Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Matt & Ben

If you're in the Cleveland area, take in the Cleveland Public Theater production of "Matt & Ben," which we saw last night. I enjoyed it.

Then hit up the Velvet Tango Room after the show for live jazz and ... even the non-alcohol drinks are great.

The Song Remains the Same

[Saddam Hussein] has developed stocks of germs and toxins in sufficient quantities to kill the entire population of the Earth multiple times. He has placed weapons laden with these poisons on alert to fire at his neighbors within minutes, not hours, and has devolved authority to fire them to subordinates. He develops nuclear weapons with which he would hold his neighbors and us hostage. [Congressional Record, 10/10/02]

I believe, Katie, that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators. [NBC, 3/20/03]

It’s clear that the end is very much in sight. [ABC, 4/9/03]

This is a mission accomplished. They know how much influence Saddam Hussein had on the Iraqi people, how much more difficult it made to get their cooperation. [This Week, ABC, 12/14/03]

I’m confident we’re on the right course. [ABC News, 3/7/04]

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war. [Republican National Convention, 8/30/04]

I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent. [The Hill, 12/8/05]

These statements were not made by he of the 27% approval rating, our reigning, intellectually and morally suspect King George, but by ...

John McCain. And there are actually people who want four more years of the same thing.

We are making no progress in the country. I'm despondent. I've been deluded for a long, long time, too.

But it was a beautiful day on the golf course. Nice to get away for a quiet walk.

Screw

I drove by a building, which housed a local supermarket headquarters. The supermarket was bought out by some company from out of town, which kept the stores open for a few years, then closed up shop, claiming the company was not making a profit here. That is the way of the world, it seems.

Some businesses moved into the building, which was good to see. A sign caught my eye:

HAND SCREW MACHINE PRODUCTS.

I believe that this company is a large conglomerate.

One of its subsidiaries is the Thumb Screw Machine Company.

Although it is not a publicly-traded company, another subsidiary is the Head Screw Machine Company.

I heard that the companies have a number of government contracts and regularly ship orders to various locations overseas.

What the Fuck's an IP Address?

Dude, I push the button, my laptop goes on, I click the little fox thingy, the internet appears right there on the TV screen; it's like all magical and stuff like that. Now, they're saying things are gonna be changing. What am I gonna do, Dude. It's like, y'know, so awesome to like, ummm, not even leave the house, Dude, and get me my dose of reality right there, y'know. It's like totally cool, philosophically speaking.

But they are saying this IP stuff, Dude, like totally the heart and soul of the internet -- they are saying there won't be no IP's to go around anymore. Like used up, man, cuz, y'know, it's like SUV's sucking up all the gas. IP guzzlers, Dude. Very, very bad. Bad for you. Bad for me.

What's that? You wanna know who they are? Like what're you talkin' about, man? You know who they are. The eternal they, Dude. You know, the ethereal they, all-seeing, yet unseen, the omniscient they. Like ... uhhh .... super physicists, Dude, but more. I'm surprised. Really, Dude. You don't know who they are. What rock have you been hiding under, Dude? Hah, don't know who they are. Funny.

They are gonna give us like ... ummm ... ultra IP's so that we won't ever run out, not in a million years, man. They're makin' it so that everyone, I mean, ev-ree-one, every man, woman, child, and pet in the universe will have more IP's than the old lady in the shoe had children, and even more. Dude, they are totally fixing this IP problem.

In fact, Dude, I'm writing to my city councilman to tell him to find out if they can fix social security, potholes, the gas prices and, y'know, stuff like that cuz, Dude, they totally don't mess around.

BUMPER STICKER

i've had at least three encounters this week with people who park in handicapped spaces because they were "in a hurry," "didn't know it was a handicapped space," or just damned didn't care.

i'm just not going to say anything anymore. at least out loud.

Same As It Ever Was

General Petraeus -- Bush must think that because the guy has a Roman-sounding name that he's special -- has claimed that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraq. There's proof, he says. That was months ago.

And the long-awaited "report" with the "proof" is not being released, yet.

Why not?

I think that "they" have to get their stories straight -- you know, be consistent about what they've seen and what's happening. It's like the four kids who are trying to blame the schmuck up the street for breaking the window with a snowball -- get the story straight.

The story -- you know, the lies.

Apparently, they can't get the lies straight. It's tough to do sometimes.

But, as always with the Bush people, say it enough times and the people will believe you. Wasn't Bush talking about Hitler and the Nazis last week. Must have been brushing up on his technique.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. -- Hermann Goering.

And it's happening again, as it did with Iraq. And it will keep the minds of the people off of their sad lot here at home.

ABBREVIATED in no order whatsoever

jackson move. leg stuck in floor through to basement. not hurt. floor replaced. big mess. hayden moves in. little matt moves in. anne visits. yay kucinich! anne moves in. bill busy. mac mini murdered. macbook. coincidence? cake baking, cake baking, cake baking. sheba surgery. sheba all better. mmmmm. 2 gig memory. mmmmmmm. craft robo arghhhhh. craft robo submitting. snow. freddie 8 years old! new york city. bad, bad tour guide. tour guide lucky to be alive. yummy museum. yummy waldorf. yummy new york. go cavs! thank you, cavs! next year, cavs. i love you, lebron. and cavs. go indians! cupcakes! buttercream success! hillary lies. yay obama! mccain sucks. matt busy. no sleep. craft robo. adobe illustrator is my bitch. or will be. bill chokes drunk at concert. i hate blogging. emails piling up. scooter must be ridden. easter lamb cake! i love mother's day! no more cake platters! tickets to clapton! tickets to visit kazoofus and keri! more black keys. more cupcakes. no more cupcakes. ever. 12.7 megapixels camera! glass blower. spa in sf in august? tuscany next year for 35th anniversary?

and ...

jax and anne engaged!!!

p.s. copy and paste this link to view the few nyc pictures we took: http://www.flickr.com/photos/72303348@N00/sets/72157605164602129/

Cloning -- You Can Do It!

Scientists like to keep us in the dark. They have all those fancy formulas -- or "formulae," according to some scientists -- and try to confuse us with all kinds of scientific terms.

Scientists don't tell us about "light;" they talk about "photons," which is not just "light," but "corpuscles of light." And they don't talk about "germs;" they talk about "micrococcaceae." Yeah, right. It's a fucking germ. They are worse than fucking lawyers!

Then there are those specialized scientists who talk about "unhygienic algorithms" -- it has nothing to do with bathrooms, but about "dining philosophers." Yeah, right. Bite me!

Don't be fooled by all this who-shot-John stuff. Don't be perplexed by the obfuscatory rhetoric of scientists.

For instance, you think you need to know something to ... say, do some cloning? That's a bag o' crap they're trying to hand you, folks. It's actually quite simple.

You can buy a cloning kit for $144 in American money. "Fast, one hour, room temperature cloning reactions with >99% efficiency deliver the clone you need." That's a written guarantee in my book. And like I say, it's only 144 bucks for "the clone you need."

That's cheaper than buying a new pure-bred dog. Simply clone your dog for $144.

Or ... clone yourself. For that price, you can't go wrong.

[Your] [You're] [Ur] Kidding

I tutor an 11th grade student. She brought a take-home test for her health class or whatever it is called nowadays to the session. It was a writing assignment. She was required to advise, coincidentally, "Bill" about nutrition and the manner in which to go about reducing his weight from 280 pounds to 240.

Her teacher wrote the instructions and the description of the problem, along with a list of terms that he required her to incorporate into the story and to defining the terms so that "Bill" would understand.

In the problem, her teacher wrote, "Your to explain to Bill, who weighs 280 pounds and wants to get down to 240, about nutrition ...."

My health teacher in 10th grade was a retired professional football player. He played when professional football players had to supplement their incomes with other jobs. Also, he was about 5-11 and weighed about 170. He played defensive line. In an NFL championship game, he blocked a pass by the opposing quarterback, who was throwing from his own end zone, which was, in those days, a two-point safety. The Cleveland Rams won the championship by a score of 15 to 14, the safety being the difference. He was a stickler about grammar.

How did this teacher get out of college without knowing the difference between "your" and "you're?" I don't care if he is teaching a health class. He has a teaching certificate and a college degree.

English is a second language for my student. It's hard enough for her without some state-certified teacher dragging her down, but maybe that's all part of the dumbing down of America.

Captivating Television

I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. -- Newton Minow, excerpt from speech delivered May 9, 1961, National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, DC.

Apparently, news having traveled slowly to Yugoslavia, in 1966, Hedviga Golik, in her small flat in Zagreb, decided to take Mr. Minow up on his invitation, prepared herself some tea, and sat down in front of her television set.

Forty-two years later, she was found, eyes still glued to that black-and-white set -- vast wasteland, my ass.

McCain & Golf

John McCain is against the supplemental war funding bill working its way through Congress.

"That's a good thing," you say. "I guess McCain is listening to the American people about the war," you say.

Well, no, not really. What irks McCain is the part of the bill that doubles current funding for the G.I. Bill and ends the requirement that new enlistees ante up $1200 to buy into the benefit plan. Currently, if new recruits don't understand that they have to pay $1200 upon reporting to basic training to get the benefits after they have survived serving their country, then they are foreclosed from getting the college tuition assistance they thought they were promised when they enlisted.

So, McCain is against the New G. I. Bill, which is supported by Democrats and Republicans. Bush is against it, too, and will veto the bill for the same reason if it passes, giving the G.I.'s another kick in the teeth for the sacrifice they have made fighting his illegal war.

Of course, this is from the same simpleton who told the Pope "awesome speech;" and, sadly, from the same imbecile who says he gave up golf to show his "solidarity" for those fighting his illegal war. Yes, he gave up golf. And lied about it.

Does Bush know that over 4,066 Americans have given up their lives and over 29,000 have lost blood, flesh, and limbs and another 300,000 will suffer from depression, post traumatic stress disorder, and other long-term psychological disorders, all of which have disrupted and shattered the lives of families, relatives, and friends of these G.I.'s?

Bush gave up golf.

And now there's McCain.
More of the Same.

Right on Target

I was not comfortable this afternoon after walking into TARGET and seeing Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Kill Bill, Vol. 2 prominently displayed at the check-out area.

I thought that these threats were over. I have stopped looking for snipers on the rooftops. Now, they are back -- and in TARGET. And there's a red bull's-eye on the display.

Threat Level - RED.

Fat Transplants

I was going to write a post about how Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the tradition of great Southern politicians, such as Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and David Duke, who have gone before her, has appealed to ignorant racists everywhere by pointing out that Barack Obama is a man of color, for whom no decent White would ever vote -- or should ever vote.

And I was going to ask whether anyone else is offended by her statements, and was going to point out that I am not that naive to think that bigotry has disappeared in these 21st-Century United States and that many voters will never, ever vote for a Black candidate, but those people already know that Obama is a Black guy, and long before Hillary pointed it out to them. And I was going to write that I'm white and that if Clinton wins the nomination, I won't vote for her for president because, whether or not she wants to own it, she's a racist; and she voted for the war in Iraq; and she has lied about her past; and she has misrepresented herself as the voice of the middle class when, as a lawyer, she catered to the rich, and represented corporations, not the little guy, not the middle class; and she never had the guts to cut loose a guy who cuckolded her countless times, but is now tapping into her role as First Lady, her "experience" in the White House, with her *ahem* husband by her side: and she has maligned Obama because of what the pastor of his church has said, when she has been directly involved in some rather shady deals with her brother and those he represented in obtaining pardons from then-President William Clinton.

But I decided that I wouldn't get into all that -- I'm just plain sick and tired of all the crap.

What really struck me as interesting, though, is that soon, instead of undergoing liposuction, people will be getting fat transplants, transplants of subcutaneous fat, that is, fat under the skin, which apparently is now being viewed as "good fat." "Bad fat" is fat deep in the body, visceral fat, which is wrapped around our internal organs. Plumpified mice, which had "good fat" transplanted in their hips and thighs had better control of blood sugar and cholesterol than mice who had the fat transplanted around organs.

There's a joke in there somewhere. I can feel it bouncing around the neurons in my brain, but it just is not making it out.

Local News

We've heard and seen enough about the primary elections. Obviously, the media think that we've heard and seen too much about dead and maimed bodies in Iraq. Time for a break in the action --

It's nice to see that some people have respect for the law. A little west of here, Victoria Wilson actually sold 45 of the 90 cats living in her house to comply with the law limiting the number of cats per household to four. Four.

In southern Ohio, one early morning, Timothy Caudill broke into a bar. Believing that Tim had a substance abuse problem, instead of sending him to prison, the judge sentenced Tim to a locked-down drug and alcohol rehab center. Tim completed the program there and is on probation. While in rehab, Tim bought a Lil Debbie oatmeal cream pie -- mmmmm, goo-o-o-o-od -- from a vending machine; and, being the decent fellow that he is, Tim shared it with a one of the other recovering addicts. Well, his "friend" wasn't allowed to eat the snacks. The prosecutor got wind of Tim's seriously aberrant behavior and wanted the judge to throw Tim in prison for 9 months ("Why you in here, man?" -- "Ummm, I gave a piece of my *ahem* Lil Debbie oatmeal cream pie to my roommate ..." -- "Bend over.") The judge gave him 30 days and ordered him to pay $1,500.

In Cleveland, Jeremy Waters' (that's an alias, by the way) wife had been been bugging him for over a year to paint the house. Being a good husband, and with Mother's Day upon us, he started the big job of scraping the house and painting it. He bought a Wagner heat gun to make the scraping job easier and a Wagner power painter to save time on painting. Well, it turns out that Jeremy can return the Wagner power painter. He doesn't have to paint the house -- the contractors will do that -- since the fire he started with the heat gun did a lot of damage to the house.

Happy Mother's Day!

Tour of New York City

Dave was our tour guide. We were on a bus with 45 other people set to ride around Manhattan for 8 1/2 hours to see the sights.

There were two guys from India, a couple from Chicago, a group of women from Scranton, PA, a family from Paris, a young couple from Brooklyn on their first -- and probably last -- date, a few women from Erie, PA, some people from someplace in Georgia, but I couldn't figure out if they were from the country or the state, and then there were the "Koreans," Dave called them. They were from somewhere in New Jersey, born and raised in the U.S., but Dave grilled them for nearly 20 minutes -- I'm sure we missed a lot of the sights -- about Korea. The driver of the tour bus was named Pancho -- or that's what Dave kept calling him. Pancho said, just before we left the tour bus, that "If I had a gun, I'd shoot him" about Dave.

Now, Dave does not play the harmonica very well -- or as well as he thinks he does. He didn't play any of the three harmonicas he brought with him very well. And I'm sure that in real life, that is, away from his tour guide job, he is at least as obnoxious as he was on the tour, if not more so. He is a well-traveled man, I will concede, because we heard something about the 42 countries he has visited around the world -- and not much about Manhattan.

So, if he was not blowing into one of his three harmonicas or showing us his photos of him riding camels with Bedouins several times, apparently so we would not forget easily, or talking about Istanbul, which was called Constantinople, you know, and Paris, in French, of course, or Cincinnati, which he thought would enamor the two Clevelanders to him, or any of the other ports of call he mentioned, he did point out the ice-skating pond at Rockefeller Center that wasn't there because it was springtime and passed around a rock he claimed was right from Central Park.

He could have been more timely in pointing out the various sights of Manhattan. He paused the mutant Harmonikat routine long enough to tell us that if we would have looked down that street we just passed, we would have seen the Chrysler Building; although, he did tell the driver to stop so that he could point out an apartment building in which he once lived in Greenwich Village. He was on the fifth floor and used the fire escape to get in and out. He took us for a walk down Wall Street and near Trinity Cathedral; so, I saw where Alexander Hamilton is buried and the nondescript New York Stock Exchange building.

Dave shined at the waterfront. He was in his element -- the waterfront. He was a seaman, inspired to sign on after he read Moby Dick. He pointed out something about Herman Melville, but I didn't catch it because he forgot to turn on his microphone. The quiz -- we wiped up on the quiz -- first line of Moby Dick, name of the first mate, who made the coffin -- no prizes, though. We boarded a boat for a tour of New York Harbor and the East River, checking out Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge, among other things. There's a pizza place near the Brooklyn side of the bridge, which Dave said was excellent; and I wish we would have stopped there for lunch instead of where we were headed after we got off the boat.

I don't recall the name of the place that served lunch; but it wasn't the bad lunch that accelerated the downward spiral, it was our guide, Dave. We're in fucking New York -- there should be some good food, not a dry burger on a bun with Ore-Ida fries badly made -- but then there as Dave. I get this second-hand because I went to get Stacey's what-Dave-called-quesadillas. Dave announced that the people who ordered the quesadillas should get up to get them: so, I went up. Dave apparently wasn't happy with that arrangement because he saw Stace sitting there. She heard him say, "Momma?" And you have to understand here that Dave must have been approaching 80 years on the planet, give or take a couple. "Momma?" he said again, and Stace didn't pay him any heed because why should she.

"Momma?" the voice got closer, until she looked up and Dave, his gray hair flying away from his head in all directions, stood over her, "MOMMA?" I heard her say, "WHAT?!!!" from the food table across the restaurant. The man should consider himself very lucky that she didn't reach up and slam his head on the table or run him through with her Leki Wanderfreund. That was it, as far as she was concerned. The fucking tour was over. Dave was a fucking lunatic, apparently thinking that his contemporaries are the only people who have a monopoly on assistive devices to keep their balance while they walk. Fucker. Then he announced, "Any more silverhairs want to go up first, go on!" Who the hell was he talking about, the couple from Chicago? I don't know.

All I know, lunch was not pleasant. The food sucked. And my lovely wife wanted to kill Dave.

We headed uptown. Dave did show us a couple things. Grand Central Terminal. WE should have told Pancho to let us off at the Waldorf, but we didn't. Mistake. This was the ride by Rockefeller Center and Carnegie Hall and Central Park. He wanted Pancho to stop to see if Yoko Ono came out of The Dakota, but Pancho ignored him. Dave recounted the Lennon killing to us.

We headed into Harlem. We drove up and down some streets; Dave described the rowhouses. Then we headed over to The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Stace stayed on the bus. I wandered around myself inside the church, which was being restored, away from Dave. Stace found out that Pancho wanted to shoot Dave and that the first date wasn't going well. I came out and wanted to head over to the Hungarian bake shop across the street, but returned to the bus. Speaking of the bus, I thought that if we were going to be looking up at tall buildings, the bus would have a glass roof or no roof or be one of the double-deckers we saw, but no -- it was a fucking bus to go on a cross-country trip.

I got back to the bus -- I don't know where we were going next and didn't care at that point. We decided to leave Pancho to shoot Dave in front of two fewer witnesses. We grabbed a cab and headed back to the Waldorf, getting there before Starbucks closed, and sat down to relax, watch new arrivals at the hotel, and enjoy one of the last performances of the singer/piano player in the lobby until we left for LaGuardia, in time for further adventures.

War or Peace

And war goes on. Not the war in Iraq. War. We have one candidate, who will have our troops in Iraq for 1000 years. He's the one who is confused about whether he was talking about the current war in Iraq or the Gulf War -- yeah, I can't believe that almost 50% of the people polled want him in the White House (But it's hard to believe that only 71% of people recently polled think the job Bush is doing is not satisfactory; so, I have little hope for the country and am looking to buy an island somewhere.).

We have another candidate who would obliterate Iran -- presumably, with much of the American stockpile of nuclear bombs, because that's my connotation of "obliterate," being of the generation that grew up hurrying, when the alarm sounded, to the William Foster School janitor's office, which was designated the "Fallout Shelter - Cap. 60" by the yellow and black signs, or crouching under our desks, if we were not lucky enough to be the designated "60" on that day.

Enough of that political stuff. We all, save one, know that the economy is in the dumper; we all know that the U.S.A. has lost its luster among the nations in the world; we all know that things aren't going the way we had hoped they would go for us and our children; we all know the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel has canceled the weekends engagement of the songstress who plays Cole Porter's piano at the cocktail terrace. The list goes on and on, but I have digressed.

WAR. One in five of those who return alive from Iraq, about 350,000, will suffer from depression and post traumatic stress disorder, of which 70% will not seek any treatment whatsoever, which means there will be a lot more casualties of war from suicide, murder, drug addiction, homelessness -- the list goes on and on.

That's a part of the Bush legacy. That's a result of Congress' inaction. That's the result of American ethnocentrism.

Only in Texas

George W. Bush has managed to run up a huge debt. It makes me wonder if he's done it because of things he learned hanging out with people in and around Crawford.

Charles Fuller tried to cash a $360,000,000,000 (yes, that's 360 billion) check at a Fort Worth bank.

Here's the puzzling thing. If the check would have been made out to him, would the bank teller have cashed it? It was a problem, it seems, only because the "personal check was not made out to Mr. Fuller."

WTF?

Just got an e-mail from Amazon.

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

Men's Bottoms $39.99 and Under Direct from Amazon.com

What? Who wrote this? Those are pictures of pants.

I never heard a guy call those BOTTOMS. I never heard anyone call those things bottoms. Those things are PANTS.

Same As It Ever Was (Or Worse)

John McCain made a visit to the Cleveland Clinic yesterday. From my perch up on the ninth floor, I could see snipers on the roofs of a couple buildings, the bomb squad trucks below on the street near the hotel, police and other security personnel scurrying around and between buildings, and protesters on the sidewalk in front of the Inter-Continental Hotel.

Even though the media no longer seem to be interested in reporting the mounting death toll, which increased in April, the highest monthly death toll since September of last year, the war keeps going and going and going.

If McCain is elected in the fall, we know that we will, for at least four more years, get a bigger and bigger bill and, more importantly, more of this, that is, the dead, from the month of April:

* Staff Sgt. Travis L. Griffin * Capt. Ulises Burgos-Cruz * Spc. Matthew T. Morris * Not named pending notification of next-of-kin * Staff Sgt. Emanuel Pickett * Pfc. Shane D. Penley * Maj. Stuart A. Wolfer * Not named pending notification of next-of-kin * Spc. Jason C. Kazarick * Sgt. Michael T. Lilly * Sgt. Timothy M. Smith * Sgt. Richard A. Vaughn * Maj. Mark E. Rosenberg * Staff Sgt. Jeffery L. Hartley * Spc. Jeremiah C. Hughes * Not named pending notification of next-of-kin * Sgt. Shaun P. Tousha * Spc. Jacob J. Fairbanks * Tech. Sgt Anthony L. Capra * Sgt. Jesse A. Ault * Sgt. Merlin German * Spc. William E. Allmon * Sgt. Joseph A. Richard III * Cpl. Richard J. Nelson * Lance Cpl. Dean D. Opicka * Spc. Arturo Huerta-Cruz * Staff Sgt. Jason L. Brown * Spc. Lance O. Eakes * Spc. Benjamin K. Brosh * Petty Officer 1st Class Cherie L. Morton * Spc. Steven J. Christofferson * Sgt. Adam J. Kohlhaas * 1st Lt. Matthew R. Vandergrift * Airman Apprentice Adrian M. Campos * Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter * Cpl. Jonathan T. Yale * Pvt. Ronald R. Harrison * Staff Sgt. Ronald C. Blystone * Pfc. John T. Bishop * 1st Lt. Timothy W. Cunningham * Staff Sgt. Shaun J. Whitehead * Pfc. William T. Dix * Spc. David P. McCormick * Pfc. Adam L. Marion * Sgt. Marcus C. Mathes * Sgt. Mark A. Stone * Staff Sgt. Bryan E. Bolander * Staff Sgt. Clay A. Craig * Not named pending notification of next-of-kin * Not named pending notification of next-of-kin * Cpt. Andrew. R. Pearson * Spc. Ronald J. Tucker