Land of Broken Dreams

No, the title is not original, but as I sit here late on a Friday evening, I think there little more appropriate.

I am raising 4 children with my wife. I work a job. I give to my community and care to help to raise, not only my children, but those of my friends and neighbors with the time I have. I coach. Not just the sports, but lessons often learned in playing those sports. Those lessons which were handed down to me about life and how to live it, how to honour,  and to honour in teaching that which was taught to me by my parents and their friends, those very tenants of a "right way of life" to my children and their friends. And, as such, I seek to honour my parents, grandparent and all those who came before me and who knew right from wrong and sought to instill it in me as they sought to instill in me the importance of the word honour.

Yet no matter how hard I try, today and really of late and most recent memory, I find the few of us who stand at the walls of the gate which guards decency, merit and right to be a dwindling honor guard, reduced by apathy and exhaustion and the prospect of an unjust defeat at the hands of the vicious horde of ego, greed and selfishness. I look across the ramparts (please, forgive the garrison's analogy but I am ever more convinced it is a war, if not a losing war, which we wage to try to find some light or glimpse of hope) and I see a growing despair in our shrinking ranks and closing enemies. I vainly seem to seek someplace or strategy from which we can snatch back our world, our lives, our communities from those who would seek to subvert all that made this world, and this country, what it was: a place where respect, hard work and courtesy enabled all to rise from slave and serf to king.

Whether it is the ooze which seeps from our media or the venom of our self-promoting politicians, somewhere we have all gotten it very wrong. Shame on us. We allow individuals with no more depth and complexity than an amoeba to roam and rule the halls of our government, subverting the people's voice with their own piped-in self-delusions of importance. We allow slackers and miscreants, who by nature assume that all should be given and not worked for, a spotlight, when instead we should use the light of truth and real sacrifice to shine upon them to send the scurrying like the parasites they are back into the shadows. We allow people into our towns and neighborhoods who seek to live according to their own selfish needs. Their mantra is the underlying belief that they are the only and most important planets in their solar systems, when it should be "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

It is late, and I am tired and my exhaustion is not merely that of lack of sleep but of broken promises, of living in a world where a man's word is no longer his bond, where "please" and "thank you", those very basic building blocks of civility, have disappeared from most corners, allowing the evil in words like "entitled" and "demanded" to envelop most of what we see every day.

I wonder what our children will say on that day, years from now, when what was good on this planet is a relic as dusty and unremembered as a tablet of an ancient civilization, cast in the corner of some museum as a curiosity with no real meaning.

I am not a religious man. I am a faithful man. I know that I live - I should say I try to live, as I fail, as we all do, no matter how hard I try as is the nature of being human, but also find some measure of success in realizing my failures and seeking to rectify them and not repeat them - by a code. It is a simple code and one that we have heard since someone was hear on earth to speak it.

I honour my parents and my ancestors, my family and friends. I seek to be the model I want my children to see and become, as I saw in my parents and have tried to become in their example. I understand the value of friendship and seek to always apply the maximum amount of time and energy I can to ensure that those bonds of more than just acquaintance count for what they are: two-way bridges and bonds of shared experience and joy. I seek to always tell the truth, to spare the feelings of others and to understand that a hard day's work is reward in itself in the feeling achieved of accomplishment, satisfaction and pride (as I often tell my son, and find myself thinking of the advice I am giving in tasks I do: "If you are going to do a job, do it well").                                                                                                              

With all of this in mind, and seeking to gain some sway of momentum back in the battle we wage every day against the dark which seems determined to envelop this world of our, this is my manifesto, my rallying "Magna Carta", my "Declaration of Independence". It may start small, but in these little actions, the swell may rise as if a tidal wave in grace, honor, and civility that may turn the tide back our way.

Say "please" and "thank you" with everything you do and receive.
Hold a door for a lady
Rise when a woman enters a room
Shake hands firmly and make eye contact
Lend a hand even when you don't have one to give
Think of others before yourself
Take time to write a note of thanks, in penmanship, and, in such, show real thanks in your efforts
Respect your elders
Read more
Watch more, speak less
Have faith in your God, your friends and your neighbors and demand of them exactly what you demand of yourself
And remember, if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.

"In the Course of Human Events, We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident"

-It is time to throw off the shackles of this sham of a current government. These men and women and Washington do not represent "We the People" but themselves and their own ways and means. They sit in complicit gridlock, shaking sticks of ideology at each other as a means for justifying their complete intransigence. They define greed and sloth, avarice and pettiness. To use the old adage, they are "not worth the salt they are made of" and certainly not the value of our hard earned vote.

-When will we, as a nation, realize that our differences are less than our commonalities? No one is arguing for socialism, but clearly blurred have been the lines of fairness where an hour worked, earns an hour's wage. Too many assume, as has been nurtured by the "lifers" in D.C. and other capitols, that wage and benefit is a right, nay a guarantee, stapled, not even to citizenship, but mere presence within our borders. "Taxation without representation", should never have become representation without contribution through taxation. 

-When do we band together to throw out the savagely self-aggrandizers who claim to represent us while lining their own pockets with crooked contracts and backroom dealings? Why do we spend so much time shouting at each other in support of individuals who care nothing for us, save our ability to keep them ensconced in the hollow halls of our democracy? Have we not learned from the past?  

-"The Declaration of Independence" reminds us that our revolution was not a one time event. It states: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government". Furthermore, our founding document states: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government".

-Let us not pick at the scab of Republican or Democrat. Let us just recognize the whole wound that festers under their incompetent rule. Let us amputate the gangrene. Let us send a message that they are subservient to "We the People" and not the other way around. If they choose to serve, they do so at our pleasure and not for theirs. And, let us not, when they stray, allow them a long rope; but rather demand they be hanged as we would hang those within our communities who violate our laws and sacred trusts.

-Mediocrity is unacceptable. It is time to stop allowing it to pervade all aspects of our lives as an acknowledgment of futility in changing the course.  

-It is time to demand change. It is time for "We the People" to take back our rights and thus our Government to ensure it serves us - "The People".

friends and Enemies

-As we wake up this week to the fact that enemy number one, Osama Bin Liner, was living in the relative lap of luxury (see the Bloomberg story yesterday) in Abbotabad (should probably be called Headinthesandabad or Stabinthebackabad), a Pakistani Army garrison town which is home to the West Point of Pakistan (though, given their army's performance that is a huge insult to West Point and our cadets). Osama was drinking Coke and Pepsi (though we don't know which he preferred), shopped for by a few guys who often showed up to the local grocery mart in a minivan, taking quantities for some 10 people. Shopping for 10 would not be out of the question in Pakistan - any more than it would be here in the US - save for the fact that the goods being purchased were largely the international products which command a hefty premium. In a country in which the average per capita income is $1027, this should have raised at least a few "red flags".

-The fact that Osama was also living in the largest "villa" in the area (a 1.5 acre estate with high walls and security fences) right under the nose of a Pakistani authority which claimed no knowledge of his whereabouts is ridiculous (the villa was seemingly purpose built in 2005, implying that Osama, having escaped a cave in the Tora Bora mountains, has been sunning himself for some 6 years). That, or it points to the complete incompetence of a national institution which is so unconcerned with its own security that it would allow the mastermind of terrorist activities to live within spitting distance of its major military training ground. Then again, many have argued that Osama, in his ability to maintain hidden, has benefitted from illicit aid of both the ISS (The Pakistani version of the CIA) and the Pakistani military. 

-Now that we have executed this blight (an interesting outcome as he was not the head of a nation and thus exempt from the Nixon era operative that disavowed our ability to assassinate state heads), the question clearly becomes what do we do with the Pakistanis. Not all Pakistanis can be painted with the same brush, though it is easy to question their true commitment to the "war on terror" and their role to us as an ally. Do we ostracize them, cut off aid and add them to the "axis of evil"? Do we make unrealistic demands of a government and regime which has had a spotty record of democracy? Do the Pakistanis care what we demand or do? As with the children's "Magic 8 ball", the answer would seem to be: "All Signs Appear to Be No".   

-That said, they, as a sovereign nation, do have to deal with significant internal issues which require a deft touch in maintaining stability. They have a significant radical Muslim population which disagrees with any alignment with the "Great Satan" and quite frankly is of the ilk of returning the national social policy back to the stone age, denying women the right to education among other more draconian social and criminal philosophies. They have regions, bordering Afghanistan (Waziristan, for example) which are as lawless as the Wild West of the mid-to-late 18th century and largely off limits to any federal administration (they are in all fact called autonomous zones). To antagonize any of these radical elements too much could result in a dissolution of a democratic regime (however loose the use of democratic may be in the Pakistani case) into some sort of chaotic or evil empire which could threaten that corner of the world, not to mention the whole of the world, with the exportation or use of its nuclear weapons. 

-Osama is D-E-A-D, either that or living in one of the many foreclosed condos in some small hamlet outside Las Vegas in the witness protection program, having actually been captured and convinced to roll on all his other plastic explosive wearing colleagues (if you are true "Smoking Gun" conspiratist, you would add his killing to the fact that we never landed men on the moon; that Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are alive and living on some commune in Goa or northern Australia; and that the Beatles were, in fact, Satan worshippers and when playing their records backward they were trying to send dark messages). Whatever the case, as simplified as this analysis is, the application of Sun-Tzu's "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" is certainly the right path for US-Pakistani relations going forward. 

-Not all Pakistanis are evil America-haters, and our ability to exercise some influence among the enlightened members of that society should be considered at every turn. That is not to say that we should bend at all when complained to about guided drone missile forays within their national borders. Nor should we cease our decision to operate covertly or overtly when necessary to achieve a national or global goal in eliminating the "world's most wanted" (Message to one Egyptian Doctor: your time is coming, my friend. Be ready for a group of well trained, well conditioned gentlemen in camo to pay you a "house call"). We should embrace Pakistan with all the sincerity of Shirley MacLain in "Steel Magnolias": full of syrupy charm and drawl, masterfully masking a string of venom. 

-We don't need to be nice. We just need to be smart.  

Wait for What

-Early spring nights are good nights. You have a few friends over whom you feel you have not seen since you crawled into the cave that is winter, you stand around a grill, you yell at the moon in unison about the ills of the world, or at least your corner of it, and you are thankful for the arrival of better weather and easier times.
-Last night, I stood around a fire pit, flipping burgers and drinking a few of Kentucky's bottled best with a couple of really good friends. They are both neighbors and members of my extended family, and more importantly, as it applies to this discussion, active members of our community here in Camelot.
-Between the 3 of us, we have 10 children varying an ages from 10 to 3. We are busy with school, sports, and the lunacy which can be a small village, its politics and gossip. Last night we enjoyed, pondered and berated all that these topics had to offer.
-As it is imminent, and of great importance, our conversation managed to make its way to the referendum on sidewalks. Now, we have discussed this topic ad nausea (though my feelings are no less passionate), but a very good point of the true issue at hand, not really discussed much in this battle between good and evil here, was raised last night. In sending the town's plan back for a re vote, we are opening up ourselves to a reconsideration of everything we, as a town, decide to do.
-One letter writer to the "Advertiser", this week, admittedly not in discussion about the referendum but rather as regards the derelict red brick eyesore at Mead Park, recommended that one course of action, preferred by this writer, would be, instead of tearing down the building as is finally to be done, for the decision to be held, to wait for a different town government to be elected to handle the matter differently (the writer did not like the fact that the dilapidated red brick nothing was to be torn down and instead thought it should be resurrected into some Shangr-i-la, as if putting lipstick on the proverbial pig would not longer make it a pig).
-Since when do we get to override the mandate of the majority to ensure our own selfish, and generally half-assed and whimsical, desires? The point of majority rules is that it speaks the mind of the majority.
-I have to endure the reign of this current flea-bitten regime of half wits. I did not vote for them (before, you roll your eyes, remember, if you read this with an frequency, you know I think we replaced one group of self-centered knuckle-draggers with yet another, and am seriously trying to figure out how to raise Teddy R from the grave amid his everlasting dreams of the charge up San Juan Hill). That said I must endure this administration, and unlike Prius-driving, cause "du jouring" morons like Baldwin and Hoffman, I do not intend to flee the country for four years to a self-imposed political exile (a promise they never, unfortunately, made good on despite my promises of free airfare - one way, of course).
-What this scribe of such supreme lack of intelligence to the "Advertiser" pointed out, and left me with, was a feeling that the view of the majority should not prevail. Time, in this illiterate's mind, should be used to wait out all things and life should be mothballed (a smell I am sure that permeates this writer's life and house) into a closet somewhere until the plan for town or life or community meets with each individuals (or, in this case, this former Larchmont - please fell free to move back - denizen's) desires.
-Damned the voice of the rest of us. Let chaos ensue, time stand still and our town becomes encrypted in a sarcophagus of our own inaction.
-I will be the first to express my disappointment should the "Yes" vote win this week's referendum, but I will live with the vote. I will not, however, allow this town to submit to the vagaries of a referendum on every decision made. I'll be damned if I will stand by idly on that front, and so I have a suggestion, nay a solution, for both the writer of the dribble to the "Advertiser" this week, and to the "Yes" vote party: time capsules.  Let us pack you and your "frozen in time" moments up in a box. We can bury you down in the cemetery (hopefully, reachable by a sidewalk at that point) and from time to time, when we want to see what true folly is all about, or just to muse about how small minded and selfish people can be, we can dig you out and parade you in front of school-aged kids like the old "Car55" movie reels of car crashes and resulting dismemberment, showing those children a true example of what happens when we, as a town, allow a small group of truly challenged people, to hijack the process of democracy and community.

Garbage Patch

-As we approach the referendum date, April 27th, I thought I would take a moment to see exactly how high I could force my blood pressure by reading the "opinion" section of the "New Canaan Patch". I think there are a number of other descriptive words which could be used to replace the noun "Patch" in the title of this less than even-handed rag.

-The reporting and prominence of the "Yes" camp (as relates to the sidewalks/no sidewalks referendum) on the pages of the "Patch" give clear definition to the editorial stand, which is fine. It is fortunately not a subscription service, for if it was I would certainly not pick up a penny in an attempt to save for my daily access. 

-That said, part of the problem, as I see it, is that the "No" camp, of which I am a member, has allowed the "Yes" camp to run roughshod over the airwaves with their half-truths and rabble rousing. They are permitted, largely unchecked, to direct false statements and vitriolic froth at the people, as represented by the "No" camp, who truly care about New Canaan (the fact that the referendum was worded so poorly as to make "Yes" a vote to send the current plan back for a redrawing is, well, baffling, but then most of current politics is) . 

-The "Yes's" are lazy, ne'er-do-wells, who have been many of the same nitwits behind the rejection of the plans for a hockey rink as well as attempts to save a dilapidated red brick building at Mead Park under the guise of "historical preservation". These are the same people who contribute to our town only if it serves there direct purposes and needs. They do not understand the nature and necessity of rational discourse, preferring in their own deluded minds to steamroll all others in pursuit of their singularly narrow-minded and short-sighted goals. 

-Should we be surprised? Well, hell yes. I though those folks lived in towns like Greenwich. 

-Why don't we ask the real questions here? What is the "Yes" vote really all about? They want their street paved (the founders of the CRS are "Main Streeters" who aim to gain no matter what here, when their road is paved as is scheduled in the current plan). What they have not relayed to their lemming followers is that the elimination of the sidewalks in the current plan only gets one-half mile of additional road paved.

-More interestingly, as we question real motivation, why don't we also ask the "Yes" camp how many have fences and walls which would need to be moved as they are on town easement, should the sidewalks be approved?

-Seems to me that those who have so vociferously screamed at the moon here are truly among the lowest common denominator in our town. If we do not band together to hold the line, then we get what we deserve.   

-Please read this anonymous (unless you give the individual credit for his/her penname: "NC Skeptic") posting on the "Patch":

 

NC Skeptic

7:55am on Tuesday, April 19, 2011

This is the best the pro-sidewalk group can do? Lame.

We're supposed to delay re-paving Main Street and pay $600k for new sidewalks on lower Main (where there's little foot traffic) because some eight-year-old, "state-required" plan says they should go there?
Please. The argument for sidewalks is weaker than I thought.
In fact, this is a costly scheme cooked up by a handful of politically connected families who want all of us to pay for new sidewalks that will benefit them and only them. Vote YES on April 27.


-All I will conclude with here, is that classic quote attributed to Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".

 

Plane of Thought

You will forgive my choppy stream of thought as I pound out a few lines between cart service and yet another "Home and Garden" magazine. Yes, I read those slick paged editions of homes and decor that always leave me wondering: does anyone actually live there or are these just show home, tv sets, fantasy models. I actually got to flip through one today which I rather enjoyed. Not a home or garden but a stylish read, one I grew up with and am glad to rediscover: "Town & Country".
I am biased. The new editor is a good friend and a man who truly oozes style. Being somewhat of a strange bird myself, I enjoy when we get together with his wife and him as I can talk shop, his sho, not mine. He knows fashion, art, and yet is a good old Texas boy who can talk a hunt or sport. When he took the job I mentioned that "Town & Country" was a staple on my prent's coffee table and I hoped, and had full confidence, his touch would return it's allure to mine.
I wish him well, and all the success in the world.
So, as usual, my flight was delayed. Not the biggest problem in the world, but in three weeks of flying, I have yet to have a flight hit the on time mark. Thanks Delta.

March into April Madness

-First, how about Obama, amidst signs of the apocalypse, deciding timing was right for him to announce the launch of his campaign for re-election in 2012. Hey, buddy, how about you focus on a few of the problems we have now and try concluding some of your, as yet unfinished, works of art from this term before you sign up for next term.

I mean, really? How arrogant is this guy. Let's take a check list of things he has really been absent on: 1) The civil War in Libya, 2) Preparations for drawdown in Afghanistan and its implications especially given the continued chaos there, 3) Nuclear disaster in Japan and US aid and relief efforts - not to mention the environmental impact for our West Coast, 4) The budget impasse, 5) Entitlements, 6) Charlie Sheen's self-destructive behavior. Ok, maybe the first 5 are really asking too much from the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania, but you would think, given his love of sport and celebrity, that he would actually have an opinion and a firm plan for intervention with Charlie.

-Second, I have always screamed that moderate Muslims must take back their religion from the zealots, and the vocal minority, who debase the faith globally. So who is this clown in Florida: Pastor Terry Jones who paints Christianity in such a similar bad light. Really? Where did this guy get ordained at the 1800's church of mutton-chopped biker bars (get a load of him in his photos)? It is not bad enough he looks like a clown with a mustache out of a bad 1960's western, but then in his burning of Islam's sacred book. he has invited the same radical minority issues that we charge Islam extremists with: inciting hatred and terror while hijacking a perfectly good religion and belief system for many.

Pastor Jones was quoted as saying: 'We had a  court process. We tried to set it up as fair as possible, which you can imagine, of course, is very difficult". Of course it was difficult. First of all, you moron, learn to speak English properly. "Fair" is an adverb, not an adjective, so it is "fairly". That said, haven't you seen "Footloose"? We all wind up dancing in the end, having seen the error of our ways. Get some religion yourself, you muppet.

Aside from the cell in Guantanamo that you should be sent to (note: your cellmates will love you), I can only hope that the vision of hell, as portrayed by the likes of Dante, is really just a daycare center and you burn and burn and burn - like my grandmother's pot roast.

What will this beloved pastor do next, burn his bra? 

-Third, why are U.S. domestic airlines all so pathetic? A combined 4 hours worth of delays this weekend in a flight down and back to Atlanta just highlighted the incompetence or the apathy we suffer these days. The airlines, who were much in the news this weekend after the attempt to open the sunroof on a Southwest Air jet and a Continental Airliner missing the end of the driveway, clearly could care less about their passengers, who, less we forget, bailed them out the last time they overbought aircraft and kowtowed to their unions, creating leverage which was unsustainable. Then again, airlines are the new greyhound buses and no matter what you pay, you might as well stay home.  

Liar, Liar...Fences on Fire

I'd like to share a two minute rant about a group in my town calling themselves CRS (Citizens for Responsible Spending). What they should be called is NC NIMBY's (New Canaan Not in By Backyarders). At issue is the town's plan to add sidewalks - a valid, needed and responsible plan which promotes both safety and more walking (and thus exercise and community). What it has become is an issue for a group of selfish, self serving individuals who built fences on what is technically town property and don't want to move their fences, which should never have been built (in case you missed the logic). I don't like liars who hide behind causes that are made up, or behind fences which don't belong. Let's take off the kid gloves. There are too many things in this world worth actually expending energy and time. This ain't one. CRS, go jump in the lake we just dredged. It should be deep enough.

Meltdown

-The obvious lead statement here is that we all hope that a meltdown is averted and everyone possible finds safety and shelter during the turmoil of trying to contain the damage at the 6 reactors near Sendai, Japan. 

-The next obvious statement, is why the heck did they build them on top of a known fault, by the ocean, with back up diesel generators positioned in  a basement prone to flooding in the case of tidal overflow?  Not to mention tsunami (a Japanese word, by the way). 

-Japan is a nation perched on what is largely considered the most volatile edge of the "Ring of Fire" a chain of tectonic plates, volcanoes and other unsettled geological issues. To build a power plant focused on a highly unstable energy source on top of this powder keg must seem a bit stupid, and not just with hindsight. 

-What child would build a house of Lego or Lincoln logs on a 3 legged table? 

-That we are now gleaning reports from former nuclear regulatory and construction officials in Japan that accidents have been covered up for years and faults in process or construction papered over, only adds insult to injury as the world sits on the edge of its chair waiting to see the out come of the "will they, won't they" end the crisis. That the regulatory body in Japan's nuclear industry is manned by the same utilities which it serves is at best a conflict of interest, at worst criminal. 

-If they are unable to contain this disaster imagine the consequences. What will the tourism board of Japan use as their new slogan: "Our LCD screens light up on their own" or "We and our watches both glow in the dark"? How short sighted has this whole process been?

-We won't bother to worry about the mercury in our tuna any more but rather the 3-headed ahi which roam a sea of monstrosities created by man's careless and haphazard management of nature's resources.

-Haven't we seen this movie. Doesn't it involve a giant lizard?

-Let's just all cross our collective fingers that somehow TEPCO manages to find the switch to begin pumping water back into the reactors before full meltdown occurs. We do not need a new generation of badly dubbed Godzilla movies.

To the Shores of Tripoli

-Do you know where that line comes from in the anthem long associated as being the theme song of the U.S. Marines? During what became known as "The First Barbary War" Stephen Decatur led U.S. ships into the harbour of Tripoli, on the north coast of Africa, to blow up the captured U.S. naval vessel [it is worth noting that the U.S. Navy was actually established in response to what was known as the Quasi War with France in 1798, peeled out of the Department of War] USS Philadelphia. The encounter led to US Marines storming the coastal city of Derna and raising the US flag for the first time on foreign soil. The Barbary Pirates sued for peace.
-The Barbary Pirates, also known as Corsairs, were pirates and privateers who operated with relative impunity from ports on the north coast of Africa, harassing major European trade flow through the Mediterranean. Descendants of the Berber tribes, from whence they got their name, they captured ships over some 300 years. Among the most famous were the Barbossa brothers (for anyone with kids who has seen Pirates of the Caribbean, these guys - synthesized into one - were transplanted to Johnny Depp's neighborhood through Hollywood's creative license). The Barbary Pirates reign of havoc peaked in the mid-1600s, as European navies were built, compelling peace forcefully on the Barbary States.
-Fast forward to yesterday's news headlines, in which 4 Americans, sailing off the eastern horn of Africa were hijacked on their boat, the Quest, and ultimately killed by Somali pirates. The 4, who had been sailing in a race in the Indian Ocean (while sailing around the world, toting bibles in a missionary program) were seized by pirates and ultimately killed after pirates had fired an rpg (rocket propelled grenade) at the US naval vessel trailing the hijacked boat. The pirates were then seized, 4 killed, and 12 taken into custody.
-Could this tragedy have been averted?
-There are currently some 600 odd "hostages" in land on the Somali coast - principals in a renewed spate of vessel hijacking going back 10 years now (a result of the anarchic situation in Somalia itself for the past 20 years - see Black Hawk Down). Civilized powers have had limited success in stemming the acts of violence and piracy by devoting a large number of naval vessels and man-hours to patrolling the transit lanes in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. That limited success is best illustrated by the 50 something reported attacks perpetrated by Somali pirates already in 2011 .
-Roaming and patrolling these waters in an attempt to snuff out all high sea crime is literally impossible. Ensuring the safety of all shipping traffic is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, which begs the question, why do we allow the pirates to continue to travel the seas as they do? Our navies behave like eunuchs hamstrung by sovereign courtesy which only runs one way. Somalia's first secretary to the United Nations, Omar Jamal, expressed his regret: "I do express a deep condolence to the families". Fat lot that does. He is a puppet figure for a puppet government which can no more move its limbs than those of a marionette without a handler. Mogadishu does not police itself, let alone, the 9mm people spread over some 246k square miles.
-Wouldn't it make more sense to once again engage the burning ship strategy of Stephen Decatur, though in analogy only this time? A united world under American, French, British, Chinese and Russian (etc) forces in coordination could torch the coast of Somalia, setting example for and fire to those would-be pirates. There would most certainly be sacrifice here but the continued lack of a real response only encourages these miscreants to continue their actions, risking further life and property.
-I think we have learned what appeasement results in. Pounding the table does nothing, as there is no one on the other side with the authority to listen. In this case force must meet force. It is time to resurrect the ghost of Stephen Decatur and burn the shores of Somalia, as we did on the Barbary Coast. "From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli".

Small, but Insignificant

-What does it say about your nation and its place on the world stage when protestors cannot even find a "square" to congregate in, but rather are forced to rally at a traffic roundabout. In Cairo as we have all witnessed in recent weeks, Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square and were ultimately successful in forcing their despot, Mubarak, to flee. Chinese protestors will, forever, be frozen in time (at least one solitary protestor) standing in front of the tanks, though ultimately unsuccessfully, in Tiananmen Square. Famously, in 1917, Russian workers massed in Red Square to overthrow the White Government, having previously joined in the overthrow earlier in the year to overthrow the Tsar.

-Many other squares have featured prominently in the history of revolution. Some post fact in memorial but many others as flashpoints for the movement from unrest to overthrow. The Plaza de la Revolution is Havana celebrates Castro's déposing of Batista's corrupt regime. Place de la Concorde is where the Republique was born and where quite a few lost their heads - literally. Azadi Square holds the infamy in our nation's history as the place where Iranian students began their march to the overthrow of our puppet, the Shah.
-These are a few examples of key real estate marking the beginning of struggles for causes, some right, some wrong. Whatever the case, the ability of masses to rally together and create a nucleus in a large open space is key. Momentum, as defined, is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. A square gives that mass the ability to create velocity, like a runway for a plane. The greater the mass, the greater the velocity, and as we know the lesser the ability to control the outcome.
-So, what happens in a country like Bahrain? The population is 1.2mm but 600,000 odd are non-nationals, in the former of foreign labourers. The country is the roughly 3.5X the size of Washington D.C. (385 square miles). It is, however, a very strategically important country. It has a causeway to Said Arabia and a southern port which is restricted as it holds the U.S. Middle East Operations Force, including the U.S. 5th Fleet. The country houses the headquarters of many global corporate behemoths and has generally been viewed to be stable ally to the west in the hostile see that is the Arab world.
-The dominos, though, have started to fall across the region. First Tunisia, now Egypt, next Yemen, next Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia? Once put into motion, the wave of discontent is difficult to halt, like a surging tide over a breakwater. Enough force behind it and the wave creates a flood.
-What happens though, if you are Bahrain? There is no significant square, as such. Protestors have this week massed at a traffic circle: The Pearl Roundabout. While their cause and belief may be earnest (the conflict is, in case you do not know, based on under representation of a Shiite majority in a country ruled by a Sunni King), how can we take a revolution seriously that begins at the junction of the King Faisal Highway, Suwaifiyah Avenue, Road No 5102 and the Sheik Khalifa Bin Salman Highway. 4 roads to nowhere (A Talking Head's song?). How much momentum can gather running around a circle?
-My 3 year old runs around in circles, fomenting all kinds of chaos, but in the end a swift spanking or a bottle of warm milk and he is down, peacefully. Good luck , Bahranians, or at least good night.

Bully: American Politics

-Is anyone else bored with the state of affairs? Democrats and Republicans, Blue Dogs, Tea Partyists. All flavors of the same tired partisan gridlock. While there are no less than 50 current "parties" in the United States, many of them are local parties focused on state or local issues. -Have you ever heard of the Alaskan Independence Party (clearly from Alaska), the Aloha Aina Party Hawaii), the Blue Enigma Party (Delaware), The Rent is Too Damn High Party (New York), the Marijuana Reform Party (no, not California for all of you who jumped to that conclusion, but rather New York), the United Citizens Party (South Carolina) and the Liberty Union Party (Vermont).
-I have no idea what any of the above mentioned parties stand for (well that is not 100% true: I can guess at what the "rent" and "marijuana" parties are fighting for, but have no idea what the Aloha Aina Party does, except maybe to lobby for Luau's). What I can tell you is that both the Republican and Democratic parties have become nothing more than a conglomeration of special interest representation. They do not represent "the people" or even the people in their respective parties or constituencies. They represent themselves. The machines of replenishment which refill their individual party coffers and ensure that their members get re-elected, which, in turn, further defends the status quo.
-From time to time a movement will erupt within a party which threatens to change the course of that party. Today, the Republicans have the Tea Party group. They represent a movement for generally smaller government and lower taxation, largely in response to the taxpayer bailout of the 2008 near crash.
-Goes to show what those idiots know. Supporting smaller government and lower taxation are most certainly along the guidelines intended as principles of the first American government as established by our founding fathers (taxation being, as most of you know, a catalyst issue for the initiation of our struggle for independence - actually the battle for the elimination of taxation without representation). However, for a party to be so ignorant of the near catastrophe with which the United States, and the world, was confronted and to assume that the bailout was a mistake, is naive. When your espoused leaders are Dick Armey, a long time Texas tripe, and Sarah Palin, a flash in the pan, wish she would go back to Alaska and do what she does best (raising her kids, oops, and snow shoeing) ; one should wonder what the party participant's decision making process really is.
-As a matter of fact, 80% of Tea Partiers polled (as usual, no one called me to get my opinion, funnily enough) view themselves as Republican. Shocker. Big government, huge entitlement Democrats don't fit the bill?
-Not to only pick on the Republicans, the Democrats have their fan base: Progressives (a stem of the old New Left movement), Libertarians , Blue Dogs and others. Both parties are in effect, a coalition of a broad group of constituent followers bound under a larger banner or label (if this was Europe, and thank God it is not, we would have some 1500 parties trying to weave a perpetually impossible coalition government, and gridlock, as bad as it is now, would wind up looking like the 405 on a Friday afternoon.
-In the previous days of our nation's history, there were some parties of promise, not locked into complete intransigence as the elephant and the donkey now are. Whigs and Federalists, Progressives, and my all-time favorite, the Bull Moose Party, all washed through the system addressing different period issues, and ultimately getting absorbed into the 2 behemoths which became Democrats and Republicans. In the course of doing so , they lost the bulk of their purpose or cause (in some cases becoming superfluous to what they were originally founded for - the Bull Moose, for example, was Teddy Roosevelt's attempt to return from safari in Africa and rest the Presidency back from his protégé, Taft).
-Nowadays, using a Pew Research Center, only 36% identify themselves as Democrats and 27% as Republicans, leaving 37% who identify themselves as affiliates of other parties or independents. Those independents have been the subject of great focus in the last few elections, swinging left or right like leaves in a prevailing breeze. The question is: are they best served by jumping into bed, in one election or another, with the decrepit and tired parties.
-Shouldn't the independent vote in this country amount to more? Is there some leadership still out in the wilderness willing to embrace change, real change. Not Obama, dyed-in-the-wool waiver to get re-elected change, but the kind of change which will address the issues we need tackled head on with no regard to tabloid journalism, the lack of intelligence of the masses or re-election? I can only hope.
-If not, bring back the Bull Moose Party with a motto of "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick".

Valentine's Day

-Is there any more ridiculous holiday than Valentine's Day? Naked cherubs and bows and arrows. Gangster massacres. Greeting card company heaven.

-My daughter loves this day and, yes, I get her, specifically, a box of some crappy chocolates, as the box is more important than the contents at her age (truth be told, my wife gets it for me). My boys could care less, though they write and give out their completely ambivilous and mutli-sex cards, so no one in their classes in left out. They have no idea, at their current ages, of the angst they will cause some girls in year's to come (and will have inflicted upon themselves as well) as they wait hopefully for a missive from one or another of my boys.
-This stretch of the year should better be known as the "throw away" holiday stretch. From Valentine's Day, for which there is, of course, no day off, to St. Patty's Day, which is merely an excuse to drink (and celebrate a guy who drove the snakes from Ireland - is that really worth celebrating?).                                                 -This holiday is all about collusion. The greeting cards companies, the chocolatiers, jewelry retailers (the cheap ones at least - you know the ones who advertise on television) and the restaurant owners get together to make (sexist input here) every man's life a living hell today. Maybe we should form a "player's association" and sue for a new collective bargaining agreement in which we agree to be nice a couple times a year, spontaneously taking our love interests to dinner or buying them a gift or two, but eliminating a specific date on which we have to pay for overpriced roses or stupid prix fix menus.
-Maybe cupid will just hit me with an arrow and put me out of my misery.
-That said, to my wife, I love you and do not need today to show you that.

Customer Dis-service

-My wife and I bought a new washing machine this week. As appliances go it is about as sexy as a vacuum cleaner, which sucks. It sits , as it does in most houses, hulking in some utility room or closet. It serves a useful function (as I have over the years worked with plenty of guys who clearly don't know what one does. Then again, they also clearly don't know what shampoo or soap does either). It serves as the wet portion of the eraser of the day's highs and lows.

- As such, I'd like to introduce my oldest son to the washing machine. He knows where it is, but seems to think it is magic not a machine that the dirty clothes he drops in the dirty laundry divider (not often successfully, as he, and his 3 siblings seem inexorably to have difficulty understanding the separation of whites and darks) which ensures his clothes come back to him clean, folded and fresh (again, I am not fully convinced he notices that the clothes are folded or fresh and not sure he cares). On some days, I'd like to make sure my son even knows that changing his clothes is something civil human beings do. He has been frequently known to wear his pajamas underneath the clothes he wears to school, as it saves him time in the morning - not having to shed a layer before adding a layer. He even, a couple of nights ago, was proud to announce that the pajamas he was wearing under his sport coat and shirt were the same ones he had worn for 3 days (I cringe to think of this when considering the time and effort my wife goes to get his laundry done). Eldest son, washing machine. Washing machine, eldest son. Good to meet you both.
-Civility in changing one's clothes, though, is not possible when one does not have a working washing machine, which leads me to "dis-service". My wife and I use local merchants where we can. We do not feel the need to go to some big box, no brain chain. Stores where the "salesman" are really no more than dogs wired to a bell. Ring the bell and they "scratch". Where they know nothing about the product they are selling and will tell you anything you want to hear to make "a sale". Where you get exactly what you pay for: nothing but the tin box you are buying and a hope that there is no mechanical issue which c ould cause you to need "service".
-We go to the local merchants because they, in theory not always in application, take a measure of pride in their service of the community and customers to which they are selling. They understand their inability to offer the absolute lowest dollar (on the basis of uncompetitive volume purchases relative to the big box) will garner customers on the basis of their ability to be an asset to those customers. My dry cleaner is one such local business as is the book store and the stationer ' s. One which is not is the appliance store: County TV and Appliances in Stamford, CT for those of you wanting to avoid an open sore on the face of consumer friendly retailing.
-My wife and I have been back from London for a little over 5 years now (London the land of no customer service). In that time, we have had 2 washing machines. We have had those 2 washing machines serviced 10 times due to mechanical failure (yes, count them, 10 times). The first machine was replace under warranty on the 7th fault. County and Whirlpool admitted: "it was a lemon". We took the credit, paid up, and bought yet a "better" Whirlpool from County (that is County TV and appliance in Stamford. CT for those of you might have missed it the first time) . This week, after just over a year, we called for service on the second machine for the 3rd time. The problem was that the machine turned on, made a "whirrrr" sound and nothing else. No washed clothes. No nothing, but a strange noise.
-We called County (TV and Appliance at 2770 Summer Street, Stamford, southeastern Connecticut) . They offered to send out a service man in a week or so. [ If you have 4 kids and live in suburbia, a week or so is approximately 23 trips to the laundromat - which I believe my town of Camelot actually has, though I have no idea where it is ] . We fortunately remembered their o-so-speedy service and had our own "certified" service company in hand who rushed out only to tell us that a "large part" needed to be ordered. We enquired on how long this would take. The rocket scientist ("I'll get back to you after I check with my manager" or file my nails or learn to read) at County (TV and Appliance "A Family Run Store") told us 3 and one-half weeks. Good luck. What part of 10 times on 2 washers in 5 years did they not understand? The part had "already been ordered" and was clearly coming by lama, as it was going to take 2 weeks and could not be rushed. Then, Schneider, the handy man resurrected from "One day at a Time" could not get to us (clearly due to the fact that his syndicated show had been cancelled 30 years ago) for another week-and-a-half.
-Business is good at County as they did not need to "hustle" at all to help a family of 6 who might be in the market at different points in time for an unknowable amount of tv's, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, etc. Business must be good or they must be lazy, or both.
-No washing machine for 3-and-a-half weeks. My son would be excited, if he even noticed. The laundry room would become a weigh station for my wardrobe. The car would log a couple hundred thousand miles jaunting between whatever dark ally the local Camelot laundromat is located down. What won't happen is me, my family or any of my friends ever buying as much as a mint at County TV and Appliances.
-Nice job, guys, and thanks for the local, "family run service". As those of you who read this know: "karma is a boomerang".

-Sanchez

-I could have added an adjective to Mark Sanchez's first name as the header to today's column, but that would have been too easy.

-We have discussed the stupidity of pro athletes before, and seemingly will in perpetuity.
-Here again, is a kid who thinks he is God and had the decision making skills of a 7 year old. Look who his coach is and what example he has set. We have discussed his behavior. Look at the penalties for bad decisions in the NFL. Slap the wrist the first time and then you are done, until you are not, 3 or 4 times. Roger Goodell, you are the man.
-It is pathetic. All that money and no brains. And, I don't buy that argument that she looked older than she was, or that she was consenting. Kids are dumb. They post things about themselves that no one should know or see on things like Facebook with no thought to the long term consequences. The get tattoo's and don't think about how they will look at 40 (which is not to say that all tattoo's are bad, but I wonder how many women will rethink their lower back "stamps" when they are 50 and that skin is sagging, turning an ornate flower into a pile of weeds). Kids are kids. They look before they leap. That is why we expect adults to raise children and set an example not the other way around (then again, we have Congressmen posting their half naked pictures on Craig's List soliciting companionship when they are married, and in office).
-Maybe the world is about to stop spinning on its axis. Maybe the apocalypse is here (after all, given the weather we have had this winter here and "down under", maybe you should be thinking about what boots should replace your snow or rain boots for the "plague of locusts" boots).
-Mark Sanchez is an idiot, but he is not alone. He follows a long line of idiots who, having coasted through what should have been a real academic opportunity fortified by their athletic abilities, got nothing more than a contract which they could barley sign without the help of their agent.
-By the way, Dirty, you have not won anything yet. As Senator Bentsen said (slightly paraphrased and liberalized for context): "I knew Joe Namath, and you, son, are no Joe Namath".

God Bless...

-O say can you see? Hell yeah. I can see and I can hear. I can leap to my feet, stand at attention, strain to hit a high note and shed a tear.

-I can understand the sacrifices given. I can count my blessings for the safety and comfort provided by those who stand in bastions far and away to protect not only us at home but the beliefs by which we live and which are, every day, attacked by those who seek to spread fear, chaos and ignorance.
-I can appreciate the principals by which our founding fathers, having set aside their families, their ploughs, their stable lives, sought to create what is, despite its imperfections, a "more perfect union". I can thank God that they bonded together and fought through tyranny and injustice to create a nation which respects the rights of the individual in equal and unbiased representation; that they quashed those elements that sought to rip our fledging union apart and rallied our citizens to seek that manifest destiny, which calls us to every corner of our borders and each corner of the world.
-I say a prayer of thanks each and every day for those who now serve in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and elsewhere to maintain the bulkheads on the ship that is democracy. I owe thanks to those who stood before them at Tripoli and Verdun, Normandy and Inchon. I believe in their just cause and chain of command.
-I know we are all good of heart and brave of soul. No matter what our differences, I know we are all Americans. I know we cherish inalienable rights and stand, when brought together by opposing forces, shoulder-to-shoulder in defense of our land,our children and our legacy

-The Inventor of the Internet and Other Lies

-Our boy and recent Tennessee divorcee, Al Gore, has decided to stop chasing tail, having divorced Tipper (I’ll tell you a funny story about their relationship later), in order to respond to Bill O’Reilly on why “global warming” has produced one of the snowiest and most diabolic winters in the northeast. Of course, the Tennessee tick hound responded via his blog, because what else could possibly be a more appropriate means of communication for the “father of the internet” than a blog?

-Al said, in response, that: “as it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now, and they say increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming”.
-First, Al, where is this “community”? Did a group of scientists move in to a row of abandoned crack houses in Detroit from which they issue communiqués? Or are they scooping up foreclosed haciendas in suburban Arizona in some sort of hippie-reminiscent collective in which they have assembled their test-tubes and electrodes? Why does Al insist on using the sweeping generality of “a scientific community”? Not all “scientists” agree. It is one thing to take a poll. It is another to throw out all the results you don’t agree with. Guess what everyone in America likes vanilla ice cream more than chocolate, and if you do not agree, well, then, you don’t count. I am not saying that there is not a true divide amongst the real experts in this field. I am just saying that Al Gore is no expert.
-Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the concept of global warming. There is little question we have, and continue, to pollute our planet in more ways than a small brain like mine can even conceive (it makes me think of the old 1970s commercial with the Indian who cries a tear at some rubbish thrown at his feet). We should be ashamed at how much we consume and then discard without thought for the long term consequences. Think “Wall-E” for all of you have kids. It is a scary thought. That said, I am not terribly worried about my descendants exiting the planet on a Walmart constructed interplanetary vehicle only to become giant “Jello” pops.
-Gore, the great prognosticator, in his response to Bill O’Reilly (an equally unhinged human being) went on to say that the rise in global temperatures (also known as global warming, Al) is creating “all sorts of havoc”. In havoc does he mean the overthrow of the Egyptian government, the currency crisis of the EU, or the inability of Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen to stay out of rehab (actually, here is thought: Charlie Sheen and Lindsey Lohan should get married and just move into the Betty Ford or the Priory for their honeymoon). Way to narrow it down, Al. Weather is weather. We have it whether we like it or not (as my Dad used to say. He, my Dad, also used to say “Chile today, hot tamale”).
-I always love sweeping predictions. It is like economists (which seems particularly this morning – nice consensus call on payroll sand way to think that the weather might not have an impact on the numbers looking for jobs this past month in snow boots and parkas). The longer you keep making the same prediction, the more likely it is to finally come true.
-While Al has his backers in the “scientific community” (we can all find a chiropractor but can we find a doctor – the value of the degree is a couple hundred thousand dollars and a number of invested years). So, when Al points to his crew of climatologists, I am somewhat skeptical. After all, this is the guy who claimed he invented the internet, a guy whose home (despite his “Inconvenient Truth”) is the largest private residence consumer of energy in the state of Tennessee (look that little tidbit up yourself). This is the guy who was married to Tipper and then packed her in after his political career ended (not that he should not have sooner). This is the guy that left-leaning (so far leaning and deluded that when they tip the boat over to the port side they consider drinking from the sea) Hollywood gave him an Oscar for his movie and a standing ovation. Noticeable in the front row of this crowd of intellectuals, in his praise that night, were a number of luminaries who had promised to leave the country when W was re-elected. They did not. Unfortunately (I had volunteered to buy some one way tickets. They clearly passed). But I digress.
-Al Gore is a buffoon. His fantastic claims of achievements not his own and his general girth discredit the cause for which he cries [As the aside I promised, the story of a friend whose wife made Tipper’s dress for the first inauguration of that famed Clinton/Gore ticket, goes as follows. At the inauguration before his death, Al’s father, Al Senior, a noted boozehound, walked up to the two couples – Al and Tipper and my friend and his wife, the seamstress. When the friend’s wife was introduced as the maker of Tipper’s dress, Al Senior’s response was supposedly: “Let me shake the hand of the woman that could fit that rear in that dress”).
-In the end, I think Al should sit back on that favorite coach out on his front porch and admire his combustible engine transport decommissioned (his car on cinder blocks) and realize what he is, a pig farmer from Tennessee whose 15 minutes of fame are up. Me, I’ll get back to shoveling my “global warming” snow.

Bourbon

-My drink of choice is that dark amber, Kentucky whiskey. Not to be confused with that Tennessee swill named Jack, bourbon may only be called that if made in Kentucky – similar to the fact that only that sparking wine may be called champagne that hails from the namesake region of France. While no one will confuse Kentucky for France, bourbon is a nectar enjoyed straight, on the rocks, with ginger ale or coke, sometimes even in a glass.
-I like my bourbon with Coke, actually Pepsi. I like the extra sugar associated with Pepsi, as opposed to Coke, and I like that blend of sweetness with the smoky grain of the bourbon. I like that smooth burn as the bourbon heads south and helps me to relax. I like the smell which makes me think of college and friends and some of the favorite bars in the collage of my life in which my familiarity means I do not need to order but merely whisk a Cheshire smile to the barkeep to ensure my glass is poured.
- I own about 30 different brands of bourbon. I like them all. They come in names most of us know like “Makers Mark” or “Bakers” or Bookers”, but also in names like “Rocky Cock” or “Ten CC”, “Big Chief” and Pappy Van Winkle”. Their tastes are as different as their names or bottle shapes and sizes. Like a wine, they are blended (the mash) and set in casks which add a huskiness or lightness, depending on how handled, and have noticeably different aromas and tastes. Some bite and some wash like velvet down your throat, leaving a trace burn of warmth.
-I have had my own battles with vodkas or tequilas but found that they were just that: battles. They work in grander drinks like margaritas (not that this is a “grand” drink, per se) or screwdrivers and martinis, but these take too much work. Bourbon metered over ice with a splash of my favorite soft drink, in its simplicity, is the best. It conjures the definition of “good ole boy”, which might be a stretch for me some days but I can assure you is a place I like to find at day’s end or on the weekends. It is porch and ceiling fan, a dog at your feet and the drone of a baseball game echoing from inside the house. It is the barbeque smoking up the neighborhood, which you must tend but only long enough to ensure the ice in your glass never melts enough to water down your mix. It is an old pair of cowboy boots with soles that have split and blue jeans your wife would wish you would get rid of: holey and frayed. It is comfort.

Enough

-Clearly no one read yesterday’s editorial which is okay. It was largely a self-indulging, self-reflective mood swing. Boarding a flight from sunny southern California to head back east will do that to you.

-As I sat by the pool this past weekend, or took a couple turns plying the pipeline (pipe more like the pvc you’d find under your sink than anything of the size hooked to the town sewer) out west, I really questioned why the heck I live in New England. Yes, I know seasons are great: spring and the bloom, fall and the leaves, summer and the fireflies and barbeques. Its all good. Then there is winter, and it sucks.                      -I play hockey, as many of you know, religiously. Some would argue that the rink is my cathedral and I am often heard yelling at God, or at least my teammates. But I don’t need to play hockey outdoors in twelve feet of snow and sub zero temperatures. I am just as happy to travel from my air conditioned car in shorts and flip flops, laden by a hockey bag and sticks to a well refrigerated igloo of indoor ice. I am just as happy to kneel at an altar of an artificially created pew (often a penalty box) to worship. I do not need to be out in the elements. The rink and my teammates are the only elements I need.
-This winter, though, I, and my New England brethren, have had to endure a nightmarish weather scene. Snow piled upon snow and cold upon cold. I clearly think that global warming (and, no, I do not need some scientific explanation and formulation about the true impact of a global warming leading to increased moisture, blah, blah, blah) has missed the northeast. I have seen some nearly 6 feet of snow which has been plowed into piles along the road which completely obscure houses. I have a dog who cries because my backyard has drifts of nearly 8 feet locking her into an area the size of a picnic table (and I have shoveled that at least 5 times now, struggling to keep that small space free of snow). I have icicles that extend from the roofline to the ground (almost). The bushes have long since wilted to the snowdrifts and lie buried like coffins in a white graveyard. I am sick of snow. I am sick of the cold. I have had…
-Enough. Enough is getting back on that plane to southern California. We have an office in Manhattan Beach. And while, I have no implants and would not consider any, unless there are now brain donors out there, I’d welcome a good stretch by the pool or on the beach, or at least sitting in a backyard that is only covered in green grass.

Flying Again

Manonaplane is on a plane, again. This blog or train of thought, or dribble, depending on your point of view or mine, originated in all the flying I do with the flight time being at least a few minutes of solitary thought. A period of time,  which we rarely find in our busy daily lives of work, children or partners, and other commitments which serve a true and necessary function. So I sit here again thinking, overthinking, as much as my limited intellect will allow.
I am thinking about my day, my week, my year - my life. The things I like and love. The things I could do without but have to carry like a briefcase, which has a lot of what I need but an equal amount of what I don't necessarily want. A phone, a notebook, a schedule and itinerary, as well as a prospectus (not necessarily a document for a deal or company but often for the commitments of my life). Commitments which are often added like buttons to a blazer - some functional  but some just for show: nice to be seen and on the odd occasion talked about. On a plane there are no blazers or buttons. There is the anonymity of being 2d or 24c, chattel to a destination. And it is in this, one can get lost in the depths  (or shallow, baby pool) of one's own thoughts.  
Sometimes the flights carry me home. Sometimes they carry me away for work. Sometimes they carry me to a destination that brings peace, relaxation and an unwind which a tired body and mind need. Sometimes they just carry me away from a life, which even in it's high notes, also find it's own discord and grind. I guess if life were easy, we would all carry ourselves upright in the confidence that all was always well and our impact on the world was true and beneficial and meaningful. Whatever the case, while I am on a plane, I can forget my place in anything other than 2d.
Often as I sit here cradled in some ergonomic excuse for a transcontinental armchair, I wonder what could be, or could have been. I am "old school", which came up in a conversationally this past weekend. A friend was not sure I was truly "old school". My rowdy, and not wholly civil behavior, might have influenced this observation at that point in time. But as those 3 or 4 of you who actually read this blog or my daily column know, I place a premium on things that it seems many people in today's world have forgotten. It does not make me the perfect ambassador of those values all the time. Let's be honest, at the root of our individual existence we are in the end, human, and imperfect. Some of us struggle harder to try to maintain that armor of civility and manner but even the best armor has it flaws and chinks. I try to be that chevalier of old. Sometimes I try too hard, fail and regret.
"Please's" and "Thank You's" do not always suffice. Holding a door or a chair, walking on the outside on a sidewalk, taking an arm, shaking hands, looking someone in the eye, "Mister, Miss, Sir or Ma'am", they get you part the way, but not always there. Sometimes no matter how well intentioned, they let you down as you try to be the person you want to be, not just for others but for yourself. You try, but let's be honest, this is not the world of our grandparents or great grand parents (which had it's own flaws). Chivalry is a foreign concept to most. Civility, something I often lack in my writings, too, trades at a costly premium. People treat each other with an inherent selfishness that belies a true desire to be a good neighbor, friend and citizen, which I think does lie within the hardened wrapper we have taken to protect ourselves from the constant bombardment of today's world. Yes, people are inherently good: some have just strayed further from the path than others.
I was once paid what today I still count as one of the greatest compliments of my life by a trader I was working with at the time, and who I like and respect (and find others do, as he is one of the most like-able and generous people I know). He described me to someone else, as the most polite salesman, and person, he had ever worked with. Maybe he has a limited roster of friends and colleagues from which to compare. I'd like to think, in a business which requires a certain amount of aggressiveness and motivation, that I have managed to find that balance that does not force me to sacrifice that which I hold most dear: my belief that not matter how I may suffer the occasional mis-step or lapse, I remain a gentleman, "old school, a friend to my friends and a person who people want to be around and have around in their lives.
As I fly I often get lost in the introspective. How do I improve? Do better? Be better? How do I take the example set laid out for me like a uniform on a bed, pressed and crisp, prepared for life and ceremony, and make it fit my frame? Can I march in that army, lead the charge, and will anyone follow? My children? My friends, who teach me more than I will ever teach them? Does it matter to anyone else?
I hope the world below, as I fly at 40,000 feet, will one day find a rhythm that finds us all able to appreciate each other. I am a realist though, in all my idealism. I remember that I am imperfect and for the moment only 2d.

Doctor Hack

-Can I tell you how much I hate doctors? Not all doctors. Not the ones who are friends who I know and see personally and in an unrelated means to professional needs (now that I think of it, I don’t have any friends who are doctors – maybe that says something). Just the ones I get stuck going to see, and by default, all those I have in theory to see for medical consultation. -I think doctors are the sadists of our era. Imagine if you would a leap back in time to the “Inquisition” in which men were flayed or roasted, and stretched on racks. Then jump back and picture the dermatologist or the proctologist who poke and prod, after scaring the daylights out of you with tales of cancers and other painful, lingering deaths, begin to carve on you to remove a spot or snaking a camera in places they it does not belong. What is the difference?
-Doctors love the value of fear. Think about it. Why else would we bother to see them? We don’t have the advantage of years upon years of education and training [I do find it amusing that the guy in my fraternity who took 7 years to graduate was called a slacker and bum, while other guys who stay in school for 7 years we choose to call M.D.]. We are forced to rely on that education and training to diagnose a tinge or winge, or worse. The Doctor, who cannot possibly know on the spot exactly what ails us, can reach into his black bag of medical litany and bluff his way through an explanation which we cannot contest. There is a huge leap of faith necessary in every visit and diagnosis.
-And this, if you get any kind of bedside manner, is a small plus. My last few doctors have been one step short of ghoulish. While I understand that one of my other favorite professions, lawyers, have made a nuisance of themselves in the medical profession via malpractice suits and other superfluous suits, doctors now seem determined to cover their keysters by presenting you the most dire of all possible consequences in everything they see. A pimple is a potential cancer, a sore knee a potential joint replacement and, God forbid, a headache a tumor.
-And this if the doctor will see you, let alone be on time to see you. This profession is renowned for its complete inability to run on a real business schedule. When was the last time you went to the doctor and he was actually on time? A doctor’s office is run like the Department of Motor Vehicles. Once you have passed the generally surly reception staff, you get to sit in some generic waiting room with only 7 month old copies of magazines you would never spend a penny on, like “Crocheting Monthly” and “Cuddly Pets Digest”. You wait, and wait, endlessly (“Next line, please. Where is your form, please”), and yet once you are in the examination room, you get a fly by from the doctor worthy of Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”. No other business runs this way.
-I’d like to know whom my doctor goes to for his yearly check up. I can only hope his experiences are as miserable as mine. If he has time, he could stop by my house. I’d be more than willing to consider leaving him with my 4 kids for 30 minutes in a small room while he waits for his “appointment”, and then you can bet your “Sweet Betsies” he would know the meaning of “Moon River”.

The New Jersey Hindenburgs

-Ara Parseghian, the famous Notre Dame football coach said: “act like you have been there before”. Clearly neither Rex Ryan nor any of his current players have been. From the “Fat Man’s” painful to watch and pathetic display of running, to celebrate the devastating touchdown, to his players constant “airplane flying” antics on the field, the Jets showed themselves to be the classless athletes, not to mention intellects, that they are.

-Rex and his band of idiots spent the week setting a stellar example with vitriol and arrogance, as displayed in interviews. Ryan said, regarding Patriots QB Tom Brady: “Nobody studies like [Manning, as in Peyton Manning, the Indianapolis’s QB]. I know Brady thinks he does and all that stuff, [but] I think there’s probably a little more help from Belicheck [The Patriot’s coach] with Brady than there is with Peyton Manning”.
-Tom Brady has played in 4 Super Bowls and has 3 rings for his victories. He was a 6th round and unheralded draft pick from the University of Michigan (Go Wolverines!). Peyton Manning, to compare resumes, who is no slouch and could and should be argued among the all-time NFL quarterbacking elites (as should Brady), was the first overall draft pick in 1998 and has only 1 Super Bowl ring to his credit (yes, he does have 4 NFL MVP awards – the most in NFL history).
-So Rex, and his band of Biplanes, spent the season, and preseason (as highlighted in their dramatic and much-hyped performance on “Hard Knocks”) shedding profanity and arrogance on television and in the press. Ryan and his team, backing comments from the likes of Antonio Cromarte (Antonio Cromarte cornerback and subject of a third round draft pick to bring him from The San Diego Chargers to the New York Jets largely due to a view that his effort was less than desired by management and ownership, as model citizen, and for reference here, has fathered 9 children with 8 women in 6 states and has been named in 5 paternity suits in the last two years. He has failed to appear in court twice on separate moving violation citations and was given a $500k dollar advance by the Jets so he could make child support payments – a plus I guess) paint a poor picture of what we should be teaching our young athletes, who like it or not, buy their jerseys and spend Sunday’s in front of the television rooting on their favorite players and teams.
-Cromarte, clearly educated in literature or some other liberal arts discipline during his time at Florida State, managed to launch into an expletive laced tirade regarding Tom Brady and was backed in his comments by his coach. Ryan should have handed him a bar of soap and shipped him to the nearest gulag. But Ryan, himself, a blowhard, and clearly as we saw from Sunday, a world champion sprinter, was in no position to chastise his linguistics major and defensive back as he almost managed to get a “XXX” rating on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” with his weekly vulgar verbal antics: once again showing skill, education and deportment (a word he clearly would have to look up).
-I am not arguing here for the civility of Ryan’s weekly opponents. I found Wes Welker’s, o so clever, hidden foot fetish comments neither amusing, nor clever. As is usually the case with the majority of pro athletes, I find they should leave “clever” to their agents and focus their limited skills on the field. What I am saying is that I am tired of the buffoonery of the majority of professional athletes who seem to forget that they are playing a game most of us would love to play. We pay for the right to see them display superior skills: athletic skills.
-I was embarrassed to have my 9 year old question me when reading the quotes and watching the focus on this war of words on ESPN and other pre-game shows. I was not letting my soon watch the Playboy Channel. I was letting him sit with me to watch a game I love and want to share with him.
-Why don’t we just let Rex and his guys blow hard on their own time. Maybe we should propose the NFL rename the team to the “New Jersey Hindenburg’s”, seemingly an appropriate leap given the New Jersey angle (Lakehurst for all you construction helmet-clad J-E-T-S fans is in New Jersey. Now, if you can, go look up the reference). Lord knows with Ryan and his team’s foul mouths, a match might do the trick.

Old Friends

-I am lucky enough, believe it or not, to have a lot of friends. Most are probably really husbands of my wife's friends, but then we are all in the same position, clinging to each other like passengers in a lifeboat, as our wives tug around life and events happy in each other's company as directed by their lives and those of our children. That said, I actually have a few friends of my own. They are guys upon whom I am not co-dependant for some passable conversation or companionship focused on football, ice hockey or beer, while the girls sort out the real issues of life, like parenting and china patterns. These are the friends I have actually made through effort over years and limited social skills while making attempts at growth and maturity.


-I have a friend, who has been my friend, since we were knee-high to a grasshopper. We grew up together in a small Connecticut town and we raised our parents together for years, as we "trialed and errored" a lot of their approach to raising their eldest children (which we both were). He and I have a litany of nearly fatal mis-steps during our adolescence - some of which made us stronger and some of which sent us cowering under our beds, even to this day, for fear of what the outcomes could have been. We survived and we moved away from home still in contact and continued to perpetuate some of our stupidities - even as adults (ask the staff at the La Perla Cantina on the Fulham Road in London). All in all, though, we never did anything that moved the dial beyond the usual actions of "stupid teens", and we managed to come out the back end, intact, and still best of friends.

-I do not see this friend terribly often. He lives in the "land of fruit and nuts" and I live on the east coast in reality. He is a "real" writer and has published a truly interesting volume of non-fiction (as opposed to my mostly daily musings at verbal diaharea). He is godfather to one of my sons. He and I manage to get together maybe once every other year given different geography and different lifestyles.

-When we do get together, it is like the clock has momentarily jogged right back to the last time we were together. The tapestry of our friendship is never ending. The threads while stretched, remain constant. He will always be the guy with whom I used to steal booze at his parent's house, replacing it with water (not that everyone has not done this) and calling it "demo juice". He is the guy I chased a girl halfway across New York with after one of those glitzy holiday black tie gigs (we never got the girl but we did get in plenty of trouble). He is the guy who hitchhiked from Stapleton Airport to the foothills of Denver to make my wedding.

-In life I have a few of these friends, as we all are lucky enough to have. I do not discount those bobbing ice cube's who have become my friends but became them as a result of our drift alongside our wives' social calendars, as some of these have become close members of my team (and I of theirs). But there are a few guys, the thought of whom and things we have done together, that always make me smile a little more wryly, and wistfully, and thankfully.

Zombies

-Is anyone else out there a "zombie" movie junkie like me? I think I have seen just about every movie made within the last 30 years, no matter how camp or bad. I love the George Romero franchise of films: "Night of the Living Dead", "Dawn of the Dead", "Day of the Dead", and the 3 that came after and were largely not worth mentioning. The remakes of his "Dawn of the Dead" and of his biological disaster film (much akin to zombies), "The Crazies", which was recently remade are also among my favorites. I love, and live for the next installment of, the "Resident Evil" franchise. I thought AMC's "Walking Dead" was brilliant in its vision of the end of the world focused on survivors in Atlanta (My youngest brother lives in Atlanta, and for those of you who have spent any great deal of time there, I am not sure that the series is not a period piece). I loved the spoof "Zombieland", arguably Woody Harrelson's best role since "Kingpin" or "Cheers". I almost forgot the British indie classic: "28 Days Later" and its ghostly vision of Westminster Bridge and Parliament Square filmed without a single person or vehicle in sight in one of the most heavily travelled 3 square blocks in the world (I lived in London during its filming which was done at 430am on Sunday morning). How could I omit Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and its homage to the walking dead. I even find that I will sit down on a Saturday night to watch some SciFi Channel low budget creeper about teens and recently deceased, come back to life, flesh eating ground crawlers.


-I don't know why I like "zombies" so much. Romero used them, in his craftier days, to poke fun at things like racism and consumerism (What could be better than the black/white racial mix and the taboo it presented in the two survivors in "Night of the Living Dead" or the rampant "shopping" while holed up in a West Pennsylvania mall as zombies swarmed the parking lot in "Day of the Dead"). Maybe it is the fact that zombies live a pretty good life. They are singular in their quest, generally (some movie makers have toned down their zombies in their hunger for "flesh" while others have sped them up to cheetah-like speeds making mockery of the foot-dragging decomposing flesh-eater we all first fell in love with), for a pound of flesh. Their hunger is both sexual (they spend a perpetual existence seeking the next piece of human meat) and spiritual (they seek in many franchises to eat "brains"). Zombies do not need money. They don't live in houses. They crawl around neighborhoods in various state of undress (and decomposition) as if in a perpetual rave. They observe no rules.

-Zombies are not evil. They are automatons. With few exceptions, while always starving, they run, or stumble, like the Duracell bunny, on and on. They moan or scream, in theory because they are acting only on primal instinct as that is all that is left of what they were. They are, quite frankly, a neat example of mass society. They have no real voice. They follow only the rest of their masses in aimless search for some sort of physical satisfaction. In the end, in most franchises, they overwhelm the remaining remnants of society as their numbers and our stupidity (that of the "living" survivors) allow them to overcome order and intelligence with mass.

-Zombies represent a "dumbing" down of the world. Whether created by an accident of the military or corporate doing, or science, as is the case in the remake of "I am Legend" (a cure for cancer goes horribly wrong), zombies are generally the result of arrogance or malignance. They are bred of greed or deceit and lead to a band of survivors forever struggling to maintain vestiges of the world that was. Zombies are not monsters. They are an allegorical representation of the 90% plus of our world today which blindly follows the talking heads on tv and assumes that success is a 3 bedroom house with a flat screened tv.

-I like zombies. I know some. I think my favorite zombie is the one in the original "Day of the Dead" which bites the great white. Seems like payback for that Christine "Chrissie Watkins". Go look up that reference.

Manners

-Just a couple of things to keep in mind. Seems like we could all use a refresher. Words which are indispensible: "please" and "thank you". A few more of us should try using these more often. Here is another one which is often lacking: "excuse me" or if you prefer "pardon me". Try it next time you try to squeeze through a tight space or walk in front of some one.


-When entering a house or building, please (not the use of the word) take off you hat, unless you are a woman. And, for God's sake please do not make the MC remind you that hats should be removed during the singing of the national anthem (by the way, for those of you physiologically challenged, your heart is on the left side of your chest, so use your right hand and out it over your heart - on the left).

-When a lady walks into a room (yes, even the women we all hang out with are "ladies" in the truest sense of the word), please rise to greet them and don't sit until they are seated. Should you be dining or sitting and they need to leave the room, rise again and when they re-enter, one more time stand up and wait for them to resume sitting. If you are dining with them, try to remember that it would be nice to aid them with their chair. It is not that difficult and all that time in the gym should be something you relish showing off in your strength to push a chair.

-When entering a restaurant allow the ladies to enter first, but, and here is one men get wrong all the time, when exiting, allow the ladies to follow. When walking down the sidewalk, the lady should always be on the inside (building side versus road side for those of you struggling with the geography).

-In general, try to remember how your grandparents behaved and what your parents tried to teach you, and pass it on.

Defenders For All

-There is no heartening way to tackle the tragic shooting this weekend in Arizona. Jared Lee Loughner "is suspected" of shooting some 20 people, killing 6 and leaving others in a range of critical to severe condition. The victims included, as part of the media circus has detailed, an Arizona Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, who appears to have been the main target in an attempted "assassination". Unfortunately, included in the victim's list, among others, was an aid to the Congresswoman, a judge and a 9 year old girl who was attending to better understand and observe how our government works. All in, this is one of those tragedies at which one can only shake one's head and say a small prayer under one's breath for the victims and their families.


-If the press and reports are to be believed, Jared Lee Loughner is, at best, a very troubled young man. At worst he is a raging psychopath who, in being found guilty by a jury of his peers, should be ended, as the parents of 9 year Christine Green were quoted as wanting. Loughner's warning signs, if taken in aggregate, were rather large. A loner in his neighborhood, he also was noted for 5 run-ins with the campus police at the local community college he was ultimately thrown out of. He scared a lot of people and yet the inability of authorities or his community to take a measure in aggregate, of all the individual incidents, meant that there was an incomplete picture, allowing him to perpetuate his heinous crime, or "allegedly" to do so.

-The criminal system, as is supported by the Constitution, allows a man such as Loughner and any other, despite witnesses and footage (from cctv cameras and bystanders) to use the courts to delay, if not throw out conviction and ultimate penalty, by any means possible (innocent until proven guilty). Loughner has already retained the attorney, Judy Clarke, who can boast defending Ted Kaczynski (who we all know better as the "Unabomber" and the 20th hijacker who missed his plane on 9/11). Clarke will attempt to argue against the death penalty due to mental illness or "defect", as is her specialty. This is his right but what of those of the victims?

-The unfortunate thing here is that Loughner did not get help despite all the warning signs - assuming help would have indeed made a difference. What is even more unfortunate, and a necessary topic here, is that this lunatic, was cleared in November for the purchase of his gun, which held a clip for 31 bullets. Aside from clearing this guy who had twice dodged other pending criminal charges by attending "diversion programs", which allowed him to walk scotch free and left no "permanent marking" of his instability or trouble, his purchase further solidifies the argument that there is no need for anyone in the public sector to be cleared to buy a glock, or any other gun, with a 31 round clip capability.

-While the Congresswoman clings to life and others mourn their losses, there are a number of questions we should all be asking. Why can we not have a rational conversation about guns in this country? No one sane is arguing for elimination of all guns - that goes against so much of the spirit of the "pioneer nation" - but there need to be limits. "Red Dawn" is not going to happen tomorrow. No Russian paratroopers, or their allies, will land in midAmerica seeking to capture our nation. Guns for "protection" and guns for hunting don't need to be akin to an M-50 machine gun. There is just no excuse. Screening must get better. A 3 day process should be changed as needed - a nearly unlimited process is not unreasonable if warranted. Red flags should be allowed to fly without violating other Constitutional rights and if it takes a few weeks to clear you for a purchase, so be it. You and I have a right to live as much as others have a right to bear arms.

-Finally, as I read one congressional leader quoted as wondering if the current climate of campaigning vitriol was not at the core of violence and its increase at or towards politicians. I think that a Congressman should practice what he or she preaches. The current process of what we call a campaign "on issues" is laughable. Candidates no longer actually discuss real matter but rather seek to exploit every personal defect, rumour or innuendo, ignoring real substance. Elections are won on soundbites. Candidates refuse to speak in substance, often taken out of context about who is sleeping with whom, who cheated on whom, or who did what. There is no discussion of what is needed, how to help a constituency or what needs to be done to run a more effective government. The claim of "hostile climate" all rings a bit hollow to me.

-I hope what we can all agree on is our best wishes and prayers for a recovery for Congresswoman Giffords and the other injured victims. We can hope not to witness such an act again (no more Arizona's, no more Columbine's, no more Texas Army bases). We can hope that somehow this country can find a way to unite, instead of continue to divide before it is too late and we witness the short end of a golden era.