Goodbye Old Friend

I had to banish an old friend today… A friend that had been there for me through thick and thin, to whose bosom I rushed whenever I had to forget my daily troubles. Sadly, my friend had worn out his usefulness and I had him taken away.
No, it wasn’t just Darth. It was my old reliable 32” Toshiba. The times had just passed him by and a younger, sleeker model caught my eye.

Hello, new friend!

This is my new friend, the Samsung 46” LCD. I think I’ll call him Samson. (It would have been just “Sammy”, but I already have one of those.)

Oh how I love your smooth lines. So much more picture to love and a remote as long as my arm. I’ve already seen one hockey game with you and it was life changing. We are going to party, my friend.
No wussy chick flicks on you, Samson. It’s going to be nothing but sports and action flicks. I’ll have Independence Day running on a 24-hour loop, with Rambo in the Picture in Picture. Maybe once in a while, I’ll switch to a cooking show, while they celebrate Bacon Week. Yeah, life with Samson will be great.

Still, Toshiba and I have been through a lot together. We met back in 1993 or ’94, back when I lived in Albany NY and was married. (Cold chill runs down back.)

Man, we’ve seen a lot of history. We’ve seen three Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl runs, one of which still gives me nightmares but is more than made up for by the other two. We’ve seen countless Steelers Monday Nighters and playoff games. We’ve seen hundreds of Penguins hockey games, most of which came in the last three years when I’ve had the NHL Center Ice package. We’ve seen the Orioles suck for 11 straight years. Haven’t seen many Pirates games, but that’s probably a blessing.

We’ve seen 4 sets of Olympic games. So many sights there… Kerri Strug sticking a vault on one leg, Brandy Chastain nailing down a soccer gold and becoming the poster-girl for buff women, Michael Phelps winning every medal in sight, even with a little help from his friends. There was Tonya and Nancy going head to head or knee to knee for skating gold, as well as countless other twisting and spinning ballerinas with blades on their feet.

We’ve seen the entire run of ER and Friends and all of 24 and Lost so far. We’ve seen series finales of NYPD Blue, Seinfeld and countless other quality shows that came and went; torpedoed by the lowest common denominator demands of the American public.

And there’s been history!

We’ve seen four Presidential elections: half thrilling, half nauseating. We choked back tears watching Diana’s funeral. We wept openly the afternoon of 9/11. We’ve seen Jon Stewart make mincemeat of the powerful and pretentious, making us laugh till we cry the good kind of tears.

So it wasn’t at all an easy decision to upgrade. Toshiba probably would have lasted many more years. But progress is inevitable and 3-years free financing is a powerful argument. I woke up on Saturday knowing I would be greeting my new and promising friend Samson and any apprehensions I may have had flew right out the window when the Best Buy guys brought that giant box in the door. They set him up, hoisted the remote into my hand and wished me well.

Into the manual I flew, wanting to know everything I could about my new friend. After some stops and starts, I got the DVD, the Wii and the surround sound into working order.

Now, let’s see what she’s got!

OK, not so fast. Sadly, I failed to realize that regardless of Samson’s broadcasting prowess, it was still a Saturday afternoon, meaning there wasn’t shit on TV (unless you count golf, which isn’t as much TV as it is the best cure for insomnia, right next to NASCAR).

Sigh.

OK, let’s check out the “E” channel and their special on “The Best and Worst Beach Bodies.” We’ll start working on making new history later.

Bail To The Chief

My man James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers is taking a lot of flack lately, because of his choosing not to go with his teammates to the White House and meet President Obama.

First of all he was quoted as saying, "This is how I feel -- if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, he would've invited Arizona if they had won.”

I think he’s missing the point a bit, but OK, whatever you want to do, James. I saw the film of him saying that, and I just get the idea that it was the first thing that popped into his head. He does have a history of messing with the press. So maybe he has other reasons. Like his agent said, “It absolutely is not political. He just doesn't want to go.”

What really puzzles me is wondering why, exactly, this is a story that’s being reported in dozens of news sources? Is this really news? It wasn’t news when he didn’t go with the team to meet the President after Super Bowl XL. So what if he’s had a couple of outstanding seasons since then? It’s the exact same choice now as then.

I say, just let James be James. He has his reasons and he doesn’t have to explain them to any of us. The only thing he needs to do is justify his new gargantuan contract by continuing to play like a monster. This video shows you why James is a big deal. And I can tell you the exact moment I became a big Harrison fan… it’s at the 2:57 mark.


Then there’s this other shining moment…

(Ed Reed is still wishing someone would answer that damned phone.)

Maybe one day, he’ll look back on this as a missed opportunity and regret that he didn’t just go along. But either way, that’s his problem.

I’d really hate to see this entire hullabaloo turn him off from talking to the press. He had one of my all time favorite sports quotes back in January of 2008, after the Steelers lost to the Jaguars in the opening round of the playoffs.

The Jags’ QB ran 30 yards on a 4th and 3, blatantly aided by an uncalled holding penalty. They were holding the rushers all night but on this play one of their lineman was holding Larry Foote like a wedding usher as the runner went by. Hell, I could see it even from MY vantage-point:
The next day, when asked about the non-calls, Harrison said "I have nothing to say about that. I ain't got no fine money to give away for talking about them blind refs, so I got nothing to say."

That kind of eloquence should never be silenced.

Musical Memory Lane

Do you ever hear a group or a song and have it immediately take you back to another time and place in your life? That happens to me all the time. Music just has a way of zooming past right reason, directly into your subconscious. One minute I’m driving to work, the next I’m a little kid listening to the car radio and fighting with my brother and sister.

Here are a handful of my associations, right off the top of my head:

Simon & Garfunkel – Anything from “Bridge Over Troubled Water”: I was in probably 4th grade, living outside Chicago. Mom began playing this album all the time and it bugged me because it replaced the soundtrack to “Hair”, which she previously played all the time. “Hair” was much more fun, although I eventually grew to love S&G.

Carole King – Anything from “Tapestry”: I’m in 5th grade; we live in Bexley Ohio, driving to or from the grocery store in our brown 1960 Rambler (named “The Bomb”). Carole King was on the radio every 15 minutes back then… she was inescapable.

Anything by Bob Seger: We had just moved to Toledo from Columbus and were still getting used to everything being so far away, so we spent much more time in the car driving to the store and whatnot. Bob Seger is from Detroit, so we also had to get used to hearing him on the radio every 15 minutes, coming from the tinny AM radio in our yellow Jeep Wagoneer (named “Jaundice”). “Turn the Page”, however, always calls back the drunken sing-a-longs, standing arm in arm around the bar during our infamous Barn Parties.

Boston – “More Than a Feeling”: Driving to school in my buddy John’s beat up VW bug. You could see the road through the floorboards, but the speakers were good. I always remember the clarity of the high-hats ringing out as the song faded out. That album was brilliantly engineered in 1976, and still holds up today.

Rod Stewart – “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”: Summer of 1979, driving down to Findlay Ohio with my buddy Rik, to see some girls. It was the disco era and Rockin’ Rod put out this steamy, thumping single that was definitely the soundtrack to our horndog activities. Rik’s girlfriend lived in Findlay and had a friend that wanted to meet me, so we hit the road in hot pursuit. I can still remember my Dad’s parting words of advice: “Be careful now… I don’t need any more mouths to feed.”

Molly Hatchet – “Flirting With Disaster”: Flying down Monclova Rd. heading for Dale’s Bar in Maumee. Wide open 2-lane highway, a great driving song on the radio and good times on my mind.
Anything by Pat Benatar: My college girlfriend was friends with a bunch of women’s softball jocks who worshipped at the altar of Pat. Benatar was played for pre-game psych-up and boyfriend break-up. When Pat came on, you best watch your ass, buddy.

The Cars first album: Pop perfection… I wore that cassette tape out on my daily commutes to and from Bowling Green. It got to be so predictable it was like, “hmm, if “Moving in Stereo” is on, I must be in Haskins.”

REO Speedwagon – Hi Infidelity: Totally belongs to said college girlfriend. “Keep On Lovin’ You” was totally ‘our song’, as I suppose it was for many, many others in 1980. We used to put that on the turntable in her basement (along with James Taylor’s “Greatest Hits” and Doobie Bros. “Minute by Minute”) and make out like crazed weasels.

Anything by AC/DC but especially the old stuff with Bon Scott: Barn Parties! Jamming in long, sweaty “performances” imitating Angus Young and invariably waking up with a stiff neck. (Click the vid below to see Angus play and you'll see what I mean.) Busting out the AC/DC at a Barn Party was the sign that the party was at its peak. No sense bringing out the heavy artillery too early… Best. Party. Band. Ever.

There are also a ton of concert memories, having seen them 5 times, but those are stories for another time.

Meat Loaf – Paradise by the Dashboard Lights: College parties and dances, grabbing a partner and acting out the whole thing. That whole album “Bat Out of Hell” was phenomenal and I was just getting into it about that time. In fact, when I wasn’t playing The Cars on the way to school, I was playing “Bat Out of Hell”, especially if the weather was bad. I used to think, “If I’m going to buy it on this stretch of road outside of Haskins, I might as well go out to some good music.” It sort of became my good luck charm that way… when the snow came down, I put on Bat Out of Hell, because I knew The Loaf would get me home. I wanted to tell him that story back when I met him in 1993, but chickened out.

George Thorogood: I remember coming home late on a Saturday night and my Dad was watching Saturday Night Live. He said, “You gotta see the musical act…” George was on and he’d already played “Bad to the Bone”, but I waited long enough to see him come back and play “Back to Wentzville”. I will never forget seeing him rocking that big white Gibson while I pretended not to be drunk.
The next week I was picking out the records for my shift on WBGU radio and the jock before me was playing “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer.” I was like, damn, this guy’s good… I went out and started buying Thorogood albums immediately. You can always count on George. It occurred to me last year, as I was seeing him live for the umpteenth time, “if cavemen could rock, they’d play George Thorogood.

Joan Jett – “Bad Reputation” album: Doing one of my radio shifts and having our Program Director come in and whip this album on me and say “check this out!” The cover showed this tough looking leather chick… I scanned the song list… “Do Ya Wanna Touch Me?” I’m like, “that’s sounds interesting…” I put it on the turntable to cue it up and caught that opening riff and went, “Oh yeah… that’s the one.” Been a Joan fan ever since.

Joan memory Pt 2: Years later, I was at a listening party for “Up Your Alley” and I got to meet her as the sound system was blasting “I Hate Myself for Loving You”. I told her “I can’t wait to get this in the car!”

That song still crunches, and whenever I hear it, I have to think of getting to spend a couple minutes schmoozing with the Queen of Rock.

Swine Flu Prevention

This just in! The best tip for avoiding the Swine Flu? Don't do this:
Ba-dump bump.

A Word From Our Sponsor: "You're Stupid!"

One thing I’m sure we here in America have in common is the hatred of TV commercials.

Now I’ll stipulate that there are occasionally cool, interesting commercials that are worth the whole 30 seconds. Unfortunately these are usually clustered into Super Bowl Sunday, which is Network Television’s desperate plot to keep people from going to the bathroom. I think that whenever ad producers come up with a quality idea, they stockpile it for the Super Bowl. No sense wasting it on Biggest Loser. So that leaves the other 364 for commercials meant to creep into your subconscious and cling there until they become an answer on Jeopardy.

“I’ll take Lowest Common Denominator for $100, Alex.”
Let me try to briefly explain something I learned back in my Radio/TV/Film classes back in school. Networks don’t really care what they put on the air. Not in the specific sense. TV programs only exist to entice the public to watch the commercials. Networks may hype their “gripping dramas” and “hilarious comedies”, but the quality of the program is incidental. It’s merely a tool to get more people watching, therefore making them able to charge more for airing commercials. Networks do not endeavor to improve the public’s consciousness in any way; they endeavor to make money. Commercials = money. It’s as simple as that. Why do you think they fought tooth and nail over the VCR back in the ‘80s, and they fought to prevent Tivo in the late 90’s? They’re terrified that we’re finding ways to avoid their commercials. I’m surprised they let the remote control become part of the standard TV package.

So knowing this, there’s a lot of thought that goes into the commercials we see. And that’s why I hate them so much. I don’t like what they think of us. They think we’re morons.

To the Ad Agencies that make these things the American Public can be broken down into these nice little segments:

Men: Brain-dead dipshits trained to salivate uncontrollably at the prospect of more beef, hot chicks and “hemi” engines. And beer… lots and lots of beer. Men shown inside a house are incapable of accomplishing absolutely anything without close oversight by their all-knowing, ever-smiling, boundlessly patient wives.

Women: Shallow harpies who slobber shamelessly over the prospect of their brain-dead dipshit bringing them a shiny trinket from “Jared’s, The Galleria of Jewelry”. (And if I may, what the fuck is a “Galleria”, if not what some yutz though was a fancy way of saying “Gallery?”) If allowed, women will spend every dollar they can get their hands on buying jars of stuff to put on their faces, hair, hips, legs, feet, whatever, if only to coerce their faithful slob to get his ass over to Jared’s. This is in and around hovering over their slacker teens and adorable moppets, to make sure they’re eating reaching their RDA of glutens and preservatives.

Kids: Know-it-all teen slackers and precocious know-it-all tots… If, Heaven forbid Mom is not around to tell Dad what to do, you can count on the kids to bring wise beyond their years insight to the buffoon of the household. That’s only if they can park their skateboards for a second, put down the Mountain Dew, and get off the goddamned cell phone. (That dear old Dad pays for, of course.)

This is us, as seen by the companies from which you buy, well, everything.

I used to work in retail, so I admit that I already have a pretty low perception of John Q. Public. I’ve seen us up close and it’s not pretty. So I admit that there can be bits of truth in all these crass depictions. But I have to wonder, are the advertisers depicting us as we are, or are we acting like what we see on TV?

I hate when they just make shit up and act like it’s something special, like “Drinkability.” Have you ever seen some smug putz in an ugly hat lounging around waxing poetic about the “drinkability” of his beer? Not in any of the bars I’ve hung out at… It would be like, “You know what pal? If it’s beer, it’s drinkable. It ain’t special. Now let’s consider your ass. It’s got “bootability. Now get the hell out of my face before punt your ass into the bar across the street! And Judge Smails called, he wants his hat back”

I also believe that there is a special place in Hell for ad jingle writers. They have a talent for writing song snippets so banal, yet so self-sustaining that you just want to jam pencils in your ears.

If we want to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, forget sending more troops. Send loudspeakers, playing the “$5 Footlooooong” jingle. Gah! By the end of the first day, 10,000 terrorists will have blown themselves up. I just typed that and already I can’t get it out of my head. It makes me want to strap a bomb to my chest and run out to Subway right now. The same goes for that McDonalds fish sandwich song. As if that Billy Bass thing wasn’t irritating enough on it’s own…

The commercials that are driving me totally batshit right now are those new Comcast commercials. Those of you in areas not (poorly) serviced by Comcast have been fortunate enough to duck these but here’s an example below:

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It’s like a graphic artist dropped some acid and got a robot to write the jingle. Then they get these sideways-looking, smirking automatons to ramble this nonsense for an entire minute. It’s like they thought those Free Credit Report.com commercials were just too peppy… “Lets keep the smirking slackers, but just make it more monotone!”

And they think that this will make us want to sign up for Comcast? If I had any alternative here, I’d cancel my Comcast account just to smite them for subjecting me to that idiotic commercial 3 times a night.

I want to leave you with a takeaway. The next time you’re watching TV, pay attention to the commercials a bit. Ask yourself, “What are they telling me here? Why are these people doing the things they’re doing? Why are they acting the way they’re acting? What does the advertiser think of the people in his commercial?”

“And given all that, what does he think of me?”

The “Aha Moment”™

I saw in the news yesterday that there is a dispute now over the rights to the “Aha Moment”™. You may have seen these commercials by Liberty Mutual where people describe pivotal moments in their lives as their “Aha Moments”™.

I’m not terribly clear what the link is to Liberty Mutual, but in using this phrase, they have incurred the wrath of Oprah. It seems she is claiming she owns the term and wants Liberty Mutual to cease and desist its use.

If they are wise, they will give Oprah what she wants. It is important to remember that she commands an army of minions, willing to do what she wants, buy what she wants, and most importantly boycott whom she wants. Trust me guys, it’s easier this way. You got some commercials on; they got noticed, now run along. No one crosses the Big O and lives to tell the tale.

Except me, of course, because those spots got me thinking about the Aha Moments™ in my own life. And at great risk of personal peril, I dare to bring them to you now.

1) Learning to tell time
I had a devil of time with telling time as a boy. (Remember, this was long before digital clocks and watches became commonplace.) We covered it in class, my parents tried to teach me… nothing worked. I knew the even up o’clocks, but unless it was the top of the hour, I just didn’t get it. They would always asked me if I could count by fives… That was easy! I could rattle off 5-10-15-20… but I just didn’t see how it applied.

Then one day, in 1st grade, I was staring at the clock and bing, I got it. It just sort of clicked into place, making the connection between the numbers and the fives. Been on time ever since.

2) Not giving a shit
It’s always been popular among students to complain that what they’re learning won’t matter outside of school. I used to as well, until I learned one of my life’s basic tenets in junior year English Lit. We were studying Thoreau and Emerson and learning about self-reliance and non-conformism and it really hit home.

I used to be a kid that killed himself trying to please everyone… being everything to all people. It never worked, least of all for me. Suddenly I realized; it didn’t really matter what other people thought. I had a handful of solid friends: I didn’t need anything from anyone else… approval, status, lunch money… I had what I needed, so why give a shit what anyone else thought? Bing!

School (and life) was so much easier once you don’t give a shit. The yoke of conformity was thrown off and I began to really enjoy life, thanks to English Lit class and a brilliant teacher named Roy Williamson. He allowed me to use his blackboard to get into a limerick war with some Neanderthal in an earlier class. (Whom I destroyed, of course.) He let me post a daily pun on the board as well. He gave me encouragement and a sense of place when I had been floating on the periphery for my whole school life.

I went on to join the school newspaper, which gave me an outlet for my wise-ass writing and more importantly, an audience. While I might have joined the paper without Mr. Williamson’s class, I would have spent too much time wondering if anyone would like what I was writing. Instead, I just let it fly and moved on.

Mr. Williamson retired after that year so I didn’t get to take College Composition with him as a senior. Some friends and I visited his house once that year, just to say hi, but I always regret that I never got a chance to thank him for so positively affecting my life. Teachers like that don’t come along every day.

3) Understanding computers
I went through school just ahead of the PC revolution, so to me they were always some kind of inscrutable, mysterious Pandora’s Box, capable of blowing up at a moment’s notice.

I first used a desktop PC in 1992, at the home office of the music retailer I worked for. It was running Lotus and WordPerfect, and a jerry-rigged version of internal email. I learned how to do things bit by bit, usually from the admins in the office. Everything was keyboard oriented… there were no mice.

I never used Windows or even a mouse until I moved to Baltimore in 1997. I picked up some Excel and Word pretty easily, but I really didn’t know much more about how things operated. I still hadn’t even seen the Internet. But the ability to edit what I wrote in-screen was life changing.

Finally one day I was poking around some of the folders on my work PC and it dawned on me that all the information stored on a computer were basically just like a file drawer system… files, in folders, in bigger folders, in drawers. Bing!

I could find things, file things and do some minor troubleshooting. It was in that moment that I realized that I could actually own one of these things. In August of 1998, I bought my first PC… a training PC if you will. It had about 47 gigs of storage and a 15” monitor. Off I went, not looking back.
Now I can’t imagine life without one. I can keep in touch with friends and family all over the country. I’ve met people from all over the country. All my Christmas shopping is done online. Heck, pretty much everything I buy that isn’t groceries comes from an online store. Plane tickets, hotel reservations, photography, news, weather, sports, music, TV, movies, driving directions… everything comes from my computing life.

There was a time that I thought the idea of my owning a computer was preposterous. Now I’m on my 3rd website. Live and learn, baby. No looking back now.

Odd Bits 3: Torture and Bill Maher

The Interrogator Speaks
An issue eliciting much brouhaha across our country is in right now (besides who’s gotten voted off American Idol) has surfaced with the release of the so-called “Torture Memos”. These memos note the high-level approval to torture as a regular tactic, almost immediately after 9/11.

I understand the nature of this conflict… you have the “Keep Us Safe At All Costs” camp versus the “Thou Shalt Not Torture Lest We Become Our Enemy” camp.

I tend to come in under the latter, though allowing for shades of gray. There are far too many cases where there is not a black and white answer. (Unlike on “24”, where you almost always know what has to be done.)

But regardless of the camp, there is one argument that trumps all… “Does it work?”

That shoe seemed to have dropped this week with an Op-Ed in the New York Times by a fellow that was involved with the interrogations. He wrote:

“One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.”

“There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.”

Game, set, match. If it doesn’t work and is unnecessary, then it is pointless to dither about the moral points of torturing. End it, and reap the benefits of taking the high road for whatever reason.

Another thing these memos have accomplished is to get the onus off the field-level personnel conducting the dirty work. I bet if these were public a couple years ago, we wouldn’t have convicted the low-level grunts at Abu Ghraib. It’s clear that the orders to torture and humiliate came from the highest levels of the Bush Administration and not just a few “bad apples.” Just like in real life… the rich and powerful skate while those without cash or clout do the time.

I Wish I’d Said That Dept.
Have you ever had something on your mind and spill it out in some silly blog and then someone comes along and says it smarter, funnier and more pointedly? I get that a lot and it happened again when I read this column by Bill Maher in the LA Times. He used part of it on his show “Real Time with Bill Maher” last night, but the whole thing is worth the read.

Some of the chestnuts:
“If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.”
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“Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law. And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?”
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“The GOP base is convinced that Obama is going to raise their taxes, which he just lowered. But, you say, "Bill, that's just the fringe of the Republican Party." No, it's not. The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned Parenthood. And I would have to totally rethink my position on a border fence.”

You should read the whole column from the link above. To me, Bill Maher is almost worth the cost of getting HBO by itself.

Note: I'll have another post soon, probably tomorrow. It was orignally part of this one but I'm running long. Sometimes once I start typing, I just can't stop. I may be shaped like a bowling pin, but my fingers are in great shape. I also haven't forgotten about the last installment of my Favorite Villains series. Stay tuned...

Odd Bits, Earl Grey Edition

Texas Tea-bags
Another day, another piss-ant demonstration of feigned outrage from the right.

Have you heard about the tea party demonstrations this week, that Fox News so dunderheadedly referred to as “Teabagging”? I had to laugh, not so much at the tragedy of so many people protesting their getting tax CUT, but at Fox News coming up with a term so rooted in gay porn that no one could possibly take them seriously. Well, no one that doesn’t watch Fox News, that is. The website Gawker has a great rundown on this smirkfest.
.Presiding over his Texas delegation of teabaggers was Governor Rick Perry, who didn’t dismiss the idea over Texas seceding from the Union over this little issue. The funny part is where he seems to think that the right to secede was negotiated into the terms when they were admitted to the Union. Like the rest of his followers on this issue, he’s WRONG.
“He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede.”Gail Collins in the New York Times made some hay about how the States yelling the loudest about government spending are also the States that are receiving the most. Further, she wonders how a crowd can stand there waving American flags and be yelling “Secede!”

I know how. Inbreeding.I say let them secede. Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, Johnny Winter is almost there, and ZZ Top hasn’t made a decent album in years. And by seceding, they will automatically raise the collective IQ and gene pool of rest of the country. They will also spare us from having to watch the Dallas Cowboys every week. In 3 weeks the Cowboys and the Titans can play a home and home series, then meet in the Super Colossal Texas Bowl. They can have Miss Texas Two-Step crown the winner in Jerry Jones’ luxury owner’s box while the ghost of Ann Richards spoils the sheep dip and we won’t have to hear about them for the rest of the football season.

Eat, Drink & Be Harry
The trailer for the new Harry Potter movie came out and I can’t wait to see it. I know I’m a little old to be a Potter fan, but they’re just plain good family fun. Plus I get to giggle at all the religious conservatives that get their shorts in a bunch over “witchcraft” destroying our nation’s youth. After all, that's their job.

Arenas Envy
New blog “Fanhood: For Fans - By Fans” is dedicated to exploring the game experience at various ballparks around the country. On 3/31, they had a wonderful post on attending a game at Heinz Field. They’ve also covered PNC Park and Wrigley Field, which are 2 more places that are near and dear to my heart. I’m looking forward to reading about their further adventures.

In Snopes We Trust

My mom forwarded me a very troubling email this morning, no doubt with the intent to ruin my tranquil Saturday morning of newspaper, Internet and Diet Coke.

It was an email she’d received “exposing” my hoax bible, Snopes.com as nothing but a liberal mouthpiece. It was, of course, the usual right-wing smear tactic, mixing truths with innuendo and adding flawed and biased assumptions.

You could see by the forwarding tracks that this had changed hands a number of times, so knowing the actual writer/speaker’s identity is impossible. At least one person added their take as an introduction:
EXACTLY what I have been saying for a long time, liberal democrats; for my trouble - constantly being called wrong. Read this and weep! I am going to have drink! ROFL

Joan

May your path be strewn with flowers,Memories, friends, and happy hours.May blessings come from Heaven above,To fill your life with peace and love.
.....An English Blessing.....
I don’t know who “Joan” is, but from her writing, I can see why she’s always being called wrong. And she should be careful… Friends don’t let friends drink and ROFL. They might spill their drink.

It also cracks me up that “Joan” quotes some pithy saying about flowers, friends and Heaven and then goes on to attach hateful, prejudicial screed. It’s typical hypocrisy of the religious right, if you ask me.

It never fails to amuse me how people will believe anything, no matter how far-fetched or unsubstantiated, as long as it supports their pre-existing opinions.

Here is the text of the original message itself:
For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the 'tell all final word' on any comment, claim and email.

But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it – kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It's just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby.

David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the web site about 13 years ago - and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions - or skepticism - is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issue when in fact they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms that the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the 'true' bottom of various issues. I can personally vouch for that complaint.

A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the Internet, 'supposedly' the Mikkelsons claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort 'ever' took place.

I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers - and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet, snopes.com issued a statement as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things - not!
(The bolding is from the original… bluz)Then it has been learned the Mikkelsons are Jewish - very Democrat (party) and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the Internet with people pointing out that the Mikkelsons' liberalism is revealing itself in their web site findings. Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to www.snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts...proceed with caution. Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always Google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems
apparent that's all the Mikkelson do. After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not' fully looking into things.
[Check out the Wikipedia page for yourself: Snopes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

OK, here’s what I have to say about that.

Yes, the Mikkelson's are a small-time operation, no question about that. One doesn’t need to be formally trained in anything in order to do some legwork and make some phone calls. And if, as they quote, they have been doing this for 13 years, that sounds pretty experienced to me.

Now look at the 3 main areas presented here:

1) The State Farm case: If this is not just another fabrication, I suspect this was too small-time an event to elicit real activity and research. The Mikkelsons get a ton of items to research; this might not have been a big enough deal. I just searched Snopes using the words "State Farm Obama" and there were no matches. I doubt whoever wrote this ever actually looked on Snopes. He's also taking his agent's word verbatim. The agent has a dog in this fight, and may not have reason to be completely truthful.

2) Mikkelsons are Jewish: I want to look at the big bolded paragraph line by line, because there is too much bullshit there to cover in a summary.
Then it has been learned the Mikkelsons are Jewish - very Democrat (party) and extremely liberal.
First of all, who says? I’ll be the first to say that I have no idea if they’re Jewish or not. Is there some kind of proof, or are they just Jewish the way President Obama is Muslim… because a bunch of idiot keep saying that they are? The kicker is that the question of whether they are Jewish or not really doesn’t matter. This is lazy bigotry at it's best. Because they may be Jewish they're automatically raging Liberals and incapable of researching Internet claims in an unbiased manner? That's just faulty logic wrapped in prejudice, much like so many of the right-wing screeds that Snopes debunks.
Again, if the writer had ever actually used Snopes, he's see that the also debunk misinformation targeting the conservatives. If they were so biased, why would they bother to do that? The Mikkelson's actually research these things... they call the police stations, the newspapers, the town officials, and they reproduce public records and leave references. How much verification do you ever see in the original smears?
As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative.
Excuse me, but NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! In an election year especially, liberals try to discredit conservatives and conservatives try to discredit liberals. This proves absolutely nothing, other than the writer is unable to come up with a viable argument. A “purpose agenda?” What the hell does that even mean? I guess you could say that every agenda has a purpose, or else it wouldn’t be an agenda. It kills me how people just throw a couple words together and pretend it makes sense.
There has been much criticism lately over the Internet with people pointing out that the Mikkelsons' liberalism is revealing itself in their web site findings. Gee, what a shock?

Otherwise known as the Fox News tactic: have all your stations and commentators repeat some ridiculous tidbit and then report that said tidbit is all over the news. This sentence means only one thing: people may be complaining about the Mikkelson’s “liberalism”. You can find people on the Internet complaining about any number of hair-brained things… It has no bearing on whether it is truthful or valid. Yes, “Gee what a shock”, as in “Gee, I can’t believe that conservatives are complaining when their ill-conceived slurs are exposed for what they are.”

3) Wikipedia says so: Shows the complete lack of knowledge of what Wikipedia is. Anyone with an agenda can go on Wikipedia and enter some unsubstantiated bit of gossip. It is a user-generated system. Anyone can post on any topic, truthfully or not. Often times, users that know better can go back and change or delete the information. No one with any sense uses Wikipedia as an absolute source on anything, other than as a pool of opinions. The very thing that makes it great, being generated entirely by “the people”, is also its greatest weakness.

That said; I just went to the Wikipedia page on Snopes to see exactly what they “got to the bottom of”. In short, nothing: just a brief history of the website, what it is that they do, and who relies on them. What this tells me is that the use of Wikipedia in this rant is just so much window dressing. The writer takes a banal factoid cited by a source he considers reputable and then adds his own conclusions. The continued citing of the reference is nothing but an attempt to confuse the reader into thinking that the reference is the source of the conclusion. And they pray to God that no one actually looks it up for themselves, or else the whole house of cards falls to the ground.

Closing ArgumentsIn my opinion, this whole article is just an attempt to smear an organization that has proven adept as ferreting out other biased, exaggerated and untruthful charges so often levied by the right. It's what they do... discredit the messenger. It's Rovian politics at its best. Feel free to pass this on to anyone that has seen the original email.

Of course, then they'd just try to discredit me.

_________________________________________________________

Epilogue
OK, that was going to be the end of this post, but before publishing just for giggles, I did a Google search using “Bud Gregg” and “State Farm”. I assure you that every word above that line was written before I saw these web pages. If only I’d looked this up before spending 2 hours of my Saturday morning on this subject.

First up was Snopes’ posting itself on the whole sign issue, which basically shows the original brouhaha. (OK, I was wrong, they did post the item, but they must not have tagged it with the words I used to search for it.) In a 2008 update, they address the email in question:

“An email circulated in October 2008 falsely claimed that we contacted neither Bud Gregg nor State Farm about this subject. FactCheck.org has verified that the email is false.”
There was a link provided to the page in question on FactCheck.org and I clicked it to find not only a thorough debunking of this particular email but example upon example of the Mikkelson’s diligence in debunking internet rumors, regardless of ideology.

So don’t just take my word for it. Look for yourselves. It’s exactly what the ideologues don’t want you to do. And that goes for the next preposterous email you receive, too, regardless of ideological bent. If Snopes or FactCheck say it's true, that's Word. That's Church. That's da fact, Jack!

Today's Caption Contest Winner... Me!

The Baltimore Sun has a blog that does daily caption contests and today I learned that I won for a day last week. This was my 3rd win since I started entering, so I'm pretty happy about it. Yay for me!

Considering the subject dealt with clowns, I felt it was a step forward just to point and laugh.

This was the previous win, from January:

And the first, from November 2008:

Now, from the "No Shit" Headline Dept:

The article goes on to talk about how women's sense of smell is superior to men's, but I couldn't argue either reading of that headline.