Well, once again (or, still) I am without Internet access at home. After I contacted them yesterday morning, they told me there was a problem, but had no resolution estimate. Well, as long as they knew about it, I figured that’s cool. When it was still out after work yesterday, I called and they had no idea what was going on. WTF? So, they’re sending somebody out today “between noon and 5:00.” And of course I have to figure out how to get home to deal with it. This could be the last straw to make me jump over to FiOS (even if it means I’ll need to start paying for it myself again). No Internet, and I can’t drink beer due to the high levels of Ibuprofen I’m taking. This sucks. On the bright side, it actually makes me glad to get to work. Aint that a revoltin’ development.

I managed to make it out to the Ortho guy yesterday, who told me I most likely have impingement from the bone spur on the acromion (aka, the front edge of the shoulder blade, which is over and in front of the head of the humerus, and is not very funny). So, when I move my arm, the acromion rubs (or “impinges”) on, the surface of the rotator cuff. It’s also possible there’s a tear in the rotator cuff, but that would require an MRI to see. So, I don’t really think this is a job for Tiger Balm. Instead, I got a cortisone shot in the shoulder, and made sure to get a script for more drugs. Lortabs and coffee – the breakfast of champions. If it isn’t better in a couple of weeks, I’ll have to get an MRI and see what to do from there. Things aren’t totally pain free yet, but I have much more range of motion, am no longer in constant agony, and can even get some sleep. So that’s good. But, to add insult to injury, our Internet connection went down yesterday evening, and still isn’t back up. So here I am at work, without time to talk about my new hero the Jet Blue flight attendant, or about how horrible it is that Michelle Obama took a vacation. Maybe tomorrow.

Thanks to Vernon for letting us know who yesterday’s boobleheads were. I’d hoped to be back home in time, but things didn’t quite work out as planned. Oh well, nothing ever does. No work for me today, so I think I’ll go back to bed. Turns out, having Lortabs for breakfast makes you kinda sleepy.

Hope you’re feeling better. This is a defiantly why bother booblehead day.

State of the Union With Candy Crowley Immigration, healthcare, the economy: Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D-Mich.), Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.); Gulf oil disaster: Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen (ret.). 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. CNN

CBS News Sunday Morning Arizona’s controversial immigration law; polo player Ignacio Figueras; Barbra Streisand; theater camp for kids. (N) 7 a.m. KCBS

Fareed Zakaria GPS The economy, politics: former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. 7 and 10 a.m. CNN

The Chris Matthews Show Bush tax cuts; gay marriage; Obama’s 2012 running mate. (N) 7:30 a.m. KNBC

Meet the Press Gulf oil disaster: White House advisor Carol Browner; 2010 congressional elections: Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). (N) 8 a.m. KNBC, 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. MSNBC

This Week With Christiane Amanpour Iraq troop drawdown: U.S. Army Gen. Ray Odierno; soldier suicide epidemic: U.S. Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli. (N) 8 a.m. KABC

FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace Gay marriage ruling: Plaintiff’s attorney Ted Olson;. 2012 presidential race: Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.). 8 a.m. KTTV

Reliable Sources Coverage of the Prop 8 decision. 8 a.m. CNN

Face the Nation Gulf oil disaster: Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen (ret.); same-sex marriage debate: Tony Perkins, Family Research Council. (N) 8:30 a.m. KCBS

60 Minutes The high cost of intensive care; Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox Church. (N) 7 p.m. KCBS

Feel free to kill at will,

Definitely down to one arm now. Not much sleep, but at least i’m catching up on my recorded teevee shows.

My shoulder has gotten really bad (down into my elbow now), so I can’t really type much (which should make work really pleasant today). Too bad, too, ‘cuz I could talk about the Jets training camp (and who wouldn’t want to hear about that) and how Joe Namath (who is responsible for the mostly miserable 45 or so years I’ve spent as a Jets fan, and who is still a hero to me – OK, not hero, really, but I thought it was pretty goddamn funny – for getting hammered and hitting on Suzy Kolber on national teevee) was here (well, not here, here, but in Cortland, which is close enough to here to call here) talking about bringing a Super Bowl Championship back to NYC (well, to NJ really, but close enough) after last year’s AFC Championship game appearance (never mind they kinda backed into the playoffs – thanks to losing 6 out of 7 games in one stretch – courtesy of the Colts, which is rather ironic given that whole Super Bowl III thing).

Speaking of NYC, I could also have talked about how Ed Koch will be in town today to promote his Albany reform group “New York Uprising,” which I find kinda odd, ‘cuz I didn’t think Ed Koch even knew there was anything north of Hoboken and west of the Hudson, let alone lower himself to actually come up here (except for during his ill-fated, Rupert Murdoch-backed – or at least encouraged – run for Governor back in the 80’s, when he talked about Upstate residents “wasting time in a pickup truck when you have to drive 20 miles to buy a gingham dress or a Sears, Roebuck suit”).

Sorry, Ed, but I’ve got a Hyundai, it’s less than a mile to the closest Sears (I can even walk there, but I gotta be careful crossin’ the Boulevard, what with all them dang old pickup trucks whizzin’ by ever’ whichaway), and anyhow, I buy my suits from JC Penney and Granny buys her gingham dresses off that Interwhatsit thing all the kids are talking about. But good luck with that whole reform thing, ‘cuz I really respect your f*cking opinion, old man.

If it wasn’t such misery to type, I might even have mentioned Elana Kagan being confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice (and how she kinda looks like she could be Rachel Maddow’s “Aunt Laney” or something; can’t you just picture the two of them together smoking cigars and playing poker or out in a boat fishing?).

Or I might tell you that Granny dropped something or other on her foot, so between her foot and my shoulder (talk about a precarious position), last night the two of us were gruntin’ & groanin’ (in agony, not ecstasy – get your minds outta the gutter), cursing (lots-o-cursing) and hobbling around like a couple of ancient cripples, putting ice packs on our various afflicted parts (a little bit of ecstasy there) and lamenting about how it sucks to get old (if I ever start talking about how my BM was this morning, somebody just shoot me).

I would probably also mention that today is the 65th anniversary of the first time nuclear weapons were used in war, as Pilot Paul Tibbetts (played by Sidney Poitier in “In the Heat of the Night” and its sequel, “They Call Me Mister Tibbetts!”) and the Enola Gay (named after his mommy; what a good son) dropped “Little Boy” over Hiroshima, ruining what by all accounts was a very pleasant morning.

But my shoulder’s killing me, so this is about as much as I can manage. And, speaking of ruining a perfectly pleasant morning (other than the shoulder agony, of course), I reckon it’s about time to head off to work.

On the bright side, at least it’s finally Friday.

As everybody’s heard by now, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that California’s Prop 8 ban of same-sex marriage violaes the equal protection and due process rights clauses of the US Constitution. Well, duh. How this could be considered “controversial” is beyond me. As long as people are allowed to marry other people, nobody gets to discriminate between different “types” of people. You may not like who other people choose to marry (such as, say, when 26 year old Anna Nicole Smith married 89 year old J. Howard Marshall), but it’s really none of your goddamn business. Of course, this isn’t over with, and the case will be appealed to the 9th Circuit, and eventually to the Supreme Court, where, if there was such a thing as “justice,” they would not only rule that banning gay marriage is unconstitutional, but that there is no need for laws “legalizing” it, because it’s already legal for two humans to get married. But I don’t really associate SCOTUS with “justice” these days.

Speaking of SCOTUS, Elana Kagan is expected to be the fourth woman confirmed to the Court today, over the objections of all but five or so Republicans and “Democrat” Ben “The Wig” Nelson, and without the backing of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.

“This rare decision comes because Kagan’s record as an attorney is too ambiguous for MALDEF to make an informed determination about her current knowledge and potential understanding of Latino legal concerns,” the group’s president, Thomas Saenz, wrote in a commentary written for the online news Website the Huffington Post.

I don’t expect Kagan to turn out to be a flaming liberal (hopefully she’ll at least be to the left of Fat Tony Scalia), and therefore will not be in the least disappointed if (or when) she votes to uphold California’s Prop 8.

If you’ve got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, be careful about where you surf.

The iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touches running iOS versions 3.1.2 or higher have a critical security flaw that allows malicious code to be loaded through Safari (the web browser) to give hacker’s full access to infected handheld devices.

The finding has been so serious that the German government issued an official warning in which it sited “two critical weak points for which no patch exists.”

On the bright side, you can use the same technique to “jailbreak” your phone.

Of course, this isn’t the first security issue with these devices, nor is it likely to be the last, and Apple already says they’ve got a fix for it, which they’ll release when they get around to it.

As long as there are smart people with a lot of time on their hands, they’ll always be able to figure out a way to screw with these things – whether they’re Linux or Windows-based PCs, Macs, or iWhatevers. It’s just nice to see that Apple now has enough market share with their stuff to make them attractive to hackers. They’ve been pretty well known in the past for not bothering to fix known (but unpublicized) vulnerabilities in the past, then vilifying those who make the exploits public out of frustration with Apple’s slow response. Maybe this will shake thing up out there in Cupertino.

And, finally, I’d like to say Happy Birthday to my wife. Happy Birthday, Granny!

Big news here in NY, as our legislative heroes in the State Senate finally passed a budget last night on a strict party-line vote of 32-28. Since the Assembly passed a budget back in June, I guess we finally have a budget, and only four months and a couple days late. Special kudos to our Senate Republicans, whose obstructionist abilities to march in lockstep in objection to everything rivals even those of their big brothers in the US Senate. Good for you, guys. You’re a credit to, um, whatever it is you are.

Sometimes you just gotta give credit where credit is due. Lou Dobbs had this to say about the fake attempt to repeal the 14th Amendment:

“The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14th Amendment, I part ways with the Senators on that because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important,” Dobbs said. “It lays the foundation for the entire Bill of Rights being applied to the states.”

So, good for you, Lou. You’re not quite as crazy, stupid, and dangerous as Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Jon Kyl, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and Lindsey Graham (to name a few).

Today is the President’s birthday. Or is it? As Rush Limbaugh said yesterday, we can’t be sure because we’ve never seen any proof of that (other than Obama’s birth certificate – but who you gonna believe, Oily Taintz or your lyin’ eyes?). Anyhow, on the odd chance that is really is is your natal day, Happy Birthday Barry. Put your feet up and have a smoke and a beer (and fer chrissakes, not a Bud Light, please – though I guess light beer would be quite emblematic of your presidency, which I am in no way disappointed in).

The aurora borealis was visible in the northern US last night thanks to a solar storm over the weekend. Or so I hear. I was in bed, and I think it was raining here. I guess I’ll just have to find a YouTube video of it or something.

I saw the Northern Lights here when I was a kid, though at the time I had no idea what the hell it was. I just remember seeing this weird light to the north, and all of us going, “what the hell is that?”

Oh well, off to bravely face another day. That’s the nice thing about doing something for a living you really don’t want to do anymore. It keeps you from fearing death.

Oh, and as for dinosaurs and oil, I think the relationship was made pretty clear by the TV show “Dinosaurs,” which featured Earl Sinclair, Ethyl Phillips, Roy Hess, and BP Richfield.

I must confess, I did not watch Christiane Amanpour’s debut on “This Weak” last Sunday, but had I know it would be so controversial, I might have tuned in. Wingnuts are outraged (which is so darn unlike them). St. John McCain even tweeted about his lament for the good old days with Jake “the mens room” Tapper. What was so vile, you ask? It seems that Christi had a new segment called “In Memoriam”, where she had the audacity to say

“We remember all of those who died in war this week, and the Pentagon released the names of 11 U.S. servicemembers killed in Afghanistan.”

I mean, how controversial can you get? Was she just trying to incur the wrath of all real Americans?

Now, just in case, like me, you don’t quite get what the frickin’ problem is here, I’ll let the inimitable (and sexy) WaPost, “style columnist” (style columnist?) Tom Shales explain.

“Perhaps in keeping with the newly globalized program, the commendable “In Memoriam” segment ended with a tribute not to American men and women who died in combat during the preceding week but rather, said Amanpour in her narration, in remembrance of “all of those who died in war” in that period. Did she mean to suggest that our mourning extend to members of the Taliban?”

Ah, yes, well. Shame on you Christi! But why stop with the Taliban, Tom?

“We remember all of those who died in war this week….”

That doesn’t just mean all those who died this week. No, it means that, this week, we remember all those who died in war (next week, we’ll remember what we did with our keys). And that means Nazis and North Koreans and Viet Kong and Confederates (oh, sorry, I didn’t touch a nerve there, did I?) and even Iraqis and Iranians (not to mention the Romans – who, contrary to popular opinion, are the ones who actually killed Jesus).

Yes, this week, we remember them all.

Shame, shame, shame on you Christi, you Taliban-Nazi-Christ-Killer sympathizer, you. Though I’m not sure that remembering actually equates to honoring. I mean, shouldn’t we remember the “bad people” too? If only so we can recognize them before it takes a global conflagration to deal with them?

Anyhow, this “amanpourism” not only shows that the media is a bunch of commie libruls (especially those foreign female types; what are they doing on regular American teevee anyway, with their snotty accents and big fancy words and high-class hairdos?), but that manufacturing isn’t dead in this country.

‘Cuz at least these wingnuts can still manage to manufacture faux outrage by the ton.

As you may have heard, Maxine Waters will apparently face a “trial” by the House Ethics Committee for requesting federal help for a bank that her husband owned stock in and had served on the board of directors (which she denies).

First Charlie Rangel, now Maxine (who’s next – Patty and Laverne)? Who knew that in the hallowed halls of Congress, only the black folks are ethically challenged?

Mitch McConnell has officially jumped on the “Repeal the 14th Amendment” bandwagon. That’s the one that says anybody born in the US is a US citizen.

In case you weren’t paying attention in Social Studies class (or “civics” for you old-timers), Amending the constitution is a rather involved process. There are actually four ways to go about it (though two have never been used, and only one method has ever been used more than once), but the usual way is for the proposed amendment to pass both houses of Congress by a 2/3 majority, and then ¾ of the states must ratify it. Of course, there’s not really a “usual” way, because it’s only been done 27 times since the Constitution was ratified by the State of Vermont in January 1791. And when you take into account that the first 10 amendments (aka, the “Bill of Rights”) all happened at once at the end of 1791, that only leaves 17 amendments in 218 or so years.

So, it’ll be a tough slog, but, since there’s really no other big issues to worry about right now, I think it’ll all be well worth the effort.

If you look through the Huffington Post, you’ve probably seen stuff by “Robert Lanza, MD” from time to time. He’s apparently a smart guy, but his posts, well, they never seem very impressive to me. He likes to ask questions and then use the questions (not the answers, mind you) as “evidence” to prove whatever his point is. His most recent – “Why You’re Alive and Can Never Die: The Larger Scientific Picture” – is no different.

Is it just a one-in-gazillion chance that you happen to be alive, now, on top of all time? Or is there a more rational scientific reason? Grade-school math tells us the probability of being on top of infinity is zero. If space and time are tools of the mind, then how can there be a time without consciousness?

OK, not being a “scientist and theoretician,” I guess I’m not smart enough to understand what “being on top of infinity” is supposed to mean (or what it has to do with the three questions he’s asking in that paragraph), but if it means there isn’t a number greater than infinity, then I reckon I did, indeed, learn that in grade school (of course, infinity isn’t really a number – it’s more of a theory that can never be proven). But Lanza’s first poser, which I suppose is meant to imply that there’s such a tiny chance of you happening to be here as the person you are at exactly this time and place that, golly, it just can’t be an accident, reminds me of the “intelligent design” people.

Gee, in order for you to be you, everything had to happen exactly the way it did, or you wouldn’t be here. So it had to happen for a reason. I guess it doesn’t occur to these people that it works the other way around. Thing didn’t happen the way they did in order for you (or the universe) to exist the way you (and it) do. You exist they way you do because things happened the way they did. If things had happened differently, then everything would be different. But they didn’t so they’re not.

Now, if choose to believe that an unseen hand (either God’s or Adam Smith’s) guided everything to happen a certain way, well, OK. Personally, if there is some sort of creator, I suspect they were just f*cking around to see what would happen. Mix this, that, and that other shit up, heat it for a while, and see what grows on it. I kinda doubt there was some sort of master plan designed to create me.

And if it all was a bug plan, then I’m pissed my plan didn’t include having enough money to keep me from having to go to work today.