On a lighter note, we have a cat terrified of a bedspread and a miracle of a plane crash. The government rescued but a few except the government DID make the pilot take a drug test. Sure it’s procedure but it’s so low, just so low.
Lots of TV updates.
American Idol premieres and we’ve got some prospective winners, or at least the top ten. One is blind and another is the brother of a former top ten idol.
The Golden Globe awards, heh, you gotta love this paean to empty person hood. We’ve got potty mouth celebrities and fashion awards like none you’ve ever seen before.
The Bachelor continues on and I continue, against all common sense, to follow Jason’s quest for a DeAnna lookalike. We’ve got two contenders that everybody loves to hate and a predicted winner by my own wise self.
Pic of the Day
The Truth About Hamas
Stories of Israel fighting with Palestine are so de rigueur that we too often blink our eyes, yawn and ask what’s new.
There is a way to put an end to this constant fighting which I will get to in a bit.
To get to my wise conclusions as to just how to end the endless fighting, needless death and destruction in the Mideast, we must begin by reading the story at this link.
The bearded young Hamas fighter stood beneath a shop’s awning in the centre of Gaza City as he tried to hide from Israeli drones. “Gaza will be like a volcano erupting beneath the Israelis. It will destroy the legend of their invincible army,” he boasted as the street echoed to the sound of distant gunfire and explosions.
Hamas, and its sister terrorist group in Lebanon, Hezbollah, are classified, rightfully so, as terrorist organizations. They do, however, fill in for certain missing government functions and this endears the local populace to these terrorist groups.
It’s a weird way to run a country but folks, this is the middle east, an area filled with vast oil deposits. The oil below the sands of the mideast technically belongs to the peoples of the countries on top but why share when you can keep all the money for yourself?
Thus the House of Saud, a bunch of descendants of matings of camels and desert nomads, control the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. The Mullahs control the oil wealth of Iran. Saddam Hussein once controlled the oil wealth of Iraq before America took this guy down then he was hung by his own people, although the liberals love Saddam way more than the Iraqis ever did.
In South America, Hugo Chavez controls the oil wealth of Venezuela so this sort of thing is not occurring only in the Mideast. Well damn, just follow the money.
Never mind the vaunted Muslim religion and its billions of devoted followers. The controllers of the oil wealth exploit this religion to control the people. Beat any of your four wives up at night, make them wear a burqua to cover same in the daytime and hey, the men and their rage at high unemployment, lack of personal growth, denial of basic freedoms…well you get over it quicker.
Find a common enemy and again, it becomes easier to control the populace, a populace of normal human beings yearning for freedom just like every American granted same from birth. Enter Israel.
Palestine is a little country of pretty much nothing that the Arabs managed to put next to Israel just to keep an eye on things. None of the nearby Arab countries would allow entrance of the so-called Palestinians into their own countries as that is not the purpose of these people. Their purpose is to keep attacking Israel, to live in hovels of endless poverty, to be one big PR joke on the rest of the world. Consider that Palestine has been under control of the UN for yea these past 20 plus years and this with BILLIONS thrown at it by America and the UN.
No one really wants Palestinians to be a free and vibrant people. Except maybe Israel and there’s the irony of it all.
So send in Hamas, which is controlled by Iran, another theocracy sitting on vast pools of oil which few benefit from. Those controlling the oil wealth don’t want to give it up. It’s not rocket science.
So Hamas for the past six months of so just willy-nilly lobs rockets over to Israel from Gaza, a strip of land Israel gave back to the Palestinians but Israel doing good stuff is not what the Arab oil barons want to be widely published. A year or so ago Hezbollah, this group controlled by Syria, was lobbing rockets over to Israel from Lebanon.
They don’t really want war with Israel. This whole wasteful and useless drama is orchestrated just to make tiny Israel angry and provoke them to fight back. Israel does not have any oil, it’s about the size of New Jersey and if left alone, wouldn’t bother the hair on a son of a camel’s head.
But they need that common enemy, folks, keep this in mind.
So after endless months of rockets raining down on its citizenry, Israel finally decides to strike back. Which is exactly what Hezbollah and Hamas want, you must understand.
Then we go out to the people and shout from the rooftops that Israel is attacking and killing them. If the people have been raised in a culture of hatred and are restless anyway, they believe the story, they want Israel blown off the planet, they direct their hatred from where it should be, specifically their own useless leaders, and direct it at Israel.
It’s a PR show, folks, much like Africa’s needless AIDS epidemic. It’s all to shame the world into giving money to big nothing leaders or to get the citizenry angry at a country that has never caused them any grief. Such as Israel.
So Israel finally had to fight back at Hamas, which lobs missiles from schools and mosques and hides behind women and children. When Israel, in desperation, has to finally bomb the schools from whence the missiles that kill its own citizenry come, well right there we have a PR bonanza.
The paid off, corrupt and dishonest UN can then have mighty meetings. Righteous nothings can pontificate and wail against Israel, which would murder innocent Palestinian women and children.
Hamas, meanwhile, provides such as trash pickup, medical aid, and certain government duties for Palestine. Although dear Lord enough money’s been thrown at Palestine over the years you’d think they’d have built a whole new country by now. But the UN is in charge of all this so right there is who controls the money. Who controls the money gets most of the money. Again, follow the money.
So what’s my solution to put an end to this everlasting charade which has gotten so damn old?
Have an American President, one with gonads and courage, stand up on the world stage and reveal pretty much all I’ve said above. Boom. Just like that. Just like Ronald Reagan said to tear down the wall.
And I’m not casting aspersions at either Republican or Democrat Presidents. Bush didn’t do it. Although Bush did, with a vote of 99-1 approval by the House of Lords here known as the Senate, invade Iraq. Now you’d think Saddam Hussein his fine self should have been left in power and all those Lords who voted for the war, well damn you’d think every one of them was an idiot such is how the very dumb Dubya Bush fooled them all. Including Hillary, our soon to be Secretary of State, was also so fooled by Dubya.
Clinton didn’t do it. Carter was in their back pocket. Bush the first chickened out of getting rid of Saddam with the Gulf War when he had the chance.
Obama, well I doubt he’ll do it.
It takes courage and a need to convince the American populace.
But one speech, right from the Oval office, telling what’s REALLY going on in the Mideast…it would end it all.
But it will take courage.
Maybe someday.
Shopping in the Wholesale Houses
Civilization, it would seem, has come to the swamps of Delaware. Let us get a Petsmart (for what makes them think we can’t have pets in a swamp?) and we’ll be right up there as cool and modern, here in the once wild and unwooly southernmost regions of Delaware.
A BJ’s wholesale house opened up in Delaware’s small town of Millsborough. This township is about 15 miles from me, about 10 miles from the Merryland state line. I speculate that this is the reason why such a place opened in Millsborough for this is a place not known anywhere except for maybe, eh, Millsborough.
Merryland’s Governor very wisely, heh, raised that state’s sales tax to 6% and I think Millsborough anticipates disenchanted Merrylanders riding over the state to Delaware, which has NO sales tax, folks.
When I lived up Baltimore way I used to love to shop at a big warehouse known as The Price Club. At that time I was married to a fellow who had two teenagers and my daughter was about eight. That husband was a big guy who liked food.
Now it’s just me and current husband of these past 20 years. My daughter is grown and on her own. Current husband is a little guy.
Obviously it’s not the same thing.
Smallish husband does quite like Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes so above, a box of the latter that is as big as a small washing machine. Husband does have a big bowl of cereal every morning and I go through huge boxes of corn flakes once every two weeks or so.
Boom, big, big box of Frosted Flakes which I will help him eat.
The strategy for shopping at these big warehouses, which does require an annual membership fee keep in mind, is to purchase items that you use a lot of. And unless you have a huge family, you only want to buy those items that aren’t perishable. That big box of Frosted Flakes will not go bad before husband and I eat it up. Then I shall buy an equally big box of corn flakes.
I wasn’t willing to pay the current membership fee, which per my research was, at the time of my shopping, $35 for 15 months. The checkout girl told me that the membership fee was due to go up to $45 for a year. You can shop at BJ’s without a membership card but you will pay a surcharge of 15% above your purchase price.
It wasn’t that I was adamantly against paying the annual fee. It was just that I pondered if husband and I would benefit from any savings at all. Almost every week I shop at Walmart, here in Delaware with NO sales tax did I mention? It takes a lot to beat Walmart prices, especially with husband and my smallish grocery costs.
Husband and I DO, however, as most folks, use laundry and cleaning goods. We have the market cornered on paper eating supplies and things that make your house smell good. We eat almost everything on paper plates and bowls. The two of us are at the break even point what with the cost of dishwashing almost equal to the price of medium quality but inexpensive paper goods. With a house full of pets, any smell good stuff is usually on our grocery list.
I drink Diet sodas and these last forever with no bother. Toilet paper, paper towels and laundry supplies…all can be purchased in large quantities and providing there’s storage space, purchasing in large amounts is usually the cheapest way.
In the mail, boom, comes a coupon which allows me to shop, for one day, at BJ’s Wholesale store, with no bother of paying a membership for a year and for that one day, with only a 5% surcharge.
Well how could I pass this up?
Let’s for the moment not laugh at the fact that on the same day Kelloggs recalled the damn things for salmonella I bought a pack of 45 packs of Austin’s peanut butter crackers. Well hell, granddaughter loves these things, I’ve always liked them and hey, $5.19 for 45 packs when they cost almost a buck a pack individually, this is a savings of almost a thousand percent, just pulling a number out of the air.
Kelloggs is offering refunds for those of us stuck with all these packs of peanut butter crackers. I have the sales receipt for will they think I’m making up this huge pack of 45 of the things?
Once upon a time I used to be an accountant. Assuming a surcharge of 15% and an annual membership fee (for 15 months…) of $35, if one were to spend $233.33 on a trip, it would even out to buy a 15 month membership fee. Anything beyond spending $233.33 would result in a savings with the surcharge versus the membership fee.
I spent about $292.00. 15% of this would have been about $43.80. My surcharge, with my coupon, was $13 and change. So I saved about $22 bucks if I would have had to pay the $35 membership fee. I saved about $30 if I didn’t have the coupon and had to pay the full 15% surcharge.
Hey, it was a good marketing technique.
I am currently considering whether to go ahead and sign up for $35, or maybe $45 bucks if the price goes up. If I managed to spend almost $300 on my first trip, well I figure a couple of trips a year I’d be over that equalizing amount to warrant paying the membership fee.
But is it cheaper than Walmart?
Hey, I’m still working on this.
For that almost three hundred dollars I got 30 rolls of septic safe toilet paper, those salmonella-tainted Austin crackers for which I intend to get a refund, three huge jars of spaghetti sauce, about fifty containers of oodles of noodles, a case of Diet Pepsi…60 cans I believe, a bunch of canned goods, two 250-ft rolls of aluminum foil, a bag of 90 Glad flex-force bags and some regular groceries.
Yes this BJ’s Wholesale Club has a bakery, a meat department, a produce department. I originally thought I would have to shop in two stores, one for what I knew would be big purchase items and another for the various, well food items, that I buy every week. I spend on average about $140 a week for groceries at Walmart. This includes our food supplies as well as cleaning supplies and other froufrou. So I spent about $145 more at BJ’s this week beyond my normal weekly grocery trip.
I’m now compiling a list of items that would be appropriate to purchase at the wholesale house. I figure paper goods of all kinds, cleaning supplies, laundry goods. As it occurs to me I mark it down. Then I will price these things at Walmart and at BJ’s.
I’ll get back to you.
Bush’s Last Press Conference
Lookit, I know a lot of people in this country don’t like George Dubya Bush. There’s the kooks, and there’s plenty of them afflicted with what is popularly called BDS, or Bush Derangement Syndrome. I don’t especially like Barack Hussein Obama and I really didn’t like Bill Clinton. But I never hated them with the very unhealthy vehemence that those with BDS despised George Dubya.
At worst Dubya might be described as a lovable doofus. At best he was the President at the time of the largest attack on this country’s mainland and we haven’t been attacked again on his watch, a considerable accomplishment despite those who are too small to give him his due.
But those journalists at Bush’s last press conference are living examples of all that is wrong about journalism in this country.
Because why the hell ask the man, at this last time they will have to face him who they so hate, to list his mistakes? I wouldn’t ask either Obama or Bill Clinton such a question on such an occasion and again, I don’t like either one of them.
It’s just plain mean. Couldn’t they have been just a little gracious? I mean the man’s going home to Texas. He’ll be out of their ever loving hair, never to shadow their handsome and beautiful selves again. Couldn’t, just once, they lob a few softball questions the man’s way?
Mean people…I don’t like them a bit.
Hillary’s Secretary of State Committee Hearings
Chuck Shumer hates Hillary Clinton. It’s a known fact and I don’t much blame him. Here he’d been New York’s loyal senator for yea many years and along comes the First damn Lady for God’s sake and becomes the junior senator of New York. She overshadowed Shumer so much the man almost couldn’t find the TV cameras he so loves.
Shumer was just one of many Lords in America’s House of Lords who sang Hillary’s praises to high heavens one would think she was a combination of Mother Theresa, Princess Diana and Ghandi.
It was the most unbelievable kick off to the most unbelievable choice for Secretary of State in this nation’s history.
Thomas Jefferson, this country’s first Secretary of State, has got to be turning over in his grave.
Lucy and the Dangerous Bedspread
Do not, whatever you do, discount Lucy’s fear of the new bedspread. She still gingerly walks past the new HDTV given to husband on Christmas 2007!
This year there’s a new bedspread on husband’s bed and Lucy the calico is having none of it.
We are almost at the end of January and since the day after Christmas through this writing Lucy has refused, REFUSED I tell you, to place herself in the danger of being swallowed alive by a new bedspread that she knows is really a snake laid out and spread wide.
All of the other cats, three, are just fine with the new bedspread. They all, in fact, were eager to get on it and test it by doing what cats do best, which is sleeping.
Lucy? Not going to happen.
From time to time I will see her walking cautiously around the bed, her head raised, her nose sniffing. She’s curious but she knows that someday we all might be dead whereas she will live on.
All because she was smart enough not to trust the bear/snake/coyote disguised as an innocent bedspread.
American Idol 2009 Begins
I now have a separate American Idol Blog HERE.
For I quite enjoy watching American Idol and I apologize to no one. I pay attention to world events. I will even watch all the inauguration stuff and cable news plays upon my TV almost 24/7. By me American Idol is one of the most fair ways to choose a celebrity. The contenders certainly must have talent, persona and a special something that appeals to the American public.
Last year I followed American Idol on this Blog up to almost the winner David Cook was announced. Then my heart acted up and guess where I watched the final announcement of the winner? From a hospital bed in my private room, my body drugged up for the pain and the nurses adjusting my TV and chit-chatting with me about the various contenders, their thoughts and opinions. It was great, actually.
For everyone follows American Idol in some form or fashion, even if they won’t admit it.
The Gubmint To the Rescue-“Miracle on the Hudson”
A well-trained pilot loses both engines of his plane from a bird strike. He’s spent his life doing what he does best, in the American way. He lands the crippled plane in the Hudson River of all places. No civilians on the land below were endangered by this strategy.
The passengers mostly sit mute and shocked. Their exit was orderly. There was some panic but a few of the more pragmatic took control and commanded women and children will go first.
Ferry boat drivers see the plane in the river. They think they’ve lost their last brain cell but with an instinct they cannot deny, they speed up their boats and rescue the passengers, all standing scared and shivering on the plane’s wing.
That experienced pilot walks the aisles of his craft not once, but twice. He peers under seats to determine if anyone is left behind. He exits his craft last, embarks on a rescuing ferry, and is whisked off to be grilled and humiliated by the gubmint.
So okay…FIRST…ladies and gems, write this down. THE GUBMINT DID NOT RESCUE A DAMN SOUL IN THIS EVENT. There were no lazy welfare recipients sitting on roofs awaiting rescue by the federal government for their lack of common sense to get out of the way of a hurricane. A hurricane coming on with over five days warning, let me remind.
Nope. That airplane that landed in the Hudson River had only a few minutes advance notice. The pilot had a split second to decide: the river or that landing strip over yonder. Those Ferry boat operators, they knew their lying eyeballs showed an airplane floating in the river. They did not call a single soul for advice. They did not stop to consider such as lawsuits. They simply gunned up their engines and went out to pick up some passengers. The passengers did not have gubmint leaders telling them to go to the nearest superdome. Their gubmint leaders did not leave rescue boats on school parking lots while they had to remain on the wings of a sinking airplane awaiting the national guard to do what their local gubmint should have done.
Well damn. Just damn.
AMERICANS SURVIVING ON THEIR OWN! Imagine that.
Not that the gubmint didn’t get involved. Dear Lord, the gubmint must justify its existence, go on. So they take this hero of a pilot and they demand THAT HE PEE IN A DAMN JAR!
The man save God knows how many lives if you factor in those who could have died had that plane landed on the ground in busy Manhattan. The gubmint, for thanks, hands him a jar and instructs him to pee in same.
Thank you Sully. Now be a good boy and pee in the jar.
So what happens if Sully FAILS this drug test? What if Sully smoke a joint three weeks ago at a New Year’s party? Marijuana shows up for a whole month after ingestion. What, the gubmint gonna fire the guy?
Okay, so I understand that it’s necessary to determine if those pilots were drugged up when they landed that plane. On some level, yeah, I get it.
It just seems like such a small, petty thing to do. It smacks of everything ugly and demeaning about Big Brother and bureaucrats who could never land a cripple plane in the Potomac doing what they do best, which is to wave the rules in their huge paperbound books under the noses of those they control.
If I were the bureaucrat told to get a sample of Sully’s pee that day I would have thrown that jar across the room and quit that awful life forever.
But that’s just me.
The 8th Season Begins
Last year, 2008-the 7th season on my main Blog, I religiously followed the American Idol reality series from beginning to end. I was so good about it that I regularly posted, right after the announcement, just who was eliminated. I was receiving thousands of hits.
By clicking on the above link, which brings up ALL of my 2008 American Idol posts, you will note that it suddenly stops, boom, on 4/30/08.
This is because on and all around that date I was in the hospital having my heart re-plumbed. In fact, I recall the evening that David Cook was announced as the winner. It was May 7th I believe. For my heart had been removed from its cavity on May 5th. Veins from my legs were taken and grafted onto the pathetic coronary arteries leading into my heart and the evening David Cook won the prize I was recovering from all this coronary plumbing work.
It was intriguing, however. A bevy of wonderful nurses surrounded my bed. Even through my drug haze I was excited that the finale was then upon. I’d eagerly told all my angels in nurse scrubs how I was a Blogger and how I’d been posting each week with my opinions, critiques and magnificent commentary.
So when the big moment finally arrived, a bunch of nurses came into my room. They got me the normal Diet Coke with a straw and a bunch of ice. We all chattered back and forth, this one shouting that David Archuletta was a shoo-in, or hey, that might have been me. The other one pooh-poohed…David Cook was the dream of the mavens while Archuletta appealed to the pre-teens.
It was fun, actually, although I knew I’d never be able to make those final two Blog posts and I smile as I look back and see how I boom, just left it empty. Well hell, on the day of that last post, indicating that I would post the results right after the announcement, I’d taken a stress test at the Cardiologist office. I had not the least suspicion that I had such clogged arteries but that very day I almost died in that Cardiologist’s office and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Then followed a week of tests and hospital stays and tears and shock. I will always remember David Cook as the American Idol winner who won two days after that monumental heart operation.
THIS year I hope to follow the contest through to the end without bother of such as quadruple coronary bypasses.
The season began on 1/13/09 in Phoenix, Arizona. The following night the judges, now FOUR of them, moved on to Kansas City.
The series began with a wonderful opening vignette. I saw Sanjaya, Fantasia, Jordin Sparks, Carrie Underwood, of course, Kelly Clarkson, and naturally, David Cook, the current champion of American Idol.
This early in the year the shows are mostly teasers; snippets and bits of the good, bad and ugly as a start to gather the audience that would increase to the millions by the May finale.
One sign that the producers consider a contender quite seriously so early in the series is how much time they spend on a contender. Which does not mean this is always the case as often the show will concentrate as much as 15 minutes on a contender, showing vignettes of the contender in their home and their element and that contender will go on to be eliminated at the first tryout. I think this is also a way of building suspense. For as I watch John-Bob lob forkfuls of hay on the family farm I must wonder if he can sing and/or how well he can sing. Sometimes he’s really bad, sometimes fair to middling, sometimes he’s great.
Emily Wynne-Hughes was a contender at the Phoenix tryouts. She’s a member of an all-girl band and is covered with tattoos. She is the first contender that I honed in on as one likely to end up in the top ten.
Besides the photo montages above with a few other hopefuls I noted, below two remixes of the good and next, the bad.
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