Please die soon.

Today on HuffPost there was this sad headline, "Horror Master Wes Craven Dies." Just above it, in an unrelated article, was a photo of this evil warmonger and mass murderer.  The headline for that story should have been, "Horror Master Dick Cheney Lives."

The media praises another pain in the ass.

This is going to sound very misanthropic, but the news is especially annoying today because it's letting so many stupid people off the hook. For starters Gregory Murrey, he's the moron who fell 40 feet  to his death at the Atlanta baseball stadium. Seems he got so carried away with his dislike of Alex Rodriguez he catapulted himself right through the guard rail. The news of course never mention that he was a jerk to do so. Another idiot this week was Miyuki Harwood, the 62-year-old who carelessly got separated from her hiking group and wandered off like an unsupervised tot. The result? She was lost for nine days in the Sierra National Forest. The news media made a big fuss about her rescue never mentioning that she was a thoughtless and careless idiot to put so many people at risk who had to go searching for her. Finally, while I think the unprovoked shooting of a police officer Darren Goforth at a gas station in Harris County, Texas, was a terrible tragedy, I think it's ludicrous to hold a vigil at that gas station because it was the site of his death.  I think most of the many mourners are merely ghouls who want to be part of a news story. Also ridiculous are the de rigeur balloons and stuffed animals which always create a maudlin display. The news of course always covers such sentimentality with insipid seriousness.

Under two rocks.

Is there any creature on earth lower than Donald Trump. Absolutely. Sarah Palin is even scummier than Donald. And she proved it the other night on her interview with him during her show On Point with Sarah Palin. As we all know Sarah is a brainless narcissist, a quitter, a liar, and a phenomenal failure at everything she does. She's generally an arrogant cipher only interested in gaining glory for herself. But on this interview she took the role as toady. She was an ass-kissing obsequious fan, flattering Donald throughout, genuflecting, kowtowing, salaaming with every worshipful sentence. She was the 18 wpm secretary so eager to gain a job her every utterance promised whatever kind of obeisance the great man wanted. What a delight it was to see this harridan brought so low and see this arrogant fool so addicted to false flattery that he preened at every word from one of the world's most famous liars.

"Evil thy name is Dick."

There are lots of despicable Republicans. The GOP practically has a monopoly on creepy, soulless, cheating, war-mongering, hypocritical liars. But there's one who stands head and shoulders above all the others. He's nastier, angrier, balder, older, and deadlier than all than anyone else. And despite being out of power—and surprisingly out of prison—he still has an Adjutant General and Propaganda Minister which he produced from his own poisoned loins to assure that she would be as evil as him. Amazingly this old rattlesnake is still hissing and spewing poison everywhere he goes, which shouldn't surprise you because he only looks like a nonagenarians. Which is a pity because while he often moans like he's at death's door, he always survives to crawl or wheel from city to city with his blonde-helmeted nursemaid daughter making false accusations, dire predictions and unprovoked attacks. Many have compared this mass-murdering monster to Darth Vader, which is ridiculous. Next to Dick, Darth seems practically adorable.

Shame on me.

It isn't nice to judge people on their looks. But,  god, this man is ugly. 

No longer perfect. Ha. Ha Ha.

Are we becoming a nation of Philistines? When a major work of art is damaged it should be considered a sad event and in many cases a cultural catastrophe. But this week, when a clumsy boy carrying a soda can tripped into a 350-year-old painting worth 1.5 million dollars, leaving a gash in the art work, both NBC and ABC News considered it an amusing story. Neither one of their tongue-in-cheek reports suggested that this damaging of a painting titled Flowers in a Taiwan museum was in any way a bad thing. First of all this clumsy oaf should have been supervised, and secondly why was he allowed to carry a soda can through a museum? But he's young and stupid and not expected to know better, but the editors at NBC and ABC should have enough intelligence to know that this story should not be treated as comical filler. Boorish jerks!

Note: I'm surprised these networks weren't roaring with hilarity
when ISIS destroyed the ancient city of Palmyra.

"It's so clever."

Every year I choose my favorite commercial. Generally it is a funny spot, and one with which you never get bored no matter how many times you see it. (That's very rare today when so many commercials should be seen only once then disappear forever.) The trouble with this year's choice is that I cannot post it because it doesn't seem to be anywhere on YouTube (not even a still shot). I wonder why. Possibly because some people have suggested that it's gay since it features two young men in a car, one seeming to be uncomfortable with the other's familiarity. But who knows? Some people see gay in everything. I just think it's hilarious, brilliantly acted, and happily never unwelcome since it runs quite a lot. The commercial is for the Toyota Corolla in which one guy is admiring his friend's wisdom in choosing a  car with so many features, especially the one he considers most appealing, which he expresses in his last rhapsodic line, "It's so roomy".

What more proof do you need?

I've posted this commercial before, but I find it so annoying I had to run it again. I hate that so many advertisers run such stupid and illogical commercials. While trying to make this young woman look proud that she got a safe drivers' bonus check, they make her look a moron if she thinks that proves that women are better drivers than men. Of course, he looks just as clueless for being supposedly cowed by her "evidence". Women may be better drivers than men. Who really knows? But I don't think a single check from All State settles the case once and for all.

Picture perfect.

Most celebrities and politicians are portrayed a certain way in the media. Oftentimes someone you admire is caught looking shabby or dissolute. Someone you don't like may be portrayed as being refined and dignified. It all depends on the photographer and often on the medium itself. Any celebrity will look much better on the cover of Vanity Fair than on the front page of the Enquirer. And every now and then you see  a photo of a famous personality that shows that person exactly as you imagine them to be, no matter how much positive press they receive at other times. This photo, I think, captures the very essence of Jeb Bush and reflects perfectly just how qualified he is to be President of the United States.

The death of real songs.

Why does America have such low-brow musical tastes? First of all that which is piped in everywhere you go it not actually music, it's noise. It's sound designed to fill the environment of every restaurant, store, medical office, and mall. Many restaurants even blast manufactured cacophony into the street. And it is rare to non-existent for that "music" to be anything but the most pedestrian pop songs, more often than not with second-rate singers screaming intensely repetitive lyrics. You never hear inspiring classical music, or universal favorites from America's Songbook. You rarely hear actual singers like Sinatra, Garland, Bennet, Clooney or any other past or contemporary artists who can actually sing. You also rarely hear superior instrumentals. Most of these songs have a strident insistent beat that was probably produced on some music machine. Sadly, I don't think Americans are that uncultured.  I think the purveyors of music systems have brilliantly conned businesses everywhere. First, by convincing them that music is necessary to generate business. It isn't. And secondly by selling them absolute crap and telling them it is what consumers want. It's not. These scam artists know very well that people seldom complain. I am a rarity. They also don't want to pay the royalties required for top talent, ergo: all these moderately talented over-produced, echo-chambered, single-beat performers chanting pedestrian six-word cliches often repeated 20 to 30 times, invariably using the noun "baby" and generally of no interest to ASCAP or BMI. I personally detest having to listen to this shit everywhere I go. And I don't think I'm alone. But most people just put up with what is placed in front of them. Which is really stupid. If you go into a restaurant, you order what you want from the menu, not what you are told you must choose like it or not. So why is everyone so willing to have some huge profit-making company determine the music they must listen to?

The day John caught the brass ring.

One shudders when one considers how it was possible for Sarah Palin to become president if John McCain had won the election and later died in office. As we know now, and actually knew then, Palin is a incredibly ignorant narcissist with zero integrity. She's lazy, dishonest, spiteful, ill-informed and just plain dumb. But she wasn't the only problem. If you look into McCain's past you will see that his also a  veteran liar who was no more worthy of running out country than she was. While he claims to have been an honorable POW, the facts and other prisoners tell a different story. To avoid torture, he sang like a canary. It seems that when McCain returned to American in 1973 to undeserved fanfare, he learned his wife Carol had been disfigured in a 1969 car crash. Not happy with her appearance, Johnny led a promiscuous life for the next 7 years, and in 1980  divorced Carol, mother to his three eldest children, and a month later, ever the opportunist, he married Cindy, 18 years his junior and heir to an Arizona brewing fortune. And he's been pretending to be an upright citizen ever since. So thanks to President Barack Obama, we dodged two bullets on election night.

Good as gold.

We all know that pharmaceutical companies are rolling in money by overcharging us for all the medicines we depend on or have been told we depend on. Which is why they push so hard. This week I haven't been able to look up anything on YouTube without first having to view a commercial—at least for five seconds—for Invokana, a new cash cow from Janssen. Used along with diet and exercise, INVOKANA® is the first in the newest class of diabetes medicines that’s proven to significantly lower A1C in adults with type 2 diabetes. That makes it highly desirable and much needed, which is exactly what greedy pharmaceuticals require in order to soak the sick. (30 pills, $371.00.) Fortunately I don't
have diabetes so their ads are wasted on me.

What the rednecks saw.

Poor Donald. He was convinced that his arrival in Alabama would fill all 40,000 seats and then some at Mobile's Ladd-Peebles Stadium. But when he began his speech it was only half-full. Not that 20,000 rednecks isn't impressive. That's still a mighty powerful number of drop-jawed bigots hee-hawing at every nasty comment and knee-slapping at every mention of that wall.And how proud he must be to have been compared to George Wallace— wow, what a tribute. One of the attendees, a 59-year-old retired psychiatrist from Tuscaloosa, said she isn't offended by the insults Trump has directed at women, like "dog" and "bimbo." One can only imagine how successful her practice was with that kind of thinking. Yes, it was the kind of event that reminds us all that "The Heart of Dixie" is in bad need of several stents.

Winners of the Dumb Tee Shirt contest.

What inspires idiots like these? Did these four dumb harridans make these tee shirts themselves or have them created at some novelty shop. And who dreamed them up——the redneck giantess,You? And how is Obama fired? He will finish his term and a new president will take over. It seems to me these incredibly stupid stand-together duds could only be created by four angry racist goons. I'm assuming that they were all attendees at Trump's Alabama rally, a quartet of giggling duelling-banjo bimbos turned on by his ethnic slurs and thrilled to see the super star of their favorite TV show "The Apprentice".

It's never a nice word.

I think one of the stupidest arguments today is that the word "queer" is an acceptable appellation for anyone who's gay. Many gays argue that they are just claiming for themselves a word that was once used against them and by doing so they empower themselves. What bullshit! The word queer was  and remains an insult. Queer means eccentric, weird, odd, peculiar, and any number of other unflattering terms. It is a word that is spat in complete derision at millions of bullied teens. It is an ugly word and the fact that so many masochistic homosexuals embrace it does not make it acceptable. If queer is an approved synonym for gay, then you might as well bring back words like retard, cripple, moron, gimp, and dozens of other insulting terms with the rationale that those afflicted should embrace these cruel epithets, not as demeaning insults, but as a way to empower themselves.  In short, use the same idiotic, delusional argument that so many gay men and groups use who believed that the demeaning word "queer" is a swell word to define who they are.

"You couldn't maybe mention Hawaii?"

Isn't it funny how God of the Bible didn't know any more than the residents of the Holy Land? He didn't know a damn thing about science, meteorology, astronomy, geography. He never even hinted that there were distant lands and oceans. For someone who supposedly invented everything, you'd think he'd mention medicine, fossil fuels, and bring up hundreds of other subjects that would have made everyone's life easier. It almost makes you think that since the God of the Bible didn't seem to be an all-seeing, all-knowing deity, there really wasn't such a omniscient being. But how is that possible?

Crude animations.

Have you noticed. Almost every time you see a promo for a kids' film, even Disney films, it will include a scene that is particularly vulgar.  The movie itself will, of course, have lots of toilet jokes.
I won't list the subjects they choose, suffice it to say they are all scatological. Apparently someone told filmmakers that children find any kind of toilet humor hilarious, which may or may not be true. They only thing I'm sure of is thanks to today's filmmakers, we are pretty guaranteed of having a generation of boorish adults who adore bathroom humor.

A penny saved is, well, basically nothing.

Does Ross think that their potential customers are all morons?  Do they actually believe that viewers will not know that $22.99 is only a penny less than $23.00? And won't they assume that once they pay the sales tax there is no way they they will get them "for less than $23.00". Ross uses this same illogical wording in almost all over their commercials.   I'd call it deceptive advertising if it weren't so stupidly transparent.

Near disaster.

I am reading The Lies of Sarah Palin, The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power by Geoffrey Dunn. Needless to say it's fascinating reading. But it's also disturbingly eye-opening. We know that John McCain made a huge mistake when he chose this nasty naif to be his Vice President. But that  he did so without completely vetting her is shocking. Long before he even heard of her she had left behind her a trail of lies, betrayals, vendettas, profound ignorance and neurotic behavior. Even a cursory investigation into her past should have excluded her from being his running mate. That anyone so flawed as Palin could go so far on looks, chutzpah and designer frames is amazing. And that she could fail so miserably and still have enough of a following that Fox News and other media outlets deemed her to have any value at all is a sad commentary on American society. Now she is 51 and relatively played out. But I doubt that we have heard that last of this narcissistic, attention-hungry harridan.

Just one of the boys.

I think Americans are very naive if they think Donald Trump is any more anti-women than the other chauvinists seeking the presidency.  As Republicans they are constantly fighting to prevent women from having any say over their own bodies, attempting to cut funding for birth control, voting against equal pay for women, and sticking their GOP noses into other areas of concern to women and none of their business. Donald Trump is arrogant,  obnoxious and repulsive, but so are all the other male contenders. The only difference is that he's loud and obvious and they keep their misogyny relatively hidden.

Effective.

Since the first Republican debates, there is a concerted effort to lionize (lionessize?) Megan Kelly because she acquitted herself well as moderator, notably in attacking Donald Trump. But I can't ignore the fact that she is just another blonde propagandist for Fox News, which means she is not a serious journalist but merely a decorative reporter. So while many in the media are suddenly praising Ms. Kelly, I still see her as not much more admirable than Tokyo Rose or Axis Sally, who were also very good at their jobs.

Words that almost nobody can pronounce.

Why does everyone say innanet. The word is internet. There is a T and an E and R in that word. There's also a T in interview. It's not innaview. When did the word come down that one is no longer required to pronounce the interior T in words like Atlantic, Interstate, Intercourse, Identity and...well hundreds more. If you're one of the millions of persons guilty of dropping the T, I wish you would try putting it back for at least a week. You'll find that your speech is much, much stronger.

Do you know what this is?

I'm curious because obviously most people don't. Especially people who use this item of furniture. They never refer to it correctly, but call it by another name—an inaccurate name. This is a lectern. It is not a podium. Nobody stands behind the podium. They stand behind the lectern. One stands on a podium. Pod means feet, those things that one stands on when standing on the podium. I was amazed during the discussions of last night's debate that not one news person correctly referred to the lecterns, but kept speaking of "standing behind the podium". Now I wouldn't be surprised if this has become an accepted term for what is actually the lectern because often we have to change the meanings of words because people are too ignorant to use the correct ones.

"Ten little, nine little, eight little indians."

I never went back to see the rest of the first Republican debate. Why would I waste my time watching ten skilled liars answer questions from a Fox News blonde clone with 3-inch eyelashes. What little I did see was comical enough. Bush trying to blame Obama for brother George's madness. Lindsey carrying on like a  paranoid hysteric about ISIS. Moe and Curly getting into a squabble. Rick Perry talking about Ronald Raven giving amnesty to 4 million illegal immigrants. (I'm sure I heard billion.) Trump was the draw, and I hear he didn't disappoint, releasing all his usual bluster, arrogance, and misogyny. With so much money involved and so many attacks on Hillary and considering the gullibility of the American public, it's possible one of these jokers may be our next president.  And we all know what the means: WAR!

Foxy debate moderator.

I didn't watch the entire debate tonight. That kind of mendacity can prove to be very depressing. But what little I did see seemed to be  very combative, and predictable. Notably Jeb! Bush suggesting that the unrest in the Middle East is the fault of President Obama when the blame is entirely on the weak shoulders of his lying, war-mongering brother. I'll try to catch a rerun tomorrow. What did strike me as most peculiar was seeing ten men in a supposedly serious political debate being conducted by a bimbo blonde with 3-inch false eyelashes.

When silver goes green.

I just called Pfizer to report that the tablets in a container of Centrum Silver that I haven't use in a while have turned green. Is that normal? I wondered. Now you would think when a consumer brings a company's problem to that company's attention, it would be responded to with alacrity. No way. Lots of wait time, listening to repetitive 10-second piece of music, followed by an even longer wait in which I was transferred to India. When I refused to talk to India and demanded an American employee, there was still more waiting. There is no conclusion to this whine, other than this: If you care about America's economy, any time you are transferred to what is obviously an overseas rep, you should demand to speak to the American office. If enough people do this, these greedy corporations, like Pfizer,  might just start transferring jobs back here where they belong.