This place was created near the end of the twentieth century just for the heck of it..
Wednesday August 30, 2000
Maureen Dowd says it for me today. I am not in the mood. I am in a mood. And it's not a good mood. Is it any wonder? There you have it!
Tuesday August 29, 2000
I wanted to cite this story the other day and I forgot. It strikes me that these characters may get what they always wanted from their "love" of little Elian. And it's bizarre that these nutcases might get their reward from an even bigger nutcase. And while I am at this, remember how the Miami wackos said that little Elian was saved by Dolphins and therefore a special gift from God, well maybe this being saved by dolphins stuff is contagious.
What all this has to do with baseball, politics, truth justice and the American way is obscure. This baloney-fat's connection to truth, justice and the American way is even more obscure. It can't wait till a few weeks after the election to come out with a report that says well, she didn't do anything wrong, but she is a liar liar pants on fire, maybe but I can't prove it.Give it a rest and us a break Mr. Starr or Ray or Mellom-Scafe or whoever!
And speaking of baseball, the Red Sox are rapidly becoming mediocre. Either go on a real winning streak or lose half a dozen in a row. Enough of this middle of the road baloney. I have to suffer enough of that in politics lately.
Monday August 28, 2000
I did go sailing Saturday. Very relaxing. I even tried thinking about this guy which usually requires getting exorcised and ... well I just couldn't. Have to rate that as a good day. As for today, well the calm remains, so all I am going to do today is think about this stuff. . And more here. Should I try it too?
Saturday August 26, 2000
It's a gorgeous day and I have gone sailing aboard Chimaera. (this link is now fixed for all of you who complained to me)
Friday August 25, 2000
You know, it's not just that George W is sort of a dumb product of his families influence, and the powerful guys who own him, it's that the silly guy doesn't even know it. Not unlike the pampered athlete who has grown up to be rich and famous who then believes he can do whatever he wants, George thinks that he is self made and smart and shrewd and all the other thing that Barbara, Poppy, panderers, and truly shrewd manipulators have been telling him all his life. And therein is the danger of a guy like him becoming president. He might actually try to be an executive. He may try to make actual decisions.
As they say, kidding aside, he is not the guy you want making decisions. Reagan didn't try to make decisions. He accepted his role as spokesman for his manipulators gladly because I don't think he had any allusions as to who or what he was. And he loved his role.
On another tack, here is a story from The New York Times that is interesting in the way that stuff used to be interesting to me before I got obsessed with the fear of another Bush like Barbara arriving on the scene. (By the way, I hope you are able to see these links from the Times. I did warn you.) Doesn't the premise of this theory of remind you of the"stuff just happens statements" that were so common before all this "everything has to have a reason" kind of thinking took us all over. As some old tired beatniks from a long way back still say "dig it".
Thursday August 24, 2000
I watched it! There you have it straight out. The ball game was in a three hour and one minute rain delay, TCM had a not so good movie on and neither did any other of the kazillion movie channels provided by my cable company, so.
While I don't know if the show is scripted or not, it's premise is contrived , it's props, costumes, and sets are downright comic book silly, it's host is foolish and the stupid thing is the two hour finale hooked me and I watched till they gave the million dollars to the flabby guy. But back in the days when I would watch Gilligan along with the professor, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star etc. I was entertained. Last night I was merely curious.
Nice break from the usual baloney though.
Wednesday August 23, 2000
I live in a household that never saw even one episode of Dallas. That isn't one of those "oh, we never watch television" brags of the intellectually phony. I, and we, do watch TV and several hours worth of it daily. Hard to forget those days of Howdy Doody, Your Show of Shows, John Cameron Swayze, Walter Cronkite, Our Miss Brooks, Ernie Kovaks-the king of comedy- or even Archie, Mary Tyler Moore, or any of the many others that at one time or another tied us all together. But, and this is a big but, Dallas was not one that we watched despite it's popularity. Not even the famous last episode. Now there are the stupid quiz shows like Millionaire or whatever it's called that we eschew. And so far, the reality shows like Big Brother and especially Survivor, have never lit a TV screen in this house, even though they represent the new common denominators for Americans.
Tonight I may break down and watch tha final episode of Survivor. Unless there is a pretty good movie with a story line on Turner Clasic Movies, or Encores Mystery Channel.
Have a look here at what is going on with political "free speech" and figure out who has this right and who doesn't. I have not been too rabid in the campaign finance issue in the past. I am starting to get there. This site---bookmark it --- is very detailed. Examine it over time. And then either be very afraid or not. I am becoming the former.
Finally today this little piece of technospeek from Slate. I have been forced against my will to actually try to understand a little of this (gibberish).
Tuesday August 22, 2000
Molly Ivans is the "gal" as they might say deep in the heart of Texas. So, please read this.
Last night, I was frustrated by my lack of understanding of ---well everything, so I didn't watch the Red Sox game but later in the night I listened to one of the most improbable 9th,10th,and11th innings that I have heard in a long while.
Now I know that Al Gore has a convention bounce, and that he has raised issues that may actually resonate (see Molly's column again), and that the GOP and George W are whining that Gore will "attack" them, but this money story is scary, scary, scary. And this one, too. What kind of advertising will the wackos come up with with all this money. Remember "Willie Horton". Well maybe not, but suffice it to say that that ad campaign coupled with the dumbest and least relevent question ever asked in a presidential debate---remember" yeah, well if your wife was raped and murdered would you still be against the death penalty" or something like that. This question was asked by Bernard Shaw of Gov. Dukakis back in the "88 campaign helping big George Bush to victory. But then, without that low campaign we never would have been able to kill all those folks in Panama so that we could put Bush's pal Noriega in jail. Just what was Bush afraid of?
Ah, I best get off of this before my prejudice against the Bush's starts to show.
Saturday August 19, 2000
This article fromThe NY Times seems ominous. Who knows, maybe My Connecticut River will become a lake soon.It was a while back right after the last Ice Age. Here is a summary from a while back which amplifies the melting story and potential situation. By the way, if the links to the NY Times don't work, go to the and register. Then they should work---I think. But you should be a registered Times web user anyway.
Politics. I am having a hard time getting used to this Bush character. I know he is dumber than dirt and therefore ought to be pretty harmless, but ...
On the other hand this little jerky dancing parody of the jerk softens my worries. And tickled my funny bone for some peculiar reason.
Friday August 18, 2000
As the conventional wisdom declares, the first two big presidential election factors are over. The VP picks and the conventions. Now, if the CW is correct, will come the final part of the troika, the "debates". And I say the CW is just plain baloney-fat.
I don't know what is driving the polls nor do I know what will drive the actual presidential election. But I am not convinced that it is any of the above. Nor do I think it is issues. If it is issues, Gore would be ahead by plenty. So it must be something else. Maybe it's some silly notion of fairness--you know the advice that all of our moms gave us, " Now let Johnny have a turn dear, it's only fair" Oh, I don't know. All I do know is that most Republicans remain anathema to me and for the life of me I can't understand why they don't to everyone.
So here is one of the typical political stories of the day. And yet another in the never ending blood-lust by the wackos. They won't quit on this guy. I bet that in forty or fifty years they will still be after him. These people are nuts. Can you imagine how ballistic they will goif Hillary wins!
I took to the water aboard Folly yesterday and enjoyed the Connecticut River for several hours. Good day good time. Maybe time to rename the little skiff.
Monday August 14, 2000
The Democratic National Convention opens today with a farewell speech from President Clinton and everyone is wonderinggggggggggg, blah,blah, blahing, snoooozzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It's all the same isn't it. None of them ----the newsmen, the pundits, the commentators----have anything to say about anything that is in the least way related to anything that matters. Just the same old stupid process stuff, the celebrity stuff, the latest poll stuff.
So in keeping with the mood of There You Have It a couple of weeks ago at the GOP thing, I will sort of shutdown for a while. I will leave for now, with this little almost clever political cartoon and I will urge you to look down at the lower right corner and help me decide if I should allow this blatant plagerism to go un-challenged.
Saturday August 12, 2000
So here it is Saturday and I am forced to go to work to bring you this important news about the Bush families "sitter" and how he is "giving up" a lucrative job in the private sector to return to public service so that he can help George W be a compassionate "servant of the people".
Yeah right!!! Salary for a couple of years over 12 million, options worth over 30 million, golden parachute worth over 20 million and he is going to be my servant? And with the Bush tax cut for "that single working mom" who will get to keep more of her money---about $20 a month-- Cheny will get an added bonus of several million.
How are they ( the GOP and business manipulators of Bush) getting away with this baloney???
Friday August 11, 2000
While were at it, Molly, let's re-regulate all the stuff that needs it. All public transportation, the broadcasters that use the public broadcast frequencies, the telephone companies, the cable industry, the medical industry, the drug companies, all water companies and I could go on. Yeah I know the free-enterprise rap. But it's baloney. All these industries and more were all good investments before the halcyon days of Reagan and the deregulation of most of them. That's because with regulation came a certain guaranteed profit. It was part of regulation. So many of America's trust accounts were made up of reliable public utility stocks. So for all you capitalists, was that so bad?
And I know I have used a little license slipping in the medical industry, but if that isn't a public utility and neccessary for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", what the heck is.
Thursday August 10, 2000
Yesterday I was exposed as sort of an uninformed jerk when I was asked a question about the wildfires around Missoula and in other parts of Montana. I told my tormentor that I was not even fully aware of them. Now this was an answer to a question from a guy whose kid is now in Montana and in Missoula and who is there for many reasons, but at least one of them was because I had talked so much about Missoula back in the days when I was more interested and probably more interesting. I suppose that this is another confession.
I could use the excuse that politics has me captive. I could use any excuse. But the truth, made known to me by another frequent tormentor, is that I have become a person who is less and less eclectic and more and more narrow in my interests. And more and more boring. My obsessive fear and loathing of Bush and the GOP, my laments about the weather, houseboating daydreams, the Red Sox:; all that and the need for my poached egg in the morning to be perfect are driving me more and more frequently to Zippy. And here. And here.
Tuesday August 8, 2000
It's hard to say much about yesterdays news on Lieberman. It's all over everywhere else isn't it. I said my piece and I will stick with it. And, since I am not thinking about much lately, I am stealing this piece from another site that I look at once in a while and for no good reason other than I have always liked the idea of Che. While knowing nothing much about the substance of Che.
And if that isn't a confession, nothing is.
Here is a link to another site that I actually do visit every day. The guy who runs it must me special since he had an entire section on GILDA a while back. And no I stole these pictures somewhere else.
Monday August 7, 2000
I give up. Despite dewpoints over 70, I want to get August started. (for those with short memories see the July stuff).
And so, the buzz today is that Joe Lieberman will be the Democratic Vice- Presidential candidate. Now I have to say that I did support him when he first ran for the Senate against one of my favorite mavericks, Lowell Weicker. Later I became disenchanted with him. He took a stance upon a moral highhorse which bothered me, he was forever "agonizing" over votes that should have been slam-dunks, and he appeared too often on the stupid Imus radio show. All that, and he turned out to be not a liberal, but one of those New-Democrats---talk about fuzzy. But, if the buzz is true and he is going to accept and run for VP, then my hat is off to him for his courage. The crazies, along with, the so-called Christain Coalition, the outright nazis, the southern republicans, some of the democrats, some in the right wing press, the radio talk-show jerks, even the nice new compassionate conservative GOP will all be taking their shots at his religion. They will talk around it in some cases, they will defend it in others, some will even praise it, but for the most part thay will be direct and vicious.
Joe, for all the negative things I have written to you over the years, well, I still mean them. But Joe, you have my new respect. And of course, my vote.