Web Log Archive

It is now clear, even to a casual observer, that the world's current downhill slide began on February 25, 2003, the date on which ABC broadcast the infamous episode of NYPD Blue, wherein "a woman wearing a robe is shown entering a bathroom, closing the door, and then briefly looking at herself in a mirror hanging above a sink. With her back to the camera, she removes her robe, thereby revealing the side of one of her breasts and a full view of her back. The camera shot includes a full view of her buttocks and her upper legs as she leans across the sink to hang up her robe. The scene depicts multiple, close-range views of an adult woman’s naked buttocks."

OK...if you haven't fainted and are able to read on, then please be assured that this vulgar scene will have consequences for ABC (now owned by the Walt Disney Company). Yes! Mindful of the irrevocable damage done in 2004 during Janet Jackson's accidental (yeah, right) half-second boob exposure at her Half-Time Super Bowl Performance with fellow libertine, Justin Timberlake (an outrage for which CBS was rightly fined $550,00), yesterday our Federal Communications Commission (in language redolent of a Papal Encyclical) proposed that ABC pay a fine of 1.4 million dollars for "its patently offensive...explicit and graphic depictions of sexual organs." Oh sure, "ABC argued, without citing any authority, that the buttocks are not a sexual organ", but the FCC emphatically rejected this silly defense as running "counter to both case law and common sense." Hmmm.

Seth Levy, of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, had what he thought was a fool-proof plan to get rid of his wife's cat!

"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I'm calling from Fort Worth, Texas,
and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage,
and when I opened the suitcase, a cat jumped out."
Rob Carter, in a phone call to Kelly Levy

Gracie Mae

Meanwhile, over there in Austin: "A cat snooping around its new apartment found a hiding place where the previous resident hid a stash of child pornography."

"If I fail to practice for one day, I know it.
If I fail to practice for two days, my wife knows it.
If I fail to practice for three days, my audience knows it."

"There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists."

"I do not teach piano. I only offer tips on how to play."
Vladimir Horowitz, 1903-1989

This piece was created using all eighty-eight keys from an abandoned 1917 Aeolian Player Piano. The sculpture measures 33 by 23 inches.

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

Those who strive to appear hard-working risk giving the impression that they are not up to their job.
Courtesy and honor have this advantage: we may bestow them on others without cost to ourselves.
Better to understand how to keep an old friend than to learn how to make a new one.
When you counsel someone, remind him of something he has forgotten, not of what he is presently unable to understand.
When an evil has been exaggerated, its reality brings applause. For what was feared as ruinous has become tolerable.
It is better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.
.

Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Being congenitally cheap, I waited to see Borat until it was in the Sunday-through-Wednesday 'Rent Four for the Price of Two' specials bin. Of course, I had already seen clips from the movie and heard Sacha Baron Cohen interviewed on Terri Gross.
This movie's in a class by itself or, perhaps, in 'no class' by itself: a very mixed bag, to my way of thinking. Sequences of unparalleled laugh-out-loud comedy alternate with some of the most disgusting and revolting scenes ever contained in a 'mainstream' film. It's surprising that Cohen's audacity did not cause him to be murdered either during the film or shortly after its release as, one-by-one and bye-and-bye, the 'supporting cast' realized they'd been 'had'! To date, he has been sued by at least five individuals who claim that they were publicly humiliated by their (unwitting) collaboration. So far, none has been able to move a case forward in the courts. The latest legal triumph for the bold comedian came only last Friday when one Kathie Martin (an 'etiquette instructor' from Birmingham, Alabama) lost (albeit on a technicality) her court fight to recover 'damages'. Her sequence in the film involved a formal sit-down dinner at someone's up-scale private home, ostensibly arranged so that Borat could be 'educated' in the ways of 'upper class' American manners. But even when the actor returned to the dinner table from a bathroom break with a bag (supposedly) of his own feces, Kathie appeared to be unfazed. In fact, she graciously led him back to the bathroom, where he was gently lectured on the do's and dont's of 'wiping his bottom'! I'm not making this up! It must be said, however, that after this scatological decorum-buster, the other guests at the table no longer seemed so 'sure' about what was really going on. But the proverbial 'curtain' didn't come down until a bit later...when the doorbell rang. There, on the front porch, stood a cigarette-smoking, thirties-something, big-haired, lusciously-lipsticked black woman in cutoffs who had been invited to the 'party' by Kathie's etiquette student. As a matter of fact, a paragraph in Kathie's civil suit alleges that the film was edited to make it 'appear' that she and the other well-heeled participants were grossed out, at last, only when and because a black person had intruded upon their lily-white bastion.

With all the modern issues to fight about (like, say, birth control, abortion, war, homosexuality, women's rights and the unequal use and distribution of our planet's resources) what kind of a Dufus would you have to be to wanna look to fight about something that happened more than three hundred and fifty years earlier and about which your guys couldn't have been more wrong?! But...that's just what Dope Benedict 2⁴did in 1990, back when he was merely Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
That's right! Referring to the writings of the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend, in a speech at Sapienza University, Cardinal Joe said, "The church at the time (i.e., 1633) was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just.” Jesus!

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended that we forgo their use."
Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642

"You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time. You lug around books and all and do homework. They give too much homework. You shouldn't be doing homework. Nobody's interested in it. The teachers are stupid. They shouldn't have any women in there. They don't know how to teach. And they shouldn't make anyone go to school. You don't want to go, you don't go, that's all. It's ridiculous. I don't remember one thing I learned in school. I don't listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn't like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy. If they'd have let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen."
Bobby Fischer, 1943-2008

"I would think, essentially, that cheerleaders make good sales people!"
Cassie Napier, former member of the national-champion University of Kentucky squad and now a saleswoman for TAP Pharmaceuticals, marketer of Prevacid. "If I have a customer who is a real big U.K. fan, we'll have stories to tell each other! If they can remember me as the cheerleader - she has Prevacid - it just allows you do to so many things!"

"You'll never meet an ugly drug rep!" Dr. Thomas Carli, University of Michigan

"Obviously, people hired for the work have to be extroverts, a good conversationalist, a pleasant person to talk to; but that has nothing to do with looks, it's the personality!" Lamberto Andreotti, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

How To Pill A Pet
For A Cat		For A Dog
1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow. 2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process. 3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. 4. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm, holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten. 5. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden. 6. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously. 7. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set to one side for gluing later. 8. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw. 9. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink 1 beer to take taste away. Apply Band-Aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap. 10 Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Open another beer. Place cat in cupboard, and close door on to neck, to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band. 11. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges. Drink beer. Fetch bottle of scotch. Pour shot, drink. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Apply whiskey compress to cheek to disinfect. Toss back another shot. Throw Tee shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom. 12. Call fire department to retrieve the damn cat from across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap. 13. Tie the little bastard's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table, find heavy-duty pruning gloves from shed. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of filet steak. Be rough about it. Hold head vertically and pour 2 pints of water down throat to wash pill down. 14. Consume remainder of scotch. Get spouse to drive you to the emergency room, sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Call furniture shop on way home to order new table. 15 Arrange for SPCA to collect mutant cat from hell and call local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.		1. Wrap it in bacon. 2. Toss it in the air.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 Martin Luther King was born seventy-nine years ago today.

To paraphrase Antonio Gramsci...

"A 'Crisis' arises when you discover that you have ingested all the pills from your old prescription before you have gotten the new one filled!"

Finally getting back to some recording now that the 'dust' has cleared. Figured I'd warm back up with a tune that I've known for at least fifty years!

'P.S., I Love You' (no, not the 1962 Beatles song) was first recorded in 1934 by Rudy Vallée, shortly after it was written by Gordon Jenkins and Johnny Mercer.

According to a University of California Web Site, there are at least 700 varieties of mushrooms in the State. This morning, I discovered this cluster growing happily in a clay pot in my front yard. So far, I've been unable to match them to any particular item in the huge online photo gallery.

Maybe I'll eat one...just to see if it 'does' anything!

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