Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

My Annual Art Review

Cosimo Cavallaro, who claims to be an artist, and I don't doubt that he is what he claims to be, will unveil his anatomically correct, loincloth-less, milk chocolate Jesus in New York on April Fool's Day. The crucified Jesus is made of 200 pounds of chocolate. The press release says that the Jesus sculpture is six feet tall. My impression has always been that Jesus was much shorter.

You might remember Cosimo's other important works, such as "Fish in Shit" and just plain "Shit." Or perhaps, you appreciated his seminal works, "Cheese Chair," "Twiggy in Cheese," or his opus, "Cheese Room."

Hey, it's a living.

Stand By Your Man

George the Lesser, ever loyal, deceitful, and dishonest, will come to the aid of his dear friend, Tony Blair, and bomb the hell out of Iran to try to get the captured Brits back.

Do I need a passport to go to Antarctica? The climate there must be better than here, especially with winter approaching.

Disappearance of Bees Solved!

After an initial flurry of news stories, I haven't heard much about the disappearance of honey bees, which pollinate about 30% of the fruits, vegetables, etc., that we eat and the alfalfa and clover that cows and other sources of food and milk eat. The bees simply disappeared. There were no dead bodies in the hives. The bees disappeared.

There is an explanation. Just to squelch the rumor that has been spreading, President Bush, strapped for cash to fund the war effort, did not sell the bees to aliens, who then took the bees on their space ships back to their home planet to save their own civilization. That is totally not true. I made it up.

The Rapture. Way back before VW's had air conditioners, I read a book by some guy named Hal Lindsay that scared the bejeebers out of me, talking about Armageddon being right around the corner and people just disappearing, being taken right up to see the Creator. Kids with overactive imaginations should not read books like that. I thought, when I got it, that it was science fiction, like Arthur C. Clarke-ish; but I was wrong.

Now, the Bees have disappeared. Not all of them, mind you, because among the remaining Bees is the incarnation of the Second Coming. The Rapture.

Absurd, you say? The writer has finally lost his marbles, you say? [Sorry, I found them. Most of them ... well, enough of them. Maybe.]

The Ultra-christians (this word brings to mind Raquel Welch, circa 1969) and Bible-maniacs should not be so Aristotelian ... the Bible may be the Word of their God, but it has been transcribed by human beings, most of whom couldn't take shorthand; so there is little doubt that some mistakes have been made. There are those who state that "[t]here will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven;" and that the disappearance of the Bees is part of that grand godly plan.

In Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians (4: 15 - 17), he points out, [t]hen we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. Who is the "we," of which Paul speaks.

Bees. He really wrote about "Bees." Maybe his handwriting was bad. Perhaps the translation was bad. It could be that somebody, along the way, said, "It's Greek to me," and changed it to "we."

Bees, after all, have a hierarchical society. Bees take care of their own. Bees communicate with scent, sound, and motion. Bees build marvels of engineering that are copied by humans. Bees make their own food and share. The nurse bees make royal jelly, the food of the gods. Bees are benevolent creatures, flitting from flower to flower, doing their naturely jobs, minding their hives, stinging only when stepped on by a careless golfer.

Bees do not use automatic weapons or even semi-automatic weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

Bees. The Rapture. Mystery solved.

Vanity Pl8s

Don't people understand the concept of vanity license plates? Putting random numbers and letters on a license plate, the meaning of which is known only to you and your god, is a waste of money and a hazard on the road. There are people who try to figure out the secret meaning of the license plate while they are driving, and their driving is worse than when they are on a cell phone.

But even more annoying than non-sensical vanity plates are vanity plates that are not true. Let me give you an example. I was driving to court in a neighboring county this morning. And if you know anything about lawyers, know this: As well-intentioned as they are in trying to get to court on time, they rarely leave early enough from their point of origin to make it on time unless they break numerous traffic laws.

I was motoring on the interstate highway at a moderate rate of speed (Moderate = in excess of the speed limit, but not recklessly so). By the way, it is a common misconception that the interstate highway system was created for a military purpose, that is, the speedy transport of troops and material around the country.

The interstate highway system was created by lawyers (back in the day, nearly all of the people in Congress were lawyers) for lawyers.

While you may disagree with me on that observation, and you would, of course, be wrong, I was taking full advantage of the interstate highway system, meaning that I was traveling in the high-speed lane, when I came upon a slower-moving vehicle, a big ass black Lexus. It would have helped me positively identify the make of the car if there was a vanity plate on the car that said "BIG LEX" or some stupid phrase about the make of the car, but there wasn't. Doesn't the factory-installed nameplate on the back of the car or SUV or SUT or crossover vehicle or pick-up truck or van tell us the make? Why do you need that on the license plate?

I pulled up on this guy's Lexus rear end. His vanity license plate was not true: L8 4 CRT. I assume that translates to "late for court," but he obviously wasn't; otherwise, he would have been hauling ass.

And it is just something like this that gives lawyers a bad reputation, a reputation for being dishonest.

**The time for entering The Annual Spring Contest With Prizes is waning. You don't know what you are missing.

Sunday Morning Shopping

It's got a backlit LCD with, get this, Caller ID! It's the BlueAnt V12 Bluetooth Headset! Now, while you're walking the dogs, riding your bike, driving your car, find out who is calling you by grabbing the thing off your ear and looking at the cool backlit LCD display to check the number and then putting it back on to talk. What a convenience item!

While wearing the V12, you can strap on a pair of gasoline-powered boots to make that jog up the hill a lot easier and faster. And marathons? Why waste time? Beat the crowds and finish in just over an hour! You will literally smoke the rest of the competition and leave them exhausted.

But before you strap on your boots for that marathon, how about a "comfy heated seat?" With such technological advances, why is it offered in only white? Why stop there, though? Go ahead, order the Swash 800 with the warm air-dryer and the wireless remote.

Speaking of warm water, you say you can't boil water? You say you didn't know why three pans came in that gift package because you need only one? You say you can't figure out what to do next because the recipe card caught on fire? Never use the wrong pan for a recipe again! Never burn anything! Never mess up a recipe again! It's ROBOTIC COOKWARE!

The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers

In a move only someone like his friend, George W. Bush would love, Pakistan's President/General Musharraf suspended the nation's Chief Justice and has turned off all electricity and plumbing to his residence and has prevented him from leaving or communicating with the outside world.

In the meantime, lawyers all over the country are marching in protest, boycotting the courts. In Lahore, police beat back hundreds of lawyers, dressed in black suits, with wooden batons, injuring a number of the lawyers. Rumors have circulated that many lawyers were smashed in the head and, of course, suffered no ill effects at all, except for some blood.

The Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has questioned the government's detention of about 400 individuals without trial and without being charged.

Pakistani news agencies took the government line and report that the marches were minor annoyances and that courts were not closed, in spite of what was apparent to foreign journalists.

The Annual Spring Contest with Prizes

I was looking around the world wide web, and I found a cool vise from Dremel. I couldn't find it on the Lowe's or the Home Depot website; so, I'm going to call the hardware supply place just up the street -- I guess it's 40 blocks or so -- to see if it's in stock there.

Here's my problem. I thought I'd bookmark this page. I have the Safari browser that came with my Mini-Mac computer, and I clicked on the "Bookmarks" thing. Among the choices are "Shopping" and "Tools and Reference."

I'm puzzled. Where do I put the link? Under "Shopping" or under "Tools and Reference."

Explain your answer.

The best answer wins a cool prize.

The first and second and, maybe, third and fourth runners-up will be awarded less cool prizes.

I haven't had a contest in a long time, and you all know that the prizes awarded here at nothingbutlove.net have been pretty cool in the past. Draw no inferences from that link.

Your explanation will be judged upon the content, originality, grammar and usage, strength of schedule, and other subjective, ethereal factors known only by the Selection Committee. The decisions of the Selection Committee will be final.

Here's the only important rule: "Both" is not an acceptable answer. Tell your friends ... or enemies.

The deadline for submissions is 8:07 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, March 20, 2007, the Vernal Equinox, the arrival of Spring, in this part of the world.

Good luck.

The Horror, the Horror ...

"The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch ... in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information ..." -- Bush Signing Statement to reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Well, now we know what King George meant by that. He meant that although the law requires him to oversee the FBI when it issues National Security Letters, which are demands by individual agents for records that do not require a judge or magistrate approval, and report to Congress about the scope of the National Security Letters, he would shove that page of the law right up Congress' asses.

Yes. Bush democracy in action. Another big "Fuck you!" to the American people.

Chalk up another impeachable offense. The FBI, a part of the executive branch, did not accurately report the number and nature of the National Security Letters it issued. If there's a unitary executive, then that unitary executive is responsible for this significant, illegal trampling of the Constitution.

Let's talk about Bush democracy and the Rule of Law.

You will recall that a relatively small force of United States soldiers went into Afghanistan to assist the loose confederation of native tribes overthrow the Taliban-led Afghan government back in 2002. The U.S. wanted to smash Al Qaeda, which maintained training camps in Afghanistan with the support of the Taliban, and find a guy named Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Those, most thought, were the main goals of the war on the terrorists who were responsible for the attacks of the World Trade Center, the U.S.S. Cole, the U.S. embassies in Africa, none of which were perpetrated by Saddam Hussein or his evil henchmen in Iraq, the mullahs in Iran, or the guy with the weird hair in North Korea.

You probably do not recall Omar Khadr, however. He is a Canadian citizen, who went to Afghanistan and ended up fighting on the side of the Taliban-led government, which, again, the U.S. sought to replace with a kind of government Bush called a democracy. Khadr, fighting for the Afghan government forces, was captured.

I'm no genius, but it seems to me that Omar Khadr became a prisoner of war and was entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

Can anyone explain to me why he has been charged with murder, conspiracy, spying, and providing material support to terrorists? He has been held in Guantanamo by the U.S., which has ignored the Geneva Conventions.

And is the U.S.A. still fighting in Iraq because if the President withdraws the troops, the government that finally rises to power in Iraq will try to bring him to justice just as he is trying to bring Khadr to "justice." The high crimes and misdemeanors Bush has committed are far more serious than those perpetrated by Khadr, who was fighting for a legitimate, albeit, evil enemy government.

I'll probably be investigated by the FBI. The National Security Letters will go out. And because we are no longer free to speak our minds about our own government's illegal and irrational policies and criticize the Unitary Executive, I'll probably be brought in for questioning under suspicion for providing material support to a terrorist ... or the ACLU. Round up the usual suspects. The Sedition Act of the early 20th Century is back.

The last days of the Rule of Law are getting shorter and darker. Soon, you will be wondering why they have broken down your door and taken you away ... and they didn't even ask to see your papers.

It's Red Bull

Of course, people think the commercial is humorous. The writer must have thought he or she struck gold -- it's on the air during an episode of "Lost" at the first commercial break. In the animated commercial for Red Bull, the red-costumed super-hero, hearing a woman screaming, leaps to the refrigerator and takes out the remaining two cans of Red Bull. They're empty. The woman continues to scream for help. The view switches to a garbage can overflowing with Red Bull empties.

The cries for help continue. The red-costumed super-hero goes to the window and closes it, cutting off the woman's screams.

The message, NO RED BULL, NO FLYING, flashes on the screen.

Thirty-eight of her neighbors heard the horror-filled cries of Kitty Genovese and ignored her cries for help over a 35-minute period. One of them finally called the police after she was dead. The man who killed her, wearing No. 64A0102, sits in his cell in Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York.

We haven't come very far in 43 years -- or maybe it's just me.

Tall Kitchen Trash Bags

The Swiss Army, with their Swiss Army knives at the ready, invaded Lichtenstein last night. I suggested that the U.S.A. do this four years ago to bring democracy to the people of Lichtenstein. I went to college with a woman from Lichtenstein. She was a member of the royal family there, a princess. She probably would have benefitted from a good dose of democracy.

[I don't have a good segue here, but I'll try.] I read about the invasion of Lichtensten this morning before I threw away a used coffee cup in the trash can under the kitchen sink. I line the trash can, a rubber plastic one maid made by Rubbermaid, with tall, white kitchen trash bags from a box of tall kitchen trash bags I bought at Costco.

I'm trying to remember how long ago it was that I did that. It was before moving here; so, it has been over a year and a half since I bought that box. For those of you who don't go to Costco, the box is orange, as if that means anything. The box is made of heavy-duty corrugated cardboard; and it has a perforated flap that is pulled up, turning it into a dispenser box, revealing the big, white roll of individual bags, that is, not tear-off-the-roll bags. When a bag is pulled out, the end of another bag, folded very precisely, hangs out of the dispensing flap.

I hate this particular orange box of tall kitchen trash bags. I can't remember how long I have been pulling bags out of the orange box. It's been much more than a year and a half, come to think of it. The Gulf War was just starting, the first Gulf War, the one when the real George Bush was in the White House.

Here's the thing. One day I picked up the orange box and it felt a little light, like I was nearing the end of the roll of white kitchen trash bags; so, I bought another box, a generic box of tall, white kitchen trash bags, from Marc's, the close-out store.

That was four, five, six months ago. Six months ago. And still, the orange box produces, or reproduces, tall kitchen trash bags.

And I have cleverly tried to fool the orange box. I pulled out -- real fast, one right after the other, without pausing -- one, two, three, four, five, six bags, thinking that maybe the orange box was the vortex of a time-space displacement, and that speedily pulling the bags out might just change the inter-dimensional structure of the universe at that one particular place and time and stop it with the bags already. It didn't work. A bag end hung out of the dispensing flap.

I looked at the box just a few moments ago because I had to take the trash to the trash chute down at the other end of the hall. When you get off the elevator, the trash room, in which the trash chute is located, is to the right, in case you're wondering. It's not like that on all the floors. When Matt and I were doing physics experiments, he went down to the sixth floor; and the trash room wasn't to the right as he got off the elevator at the sixth floor. He figured out that he had to go to the left out of the elevator and then loop around, finally finding the trash room after a prolonged search. I called him on his cell phone, wondering where he was because he was supposed to yell up the trash chute that he was ready to make his observations, which were an integral part of our physics experiment, and he didn't yell for quite a while. I became concerned. Anytime that physics experiments are being performed, strange things could happen -- ask any physicist.

As I was saying, just a moment ago, I looked at the orange box to check how many bags the orange box is designed to hold. I wanted to know if it was two or three thousand, to give me an idea of when I would get to use the box of generic tall kitchen trash bags I bought six months ago. You know what? There's no number on the box.

On Starbucks

I haven't commented on the article I saw in the Wall Street Journal, and I say "saw" because there's something about reading the Wall Street Journal that sends chills up my spine, about Starbucks expanding into other areas, food service to be exact. Some Starbucks cafes serve breakfast sandwiches? Is that true? Why would Starbucks do that?

It's Starbucks Coffee Company, not Starbucks Rip-Off-McDonald's-Egg-McMuffin Company.

I take it from this turn in marketing strategy that Starbucks executives think they need some new gimmick -- putting the cleavage back on the mermaid wasn't enough. Serving breakfast sandwiches is not the answer. The minute that my Starbucks starts serving breakfast sandwiches is when I stop going there. I don't want to be smelling sausage, egg, and cheese bagels getting reheated in the oven ... that's fucking with me too much.

What they're doing is getting away from doing one particular thing particularly well. Do they honestly think that the business is going to increase by a substantial amount by serving reheated Egg McMuffins? I'm disappointed that Starbucks serves pastries that are thawed out the morning they are served for $1.75 each. That is shameful, but I overlook that.

What I won't overlook is being forced to watch some wool-blend suit stuffing a breakfast sandwich in his mouth and talking on his cell phone as I'm opening the door. What I won't overlook is the smell of pork sausage and burning cheese in Starbucks Coffee Company. I won't be a customer there.

Perhaps, Starbucks should return to its roots -- unless abandoning the concept of doing one particular thing particularly well and gravitating toward mediocrity in all Starbucks does is considered progress.

Papers! Show Me Your Papers!

The proposed regulations for "driver's licenses" have been published by the Department of Homeland Security. States are required to comply with the requirements in order for the ID to be accepted by federal agencies for "official purposes" ... in other words, it would be the equivalent of a national identity card, with the same information and certifications as the Kennkarte carried by individuals in Nazi Germany and the countries it occupied.

"Official purposes" has an open-ended definition ... it could be required for anything since the feds seem to have their hands in everything. Technically, the subway trains are subject to scrutiny by the Department of Homeland Security; so, on the ride home, you may, in the future, be required to show your ID card.

It is amazing what one man has done to this land of the once free and home of the once brave ... I suppose I could say that the one man is Osama bin Laden ... but I was thinking of George W. Bush and the war he has waged on our civil rights with his campaign of fear. Does anyone honestly believe that Al Qaeda is as dangerous to the American public as has been portrayed; and if so, how did we end up killing Iraqi's instead of hunting down Public Enemy No. 1?

UPS DELIVERS

do you think that when the employee handbook says that you should not use a handicapped spot for parking that it is perfectly okay to park in more than one?