Wasn't I supposed to gain great wisdom in exchange for my youth and beauty?


Maybe, the amount of wisdom we gain later in life is commensurate with the amount of "youth and beauty" we had earlier in life? Dear God! I am so fucked!

RE: Where's MY stimulus package?

Screw 'Wall Street' and all those other unscrupulous, bloated corporate hogs ... Where's my stimulus package?

Well, tough times call for creative solutions.

Below are a variety of carefully researched and proposed stimulus packages designed to motivate and move average Americans forward through these tough times.

Please indicate your preference, and we will recommend that the President send one to every American household.

	Stimulus Package: #1 Bucket-loads of free caffeine and energy drinks + - No more late fees + - Your kids already know how to mix them with all the most popular over-the-counter medications.
	Stimulus Package: #2 This is a joke. + - Reusable
	Stimulus Package: #3 Angry Dogs. + - "Green"/ Eco-friendly + - "Release the hounds!" isn't just an expression anymore. Now, It's a lifestyle.
	Stimulus Package: #4 Cocaine. (Hundred dollar bill not included) + - Profoundly expensive, which means the Federal government would likely approve it. + - Complete your 40 hour work week in a mere 2 days!
	Stimulus Package: #5 Whips. (Lesbian dominatrix included) + - He/She WILL get out of bed and look for a new job. + - Drastically reduced wait times. For anything.
	Stimulus Package: #6 Small explosives. + - Guaranteed customer service like never before. + - Personally empowering. Boosts confidence without a hangover!
	Stimulus Package: #7 Angry wives or mothers. + - Local suppliers + - Made in the USA + - Reusable - - Non-recyclable

Birthday-Smirthday

My 41st birthday is near, and I find myself feeling .... Well, pretty negative about the whole thing. I've felt this way for weeks, and I find that all I really want to do is "hide out" in my apartment and watch old movies. Pretty pathetic I suppose. Is this what they mean by a midlife crisis?

I know that on my birthday the sun will rise exactly as it always does, and it will set exactly as it always has, and the dinstinction I give this day is merely in my head. The day won't be appreciably different from the day before or the day after, or any other day. Still ....

I wonder. I ask myself endless questions: Has my life just been a gigantic excercise in futility? Have I failed at everything? Is it all pointless? Is there anything that lasts? Anything that endures? Or are we all just "caught up in the tangle of other peoples lives"?

Perhaps asking questions like that is the true puprose of having birthdays in the first place. I don't know. If so, it seems like a fairly unpleasant excercise, hardly appropriate for celebration.

Of all that I have done and not done on this planet, whether I have succeeded or failed, I try to remind myself of something I heard once:

"The Universe is vast, and we are so small. The only thing that we could ever hope to possibly control, is whether we are good, or whether we are evil."

The rest I suppose is just a roller-coaster ride.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, I am now able to watch TV on my computer. Moreso, I found I was able to do something a bit surprising this morning.

Looney Tunes, the Herculoids, Super Friends and the like awaited every kid at 7AM, Saturday morning. On CBS, NBC or ABC. There was nothing else. Saturday morning was the sole domain of children. And cartoons ruled supreme. Every kid who had a television could watch them. Not so anymore.

If you turned on "Saturday morning cartoons" these days, you would be sadly disappointed. Educational programming and infomercials rule the morning airways. Bugs bunny, Space Ghost, Scooby Do are all valuable "real estate" now owned by the Cartoon network, and other cable moguls. They represent big bucks, and children really aren't the most important part of the equation anymore.

Thanks to my computer (and the Internet) I was able, for the first time in almost 30 years, to sit down and watch some silly, frivolous morning cartoons. For free. No subscriptions, contracts or cable. Just me in my underwear, with a bowl of cereal ... oh, and a cup of coffee. The way God intended.

Let's Play Scruples ....

OK ...I don't want to bias you with any more background information, or details. I'd just like to play a short round of the popular game Scruples with you.

SCENARIO:
You driving through a residential neighborhood. You car accidentally (at least we're going to assume it accidental) hits and kills a house cat (or dog if you prefer). You know it's a house cat/dog because it's clearly wearing a collar.

What, if anything, do you do?

[All opinions are welcome, as long as they're truthful. Thanks]

Summer ...

You know ... When I was a small child, we still had an ozone layer.

Short of getting a nasty sunburn, it was actually HEALTHY to run around outside and get some sun.

Even if you went to the beach, you might have put some zinc on your nose, or maybe some sunscreen on your face and shoulders (i.e." hot spots"). Getting "a little pink", or getting a "racoon face" wasn't going to kill you. People just did not slather their entire bodies down with SPF 3000.

Beaches smelled of women wearing coconut oils. The general public had never heard of hydrofluorocarbons, or carcinomas.( As I mentioned, we still had an ozone layer.) If you started to get burnt, you just put on a hat, shirt or sat in the shade. Imagine that. People weren't obsessed with getting tans anyway.

It is the year 2009, and ironically enough, we now know that there is UV "A" and UV "B". All those sunscreens you were so diligent about putting on in the 80's and 90's may not have protected you at all from deadly cancer or worse yet ... the wrinkles of "premature aging". <insert maniacal laughter>

Wow. I think that was my first, official "When I was a child", geezer-story. I wanted to work in the "We had to walk 9 miles uphill and back carrying our little brother on our shoulders", but I think that's more effective as a winter "geezer story". Don't you?

Adding Insult to Injury ...

I have recently discovered that my present housing dilemna has a few unexpected twists. TVHP (i.e. the actual property owner/landlord) is not in fact the author of this debacle as I was led to believe. CAP (i.e. my supposed HIV housing managers/advocates) is.

Could someone reach around maybe ... Bewtween my shoulder blades ... There seems to be ...something stuck ... in ...my ... back.