"Get Your Ugly Fat Ass Over Here"

Not exactly what you would expect to hear in a Zagat rated establishment is it? And hear it I did, directed to me personally.
But this is a great case for a quote taken out of context. On its surface, it might be assumed to be an instruction from a cop to someone who is trying to jump in front of a train, or similar circumstance, like a parental command to a lard-ass offspring.

You have to know the Zagat rated Koch's Deli, Locust near 44th in Pennland here in the Quaker City to understand that its really a heart felt invitation to try a free sample of wonderful food. Koch's, founded in 1966, is a standing room only (except for two mismatched chairs) deli wonderland remembered from my youth and virtually unchanged since then (1974, when I lived in the then shabby, now pristine, Netherlands Apartments nearby).
Nothing here for new-fangled foodies or health nuts. Their trade is in giant sandwiches which could sustain most third world hamlets for a week. "More Meat for Less Bread". They take orders over the phone but don't make them till the caller shows up because they are busy with the folks in the store. The walls are festooned with pictures, "Best of Philly" awards, autographs, fan mail and municipal proclamations of greatness. While you wait for your order they offer free pickles and samples of whatever they are working on, with very earthy invitations.

Wherever you may see Koch's listed as a "restaurant" on those stupid on line restaurant sites, know you are reading ignorance. Koch's is not a restaurant, it is a DELI.
If you are visiting Philadelphia and have the choice between the Liberty Bell and Koch's, go to Koch's, unless you are not really hungry.
They have a website and a twitter thing but nobody pays attention to any of that, its a place you have to go to and enjoy for real.

Happy Holidays!??

So here it is this year, the time after Thanksgiving, when we used to say "Merry Christmas" to just about everybody. But today we mostly don't. We offer banalities instead, most commonly, "Happy Holidays". Why is this?
To the mild of mind, saying "Merry Christmas" to anyone that does not believe in it is supposedly an insult. Since they are not of the Christian faith, they will have a crappy day on Christmas, so why rub it in?  Or logic similar, and all too widespread.
This is utter nonsense. I don't believe in the virgin birth any more than I believe that Adam and Eve chatted with a snake. Its all quite silly to me, yet I always have a delightful time at Christmas once I get over grousing about all the shitty junk we squander our money on for young people. In fact I enjoy the midnight mass at Sts Peter & Paul, its a grand god show. So why are non Christians doomed to have a lousy day on December 25th? No reason at all. Why should we not wish Moslems, Jews, Bahais, Buddhists, Confucians, Jews, and everybody else a merry day? In fact they should have an even merrier day than Christian folks, since they get a day off and don't have to waste their time racing around like rabbits buying crap young people forget in an hour or less.
So here it is, for everybody, have a damn fine MERRY CHRISTMAS! And if you are so inclined, go find a snake and ask it about them apples....

The Mighty Twenty Three

One of the oldest  (before 1877) and longest urban bus routes, for many years the longest streetcar route in the world, is SEPTA's 23 bus, here in the Quaker City. Described as "SEPTA's rolling cash register", it winds from the wealthy reaches of Chestnut Hill, through historic Germantown, through the "Badlands", downtown and ends in deep South Philadelphia. Ridership changes from white to black to Asian to white en route.

Folks still work at getting it back to be a streetcar line, especially after seeing route 23 streetcars in robust daily service in San Francisco.
Among the landmarks it passes in North Philly is Fair Hill Cemetery, resting place for early Quakers, abolitionists and female rights advocates. According to some often verbose passengers that cannot comprehend the site signage or the several murals nearby, it is a) the oldest black cemetery or b) the oldest pet cemetery in a)Philadelphia or b) the United States. This may be due to the Quaker tradition of marking graves with very modest stones.

 

 

These days SEPTA's 23 and other busses have become more and more festooned with advertising that often covers the entire bus, making it look like a Heineken bottle or a large gin & tonic. They also have ads for personal injury lawyers (who sue one another to gain ad space on our public transit) on the back.

 

The 23 also passes two wonderful places, to me heavens on earth. First is the Reading terminal Market, which lends joy to conventioneers and jury members among many others. Its inside -

 

 





 Even better, just a few stops further south, is the Italian market, a mecca to some and a great place to get some python, buffalo tongue or a pig (that's a whole pig, as in pig roast). Someday maybe Connie and I can rent a place above one of these stores...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hipper Than Thou

Here in the City of Brotherly Love, we are getting way hipper than most folks think. Not only did we have a "Texting Lane" around city hall (this was an April Fool's joke on the part of Hizzoner Mayor Nutter). Now, to outdo all others, we have UNICYCLE Lanes, or at least one of them, to wit see below-

 

 

We are getting so hip that now the old old Koch'e Deli in West Phila is Zagat rated, for crying out loud.

 

Where will it end? 

About the Best Thing I Do

It is good to ask oneself what value one's activities have from time to time.
After retiring I decided to join my Connie as a reading coach for a program called Philadelphia Reads. She works downtown and every Thursday during the school year two classes of first graders come to her building from the Isaac Sheppard School, a 114 year old elementary public school in the poorest ZIP code in the city (or perhaps the country). Each week I get to help a kid learn to read. In a lot of cases, these coaches and their teachers are the only adults in the kids lives that think learning to read is important.
I never ask about parents because usually there is only one. Vacations are another bad topic, since they mostly never have any. They come in never really clean clothes, bright and cheerful and glad to see us. Then you learn that the oven at home has too many cockroaches so no hot food or, more importantly to them, cake. One child I coached was obviously dyslexic, but despite three tries by his teacher to get his mom to see a doc, he made no reading progress for the entire year.
This year, even this early into the school year, my kid is making good progress. At first he would not let go of his teacher's hand and worried (in Spanish) about people falling out of the neighboring office towers - he had never seen things so big. Now he is braver, speaks clearly, and holy moly, he reads better every week. So there may be hope for him, no matter how hard our legislators try to destroy his life chances.

Stalwart Beauty and Let's All Help the Rabbits

Rescued from a short life as junky desk décor, our little rose has bloomed four times, and this one is from a couple of days ago. As the beautiful color of the leaves fades into crappy stuff we need to get rid of, this joyous flower is a wonder in November.

And let's all be sure to note that here in the Land of Giants, our state legislature has decreed that November is Rabbit Breeders Month. We do not need schools, health care. roads, busses, pension funds or stuff like that. However we very much need more rabbits. Who knew it was hard to breed rabbits? Ah, Pennsyltucky, home of the myopic and the brave!

Too Much Technology "Lite"

Lately I have come to feel that we are misusing the term "technology." All over the place its used to describe what really amounts to mostly useless tweaks to computers, which even though we carry them in our pockets today, are not new any more, they were invented in 1947.  Even the New York Times "technology" section mostly describes what really amount to titillating toys that enable the mild minded to pass time gazing at glowing screens or spreading useless personal information about themselves or what they ate for lunch. You can even blab at folks and watch them endure your boring yammering. Worse yet they may even be interested in your yammering since the glowing screen has removed them from the real world in which thinking is so often useful or required.
Its mostly nonsense, and it is a lousy excuse for "technology". In the early days of television folks used to hope for a vast educational asset but what we got is mostly a barren wasteland full of night soil of the mind. Similarly "edu apps" are promoted as helpful to "digital natives" (these are young kids whose lives are impoverished by early access to pads and pods and other such junk - I actually heard this bullshit on NPR today) who will in all likelihood grow up unable to boil water or rake leaves. Or care about the world they take up space in.
We were supposed to have bullet trains and personal jets and X-ray glasses. That's technology! All we got are crappy little gizmos that waste our time.

Let's Say Goodbye to Texas

Lets all think about what would happen if the country let Texas leave the union. A number of things to consider-
First, we would get rid of Senator Cruz, the loudest Whining White Person in the country. And the slack minded yokels who think he is so great. I wonder what they would think about him when their social security checks stopped? And remember Texas  has more uninsured people than just about any other state, and they want to keep it that way.
We would not have to hear from Rick Perry, except as a joke from another country. That new country could have as many branches of government as it wants and dear Rick would not have to worry about which three he wants to abolish.
Oklahoma would not have to suck so hard to keep Texas from floating off into the Gulf of Mexico.
I'm sure lots of good ol boys would be delighted to be a separate nation. That is until they had to come up with their own currency and find out no one will lend them money because they would not be able to stop laughing, since the state won't have much revenue once the oil companies have their way. After all somebody will have to make up for the federal subsidies they get from all of us.
They could build a huge wall along their border with Mexico, until they discovered that they don't really have the bucks to finish it.
The opposite of secession is decession like "de-aquisitioning" works of art. We don't really have to wait for the Texans to take action. Perhaps we could even sell Texas to Mexico, or perhaps France. Or maybe we could "gift" Texas to, say, Iran.

Fear and Loathing of the Future

The "Anti Economist" column in Harper's is always a worthy read, as is the whole magazine.
In the most recent issue the columnist Jeff Madrick noted that 218 out of 233 Republican House members have signed a pledge to vote against taxes regardless of circumstances. They signed this myopic pledge at the urging of one Grover Norquist, who makes his living it seems by getting others to change centuries.
I wonder how many of these pledge signers also claim to want to run the government "like a business." Perhaps they know of a business that can never, no matter what, raise prices, and the utopia it occupies. Every single one of them, along with the so called "self made" success characters, becomes dependent on government the instant their car tires touch a paved road. Paved roads wear out. Paving costs more money now than then, and will cost more in future. But some think they would prefer gravel roads. They come from gerrymandered cocoons into which no breath of modern thinking can penetrate.
The reason I think is fear and loathing of the future. And part of the fear just may be that the idea of being returned home from Washington to the lousy places they come from.. Can't say I blame them.

Cape May

A very fine place, off season. No brats and mostly older folks sauntering about the town square. Lots of cute shoppes full of mostly junk. The nice thing about the junk is that the stores mostly do not have the same junk, so the junk variety is less boring than most places.
Also fine eating sans crowds. We especially enjoyed Louisa's, best described as eclectic. And delicious!
The coolest thing I found was the quaint architecture which makes San Francisco's "painted ladies" well below first place.
Also lots of new mcmansions along the shore line which remind one of the Jersey shore's "Irish Riviera" (also known as Avalon). Sad to see this here but that's the way it is.

 

One of my favorite items down here is the carcass of a concrete ship, the Atlantis. It seems that during the First World War there was an effort to build ships from concrete. Quite a few were built and actually used. One sank at the tip of the cape and is still visible today. Some years ago I bought a sort of book about them. They were, and at least one still is, real.

How to Enjoy the Jersey Shore - Part One - The Winery Tour

To be specific, we have just spent a delightful few days in Cape May New Jersey.
The first thing to do is be sure to go when all the schools are back in session so you will not be bothered by brats behaving worse than you ever let your kids behave (they are all worse than your kids...).
Also avoid the places damaged by hurricane Sandy. Head south!
Take a few back roads and go on a winery tour. That's how you can find  real diners in places like Clayton (the Liberty Diner, where the waitresses still say "youse").

We stumbled upon a fine little vineyard/winery called Coda Rossa in Franklinville, well off the beaten trail of the Cape May County wine whatever they call their organization. The young lady there did not say "youse" so I can confirm wineries have, in general, more class than diners. Pretty decent vinos.

Southerly from there as one closes in on the bottom of the state there are a bunch of places, some of which have been in business for quite awhile but got good press only fairly recently (thank you Phila Inky). We stopped at all of them except Turdo, which sells out all their wine early in the summer and closes. And has a cool name that none of the winery folks we talked to smirk at.
Closing in on Cape May we stopped first at Natali Vineyards which had a nice selection and even a banana wine which I thought would be horrible but it wasn't. Then on to Jesse Creek Winery, followed by Hawk Haven, Cape May and Willow Creek wineries. These guys all grow their own grapes and get some from local farmers who I assume find fruit of the vine more fruitful than lima beans. (We just missed the Lima Bean Festival in  West Cape May, for real, no lie).
Were I a more practiced wino I would recall more specifics about each one. At the end of our tour we had bought wines from every place we visited. They all sell almost all their production from their tasting rooms and the proprietors have lots of tasting notes about flavors I usually can't discern at all. We were told that they had a bumper crop this year and business was very good. I know we did our part in that regard.

If He Were a White Man

Inspired by Tevya's song "If I Was A Rich Man"  from Fiddler on the Roof* - or Obama's lament-

 

If I were a white man,
Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.
All those yahoos wouldn’t hate me so

If I were Caucasian
I could take this country on the move
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy white,
Idle-diddle-daidle-daidle man.

I could make some room for healthcare
so all of us would share
A life much better than we ever could before

We could have a real congress,
Not the joke we have right now
The world could still respect us instead of laughing while we fuss

If I were a white man....

* all rights reserved but certainly not for me

Another Thought About The Affordable Care Act

So this whole deal is modeled after the program initiated by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts - some folks still call it "Romneycare."
97 % of Bay State residents have health insurance, more than any other state.
People like it.
The state did not go bust.
Businesses did not flee the state.
Taxes did not go out of control.
Medical costs did not skyrocket.
There are still lots of docs in the state.
So none of the horrors feared by the whining flapping lips actually took place.
Just a thought.

Thoughts About "Obamacare" and Whining White People

One of the first things that comes to mind is that I have, until recently, never heard anyone who uses the phrase "Obamacare" indicate that they have any idea what the Affordable Health Care Act actually does, or is. If you ask these folks what they are talking about you usually get a blank stare.  I say recently because the moniker "Obamacare" has made its way past the haters, yahoos, slack jawed yokels and political opportunists to the marginally better attuned general public.
Most of these folks used to flap their lips about the deficit, a topic laden with technicalities very remote from their cognitive abilities. Before that they hated the stimulus, about which they understood even less than the deficit. Before that it was abortion. And gun control. And immigration reform. And before that it was just about anything that could possibly move the country forward to the ranks of real first class societies. Always the same folks, from the same parts of the country.
So what is actually wrong about the Affordable Care Act? Is it the likelihood that we could possibly provide better health care to more people than, say Chile or Bulgaria?
Perhaps the problem is that the whiners are just sore losers that do not comprehend that they cannot always get everything they want. Like little brats that get a "no" from their mom and scoot over to  whine at dad, who, if he is really stupid, may just say "yes;"

Gin Gimlet Review Number One

One of our city's charms are the old building of past, or mostly past, financial houses and banks. These are very cool buildings and some of them have been cleared of stuffy geezers in straw hats and argyle socks to be refashioned into restaurants. They have high ceilings, fancy columns and some still have neat old furnishings. Founded in 1910 as Butcher & Co. by scion Howard Butcher Jr., the company could trace its lineage to Colonial days through its various acquisitions over the years. One of those acquisitions was of Yarnall, Biddle, which got its start in 1764 as Thomas A. Biddle & Sons.
One of them is Butcher & Singer, at 1500 Walnut Street.
But in 1988 away it went.
Now its a pretty fine place to eat. And the background music isn't too loud, and its not new stuff that is horrible. Also it lacks the sports TV so it has class.
While well presented in the proper glass and delivered perfectly by an excellent server, it had just a touch too much lime. Perfectly acceptable but not quite up to Dan's standard.
The Old Fashioned and the Sidecar were completely first rate.
And the food is excellent, if a bit pricy.

Best Way to Enjoy the NFL

As a rule, I have long thought that the frenzy accompanying professional football is wasted energy. I can't remember when I last watched a pro game, and the idea of paying a hundred bucks to attend one is beyond my pale.
But at half time during the recent Fildelfya Iggles loss to Kansas City (and the Iggles former coach Andy Reid) my Connie decided to follow the Live Chat on philly.com. I admit that I may be the last person to discover this, but the Live Chat, at least in the City of Brotherly Love, is top drawer entertainment. At half time the messages came in at a rate of about one every two seconds - the little beeps they make coming in made a music of sorts. The pace did not slow down when play resumed, but kept up steady as a drum beat in a march.
Each nuance of every play is reflected in comments, most dripping acidic criticism of players and coaches, regrets about team changes and simple phrases that for the most part included the word "suck." Even better, some of the commenters used names of past football greats as tags (I think that's what they are called) - so you get to hear from Roman Gabriel and Chuck Bednarik among others.
No ads or interruptions, no obnoxious fans - just a continuous stream of mostly hilarious venom. And its free!!
My favorite - "the birds are a field of geese."

Is It Greed? Innumeracy?? Hatred?? Lost Planet Airmen??

So now our Congress wants to take away food stamps from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of poor people in order to solve the non problem of "rampant fraud and abuse." They even have the standard "poster child"- some California jerk that uses food stamps to buy sushi when he is not surfing. Just like the so called "welfare queens" of the eighties. There actually was one then, like there is one now. So now we won't feed as many hungry people and too bad for the farmers that actually get money for this program (which is why it used to be part of the Farm Bill).

It reminds me how our legislature in Pennsylvania (the "Land of Giants") decided to require picture IDs to vote because of..."rampant fraud and abuse." When called out, the Republican spokeswoman - lip flapper actually  cited a single case in Philadelphia where some old man was registered twice. But did not bother voting. And spelled his name differently. And may have been two guys, neither of whom voted. So now we are spending millions to get everyone IDs and defend the idiotic statute in court.

What drives these small minded efforts? Are their backers innumerate (that's the same as illiterate, except it involves an ignorance of numbers)? Can we really be electing folks that stupid to Congress? Are these folks greedy?  Do they think their miserable constituents will get the money?

Or is it hatred of everyone not like them? Are all of their constituents rich? Mostly not; they may not be real bright but they are not of the one percent. But they mostly believe in high level abstractions that to simple minds are easier than pesky facts, history or numbers.

And perhaps therein is a clue. Relying on voters too dumb or lazy to learn reality, these legislators can assure themselves that they will never have to return to the crappy places they came from. They can stay in our glittering (well, relatively glittering, depends where you come from) state and national capitols, and stay there by spouting out stuff the yokels back home like to hear.

SUPPORT REAL PUBLIC EDUCATION

My view, taken from the Philadelphia Daily News...

GOING TO THE DOGS or Doing to them...

For no known reason, yesterday I took notice of an inordinate amount of discouraging information about dogs. Discouraging in the sense that people seem to have become too enamored with these creatures that eat cat shit whenever they get the chance. I have indeed loved dogs in my life but I never confused them with humans, or any other elevated being.

I do not sleep with them in my bed, as I learned awhile ago, more than fifty percent of dog owners do. Remember these are creatures that eagerly devour cat shit.
In the New York Times yesterday I read that we (Americans) spend over fifty billion a year caring and feeding pets. More than the entire budgets of a number of states. Since we feed and care for a cat I know that the bulk of this money goes to dogs. Here in Pennsylvania our legislature (the “Land of Giants”) spends more time worrying over puppy mills than about all other public needs combined (or so it seems). Perhaps that is because we let a guy that killed dogs for fun quarterback the Iggles
In yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer I learned that there are spas for dog owners that can bring their cherished cat shit eaters with them and learn how to make organic treats for their loved ones.
But these extravagances pale when compared to the service I saw promoted on the C line in New York yesterday-

A joke of course! But wait! It’s actually a spoof on something real. Or surreal. People do in fact get their dogs altered with plastic surgery. They can even install fake testicles so their poor mutts won’t lose their self esteem and have something to play with when there is no cat shit to gobble. I guess friction powered fake nuts that glow when the dog walks are coming soon....

 

Red Lines, Flapping Lips and History Doesn't Start Every Day

So now we all worked up about blasting a bunch of stuff in Syria, as if this is new. Its not. What IS new these days is our need to tell everybody what we are going to do if...
Then, when IF happens, we HAVE to do what we said we would do, no matter the results or logic. And since we flapped our lips, we have no surprise to deliver. Remember the generals announcing offensives in Iraq so the bad guys could beat feet out of town?
The real case to be made for blasting away at the Syrian gang is that not doing so may well lead to more use of toxic gas on more people. Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Iranians in the 80s (remember there was a long, bloody war between Iraq and Iran when Hussein was our pal?). Since he was killing folks that were not our pals, we had nothing to say about it, even though gassing people was as much against international law then as it is now. So when the Hussein regime decided to gas its own citizens (Kurds) for two years, that too was OK. Except that the news got out and folks got very upset and by then old Saddam wasn't so much our buddy. Even so, we and the world did nothing until we conjured up myths about "WMD"s and toppled his regime, to be replaced by a "beacon of democracy" - remember?
Now Mr. Assad and his gang gave it a go - gas the opposition and see if that scares them into submission; after all it worked next door earlier. These guys are fighting for their lives and their religion and the risk of retaliation by the "world community" is, to them, well worth it.

"Move 'Em In, Move "Em Out, Move "Em Back In Again"

Here in the City Of Brotherly Love we have just completed college move in days. I feel this is a very special series of events for which tickets could be sold to visiting tourists (Penn will be the first no doubt). The act of moving offspring into a large urban campus is not at all the same as what takes place in bucolic country side settings. That's what makes it so much fun to observe.
Here we have, almost cheek by jowl, the University of Pennsylvania (undergrad enrollment eleventy billion), Drexel University (undergrad enrollment one huge number) and just up the road a piece, Temple University (undergrad enrollment unlimited).

While the upper class men and women know some ropes and scam ways to get in early (mainly to get the hell away from their families), the incoming frosh and their attendees are clueless, and must be herded like sheep to well organized destinations. Upon arrival many discover for the first time that dorm rooms are not the palatial facilities they have at home. The families with big SUVs with U-Haul trailers (mostly from southern states I have noted) must quickly decide what of their kid's crap will stay and what will have to go back home. These are wonderful transactions to watch, especially when the kid's folks brought the family dog along (who right there and then must take a crap). They do this quickly because a campus or city cop will soon help them along with the comforting phrase "you gotta move your vehicle sir."

It is not only a clash of cultures, but a grand lesson in applied physics as well.
Once the kid's stuff is dumped, lots of folks, especially alumni, feel the need to trek about the campus, getting lost trying to find old haunts like Penn's Smokey Joes, with the kid in tow and the dog trailing the exuberant parent. The kid just wants all these assholes to leave so he or she can meet members of the opposite sex and explore the temptations of the big city. Lots of smiles at the front end and a scowl at the end.
Truly a glorious day. A great place to observe this in Philly if you ever happen by at the right time is the Starbucks at 34th and Walnut, right near the frosh dorm at Penn with the smallest rooms the city building code will allow.
There is another side to this ritual - what to do with the mountains of crap departing seniors leave behind? Like a digestive system, large universities (small one too I am sure) must excrete tons of stuff each year. No matter what their parents or they may have spent to get it, most of the kids' stuff does not go home. At Penn they load it into the ice skating rink and open it to the public to sell the junk by silent auction. Viewed from above this activity resembles a colony of ants with steady columns of worker ants leaving the colony with stuff in their arms. And trying to fit refrigerators in trunks of cars. Another lesson in applied physics.

The Gin Gimlet - Spirit of the Gods

The Gin Gimlet has been my favorite cocktail for many years and like so many high quality items, many have degraded it to a point where its often unrecognizable. Therefore I will start to monitor the local quality of this fine drink. In doing so I hope to fight against crappy drinks that taste terrible despite their fashion and the general decline of quality in America.
A Gin Gimlet is made thus, and only thus:
Four full shot glasses of gin
One half to one shot glass of Rose' sweetened line juice [can be another brand but best not].
THATS IT! NOTHING ELSE.
Shake vigorously with ice, until the shaker is very cold. Pour into full sized martini glass - it should fill it up to the brim.
The only permissible garnish is a slice of lime, but its not a necessity.
You can find lots of different recipes on line, which just goes to show you that the Internet is a source of a lot of lousy information.
My benchmark Gin Gimlet is that which is delivered consistently by Dan, the manager and bartender at the Pen and Pencil Club in Philadelphia.
If you order a Gin Gimlet and it has bits of citrus pulp, you are visiting a youthful place that should be avoided in future..
If you are served a Gin Gimlet in a tumbler, or with ice cubes in it, just get up and leave the place.
More to follow....

American Salafis - "..their number is negligible and they are stupid

American Salafis - “...their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Awhile back, the folks that drink too much tea were very agitated by immigration, which they want to not reform but spend lots of other peoples’ money on. Now they want to defund “Obamacare”, the understanding of which eludes them completely. And before all this they wanted to reduce the deficit by strangling the government that feeds their constituents (did you know that Mississippi gets 53% of its state government revenues from the feds? Do Pennsyltuckians know that figure for the Keystone state is 37%? Likely not.)

Since as a nation we are far too backward to have single payer health care like the grown ups, we have stumbled with great difficulty to the Affordable Care Act, known to the weak of mind as “Obamacare”.

This is not new. Today we call the clutterers of our nations’ progress “Tea Party” people. They used to be the “Silent Majority”. In an earlier age they were known as “Know Nothings.” They have been with us always, guided by mythology about earlier times when we were all real independent, strong people who could care for ourselves. When most of us did not live past 50 and we lived in squalor free from running water, roads or electricity. They forget that their dependence on government largesse begins when their tires touch a paved road.

They are not much different from the Salafis, Sunni Muslims that believe themselves the only correct interpreters of the Koran and consider moderate Muslims to be infidels; they seek to convert all Muslims and to insure that a fundamentalist version of Islam will dominate the world. Drink tea and move backward.

 Like Salafis, many of our elected “public servants” seek to make sure all of us are as degraded as they are, and that the hands of the clock be turned back.

President Eisenhower, an astute Republican, when discussing conservative efforts to abolish Social Security, eliminate labor laws and farm support programs, had this to say to his brother “...their number is negligible and they are stupid.” [Read this and more in “Eisenhower in War and Peace”, Jean Edward Smith, Random House 2012]

How sad that today their number is no longer negligible.

"I'm good." Good at What? Good for What?

More bad English, where does this come from?
Nowadays when you ask folks (especially young ones) a question like "how are you/" or "can I get you something to drink?' you often get the response "I'm good" instead of "I'm fine" or "no thanks".
Instead of answering the question, folks make unjustified positive value judgments about themselves. What are you good for? Or good at? And who on earth told you that you are good for, or at, anything at all?? Maybe you're a jerk and others are just being polite wasting their time talking to you. Perhaps they wish you would just go away, instead of telling them how good you are.
Bad money drives out good, but need bad language do the same?

SCAMS TO LEFT OF US SCAMS TO THE RIGHJT OF US

Those that know me have heard a lot about the many things I view as scams, so I will start to detail them from time to time, perhaps too often.
Lets start with the best scam ever perpetrated on our continent - that would be BOTTLED WATER.
(In my hometown its often called "wooder"). "Purified" and "Spring Water" tend to make weaker minds think that there is somehow something special about many brands of bottled water. Somehow folks think that up in some bucolic forest there are people in loin clothes gathering water from springs and gently putting it in crappy plastic bottles. Or maybe forest nymphs are the ones. I think this is because too few people have ever spent time in a modern factory or seen a bottling plant in action. While in fact all (or almost all) rivers start as springs somewhere, there is no spring on earth that could feed a even a modest bottling plant. So forget "Spring Water" - it does not happen.
What does happen is municipal water is supplied to bottling plants. No bottled water in this country comes from a non municipal source. It goes into big vats where it basically sits for awhile  (this has been called "reverse osmosis"), and then in gets put in bottles which are shrink wrapped and out the door they go.
So its tap water. Not some of it - all of it.
Bottled water is more expensive than gasoline. A gallon of water from my tap costs about a penny. A gallon of bottled water from the lowest priced on line offering from walmart.com today is $3.40.
Some folks whine about the taste of tap water. They forget that the pipes into and inside their houses can crap up municipal water. Put a pH meter under the tap for a few minutes and watch the pH change.
But its so convenient! No its not. In a developed country its just plain stupid to lug water around like starving people in deserts someplace. That's why they invented pipes and pumps.

Worthy of Worship

Many, if not most people say they believe "in God." This is usually thought to mean that they are religious and have faith in a higher being. I am pretty sure this is bunk, but its a commonly held feeling. There are many gods for folks to believe in, and for the most part they (the gods) hate each other and all too often provide an excuse for their followers to kill non believers. Since no gods can be proven to exist, the belief in them is essentially a man-made fiction, one could even say a scam. If money is the root of all evil, what then is religion? Which has led to more death and destruction? Was there ever a one hundred year war over money?? Why do so many people believe that we can talk with snakes, and do what they say??
Personally, I think there are some pretty cool things about religion. I love the God Show put on each Christmas eve at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul here in the Quaker City; the place is beautiful, the choir and singing are lovely and the archbishop has a very slick hat. But when I was six no god would help me tie my shoes so there you have it. If you live in a city or big town, at some time you may have been, or will be, accosted by religious folks who feel the need to talk to you about some god or another. If you can't get rid of them by keeping your feet moving and a smile on your face, just refer to god in the feminine and they will stop cold in their tracks.
I feel humankind would be much better off if everyone venerated some thing, person or group that provides tangible value and makes the world better for all.
Personally, I venerate municipal trash collection folks. They do not demand offerings, but take all those that we give them. They perform reliably (here every Thursday). They do not visit wrath upon us. When it snows, they clear the streets. Their care for us is unconditional - they take the trash from saints and sinners alike. We don't even need to pray for them to show up - they just give us the joy of taking the crap out of our lives every week.
On their best day, no religion or mystical god can beat these guys.

Courtesy of the Sanitation Division of the Streets Department of the City of Philadelphia, 4th section, also known as "Home of the Motivators"






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Clinging Pennsyltuckians

Pennsyltucky is the part of Pennsylvania where folks that "cling to their guns and religion" live and vote. They send quite a few less than brilliant folks to represent them in our state capitol, Harrisburg. Not for not the first time, one of them proposes legislation to allow public school kids to "question the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theory". The proposer is State Rep Stephen Bloom, from one of our mid-state counties, who actually has a law degree and could well thrive outside the womb of the PA legislature (many of his colleagues would have a real hard time at this),
Previous attempts to include creationism and intelligent design, for which no tangible evidence can be found anywhere, have been tossed by the courts. Thus it is somewhat interesting that the measure to sneak that stuff in under the door has been conjured up by a real lawyer.
The proposed legislation states that "the teaching of some scientific subjects, including but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning can cause controversy."
The controversy about well established science is not caused by its teaching. Science is about discovery and proof, It is not about dogma and religious nonsense. The only real controversy about teaching science is brought to us by crackpot politicians and the stupid or greedy folks that lend them support and the poor souls that elect them.
In much of the civilized world they "could not be elected dog catcher in our smallest village" (this from a Chilean  Fulbright Scholar who visited during the most recent national election campaign, and observed closely some of the Republican party's  presidential hopefuls in person).

Betsy's Finding About Shitty Dogs

To be specific, my niece Betsy has a well founded hypothesis about Chihuahuas and the in home abuse of children. Betsy works in social services and is called upon, among other duties, to remove kids from homes in which they are abused.
Chihuahuas as we all know, or should know, are a species with no redeeming qualities at all. They demean all other dogs, many of which are noble and helpful. Even mosquitoes are more elevated than these useless dog-rats. To kick them, all one needs to do is show them one's hand and when they leap up to bite it (even if its the hand that feeds them) they can be kicked judiciously in mid air. The extinction of this species would be a welcome development. Check out stories about people kicking these despicable creatures by Googling "man kicks Chihuahua".
But I digress.
Betsy's finding, after some years of careful observation, is that whenever a kid needs to be extracted from an abusive household that includes a dog, that dog is a Chihuahua. Not sometimes; not frequently, but always. If there is a dog in the house along with an abused child, it will be a Chihuahua.
Why is this? Do people take out their anger at their crappy dogs on their kids? Is there some toxic component in their saliva or fur that drives people crazy? Or perhaps child abuse and shitty dog ownership are somehow linked in some cause and effect relationship?
Well worth some extensive research if you ask me.

Wither Our Economy?

I know "wither" in my title should really be "whither" but the point here is of decline, not discovery of location.
Awhile back I heard a radio article about folks that rent tires for their cars, probably on NPR. It seems that there is a company called Rent and Roll that will rent you tires for your car by the week. After some weeks you can keep the tires in their well worn state for gobs of money paid weekly over time.
Wait a minute!! People are RENTING tires? By the week??  What's going on here?  Are people becoming more stupid or more poor?? Have wheels and tires become fashion accessories that can be changed like a pair of earrings?? The article included an interview with one of the customers, a manager of a McDonalds. It is claimed that the average McDonalds produces $2.3 million bucks a year, so why does the guy who runs one need to rent tires?? Maybe he likes a different look for his car every week? Who knows. All very strange to me.
By and lage renting anything except beachfront houses by the week is for folks with no money or no smarts.
I think this is a sign of a declining economy more than anything else and that Rent and Roll is pretty slick in taking advantage of a sad trend. If you want cool wheels and tires, here is one place to get them, by the week if you so choose-
http://www.rnrez.com/#

Rearing A Child "In the Way They Should Go"

Many have noticed a widespread retreat from child-rearing responsibility by today's parents. Brats run wild, are traumatized by hearing the word NO, and are paralyzed by the prospect of exerting effort of any kind. Normal exuberant behavior that requires a touch of parental discipline becomes a mental condition cured best by steady doses of legal dope, dispensed in just seconds a day. Once these kids get to school, all thought of any need for parental effort in guidance evaporates - the mantra becomes "his/her teachers don't understand him/her" and ditto for  the school district and on and on. Parents don't get that serial killers, porn stars and Wall Street gangsters actually come from SOMEWHERE.
How gratifying then to learn that it is possible to rear a child for just twenty nine bucks a day! The answer to the whole problem of bringing up kids is STORAGE! After all, raising a child in a small house or apartment is like growing an oak tree in a thimble, right? Indeed it is and all one needs to do in order to learn how to stow their brats away is take the A train!

This is just a test entry!

Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow. Actually, sheeps get their coats filthy real fast so they are never really white, let alone white as snow (unless the snow is also filthy).
Sheeps' fleece is also more than likely infested with lots of crappy tiny bugs, and smells bad. Shearing the sheep of its fleece and getting all the filth and bugs out takes lots of work and that is why real wool costs a lot of money.
Unless it is processed in China. Then it costs less and is still not quite as squeeky clean as one would hope.

Well known sheep expert from Maine