FF, Part Deux - MJ/Iran Mashup

Okay, this one actually made me smile.



Bringing cutting edge news issues together, for your viewing pleasure. It's what I do.

Iran, the Beautiful

I said a few entries ago that I was following the Iranian election with considerable bemusement. After the events of this weekend, it's safe to say that I'm now following post-election events in Iran with considerable captivation. Hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets, risking their lives to dispute a presidential election that looks, smells, and tastes like a fraud. (We Americans know an electoral fraud when we see one.) In all the years since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, I never believed that there were so many Iranians who were so disaffected. First, it should be said that notwithstanding everything that's happening there right now, Iran is a democracy, arguably the only democracy in the Middle East besides Israel. People get to vote for their leaders, though in this case their choices for president were one of 4 men handpicked by Ayatollah Khamenei. They also have the freedom to assemble and voice their protest against the government, though there are limits to that right, as we're seeing before our eyes. There's a Constitution and a Parliament, both of which must adhere to Sharia, or Islamic law.

Is Iran a perfect democracy? Of course not. Khamenei, or whoever occupies the position of the "Supreme Leader," controls the security apparatus and the armed forces, and has the final say on the candidates who run for office. Women in Iran are still second-class citizens when it comes to politics, education, and employment. Many of the freedoms we know in the U.S. don't exist in Iran. But let's give credit where credit is due. Iran is a credible Islamic democracy, with Islamic rules and limits. The fair comparison is not to the U.S. or Western Europe. The fair comparison is to Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, where there are no elections, even sham ones, and where royal families and political elites retain power in perpetuity and rule with an iron fist.

For all of its warts, Iran is a sophisticated, though evolving, democracy. This weekend we saw its limits and how far it needs to go. We saw police in Darth Vader riot gear, looking every bit as ominous as the movie character they resembled, cracking down on protesters, who themselves were becoming increasingly impassioned. Jittery cell phone videocams recorded screams, tear gas, fires, people running away, people shot, people lying on the ground bleeding. A young Iranian woman, "Neda," who'd been marching peacefully with her father, was shot and died before our eyes. Her final moments were recorded and posted on YouTube: blood trickling out of both sides of her mouth, her blank eyes staring at the sky. It was graphic and shocking to see. This young, anonymous woman achieved a tragic fame in death that she never could have dreamed of in life. Much like the students who were killed at Kent State, Neda was a casualty of political anger and spiraling violence. While the names of the Kent State students are long forgotten, YouTube has ensured that Neda's never will be.

What's happening in Iran is truly inspirational. People literally dying for their vote in their own country. People who know that they are taking their lives into their own hands when they hit the streets decked in green. The Iranian police and paramilitary squads have to be shocked at the size and ferocity of the crowds they are seeing. But the tide hasn't stopped. To protesting Iranians, their cause is worth the risk of death.

America used to be that way. Americans used to protest things, stand up for what's right, stand up for fairness, justice, and the American way. And we used to do it en masse, not with a trickle of hippies in Birkenstocks and tie-dyes, but with a FLOOD of people of every stripe, color, and creed. The March on Washington. The Vietnam War protests. The 1968 Democratic Convention. Kent State. But that was all in 1960s, and early 70s. We don't do that kind of thing anymore. Certainly not over an election. I mean, fuck, the 2000 election stolen by Bush was grounds for a sizable protest with some yelling and "hell no" chants, wasn't it? Do you remember one? I don't. The 2000 election was as fraudulent as the 2009 election in Iran, but when it was finally over, and Bush took power, you heard nary a whimper out of most Americans. Okay, maybe at cocktail parties and on some news shows, but on the street? NOTHING. It all blew over by Christmas. Americans take to the streets over one of THEIR elections? You must be joking. There's football to watch! Thanksgiving turkey to eat!

Oh, I find it hilarious how outraged our Senators are that one man, Ayatollah Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader" of Iran, gets to decide the result of this election. In 2000, nine people (actually five) on the United States "Supreme Court" decided that Florida should have no recount, effectively handing the election to Bush. In Iran, the judge of last resort is Khamenei. Here it's a partisan majority in the Supreme Court. Really, how different are they? Maybe Gore should have fought the 2000 result like Moussavi is doing. Maybe he should have had his own Green Revolution. Too late, sick fate.

Historical digression: It bears mentioning that Iran had a more secular democracy once. A democracy without Islamic law and clerics and Assahole-ah Ayatollahs. In 1951, the Iranian Parliament selected Mohammed Mosaddeq as Prime Minister. MM was a normal dude, he wasn't a cleric or anything like that. The problem with MM was that he wanted to nationalize Iran's oil, you know, so the IRANIAN PEOPLE could benefit from their own natural resources. Britain didn't like that because well, see, they wanted Iran's oil to benefit the BRITISH PEOPLE. So in 1953, Winston Churchill convinced President Eisenhower that MM was going all Commie on us. Eisenhower didn't like Commies. No one likes Commies. But everyone does love oil. Iranian crude. Black gold. Working together, the British and American intelligence services effected a coup d'etat and overthrew poor Mosaddeq. Code name: Operation Ajax. I shit you not. They literally "cleaned things up." Out went the bad Commie democrat and in his place, UK/US installed an old reliable monarch, Reza Shah. Reza and his son, who took power after his death, were a 20th Century versions of the Saudi royal family. They ruled Iran with an iron fist while ensuring the free, non-nationalized flow of Iranian oil to Britain and the United States. Just say "no" to nationalization!!! Unless of course American banks and insurance companies are failing, then say YES!!!!

The point of this brief history lesson is that things blew up in 1979 when Iranians took their country back, deposed the Shah, and installed an Islamic theocracy. One has to wonder if Britain and the U.S. had left well enough alone in 1953, let Mosaddeq stay in power and allowed Iran to evolve as a secular democracy, whether we'd ever have seen self-righteous pricks like the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Ayatollah Khamenei running things 30 and 50 years later. I think not. But short-sighted American foreign policy often leads to this kind of blowback. See Exhibit B: Mujihadeen, American support in Afghanistan, 1979-1990. Today, Iran seems to have strayed from its revolutionary ideals. That's the problem with revolutionaries: once they take power, they get so addicted to it that they come to resemble the very autocrats they overthrew in the first place. Now the Iranian religious police and secret service are as thuggish as ones the Shah used to use to retain his power. But, history repeating itself the way it does, young Iranians, who make up the vast majority of the population in that country, are chafing under Islamic law and absurdly conservative rules that require women to wear the hijab and treat them as second class citizens (not good odds when women make up 65% of the Iranian population).

Young Iran wants change. It wants freedom. It wants better relations with the West. And they're willing to die to get it. The other half of Iran? The half that voted for Ahmadenijad? It likes things the way they are and thinks Mahmoud and Khamenei are doing a wonderful job standing up to the West and keeping Iran in line with its Islamic ideals. So there's a political split in Iran, you might say it's a red-state-versus-blue-state divide.

Sound like any place you know?

Things I Think

It's Friday, and I have a lot on my mind. Let's get started with the ugly:



Everyone's worried about foreign terrorists. Gotta keep Al Cater out of the country or he's gonna kill a lot of people. Gotta keep those Iranians in check. While everyone's busy hunting for bad guys "over there," we've got homegrown terrorists -- Americans -- shooting abortion doctors, blowing up federal buildings, and now, killing a guard at the Holocaust Museum, a stone's throw from the White House. And let's not forget how, a few years ago, a former Army sharpshooter took a young kid on a shooting spree in Maryland and Virginia. They murdered countless people in parking lots and gas stations and scared the shit out of everyone in the mid-Atlantic States. Oh and remember how, right after 9/11, some kook mailed anthrax to Tom Brokaw and other media personalities? The moral of this story is, that there's no shortage of American nutjobs with axes to grind, people full of venom and hate. And in a developed country like ours, you can buy all the shit you need to kill a lot of people at the local Walmart or Home Depot. Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City with a truck full of fertilizer. The next American mass murder may decide to build a dirty bomb out of all that extra radioactive waste lying around your local hospitals. Actually, another school shooting is more likely than that. For now. These people are terrorists too, right? I mean, you don't need a long beard and catchy "Down with America" chant to be considered a terrorist, do you? They say the hate groups in this country are all riled up because of Obama's election. No shit. They're on the wrong side of history; they should be riled up. I just hope someone's paying attention. If 88 year-old racists with nothing left to lose are pissed off, we're in bigger trouble than I thought.

Now the purdy:



That Miss California -- ex-Miss California -- what's her name, Carrie Prejean? She sure has some stupid views about gay marriage. Real dumb. Redneck dumb. But honestly, the first thing I think every time they show her sauntering around with those fake boobies of hers, is "Damn, that girl is f'n hot!" For what it's worth, I'm not proud of it.


David Carradine, WTF? That is one weird way to go out. And we're never going to know how he really died. It sure as hell wasn't suicide, like they originally reported. His hands were bound. That's impossible to do if you're going to hang yourself. Option two is auto-erotic asphyxiation, a form of masturbation where you cut off the oxygen to your brain to induce a more intense orgasm. Michael Hutchence of INXS supposedly died that way. I'm not sure I buy that theory either, even for an edgy dude like Carradine. Who needs an ex-tree intense orgasm at age 72? I mean, if I'm still that horny at 72 -- and mind you, I PLAN to be -- I'll be happy just to be able to pop one off at that age. I won't need all the extra fixins. I just don't think Carradine would be practicing that kind of thing at that point in his life. And if he was horny, baby, he was in friggin' Thailand. He had money. He could have gotten himself a very affordable playmate. It just makes no sense. I'm thinking he pissed someone off and got his ass killed.

Last night we had another thunder storm. I feel like I've been living in a thunderstorm for a month. The other night, the thunder crackled so loud at 3:30 a.m., I nearly wet the bed. I don't even remember what the sun looks like. It's almost summer, right?

Could someone please explain to me ESPN's inexplicable obsession with Brett Favre? Last year they wouldn't shut up about him coming out of retirement to play for the Jets. This year it's the Vikings he's courting. I say WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK!!! Is that asshole paying ESPN royalties to mention his name every thirty seconds? Does anyone outside of Minnesota care if he retires or not? I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE FAVRE STORIES! I JUST WANT THE F'N RED SOX HIGHLIGHTS! PLEASE MAKE THEM STOP!


In other news, my Boston Red Sox have played the New York Yankee$ eight times this season, and they have won all eight games. Sweet, sweet ambrosia.


I have been following the Iranian election with considerable bemusement. You might be surprised to hear (a) that Iran is actually a democracy (more of one than say, China or Iraq); and (b) political elections there are as bareknuckle as they are here. There's a reformist candidate -- Moussavi -- running against Ahmadinejad, and I really hope he wins. He's a painter, an architect, a real renaissance man. Mahmoud is a cock gone flaccid. All arrogant flash and self-delusion but nothing real to er... stand him up when he needs it most. Just like our ex-President. Bush is gone and now it's Mahmoud's turn to leave. I'm really hoping things go that way. Funny how the leaders of Iran and the U.S. create all kinds of conflict inside and outside their countries, but the Iranian and American people seem to want peace and good relations with one another. Fingers crossed.


I loved Obama's speech in Cairo. It's about time an American President said those things to that audience. And it's about time that an American President didn't kowtow to Israel's every desire.

The GM bankruptcy shows that the companies everyone says were "too big to fail" were not too big to fail. I hate to say it, but the Republicans were right about this one. Though they're being totally hypocritical about it because most of them supported Bush when he was pushing these bailout plans nine months ago. Everyone screamed that we needed to save GM or the world would end. Billions of dollars later, it didn't work and GM is still going bankrupt. What a colossal waste of money. Not Iraq War wasteful, but wasteful nonetheless. Obamer got this one wrong. There, I said it.

The twenty-year anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square just passed. Did anyone notice? People seemed to give a shit '89. Guess we can't make too much of a big deal about it now since China owns our ass. Literally.

Palin's pissed about a tasteless Letterman joke about her daughter. Here, Dave explains what happened:



Good, now someone please grab a cane and drag dear Sarah off the stage. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill and misleading people in the process. Shit, if she didn't have any kids, she'd have no publicity at all. She should be thanking Dave for the airtime, not getting all up in his 62 year-old grille.

Here's a final thought to ponder over the weekend: what if every single thing our five senses tell us is actually an illusion? Descartes said "I think, therefore I am." That may be true. But what if none of what we think is real, the things we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is the real reality? What if it's all a dream that the collective mind is having? A bad dream where Big Mind believes that it has divided into billions of individual bodies containing tiny, smaller minds? Where Big Mind has forgotten that it's actually one mind and is now divided and subdivided and at war with itself. Where it watches millions of tiny minds -- broken pieces of itself encased in symbolic bodies -- fight each other in every way possible, from household arguments between spouses to drunken fisticuffs, to criminal assaults, rapes, and serial murders, to world wars. What would it mean if nothing in this world really mattered, that it's all an illusion to serve some unknown purpose? What if nothing we see is real and we are living in Matrixland?

If you think this is a bizarre idea, tell me, did you have a dream last night or the night before? Have you ever had a dream where you thought you were flying? Or you were shagging that boy or girl you've had your eye on for awhile? Then you woke up and you realized it was just a dream, that you can't really fly, and Bobby/Georgina never looks in your direction. (And you were pissed!) Your mind, my mind, they have the power to create worlds that defy the laws of reality, or what we think is reality. We do fantastical things in our dreams. We do bad things to good people and bad people do them to us. If there is a powerful, collective unconscious mind out there, one that encompasses the electromagnetic strength of every living thing, isn't it possible that it too could be having an incredibly intense dream (or nightmare, depending on how you look at it) where it created a world -- this world --that's not the real reality? And time, birth, life, death, winning, losing, sex, killing, wars are all an illusion occuring in the dream? Me, I not only think it's possible, I think it's happening.

Things I Think I Think On September 20, 2007

I'm glad they Tase'd him, bro. Anyone who watched the video and doesn't think that spoiled, wannabe, melodramatic, annoying fuck wasn't pandering to the cameras to promote his own douchebaggery is blind and stupid. It's laughable that this tool has now become a cause celebre for police brutality and some cop is probably going to lose his job over this. Andrew "Don't Tase Me, Bro" Meyer is a great example of the spoiled and self-absorbed pricks who currently occupy our universities on Daddy's dime. Better put more money in my 401(k), this country's going to be in the toilet in 20 years. Actually, I remember more than a few dinks like this when I was in school, so nevermind.

Speaking of douchebaggery, O.J., welcome back, my brother! For one night at least, you slept in jail, which is where you belong. How ironic that you may get more prison time for a botched robbery than for the cold-blooded murder of two people. Someone should Tase him, bro. A few times.

How petty has the United States become? The leader of Iran wants to go lay a wreath at Ground Zero and we refuse to let him. This is the international equivalent of taking our ball and going home. How silly. Yeah, he's a dick. But we've got our own dick as President, don't we? Actually, our Dick is Vice President; we've got a Bush as President. Sometimes our Dick gets inside our Bush and that's when we get an orgasm of problems, like the Iraq War, sweetheart deals for Halliburton, and the evisceration of our civil rights. But I'm digressing again.

Yeah, Iran's causing problems in Iraq, Syria, and a lot of other places. But is Iran doing anything the United States hasn't done first? We've certainly caused our share of problems in other countries during our history. Here are a few examples of the places we've invaded with our armies, our CIA, and/or our money: Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Lebanon, Ecuador, Chile, Korea, and Cambodia. And we're criticizing Iran for meddling in other countries' affairs? Talk about the ass calling the finger stinky. They're just doing what we've been doing for the past 100 years. At least Iran stays relatively close to its own borders.

Sure they're trying to develop nuclear weapons. But we do not occupy the moral high ground in this area. We invented nuclear weapons and have thousands of them stockpiled. Chemical weapons too. And... biological weapons too. "Oh," you say, "it's okay if WE have them. We're a NICE country. We only want what's BEST for the world. Some of those other countries are BAD countries. They do BAD things." That's all a matter of perspective, folks. I don't think most of the world agrees with that point of view. Most of the world thinks George Bush is more dangerous than Osama Bin Forgotten. That's sad, and it shows you how far we've sunk. Oh and by the way, we're the only country that's ever USED nuclear weapons. And we look the other way on nuclear proliferation when countries we like acquire them. You don't hear us complaining about Israel having nuclear weapons, do you? Or India? Or Pakistan? (That last one scares me way more than Iran.) Do those countries have any more right acquire to nuclear weapons than Iran? Why exactly? Iran understands that the United States would think long and hard before it attacks a country that has nuclear weapons, so it's understandable why Iran wants them too.

I know it's not a popular view, but if Iran's nutty professor wants to visit Ground Zero and pay his respects on behalf of the Iranian people, sincere or not, we should let him. What would it cost us? Iran's younger generation is very pro-Western and is chafing under all the stupid rules instituted by Iran's religious leaders. It's only a matter of time before moderates start occupying positions of power in that country, so less, not more, separation between our countries is what's needed here. Snubbing Ahmadinejad, a democratically elected leader, only makes us look like the arrogant fucktards we've been acting like for the past seven years. And even worse, it makes that whackjob look like a victim. Smart move, America!

Besides, people shouldn't forget that Iran actually condemned the 9/11 attacks and was initially helping us in Afghanistan when we invaded six years ago. They only changed their tune after we stupidly invaded Iraq. Uh, can you blame them? How comfortable would we be if we had the Chinese Army occupying Canada and Mexico and building military bases on our borders? It's time we started putting ourselves in the shoes of the countries and leaders we say we despise. Maybe then we'll adopt a foreign policy that plans beyond the next five minutes and does more good than harm.

Damnit, Kyla Ebbert's outfit was NOT too skimpy to fly on Southwest.
Give me a friggin' break. That's what she's wearing and they throw her off a flight? Puh-leaze. There's no cleavage there and hardly any skin. Indeed, I've seen skimpier Christmas Party outfits on some of the secretaries -- I mean "assistants" -- who work in my law firm.

I'd like to know who the hell complained. It had to be a woman. Probably a busybody who reads Quilting Weekly and hasn't been laid in a decade. Damn sure no straight man groused about that outfit. Or even a gay man. Actually, check that. A gay man may have tried to have Kyla thrown off the plane for bad taste. Either way, why can't people mind their own fucking business?

I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but I'm SICK and TIRED of the anal a-holes who always play the victim and who think they can boss everyone around because their hypo-allergenic sensibilities have been offended by something that the average person doesn't give a shit about. Let's round these hypersensitive jerks up and stick them in Ethiopia for a couple of weeks and see how offended they get when they can't find any food or water. Man, these people chap my ass! And I love how the airlines pander to these Human Nerve Endings instead of doing the only thing we want them to do right: take off and land on time. And I also love how every time I fly, I NEVER sit next to someone who looks as slutty hot as Kyla Ebbert. No, instead I get Stank Canker, the 350 lb. frequent flier from Milwaukee who smells like warm salami and three-day old Cheetos.

The "Jena 6" Situation. What a clusterfuck. How does a simple assault and battery get charged as an attempted second-degree murder? That's idiotic. And how in the world does the racist beating of a white kid justify a "March for Justice" led by the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson? What about justice for the kid who got beat up? Seems to me that those protesters are overlooking that someone got their ass kicked here. According to Jackson, the little scamps who did it should only get "probation." I wonder if he'd be supporting probation if the colors in this story were reversed. I wonder how big a protest there would be if it was six white kids who attacked a black kid and put him in the hospital. Oh, it would be bigger alright, but for different reasons. They'd want a LOT of jail time and how! And The Jena 6? C'mon. We're not talkin' The Chicago Seven here. I'm just glad no one got Tase'd bro, or we'd have had ourselves a riot down there. Long way to go on race relations, pee-pull. Long way.

On the bright side, at least someone's protesting something in this country. Tens of thousands dead in Iraq and hundreds of thousands murdered in Darfur and you don't hear a peep.

Fall is here, and I'm as happy as Jeremy Piven in a Catholic, all-girls high school. This is my favorite time of the year, by far -- the time of year when I really miss living in the Shire. Brisk, clean air, the leaves are changing, Halloween parties, hay rides, bobbing for apples, the whole nine yards. Down here in NYC, the perks of fall aren't quite as fantabulous, but I'll take them anyway. No more heated city stench wafting off the concrete. No more sweatin' to the oldies on the subway. No more sidewalks packed with Eurotrash and Midwesterners. A nice clear path until Thanksgiving. And we've got our outdoor beer gardens (including one that's coming to the 'Burg this month), our Spa Week, our Village Halloween Parade, our Feast of San Gennaro, and our Film Festival. Best time of the year. Speaking of which, I got myself a hankering for a lager right now.....

8 Things I Think I'm Thinking About On March 1, 2007

Boy all this work has been cutting into my blog time lately. Enough with the mushy b.s., it's a new month. Time to get back to current events. Here's a quickie in the middle of my workday: 8 things I think I'm thinking about today, March 1, 2007.


1. Dick Cheney would do well to keep his pasty white arse within the borders of the United States. Yes, he's almost as despised here as he is in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but as far as I know, no one here is trying to take him out. Seriously, what in Allah's good name was he doing visiting those two haters a few days ago? Couldn't he have done the same thing with a video conference? No, no, no. Meeting with foreign dignitaries is really not the point. These little jaunts to the world's hellholes by Messrs. Bush, Cheney, and Madame Rice are designed to accomplish two things: (1) Stanch political bleeding on the home front, and (2) Poke a large American finger in the eye of our enemies. "I am all powerful, and I can go wherever I want in the world, including your backyard. I'm right in your face and you can't touch me, fuckers!"

Well, Dickles almost got touched a couple of days ago. Permanently touched. Too bad the Talibananas don't know that you can't kill Dick Cheney. You can only hope to contain him. The man is a vampire. He's Bulletproof. A zombie. The undead. You get the point. He's survived what, four heart attacks? He's not going anywhere and will probably live to 104.

Oh, and I loved this quote. When Dick was asked about the purpose of the suicide attack -- which killed 23 people by the way -- this is what he said:

"They clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government. Striking at Bagram with a suicide bomber I suppose is one way to do that."

No shit, really? If they almost got Cheney on short notice, how much time do you think Karzai has left?



2. Britney's bald look is hot. Yes, I know I'm in the minority here. Perhaps even a distinct minority. But her head is so smooth, so sexy without hair. It really brings out her beautiful eyes. I dig it. I really do. I'm biased though. In my life, I've had torrid crushes on other bald women, like Sinead O'Connor (pre-SNL fiasco) and the bald actress in the first Star Trek movie. I can't explain it. You really need the right head shape to pull it off though ladies, so beware before you trot out those clippers!



Jack Nicholson is another story. At the Oscars, he looked like a bloated Daddy Warbucks in too-cool-for-school sunglasses. Like Darth Vader after they removed his helmet in Return of the Jedi and showed his misshapen blue head. Not a good look, Jack. But you're doing it for your art, so you get a pass. (And I know you're reading this blog in between Bacchanalian romps with young wannabe starlets. That's why I am speaking to you directly, in the second person).



3. Pigs are flying and hell is freezing. We are approaching peace with North Korea and (gasp!) we might actually be seen in the same room with leaders from Iran and Syria. Good news, my brothers!

Of course, the moral of this story for all you pipsqueak enemies of the United States is that if you build yourself a nuke or two, we'll make peace with you. No one wants a nuclear fistfight. Is it any wonder why Iran is running full steam towards membership in the Nuclear League of Nations? It ain't no fluke, if you don't got that nuke!

Hey, who's that in the back of the room stompin' and swearin' and gettin' all red in the face? Israel? Hmmm... this story's not over yet. Get your hazmat suits and Cipro ready folks, and strap yourselves in. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.



4. You think your life sucks? Try being Taco Bell for five minutes. First they have a sickening outbreak in some of their restaurants in New Jersey and then NYC inspectors "discover" a nest of rats in one of their restaurants in Greenwich Village. Nice eh? I love rat droppings with my tacos, don't you? If you are stupid enough to still own stock in Yum Brands (owner of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut), you may want to consider beating yourself about the head with a KFC chicken wing.

I've probably eaten at a Taco Bell twice in my life (my appetite does not run large for a shit-looking/smelling bean paste in a thin wheat rollup), but you'll never catch me there, or at any of those other places, again. In fact, between E. coli outbreaks, mad cow disease, and that bloated feeling I get after eating red meat, vegetarianism is looking better and better to me every day.



5. I wish Alan Greenspan would shut the fuck up. Isn't this guy supposed to be retired? He's as old as God and he still feels the need to grab his balls and opine on the future of the market whenever someone puts a mic in his face. A few days ago, he did us the dubious favor of proffering his wisdom that the U.S. could be headed for a recession later this year. Based in part upon his negative remarks (and profit taking in an overheated Chinese market), the U.S. market tanked 416 points, the largest drop since after 9/11.

Can't he be quiet, go buy an island somewhere, and keep himself busy playing hide the mango with a few lady friends? Sheesh. If he keeps this shit up, I'm going to be on the street wearing nothing but a barrel, like a poor character in one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons.



6. This just in -- 74 year-old Italian grandmother, Olga Mauriello of Naples, finds live grenade in groceries. Apparently the device was covered in dirt and she thought it was a spud, a dirty little potato, until she took it home, picked it up, washed it off, and realized she had a live, active grenade in her hands. [INSERT CLICHED ITALIAN EXCLAMATION HERE]. Thankfully, she lived to tell the story, though she has been seriously traumatized by the Spud That Was Not A Spud.

Baaaah! What a baby. My Nonna would have turned that grenade into spicy fries, thrown it on a plate with a T-bone, and served it to us for dinner.


7. In local news, I can't decide where I come down on Pool Aid. You don't know what Pool Aid is? Man, where you have you been? Pool Aid is an organization that has taken a (still) decrepit, though incredibly large, empty pool near McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and turned it into a happenin' site for summertime concerts. I attended a couple of them last summer, and they were actually kind of fun, though the lines got longer as the word got out. Cheap beer, Dodgeball games, slip n' slide, hot dogs, lit doobies here and there, and good old fashioned rock and roll. All the great things you remember from your childhood.

The downside is it that the crowd gets a little grungy during the course of an afternoon. And after a few drinks, some of the hipsters -- the cool but much maligned 18-25 year-old unwashed demographic that pervades the 'Burg -- come perilously close to venturing into 60s hippydom, dancing around, hugging, waving, laughing, smoking. Hippies are most certainly NOT cool. When I start seeing hippies, that's when I pick up my NY Times (what a dork I am, seriously), get on my bike and leave the scene.

Some people don't want the concerts because McCarren Park is located near rapidly rising, yuppie condos, some of which now surround the Park. The concerts go all day on the summer weekends. Not exactly what the Condo People envisioned when they plunked down mucho dinero for granite countertops, Australian Jarrah wood floors, and Subzero refrigerators.

If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, what a hipster is, or why you should give a rabbit's poop about pool concerts in a tiny town in Brooklyn, well have I got a special treat for you! I ran across the video below on Curbed, which will answer ALL of your questions and much much more. It's Pool Aid Hipsters singing "We Are The Pool," playing off the USA for Africa song from two decades ago. Shots of last year's concerts, kids splashing, Williamsburg hipsters dancing, and people just having a good old party time. An aging, sadly deflated Kool-Aid Man even makes a cameo. (Sadly, he's really let himself go. Must have been all that cocaine in the 80s.) Enjoy.






8. One small step against terrorism, one giant leap towards a police state. Time for an update on the legal proceedings of the case involving alleged Al Qaeda operative (and American citizen) Jose Padilla. He's the guy they locked up in a U.S. military brig in South Carolina for a few years without due process for allegedly plotting to build a dirty bomb. His trial is coming up in April and what do you know? It appears that a crucial DVD recording of Padilla being interrogated has mysteriously disappeared. The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It's important because it might show, among other things, that Mr. Padilla was sufficiently traumatized by prior harsh treatment -- which has been said to include extreme isolation, manipulation of the temperature in his cells, loud noises and other techniques designed to break him down -- that any confession or other statements he gave during interrogation could be ruled inadmissible at trial. Guess we'll never know now, will we?

Prosecutors gave no explanation for how and why the DVD went missing after all this time. One would think they would have kept it carefully guarded under lock and key, since it purportedly provided key evidence of Mr. Padilla's guilt. Apparently someone important decided that the bad outweighed the good and the DVD should disappear, so it did.

This guy is getting railroaded so badly, it makes Saddam's trial look fair and clean by comparison. Can't wait to watch the sham on C-SPAN.

And that's 8 things I think I am thinking about today. Good night and good luck.