Today is payback for my having worked too damn long on Monday, so I get to end the week a little bit earlier than usual. This, of course, means the weather will suck. Or should I say, continue to suck. As has been the case in every year I can remember (which is pretty much just this year, ‘cuz I can’t remember shit), huge spring snowmelt and rain that led to fears of flooding have turned to a monthlong drought leading to fears, of um brown grass or something, which has now turned to heavy rain leading to fears of flooding. Or something. Oh well, better the weather should suck while I’m at home, I guess. Well, no. Actually better the weather be better whether I’m home or not.
It’s been a tough week, and one I’m glad to see (almost) over. For one thing, the Dunkin’ Donuts at the halfway point on the way to work closed Monday for renovations. This means that my commute has stunk to high heaven with tweaking County Sheriffs who haven’t been able to get their sugar and caffeine fix.
Then I went to the “club” store yesterday at lunchtime, and had to wait forever for the two fat old ladies and their fat kid to get the hell away from the organic spinach. Apparently they were intent on discerning some noticeable difference from one package to another (or maybe they’d just never seen spinach before; they didn’t look like the leafy green vegetable type), and had to pick up and handle every frickin’ one of them (no difference – trust me) for an hour while the fat kid practiced ballet kicks or something in the aisle next to them (from her frenetic kicking, it appeared that her DD was open this week, but I’ll give her credit, she got that old ham shank of hers up pretty high; the last time I had my leg in the air that high was probably back in college when I was hammered in an icy bar parking lot, and my feet flew out from under me. But I didn’t have a shopping cart to hold on to, so I win).
I think all the senior living facilities must have coordinated their field trips yesterday, because the aisles were packed tight with fat lumbering old people (and skeletal old people) wearing stretch pants. Some leaned on shopping carts, and some were too big too lumber under their own power (chicken and egg), so they cruised around in those stupid little scooters, all the while pondering whether a pallet of single-ply toilet paper with 500 sheets per roll is a better deal than a pallet of 2-ply toilet paper at 300 sheets per roll.
Oh, it’s not just the old people, of course. The young people suck, too. I mean, WTF? There are a great many mysteries in the universe, but the difference between a can of name-brand peas and a can of store-brand peas is not one of them.
Pick one, and move the fuck along.
Then I had a dream last night, where I was walking home (except it was an apartment in a city, like NY or something), and there was a guy wearing a raincoat with the hood pulled up, all done up in the colors of the Green Bay Packers (kind of a Green Bay rain suit; no cheese head though). He was clearly Stephen King, so I said hello to him, and he pulled his hood down and said “oh, you recognize me?” (I mean, duh – it was Stephen King), and he said he was there with a film crew making a movie in the neighborhood, and, to make a long story short, we got along pretty well so he came up to my place, which overlooked where he was filming, and for some reason I had a shitload of friends (which should have been a tip-off that it was a dream. I mean, Stephen King in a Green Bay rain suit, maybe….), so it was party-central and we were whooping it up, and he said they needed extras, so everybody got to be in the movie. Except for me.
He didn’t come right out and say it, but it was pretty clear that I couldn’t be in the movie because I’m too ugly (and when Stephen King thinks you’re too ugly to be an extra in a movie, that’s pretty bad, I must say), so I was pretty bummed (not so much about being in the movie, which was no big deal, but because I’d been kinda kidding myself that I wasn’t all that bad – I mean, not Brad Pitt, but I didn’t think I was exactly Joseph Merrick, either). ๐ฅ
Oh well.
Meanwhile, in Albany, State Senators are still in their gay marriage holding position. Maybe they’ll vote today. Maybe not. I’m guessing not.
Farther north in our great State, the President traveled to Watertown to address the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum (the most heavily deployed division over the past decade or so in Afghanistan and Iraq). I didn’t really catch what he said, but I’m guessing it was that they’re great, America’s great, and, um, some other flag-related type stuff.
Oh well, time to do that thing I do to stave off the bill collectors. At least ’til Governor Snotball tells me I can’t do it any more.
Matt Taibbi wrote a story about the Tea Party which prominently features old people in motorized scooters gotten through Medicare and concludes:
They’re full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending รขโฌโ only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry’s medals and Barack Obama’s Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending รขโฌโ with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-on-the-tea-party-20100928
As for the weather in New York: no one likes it. But it does make for some creative complaining. We do get a handful of nice days in the spring and fall and the city, looks very nice after the first snowfall (at least for a couple of hours) but what else can you say that’s good?
A heretical idea has entered the national discourse: Maybe some other nations handle their economies better than we do. Some nations, after all, are growing like gangbusters. Some nations have retained manufacturing — even high-wage manufacturing — in the face of low-wage competition. And in some nations, ordinary people actually share in the proceeds from globalization that in this nation flow only to the rich.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/06/germanys_economic_example_haro.html
I fully expect that he will pop back unexpectedly with another query or two.
Peter Falk dies at 83; actor found acclaim as ‘Columbo’
๐ :gate:
Another SU alum gone.
Republicans are going to allow a vote on the same sex marriage bill in the NY State Senate. It’s been sent to the floor as of right about now.
NY State Senate live stream (assuming they actually do something).
Jeezus, no wonder these people never get anything done on time. While we wait, there’s always this story….
OK, well, at this rate, somebody’s gonna have to tell me how this ends, ‘cuz it’s almost bedtime.
Gail Collins once wrote that NYS legislators were like a crazy uncle, whom you locked in the attic when company came.
I don;t remember if she mentioned that they were also boring and stupid.
๐ :gate: Peter Faulk
Not mentioned in the NBC obit were his (IMHO) greatest films-
“Wings of Desire” directed by Vim Venders,
which I’ve never tired of watching and anything he did with John Cassavettes.
“Woman under the Influence” rightly praised Gena Rowlands great performance but Faulk was scary as an insane husband.
YES! The Cassavetes alliance was a great one. Ben Gazzarra as well. We just got an over the air station that is showing some Columbo and Run for Your Life shows. I’ll bet those guys (and Gena) were a fun bunch.
and that damn Gay marriage in NYS may just be happening.
Casssavetes is still underappreciated but the Denver Film Festival hands out a Cassavetes award for worthy Indie’s.
He was like a great jazz band leader and surrounded himself with outstanding talent like Rowlands, Faulk and Gazzarra- always willing to take a chance.
Musta been the weather
:yippee: :banana: :blues: :bee: :pup: :omg: :rofl2:
Gay marriage has passed in NYS. One of the senators who changed his vote to yes, is Carl Kruger a Democrat from Brooklyn, who has been indicted on federal corruption charges and who spends much time, day and night, at the house of a woman who has a grown son in whom Senator Kruger is suspected of interest.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/kruger_headed_to_turn_self_in_uGL5FlcUrtyC40CFJPrhgM
:yippee: for New York โ
The dick cavett show – cassavetes, falk, and… by Ali_La_Pointe
๐ :gate: