I really don’t wanna think about the animals in Ohio, so I won’t. I also don’t want to think about what sort of craven individuals would kidnap the disabled and chain them to a boiler, as happened in Philadelphia (no wonder a dog-killer like Michael Vick doesn’t bother them in the City of Brotherly Love). Though I suspect there will no be a rash of these things being discovered over the coming weeks – unless some blonde chick comes up missing in Aruba, which will push all other stories out of the media consciousness. Plus, I’m trying not to think about why East Aurora, NY is some 100 miles west of Aurora, NY. Mostly, I just want to think about getting through today, because I have tomorrow off.

I thought I had my annual health assessment today (which consists of having your blood pressure taken, telling them to take their flu shot and shove it, and telling them you have a doctor that you go to so that they won’t lecture you on their mainstream Western Medicine bullshit), but it turns out that’s actually next week. So today, I just have a stupid meeting instead (not as stupid as yesterday’s biweekly stupid meeting, though).

God, how these people love their meetings. To me – at best – meetings are like masturbation without the payoff. At their worst, meetings are what I imagine being temporarily buried alive must be like. Restricted movement, gradually diminishing oxygen, and fighting the rising panic while trying to not to think about the likelihood that you’re going to suffocate and die there.

I hate meetings, and I hate talking on the telephone. I mean, phones are like, what, 18th Century technology? Don’t call me – e-mail me. And for chrissakes, if you’re gonna call me, leave voicemail beyond, “call me back.” There’s a reason I didn’t answer the phone in the first place. Tell me what you want so I can find out the answer before I call you back. Unless you just want to hear me say, “uh, I dunno. I’ll have to look into it,” because that’s probably about all you’re gonna get.

Finally, somebody is brave enough to speak (or at least write) the truth: Hitler died in 1962 in Argentina.

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler claims the Fuhrer and his mistress Eva Braun were secretly flown out of Germany in April 1945 and taken to fascist-controlled Argentina.

It is alleged Hitler lived in the country for 17 years until his death in 1962.

The book also accuses US intelligence of being complicit in the scam in return for access to Nazi war technology.

“Stalin, Eisenhower and Hoover of the FBI…

As opposed to Hoover of the Vacuum Cleaner Institute?

…all knew there was no proof of him dying in the bunker,” Williams told Sky News.

I know what you’re wondering. “What about his dog? Did they get Blondi out, too?”

I think I smell another book opportunity.

The story isn’t that Herman Cain is the frontrunner in the Republican reality show, but how extraordinarily terrible Rick Perry is. I mean, here’s a guy who seemed tailor-made for putting the “white” back into the White House. Texan? Check. Executioner in Chief? Check. White? Whiter than Wonder Bread or a Pepsodent smile. Christian? Shit – he’s so damn Christ-like, he’s even being persecuted (I think he’s even got a touch of the stigmata). But then a funny thing happened. He opened his yap. Hard to figure you could out-stupid and out-cray the likes of Michele Bachmann, but damned if Ricky didn’t manage it. Now he’s fallen so low, he’s polling lower than Rick Santorum in Florida – a mere 2.9%, which, even using Texas math, is pretty piss poor.

Speaking of Herman, we know Cain is Able, but is Cain also Liable? Liable to be charged with some campaign finance shenanigans, that is. Seems it isn’t technically illegal in and of itself, but the Cain Campaign has paid the for-profit “Herman Cain T.H.E. New Voice” (which is a pretty crappy name for a company, if you ask me) $100,000. Apparently his company promotes his books and “philosophy.” No word on how much the Cain Campaign has spent on Godfather’s Pizza.

West Side Story (the movie) was released 50 years ago today. In case you don’t know, it tells the tale of two of NYC’s gayest gangs – a conflict between the Jets (white people in pale makeup), and the Sharks (mostly white people in dark makeup) dancing their way through the streets, snapping their fingers in a threatening manner, and saying things like “daddy-o” as NYC “toughs” were wont to do back then.

This movie is when I fell in love with Puerto Rican women, developing a life-long crush on well-known hispanic chick Natalie “Maria” Wood. Though I always thought the movie – and musicals in general – was pretty stupid.

Big birthday day today, as Chuck Berry hits 85, Keith Jackson goes rumblin’, stumblin’, bubmblin’ to his 83rd, and everybody’s favorite castaway – Dawn Wells – is 73. And still cute as a button.

Not a lot of time this morning, as it’s an early day, and I’ve squandered my morning looking at guitars I can’t actually play. I have an acoustic I can’t play, and am thinking I ought to get an electric I can’t play (because it would be easier for me to not play, plus I could not play it with headphones on). So, anyhow, I pretty much have to get going if I’m gonna save up to buy a backhoe to start digging a moat between the US and Canada. Herman Cain might be a quitter, but I’m not.

I’ve never been the parent of an infant, but, at the risk of seeming smug (which, on a side note, is the extremely apt acronym for the Syracuse Mac Users’ Group, surpassed only by the Onondaga County Water Authority for best local acronym), I’m fairly certain I possess enough latent parenting skills (and, oh, I dunno, common fucking sense) to know better than to give a baby a bottle full of prescription pain killers as a rattle. Actually – and, again, I haven’t read any of the books or anything, so this may be going out on a limb a bit – I think that probably goes for non-prescription drugs, too. If nothing else, I’m pretty certain that if there was an infant in the house, I’d need those drugs. This, as Sue would point out, is what happens when you teach to the test (as opposed to trying to give people the skills required to “think”). You can’t possibly put everything on the test, and clearly the one about giving drugs to babies wasn’t in the rotation. Granted, it does appear to be a pretty good way to get them down for a nap, but there seems to be an issue with the whole getting them back up again thing. Whatever happened to soaking their binky in brandy?

Speaking of somebody who’s apparently been soaking his binky in brandy, not only does Herman “Abel” Cain (BTW, set your DVRs, as he’ll be on Press the Meat this morning) want to dig a moat between Mexico and the US and fill it with alligators (thanks to Gail Collins via Sue for the tip), but he also wants to build an lethal electrified fence along the border as well.

No details on whether it would be moat-fence, or fence-moat, but it seems pretty clear that – care and feeding of the alligators aside, these are not financially feasible proposals.

I mean, Herm said he wanted a “really big” moat, which kind of goes without saying – I mean, if it’s gonna cover the entire US/Mexico border, by definition it’s gotta be pretty big. He didn’t say if he meant “big” as in wide, or as in deep, but, presumably it needs to be pretty wide (or you could just throw a 2×4 across and walk over).

Now, unlike Herman Cain (who is a very successful CEO and serious Presidential candidate), I haven’t crunched all the numbers, and wouldn’t be certain how to go about estimating construction costs. The Erie Canal might be a good start. It’s something like 360 miles long (or it was when they finished it), but it’s only 40 feet across and 4 feet deep. That might be sufficient for mule-drawn flat barges, but it doesn’t seem Herman Cain “big” to me (and certainly not big enough to keep out those pesky Mexicans, unless you keep it pretty densely stocked with alligators, which they’d probably just catch and eat anyway – I mean, if this idiot can catch ‘gators, I’m thinking it wouldn’t be much of a challenge for Mexicans).

So let’s think “big” – like, Panama Canal big. Now, the Panama Canal cost $375,000,000 to build (BTW, if you search for information on the Panama Canal, be prepared to look at some truly ugly websites). But that was in, like 1914, which would be roughly $8.2 billion today. Of course, the Panama Canal is only 51 miles long, and the US/Mexico border is over 1,900 miles long, so, extrapolating from there, a bigass moat would cost over $300 billion. And that’s just initial construction. Presumably the annual maintenance would be rather astronomical (keep in mind that we couldn’t really use cheap Mexican labor for all this ‘cuz, well, they’d be building in back doors and stuff (and the Irish don’t work as cheap as we used to) – though I suppose we could use prison labor, though in this “prisons for profit” world we live in, that would probably still be pretty expensive.

On the bright side, alligators are free. Assuming Cain is Able to go and catch them himself.

And that’s not even for the electrified fence. Your basic electric livestock fencing (which doesn’t even contain cows when they have a mind to wander) costs about $6 a linear foot. So, let’s see here, 2,000 miles is like 10.5 million feet, so that’s another $60 million (which I guess is chicken feed, compared to the cost of the moat). Not counting the cost of electricity (I suppose it would be a good excuse to go solar, though). But you’d really need to construct something more substantial to string that across. So, well, let’s just say it would kinda cost a lot of money, though it might create a lot of jobs.

Now far be it for me to poo-poo Herman’s plan. One thing I’m bummed about is the loss of the “can do” American spirit. So let’s get out there and start digging. I mean, it took 10 years to build the Panama Canal, so it could take, oh, I dunno, 400 years to dig our moat (assuming we don’t want to employ any technology that didn’t exist in the Bible, of course), so we have lots of time to figure out how we’re gonna stock it with alligators.

Hey, looks like we’re getting ourselves into a new war, as President Obama is dispatching troops to Central Africa. I hope there’s oil or something there. Diamonds, maybe? Everybody loves diamonds. Not to worry, you lily-livered, bleeding heart (I think the hepatic disorder is what leads to cardiac hemorrhaging, but you should, of course, consult your physician) liberals. Obama is only sending 100 troops in an advisory position, and sending “advisors” into a war could never lead to anything unpleasant. Right?

The warm weather has finally broken (though, all things considered, it’s not exactly “cold” – yet), and today is supposed to be chilly and rainy, and very, very windy. We’re all kind of hoping for a bit of a break this year, what with last year being kind of a pain in the ass (particularly if you’re an aging baby-boomer who is beginning to discover all the nifty little places your body can feel pain – often for no apparent reason, and especially when the weather is cold and damp).

According to the woolly bear caterpillars (which were out in force last weekend; y’all know what woolly bears are, right? I mean, they aren’t a local or regional phenomenon are they? I’m really not very worldly – shocking, I know), it looks like we’re gonna have a short, harsh start, followed by a long, fairly mild stretch, and a short crappy spurt at the end. I guess I can live with that. And the woolly bear caterpillars are way more accurate than the National Weather Service or the Farmer’s Almanac (the Farmer’s Almanac weather predictions are kinda like a horoscope – vague enough so there’s something in there for everybody).

So, anyhow, I figure I have one more grass-cutting to do (assuming it’ll stop raining long enough), and then I can take the mower off the tractor and get ready for winter. Next Friday (barring the Rapture, of course) will be the one-year anniversary of when we closed on this house. So of course, we’re all moved in by now.

HA!

Private joke there.

Oh well, time to get going on whatever it is I’ll be doing today. Like watching last night’s Bill Maher – assuming I can stomach looking at and listening to that smarmy little piggish bag of douche, John Fund.

Or, I could regale you all with tales of the SU Alumni hoops scrimmage from last night, featuring players from 4 decades of SU and NBA history. And I’m sure nobody wants that.

I just saw this important news story on the lo-cal news, and thought I’d pass it along as kind of a public service. Turns out, if you’re not careful when carving your pumpkin (as the kids call it these days), you can cut yourself. A pediatrician interviewed for the story said that he sees as many as “one or two” kids a year with jack-o-lantern wounds. My god! With carnage like this, you’d think there’d be a law. They didn’t say, but I’m guessing most adult pumpkin-carving injuries are alcohol and/or drug related. To quote an “expert” from the story, “pumpkins are slippery, and knives are sharp.” I’m thinking of getting that printed on a t-shirt, along with a picture of a severed hand or something. Might also make a good epitaph for your tombstone (people will wonder what the story behind that one is). So, y’all be careful out there when handling your pumpkins.

Although I suppose Rick Perry would pretty much have to have a wife, I never saw her before this morning, when I caught a clip of her attempting to diss Herman Cain. Turns out, she’s exactly what you’d expect – a bubbleheaded bleach blond who appears to equal (if not surpass) her husband in the area of stupidity.

When eye he-uh nine, nine, nine, eye want to call nine, wun, wun

Pause for laughter…. No laughter.

Becawze it will rayuze the taxes.

Yeah. OK.

In other news, not only is it Friday, but it’s the official start of basketball season with Midnight Madness (which starts at 7:00 – go figure) at the Carrier Dome here in Syracuse (and other places that, let’s face it, nobody gives a shit about). Good news for sports fans like Sue and my wife, as, if you can’t make it to the festivities in person, you can watch MM coverage from around the nation (including here in The ‘Cuse) on ESPNU. SU’s will be the best, of course, in part because, thanks to the NBA lockout, the main event will be an alumni game with former SU “legends,” including current NBA players like Carmelo Anthony (I’d keep on naming them, but I realize nobody else cares).

Must be Dave Bing is too busy being mayor of Detroit to come (or Jim Brown, who of course was also a very good basketball player, ‘cuz there’s nothing he wasn’t good at – with the possible exception of relationships with women, but, hey, nobody’s perfect).

As if all that wasn’t enough, it’s a huge day for the iLemmings out there, as the Steve Jobs Memorial iPhone will be released in record-breaking numbers. Turns out that dead Steve Jobs is an even bigger marketing genius than living Steve Jobs, and if Apple can find a way to trot him out at every new product release, they’ll kick some major ass for centuries to come (I’m thinking a holographic appearance – kind of like after a Seldon Crisis; you probably have no idea who I’m talking about, so I guess you’ll just have to get on the Google).

Word has it that Woz is first in line at the Apple Store in LA. I hope he’s got cash (‘cuz, as they say in Cupertino, “In Jobs We Trust – All Others Cash”).

Speaking of cash, time to go make some.

Supposedly, there’s been a BlackBerry outage for the past couple of days. Didn’t notice a problem with mine, but it would be great if the place I work at would switch to something else. As long as it’s not limited to iPhone. That’s fine if you want it, but I’d prefer an Android device. Then again, as long as it’s free (to me), I guess I don’t really care either way. Unless somebody can invent an app to fast forward me to Friday, and then put the world on pause at some point on Saturday afternoon. Preferably before the weather turns to crap. Oh well, time to get ready for work. I have diesel fuel to pay for.

While I was busy not paying attention, the Goopers had another debate last night. Afterwards, Rick Perry apparently explained that our forefathers (or maybe he thinks there were actually four fathers) fought the revolution in the 1500s to get away from an “onerous crown.” Which I guess could be anyone from Henry VII up through Elizabeth I. Though probably not Queen Jane, ‘cuz it would have had to be a really short war. Newt Gingrinch also said we should throw Barney Frank in prison. Personally, I think that’s just ‘cuz Newt would love to be Barney’s cell mate, if you catch my drift (though I highly doubt Barney would go for the Polygrip/Brycreem type). Well, crap, it’s an early day, and I gotta get going.

Based on the most recent set of top 5 search terms that landed people here, I have to think there must be some mighty disappointed perverts out there. If you’ve been looking for any of the following: “spanked ass, they don’t cut the grass anymore boobs, mono boob, russian boobs, multiple boobs”, welcome, and I apologize. Also, WTF are “don’t cut the grass anymore boobs”, and what’s this recurring obsession with “mono boob”? Seriously, you’re making the “spanked ass” people look normal.

The dog got me up earlier than usual this morning, so I watched an infomercial for the Rockwell Blade Runner. Now I want one. You might expect to pay $500 (or more) for this (I know I would), but it’s available for four easy payments of $39.99 (and they’ll even throw in the optional wall mount for free!). One more thing for the wish list.

SPeaking of wish lists, good news for all you people hoping for a good candidate to run for Congress, as Not Joe the Not Plumber has tossed his hat into the ring (I’d post a link, but who really cares?).

Back to work today, because I’m not rich. And for this, I blame Herman Cain (his name is Herman, right? I never heard of him before all this – I think he used to be a pizza delivery guy or something).

I have a bumper sticker suggestion for his campaign, though.

“Cain is Able!”

Heh? Pretty catchy, no?

Pizza delivery guys, fake plumbers, hockey moms…. These Republicans are the kinda down-home folksy folks we need in office.

Not only do I not have to go to work, but it’s supposed to be yet another beautiful day, weather-wise. Hey, if they want to give me a day off for some sociopath who thought he was gonna find a shortcut to India, who am I to argue? You’d think national holidays should be limited to actual Americans (except for Jesus’ birthday, of course – but then when President Romney is inaugurated, I reckon he’ll grant Jesus retroactive citizenship), but, hey, who am I to argue with the powerful Italian-American community? I’m pretty sure Columbus was in “Waste Management” anyway.

Normally, I wouldn’t rejoice in a victory by the Buffalo Bills. But when they beat Philadelphia – and intercept Michael Vick 4 times – I’ll make an exception. I think it’s time Philly realizes Vick just isn’t performing and needs to be put down. Nothing personal, Mike. You’re just not earning your kibble.

Well, I guess I’d better figure out what I can around here today – without spending any money.