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Wii are the World
1/30/09
I'm one tough sumbuck. No, I am. On New Years day we were playing on a Wii and I knocked two guys out! Knocked
'em out cold in less than two rounds. I never realized I had such a talent for that.
Well, you know, real life isn't quite as simple as that simulation. I can't remember what the point of this
thing was a month ago when I jotted this down, but I think it was probably an Obama slam. I think it was probably
meant to be a rant about idiots who think Obama's going to dash in where Bush was and solve everything. Yeah, let's say that was it.
Anybody who's heard of his ridiculous "economic stimulus" should be aware of that now. The man is completely clueless.
Holocaust Deniers and Other Whack Jobs
Frank could never eat at The Trolley without remembering Ken's brother-in-law. Not long after the place opened Frank and
Ken had gone to lunch and Ken's brother-in-law went along. "Where d'ya wanna' go?" I don't know, where do you wanna' go?
"Hey, what about that new place, that . . . what is it? The Trolley?"
So they went to the diner made from an old trolley car. The group was a little surprised at the prices, but what are you
going to do? A little know provision of State Law forbids diners from running from a restaurant screaming after seeing the
menu . . . unless they fake a heart attack first.
Everyone agreed that the food wasn't bad, but at those prices they weren't likely to go back. Ken's brother-in-law summed
it up pretty well. "You can fleece a sheep as often as you want, but you can only skin it once."
A lot had changed since that long ago day when Frank had resolved not to return to the Trolley. Lunch prices in general had
increased, Frank was making better money, and the diner had added a large dining room adjoining the trolley car, allowing
them to do more business.
But as Frank sat down in the dining room at the Trolley he realized why he'd started eating there again. Every time he had
been back since that first day, someone else was picking up the tab.
The Trolley was a favorite of Darren's and the place he typically took clients and vendors. That's why when the group from
Virtania Mineral Resources offered to take Frank and Clint to lunch, it was to the Trolley Diner that the rental car was directed.
At the next table a group of elderly ladies, with hair various shades of artificial color, were gathering for what seemed to be a
regular get together. "Helen called last night and asked about your mom." Frank had to marvel that the lady being addressed had a
mother still living. "Oh, she's fine, she's fine." The lady said. "What are you going to drink? Don't get the diet Pepsi, 'cause
it's just nasty. Nasty."
Frank wasn't trying to eavesdrop, the tables were just so close together. He turned his attention to the conversation at his own table.
The talk that Spring day ran the usual gamut, from what was good on the menu, to talk of the news, and discussions about work and
technology. And of course there was talk about the latest cool things getting sent around via e-mail.
The date being April 2, the discussion turned to a hoax that Google had perpetrated, where it had offered a new service that faked
the time on outgoing e-mail messages and inserted them in chronologically correct order in the receiver's inbox.
"Yeah I saw that," Clint said. "Something about it didn't seem right."
"I had the same thought," Frank said. "As soon as I looked at the date it hit me."
At the next table the server was taking orders "Make sure it's a real Pepsi," Frank heard, "'cause that diet stuff is nasty. Just nasty."
"You know," one of the Virtania guys was saying, "It seems like people will fall for anything."
"Oh, man," Frank said, "we've got a guy at work and, I kid you not, he's never seen a conspiracy theory he didn't like."
Clint chuckled. He knew exactly who Frank was talking about.
"It's like . . . He's always going on about his 9/11 conspiracies and, oh . . . oh, and this is great. He has this video he's
always trying to get everyone to watch that 'proves' we never landed on the moon."
"Ha ha, that's great," the Vertania guy laughed. "A real nut case! I'll bet he even thinks global warming isn't real. Ha ha hah!"
Frank suddenly became busy drinking his lemonade, while Clint glanced over at him and stifled a chuckle with his napkin.
Your Good Name
Bush commuted the sentence of Ramos and Comfean just before he left office. Good for him. Better for him if he had pardoned the
guys altogether. But at least they're out of prison . . . which, incidentally, is where people that haven't committed a crime should be.
But one of the guy's wife was telling Glenn Beck they're trying to work through getting his good name back.
Back from who? There's nothing wrong with their name 'cause they didn't do anything wrong. Anybody who holds being wrongfully
prosecuted against them is not someone whose opinion you care about anyway.
Look, this is like the credit rating scam. On a macroscopic scale, it's a good idea. Let's create a central kind of a database
that rates people's trustworthiness for credit. Good idea. You have a history of skipping out on debts I'd like to know about
it before I loan you money.
The trouble is that they realize how powerful it is so they abuse it. You pay off a credit card, that's a good thing. That's a
financially responsible thing. Cancel that card, that's a good thing, too. It's the right thing to do. It also damages your credit rating.
How stupid is that?
If anybody refuses me a loan because I was financially responsible and cancelled a credit card, it's not a person I want to do
business with anyway.
Trouble is, of course, the guy giving the loan has no say in it. The computer spits out a number and that dictates the rate you
get on your loan. Doesn't matter if it's because you missed a payment (bad) or cancelled an account (good).
Okay, it doesn't ding it much and it goes away, but you get the point. It's stupid. It's an abuse.
If you're Ramos or Comfean everyone knows who you are. I can't imagine anyone in HR saying "Oh, I'm sorry, you've been in prison,
so we can't hire you."
You did the right thing, guys. Hold your head up high.
Leany's Fiction Writing Workshop
With patented "take forever to get to the point" technology
1/28/09
Nobody likes someone poking fun at his religious leaders.
Muslims get so worked up about it they forbid even drawing pictures of theirs. In fact, if you draw
cartoons
about Islam they'll try to kill you, (unless you're Abu Laban (who is now dead, may he rest in pork fat), who fabricated
the cartoons that started the whole Danish cartoons killing deal).
That's how whacked out people get about cartoons of their religious leaders.
The democrats are no exception. They are all freaked out about
how to draw Obama in a way that shows the proper
respect for a Messiah. Seriously.
Are you kidding me? You know the deal with caricatures. They aren't glamour shots. Even when they aren't intended to make
you look silly (as in the ones these same religious whackos do of George Bush) they aren't flattering.
Are you going to make me say it? These people are insane.
But here's the deal (and you've been reading my blah-blah-blog long enough to know there's always a "deal").
It illustrates (as if we needed more) the infallibility of the guy in the eyes of his disciples. He can't be wrong.
By definition he can't be wrong.
So if your position is different from his, you are, by definition wrong. You must be crazy or stupid if you disagree
with him. He's right. That's all. He's right.
I once read an article on writing fiction about things you haven't really experienced. Like maybe you're writing about a
guy who confronts a lion trying to kill him. You've never had that experience. How do you get inside his head? Well, you
extrapolate. You have been scared, or had to confront things. You've had to stand up to things and think quickly. Maybe
you're very competitive at basketball. Just use your imagination to stretch that into an interesting story.
So let's see what we can do with the concept of a president who can get away with anything he damn well pleases, because
he is (by definition, axiomatically) always right.
Let's say, and I'm just spit-balling here, that you have a character in your manuscript who works with a guy . . . I don't
know, let's say he's an engineer or something. Let's just pretend, for the sake of a fiction writing exercise, that this
"engineer" is much more skilled at pulling the wool over the boss's eyes than he is at engineering. Yeah, that's good. Let's go with that.
Now I want you to imagine what it would be like working under those conditions. Draw on your experience with a President
who has the complete and unquestioning support of his minions. Remember how you feel when you can see that the guy is as
off-track as a person can be and you can't bring it up without getting lambasted and cast out as a lunatic.
Now construct a scenario where your character works with that engineer who is constantly lying to the boss, but when he
opens his mouth to set the boss straight he's the one who's crazy. The boss dismisses the information because his
pet engineer cannot be wrong. So anyone who disagrees with that engineer has to be wrong. Simple math.
Get creative. It is, after all, just fiction.
Have this "engineer" tell the boss that "race cars don't have rear brakes," just ludicrous stuff like that. Have the guy
steal ideas. In fact, have him blast other characters for their ideas in front of the boss, then present them as his own later.
Keep in mind the rules of good exposition. You want the reader to figure things out for himself. Don't just tell him outright
what he should figure out.
For example, it should gradually dawn on the reader that the boss believes that every good idea the company has ever had
has come from this "engineer." If you make the boss blurt it out to everyone in the middle of a meeting, it might
turn off readers. You don't want them to say "Oh, come on! That's just stretching it too far!"
Otherwise, get crazy and have fun. Use your imagination, 'cause nobody could have any personal experience in that sort of thing.
Swing Vote
1/26/09
We watched "Swing Vote" over the weekend. Pretty good flick.
The thing I got out of it was they summed up the philosophy of demorat politicians in one minute or less.
The campaign manager for the demorat said "Do you know what it feels like to always be right and never win
an election?"
Translation: The voters were always wrong.
That's it. That's the philosophy of Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary, Mary Matalin's disturbing husband, et al.
The voters don't know what's best for them. We are so much smarter, we should be running the show,
In a voting system that works (meaning one without ACORN, Al Franken, and Chicago or Louisiana politicians)
the definition of right is what the majority of the voters want. In that (hypothetical, perfect) scenario you
are by definition not right if you don't win the vote.
But we have Al Gore, who, caught red-handed cheating to win an election, explained "Our message was so
important that we were justified in doing whatever we had to do to stay in office." Translation: we know
better than the voters.
That's why it's not the "democratic" party. If I have ever called them the "democratic" party it was an
unfortunate grammatical slip. Democratic is an adjective meaning having to do with democracy or
being in nature like democracy. Nothing could be further from the philosophy of the demorat party.
The people (demos) vote for a senator in Minnesota. What do they know? Al Franken
has
a different idea about who should go to Washington.
In an interesting bookend to that, Al Franken would call himself a comedian. In my book the sina qua non
of comedy is that it's funny. At the risk of sounding jejune, the only thing funny about Al Franken is what
he sees in a mirror (if you catch the allusion).
But in Al Frankenfraud's world you have no choice. You have to find him funny because he says he's a comedian.
Fallacious Reasoning
1/22/09
A few years back the mother-in-law was over visiting. The little Mrs. and I some work we had to do on
the computer, so we put in the new DVD "The DaVinci Code" for the kids and the mother-in-law to watch
while we worked. After a while I poked my head in the room and asked how the video was. My mother-in-law
said it was pretty good, except for the nudity.
What?
Yeah, it turns out some whacko gets naked and whips himself until he bleeds. I believe the clinical term
for that is "terminally stupid almost to the point of being a John Kerry supporter."
So I had some 'splaining to do to the kids. I told them that some things that feel good are sins. We'd like
to eat candy all day long, but that's not good for you. (A better example, that I didn't share with my kids,
is that Marie Osmond would like to tackle me and slobber all over my greek godlike face, but that would be a sin).
So some people (clinically known as idiots) reason that if some things that feel good are sinful, things that feel
bad must be saintly.
Anybody—well, anybody that didn't vote for John Kerry—can see what a crock that reasoning is.
You know I'm not talking about self-flagellation. I'm talking about fallacious reasoning to the converse. If
A is bad, not-A must be good.
What I'm talking about is Larry King, who is
tickled
that his son now wants to be black. Black is in. It's cool to be black.
Since the liberals are incapable of expressing this sentiment because it doesn't fit in a chant,1
I'll phrase it for everybody:
It is cool to be black . . . if you are black.
Here's the deal. It's a wonderful thing that in today's America a black man can be president.2
It's a great thing that someday soon it won't be a cause for wonder because it's just the way it is.
It is now almost universally acknowledged that being white is not better than being black. That's a good step.
But don't take that to the illogical conclusion that it's better to be black than white. Rap so-called "music"
is still crap. White kids who rap are still morons (the same as black kids who rap). Talking like you live in a
ghetto is still a sign of mental retardation, regardless of your skin color or neighborhood.
1(Side note: What the crap? Poetry that liberals write doesn't rhyme. But they can't verbally communicate
without rhyme. "Hey, hey, ho-ho, Bush and Cheney got to go." Further proof that they live in an inside-out universe.)
2(Side note 2. It's a wonderful thing that we're ready for a black president. It's an even better thing
that we've been ready for a black president for decades, we just didn't have a black liberal that was capable of
fooling enough voters).
The Post-political Leany blog
1/21/09
As you have guessed I didn't listen to the radio or watch TV yesterday.
This morning I had the radio on and at the top of the hour I heard the word "Obama" and
immediately hit the iPod button on my car stereo.
But later today I was listening to Rush and he was talking about some liberal teacher in Green
Bay who was complaining about his commentary yesterday. Apparently he ran the "immaculation" speech and
he probably had a running commentary, like he does. I could ask Uncle Google, but I don't care. So this gal
had her kids listening to the proceedings on the radio, and she was all in a tizzy about how he had ruined
"the most momentous occasion in these kids' young lives."
Give me a freaking break.
Then, just in case you didn't realize she was a whack job, she included a PS in the e-mail that said
"please consider the environment before you print this e-mail."
Listening to the way the lady gushed over Obama caused me to have an epiphany. The reason politics
disgusts me is because it's slipped into the tacky universe of "A Current Affair" (is that even on?
You know what I mean, Entertainment Tonight, that kind of tasteless crap that looks like it should be
on Univision).
I don't watch beauty pageants or Oscars or Emmies or ET or any of that crap. It's a complete waste of time.
I don't care how Jennifer Aniston feels about Angelina Jolie. By all accounts Princess Di was a nice lady,
but it's disturbing that we need royalty to shower with adoration.
I don't care if Obama shaves his head or flashes people getting out of Paris Hilton's car. The only thing
creepier than the seedy life of celebrities without morals is the people who worship them.
Attaching monikers.
I'm always telling you about this guy I work with who's a liberal. I like him but if I say "this liberal
that I like" you might get him confused with my favorite liberal. Since he's the source of so much good
material I think it's time we assign him an arbitrary handle, so I don't have to keep saying "This liberal
that I work with . . ."
So I'm just going to assign him a random name, something simple, easy to remember, like, oh, I don't know,
I think I'll just call him Joe.
You know what that means?
So a while back Joe was telling me that Obama had won in Salt Lake county. That didn't surprise me. Up
there they love communists like Wayne Owens and Karen Shepherd. Then he said "You know where else in Utah
he won?" I didn't. He said "In the schools. Including Utah county."
Apparently they have a mock vote in the public schools (as opposed to the real ones they have in
Harlem and Minnesota, you know) and in that mock vote Obama came out ahead.
"You know what that means?" Joe asked.
I knew exactly what that means. It means if you have kids in public school you need to get in your car
this second, break every speed limit between your house and the school, and yank them the hell out of
those brain-washing concentration camps. Just do it. Now!
This is doesn't involve any complex logical algorithms. There is only one explanation for why kids in
school have different values than the parents that God gave them to train them in the way they should go.
But Joe saw it differently.
What was his view? I have absolutely no idea what his take on it was. My brain has an algorithm that
purges such rubbish as it hits the ears, without even passing it through my cerebral cortex, to avoid
contamination, you know.
What did you learn today?
Last night I asked my kids the standard question. "What did you learn in school today?" They said "Nothing.
We just watched the inauguration."
So this morning on the way to school we talked about Ptolemy and Copernicus. We talked about how people get
an idea in their head and then ignore any evidence that doesn't support that idea. What's that? Why yes, as a
matter of fact we did talk about global warming whackos (as we ploughed through three feet of snow).
So kids in public school voted for Obama. There's your proof. You had in your head that he's the Messiah, now
you have your proof.
180 proof if you believe that for a nanosecond.
Groovy Change, Cat
1/20/2009
Last night I was in the Wal-Mart where I live—not the one by where I live. I spend so much time
at Wal-Mart that I just have my mail sent there now. You'd be surprised how comfortable the cots are
in the camping section and it really saves time fixing meals with the groceries and cookware right
there—and I was watching Super Bowl highlights from years back. It occurred to me that I had never
seen Johnny Unitas or Bart Starr play in color.
See, I used to watch football. Back in those days we had a black and white TV, just like everyone else
that wasn't filthy stinking rich (like our cousins, who also had a real live car port and everything!).
Anyway, people who follow football know that the Steelers are going to be playing the Cardinals in the
Super Bowl in two weeks. They can't understand how anyone would not know that event is taking place.
People who follow racing can't understand how anybody doesn't know what happens on Memorial Day weekend.
A friend asked me last week, "So, are you ready for next Tuesday?"
I said "What’s next Tuesday?"
He had to remind me that we were inaugurating a new president.
Oh, yeah. Well, that's not really my thing, I guess.
As you know, I've decided to "turn off, tune out, and drop out." Those of you with Moody
Blues albums on vinyl will recognize how closely that philosophy fits that of Timothy Leary.
Now I, being named Leany, will often get letters and stuff addressed to "Mr. Leary." So I wondered . . .
Having started to read that
enlightening (French for ridiculous) article by the illustrious
(French for insane) intellectual Sharon Begley—the one about that whack job who was the reincarnation
of John Adams—I wondered if it was more than a coincidence that someone with a name so close to mine
advocated a philosophy so close to mine.
So I did a little research on Timothy Francis Leary. And would you believe it? I found some eerie similarities.
Leary was constantly in trouble with the law; I used to get a lot of speeding tickets.
Leary hung out with crazy, delusional people; I work with engineers.
Coincidence? Yeah, just wait 'til you hear this.
Leary used LSD and experimented on students in a seminary; I attended LDS seminary in high-school.
Eerie, isn't it?
I'm telling you, tune out, dude.
Blogs are Better
1/09/09
Blah-blah-blogs. Who cares? What kind of person even has a blog? I mean, give me a break. Is it so important to see your words in print
that you expose your writing deficiencies to complete strangers?
But occasionally I do find advantages of a blog. A blog is flexible. Posts can be any length you want. Or you can not post at all.
With a blog you write until you run out of thoughts (then keep writing for another half-hour).
See, if you're writing a magazine you have to fill all the space between the two covers. That's a problem if you have nothing meaningful to say.
Why yes, I am talking about Newsweek. How did you guess?
They had a big honkin' write-up on Michelle Obama. Pages and pages. It was titled: What Michelle means to us.
I don't need to fill up pages. I can answer that question in one word:
Nothing.
Celebrities You Might Know
You remember the current Miss America. . . you know . . . that one girl . . .
Of course you don't. Nobody does. It doesn't matter. It has no bearing on your life. They are all interchangeable.
"Deal or No Deal" took away the last reason to pay any attention to that mindless pageant.
That's what the last election did for us. President of the United States? BFD. One more celebrity. Some guy who flies around in a
big jet and waves at people and gives speeches. One more ego getting massaged. At least in a beauty pageant there's some suspense
about who the people running the show are going to choose.
I used to panic if I couldn't remember the maiden name of the wife of the current minority whip. I could not have picked Paris Hilton
out of a lineup of construction workers, 'cause I didn't care. But I felt like being familiar with my government was important.
I remember standing in formation next to a fine lad who was saying to the DI "I don't know, Sir, but I'll endeavor to find out, Sir!"
This was in response to the question "Who is the President of the United States." Yeah, sure, they always gave me
stuff like "Who's the sergeant major of the Marine Corps?" This kid just had to know the President, and he couldn't
even get it.
As I think about it now I realize that doing push-ups was much easier (and less humiliating) than acknowledging that Jimmah Cahtuh was
occupying an oval-shaped National Shrine (one that someday Bill Clinton would use to sexually assault teenagers). But at the time it
struck me as funny. Who doesn't know who the President is?
That's me after the next election. "President? What? I don't know. Why should I care about the name of one celebrity more or less?"
Between the non-stop Bush bashing and the press's sickening slobbering all over That One, the office has become meaningless. We are
tempted to just look away. We are tempted to give in to the idea that he's just another celebrity. The last thing we want to do is
pay attention any more.
Look, democracy works that way. So we lost an election. Boo-freaking hoo. If you want to get your way all the time you're living in
the wrong country. If we give in to the temptation to quit paying attention because of the way Obama was forced on us, our government
can get away with what it wants.
So I'm pleading with you. Please, don't you buy into the apathy that they are trying to lure us into.
Because I personally don't give a crap anymore.
Tell me Again Why We Held an Election?
Newsweek, the only weekly publication in the country that is sillier than The National Enquirer, ran this page trumpeting what
great journalists they are for their public display of affection over Obama.
Seriously, what are the chances that all three of the people who read that trash wanted to have their baby?
But between all the breathless gushing about the amazing journalism there were a couple of good letters.
My favorite was the one that said ". . . it scares me to know he owes his victory more
to the will of the press than the will of the people."
A democrat in office we can live with. Trashing the system whereby people elect their leaders we can't.
What's that? Yeah, that's right. I was about to mention the way Al Frankenfraud stole the election in Minnesota.
Vince Lombardi once said "I never lost a game. Oh, there were a few time when the clock ran out while we were still behind . . . "
That's the approach Frankenfraud took. Hey, why let a stupid thing like a democratic election stand in the way of being a senator?
So the election's over? Why should that keep more votes from coming in?
The mathematics here aren't hard. It's like filling in a hole with a shovel. No matter how big the hole, if you keep adding small
quantities long enough you'll eventually get there.
Every single day that miserable little prick would walk into the elections board with more votes for himself. "Hey, look what I found
in the trash can outside of the Jack in the Box this morning! Can you believe it? 46 more votes for me! Just add them to the ones I
found in my couch cushions last week." The maddening part is that no one ever opted out of the charade. At what point do the Candid
Camera people jump out?
One part that bothers me is how blatant it is. If he were sneaking around it would be bad enough. A friend of mine explained it this
way: What separates corruption in the US from that in third world countries is that here everyone knows it's wrong.
But practically in front of the TV cameras Franken says "What do I need? Six more votes? Hang on a second." And punches them out for
himself right in front of God and the whole country. "I'm going to the senate. What are you going to do about it. Huh? Huh? Yeah,
that's what I thought."
Not one single person in America believes that more people voted for Al Franken than Coleman. Not one.
Holy Dumbledore's Ghost, I hate evil people. I really, really hate evil people.
You Know What Else I Hate?
I hate being bored. I'm a lot like my close personal friend, who, finding himself stuck in traffic the other day, plugged in a
DVD and started watching it. In my life I have only eaten three meals without reading something when I was by myself.
That's my excuse for knowing what a crock Newsweek is. Somebody leaves them in the lunch room and it's either read them or the labels
on a salsa packet. It's a close call.
So I'm reading
an article about "paranormal experiences." I don't know, maybe I figured that
at least on "Supernatural" they have a really great '67 Impala. Maybe this article would have something.
It's about a doctor—not a real MD, like someone who knows something, but a psychiatrist. He is John Adams reincarnated.
Since he was a "scientist" he wasn't going to let superficial differences in his appearance vs. that of Adams distract him from the truth.
As he discovered that (and what an eerie coincidence this is!) Adams once compared peoples' heads to cabbages and that sounded just like
something that he might say, he had no choice but to accept it: He was John Adams reincarnated!
About that point I wondered, "Who wrote this crap?" I looked up to the top of the article and laughed out loud. It was none other than
our favorite global warming hack, Sharon Begley.
But I can tell you exactly what's in a packet of salsa.
Finally . . .
. . . I found someone who writes worse than David Baldacci.
This
loser
(French for a whole string of words I can't use here). He thinks Joe the Plumber should be silenced. He says (no, I am not making this up)
that we finally have a writer for a president. He believes that only certain people should be allowed to write.
Oh, and he thinks that people shouldn't get book contracts just because they're famous.
I'd love to be there when he tells Hillary. (I could hand her fresh plates.)
