Monday, January 29, 2007

Stupid Hillary Tricks, Vol. 1

What did I say? Didn't I say it was just gonna be a matter of time before Hillary started double-speaking in only that way a Clinton can?

There's ole Hilly in Iowa on Sunday, dipping her toe in the Presidential waters and ending up with a foot in her mouth. During a Q&A session with the local media, she was asked what on the surface seemed like a legitimate question: what was it about her background that made her quailfied to deal with evil men?

In perfect Clintonesque subterfuge, Hillary avoided having to give a serious answer to the question by first repeating it, then smirking and raising an eyebrow. A crowd full of Hill-lovers seemed to "get" the joke and roared with laughter for half a minute.

The question, of course became "Well, who was the "evil man" she referring to when she pulled her Jack Benny impression?". The general consensus seems to be that she was referring to her hubby Bill. Others suggested it was a general comment about all the "evil men" in her life, like Ken Starr, George Bush, et al. Regardless, the chuckle worked: she avoided having to answer until later (when she could get a more suitable reply from her handlers).

It's intersting to note that while this vaudevillian moment was being reported all over the news, the Dem-controlled Congress was quietly working on a way to undermine the law and force a cut-and-run resolution on Iraq. Gee, this wartime campaign is shaping up to be a real laugh riot!

First, Hill denied she was trying to be funny and blamed the moment on the crowd in attendance. Then, she did a 180 and said she WAS trying to be funny, and blamed it on the media for telling her to "loosen up" in the past.

Where have I seen this strategy before? It all seems SO familiar...

You know, Bush has been on my shit list for a while now, for a variety of reasons. My biggest fear is that this non-qualified shrew will actually get elected because of W's repeated second term bumbling (remember, it was this sort of thinking that led to Jimmy Carter being in the White House, whose foreign policy ineptitude led in many ways to the explosion of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East we see today). Thankfully, there are some folks out there that will try and prevent this from happening (these folks, for one).

It's would be really nice if the GOP would put up a candidiate of substance, too. But I'm not holding my breath.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Toilet Humor: It's My Potty

Apparently, Murphy's Law also applies to the powder room.

I'm in there trying to "take care of business" earlier tonight and lo and behold, the freaking toilet won't flush. I remove the tank lid and discover that the plastic arm that pulls the chain that lifts the stopper has snapped in two.

Why do I mention this? Because this is the second time the same exact thing has happened here at Casa del Sayek since we moved in. BOTH times it happened after 8PM on a Sunday night - when either everything is closed or you have NO desire to hit the Home Depot (especially since it's snowing outside). Plastic breaks...metal rusts. You can't win.

I guess until tomorrow I'm on manual flushing duty. No pun intended.

There IS good news - the condo folks finally decided to give us a new roof, so we shouldn't have any more 'waterfall on Thanksgiving' incidents. We hope.

The office let it slip that our roof is NOW 'up to code'. Which I guess means that BEFORE the leak, it wasn't.

Make of that what you will.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Worst Kept Secret Dept.: Hillary's In

Unless you live under a rock, you know by now that Hillary officially threw her hat in the ring for the 2008 Presidential Election over the weekend. Good God, just THINKING about the concept of HILLARY possibly being the next President makes me a little queasy, so I've been deliberately avoiding making any comments about it.

Well...I just threw up in my mouth a little, so I guess it's OK to unburden myself now.

I figured out what the Clintons are a long time ago. They are the guests that came to your party (even though YOU didn't invite them - someone else thought it would be a "cool idea" to bring them along) and refuse to leave. You know the ones I'm talking about: the house is a mess, there's empty bottles and crushed tortilla chips all over the rug. All you want to do is kick them out and go to bed. You're tired, you're weary, and quite frankly - you're sick of looking at them - and once they DO leave, you hope you never see them again. But they refuse to go. They keep spilling shit on your rug, touching your books and records with greasy fingers and scaring your cats. You're in HELL.

That's the Clintons - the uninvited party guests that keep channel surfing your digital cable and eating the salsa off the sides of the bowl with thier index fingers at a quarter to five in the morning while you're struggling to stay awake on the barca lounger.

You see them FINALLY going for their coats, but you know something else is up. The wife has been saying she has a big announcement all night but hasn't made it yet. So you know it's coming. Sure, you hope she might forget, but she never forgets. You're still gonna have to sit through the announcement. Without warning, she drops the bomb on you - and it's so potentially disasterous that it keeps you awake...night after night.

Hillary dropped her bomb on Saturday - rushed mainly to counteract Barak Obama's Presidential bid announcement that came earlier in the week (Obama being the perennial empty-suit candidate..I have this visual image of the two of them whipping out light sabres at the Democratic Convention and saying, "There can be only one". Hillary's is of course, bigger). Talk about rotted pickins - the air fills with the stench of moldy, soft pumpkins. Oy and vey.

Hillary feels that she has what it takes to be the first female commander-in-chief. She's about as qualified for that job as Geena Davis. We're talking about the woman that looked the other way while her husband slipped the high hard one to any piece of ass that walked in his general direction. Under normal circumstances, women would ostracize Hillary for being a friggin' idiot. But I'm sure she will be canonized for being smart enough to stay on Bill's coattales while he drained the noodle.

The Clintons are the emodiment of self-absorbed political arrogance. Why not? They have (either seperately or together) gotten free rides from the media and magistrate alike on such unseemly matters at Travelgate, Whitewatergate, Cattlegate, Gennifergate, Filegate, Paulagate, LincolnBedroomgate, Hubbellgate, Chinagate, Auditgate, Pardongate...oh, I could go on and on. Former associates would rather rot to death in prison than turn on them. So why SHOULD they feel anything other than Teflon-coated arrogance?

Of course, Bill and Hill's greatest legacies will be Lewinsky, having their heads in the sand while the 9/11 plot was being hatched (and having enough pull to get a movie about it edited beyond recognition) and extremely skillfull carpetbaggery. With everything the two of them have been able to get away with, I would put nothing past them - even this.

Today officially began campaign Week One for Hilly. I'm sure she already hit the department stores to stock up on new pantsuits. While she talks about having a "discussion" on her web site, let's see how long it takes before she starts talking out of both sides of her mouth.

The clock...starts...NOW.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Another Weekend

Well, another week is in the can, and what a week it was. It finally snowed for more that ten seconds here - in fact, we got about two inches of snow in the wee early hours on Friday, which made the drive down to the train station quite the adventure. It's all gone now, but the cold decided to hang around. Another day by the fireplace watching TV and being surrounded by cats. I love days like this.

So - I'm now into my third week of commuting to Manhattan via train instead of bus. I thought that I would tire of the Newark / PATH transfer thing, but it's actually started to grow on me. The bus commute had gotten SO bad and SO expensive, I don't miss it at all. Plus, it's nice to know you are going to get home at the same time every day, not at the time the bus decides to get you home. Not bad at all.

I have not posted the WHOT 2nd Anniversary show YET because I am still trying to put the show back in proper order. Apparently, in 1982 Hank and Jim decided to have TWO "second anniversary shows" - one on October 8 and ANOTHER on October 15. Then Jim recorded BOTH shows over the same four reel to reel tapes - on different sides. So figuring out which tape is part of which show is becoming quite the challenge. On top of that, I am pretty sure one of the tapes is MISSING. So some more rummaging through the tapes will be required before I can post the show properly. In the meantime, I'll try to get something else up in the next day or two.

In case any of you missed Comet McNaught's appearance a week ago, you really missed something. McNaught was actually visible IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY here in the Northern Hemisphere (I saw it in the parking lot of Shop Rite and thought I was hallucinating)...but the BIG story is what it is currently doing in the SOUTHERN Hemisphere. We may not be able to see this unreal display first hand, but the photos will knock your socks off. Trust me, you've never seen anything quite like this from a comet. Check out the photo gallery HERE.

Last but not least, somebody sent me THIS mildly amusing blog link that points out some of the more, um, annoying aspects of MySpace. The guy can't spell too good, plus he's a smarmy jerk (the layout of that blog ain't so swift, either), and MySpace has made a lot of improvements since he wrote all that stuff - but he DOES have some valid points, especially the ones about rabid Bulletin posters and ridiculous page layouts. Thankfully, some of us still use MySpace for the purposes it was intended for. At least we TRY to.

If I ever get annoying like that guy or the goofballs he's writing about, just tell me.

UPDATE: It tuns out that Kris, they guy that wrote the schpiel about the MySpace insanity e-mailed me and he's a pretty cool guy, so I take back my snarky little pissant comments...!

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Baby, It's Cold Outside



Maybe y'all didn't notice but Old Man Winter finally arrived. After dumping a couple of buckets of ice on the midwest, it's now bitch-ass cold here in the western reaches of New Jersey. As I write this, it's 15 degrees (gasp!) going down to 11 overnight (double gasp!).

Thankfully, as you can see above, the old fireplace is doing it's thang and keeping our tootsies and kitties warm and toasty. Where would I be without the fireplace...probably in debt to JCP&L up to my frozen nipples.

Looks like we might even have a couple of inches of snow tomorrow. Will wonders ever cease? It's amazing what a little shift in the jet stream will do: a couple of weeks ago at this time it was in the 60s and all the doom-n-gloom Al Gore chicken littles were running around like the sky was falling - and now, half the citrus crop has been frozen solid (good for frozen concentrate - not so good for fresh squeezed). Which just goes to show you that the weather - believe it or not - CHANGES from time to time. I know...hard to believe!

In other matters - the aircheck archive project has yielded some really delightful (unfrozen) fruit lately. Several unlabeled reel-to-rell tapes ended up having the WHOT 2nd Anniversary Show from 10/15/82 on them! As soon as I can get out of the clutches of the flu bug and assemble the show into a cohesive order, I'll put it up on the Podcast for all to enjoy!

The sleep weasels AND the ice weasels are calling me, so off to bed I go. Keep warm kids!

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Just Sitting Around...

Hey hey,

I was sitting here tonight working on the Archive and I figured I'd get some stuff off my mind as I am feeling a tad stressed out tonight.

So far, 2007 has been pretty stressful. I switched from taking the bus to taking the train in to work to try and save a few bucks - and let's just say it will take some getting used to. I certainly will be getting my walking in from now on! I'm also slightly concerned about my job as the particular office I work in has become the dumping ground for all the crap that no one else wants to do since the merger and layoffs.

It's basically been the busiest it's ever been since I started working there, and they're still giving us MORE work to do that we don't have time for. Add into the mix that we are about to spring a new product on the unsuspecting masses that (I am sad to report) is so FRIGHTENINGLY user-unfriendly that I am positive it's going to be like mailing out a train wreck in a box. The debris from which is sure to fall squarely on us.

Because of all of this, as well as OTHER stressful things going on right now, I just feel tired, anxious and completely stresed out. The good feelings I had while on vacation are completely gone, and I just don't know if I am coming or going.

I'm hoping that 2007 does not continue to be the fickle bitch she has been (at least for me) so far.

Back to the tapes...

Behind The Wall of Sheep

I love the Smithereens and I always have, since the first time I heard the "Especially for You"LP back in the summer of 1986. WHOT...