Personally, I’m a little tired of

Highly paid news anchors bashing CEO’s over “their” excesses.

I’m sorry, I just can’t stand watching Matt Lauer, who is making $13 million a year for about 3 hours work a day, bashing CEO’s over their egregious excesses. It’s like watching two fat men arguing over who is fatter.

My wife loves Matt Lauer, so I don’t get any traction at home with this argument. And, I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to get much traction here either, but wtf, I really don’t care. Matt Lauer is essentially a highly paid entertainer, just like a lot of athletes, and negotiated his contract during better times.

I just think that it’s galling that this guy, who really doesn’t do anything, everything is done for him and he just sits in front of a camera, repeating other people’s work, sit’s there and bashes these guys.

Maybe it’s just the Today show that I’m getting tired with. Would somebody please call up the Today show and let them know that Caroline Kennedy is not going to be the next senator from NY, and they can stop covering the story? If you want to see the bias in the media, just look at how the Today show has been covering this. The Today show has been beating this story non-stop, to the point that I’m beginning to wonder what tie that Caroline Kennedy has to the show. WTF.

So, with that, I think that the grumpy critic has said his piece, and will be moving on for now. I hope you have a good day, and if you can’t, well then, keep your misery to yourself. Nobody likes complainers.

Except, of course, when I’m complaining, then you just have to sit back and take it.

Just Wondering

In the fall, our oldest daughter will be going away to college, hopefully. As part of this processes, that will result in the Light Of Our Lives actually moving out and giving us some peace and quiet, this weekend, we started applying for financial aid. Financial aid includes loans, grants, work programs, etc. etc., and in order to obtain any of this, you have to go on line and fill out a form on the FASFA web site.

As I was doing this, there was one question that struck me as kind of odd. It said

“Most male students must register with Selective Service to get federal aid. If you are male, age 18-25 and NOT registered, select “Register me.” (Q22)”

So, if you’re a female, you don’t have to register with the Selective Service, but if you’re a male, and you want money, you have to. Isn’t this sexual discrimination? In this day and age, when we have women on the battle field (and who have won awards for bravery in the face of combat), isn’t it time that women should have to register with the Selective service as well?

Not that I really care one way or the other, but I just thought it was odd to see this type of discrimination practiced by the federal government, with nary a peep from all the do-gooder liberals out there. Hmmm.

On a different note, we had a little family get together, and I was talking, once again, with my overly-liberal Scottish brother in law. We started talking about the stimulus package, and my Bro-law trotted out this nonsense “I’m against tax cuts, generally. But if we need to reduce taxes for a few years to get the economy going, I’m all for it. I say we should cut taxes 10% across the board for the next two years, to help the economy”

So, tax cuts are ok when we’re trying to stimulate the economy, but they’re not when things are going well? And just what exactly is going to happen, when in a few years the economy is going well, and all of a sudden you want to raise everyone’s taxes 10%? Is he really listening to himself? You’ve got to be kidding.

All you atheists can give up now…

.. that we have proof that God exists.

What proof do we have, you ask?

Well, not only are we going to have a black man as the next President of the United States,

Not only did a plane land in the middle of a river, and everyone walked away,

But, and I hope that you’re sitting down for this,

In the exact same year, the Arizona Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl.

What further proof do you need of the existence of God?

The Run

The ash from the most recent attack was slowly drifting down from the sky. It was an hour before dawn and the overcast sky seemed to smother the earth, dampening all of the noises around me.

I hurried through the side streets, the “package” firmly in tow. If it wasn’t so eerily quiet out, it would have almost been beautiful. Right out of one of those pictures from the previous century, you know the ones that I’m talking about, right? Who was that guy? Oh, yea, Norman Rockwell. Right out of a friggin Norman Rockwell Christmas painting. If only it was snow and not radioactive ash drifting down from a dead sky. If only the dead and lightless houses I passed by actually held some sort of life. If only things had been different.

I stopped at a corner, on the balls of my feet, listening to the stillness around me. I heard it and felt it long before I saw it, one of the Hunter-Killers that prowled our empty street. Then I could see the flashing lights, the probing beams, the stark contrasts thrown off by its’ blazing head lamps. If you were caught by one of the lumbering beasts it was sure death, ground to bits beneath its’ clanking wheels, or worse yet, sliced in two and left to bleed to death.

If you were caught.

I took off the other way, dragging the package after me. I knew the HK’s were not intelligent enough to pick up my tracks in the powder on the ground, so I had no worries there. But with several of them around, it was easy to lose track of them and get caught. It was easy to focus on what was behind you and run straight into the gaping maw of another.

I raced down one street and skidded around the corner, turning North. I kept up a steady pace, not panicking or wasting any effort. I wasn’t as young as I used to be, and I needed to make up for speed and endurance with cunning and patience. It sucks getting old, and it really sucks when your life now depends on your physical conditioning, when it never did before. Now I wish I had listened to my physical trainer and taken her program more seriously. If only I had spent as much time working out as trying to get in her pants…

The flashing lights and dull rumble me snapped me out of my reverie, a scant 50 yards in front of me and closing. I darted to my left, crashed through a hedgerow and crawled under a pine tree, dragging the package after me. Just as I gathered the package to my chest, getting ready to flee once again, the HK rumbled past, oblivious to my presence. Climbing out from underneath the tree and the prickly bed of needles, I said a brief prayer to my maker, thanking him for keeping smart technology out of the HK’s. Like he had anything to do with it.

A mile later, after several twist and turns, I saw the safe house. I approached from the North and paused at the edge of the road before the house. Crouching down in a drainage ditch, I looked both ways (just like momma always said!) to make sure there wasn’t anything out there. I could see the entryway to the safe house, less than 100 feet in front of me. Beckoning me, calling me with its’ sweet embrace of warmth and safety.

But I was tired, tired of dragging the package, tired of running, tired and weary of the constant struggle that our lives had become. I didn’t want to make a mistake here, give ourselves away and end everything that we had built with a careless mistake. So, listening to my mother once again, (oh how I miss her these days), I look both ways, see and hear nothing, and sprint across to the doorway and into the house.

I put the package down and begin to shed my clothes, thinking of my decontamination shower. I put my clothes in the containment structure and enter into the main room when a light snaps on……

“Hi Honey.”

“Oh, hey, what are you doing up so early?”

“I thought I would start a load of laundry before getting on the tread mill.” She bends down to rub the dog and says “How was your run?”

“Um, it was good. Nothing really to speak of…”

“I saw it was snowing out. Are the town plows out? I hate it when they don’t plow before we go to work. Like what else are they so busy with during the winter?”

As I head up the stairs she begins talking with the dog “and so how was your run with daddy today, pookie poo? You know, daddy really needs to put on your vest if you’re going to go out in this weather….”

…..I stand near the decon shower, waiting for it to spin up, when I feel the house rumble and know that an HK is grinding past, completely oblivious to our presence. But tomorrow will bring another run with the “package”, and I’ll have to stay sharp if I want to make it home again…

More Adventures In Suburbia

So, just for fun, let’s summarize the last few weeks of Mike’s exciting life in Upstate NY.

Because, with three kids, three dogs, two cats, guinea pigs and frog, our house didn’t seem full enough, the weekend before Christmas, we adopted another cat. Actually, it’s a 4 month old Maine Coon rescue kitten, and it’s decided that my pillows, both day and night, are the perfect place for it to sleep. Normally, I’d joke that I like to sleep with some pussy on my pillow, this really isn’t what I had in mind.

On Christmas morning, right after opening his gifts, our son promptly began to regurgitate (vomit, toss his cookies, pray to the porcelain god, etc.) his Christmas Eve dinner and apparently everything else that he had eaten over the past several months. Talk about Christmas gifts that you’re not going to forget.

The next day we went over to my wife’s brother’s house. Because, what’s better to do when your whole family is possibly contagious with a nasty viral bug, than to go visiting relatives, right? It puts a whole new spin on that “spirit of giving” that we have during the holiday.

Our son’s high school hockey team was in a tournament the weekend after Christmas. Surprisingly, they played way over their heads and won the tournament. Very nice. It helped take the sting out of the next two games last week, which they lost, against inferior opponents. Ah, the unpredictability of youth.

The Sunday after Christmas, a wind storm struck Rochester, knocking out power all over the place. My wife and I were in the local sporting goods store, snagging some bargains, when the power started to fail. My wife had just found some seriously mismarked apparel, and was waiting in line to capitalize on the store’s mistake. That was, of course, until smoke started pouring out of one of the back store rooms

My wife was directed to immediately drop what she had and exit the store. Now, I’m sure you can imagine, to a power shopper like my wife, when clutching a mismarked jacket, there probably isn’t any phrase more hated in the English language than “drop what you have and exit the store”. She started complaining to the clerk (she was next in line, by god!) that if the previous customer hadn’t been such an idiot, my wife would have already been checked out and on her way.

Please, like we all haven’t been there, right?

The wild eyed young clerk, who, from all appearances, biggest stressor in life is if she misses latest episode of The Hills on MTV, looked at my wife and said “Uh, Madam, the store may be on fire and you’re complaining not getting checked out?” We all have different priorities, I guess.

Happily, that wasn’t our last experience with un-controlled flames and smoke for the holiday season. On New Year’s day, as we were taking down our Christmas decorations, our dryer did its’ best rendition of the Talking Head’s song “Burning Down The House”. We all thought that our youngest daughter was burning her lunch, when it turned out the dryer was burning our clothes. But, don’t fear trusty reader, a new dryer was purchased, picked up and installed before dinner the very next day. When it comes to shopping and spending money, nothing stands in our way. All I can say is that we’ve done our best to stimulate the economy, et tu?

To round off the weekend, our son’s team beat the only undefeated team in the league on Saturday (a little consistency in performance would be nice), the virus that we thought we had passed off retuned and laid a few more of us low, and our daughter received her first college acceptance letter.

We went to a wedding on Saturday, where the bride and groom were doctorial students at the University of Rochester. It was strange being at a wedding where I felt like I brought down the intelligence curve, you know? This was one of those affairs where they wrote their own vows, which, frankly, I’ve never been a big fan of, but hey, whatever floats your boat. The groom did a great job writing his vows, and talked about all of the adventures that they were going to have together during the blessed union.

I thought to myself, “Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about”.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

My wife and I watched the new year’s arrival at home, but ourselves. All of our kids had been invited to parties and so we had some blessed solitude in our house for a few hours. That is, of course, if you could ignore all of our dogs and cats clambering for attention and fighting for space on the bed, we were all alone. Everything is relative, I guess.

As we were watching NBC’s coverage of the ball dropping in NYC, they showed Bill & Hillary Clinton pushing the button to start the ball’s descent. Once the new year started, the NBC showed the Clintons again, dancing away amid the confetti and hoopla, seemingly oblivious to everything around them.

I said to my wife “Exactly one year ago, Hillary Clinton was the Democratic front runner, and to many, the presumed next President of the United States. It’s amazing what can happen in a year.”

I can’t wait to see what 2009 brings.