is worthy in its own right. The Mentat mantra spoken upon taking the Juice of Sapho is original to the movie and not in the books; "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion...". It was that mantra that inspired my writing of the cocaine mantra: "It is by will alone I set my lust in motion...".
The Thin Man – Nick and Nora Charles are one of the great underrated screen couples. Nick’s desire to not get involved vs. Nora’s desire to get involved. Nick’s bumbling drunk investigating is in many ways a pre-curser to Columbo’s style of investigation. Plus it’s really funny.
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back – Went to see this a few days after September 11th. We were living in the West Village at the time off 6th Avenue and used to see The World Trade Center every day. My wife had lost friends in the attack and we had both over the last few months been offered jobs down there. Fortunately we had turned them down. We could not watch the news on TV any more. It was too much. We lived below 14th street so we could not even take our car out of the garage and get out of town. So we decided to go to the movies. And we laughed. A lot. If a movie can make you laugh with all that going on - it is funny. And will always hold a special place for me.
Dogma – One of the great funny movies about religion and the end of the world. Very clearly it sets out various themes or schools of religious thought while at the same time remaining light and funny. Ben Affleck doesn’t suck in it, which is an achievement in and of itself. And Salma Hayek as a stripper in a Catholic Schoolgirl outfit, is worth the price of admission alone. Kevin Smith does have knack for getting hot girls in cool outfits. Have you seen Eliza Dushku and Shannon Elizabeth in the cat suits in Jay and Silent Bob?
Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein – What made the Abbot & Costello movies so great is that everyone else in the movie would play the film straight. All the comedy was left to them. This is style is even more evident in this movie. Bela Ligousi and Lon Channy Jr. play Dracula and the Wolfman absolutely straight, like it was any other horror film. This makes the comedy so much more funny.
Empire Strikes Back – Why Empire Strikes Back instead of Star Wars – Finding out Darth Vader is Luke’s farther is a major event in movie history. It’s Huge. Plus better directing and more exciting. It has everything right.

Here are why some books made the list:

Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae – “Illuminatus! is important on several levels. Some of the elements of import are the inculcation of non-linear thinking in the reader and the entering into and out of paranoia that the book deliberately brings to the reader. Illuminatus! helps to develop a more powerful, more resilient, mind. It brings the reader to a heightened state. It explores "What is reality?".”
Dune – “Dune is one of the greatest books ever written. It delves into the human condition and forces the reader to ask "what is human?". It shows the reader that human potential is limitless. That the limits we impose upon ourselves are often arbitrary and that the limits of what we can do are yet to be discovered. It directs, if subtly, the reader to explore the concept of multi-dimensional existence; that we do in fact exist on more planes of consciousness and dimension than perhaps are formally recognized today. Not all can be explained in terms of mathematics. Some things can be known, but not taught. Mathematically describe the flapping of a flag or hold a cloth in the wind? Which imparts the lesson of movement? Learned but not taught. So it is with Dune. The forces and motions of a society as a whole are greater than the sum of the individual parts. You cannot give a simpleton diagnosis to a society at large. There are forces of great power and limitless (apparent) energy. The drive to procreate. The need for love. The dangers of indulgence. As we act so do we become. The myriad slippery slopes we face in our daily choices. Dune makes one think and in thinking, in being aware of a life as a system, a system that impacts and echoes through other systems, one is awake. This is a lesson of the Kwisatz Haderach: One man is always the difference. Everything we do or don't do every day counts. It affects all of mankind. The echo of one can change the thought of all. Dune is required reading because it is essential to the development of the species in getting on with its growth that the Sleeper Must Awaken.”
Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet – The funniest book I have ever read. I was laughing so hard I had to put the book down. If I thought about the book while riding the subway on my way to work, I would just burst out laughing.
Einstein’s Dreams - Alan Lightman – The most poetic non-poetry book I have ever read. Deals with the fairly complicated concept of time in a beautiful and simple way. One of those books that gets you to pause and really think about important concepts and issues, yet remains light.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson – Best book on politics ever. Glimpse into, what has turned out to be a simpler time. Plus the Nixon discussing football section shows a different light on a president whose positive accomplishments have been forgotten in the light of his crimes. Seems like now presidential crimes are forgotten far to quickly.
As Told at the Explorers Club – Great stories by real people who lived the lives most of us read about in books or go to movies to see. I found it hard to go back to reading fiction after reading about some of the things these people have seen and done.
The Collected Star Man comics – James Robinson – First of all the art is amazing. If you like stuff from the Golden Age of comics, it does it well. Written with a lot of respect, thought and intelligence. It has real emotion. One part always makes me want to cry. Three characters go into Hell and are tested. It’s the most emotionally real comic I have ever read. Striking at the core of you in that it’s relationship between the characters are real. More so than any other comic or book that I have ever read.
Tom Sawyer - is a book which I probably read three times and would recommend to every young American. It is part history, adventure and life. I could have closed my eyes and I was Tom.

Only in New York

2006-03-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

Below is a link to a website full of snippets of conversations that New Yorkers hear other New Yorkers say. I have to admit, this is what we sound like.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Here are a couple to give you a flavor:

Drunk girl: Sometimes, when I look at myself through the microscope of cold, hard objectivity, I think to myself, "God, you are awesome!"
--47th & 9th

Guy: I mean, eating your own cum is one thing, but eating it on a pizza four hours later? I should probably keep my voice down...
--43rd & 8th

Teen girl #1: What's a "fortnight"?
Teen girl #2: It's British for "ten days"; like, "I'll be gone for a fortnight."
Teen girl #1: Oh yeah, that makes total sense.
--LaGuardia

Quote about the Internet

2006-03-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

"It's like a big library, everything you ever wanted to know is in there...except some crazy bastard came in and knocked all the shelves over, and then dumped his porno collection on top of the mess" -Judge Khan about the Internet.

Coat Hangers for South Dakota

2006-03-09T16:42:00.000-05:00

Someone sent this to me and it sounds like a good idea to me.

Got any coat hangers lying around? Yes? Good. Got a box? Yes? Ok now put as many coat hangers as you can into said box and mail it to The governor of South Dakota:

Office of the Governor
500 E. Capitol Ave.
Pierre, SD 57501

Let's remind them what happens when abortion is illegal.

In Progress - Worst Movie List

2006-02-16T15:41:00.000-05:00

So we have the best movies people recommend - now for the worst. Send me your list of 5 worst movies and I will add them into the list.

The movies are listed alphabetically and by the number of votes they have.

So far we have:

Planet of the Apes - the Tim (I have to wipe my ass on really good things) Burton remake. What a monumental piece of crap. I have had hemorrhoids that I enjoyed more. And the ending - what the ever living fuck was that? The movie contradicted itself so many times and in so many ways it makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. Do not see it. First movie with 2 votes.
30th Anniversary Night of the Living Dead DVD - they recut the film. Check out this great rant http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=4397 - Best Rant about a bad movie ever!
13 Ghosts - The remake
Batman - Another Tim Burton suck fest. I have to admit I saw this twice because the first time I could not believe how bad it was. I figured "Well I am a fan of the Batman comic, so maybe I am just being really hard on the film." So in all fairness I saw it again. Still sucked
Blue velvet - Imagine Salvador Dali directing "Abbot & Costello meet Marilyn Chambers". Now make it unfunny and boring. I was more interested in the coat of the guy sitting in front of me than this movie. I think if a date drags you to a movie that sucks this bad she ows your a BJ.
Boxing Helena - Another film that even though there is a lot of nudity, and hot nudity at that, it does not matter - nothing will ever save this movie. When I and the audience left the movie we told the people waiting on line to go see another film. When someone responded that it could not be that bad, we all looked at each other and in unison said "It's a dream sequence". Everyone on line went to another movie.
Destiny Turns On the Radio - One of the most boring movies ever made. Quentin Tarantino guest starred as a favor to his no-talent director buddy. A complete waste of everyone's time.
Double Agent 73 - This is a soft core movie where secret agent Chesty Morgan has a camera inserted in her breast so when she wants to take a picture she whips it out and squeezes. I was going through puberty when I saw this movie and even all the nudity could not save this movie.
Eraserhead - The second David Lynch movie, but Tim Burton is still ahead in sucking.
Family Stone
Howling 2
Howling 3
Howling 4
Howling 5
Interview with a Vampire - Second Tom Cruise movie to make the list
Ishtar
Jaws 3D
Mars Attacks - In the long, long list of awful, fake-artsy Tim Burton movies, this one sucks the most ass. Quite a feat there, Tim.
Meet the Fockers - Second Ben Stiller movie to make the list.
Something about Mary - Cameron Diaze would have to actually give blowjobs in the theater to get me to see this waste of time again.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - Shatner finally gets to direct one and boy is it an ass wipe of a film. The plot involves Spock's long lost never mentioned brother. But the main reason he did it - the final fight of the movie - Kirk vs. God. And Kirk wins.
Starship Troopers
Surf Nazi's Must Die - The shittiest of all the shitty Troma movies. Granted, that's like comparing which is worse: leprosy or ebola. They both suck, but which would you rather die from?
Tarzan the Ape Man - This convinced me that Bo Derek sucks. In fact, everyone involved with this movie sucks. I suck for sitting thru it. Boring soft-core porn for people who are afraid to watch the real thing.
Top Gun - Jingoistic Tom Cruise bullshit with an annoying, awful soundtrack. This movie is why the 80's sucked. Really. It's solely responsible. It ruined the decade for me.

Please note that the quotes are from the various people who submitted to this list and do not necessarily express the viewpoints of this blog.

They probably do though.

Especially anything about Tim Burton sucking monkey cock.

Current Book & Movie Lists

2006-02-14T10:37:00.000-05:00

Current Book List

Lord of the Rings Trilogy - 5 votes
Moby Dick - Melville - 5 votes
Ulysses - James Joyce - 3 votes
100 years of solitude - Garcia Marquez - 2 votes
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - 2 Votes
Animal Farm - Orwell - 2 Votes
Any book - Kurt Vonnegut - 2 votes
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 2 votes
Dune - 2 votes
Geek Love - 2 votes
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - 2 Votes
Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae - 2 votes - First book to receive multiple votes & first book put on the list
Junkie - William S. Burroughs - 2 Votes
Odyssey - 2 votes
Silence of the Lambs- 2 Votes
The Stand - S. King - 2 Votes
The Stranger - Albert Camus - 2 votes
The World According to Garp - 2 Votes
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett - 2 votes
Watchmen - 2 votes
Wuthering Heights - 2 votes
1984
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A good biography on Abraham Lincoln
Alone---Byrd
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Anything by Kipling
Anything by Cussler
As Told at the Explorers Club
Athletic Shorts - Chris Crutcher or anything else by him
Battle Cry Freedom
Belladonna - Karen Moline
Beowulf
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Borstal Boy
Catcher and the Rye - Salinger
Civil War - Shelby Foote
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Collected Star Man comics - James Robinson
Collected Stories - Franz Kafka
Collected Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters - John Waters
Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
Don't smoke grass on my father's lawn (son of Charlie Chaplin),
Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Fahrenheir 451 - Ray Bradbury
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel - Groucho and Chico Marx
Fountainhead
Getting Things Done
Girlfriend in a Coma - Douglas Coupland
Gone with the Wind
Good Earth
Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet
Great Gatsby
Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
Gulliver's Travels
It - S. King
Rose Madder - S. King
Portable Beat Reader - many writers (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs)
Kane & Abel
The Prince
Still Life with Woodpecker - Robbins
Lance Armstrong's first book
Monkey, A Journey to the West
Old Man and the Sea - Hemmingway
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The Wizard of Oz series - Frank L Baum
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
L.A. Confidential - James Elroy
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat - John Gibbons (non fiction)
The Pirate Lafayette,
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Iliad - Homer
Maltese Falcon
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Snow Ghosts (also called The Snowstorm)
The Trial - Kafka
Middlemarch - George Eliot
On the Road
The Son Also Rises - Hemmingway
Oxbow Incident
Paradise Lost
Three Musketeers
White Noise
Foucault's Pendulum
Pharmakopia
The Tipping Point
Love in the time of Cholera
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Madam Bovary
The Rites of Spring - Madras Eckstein
The Proud Tower
Dreadnought - Robert Massie
The Great War and Modern Memory
The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
Winter Soldier - Robert Ketchum
The Cousins' War
The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
In Dubious Battle - Steinbeck
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1
Green Arrow, Archers Quest - Brad Meltzer, Phil Hester
For Whom the Bell Tolls---Hemingway
Tom Sawyer - Mark Tawain
In the Heart of the sea---Plhilbrick
The Firm---Grisham
Shackleton
Flyboys---Bradley
Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
Science and Human Values - Bronowski
Confronting Silence - Toru Takemitsu
Poetics of Music - Igor Stravinsky
The Dilbert Principle or The Way of the Weasel - Scott Adams
The Abs Diet - David Zinczenko
The Illuminati Papers - Robert Anton Wilson
The Big Book of Conspiracies - Robert Anton Wilson
Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
DareDevil - Frank Miller
Tomb of Dracula - Marv Wolfman
Swamp Thing - Alan Moore
The Collected Calvin & Hobbes
I know why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
How The Dead Live - Will Self
The Hear is Deceitful Above All things - JT Leroy
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Walden - Thoreau
Warriors of God
Winnie the Pooh
Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
Zen and art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Here is the current movies list:

Star Wars: Episode 4 A New Hope - First movie put on the list - 4 votes
Lord Of the Rings Trilogy - 4 votes
Casablanca - 3 votes
A Wonderful Life - 2 Votes
Blade Runner - 2 Votes
Clerks - 2 Votes
Star Wars 5 - Empire Strikes Back - 2 votes
Exorcist - 2 Votes
Ghost Dog 2 - votes
Gone With the Wind - 2 votes
Jaws - 2 votes
Manchurian Candidate (original) - 2 votes
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - 2 Votes
Rashomon - 2 votes
The 10 Commandments - Original with Charlton Heston - 2 votes
The Godfather - 2 votes
The Sound of Music - 2 votes
Wizard of Oz - 2 Votes
Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein
Animal House
Aliens
Apocalypse Now
Barbarella
Battle of the Bulge - Henry Fonda
BeastMaster
Bells of St. Mary's
Bowling for Columbine
Brain Candy
Brazil
Bridge of the River Kwai
Bridges of Madison county
Children of Paradise
Citizen Kane
Clash of the Titans
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Die Hard
Dogma
Dracula (Original with Bella Ligousi)
Dune
Fight Club
For a Few Dollars More
Forest Gump
Goodfellas
Hello Dolly
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Kung Fu - David Carradine, Made for TV
Manchurian Candidate (remake)
Modern Times
Moulin Rouge
Nightmare Before Christmas
North By Northwest
Office Space
Out of Africa
Princes Bride
Project A - Jackie Chan
Psycho
Re-animator
Rear Window
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn
Royal Tenenbaums
Schindler's List
Silence of the Lambs
Seven Samurai
Singing in the Rain
Star Wars 6 - Return of the Jedi
The Big Lebowski
The Cocoanuts with The Marx Brothers
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover
The Godfather 2
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Incredibles
The Passion of the Christ
The Quiet Man
The Seventh Seal
The Shining
The Thin Man
The Thing (original)
The way we were
The Wolf Man
The Zero Effect
Texas Chainsaw Massacarre - (original)
They were expendable
West Side Story
Young Frankenstein
Zatoichi

Interesting article on torture gaining acceptance in the US

2006-02-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

Below is a link to a very interesting article by Alfred McCoy, professor of History at University of Wisconsin, on the increasing acceptance of torture in the US. Here is an excerpt:

". . . Torture in defense of the "homeland" has gained surprisingly wide acceptance, while the torture debate has been reframed -- to the administration's great advantage -- as a choice between public safety and the lives of millions or private morality and bleeding-heart qualms over a few slaps up the side of the head. In this way, old-fashioned morality has been made to seem little short of immoral."

http://tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=57336

Preaching to the converted

2006-02-06T11:55:00.000-05:00

There is a thing going around about Oliver North Named Osama bin Laden as a Feared Terrorist During 1987 Iran/Contra Hearings While Being Questioned By a Disgusted Al Gore.

This is FALSE. See the link here that takes to a letter by North explaining that it is a lie.

http://truthminers.com/hoaxarticles/oliver_north.htm

The thing that gets me about this sort of thing is why take the time to create this lie. It makes the Right look like desperate liars. I do not think it is a Left conspiracy. Not going to waste the time on North.

No I think it is some stupid Right wing nut living in his Mom's basement waiting for the rapture. One of those "by any means necessary" idoits. By lieing about their cause to make the Left look bad they just make the Right look bad as well.

Get a life.

Ouch

2006-02-03T15:34:00.000-05:00

Some one posted this on an industry site about the company I work for:

The whole thing is broken.

It has become nothing more that chatter and a few execs making more than they should.

Last one then make sure you turn out the lights. I don’t see a savior among them.

Neet site

2006-02-03T15:23:00.000-05:00

There is a site where there are three realy attactive women standing in front of a car and you type in commands to ge them to do stuff, pretty cool.

http://a.oneofthelads.com/carwash.php

I could not get a pic to upload. But try the site and try the words:

blow
spread
sex
slap
spank
bra
knickers
wet
water
finger
wash
ass

you get the idea

The Greatest Blog Ever

2006-02-03T15:22:00.000-05:00

http://rrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnhhhh.blogspot.com/

I say no more, for I am humbled by the master.

If you are going to SPAM my blog . . .

2006-02-01T14:41:00.000-05:00

There is that little space at the end of a blog entry where people can post comments. Most of the comments I get are freaking spam. Why the hell would I take any legal advice from a guy who posts his legal advice on a blog. And what the hell about my comments makes anyone think I would be interested in Canine Kidney Failure? Have you seen anything related to dogs in here?

Come on - if you are going to spam me at least have the decency to to submit a list of movies or books for me to add. Make it look like you might have even looked at the damn blog before you post saying "WOW, big fan of your blog. I think you might be interested in a blog about the mating habits of ants."

Like Zombies?

2006-02-01T14:35:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to a great Zombie Flash animation series

http://www.xombified.com/episodes.html

Check it out.

Separation of Church and State

2006-01-30T15:19:00.000-05:00

Mother Jones recently devoted an entire issue to the growing influence of religion on politics is the US. While the magazine is clearly more on the liberal side, the articles are well researched. The best article is one on the "Original Intent" of the founding fathers. It fairly clearly goes through the various documents, both state and federal and points out the clear intent to separate religion and the state. Excellent read.

http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/12/
original_intent.html

Two other interesting articles are:
Smith vs. Darwin - about the idea of the Invisible Hand in economics
http://motherjones.com/commentary/columns/
2005/12/smith_darwin.html

A collection of interesting and odd facts related to aid and charity (I.e. AMERICANS SPEND $8 billion on Christmas decorations, almost 4 times what they give to protect animals and the environment. A MINNESOTA company has made $758,000 selling “His Essence”—a candle that smells the way the Bible says Jesus will upon his return (myrrh, aloe, and cassia). JOHN TRAVOLTA piloted his 707 filled with 5 tons of food and 450 tetanus doses to New Orleans, where he met fellow Scientologists providing “therapy” to Katrina victims.)
http://motherjones.com/news/exhibit/2005/12/exhibit.html

The rest of the magazine (link to index below) touches on Intelligent Design, Death Row Conversions, and other topics

http://motherjones.com/toc/2005/12/index.html

Here is a guy who should run for President

2006-01-20T14:26:00.000-05:00

This is a link to a Mother Jones article about a former Marine who served in Iraq who ran for office on the Democratic ticket. It is making me rethink some of my traditional Democratic points of view.

Not say he should be president, but I would like to see him run, just to shake both parties up.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature
/2005/11/paul_hackett.html

On reviewing articles and trying to be more even headed

2006-01-18T11:14:00.000-05:00

I am back from my nice long vacation and have decided to just do one large email to respond to the various emails/articles that have been circulating.

One of the things I have noticed in the emails is that people have a tendency to ignore the problems with our own party. I am going to try and not get into that trap this anymore. I know my party has problems and and I am willing to discuss them.

I will start with the quote:

"[Democrats] are the same people who rediscover poverty every election and promise to cure it. They've cured it so often that they've now made a profession of it. They thrive on failures, on righting wrongs, aiding victims, and so forth. It must be understood that success in those tasks would put them out of business. No matter how many programs are set up and operating, their proponents never claim success for them. To do so would be to say the problems have been solved, meaning the programs are no longer needed. And the programs, not the problems, are their very reason for being." —Ronald Reagan

The thing about any political quote is that if you change a few words you can make it work for the other side. The Democrats rediscover poverty and the Republicans always seems to have a new boogie man who is coming to get us. Funny thing is the boogie man who actually came to get us (Osama) got his start, in some ways, thanks to Ronald.

As for what I consider to be the best line in the quote: "And the programs, not the problems, are their very reason for being." That too can be applied to both parties. Both the Dems and Reps make their living off the problems. I do not believe there is a single Republican politician thinking "We better hurry up and solve these problems so my county/city/state can stop receiving Federal money and I can stop receiving lobbyist funds." Don't get me wrong, I don't think there are any Democrats thinking that either. It is in the best interest of politicians and the political machine (lobbyists, receivers of pork barrel funds, etc.) for politicians not to solve all of the problems. They just have to make things better than the last guy did, particularly if that guy was from the other party. Please do not act like Republican politicians and their financial supporters only have the best interest of America in mind, you are too smart for that.

If you want in another email we can get into the various pork barrels that Reagan handed out during his time. Remember the S&L debacle. What did that run the country, a couple of trillion? If you remember the son of the then Vice President and the current President's brother did jail time for that. Not to say Dems did not binge on that one as well. They did.

When it comes right down to it, it is not always financially in peoples interest to solve problems. Provide treatments to problems yes. There was recently an article in the NYTimes about how diabetes treatment centers make up to an $11,000 profit per patient on treating diabetes over providing preventative care.

When you are starting or mid-point in your career you tend to not be to pro innovations that will result in your being out of a job.

That brings us to the next topic, the Liberal turned Conservative article Confession of a Crypto-conservative Woman.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5059&search=Bookworm

Both side of the debate have had their converts for various reasons. I had originally considered being a Republican, but then Reagan and his crowd ended that. There is a great quote from Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian conservative who did work with both Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay:

"It's a classic tale of intending to do good - and doing very well, ... The pledge of all these Reagan revolutionaries was to overturnthe iron triangle of Congress, the special interests, and the lobbyists. Instead, they've found themselves comfortable with big government, as long as it cashes in for their clients. I remember all these people as insurgents, revolutionaries to overthrow the establishment. They became the establishment in such a short time in an orgy of moneymaking. They ran the Republican revolution off the rails."

There are great reasons for people from either side to convert. It all depends on your perspective. She refers to the "rebounding American economy". I on the other hand do not see it. Granted I am not an economist but there are a lot of things that say to me things aren't great.

I am going to loose my job in the next several weeks/months. They have told me I am going but have not yet told me when. Granted that is predominantly related to the industry (Music) but also related to the economy in that sales are down and therefore they are cutting back. (The funny thing is that since they have gutted and restructured HR I could end up being here for a couple of months just waiting for them to get around to the piece of paper with my name on it. The old system we were all specialists. I was the international comp/insurance/pension guy. There was another person who handled all leaves (FMLA, disability, etc.)/terminations/resignations. Now they are all generalists. So today you might be recruiting and tomorrow you might be doing international tax equalizations. The only problem is that now nobody is sure who is doing what at any given moment. So somewhere there is a piece of paper with my name on it, stating that I am to be laid off. The question is how deep into their pile of papers is that piece of paper. I could be here for months. If I get really lucky that person will leave before they lay me off and it could be many more months before the new person gets around to me. I have images of me sitting in some cubicle in the basement and retiring from here in 25 years, before anyone remembers that I am supposed to be laid off. On the other hand if that piece of paper is on top I could be gone next week.)
I have been looking for a job for a couple of years and have only had two sort of offers and both were for less money and one had a longer commute (it would have been 8 hours a day commute instead of 5). And I have been looking in NYC besides upstate. I am sure some of that is because of the profession I am in (Human Resources), but if jobs are hard to find that is related to the economy. Hopefully getting my Professional in HR certification will help. (Glad I passed that damn test. 4 Months of studying, and 3.5 hours of test - I read crap for a week to thank my brain). Not to say that places have not been interested and thankfully places are honest about the salaries, so I do not waste my time and theirs at an interview for a job that I cannot afford to take.
My investments are down. If you look at the per share price now vs the same period of Clinton's Presidency, the shares are down. One by 45%. I know that 9/11 screwed the market, but still, I have less money now then I did when Bill was around. Please note that I do not invest in weird things, I am a long term market thinker and invest in staples that people need and I know (hope) that when I need the money years from now the market will be even stronger than when Bill was around.
Many of my expenses are up. Medical and dental insurance has gone up at work. My real estate taxes are up over 40% from last year. This just means my paycheck, which has not gone up, is stretched a little tighter than before.
I have a couple of friends who float job-to-job and they are having a tougher time now than before. Some of that is related to their lifestyle, I know that. Still, when your friends are having a tougher time making ends meet then they did under the last President, you have to wonder.

I know, for the 10th straight quarter it says the economy is up. But not in my world.

She speaks of Carter's weak response to terrorists but fails to acknowledge the very direct connection between Reagan's actions in Afghanistan and the creation of al Qaeda and then 9/11. I have to wonder if we kept our nose out of there are all those years ago would we have the problems we do now. Probably not. Different ones though. Would Russia have been the target on 9/11? No one can say for certain. There is a certain irony in Reagan's need to destroy/out-spend Russia because they are the great threat, and that resulting, in some small way, in aiding in the creation of an enemy that actually did attacks us.

Her comment "since government welfare programs began in the 1960s, poverty has become intractable in many African American communities" seems to forget that poverty was already around, that is why the programs were started. It is not like after the end of the Civil War suddenly all of the former slaves were rolling in cash and we screwed them by introducing welfare. There was already a problem, someone stepped up to the plate and tried to fix it. Best solution? Nope. Better then doing nothing though. It's about giving people a hand when they need it. Some people grab on and pick themselves up and dust themselves off and move on. Many don't. Many can't They stay where they are - for a variety of reasons.

I have a friend Rich who works with people coming out of rehab, finding them housing and jobs as well as counseling. In almost 15 years (holy crap have we been out of college that long) doing this one of the thing he frequently complains about is that welfare helps to a certain point. Once you reach that income threshold welfare basically disappears so if his clients run into any sort of financial problem (unexpected medical expenses is a frequent complaint of his) they have to sort of bottom out in order to get aid again. (PLEASE NOTE: I am really freaking simplifying this! Please do not get all anal on the my brief explanation of the systems). He said that after a couple of times of this sometimes people stop trying. They feel stuck and stop trying. It is easier to except then to fight. Some do go on fighting, some give up and some never take up the fight in the first place. Please note this is not a declarative statement on all welfare but an interesting footnote taken from conversations with someone who works with that system.

A cousin of mine nailed a lot of it on the head in his response to her article when talking about how people speak about the other side. Both sides call names, just in different ways. A Liberal will say "I hate you" while a Conservative might counter with "Why do you hate America?". Do I think Bush is "Evil"? NO. The BTK Killer is Evil. Pedophiles are Evil. Do I think he is an "Idiot"? NO (but I think that "A Village in Texas is Missing its Idiot" bumper sticker is funny.) The numb nuts who threw a frozen turkey through the windshield of an oncoming car, in my opinion, are idiots. The woman that ran over a homeless guy, drove home and left him stuck in her windshield in her garage as he spent the next couple of days dieing is a idiot and a decent candidate for evil. Do I think any of the liberals who say they hate Bush truly hate him - no. Do they hate his policies - yep. Does the American populace, in my opinion, have any real reason to think he or any former President is evil or an idiot. NO. On the other hand do I think every American citizen has the right to say they hate Bush and that they think he is an idiot without being called un-American? YES. It is easier/faster just to say he is evil or an idiot or you are anti-American or you are anti-God. The people you are talking too, they're ________ (fill in the blank with your party's name) and they understand what you mean.

Something that people seem to forget is that 90% of all preaching is to the converted. Whether the preacher is a politician, activist or news outlet. They preach to their audience. Do they skip over the holes in their own arguments - yep. But their listeners/audience/readers etc understand. Then the other side spots the hole and says "Look and that giant hole, they're idiots" and then skip over the hole in their own argument. It is part of the game. So we end up becoming more and more divided. We stop thinking about the greater issue and become polarized by the apparent blindness on the other side, and become blind to the legitimate arguments they do have. It is sadly easy to do.

"We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever they enemy supports." - Mao Tse Tung

It reminds me of when pre-invasion Powell came to the UN to show the intelligence about the WMD. A lot of domestic and international media outlets reported that various people (including some former inspectors) said some of the intelligence looked questionable. I remember that at that time one of the FOX news stations was between 2 other stations I watched on cable and I would just surf between the two, catching snippets of FOX as I went back and forth. One evening a reporter was going on-and-on about the liberal media and how the NYTimes was, and I paraphrase, full of shit and that the intelligence was not questionable. Now that Bush has admitted that maybe the intelligence was maybe not so intelligent do you think that reporter said on TV "Wow, turns out the NYTimes was kind of right on that one. My bad." No, I don't think so either.

See, there really is not a giant all powerful liberal media machine anymore. Not that there is a giant all powerful conservative media machine. There is a full spectrum of opinions out there, and that is a good thing. Want to read a newspaper that backs your point of view, it is not hard to find. Don't like Rush on the radio, turn on Air America. Hate the liberals over on CBS, just turn of FOX. We need both sides to keep the other side honest. That is "checks & balances". I hear conservatives complaining about the Liberal Media and I hear Liberals complaining out the White House domination of the media. Where this is bad is that on both sides it seems to be less and less about news and more and more about preaching to their converts. But that makes sense because the more watchers, readers, etc the more money they make.

I am lucky I have two Uncles (who are completely, but wonderfully, wrong about many things) on the other side that send me a lot of great information. By reading both sides of the arguments and trying to avoid both sides gaps in logic an reason I think I am getting closer to what may actually be going on.

Or maybe not. But at least I am trying.

One of the Uncles sent an article bemoaning the Liberal press and all the bad press that Bush is getting and how Clinton did not get so much bad press. The reason is not a Liberal conspiracy. The reason is simple - Americans are dying in a war. Whether or not you think it is right for us to invade, you cannot argue against the fact that Americans are dying. I do not know if it was right for us to invade. A lot of people before the war questioned our need to invade. Even the President admitted that some of the intelligence he worked from before the war, now turns out to be somewhat incorrect. Given that some of the intelligence was wrong, maybe we did not need to go to war when we did, the way we did. And if there is a chance we did not have to go to war when we did then maybe those soldiers did not need to die when they did. So if the President is getting a lot of bad press, while Americans are dying in a war that we might have not had to go to, I am not going to feel bad for him. Not that the war is the only thing he is getting bad press on, deservingly or not, but the war is one of the big ones he gets bad press on right now.

I remember when Libya were the ones who were going to come and get us and how they were making weapons that would get us and that they supported terrorists. We did not invade then. Few bombings and years diplomatic pressure and they copped to their bad behavior and are trying for the straight and narrow. Would that have worked with Saddam? Maybe/maybe not. We will never know now. Would that have worked with his kids - I don't think so. I tend to think we would have had to go over there at some point. I also think that we did not need to go now and not alone. I know "international coalition" but when US private companies are sending more people than other countries are sending troops I don't really get the "international coalition" feeling. A lot of supporters of the war for some reason compare this war to WW2, which I do not understand since Iraq did not attack the US. But if you want to compare it, let's look and the "international coalition". WW2 was an international coalition against the Axis. This, by comparison, is not.

I did not serve in WW2 but I am always kind of offended when people compare WW2 and Iraq. But that is just me.

Interesting that you never hear Liberals comparing favorably Iraq and WW2. Iraq and Vietnam, yes you do hear that. But by mentioning Vietnam I guess that is me being un-American again. Sorry.

I also received a copy of an article by the New Patriot and I found it refreshing for many reasons. First it was well written, and good writing is always a pleasure to read. The second is that they very nicely reminded us that there are people risking their lives for all of us back home. Not just in Iraq, but anywhere the US Military needs to be. And yes I do believe you can support the troops without supporting the war. Here at work we sent boxes just about monthly to a co-worker called up for the reserves. He sent us a list of stuff he and the other soldiers in his platoon could use and we sent them. Now that he is back we are gearing up to send stuff to the others soldiers in other platoons. We are not forgetting them now that he is back. The third think I found refreshing, is that they identified who they are. In the fourth paragraph they describe themselves as "an advocate for federalism, constitutional constructionism, free-market capitalism and social conservatism". It was nice that they put right upfront this is who we are and this is what we stand for in a very clear way. As I am not amongst their converted, it was an instant guidepost for a new reader. So many times people just say "as a (liberal or conservative) it is clear that . . .". But there are all sorts of Liberals and Conservatives, and under each group there is a wide range of viewpoints.

Maybe that is one of the reasons why people stay within their reading/watching/listening habits, because they do not know where the other person is coming from. Should people have to explain their positions or classify themselves all the time? No. But it will help get others to read them. Will I read stuff from the New Patriot again? If it is all that well written - Yes. Do I agree with their viewpoints - No.

The last thing I liked about it was that within their viewpoint they did not feel the need to name call at the other side. Oh there were a couple of things that would piss some people off. But within their stance of being "an advocate for federalism, constitutional constructionism, free-market capitalism and social conservatism" they did not say anything that was out of line, in my opinion. If it were just some Conservative who did not identify his position there were a couple of things I would have felt the need to say "screw you" to. But having a better understanding where they were coming from I got why they said it. Again, they did not feel the need to go after anybody to bolster their position. Good for them for being confident enough in their position that they just said what they wanted to say without slinging. It makes their overall statement more powerful.

Wow this is freaky long. And I am not done yet.

The last article I am going to comment on is "It's the Demography Stupid" by Mark Steyn.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760

Interesting article. Boy does this guy like to go on and on and on . . . er, oops. Look I am going to be honest up front, he has some really good points and some holes in his argument you could drive a bus through. I am not going to go through every single thing, point by point that he missed. Just the bigger issues.

Before we get to that, I do think that it is interesting that he lists faith as a primary impulse but makes no mention of education as either a primary or secondary impulse.

I work from a very text book definition of "multiculturalism", being that it pertains to societies being made up of and including multiple cultures. There are probably four reasons I have this definition.

The way I was raised. My dad who I swear used to make up racial epitaphs for groups just to freak my brother and me out, NEVER said them as an insult. My dad never said he was Polish, he always said he was a Pollock. And even though he used all sorts of colorful language my dad had more friends from more ethnic groups than anyone else I have ever known. He treated them all the same. They were people. Just people. He served in WW2 in the South Pacific and lost a lot of friends there and he made a point of telling me and my brother that he does not hate the Japs, and if he doesn't hate them after what they did to his friends we are not allowed to hate any group of people. Even after his step mom, my grandmother was murdered by a black man, he made a point of pointing out that she was murdered by a man, who just happened to be black.
I work in HR and there is that whole HR speak. But if you want to hear offensive jokes put a couple of beers in someone from HR. We get all the best offensive jokes.
The nature of my job requires me to be in daily contact with people all over the world. I do not think there is a major cultural groups that I do not deal with regularly. That made me realize that we are all really the same. People with jobs trying to get by.
And I tend to think this is the BIG and MAIN reason - I grew up in New York City and have lived and/or worked my entire life in New York. Even now I commute 2.5 hours a day to get to my job in Manhattan. I deal with more people from more ethnic groups on the subway than most people in the mid-west encounter their entire lives. That is not a dis. Just pointing out the difference in lifestyle. As a New Yorker there are really only three "groups" that I acknowledge:

They are:

People in my way
Tourists.
Everyone else

As a New Yorker other than those three groups I really do not care who the other person is. Not that that is the only way I classify people. When I was single I grouped people by:

Men
Women - Yes
Women - maybe
Women - No

New York is arguably the most multicultural city in the world and we have nailed it. Multiculturalism at it's best is not feeling good about other cultures or the whole "I love you, you love me" shtick. It is not caring about what culture that person is from. "So you're a transsexual Pilipino wican? Great, good for you but I don't care. Now get me a beer." As I write this I think about all the different people that I deal with daily and all the people from when my wife and I lived in the West Village. I never though about the guys selling me my Lotto tickets being what ever the fuck they are. They were and will always be the guys who used to sell me Lotto tickets. I am thinking back to a night of fun from when I was single. We went to a Chinese restaurant, a tapas bar then a topless bar. That night our waiter was Chinese, our bartender was Spanish, the stripper Russian and the cabbie Hindu - and you know what I never really thought about what nationality they were until know. They were to me the waiter, bartender, stripper, and cabbie. That is multiculturalism at it's best. It does not mean you have to embrace every culture out there, just respect that other people are from other cultures and respect the people and ignore the rest. If you are smart you will even find the stuff about the other culture that you like and ignore the rest. I love Thai food, does not mean I want to live there. Not seeing other people as a group/culture and excepting them as whoever they are. You can get dinner in Little India, drinks in Little Italy and desert in China town and the whole thing might run you 2 hours.

New York City is made up of and includes other cultures and New Yorkers just move amongst them, not judging them, because there is no reason too. They are just other New Yorkers too.

That is not to say that there are idiots who don't take multiculturalism to stupid absurdities. Of course there are. There was also a time when people were so un-multicultural people would hang a man because of the color of his skin. Now some people might say well that is Racism and not un-multicultural. True, but they both stem from the same thing - a bias against someone else because they are different in some fairly superficial way. So as a multicultural person I can respect some guy from Burma (my sushi guy is from Burma), like the guy, like the food and the art without having to go live there. In all honesty I think of him a Sushi guy not as Burmese Sushi Guy. Of course I think of him as Sushi Guy because I cannot pronounce his name. Which is cool because he cannot pronounce my name either. He calls me "Man".

So some politicians visited Mosques after 9/11. Big deal. Damn rather they do that than what we did the last time there was an attack on US soil. Lock American citizens up in camps, just because they also happened to be Japanese as well.

I do not know that much about the case of Khadr in Canada. Based on what Steyn wrote in his article I tend to think the politician was being an ass and should have put them on a plane and sent them back to Peshawar. But I also think Steyn left out some facts, like why wasn't the boy already in a prison hospital. If he wasn't there must have been a reason. What was it?

But he is right that people take things to far. This goes back to what I was saying about preaching to the converted. You yell "They are not being multicultural, let's get them" So they push it to an extreme just to prove a point. But then the other side instead of saying "Hey look multiculturalism has some really good points, but let's not go overboard" says things like "Multiculturalism is killing America".

(Funny sidebar - last late summer Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa) explained to TV interviewer Barry Nolan that America's "entire culture" was focused on something that was "harming America". Santorum boasted his knowledge of the "founding documents" before he hit upon the precise phrase to describe what is harming America - "The pursuit of happiness.")

So we once again polarize and argue instead of working towards a real solution. But then again if opinion columnists did not preach to the converted of their readership they might not have a readership.

I love it when people say that America is worrying about the wrong things and what you really worry about what I tell you. He says not to worry about environmental doomsday. Well it is precisely because somebody does worry about it that we might never face it. One Uncle recently expounded on why forestry should not be handed over to privatization. As a forestry person he was able to give a strong concise argument against privatization in this case. He worried that they could not do the job properly. By worrying about it and acting on it he helps prevent a problem down the road. Remember acid rain? Some people worried about it getting worse and worked on solutions to fix the problem.

As for krill levels in the Antarctic I am not even close to any sort of expert to venture a judgment on that topic. I doubt Mr. Steyn as a theater reviewer has any specialized degree in that field to be able to make a reliable call on that one. Maybe there is something to it, maybe not. Is it in the best interest of the experts who study krill for us to give them more money to fix the problem? Yep. Does that mean that it is therefore totally not a problem and something that we can completely ignore? I do not know. My suggestion is get other people who are not making money on krill research but are well trained in the area to review the material.

Should we worry about things that will affect the future? Yes, be it declining populations or the environment. What we should not do is run around like Chicken Little screaming the sky is falling because of _________ (insert your favorite worry here).

Why the hell did he waste any time discussing Cameron Diaz's opinions? I have never considered her, or really any celebrity a source of political wisdom. Remember actors and actress, even though they make a lot of money and are famous are people who make a living pretending to be other people. That does not make them any smarter or dumber than you. They are entitled to their opinions as an American just like you are. Just people are willing to let them blather on on TV. So why waste the time on her opinions? Because he is preaching to his converted. They like to make fun of Liberal celebrities who talk politics and he is pandering to his audience. Though he did unwittingly tell his audience something very important about himself.

He watches Oprah.

But now on to the main points of his article and the biggest hole in his article. He is correct in that populations are declining in certain countries in the world and increasing in other countries. As an HR guy who does a lot of work in international pensions I have done a fair amount of research into population shifts in Europe. Even given a couple of presentations on the topic. Not an expert, but I probably know a little more about it than the Mr. Steyn. He is also correct that Muslims is the fastest growing religion in the world. If he is correct about population shifts and Muslims increasing in number where is the hole in his argument? Simple, he does not ask why is there a decline in population and why there is an increase in Muslims. What is going on that makes people decide not to have as many children? Based on Mr. Steyn's article it is not a lack of free time on the part of the Europeans. I think it is a more subtle shift in thinking about ourselves, each other and work. I know people that only have one child because they feel they cannot afford to have two. On the other hand I know three families with 6 kids each and they figure "We always find a way." I am not a sociologist, so I freely admit I do not have the answer. But he did not even ask the question. Why?

Muslims are not increasing in number only because of birth rates. They also have the highest rate of conversion these days. Why? I have no idea. Why do statistically more Muslims really embrace their religion and attend services than any other religion? Again no idea. But I think that is a hell of a lot more important question than if they are having more kids.

See something is going on here. People are motivated by a religion and others are less interested in having kids. These are issues that if we can answer will really help change the situation.

Why did he not ask the obvious questions about the reasons for populations shifts? Why do some people chose not to try use welfare to get off welfare? For the same reason people call each other names. It is easy.

Whether feeling like "well this is the system, and I am stuck in it so I might as well accept it" or "they don't know what they are talking about so I do not have to listen to what they are saying". It is easier to listen to the rants then to critically listen to both sides. And if people listen to the rants enough then sometimes they believe them. Then they spread party PR as if it were truth. Both sides do it, again it is part of the game.

I think one of the reasons people join religions in the first place is because it makes life easier. If they except a religion, really except it, then certain issues are then resolved without critical thinking. Societal norms are set and even better they are set by God, so anyone who differs from you is a sinner. Plus since God set the rules, you do not have to question them nor ever budge on anything. "Why? Because God said so." You instantly have a community. Things go wrong when the priest says "Abortion and homosexuality is a sin" or the cleric says "America is the great Satan" and some damn fool of a follower decides to do something about it and forgets other things the priest/cleric says like "do unto others" or "murder is a sin". In an area under as much unrest as the middle east, with as much poverty this might help explain some of the conversions.

In other parts of the world if you look at who is being converted to Muslim or Christianity the areas that have the highest unemployment and poverty levels typically have the higher rates of conversion. Feelings of disenfranchisement from the establishment, helplessness, etc. Similar reasons people join cults, gangs etc.

Look religion has its place and can do amazingly positive things. It can also do amazingly horrible things.

To critically think about one's religion or politics requires not only listening to what is being said by BOTH sides, and I mean really listening, but also the ability to look inside one's self and think about what you think about what they are saying. Not just looking for holes in the argument, but how do you feel about the logic. Not a knee jerk reaction, but asking yourself why did you knee jerk that way. This is something I am going to try and be better at this year.

Of course you cannot have a population with the ability to critical think without a decent educational system, but that is a rant for another day.

OK, this has gone on long enough. I will stop here, for now. But I am sending along two articles and a few quotes. Both are articles from Mother Jones - a very liberal magazine. But that does not mean they do not do accurate reporting or make points that should be dismissed because of their viewpoint - you just take it into consideration while reading.

The first has some big holes in it, the guy really does not like Bush, but when you get away from the commentary and look and the information about Europe and the EU, it is something to take into consideration when thinking about Europe.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/11/continental_divide.html

The second is an article, the last article, by Steven Vincent, a murdered foreign correspondent. He wrote about the beginnings of democracy in Iraq. If you read his work it makes you wonder what kind of democracy are we setting up over there.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/11/assassins.html

"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct." - Thomas Jefferson

"Politics have no relation to morals." - Niccolo Machiavelli

"Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt Jr.

"If the government wants us to respect the law it should set a better example." - Anon.

Which Action Hero Would You Be?

2005-11-29T10:19:00.000-05:00

Here is a cool quiz that figures out what action hero you would be. I rated Batman! Excellent.

http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=92013

Thomas Jefferson on religion in politics

2005-11-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. Chistianity neither is, not ever was, a part of the common law."

Thomas Jefferson 1814.

The emperor has no cloths . . .

2005-10-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

Where I work people used to use the old "The emperor has no cloths" line to refer to The President.

Well I think it is more like "The emperor is a cross dresser, masturbating in the corner while making monkey noises."

A quote

2005-10-03T10:32:00.000-04:00

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor canany be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775)

Bush: One of the worst disasters to hit the US

2005-09-27T14:25:00.000-04:00

Funny how much the meaning changes once you remove the quotation marks. A news station in Ireland "forgot" to put the quaotaion marks around a Bush quote.

The result - this great image.

If you think that is funny try going to www.google.com

Then type in "failure" , and then hit "i'm feeling lucky".

It takes you to Bush's White House bio. It iwas what is known as a googlebomb. Here is a link to some additional information:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html

Updated Book & Movies Lists

2005-09-21T10:50:00.000-04:00

I have received some more lists and so updated the master lists

Current Book List

Lord of the Rings Trilogy - 5 votes
Moby Dick - Melville - 5 votes
Ulysses - James Joyce - 3 votes
100 years of solitude - Garcia Marquez - 2 votes
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - 2 Votes
Animal Farm - Orwell - 2 Votes
Any book - Kurt Vonnegut - 2 votes
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 2 votes
Dune - 2 votes
Geek Love - 2 votes
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - 2 Votes
Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae - 2 votes - First book to receive multiple votes & first book put on the list
Junkie - William S. Burroughs - 2 Votes
Odyssey - 2 votes
Silence of the Lambs- 2 Votes
The Stand - S. King - 2 Votes
The Stranger - Albert Camus - 2 votes
The World According to Garp - 2 Votes
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett - 2 votes
Watchmen - 2 votes
Wuthering Heights - 2 votes
1984
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A good biography on Abraham Lincoln
Alone---Byrd
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Anything by Kipling
Anything by Cussler
As Told at the Explorers Club
Athletic Shorts - Chris Crutcher or anything else by him
Battle Cry Freedom
Belladonna - Karen Moline
Beowulf
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Borstal Boy
Catcher and the Rye - Salinger
Civil War - Shelby Foote
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Collected Star Man comics - James Robinson
Collected Stories - Franz Kafka
Collected Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters - John Waters
Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
Don't smoke grass on my father's lawn (son of Charlie Chaplin),
Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Fahrenheir 451 - Ray Bradbury
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel - Groucho and Chico Marx
Fountainhead
Getting Things Done
Girlfriend in a Coma - Douglas Coupland
Gone with the Wind
Good Earth
Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet
Great Gatsby
Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
Gulliver's Travels
It - S. King
Rose Madder - S. King
Portable Beat Reader - many writers (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs)
Kane & Abel
The Prince
Still Life with Woodpecker - Robbins
Lance Armstrong's first book
Monkey, A Journey to the West
Old Man and the Sea - Hemmingway
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The Wizard of Oz series - Frank L Baum
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
L.A. Confidential - James Elroy
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat - John Gibbons (non fiction)
The Pirate Lafayette,
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Iliad - Homer
Maltese Falcon
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Snow Ghosts (also called The Snowstorm)
The Trial - Kafka
Middlemarch - George Eliot
On the Road
The Son Also Rises - Hemmingway
Oxbow Incident
Paradise Lost
Three Musketeers
White Noise
Foucault's Pendulum
Pharmakopia
The Tipping Point
Love in the time of Cholera
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Madam Bovary
The Rites of Spring - Madras Eckstein
The Proud Tower
Dreadnought - Robert Massie
The Great War and Modern Memory
The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
Winter Soldier - Robert Ketchum
The Cousins' War
The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
In Dubious Battle - Steinbeck
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1
Green Arrow, Archers Quest - Brad Meltzer, Phil Hester
For Whom the Bell Tolls---Hemingway
Tom Sawyer - Mark Tawain
In the Heart of the sea---Plhilbrick
The Firm---Grisham
Shackleton
Flyboys---Bradley
Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
Science and Human Values - Bronowski
Confronting Silence - Toru Takemitsu
Poetics of Music - Igor Stravinsky
The Dilbert Principle or The Way of the Weasel - Scott Adams
The Abs Diet - David Zinczenko
The Illuminati Papers - Robert Anton Wilson
The Big Book of Conspiracies - Robert Anton Wilson
Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
DareDevil - Frank Miller
Tomb of Dracula - Marv Wolfman
Swamp Thing - Alan Moore
The Collected Calvin & Hobbes
I know why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
How The Dead Live - Will Self
The Hear is Deceitful Above All things - JT Leroy
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Walden - Thoreau
Warriors of God
Winnie the Pooh
Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
Zen and art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Here is the current movies list:

Star Wars: Episode 4 A New Hope - First movie put on the list - 4 votes
Lord Of the Rings Trilogy - 4 votes
Casablanca - 3 votes
A Wonderful Life - 2 Votes
Blade Runner - 2 Votes
Clerks - 2 Votes
Star Wars 5 - Empire Strikes Back - 2 votes
Exorcist - 2 Votes
Ghost Dog 2 - votes
Gone With the Wind - 2 votes
Jaws - 2 votes
Manchurian Candidate (original) - 2 votes
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - 2 Votes
Rashomon - 2 votes
The 10 Commandments - Original with Charlton Heston - 2 votes
The Godfather - 2 votes
The Sound of Music - 2 votes
Wizard of Oz - 2 Votes
Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein
Animal House
Aliens
Apocalypse Now
Barbarella
Battle of the Bulge - Henry Fonda
BeastMaster
Bells of St. Mary's
Bowling for Columbine
Brain Candy
Brazil
Bridge of the River Kwai
Bridges of Madison county
Children of Paradise
Citizen Kane
Clash of the Titans
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Die Hard
Dogma
Dracula (Original with Bella Ligousi)
Dune
Fight Club
For a Few Dollars More
Forest Gump
Goodfellas
Hello Dolly
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Kung Fu - David Carradine, Made for TV
Manchurian Candidate (remake)
Modern Times
Moulin Rouge
Nightmare Before Christmas
North By Northwest
Office Space
Out of Africa
Princes Bride
Project A - Jackie Chan
Psycho
Re-animator
Rear Window
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn
Royal Tenenbaums
Schindler's List
Silence of the Lambs
Seven Samurai
Singing in the Rain
Star Wars 6 - Return of the Jedi
The Big Lebowski
The Cocoanuts with The Marx Brothers
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover
The Godfather 2
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Incredibles
The Passion of the Christ
The Quiet Man
The Seventh Seal
The Shining
The Thin Man
The Thing (original)
The way we were
The Wolf Man
The Zero Effect
Texas Chainsaw Massacarre - (original)
They were expendable
West Side Story
Young Frankenstein
Zatoichi

FEMA sends ice for Katrina victims to Maine - for no apparent reason

2005-09-21T10:27:00.000-04:00

There are times when people do or say things that are so monumentally stupid it just makes my brain hurt. It feels like my brain is smashing itself against the inside of my skull, like it is trying to get out so it can smack someone.

It you are in the mood for some stupidity, or more stupidity, on the part of FEMA click here
http://ksdk.com/news/us_world_article.aspx?storyid=85020

In a recent issue of Mother Jones I can across the best description on what went wrong with the Republicans.

"It's a classic tale of intending to do good - and doing very
well, ... The pledge of all these Reagan revolutionaries was to overturn
the iron triangle of Congress, the special interests, and the lobbyists.
Instead, they've found themselves comfortable with big government, as long as it
cashes in for their clients. I remember all these people as insurgents,
revolutionaries to overthrow the establishment. They became the
establishment in such a short time in an orgy of moneymaking. They ran the
Republican revolution off the rails."
- Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian conservative in the
article The Fall of a True Believer by Barry Yeoman, in Mother Jones
September/October 2005

A Little Girl Needs Your Help

2005-09-20T09:33:00.000-04:00

My wife and I know these people. This is not a scam.

It is a tragedy. Not only because this little girl, Ruby, suffered brain damage at birth, but also that medical insurance and the government will not cover or even help cover the costs of therapy that will help her learn to do things like sitting up and chewing. It's the early intervention of these therapies that will help her throughout her life.

If you can please make a contribution.

If you have a blog please post about her including the web address.

Thank you and Go Ruby Go!

http://www.gorubygo.com/index.html

Why the Bard was quite right when he penned "First we kill all the lawyers".

2005-09-16T15:59:00.000-04:00

In case you ever ge the warm and fuzzy about lawyers, especially Boston Lawyers, read this.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/
articles/2005/09/16/injustice_for_almost_all/

I am not advocating violence, but I would probably laught like hell if someone kicked their asses.

Dear Red States...

2005-09-16T11:53:00.000-04:00

A friend send me the following. Do not know who wrote it, but it is funny.

Dear Red States...

We've decided we're leaving.

We intend to form ourown country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii,Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and allthe Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation,and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and allthe slave states. We get stem cell research and the bestbeaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital andentrepreneurs. You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to makethe red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lowerthan the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happyfamilies. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nueva California will bepro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizensback from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask yourevangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to theirdeaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't showpictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you successin Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firmcontrol of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent ofthe pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit,95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French winesat state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high techindustry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods,sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plusStanford, Berkeley, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will haveto cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projectedhealth care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percentof all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of alltelevangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University ofGeorgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red statesbelieve Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believelife is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gunlaws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent thatSaddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believeyou are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You canhave that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,Blue States

First hand account of New Orleans

2005-09-15T13:04:00.000-04:00

This is a link to a scary first hand account of trying to get out of New Orleans. Further affirming my belief that there are more people that are evil SOBs then there are decent people willing to stick their necks out for a stranger.

But those decent people save lives. We should all thank them.

http://www.nypress.com/18/37/news&columns/bobbybellew.cfm

Colonoscopy 3

2005-09-14T14:45:00.000-04:00

Between my last solid bowel movement and my next solid bowel movement - 55 hours.

On the subject of Pancakes

2005-09-14T14:36:00.000-04:00

Pancakes

They seem like they should be simple enough to make. Flour, water, baking soda, etc. But no they are one of the most difficult thing for a restaurant to make Good. Most place can make a decent pancake. But there are few truly Good pancakes.

There is (or was) a place outside Jersey City called Grandma's where you have the choice between pancakes of toast with your eggs. These are the best pancakes I have EVER had. We used to come all the way from Manhattan for them. Any people from Manhattan never go to Jersey.

Except to Ikea.

There used to be a place outside of Woodstock called The Black Bear that made good pancakes. But they closed. Turns out the landlord said they made too much traffic - with the people coming to the restaurant and all. Yea it makes my head hurt too. Closed because they were successful.

Well now that the Black Bear is closed my wife, son and I went to the local bakery for breakfast. This place make amazing bagels and great crunchy bread. Same basic ingredients as a pancake. They must be great? Right?

WRONG!

These were the worst things I have ever tasted and I had recently taken phosfo soda to clean my colon and that tasted better than these things. They were so bad we had to keep eating them to try and figure out what was wrong with them.

So if you are ever in Kingston having breakfast in a bakery - skip the pancakes. The eggs and bacon were great.

Colonoscopy 2

2005-09-14T14:02:00.000-04:00

Ok, so it is over. I just have really bad hemorrhoids. I do not remember a point in my childhood where I thought the statement "I just have really bad hemorrhoids" would be a good thing.

So it starts with me having to stop eating solid foods by 1PM the day before. Just clear fluids after that. When I got home that evening I took two ducolax and then another two right before bed. Well at 2:30 AM I woke up. I could feel something going on inside me. Something not good. Sort of like what John Hurt would have felt if Alien had shot out his ass instead of his chest. Just making it into the bathroom in time for a bowel movement so impressive I considered taking pictures of it. It just would not stop coming out. Remember that scene in Austin Powers when he was pissing after coming out of suspended animation. Picture that with poop and lots of graphic-bordering-on-Monty-Python-like sound effects.

I think I discovered Number 3.

Well after a good 45 minutes of pooping back to bed. 7AM up to take phosfo soda - three doses a half hour apart. If you ever wondered how these things clear out your bowels, well it is simple actually. The active ingredients in them cause your bowels to retain water. So basically you end up pissing out of your ass.

A lot.

Often.

And I mean a lot very often.

So after 3 hours of pissing out of my ass time to leave for the hospital. I went to Benedictine Hospital in Kingston. Really nice place. I was pre-registered. Walked in. Showed them my card then someone escorted me and my family up to the endoscopy area. Very civilized.

Gave my wife and son a hug and sent them on my way. Could not help but think about the ramifications of what the worst case senaireo would be. Met a woman on the bus the other day. She has started commuting everyday into NYC. Her husband died a few years ago and she just lost her job. The only job she could find that paid enough was in NYC. So she drops her two children off with family at 5:30AM every day. Her youngest, who does not remember her dad, just started school.

But I digress.

Well they give me a bag and tell me to put on a robe. I sat in my robe and read some of The Road To Mars by Eric Idle. After a very long wait a nurse comes to get me. Turns out they forgot I was back there. Great.

So she takes me into a room and I hop up in bed. While one nurse sticks me with the IV, monitor patches, pressure cuff and the such the other is asking me all sorts of medical questions. Since most of the time I had not idea what she was talking about I just said "no".

Now I am laying there on a bed, in a robe with no drawers on. With my feet towards the door if you know what I mean. I've got IV's, cuffs, oxygen, electrodes my chest, some thing on my finger, and more. I was wondering is this what my last days are going to be like (hopefully) 40-50 years from now. Kind of scared and feeling rather alone and remembering my grandfather in the hospital. Not the way a person should go. Not like that. Not alone.

But I digress again.

The doctors with the good medicine shows up. The guy that knocks you out. Can not remember how to spell it and the spell check aint helping. He starts making jokes about whether I am a good tipper or not. Nothing like being strapped to a table with some stranger standing over you with a BIG MOFO NEEDLE making jokes. Well he sticks the thing in the IV and I was out. Boom I was out.

vaguely remember my doctor shaking me. Vaguely.

I ended up sleeping for almost an extra hour. They could not wake me up. They would give me a shake. Talk to me. The minute they stopped talking I would go right back out.

Big freaking surprise considering that I get like 5 hours sleep a night.

Finally get me up and tell me I am ok. I started laughing really hard. Not at anything in particular.

Just laughing.

It was good.

Then I think I confessed to all sort of things I did when I was younger involving drugs, but I figure the statute of limitations has run out on those.

National Media Attention . . .

2005-09-14T14:01:00.000-04:00

for a friends Blog. Here is his email:

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Rollye James has linked to my
"Go Fish" ( http://tinyurl.com/d65xe ) post. Not bad for a blog I
started a week ago. Her site is http://www.rollye.net/ and the link is
in the second paragraph of the post in her site's blog dated TUESDAY
SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 9:00 PM (ET).
I have called into her show in the past and we had fun talking on the
air. I find her radio show to often be insightful. Like myself, she
finds both sides of the political aisle a sham.

Colonoscopy

2005-09-08T13:36:00.000-04:00

Ok, so tomorrow is my colonoscopy. I will not go into details as to why they are going to taking a film crew up my Hershey highway. It is not your business and if you were the sort of person who was into that sort of thing, well, damn it I'm married.

Everyone that knows about the test seems to think I am worried about the colonoscopy itself. Which I am not. Let's see someone is going to shoot me up and then some other guy is going to shove something up my ass. That is called Thursday night for 80% of the West Village.

No, I am more concerned with why they are doing it. Because I know blood coming out of your ass aint a good thing. I tend to doubt my doctor and his buddies were sitting around trying to figure out what to do tomorrow and shoving something up my ass was the best option they could come up with. Screw that and go play golf, go to a strip joint, hell watch All in the Family reruns. Damn it.

It is probably more like my doctor got a call from his wife to tell him that her parents were coming over for the day. And he was all "Well, that is a shame as I have a new patient who needs a procedure right away. Yes he needs, um, a. . . colonoscopy. Yes he needs a colonoscopy. So I will not be able to see your lovely Mother that day."

I went into his office last week and they stuck a hose up me bum to inflate it, so he could get a better look around. As he was inflating my rectum, and we all know the distinctive sound a compressor makes, with my but high in the air he says "Nice shoes". I am thinking "Pay fucking attention to what you are doing", but it came out "Thanks".

By the way does anybody read this?

A Buddy's Blogg

2005-09-07T08:36:00.000-04:00

My best friend, and Best Man at my wedding, has finally started a blogg. Besides being an great guy, he is probably my favorite writer. I have saved just about every email he has sent me and they still make me laugh and think.

I suggest you keep and eye one it for both good laughs and strange connections.

It is called A Spectators Account and here is the link:

http://spectatorsaccount.blogspot.com/

Here is a quote from an email he sent me years ago when I was depressed about some money issues:

Lament, shmament. Money comes, money goes. You got your health, your wife, and enough to buy a horse. You can always grow a mustache (or buy one at the theatre shop). Next you'll start whistling when you piss. Cash out, burn the money. See you in Dallas, at the plaza.
KLF JAM

Remember, in a thousand years what the hell is the difference.

Brought to you by the Society For Freedom Enforced By Massive Destructive Power
-Building Orbital Particle Weapon Platforms today for a free tomorrow.
(Soon to be a PBS sponsor)

Bush and His War

2005-08-11T13:45:00.000-04:00

If he is so fired gungho about this being a fight for Democracy and it is the right thing to do, then how come his daughters have not enlisted? How come he has not publicly said that he thinks they should enlist? Or said why they should not, but the rest of the countries kids should?

Funniest Motorcycle Story EVER!

2005-07-14T10:28:00.000-04:00

I do not know who wrote this. Over the years I have received this as an email numerous times.

I now share with you (if there even is a you) the funniest motorcycle story ever.

I never dreamed slowly cruising through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous! Studies have shown that motorcycle's requires more decisions per second, and more sheer data processing than nearly any other common activity or sport. The reactions and accurate decision making abilities needed have been likened to the reactions of fighter pilots! The consequences of bad decisions or poor situational awareness are pretty much the same for both groups too.

Occasionally, as a rider I have caught myself starting to make bad or late decisions while riding. In flight training, my instructors called this being "behind the power curve". It is a mark of experience that when this begins to happen, the rider recognizes the situation, and more importantly, does something about it. A short break, a meal, or even a gas stop can set things right again as it gives the brain a chance to catch up.

Good, accurate, and timely decisions are essential when riding a motorcycle at least if you want to remain among the living. In short, the brain needs to keep up with the machine.
I had been banging around the roads of east Texas and as I headed back into Dallas, found myself in very heavy, high-speed traffic on the freeways. Normally, this is not a problem, I commute in these conditions daily, but suddenly I was nearly run down by a cage that decided it needed my lane more than I did. This is not normally a big deal either, as it happens around here often, but usually I can accurately predict which drivers are not paying attention and avoid them before we are even close. This one I missed seeing until it was nearly too late, and as I took evasive action I nearly broadsided another car that I was not even aware was there!

Two bad decisions and insufficient situational awareness all within seconds. I was behind the power curve. Time to get off the freeway. I hit the next exit, and as I was in an area I knew pretty well, headed through a few big residential neighborhoods as a new route home. As I turned onto the nearly empty streets I opened the visor on my full-face helmet to help get some air. I figured some slow riding through the quiet surface streets would give me time to relax, think, and regain that "edge" so frequently required when riding. Little did I suspect.

As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me. It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it-it was that close.

I hate to run over animals.and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact.

Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels can take care of themselves!

Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing the oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his little beady eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, "Banzai!" or maybe, "Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!" as the leap was spectacular and he flew over the windshield and impacted me squarely in the chest.

Instantly he set upon me. If I did not know better I would have sworn he brought twenty of his little buddies along for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light t-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and leather gloves puttering maybe 25mph down a quiet residential street and in the fight of his life with a squirrel. And losing.

I grabbed for him with my left hand and managed to snag his tail. With all my strength I flung the evil rodent off the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw.

That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there. It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary pissed-off squirrel. This was an evil attack squirrel of death!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands, and with the force of the throw swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact he landed square on my back and resumed his rather anti-social and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him!

The situation was not improved. Not improved at all. His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result. Torque. This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it. The engine roared as the front wheel left the pavement. The squirrel screamed in anger. The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in well I just plain screamed.
Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly squirrel torn t-shirt, and only one leather glove roaring at maybe 70mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel and with a demonic squirrel on his back. The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder.

With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike. This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle my brain was just simply overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little affect against the massive power of the big cruiser.

About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he is a Scottish attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got IN my full-face helmet with me. As the faceplate closed partway and he began hissing in my face I am quite sure my screaming changed tone and intensity. It seemed to have little affect on the squirrel however. The rpm's on The Dragon maxed out (I was not concerned about shifting at the moment) and her front end started to drop. Now picture the large man on the huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very ragged torn t-shirt, and wearing one leather glove, roaring at probably 80mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out his mostly closed full-face helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse.

Finally I got the upper hand I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked sort-of. Spectacularly sort-of, so to speak.

Picture the scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork.

Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn t-shirt flapping in the breeze, and wearing one leather glove, moving at probably 80mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car.

I heard screams. They weren't mine...

I managed to get the big motorcycle under directional control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign at a busy cross street.

I would have returned to fess up (and to get my glove back). I really would have. Really. But for two things. First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. One of them was on his back in the front yard of the house they had been parked in front of and was rapidly crabbing backwards away from the patrol car. The other was standing in the street and was training a riot shotgun on the police cruiser.

So the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway. That was one thing. The other? Well, I swear I could see the squirrel, standing in the back window of the patrol car among shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery, and shaking his little fist at me. I think he was shooting me the finger. That is one dangerous squirrel.

And now he has a patrol car.

I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made an easy right turn, and sedately left the neighborhood. As for my easy and slow drive home? Screw it. Faced with a choice of 80mph cars and inattentive drivers, or the evil, demonic, attack squirrel of death...I'll take my chances with the freeway. Every time. And I'll buy myself a new pair of gloves.

Remembering 9/11

2005-07-08T10:01:00.000-04:00

With the bombings in London, it made me think about 9/11. Here is an edited note that I sent out on the morning of 9/13 to my friends and family outside NYC to let them know that my wife and I were okay. I edited out he really personal stuff and the irrelevant stuff.

I just thought I would send everyone a note on what is going on in New York. From 14th street down is closed to non-emergency vehicles but people are still allowed. On one of the news reports they said that below 14th street people were not allowed, not true. The main reason that it is closed up to 14th street is because the closest large trauma center is on 12th street and 7th ave. My wife and I are near it off 6th ave. The ambulance sirens are starting to get to us, as are the sounds of the fighter jets overhead. They fly over pretty regularly.
Below canal street has been evacuated, but they have been slowly moving that boarder closer to the site, allowing people back into there homes. In some areas they are allowing people to go home and retrieve items and pets. There is an entire 10+ building apartment complex directly across from where the trade center stood that is off limits. The ASPCA is trying to arrange with the police to get the pets out.
If you stand on 6th ave you used to be able to see the trade center, this morning was the first time people really got to look at the new skyline. Since it happened there has been so much smoke and dust that even though you knew it was gone, there was still this sort of weird feeling they were just hiding in the cloud. There is no smoke this morning. They are just gone.
The dust is all over the city, it has a metallic gritty feel in your mouth. The engineers that my wife work with say the is the asbestos in the air. The EPA has been saying that it is OK, the levels are to low outside the "hot area" and that the exposure has to be over a long time to be dangerous.
There is a chance of rain tonight, that might help to get it out of the air.
There was a line outside the local hardware store, people were buying dustmasks. It was strange seeing New Yorkers sitting at an outdoor cafe wearing the dustmasks, lifting them to drink there beers.
The almost the entire crew of the fire department of our neighborhood is gone.
The hotel where my bachelor party was is expected to come collapse sometime this week, if it didn't last night.
Probably one of the creepiest things, for me, it the complete quite. I am not a huge fan of living in NYC, partially due to the noise, but there is always music in the air here. Someone is playing the stereo, a car stereo, music coming out of a store, especially the local record stores and there is always someone playing the guitar for change. Now there is nothing. This may sound like over-dramatisation, but with the car ban, the only sounds in our neighborhood are the occasional sirens and jets overhead.

A Great Rant about a Bad Movie

2005-07-06T10:48:00.000-04:00

If you want to read one of the best rants around about a truly horrible movie, check out this review of the 30th Anniversary NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD DVD from Ain't It Cool News.

This makes my loathing for Tim Buron look like a love fest.

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=4397

Further proof that Tim Burton is a talent less hack who should be put down

2005-07-05T15:32:00.000-04:00

Since no one seems to read this blogg I have decided to turn it into a general rant about stuff that pisses me off. This in turn means that I will be posting a lot of stuff about how much I dislike Tim Burton.

So when he said he was doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory he said he wanted it to be the darker story that Dahl had written. OK, I disagree but if he wanted to do a straight version on the book, fine. We all knew it would be crap, but okay at least he was not going to make bullshit up like he did with Planet of the Apes.

Now the little bitch has decided that he needs to add material to the book.

He is giving Willy Wonka a dad.

An evil dad.

An evil dad who is a dentist.

An evil dad who is a dentist played by Christopher Lee.

This is going to suck on a whole new level of sucking.

All the whores in Thailand do not suck this much.

Speaking of Thai whores at least Lee will do a decent job with the material. It's not like they got Mike Keaton to do it.

Check out this article from the Sci Fi channel. http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=31454&type=0

Charlie's Wonka Gets A Backstory

Tim Burton, director of the upcoming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, told SCI FI Wire that he has given Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) a new backstory that involves a troubled relationship with his fatherÂa familiar theme in Burton's movies. "Yeah, I've got some problems, you know?" Burton said in a news conference in Nassau, Bahamas, last weekend. "You've seen me enough to realize that by now, haven't you?" In Charlie, a new movie version of Roald Dahl's classic children's book, Wonka flashes back frequently to his childhood with his stern father, a dentist played by Christopher Lee. Burton (Big Fish) said that he had his own issues with both parents when he grew up in suburban Burbank, Calif. "You try to work out your issues, but then you realize those kinds of traumatic issues just stay with you forever," Burton said. "Somehow they just keep reoccurring. No matter how hard I try to get them out of my head, they sort of stay there." Wonka's backstory doesn't appear in Dahl's book, but Burton said that he felt it was needed for the movie. "We sort of felt that if you have an eccentric characterÂand it's fine; it works in the bookÂwe just felt in the movie, you've got a guy that's acting that strange, you kind of want to get a flavor of why he is the way he is," Burton said. "Otherwise he's just a weirdo. And you want to at least have a sense as to why he's acting so strangely and why he's got some problems. If ... your father were a dentist and Christopher Lee, you can see where that might cause you some traumatic experiences in your life." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opens July 15.

2005-05-11T12:43:00.000-04:00

I found out from a friend that it can be a pain if you want to post a comment. So please send your Book and Movie List to booknmovielist@yahoo.com

Below are the comments a couple of people gave for why certain movies made their list:

Clerks – This is a movie about what my life could have been. I had a friend that worked in a comic shop who was a lot like Dante and there is always a “Randle” at a comic store. Another buddy and I used to hang out there. I was the Silent Bob to his Jay. Hell I used to date girls who lived in that town in New Jersey. Scary how much it got right.

The Passion of the Christ - Haven't seen it but read the book. I have noticed it's effect upon people and add it to this list based on that. A lesson in love that has a greater impact upon one's thinking than the common viewer recognizes.

The Greatest Story Ever Told - The story of Christ; done well for film. (Trivia: John Wayne plays the Centurion. He has one line: "Truly this was the Son of God." You recognize that voice instantly.)

Dune - The movie is not as good as the book but is worthy in its own right. The Mentat mantra spoken upon taking the Juice of Sapho is original to the movie and not in the books; "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion...". It was that mantra that inspired my writing of the cocaine mantra: "It is by will alone I set my lust in motion...".

The Thin Man – Nick and Nora Charles are one of the great underrated screen couples. Nick’s desire to not get involved vs. Nora’s desire to get involved. Nick’s bumbling drunk investigating is in many ways a pre-curser to Columbo’s style of investigation. Plus it’s really funny.

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back – Went to see this a few days after September 11th. We were living in the West Village at the time off 6th Avenue and used to see The World Trade Center every day. My wife had lost friends in the attack and we had both over the last few months been offered jobs down there. Fortunately we had turned them down. We could not watch the news on TV any more. It was too much. We lived below 14th street so we could not even take our car out of the garage and get out of town. So we decided to go to the movies. And we laughed. A lot. If a movie can make you laugh with all that going on - it is funny. And will always hold a special place for me.

Dogma – One of the great funny movies about religion and the end of the world. Very clearly it sets out various themes or schools of religious thought while at the same time remaining light and funny. Ben Affleck doesn’t suck in it, which is an achievement in and of itself. And Salma Hayek as a stripper in a Catholic Schoolgirl outfit, is worth the price of admission alone. Kevin Smith does have knack for getting hot girls in cool outfits. Have you seen Eliza Dushku and Shannon Elizabeth in the cat suits in Jay and Silent Bob?

Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein – What made the Abbot & Costello movies so great is that everyone else in the movie would play the film straight. All the comedy was left to them. This is style is even more evident in this movie. Bela Ligousi and Lon Channy Jr. play Dracula and the Wolfman absolutely straight, like it was any other horror film. This makes the comedy so much more funny.

Empire Strikes Back – Why Empire Strikes Back instead of Star Wars – Finding out Darth Vader is Luke’s farther is a major event in movie history. It’s Huge. Plus better directing and more exciting. It has everything right.

Here are why some books made the list:

Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae – “Illuminatus! is important on several levels. Some of the elements of import are the inculcation of non-linear thinking in the reader and the entering into and out of paranoia that the book deliberately brings to the reader. Illuminatus! helps to develop a more powerful, more resilient, mind. It brings the reader to a heightened state. It explores "What is reality?".”

Dune – “Dune is one of the greatest books ever written. It delves into the human condition and forces the reader to ask "what is human?". It shows the reader that human potential is limitless. That the limits we impose upon ourselves are often arbitrary and that the limits of what we can do are yet to be discovered. It directs, if subtly, the reader to explore the concept of multi-dimensional existence; that we do in fact exist on more planes of consciousness and dimension than perhaps are formally recognized today. Not all can be explained in terms of mathematics. Some things can be known, but not taught. Mathematically describe the flapping of a flag or hold a cloth in the wind? Which imparts the lesson of movement? Learned but not taught. So it is with Dune. The forces and motions of a society as a whole are greater than the sum of the individual parts. You cannot give a simpleton diagnosis to a society at large. There are forces of great power and limitless (apparent) energy. The drive to procreate. The need for love. The dangers of indulgence. As we act so do we become. The myriad slippery slopes we face in our daily choices. Dune makes one think and in thinking, in being aware of a life as a system, a system that impacts and echoes through other systems, one is awake. This is a lesson of the Kwisatz Haderach: One man is always the difference. Everything we do or don't do every day counts. It affects all of mankind. The echo of one can change the thought of all. Dune is required reading because it is essential to the development of the species in getting on with its growth that the Sleeper Must Awaken.”

Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet – The funniest book I have ever read. I was laughing so hard I had to put the book down. If I thought about the book while riding the subway on my way to work, I would just burst out laughing.

Einstein’s Dreams - Alan Lightman – The most poetic non-poetry book I have ever read. Deals with the fairly complicated concept of time in a beautiful and simple way. One of those books that gets you to pause and really think about important concepts and issues, yet remains light.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson – Best book on politics ever. Glimpse into, what has turned out to be a simpler time. Plus the Nixon discussing football section shows a different light on a president whose positive accomplishments have been forgotten in the light of his crimes. Seems like now presidential crimes are forgotten far to quickly.

As Told at the Explorers Club – Great stories by real people who lived the lives most of us read about in books or go to movies to see. I found it hard to go back to reading fiction after reading about some of the things these people have seen and done.

The Collected Star Man comics – James Robinson – First of all the art is amazing. If you like stuff from the Golden Age of comics, it does it well. Written with a lot of respect, thought and intelligence. It has real emotion. One part always makes me want to cry. Three characters go into Hell and are tested. It’s the most emotionally real comic I have ever read. Striking at the core of you in that it’s relationship between the characters are real. More so than any other comic or book that I have ever read.

Tom Sawyer - is a book which I probably read three times and would recommend to every young American. It is part history, adventure and life. I could have closed my eyes and I was Tom.

The First Posting

2005-05-06T13:28:00.000-04:00

Ok, here it goes.

It started as simply putting together "The Big List of 100 Books You May Want to Read" for my 22 month old son.

When my wife went into labor I started a sort of diary of the whole birth process. Taking notes on contraction length and time between contractions, plus jotting down various stuff that went shooting through my head. Starting as "Feed rabbits, Get out hospital bag, Find cell phone" to "Your Mom just passed the mucus plug. She said it looked like a candy. I asked her not to tell me what kind of candy" to a description of the cafeteria food. By the way New York Presbyterian makes a wicked biscuit in the morning. Little butter and jelly, great pick me up after 7 hours of labor. After that it turend into part a sort of a history of being a first time parent, so that should he ever have kids he may have an idea what to expect and a nice history of his early childhood. The other part is tips on marriage, college, love, work, vacations, kids, money and such. Just stuff I have learned over the years, usually because I screwed something up and did not want him to make the same mistakes I did. No parent does.

Then I decide to put together a list of the 100 books I think he should/might want to read during his life. Well, putting together a list of 100 books is tougher than I thought. The first couple of dozen were easy. The next couple of dozen were not as easy. Sure every once and a while I would remember some group of authors or a genre that I had earlier missed, but by the time I hit 70 I was running dry.

One thing you should know as back story is that I work in Manhattan but live in Woodstock. Technically I live in a town right outside of Woodstock, but if I tell people I the name of the town they just assume it is some small town in Westchester, and look at me funny when I bitch about my commute. If I tell them Woodstock, even if they have no idea where it is, they know it is far away. And it is. I commute 5 hours a day. On a good day. Assuming there is no traffic accidents on the Thruway and such. Bad day can run 7 or 8 hours a day. A good day means two and a half hours each way. Thirty minute drive from my house to the last stop before the bus goes express. Then and hour and a half bus ride, hopefully. After a subway ride and a couple of block walk. If the train is right there is can be as short as 15 minutes, but usually the train is not right there. One time I was on a train in the tunnel when the train in front of us had mechanical difficulties. 45 minutes later I was and the next stop, still two stops away from my stop. Anyone who rides the subway in New York City, or anywhere in the world, knows what I mean.

Most of the other people on the bus are like myself, transplanted New Yorkers. And for the record my wife and I owned the house prior to 9/11 and had been planning on moving up for a couple of years. Scary thing about the bus is that every month there is another person who becomes a regular. So many people do it daily that they have added more buses to the schedule in the year and a half that I have been doing it. You get to know people when you spend that much time together on a bus every day.

Funny, I ran into a guy on the bus who knew of my brother. He had gone to college with my brothers girlfriend. Also after my brother went from full time to freelance for a particular company, this guy started as fulltime there. Then a couple of weeks later my brother died and a lot of the guys that had known my brother told him all sorts of stories about him. He said everyone was really shaken up, as my brother was only 28 when he died. Never drank, did not do drugs. They never did figure out what had killed him. But I digress. . .

I live in a small town. So everyone knows me and my family and we know everyone else. We are on a first name basis with everyone at the local supermarket and diner. We know our butcher, the local produce guy and the ladies who work in the library. It is a small town. The only person we are not on a first name basis is the Sushi guy, only because we can't really pronounce his name. So we call him Sushi Man. We go to the same diner every weekend at the same time every Saturday and Sunday. It was always the same people. Some whose name we knew, some we did not.

During the last election people sort of stopped talking to people outside their own group of friends. Both on the bus and in the diner. We may be outside Woodstock, but it is the 'country'. So there were just as many Bush supports as there were Kerry supporters. Sometimes things on the bus would get heated as people argued about politics.

Well one Saturday I was in the local diner and I asked some friends at the next table what they thought should be on the list. The effect of the question was instantaneous and amazing. With in minutes people were discussing what should go on the list. This is important. They were actually discussing it. Listening to each others opinions about movies and books. Listening. No one adopted a hard line stance on anything. So I got some paper to write the suggestions down and everyone wanted to put their own list together. This is the other important thing: that people became very thoughtfully about "their list". Signing the bottoms of the pages. Same thing on the bus, people would actually talk to each other about it. These are people who a few months ago wanted nothing to do with each other.

So I ask you, what are your favorite 5-10 books and movies?

Any particular reason any of them are on there.

Every month I plan on putting up the list of top books and movies, based on peoples feedback.

Here is the current list of 129 books:

PLEASE NOTE that other than listing titles that have received multiple votes (and noting the number of votes) these are in no particular order.

Moby Dick - Melville - 4 votes
Lord of the Rings Trilogy - 4 votes
Ulysses - James Joyce - 3 votes
Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shae - 2 votes - First book to receive multiple votes & first book put on the list
Dune - 2 votes
Wuthering Heights - 2 votes
Any book - Kurt Vonnegut - 2 votes
100 years of solitude - Garcia Marquez - 2 votes
Geek Love - 2 votes
Odyssey - 2 votes
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 2 votes
The Stranger - Albert Camus - 2 votes
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett - 2 votes
Watchmen - 2 votes
Junkie - William S. Burroughs - 2 Votes
Silence of the Lambs- 2 Votes
The Illuminati Papers - Robert Anton Wilson
The Big Book of Conspiracies - Robert Anton Wilson
The Stand - Stephen King
It - Stephen King
Portable Beat Reader - many writers (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs)
Kane & Abel
Getting Things Done
The Prince
Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
Still Life with Woodpecker - Robbins
Lance Armstrong's first book
The World According to Garp
A good biography on Abraham Lincoln
Fountainhead
Good Omens - Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchet
Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, - Hunter Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel - Groucho and Chico Marx
Winnie the Pooh
Monkey, A Journey to the West
As Told at the Explorers Club
Old Man and the Sea - Hemmingway
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The Wizard of Oz series - Frank L Baum
Athletic Shorts - Chris Crutcher or anything else by him
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
L.A. Confidential - James Elroy
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat - John Gibbons (non fiction)
Don't smoke grass on my father's lawn (son of Charlie Chaplin),
Zen and art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Pirate Lafayette,
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Iliad - Homer
Maltese Falcon
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Catcher and the Rye - Salinger
Snow Ghosts (also called The Snowstorm)
The Trial - Kafka
Great Gatsby
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone with the Wind
On the Road
The Son Also Rises - Hemmingway
Oxbow Incident
Paradise Lost
Borstal Boy
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Gulliver's Travels
1984
Good Earth
Three Musketeers
White Noise
Foucault's Pendulum
Pharmakopia
Warriors of God
The Tipping Point
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Love in the time of Cholera
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Madam Bovary
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
The Rites of Spring - Madras Eckstein
The Proud Tower
Dreadnought - Robert Massie
The Great War and Modern Memory
The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
Winter Soldier - Robert Ketchum
The Cousins' War
The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
In Dubious Battle - Steinbeck
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoyevsky
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Collected Stories - Franz Kafka
Collected Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1
Animal Farm - Orwell
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Beowulf
The Collected Star Man comics - James Robinson
Green Arrow, Archers Quest - Brad Meltzer, Phil Hester
For Whom the Bell Tolls---Hemingway
Tom Sawyer - Mark Tawain
Alone---Byrd
Anything by Kipling
Anything by Cussler
In the Heart of the sea---Plhilbrick
The Firm---Grisham
Shackleton
Flyboys---Bradley
Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
Science and Human Values - Bronowski
Confronting Silence - Toru Takemitsu
Poetics of Music - Igor Stravinsky
The Dilbert Principle or The Way of the Weasel - Scott Adams
Walden - Thoreau
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
The Abs Diet - David Zinczenko
Battle Cry Freedom
Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
DareDevil - Frank Miller
Tomb of Dracula - Marv Wolfman
Swamp Thing - Alan Moore
Civil War - Shelby Foote
The Collected Calvin & Hobbes

Here is the current movies list:

Lord Of the Rings Trilogy - 4 votes
Star Wars: Episode 4 A New Hope - First movie put on the list - 3 votes
Casablanca - 3 votes
Manchurian Candidate (original) - 2 votes
Ghost Dog 2 votes
The Sound of Music - 2 votes
Clerks - 2 Votes
Rashomon - 2 votes
Gone With the Wind - 2 votes
Empire Strikes Back - 2 votes
10 Commandments - Original with Charlton Heston - 2 votes
Jaws - 2 votes
The Godfather - 2 votes
Return of the Jedi
The Thin Man
BeastMaster
The Shining
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Young Frankenstein
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Dogma
Seven Samurai
The Cocoanuts with The Marx Brothers
Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein
Project A - Jackie Chan
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn
Battle of the Bulge - Henry Fonda
Blade Runner
For a Few Dollars More
Princes Bride
Manchurian Candidate (remake)
Fight Club
The Incredibles
Die Hard
The Zero Effect
The Passion of the Christ
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Dune
Kung Fu - David Carradine, Made for TV
Bowling for Columbine
Royal Tenenbaums
Brain Candy
The Big Lebowski
Children of Paradise
Citizen Kane
Modern Times
North By Northwest
The Seventh Seal
Singing in the Rain
Wizard of Oz
Bridge of the River Kwai
Hello Dolly
The Quiet Man
The Godfather 2
West Side Story
They were expendable
Bells of St. Mary's
The Wolf Man,
Out of Africa,
Dracula (Original with Bella Ligousi),
A Wonderful Life,
Apocalypse Now,
Bridges of Madison county,
The Thing (original)
Forest Gump
Exorcist
Goodfellas
Aliens
Re-animator
Animal House
Silence of the Lambs

Next time I post I will update the list as well as adding some of the reasons people gave for putting a particular movie or book on the list.

Have a good day.