The (I)CRVN Blog

Part two begins…

JULY

The Republican party got a sense of deja vu when the courts awarded the vacant senate seat in Minnesota to Al Franken.  India outlawed their ban on homosexuality, going against the cold-weather trend.  Citing a lack of “VP Candidate level perks and an inability to see much financial future in politics,” Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska to better help herself.  44 people, including three New Jersey mayors, were arrested for corruption and money laundering after no one told them the Sopranos was just a TV show.  South Carolina’s charge to infamy burst out of the gates in July when a Conway man was arrested for violating his probation.  He had been on probation for having sex with a horse.  He violated his probation by having sex with the same horse!  Sadly, this means that criminals practicing beastiality are more faithful than the state’s governor.

AUGUST

Figuring Bill was better than the other option, North Korea released the two jailed US journalists at the request of the more masculine (well, visually at least) Clinton.  Canadians everywhere rejoiced as Jeremy Roenick finally retired from the NHL, and moved on to annoy the TV and film industry.  “No Politician Left Behind” poster girl Sarah Palin protested death panels that did not exist and were also not in any form or draft of any legislation whatsoever.  Handlers suggested that no matter how dreamy she thought Heston was, she should stop watching Soylent Green constantly for ideas.  Cited for everything BUT job performance, Ben Bernanke was nominated for another term as head of the Federal Reserve.  A man from South Carolina (of course) died after he robbed a store having spray-painted his face to conceal his identity.  Edward Kennedy, longtime lion of the Senate, and the last politician to say that he cared about “regular folk” and actually do so, succumbed to cancer.  He will be missed.

SEPTEMBER

Kate Gosselin filmed a talk show pilot with Paula Deen, calling into question both the nature of fame and the need for talk shows.  The mayor of Willford in (say it with me) South Carolina issued an order preventing police from chasing certain suspects in order to save the town money.  President Obama gave an address via CCTV to students all over the country, stressing that they work hard and stay in school.  Republicans immediately adopted a “stay lazy and skirt through” policy, modelled after the successful plan of the previous president.  In an emotional and unplanned outburst, Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina yells out “You Lie!” at the president during his joint session speech about health care.  Wilson would be rebuked by Congress a week later not for his outburst, but for being from South Carolina.  YO! YO! I’M GONNA LET YOU FINISH, YO, BUT I GOTTA SAY THAT CALIFORNIA HAD A WORSE YEAR, YO! Moving on…  Mackenzie Phillips released a book about why we all prefer Valeri Bertinelli.  Glenn Beck announced on Fox and Friends that he believed Obama to be a racist with deep-seeded hatred towards whites.  Obama refuted these claims, saying that he loved “all people.  Well, except for the batshit insane white folks on teevee with no link to reality or sense of decency.”

OCTOBER

Rio De Janiero won the 2016 Olympics over Chicago with a simple proposal of “it’s the summer games.  Whose citizens do you really want to see in bathing suits?”  President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his July Beer Summit at the White House.  Tiger Woods led the US team to victory in the President’s Cup despite claims he still needed help with his putter.  Ballooning for Children becomes a nationwide rage, quickly replaced by attic hiding.  Roman Polanski is arrested in Switzerland for his 1977 charge of molestation, after he was told to come to Zurich to accept his Publishers Clearing House prize.  The Assistant Attorney General of South (wait for it…) Carolina, Roland Corning, was arrested when he was discovered in a cemetery with various “aids” and an 18-year-old stripper.

NOVEMBER

A heat wave swept through Maine, so the state repealed the new same-sex marriage law.  Analysts pointed to the new 10% unemployment rate as a clear indicator that the recession was over.  It was revealed that there was in fact water on the moon.  It was in a Deer Park dispenser left there from 1969.  The government changed the insurance regulations and standards to change the standard age for mammograms for women to 50, while changing the standard age for free viagra to “whenever a man damn well pleases.”  A 600 pound cow fell from the sky and landed in a swimming pool in…  South Carolina.  Oprah, clearly defying the Mayans, announced her show would end on September 11, 2011.  In response, Jon and Kate ended their television show, and a nation shrugged its shoulders.  Tiger Woods, again having driving problems, ran into the ultimate sand trap.

DECEMBER

President Obama announced on national television that there was a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but that immediately, troop increases would take place.  The mayor of Arlington Texas, Russell Wiseman, claimed that our “muslim president” strategically timed his announcement to deliberately block the broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Obama responded that a real Christian would own the DVD.  GE was able to sell NBC Universal to Comcast by convincing the company that Seinfeld and Cosby were just on a temporary holiday.  The divorce of Jon and Kate Gosselin was finalized, thereby confirming the Republican’s drive to save the sanctity of marriage.  South Carolina almost made it a month, were it not for the announcement by state First Lady Jenny Sanford that she was divorcing her husband, once he got back from the Appalachian Trail.

*Sigh.*

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

(Well – not you, South Carolina…  TRY to stay clean for 2010, okay?)

I thought this was a joke at first.  But I really should have known better.  After all, well-off white people in a position of power tend to say some really stupid stuff sometimes.  Well – most of the time, really.

Missouri representative Cynthia Davis, on a June 4, 2009, post on her website did in fact imply that food need not be given to certain young people because “hunger can be a positive motivator.”

It should come as no surprise that Davis is also the founder of Back to Basics, a Christian bookstore.

Yep.

She’s one of those “Christian Republicans.”

Now, I have to say that I am friends with a few people that consider themselves Christian, and I have to say that there is a huge difference between the way my friends live their life and the way politicians who claim to be Christian “live” theirs.  This food issue is a prime example.

Almost.

Davis and others like her almost always cite the Bible as the reasoning behind everything they do or believe.  For example, they always seem to trot out that old classic “an eye for an eye” (often mis-quoted from Exodus 21) when addressing crime and punishment.  These are the same people, by the way, who beat themselves on the chest to show how virtuous they are in their “pro life” beliefs on abortion.  Apparently “pro-life” only extends to the point at which the cord is cut, when you consider how many “pro-life” people are also pro-death penalty.

I digress.

My point is that these people in political power that constantly quote the Bible seem to forget the existence of the New Testament.  You know – that part of the book with the red writing signifying both the words of Christ and the blood he spilt so we wouldn’t forget his messages?

Ah, that pesky New Testament… always getting in the way of Christians.

My friends know quite well the lessons from both Testaments…  I can only assume that it is so hard to keep track of which lobbyists gave you money for which illegal project, leading to these politicians only able to remember the Old Testament.

After all, if Davis knew the New Testament too, she would remember a few passages from Matthew 25 where Jesus said “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”

Now, call me crazy, but doesn’t that passage alone give us all the right to help feed and clothe and house those fellow humans in need when we are able?

Children are supposed to be our primary resource in the world.  They are our future.  (Pardon the quote from the Masser / Creed song.)  It is our job as parents to make sure that our children are not denied any opportunity or right.  Including food.  If any child in the community cannot eat, for whatever reason, it is our job as caregivers to help.  If it is easier to help via school lunch and summer food programs, so be it.  To deny anyone in need under these programs on the very Reagan-like notion that hunger is a motivator is exactly the kind of cruelty and hypocrisy that has led us to being one of the most hated countries in the world.

While I’m on the topic of Reagan, let me quickly address his role in all of this.

When Reagan came to power on the heels of Carter’s failure in Iran – and I am one to believe that had Carter succeeded in winning the freedom of the hostages prior to the election, Reagan would have never been president. Reagan brought with him a philosophy that is borne from religious ideologues: the City Upon the Hill.  This is where that whole “pull yourself up by your own bootstrap” mentality comes from, and it is amazingly convenient an excuse for not helping out your fellow human.

You see, if you believe that people should help themselves, then you are off the hook to actually live the words of Christ, and allowed to sit there smug in your own stupidity and cruelty.  After all, if you believe that people should help themselves and something does not work for them, it’s not your fault.  Therefore, you are not required to do anything in the first place.

Until society gets desperate and performs some act of desperation on you, at which point you have the criminal justice system to lose those undesirables in.  Besides, since they are in prison, clearly they didn’t listen to you about their bootstraps.

Funny thing…  How can someone pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they don’t even have the boots to begin with?

You see, sometimes, even those people not on the hill need a push. And it would be very un-Christian of you to deny them that push.

Just a few lines later in Matthew, Jesus also says “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink.”

Sounds like a bad move not to help, hunh?

(Postscript: Sarah Palin resigned, which is also a very un-Reagan like thing to do.  Riding the coattails of her unlikely bid for Veep she…  Quits?  Either something is wrong at home (did Todd have relations with a snow-machine?) or this is the worst political strategy ever.)

With perhaps the sole exception of Shrimp and Grits, there isn’t much better when I’m feeling under the weather than a large bowl of hot Cream of Wheat, cooked with butter, salt, dried (yes, dried) basil, and a spoonful of kucho karu.

(Insert Homer Simpson drool noise here…)

Thoughts?

(BTW, I think I have the comments fixed, finally…)

Sort of…

A trip to the ENT specialist revealed a new host of problems, one of which requires surgery.  Three different kinds of medicine have resulted in the fluid buildup in my left ear mostly clear, finally.   Now I have to go back for potentially infected lymph nodes and to discuss having my adenoids removed.  Sure – that makes sense – herniate two disks in my back resulting in periods of immobility and lots of pain and rehab?  Nothing.

Ear infection leading to a little annoying fluid retention?  Grab the scalpel!

It makes no sense, really.

More to come about lots of other things, maybe tonight, maybe this weekend.

Well, had I waited another week or so, I would have only had to be treated for pneumonia.  However, since I was silly enough to go to the doctor to find out what he could do for me after a month of playing “what color is the drainage now?”  As it turns out, I have Sinusitis and Bronchitis.  Woo-hoo!  Hopefully the two-week antibiotic treatment will at the very least unclog my head enough to get rid of this congestion in both ears that make me think I’ve got a shell stapled to my head.  When the doctor looked at my ear, he said I may need to see a specialist, since my eardrum looked “convoluted.”  Nice.  So apparently I not only march to a different drummer, I can’t get them in synch!

A couple of other items…

• Marvin Harrison finally whined about himself to the Colts, who granted him a release.  I give him one more year before he retires, based on production and injuries over the past two years.
• My sleep patterns have created a weird sleep schedule, so I fell asleep during Obama’s speech last night (thank you, DVRs), but I have one comment about Michelle.  While I won’t engage in the discussions about her being the best-looking First Lady in years, I will say that yes, she is a very attractive woman, and for me it all comes from the fact that she has a bright, (and more importantly) genuine smile.  A complete turnaround from what we had been subjected to these past eight years, with Laura Bush’s fixed expression unmoving the whole time.
• Someone needs to remind Hillary that it isn’t her party, both literally and figuratively.
• The stimulus package has already created work!  It took two guys to say “Madame Speaker, the President of the United States!”
• Leverage finished its first season this week.  I do hope it starts up again soon…  It’s the best new show on teevee.
• The Penguins fired coach Michel Therrien and promoted Dan Bylsma, who apparently has a grudge against his former Wilkes-Barre players Kris Letang and Bill Thomas, who were two of the very few bright spots on the team for the two weeks prior to Therrien’s firing.  Let’s hope that the “interim” tag is never lifted from Bylsma, who needs to learn that holding a grudge only hurts your team.
• USF1 officially launched the other day.  Despite being partly owned by a Brit, I am looking forward to a team that is almost entirely American competing against the overspending and underachieving European teams that sneer at Americans who show any interest in Formula 1.

As I mentioned earlier, the family’s been battling a pretty heavy-duty virus for a long time now, and I am finally getting a moment to post some notes from the past few weeks (yes, weeks).  So, of course, I’m now fighting a doozy of a migraine, too…

In no particular order:

• The fact that the Bush administration’s last act was to triple the tariffs on Roquefort cheese imports is just ridiculous.  Not only is it a blatantly obvious retaliatory strike against the French for their banning certain hormones that are regularly injected into US beef, it’s also a really nasty move when you consider that the county of Roquefort’s economy is tied greatly to the export of the cheese.  Hopefully, in time, President Obama will reverse the tariff or at least reduce it so that this cheese can once again be imported at a reasonable rate, helping both the county of Roquefort and my cheese trays.
• Did any of you watch the NHL Super Skills competition prior to this year’s All Star Game?  Why were there cheerleaders?  And for that matter, did they all have to have such large breasts?  Was this Bettman’s way of making sure that he – for the day at least – wasn’t the biggest boob in the NHL?
• Many people were upset at the inauguration speech of President Obama, hoping for the next “ask not what your country can do for you” moment.  I for one am glad, and I was quite pleased with Obama’s speech.  It was direct, said what Obama believed needed to be said, and lacked the one thing that the previous administration had been shoving down our throats for years: catchphrases.
• I saw a picture of Amy Winehouse recently, and in all sincere honesty, my initial reaction to the photo was that Jamie Farr had really let himself go.  My apologies to Mr. Farr.
• Did anyone else catch the news that one of Bernie Madoff’s victims was an author who was working to release his latest book while being swindled by Madoff?  The title of the book is (and I swear this is true) Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped And How to Avoid It.
• I saw a blurb recently about Heather Mills (the ex-Mrs Paul McCartney) that made me wonder if she’s just incredibly stupid.  She apparently cannot figure out why she’s become so popular with single men.  She thinks that it’s because she’s comfortable with herself.  I would think the $40 million she netted in the divorce helps.
• Get ready for Palin 2012.  Nitwit of the North has formed “SarahPAC” to help build a “better, stronger, and safer America in the 21st century.”  Right.  I’m not too worried.  First, Alaska is one of the hardest hit states in this recedepression, and secondly, PACs don’t tend to get Neiman Marcus Gold Cards.

That’s all for now.  Drive home safe.

The family’s been sick for weeks now, with some head and chest cold that just will not die.  When you’ve been sick for so long it’s nice to have a real comfort meal, and today I finally got mine: a salad of fresh, organic radishes, radish greens, olive oil, and chunks of bleu cheese.  Nummy!

I say “subjective” because when I eat this, I cannot be in the same room as the wife.  She calls any variety of bleu cheese “foot cheese.”  S’okay – I’m still not used to the pate she prefers…

I’ve been away for a while.  Two-thirds of the family (or, based on weight, more like 90%) have been remarkably sick of late, with Squirmese a happy and oblivious carrier.  There have been a lot of things going on that I want to comment on, but I’m still just enough out of it that I haven’t even been able to finish my single-box Sudoku.  I also have to post my pick for the Super Bowl.  Ant is flying home soon, so if he doesn’t get a pick posted, he’s got a mulligan from me.  I am still riding the fence on which team I think will win.  (No – really – I am!)  Hopefully Monday or Tuesday I’ll be up to posting a few items.  In the meantime, my Super Bowl pick should be up sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Meanwhile, my wife and I will continue to play “what color is it today?”

A few things to make note of:

• First, I’ve lightened up the commenting restrictions.  If the spammers return, I’ll figure something else out, rather than restricting the ability to comment.
• My daughter started pre-school this week, and has since earned a new nickname.  I will post photos and a story or two, more than likely on Thursday.
• The second part of the ICRVN Year in Review should be up by the middle of next week.  This week has become screwier than expected.
• More root canal fun tomorrow, right before work, no less.  Yay.
• Are the people claiming Lady Gaga is the next great artist in Pop music the same people who believe that Yoko Ono is merely a misunderstood genius?  A blind hunter would shoot both, mistaking them for wounded animals!
• It’s a shame that the passing of Pat Hingle was linked to his work in the four mediocre 80s-era Batman films.  Hingle produced much better work earlier in his career, far better than the mere cameo-esque work required of him in the four Batman films, the first series to relegate the Commissioner Gordon character to an afterthought.

A couple of goofy moments from recent teevee and web-video viewing:

• On American Life TV, a recent episode of Fixing Dinner featured the use of a spice mixture called (I’m not kidding) “Graham Masilla.”  I’m surprised the host wasn’t shot by an angry Indian on site.
• One of the funniest lines in recent memory comes – unsurprisingly – from Alton Brown from his description of fried chicken he ate on his second Feasting on Asphalt tour.  According to Brown on the web series Serious Eats, it will be the only fried chicken he ever eats again, because it “was like Colonel Sanders, pole dancing.”  Now that’s an image that’ll stick.

One more item if interest:  My friend De has started another blog, Best Picture Derby, in which he plans to watch at least one film nominated for Best Picture every other day.  Great idea, and a perfect use of the “blog” concept.He’s just started, so by the time summer rolls around he and I can get into a debate over the 1935 Academy Awards…

See y’all later…

We finally found out what was going on with my head.  If you will recall, I found a lump just beneath my nose a few weeks ago, and it could not be determined what the problem was.  After several doctor’s visits and dentist’s visits, the dentist finally was able to locate the abscess this morning.  So, instead of having a cavity filled, I got to have an impromptu root canal!  Yay!

Actually, it wasn’t that bad.  I felt nothing and now that all of the anaesthetic has worn off, I only have slight soreness in the area around the RC.  Not too bad, I guess.  The dentist even noted how well I did during the procedure, to which I replied “well, I was blessed with really crappy teeth, and a high threshold for mouth pain, so it works out.”

What is curious, though, is why the RC takes half the time as the tooth reconstruction.  You’d think they’d want  to take a little extra time taking out the root…

What was neat, though, was my little girl taking me by the hand to help me back to the car after the procedure, and chatting with me to make sure I was okay during the ride home.  My sweetie.