For Labor Weekend…

August 31, 2008 | Filed Under Main | 5 Comments

Thought Obama’s speech was pretty good. Think he nailed it. However, after years of listening to President Doofus, Al Gore and John Kerry – my bar might be a bit low…

I can’t tell anything about McCain’s pick for VP – but it is a really short walk between gutsy and desperate. Geraldine Ferraro anyone?

My thoughts go out to the Gulf Coast. My poor, poor New Orleans about to get beat down again. I’m glad I got to see it three years ago – only two months from the first devastation.

How about that Carl Pavano? As soon as the Yankees are out of contention – suddenly he can pitch again! That whole team needs to be sacked and re-built.

Tomorrow begins Ramadan for all Muslims (and non-Muslims living in Muslim countries). Ramadan is a month of fasting and spiritual renewal. For all those of the faith – Ramadan Mubarak.

Salvation!

August 28, 2008 | Filed Under Main | No Comments

no – not Obama…

I finally found a health club!

And it has all my favorite machines!

And it didn’t cost over $1000 per year (payable in full up front, thank you)!!

It’s in a Holiday Inn nearby. I haven’t lifted a weight or been on a bike in almost seven months. Now I can finally work out again. Have a healthy sweat – not the usual oh-my-god-it’s-130-and-humid sweat I get just walking to my car.

I am SO happy…

The Candidate

August 25, 2008 | Filed Under Main, Politics | 4 Comments

In honor of the free-wheeling, gaudy circus about to descend on Denver (and no, I don’t mean Madonna’s “Sticky Sweet” Tour – though you would be forgiven for thinking that…), I would like to introduce you to the newest candidate on the national stage – Thomas Stiles Stevens. It seems young Mr. Stevens is running for State Representative in Vermont (!!). Mr. Stevens is a good man. I’ve known him a long time. Heck, I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. He used to come over Saturdays and cut my lawn and babysit the kids! (Amazing since we are the same age…) He is also my oldest friend who has been with me through every major and minor chord moment of my life.

Mr. Stevens is not new to the world of politics – no sir. He has been elected on a local level more than once. He is also the so-and-so who talked me into getting involved on my local level. I may never forgive him for that but though New Jersey and Vermont are VERY different states, we did share many similar experiences. Everyone should get involved. If they did, Mr. Stevens wouldn’t have to sacrifice himself again to the gods of Politics. But we don’t, so he’ll have to. I have listed his campaign website over there to my right (left?) where you can read his positions, his views, donate, or just see a gratuitous picture of him and his dog, Tinker.

Best of luck, Tom! We’ll be rooting for ya!

“Filterless”

August 23, 2008 | Filed Under Music | No Comments

My favorite lyrics ever to a three and a half minute song. By Chris Brady and the band Pond.

yellowed brown stained fingertips caused by too many filterless, she crushes the ashy end
lifts the lid and drops it down in an urn she carries around – her father resides

her heavy foot is on the gas

with Saint Christopher on the dash she is safe from any crash at least she believes
what she doesn’t realize that he’s been decanonized by the church

her heavy foot is on the gas

she used to make gum wrapper necklaces
she always seemed to smell of wintergreen
in her father eyes she was not a princess but a queen
she didn’t love to play the queen

only prayers and country songs are found as the needle crawls along through megahertz
black rubber radials wearing bald and wearing dull, she sings along

her heavy foot is on the gas

imitation leather cracks from too much heat and too much smack, you broke mother’s back
she prefers the Texacos for the color of their clothes and their smokes

her heavy foot is on the gas

she used to make gum wrapper necklaces
she always seemed to smell of wintergreen
in her father eyes she was not a princess but the queen

she used to wake up with the sun
she used to watch the clouds go by
her hands tighten on the wheel
she hums a tune as she closes her eyes
________________________________________

Olympic Fever

August 20, 2008 | Filed Under Main | No Comments

I’m so glad Shawn Johnson finally won a gold medal. What a drag it would have been to get so close – do so well – and only come away with silver.

… of course, I only learned who she was two days ago.

I haven’t been paying much attention to the Olympics. I know who Michael Phelps is and I know it’s in China and you’re not allowed to bring in cartons of bibles. But that’s about it. Even when I thought about watching, I don’t have “premium” channels so it was hard to find a consistent station for the Games. I watched one of the 100 meter men’s races. I saw part of the women’s Shot-put competition. I DID see Korea kick China’s butt in Handball. I have seen Handball a few times since I’ve been out here. Cool sport, if you haven’t seen it. A perfect mixture of soccer, basketball and fifth grade recess. Honest – this sport was created in a place where it rained all the time and the kids couldn’t go out to play. One day they took over the gymnasium- and the rest is history! But – oddly – most of the Olympics TV out here was in Arabic and without all the heartwarming blather, it was hard to get involved.

But this isn’t new. I haven’t been a big Olympic groupie for some time. I like the Winter Olympics more. Mostly for the figure skating… AND the Luge! I was probably spoiled. The first Olympics I remember watching was Munich – and you can’t beat that one for drama and pathos.

John Bolton

August 16, 2008 | Filed Under Main, Politics | 3 Comments

I was watching an interview this morning with one of Bush’s former douchebag appointments, John Bolton. The interview was on Al Jazeera, no less. Bolton was our ambassador to the U.N. for a mercifully brief period of time. He had the great brain damage to say that complaining about the US actions in Iraq is like complaining that our response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor escalated the violence in World War II. ?!?!?!?! Soooo – Saddam Hussein, by just existing, was as dangerous to our country as a physical attack by a foreign country? Not only does this insult the memory of all who died at Pearl Harbor (and maybe the entire Pacific theater of the war), but it also makes all those Neo-Cons look like such wussies. I mean, they seem to be afraid of EVERYBODY. If you really believe America is all-powerful, then you wouldn’t have to going around trumpeting it all the time. Instead, their entire foreign policy chops seems to be – “America is Number One and if you don’t agree we’ll kick your ass.” This shows an intense amount of insecurity, if you ask me. And, of course, generates a ton of would-be Number Ones to come gunning for us. (I thought these jerks watched Westerns. Don’t they know about Robert and Charlie Ford?)

This genius also said that there “was no way to possibly foresee” that the centuries old ethnic tensions in Iraq would flare up with Saddam gone.

Folks, I give you John Bolton – Douchebag.

Added to iPod

August 13, 2008 | Filed Under Music | 4 Comments

Just cleaning up the past a bit…

Peter Frampton – “Frampton Comes Alive!” Sooo bored with it a month or two after it came out but it’s really not that bad.
Nirvana – “MTV Unplugged” Specially for Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Kaiser Chiefs – “Yours Truly, Angry Mob”
Sweet – “Desolation Boulevard” Keep Darkness – I have the real thing.
Talking Heads – “77” and “Buildings and Food” Necessary.

THEN one of our crew comes back from his holiday home in Scotland and returns with a 160 gig external hard drive FILLED with music one of his nephews put together for him. That 160 gigs of free music has spent the last week travelling through our little band of Westerners and I just finished cherry-pickin’. What fun. It was mainly comprised of ‘greatest hits’ collections, but music is music. Now I finally have fulfilled me need for Alice Cooper, America, Johnny Cash, Buffalo Springfield, Don Henley’s “Building The Perfect Beast”, Hall & Oates, The KLF, The Arctic Monkeys, Erykah Badu’s “Mama’s Gun”, and the best of The Last Poets. Throw in some tracks from Chris Rock, Jaco Pastorious , the best of The Byrds AND ZZ Top… and I think I’m pretty well done with my formative years.

Now Where Is The NEW Music?

Learning things #2

August 8, 2008 | Filed Under Main | 1 Comment

There is this great store in Jersey called The Wine Library. It is two stories of various liquors but mainly wines (real wine – not the stuff I make). Wines from every region and made with every kind of grape. And the guy who runs it – Gary Vaynerchuk – has these video blogs on his website where tastes different wines, spits them into a Jets bucket and tells you what they taste like and what they should taste like. It’s hilarious and very informative. Well, he now has Podcasts on iTunes so I tried to subscribe to them. Nothing came through. I subscribed again, I purchased each podcast individually – still nothing. I checked all my setups. Everything was cool, but still no podcasts. Finally, I noticed a little exclamation point that kept popping up which said there was trouble getting to the Wine Library website. So I tried the website the normal way. Instead of the Wine Library, I get a big white screen with a picture of a rubber stamp on it that says “Access – DENIED”. The reason given – Alcohol. In Kuwait, I am not even allowed to read about liquor.

Also, I will never be able to tell you the exact temperature out here. They have a law in Kuwait that says if the temperature goes above 50 degrees Celsius (roughly 120), that all outside laborers can go home. The guys who work outside here are the poorest of the poor – men from Egypt, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other places who have no skills and make maybe $100 a month (which I guess must be better then where they live). However, all reports of weather – including temperature – come from the Ministry. Only the Ministry – there are no outside agencies allowed. And, oddly enough, the temperature has never been above 50 degrees. Al least not before 3PM when the Ministry closes.

Politics Still Sucks

August 5, 2008 | Filed Under Main, Politics | 6 Comments

I want to vote now. No, I mean right NOW!

So Obama is a rock star…. in Germany. (What’s next – big in Japan?)

McCain is in a war of Words… with Paris Hilton and her Mom. (And Nicole Ritchie has stopped eating again.)

Please make it stop. Imagine what we can descend to in three months time?

Learning things

August 2, 2008 | Filed Under Main | 4 Comments

Per another website, I learned that today – August 2 – is the 18th anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait.

Some of the other ex-pats at work and I walk through the parking lot after lunch and, if the day was somewhat dusty, they would joke about feeling the uranium in the air. I laughed but was not really sure what they were referring to. Last night the topic came up again and finally I asked “what uranium?” It seems that when your country is in a war, many bit and pieces of weaponry are left lying about in the aftermath. Certain areas of Kuwait were known to have dead Iraqi tanks littering the ground. Most of these tanks – I’m told – have big holes in them, as if something just melted through the hull of the tank and then exploded. Indeed, that is what had happened. Because the shells we Americans used to stop tanks were made of depleted uranium. These were 30 millimeter shells – items you can hold in your hand or soldiers could pick up and load into guns. Then – boom. Uranium splattered all over the place. Still used by both the US and the UK in the latest “conflict”.

But not to worry. The gov-ment said that THIS type of uranium wasn’t hazardous to anyone’s health. And they don’t lie, right?