Pen and Ink

Out of control.

With the federal budget deficit and the country's debt out of control (currently over $9 trillion), one would think a little restraint would be in order.

This post could go on and on about the stupid war and pork projects, but I'll spare you.  I'm going to focus on one tiny expenditure (relatively speaking) which has my panties in a twist.

The Rubik's Cube.

You remember that insane mind-boggler of a game. But like me, you probably thought it went the way of the pet rock.

No, dears, it's still around.  And apparently, the government is interested in it.

You see, previously, computer scientists used to think the puzzle could be solved in 27 twists out of a possible 43 quintillion.  Yes, quintillion.

But that wasn't good enough. The National Science Foundation gave $200,000 to Northwestern University to see if the computer geeks there could do it with fewer twists.

And such a return on the NSF's investment! Guess what?  It can be done in just 26 twists.

I fail to understand how this advances science at all? With all of the disease in the world that need curing, the alternative fuels that need developing, the equipment the men and women in our military need to keep them safe, couldn't we have found better things to do with $200 grand?

What the brain trust at the NSF doesn't know is that it the puzzle can be solved with no twists. Just peel the damned stickers off.

The unfair audience.

South Florida is a weird place.

Don't get me wrong. I like living here, but this place is whacked sometimes. Or, more to the point, the people are whacked.

John and I were at the Carnival Center in Miami tonight for the opening of My Fair Lady. As the curtain fell after the final number (but before the bows), a whole bunch of people got up to leave. I mean, a whole bunch.

"Why are they all getting up now?" I whispered to John.

"It's the rude South Florida audiences," he replied.

I have a great deal of respect for performers, musicians, choreographers, directors, and everyone else who's involved in putting on a musical.  All of those people -- on stage and off -- coming together in harmony -- each person playing his or her part -- is just astounding to me.  For me, it's something to which I assign a high value.

So to leave the theater before the performers and musicians have taken their bows and received whatever applause is due to them is just the ultimate insult. It's rude.

I was trying to understand why people would do it. The only reason could possibly be to avoid the long line to retrieve their cars from the valet. But if they bothered to walk the half-block to the self-parking lot, they'd be out of there in no-time at all. The streets around the Carnival Center are not crowded, so it's easy to maneuver around.

These people should be ashamed.

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By the way, the show was really good. I wasn't supposed to go tonight, as I have Thursday night season tickets to the Broadway Across America series. But John had press tickets and no one to go with him, so I went. It certainly won't be the first time I've seen a Broadway show twice.

Politcal potpourri.

There are so many things to comment on from the political world this week. And just think, it's only Tuesday.  So here I go.

On Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez: Well, it sure took him long enough. This has been coming on for months. The latest of the Bushies to fall depart. That's what arrogance will get ya.

On Senator Larry Craig: "I did nothing wrong."  Right. Sure. Larry, you went into a men's room, started tapping your foot, put your hand under the wall of the stall into the next one, and peered into the crack between the walls.  I'm not one to cruise for sex in bathrooms, but this doesn't sound to me like he was just there to do his "business."  After he was caught, he plead guilty.

So, the guy's gay and closeted (and butt-ugly, too). So many are. But he's one of the ones who's aligned himself with the conservatives and would deny us GLBT folk equal rights.

Another closet case brought down. Gotta love it.

On an "invincible" Democratic ticket: Everyone's favorite octogenarian Commie, Fidel Castro, has pronounced a Clinton-Obama ticket "invincible." Now Fidel is hardly a good barometer of US politics, but I think he's on to something. I've often thought that Hil and Barack would make an interesting pair. She'd have to be prez because her ego wouldn't allow anything else, and he's got some learnin' to do anyway. Both of them are trailblazers, to be sure. It's a ticket I think I could vote for.

On the ultra-conservative Bush administration: This from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force -- the federal government is proposing regulations that would effectively kill adult social-networking sites. This is being done under the guide of fighting child pornography. The regulations would in part allow the attorney general to conduct warrantless searches at will on targeted sites' records, including visitors' personal information. There are few safeguards over what the FBI can do with the information it obtains. You have until September 10 to object to these regulations, and the Task Force, Inc., urges you to do so. It's easy and essential.

There's nothing wrong with adult-networking sites. Hell, it's where I met John. It's just another attempt by this administration to limit our freedoms.  Check out the Task Force and let your voice be heard.

Concerned about waste.

OK. I've heard it all now.

Please consider this paragraph, lifted from Tuesday's edition of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Beginning today, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will spend $1.1 million to notify 2.2 million people that it is under court order to release their addresses to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as part of the newspaper's lengthy investigation into massive waste and fraud in disaster aid.

Huh?? What was that? 

I almost spit out my bagel as John read that paragraph to me while we sat in Dunkin' Donuts this morning.

The Sun-Sentinel, which I never read unless it's lying around Dunkin' Donuts and I have nothing else to look at (as was the case today) is concerned about waste at FEMA. OK. Good to be interested in that. FEMA doesn't have the best reputation around.

But because of this rat-ass newspaper's inquiry, FEMA has to waste another $1.1 million on top of what they may have or have not already wasted on God-knows what else.

Is it me, or is this absurd?

There are still people living in trailers after the devastation of Katrina. There are still people, I'm sure, with blue tarps as roofs here in Florida after Wilma and the hurricanes in 2004.  Couldn't $1.1 million be better spent helping them? Or maybe, just perhaps, wouldn't saving the money for the next disaster that comes along be a good idea?

But no, because of the Sun-Sentinel -- which is not fit to read by anyone with a modicum of intelligence --  they will rack up more waste. Waste, just like the paper itself.

Stupid whore.

Regrettably, I followed the reports of last week's media feeding frenzy for the post-prison interview with that tramp Paris Hilton.

 

Of course television news, like all other programming, is about ratings. But I just don't get the fascination with Paris Hilton, and all of the other stupid, blonde bitches out there. Why should we about Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan, the Simpson girls, and the rest of them? They've done nothing other than cultivate hollow celebrity status. Do they have any talent? I don't think so. They have no socially redeeming value.

What's worse is that those who otherwise respectable journalists -- Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, et al -- actually get into the fray. They demean themselves, their profession, and their audiences by actually thinking the blonde bimbos warrant any attention at all.

OK. Rant over.

Stupid retailers.

I went to Costco over the weekend. Or at least I tried.

Shopping in that warehouse is never a pleasant experience. And as someone who generally enjoys shopping, experience for me is key.

On my first attempt, at 9 a.m., I found the place closed. On a Saturday morning. All of the big stores around here are open by that point or earlier. Not Costco.

So I went back around 1 p.m. Silly me. There wasn't a single parking space to be had. And even if I could knock over some old people and steal their space, the thought of what the checkout lines must be like caused me to just keep driving out the exit.

Third attempt was at 6:30 p.m.  The friggin' place was closed! Huh?

After subjecting John to profanity-laden rant, I decided I would try again Sunday. Now the logical thing would be to get there when the dump first opens. That would be 10 a.m. However, I'm shopping for a party in two weeks and I need to buy alcohol. God forbid we should be able to buy booze before noon on a Sunday here in Florida.

Is it me, or wouldn't it make sense for this company to have more convenient hours? On weekdays they don't even open before 11 a.m.?  Having more hours would alleviate parking problems and would eliminate the need to stand in a check-out line for 30 minutes.

Is it really worth it?

What a maroon!

I found this quote in one of our local bar rags:

"...We're going to try to strengthen and maintain marriage as our society's most pro-child institution. I'm not condemning homosexual relationships. But the best institutional friend children have is marraige, and if grownups make a mess of it, the children are going to suffer."

The enlightened spewer of this bile is David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values.

Is he on crack?  "If grownups make a mess of it???" Uh, hello?  Earth to Dum-Dum David?

I can't believe people actually listen to this shit, let alone buy his books. We all know what the divorce rate is in this country. Grownups have been making a mess of it for years and children are, in fact, suffering.

We gay folk have nothing to do with it. Our marriages, quite often don't have anything to do with children. We're no threat to kids or the sacred (and I use that term loosely) institution of marriage.

But most likely you know all this. I'm not covering any new ground here.

What kills me is that someone like Blankenhorn is so idiotic as to actually utter such a ridiculous comment.

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A prize to the first person who correctly identifies where the title of this blog comes from. Hint: it's related to kids.

In just three weeks.

Here's a question to ponder: if you had nothing else to do (like go to work), what could you accomplish in three weeks?

I turned this question over in my mind as I was driving to work yesterday. It was triggered by something I read in the paper, which I'll tell you about in just a minute.

Here's what I came up with for myself:

1. Lose some weight. If I didn't have to go to work for three weeks, I'd go to the gym, ride my bike, walk, practice yoga, and prepare myself some very healthy meals. I figure I could drop a good six to eight pounds in three weeks.

2. Plant some kick-ass gardens in my back yard. Three weeks with no work would produce the beautiful tropical paradise I've envisioned for my back yard. Never mind the cost, this is just a mind exercise.

3. Get a major project at work completed. I'm editing and rewriting my organization's policy and procedure manual, all 175 pages. It's been dragging on -- and will continue to do so -- for weeks. Three weeks of uninterrupted time? It would be finished, printed and bound.

4. Develop a habit. I don't know what habit it would be. But they say it takes 21 days to develop one, so why not? The converse is true too.

It's that last one that prompted me to write this. Remember the Rev. Ted Haggard?  Of course you do. He's the holier-than-though, whack-job, right wing preacher from one of them big-ass 'ole churches in Colorado Springs who got caught with his lips around a certain portion of a male prostitute's anatomy a few months back. The whole thing errupted (pun intended) into a scandal and the creep had to resign. Poor Teddy.

Well, with his free time, he went into counseling. "Intensive counseling," according to the Times.

Three weeks, and voila! He's completely cured of his homosexuality. Just like that! He reported that his three weeks in counseling felt like "three years' worth of analysis and treatment."

"Jesus is starting to put me back together," he spewed. "I have spent so much time in repentance, brokennes, hurt and sorrow for the things I've done and the negative impact my actions have had on others."  Blah, blah, blah.

Lets just see what happens the next time he's in any urban area of any decent size and starts looking at the ads in the back of the "alternate" weekly newspaper.

How stupid can they be?

We interrupt this Martin Luther King day of rememberance for a little rant.

One of the things I struggle with is getting the motivation to go to the gym. Looking at myself naked in the mirror should be inspiration enough, but apparently not. I really have to work at it.

After a relaxing morning, I vacuumed the house and folding four loads of laundry. Miraculously, I found myself with that rare inspiration to go work out. And not just to do cardio, but to actually pick up some weights.

Then the phone rang.

"Hi, this is peppy customer service representative from Comcast, just calling to confirm your service appointment this afternoon."

"I'm confused."

"Sir, we have you scheduled for two to five today to fix the problem you have with poor reception."

You see, I have, in fact, been having a problem with poor reception on channels two through 10. It's not the TV, but the signal, because my newly-installed DVR has been recording the distortion, which not-so-concidentally, started the day I installed the new box.

So last week I called and scheduled the appointment for this past Saturday, 8 to 11. I didn't mind being home, as I had tons of things to do around the house anyway.  So I waited. And waited. Around 1 p.m., I happened to listen to my house voice mail. Comcast had called on FRIDAY and left this message:

"We're sorry we missed you today. Please call us to reschedule."

Call, I did. And ripped someone a new asshole.

"No, we had you scheduled for yesterday."

"Well, I never ever would have scheduled it for Friday because I have a new job and can't take the time off."

So, we rescheduled for NEXT Saturday.

Then the phone rings today. I was nicer to this customer service rep than I was to the last one as I explained the story. She replied that it was weird that someone would schedule me for NEXT Saturday because they only schedule two days out.

Huh???

So here I sit, again, waiting. And hoping that my gym motivation won't wear off, because I really need to go.

The problem we have.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog for a little rant.

If you've been reading this site for any length of time, you know that I read the New York Times daily. Often I rip out things that intrigue me, amuse me, infuriate me.

This post is about the latter.

After Foleygate broke, there was a piece about evangelicals blaming Foley, not the GOP, for the problems currently facing the Grand Old Party. (With any luck the lights are about to come on in this country and that sad party is about to be over for awhile.)

The article quotes some religious whack-job saying that he was leaning toward voting Republican in the coming election and that the Foley scandal only served to reinforce his conservative Christian convictions. Fine, he can have all the convictions he wants. It's what he said next that really got to me.

That is the problem we have in society. Nobody polices anybody. Everybody has a 'right' to do whatever.

Oh. My. God. Did this lunatic really say that? Did this man ever read the Constitution? Does he even have a basic understanding of why this country was founded in the first place?

As far as I'm concerned, there are too many conservative Christian nutcases people policing everyone they don't agree with, everyone who is not a clone of themselves. These poor, repressed souls worry too much about what other people are doing in the privacy of their bedrooms, who they marry, what they read, what they watch on TV, what movies they see, so on and so on and so on.

They should police themselves and no one else. We absolutely have the right to do what we want within a lawful society. That's the foundation of this country.

The article also quotes some picklehead, who, as a mechanical engineer should have some modicum of intelligence. This self-described fundamentalist said, "But there is a bigger moral issue which I would say is the prism I view this [Foleygate] through: I do not believe in homosexuality."

Well, what's to believe? Homosexuals exist. We have for centuries. He doesn't have to be gay himself, but we exist.

What I believe is that these people are idiots.

Now we return to our regularly scheduled blog, the next posting on which will probably be a review of the shows I am seeing tonight and tomorrow. Have a glorious weekend.