I’m sure everybody has heard about “Fearless” Felix Baumgartner jumping from about 24 miles up and reaching a speed of almost 834 MPH (faster than the speed of sound) before parachuting safely to the ground below. The pictures are pretty awesome, and I was struck by Felix’s quote after he got back to the ground: “Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are.” Amen to that. Who hasn’t gotten really high and wondered if our universe is just one atom in a giant being, whose universe is just one atom on another giant being, whose…. Woah. Started to blow my mind a little bit there, and it’s too early for that.

Of course, the big news this week is Round Two: tomorrow night’s presidential debate. Team Obama is promising a much better performance this time around, and Obama has been going hard at it with Romney stand-in John Kerry. Anybody think maybe that’s kind of the problem to begin with? I mean, Obama was practicing against a mannequin, so it’s no wonder he was somewhat taken aback when Pinocchio came to life (a shame Mitt’s nose doesn’t grow when he lies, though). I guess we’ll just have to see how he does (not that I’ll be wasting any time watching it this time around, though; he already made me stay up late once for no good reason, and we have a saying here in Syracuse – probably have it in other places, too – that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again).

I always wondered what happened to Ralph Kramden, and now I think we know. He apparently left the Gotham Bus Company, and moved to Cleveland, where he finally really did go “POW! To the moon!”. The victim in this case wasn’t Alice, but a 25-yr old female passenger.

A Cleveland, Ohio, bus driver dealt quite the blow to a woman who apparently had been taunting him during a ride, delivering an uppercut punch directly to her jaw.

There’s video (of course), and I must say, it was quite a shot. I don’t think this guy’s gonna be driving a bus again anytime soon. While I of course abhor violence, it appears that the woman in question wasn’t totally blameless.

New information has been released, identifying the bus driver as Artis Hughes and the female passenger as Shidea N. Lane. According to the police report, obtained by Cleveland.com, Lane allegedly got on the bus driven by Hughes without paying, claiming she forgot her backpack. She proceeded to ask “Are you putting me off the bus?” and “Is this how you treat people in Cleveland?” Lane eventually paid and called Hughes a “bitch.” The two got into a verbal argument, according to the police report, and Lane reportedly proceeded to grab Hughes’ throat, spit in his face and strike him with her fist.

If you’re gonna spit in somebody’s face and then punch them, well, you probably shouldn’t be terribly surprised when they deck you. Just sayin’.

Oh well, time to get on with the day. Happy Monday.

I watched a little bit of last night’s debate, but not too much of it. By all accounts, Joe Biden was the big winner. If, by all accounts, you exclude CNN (“call it a draw” they say, though their Republican-skewed poll showed Ryan the winner, 48%-44%), and NPR (on the way in, their report said, “both sides claim victory”). CBS says Biden won among “uncommitted” voters (those who aren’t in a mental institution, I guess), but their story never tells you what percent Biden got (unless you watch the video).

Of the 431 polled immediately following the debate, 31 percent deemed Ryan the winner, and 19 percent said they felt it was a tie.

I guess one could do the math on that and come up with 50%, but it seems an odd item to exclude.

Fox News said Biden was a big old meanie.

STEPHEN HAYES: “When he thanked Joe Biden, Biden was smirking. And I just think that came across as very disrespectful.”
BRIT HUME: “It looked like a cranky old man, to some extent, debating a polite young man.”

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: “The smiles, the sneers … it made Vice President Joe Biden — someone who I typically like — I thought he was very unlikable.”

CHRIS WALLACE: “I don’t believe I have ever seen a debate in which one participant was as openly disrespectful of the other.”

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “It was so disrespectful.”

SEAN HANNITY: “At times, it was so uncontrollable, I was beginning to worry about him [Biden].”

And Fucker Carlson?

“Have you ever felt that way when you just want to deck somebody?”

Why, yes. Yes I have.

Oh well, guess you just can’t please everybody, Joe.

Except that everybody agrees that Martha Raddatz was the big winner as a moderator (except for Sarah Palin, of course, who said she let Biden run all over poor little Eddie Munster).

Speaking of Martha, weren’t they making a big deal about Candy Crowley being the first woman to moderate a debate since Christ was a corporal or something? I guess the VP debates don’t count.

Current apparently analyzed the debate to determine at what reading level the questions and answers were on. Preznit and Vice-Preznit are pretty lofty positions, so I’m assuming it was pretty high level stuff.

We analyzed the questions asked by moderator Martha Raddatz, ABC’s senior foreign correspondent, along with the responses from Biden and Ryan to determine their reading level.

In a similar look at the first presidential debate President Obama responded at a ninth-grade level, Mitt Romney responded at a sixth-grade level and moderator Jim Lehrer asked questions at a fifth-grade level.

It turns out the entire vice presidential debate was at a sixth-grade reading level.

Oh. 😐

No wonder Obama did so poorly. He was talkin’ like a smarty-pants high school freshman.

Anyhow, next up is the second Presidential debate. Here’s my prediction: Romney will dial it down a notch or two, Obama will actually look like he’s alive and breathing, and the media will declare that Obama looked “crazy, angry, and desperate,” while Romney looked “confident and ‘Presidential’.”

There, now you don’t have to bother watching.

Big night tonight, with the Vice Presidential debates. Democrats have high hopes that Joe Biden can undo some of the damage that their main man did in his rather pathetic and uninspired performance in the first Presidential debate. Yeah, that’s right. All hope are on the much maligned Joe. Leave it to the Irish guy to clean things up. Okay, well I guess Ryan is theoretically an Irishman, too. But he never lived in Syracuse, so screw him.

Otherwise, there’s not much else going on in the world, I don’t think. Nothing more than usual, anyway. The Yankees beat the Orioles in 12 innings last night, thanks to Raul Ibanez pitch hitting for A-Rod. I know everybody’s excited about that. Donald Trump says A-Rod’s no good unless he’s juicing. I’m not sure why anybody cares what the loudmouth has to say, but they keep reporting on his rantings. I’m surprised he didn’t demand to see Ibanez’s birth certificate (or at least his green card).

Oh well, big day here at work today. It’s parking re-registration day, where I have to prove my car is registered so I can get my new parking sticker (that I never put on my car, because I only need it if I have to go to the hospital for something, which I never have to do, thank goodness).

Tomorrow is “Pay Day” for me. I’ve languished  two long weeks for this day, and I can’t wait! It’s a small sum but it keeps me from losing all hope in the world.

As you may or may not remember, I work with a small company that provides wheelchair services, baggage storage and security for airline passengers. Alaska Airlines has contracted this small company to assist TSA with running baggage  through an x-ray machine– and that’s where I come in with all my talent and abilities, or lack thereof.

So I basically sit on my ass for four hours, rummaging through the deep caverns  of  my mind, drifting in and out of different states of consciousness (with my eyes open of course). I think, and think some more. I imagine building a small home with no running water. Contemplate how much it would cost, how many rooms I’d need, if I’d have a telescope platform on the roof or not– shit like that.

I ruminate about my past– mistakes I’ve made, friendships I should have avoided, laughs I’ve had, meals that were amazing, love interests that will never evolve into more than anything outside the confines of my mind. My head full of blurred, distorted, grainy thoughts, I laugh to myself occasionally.

I sit. I just sit, waiting to jump up like a pet doing a trick for a treat, for the next bag to shove into the x-ray machine.I think about the story I heard of Mark Twain and his buddy Nicola Tesla shooting themselves in the head with an x-ray gun. Oh, the levity.

During the 100 or so hours sitting like a bump on a log, I’ve convinced myself I’m qualified to work with TSA as a TSO, just like my high school teacher Mr. D said I was back in ’04. Pressured to find a real job, with responsibility and a living-wage, I applied. I’ve thought so much about it that I don’t even know if I want it anymore. I certainly need it.

Now, I’ m waiting for the next hoop, another hurdle, for a bigger treat with harder tricks. Hedging my bets, I joined a union for public employees. Dues are 35 a month with a low, very low, possibility of getting a Maintenance job. Like buying 35 dollars in lottery tickets a month and expecting a winning ticket.

What’ll happen? Who knows. I need to sleep.

It may be Tuesday, but it sure feels like a Monday. Especially with the rather disturbing polling news (which I haven’t heard any Republicans calling bullshit over, so they must be correct). Not only has our boy Mitt taken a national lead in two polls (4% Pew, 2% PPP), but women have also apparently fallen out of love with Obama (or a lot of them have, anyway). The Pew poll had Obama’s 18-point lead with women evaporating completely, while PPP has it down from 16 points to 6. And polling in the swing states shows Obama’s leads shrinking in them, too. So that kinda sucks, and doesn’t bode well for November.

Here I thought we’d all agreed that Romney sucks and you’d have to be an idiot to vote for him, and now it’s starting to look like he’s going to get elected (this may seem premature to you, but, I assure you, I’ve seen SU blow enough leads in my time that I can tell when things are turning to shit early in the third quarter – or second half, depending on the sport).

Just pray the filthy Republicans (channeling my inner Mike Malloy there) don’t take the Senate, because between them and the DINOs us 47% slackers are in for some hard times. At least we’ll finally be done with Joe Lieberman (although it looks like CT is gonna stick us with a damn Republican).

In other news, Jerry Sandusky was sentenced today. Facing over 300 years in prison, he was let off pretty easy, only getting 30 to 60. That means he’ll be eligible for parole when he’s 98. The big question is, will his wife wait for him? Maybe she and Susan Poland can get an apartment together near the prison. Kind of a Golden Girls thing.

On the bright side (for them), I bet they’re all Republicans.

Normally I’m kind of depressed on Mondays because, well, it’s Monday. But not today, because I have to day off to honor some guy who thought he was taking a shortcut to India, only to be not the first non-native person to ever arrive on this continent. Whatever. A day off is a day off (which is why I don’t understand why so many bigot-types had such a problem with MLK day; shut up and take the day off, ferchrissakes). Anyhow, having the day off isn’t the only exciting thing going on around here, as the Dalai Lama is in town for the “Common Ground for Peace” Symposium at SU.

It’s a two day thing with panels of folks (including former CIA director James Woolsey, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III) moderated by Ann Curry. If you’re so inclined, you can watch the live webcast of the two days of panels.

Then, tomorrow night, the “One World” concert will start off with a talk by the Dalai Lama, and then a concert emceed by Whoopi Goldberg (under the musical direction of Phil Ramone). There’s quite a lineup of musicians, including Don Was, Dave Matthews, David Crosby, Counting Crows, Roberta Flack, Nelly Furtado, Engelbert Humperdinck (yes, he is apparently still around), David Sanborn, Joanne Shenandoah, Voices of Afghanistan and a whole bunch of other people I’ve never heard of because I’m old and from the US of A. So, as you might imagine, it’s a pretty big deal around here, where we don’t typically have all that much going on. And a nice thing to replace the headlines about Romney’s “bump” and all that.

That’s odd – the sun seems to be out. I should probably go do something.

Finally, it’s Friday. And there’s even some good news for a change, as not only has the unemployment rate dropped below 8% (to 7.8%) for the first time in about four years, but the jobs rate for August was revised upward to 146,000 new jobs added (from 96,000). Mitt Romney’s not gonna like this one bit. Maybe this will knock Obama’s crappy debate out of the news for a while.

I’m not sure why Obama is such a wimp. I thought Chicago guys were supposed to be tough, but Barry’s debate performance is not unlike his performance with the Republican Congress the past four years. Lame. He’s pretty tough when it comes to ordering an drone attack or calling on the Navy Seals to go kill somebody, but when it comes to face-to-face stuff, not so much. Oh well, maybe he’ll get better.

It’s a three-day weekend coming up for me. The weather looks like it’ll be cold and crappy, so that’s good. I’d hate to squander a weekend being outside in the fresh air.

Although I hadn’t intended to, I actually stayed up and watched last night’s dog and pony show. Well, some of it. I must’ve passed out and went to bed (yeah, in that order) at some point. Anyhow, what I did see pretty much sucked. This morning’s conventional wisdom says that Romney won, Obama sucked, and Jim Lehrer was the worst debate moderator in the history of presidential debates. Up next, “the bounce.” And then the horse race will be on. Rather depressing, if you ask me.

On the bright side, I watched “Heist: Who Stole The American Dream?” on SnagFilms (via the Roku, though you can watch it online, too – free for a week or something), and it was pretty good. Also depressing, of course. Narrated by our old friend Thom Hartmann. The short summary is that we’ve all been screwed (but then you probably knew that already.

Of course, if you think we’re screwed now, wait until President Romney and his gang get control. I think my retirement plans are pretty much shot to hell.

Tonight’s the big night – the knockdown drag out, Rombamapalooza debate, round one. Are you planning on watching? I’m not. My mind is made up, and the relative ability of two politicians to spit out soundbites that are, at best, slightly related to the actual questions isn’t going to influence my vote one way or the other. Especially since I know how it will go. Romney won’t be totally inept, and will therefore be crowned as the “winner.” The serious talking heads will declare that he looked presidential (just by being on the same stage as the president, if all the drivel I’ve been hearing on NPR is actually true), he’ll get a nice post-debate “bounce” and the media will declare that this thing has become a “horse race.” And they love they love them some horse race. The only hope, I suppose, is that Jim Lehrer will call Romney out on his bullshit. But there’s only so much he can do (especially since we know he’s a commie pinko in Obama’s pocket).

So, Todd Akin (you remember him, right?) apparently gave a very enlightening speech on the House floor back in 2008.

“It is no big surprise that we fight the terrorists because they are fundamentally un-American, and yet we have terrorists in our own culture called abortionists. One of the good pieces of news why we are winning this war is because there are not enough heartless doctors being graduated from medical schools. There is a real shortage of abortionists. Who wants to be at the very bottom of the food chain of medical profession? And what sort of places do these bottom-of-the-food-chain doctors work in? Places that are really a pit. You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things, misuse of anesthetics so that people die or almost die.”

I had not idea there was an “abortionist” physician specialty. And I’ve actually been developing charts that track various metrics broken out by specialty at our two hospitals, and I don’t actually see it anywhere. I guess we don’t have enough heartless doctors (which is hard to believe).

Now, as I’ve said before, I’m not a doctor myself so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s technically impossible to “give” an abortion to a woman who isn’t actually pregnant. But I guess I’ll have to defer to the professional experts (like Todd Akin) on that sorta thing (though I will say that if that’s true, then the abortionists are missing out on a great business opportunity, and they should start giving abortions to men who aren’t pregnant, too).

Paul Ryan is actually a lot more optimistic about Americans than his running mate. Whereas Mitt Romney thinks 47% of us are leeches, Ryan thinks it’s only 30%.

Seventy percent of Americans want the American dream. They believe in the American idea. Only 30 percent want their welfare state.

Oh well, it’s stupid meeting day, so I suppose I’d better prepare myself.

I was looking at the “station” where the cats get fed, and next to their slimy bowl of whatever disgusting thing that comes out of the pouch they get fed with was – as is often the case – was a pile of cat puke. You know what the difference is between cat food and cat puke? Me neither. Of course, the puppies (or at least one of them) were also up to no good overnight, as they managed to crap on the rug in our family room (where we have been letting them roam freely at night, as they’ve been relative good lately). I didn’t see it, myself (it was amongst the shards of yogurt container that they’ve been happily chewing to pieces), but the wife did. And oh, how she chuckled about it. Those whacky pooches.

Meanwhile, over at my sister’s house, all three of her dogs managed to get sprayed by a skunk last night, after which hilarity ensued. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a critter get skunked (or been sprayed yourself), but it is one nasty stink to get rid of (burns your eyes, makes you gag. It’s neat). I think I’ll wait a while before visiting.

Speaking of stinking, yesterday was the first time in a long time when I sat down and watched an NFL football game. The weather here yesterday sucked. It went from a steady mist to outright downpour from time to time, and it was a little on the chilly side (would have been fine, had it been sunny). So I took Fritz to go play with his as yet unskunked cousins while I watched some football with my sister and her hubby.

Unfortunately, it was the Jets, and they were horribly inept. Especially on offense. So that wasn’t much fun to watch (although I know a couple of you were probably very happy with the game, so congratulations to you). Fortunately, I stopped taking Jets games seriously, so it wasn’t terribly traumatic for me. Just boring.

The other game that was on was the Bill – Patriots. A tough game for me to watch, since I can’t stand New England, and yet I hate Buffalo. But at least it was somewhat of a game (for a while), and as much as I don’t like the Patriots, it’s always kind of fun to watch the Bills lose at home (in front of their “Wall of Fame” which of course includes #32, OJ Simpson).

They did show us a few minutes of Atlanta starting from their own 1 inch line or so to kick a winning field goal, so that was good (not that I care about Atlanta – or Carolina, for that matter, but it was at least fun to watch).

But now it’s Monday. Bleh.