Wednesday, December 26, 2012

EXERCISE AND CABBAGE HEADS


EXERCISE AND CABBAGE HEADS

I’m 75. A recent magazine article informs me that our brains—if we take care of them—might hold out until we enter our 90s. After that, decline is inevitable. Keys run off and lose themselves, people go for walks without their pants on, and one’s children might as well be cabbage heads for all the attention we pay them when they visit. However, that same magazine tells me I can hold off embarrassing displays of nakedness to the very last moment by exercising the meaty organ that resides in the bone home between my ears. For example, I can work crossword puzzles and solve math problems—as if fractions weren’t hard enough for me when I was 10. Also I can keep the old brain humming along by dabbling in the art of the Sudoku and—my favorite—by reading several filthy novels a month. Well….

Honestly? The article suggests only that I read. The reading material itself is left to the reader’s imagination. Think of all there is to read! History, biography, science, poetry? Or fiction—whatever fiction catches your fancy—desperate females tied to chairs in detective novels or, if you’re a woman, muscular hunks with shredded shirts in Harlequin romances. Some of my friends study books on gardening in case they want to grow more cabbage heads like the ones that keep showing up in their retirement homes. 

With only a middle school education, my churchgoing Baptist Grandmother, Eve, was a reader. She not only read but she worked crossword puzzles all her life to improve her vocabulary. Born in the final decade of the Victorian 19th Century, she displayed a complete set of Dickens’ novels on a shelf in her living room, but she took a fancy to trashy novels late in life after a stroke partially immobilized her and she could no longer take in work as a seamstress or make lace by hand which she had taught herself to do. After the stroke, she read nothing but dirty novels into the last months of her life, and she lived to be 100. 

An interesting thread connects my grandmother’s youth to today’s young women. In 1897, a year before my grandmother’s birth, Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out. Today’s young girls seem particularly fascinated by the thought of being ravished by a long-fanged vampire. I wonder if my grandmother read Mr. Stoker as a girl and what she thought about his novel? When a particularly devout daughter-in-law displayed a reluctance about my grandmother’s late-blooming taste in novels, Grandma told her, "It’s only life, dear."

I’m also told we seniors can continue to remember that our children aren’t vegetables by eating a healthy diet and by exercising to keep our brains oxygenated. I’m encouraged by every senior publication I read to stay with the vegetarian diet my wife has recently prescribed for us. The diet makes my colon empty itself more times a day than I care to think about, and I fart like a brewery dray horse who’s nosed into the barley. Under the new dietary regime, I’ll become even more of a stinker than I’ve been in the past, but I’ll live longer. The analogy reminds me that Eve’s father, my Great-grandfather Thorp, who taught me to play the card games Big Casino and Seven Up, drove a team of horses for a brewery in his youth. 

Exercise is specially good for the brain. I’m encouraged to climb stairs no matter how much my eyes gaze longingly at the elevator doors a few steps from every stairwell. Parking long distances from mall entrances and walking the corridors of those malls are both encouraged in every book having to do with senior health. Tires me out, thinking of those stairways and long mall corridors. To keep me interested in mall walking, I’ve added a twist to mall walks. I walk when the shops are open and circle through the stores themselves. I like to stride hungrily through the tool section at Sears and stroll through the brightly lit, sparkling Macy’s at one end of my favorite mall. When I feel daring, I whistle my way through Victoria’s Secret. Nothing much remains secret after a turn through that old, Victorian queen’s underwear. Not too long ago, they added a Frederick's of Hollywood to my mall which I plan to visit on a future walk…whistling all the way, of course. 

Who knows? Maybe if I’m lucky and stick to my regime, I’ll live into my 100s and forget all about exercise, find myself in the middle of a mall one day, wondering why I’m in the mall? And not wearing pants!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Jim Greer, Former Florida Republican Chairman, Says Party Officials Discussed Suppressing Black Vote


Although I think of Florida as separate from the rat race that is the South, it seems they are as corrupt as the rest of the Bible Bib states.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Ed Gillespie: Mitt Romney 'Retired Retroactively' From Bain Capital


So, I guess this is an admission that Romney accepted compensation for work he did not do? Isn't that some sort of fraud? Or, on the other hand, he was RESPONSIBLE for putting thousands of Americans out of work because he was IRRESPONSIBLY not at the helm of the company he was supposed to be responsible for? He still must take responsibility for everything that happened while he was captain of the ship. Here's another failure by business types to do their jobs responsibly and with the best interests of the citizens of this land foremost.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, June 22, 2012

Churches, Religious Officials Ramp Up Political Speech While IRS Remains Silent


It's okay. I'll gladly let them speak their minds as long as my tax dollars (i.e. their tax breaks) aren't affected. We could use the taxes those churches ought to be paying. I'm tired of having my share of taxes increased so that they may ride free. I think the concept I just stated is probably beyond the mental capacity of an evangelical minister. But, hey, he knows he's got a partisan and activist Supreme Court to back him up. That makes me nervous.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, June 15, 2012

Conservative Agenda In GOP-Controlled Statehouses Runs Into Hurdles


The consistent underlying theme of the Republican Party is to destroy the last of the union jobs which create all that is left of a truly middle class, living wage electorate. I'm scared because somehow they have been able, in the South, to convince the average male worker that it's better to work 60 hours a week to earn what a union worker can make in 40 hours than it is to work 40 hours a week and make what a dimmer worker earns in 60 hours. How they have manipulated those Southern workers I don't know. The one clue I do have is that between 1 and 3 percent of any population are conscienceless sociopaths. Since about 1 to 3 percent of Americans are at the top of the capitalistic system, I see a connection. Sociopaths are extreme adroit at getting whatever they want. They can be charming when they need to be and they are ruthless if charm doesn't work. In the South, charm still seems to be working. But under that silk glove is a fist of iron. Most Southerners are pretty beaten down. Under their Southern hospitality lurks a self-loathing psyche. Religion helps the wealthy to control the Southern voter, by teaching them to be humble and to LOOK UP ABOVE themselves to get direction. That "looking up" attitude makes them easily manipulated by the sociopaths who control religion and finance in the South.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Venomous Spiders Invade Indian Town, 2 Dead


Every once in awhile, Nature is for the birds, and strikes back. Maybe a species has learned to identify the human smell with actions and activities (cities?) that are harmful to it. Then they come in their millions to kill the enemy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, May 18, 2012

Black-on-White Crime and the Reasons for a Media Double-Standard


The main problem is that there aren't enough news sources to feature all the hot items the fringes of America create every day.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Employers Not Obligated To Ensure Workers Take Lunch Breaks: Court


Problem with this is that it will become routine that suck ups can use their non-lunch breaks to curry favor with their employers. Thus, slowly but surely, the law mandating lunch breaks will be ineffective, and people with dietary needs that require lunch will stand out like sore thumbs and be labelled as lazy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Monday, April 09, 2012

CNN Apologizes After Second Reporter Uses N-Word Unbleeped (VIDEO)


Look. In this case she was reporting the facts. One does not alter the facts when reporting the news. When news people start tailoring the facts to suit the prejudices of any one group, then they all become Glenn Becks and are commentators rather than news reporters. Dictators often suppress the language that offends them. Take how Reagan used the word "misspoke" to cover up the times when he "lied" to the American people. We cannot be dictators when it comes to the facts.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Joe Walsh: Tammy Duckworth A 'Wounded Veteran -- What Else Has She Done?'


How often these members of the Republican Tea Party are not veterans. Like John Wayne who also never served, they are big on talk and nothing on service. Who would expect a party controlled by the wealthiest and most selfish Americans to ever put service ahead of racking up the dividends and profits they sweat out of the labor of working class Americans? Too many Americans just aren't aware of the BIG LIES they are being told through the expenditures of rich Republicans recently allowed by the Republican Supreme Court. Never in my lifetime have a seen such a BIG LIE so boldly and forcefully being told to the American electorate. We'll soon see if a lie told often enough can cause the average American to vote against his own best interests and vote for the Republican Tea Party.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, March 30, 2012

Portions Of Scott Walker's Anti-Union Law Struck Down By Federal Court


Actually, to disempower public employee unions while allowing the SuperPacs of the wealthy free reign shows just how much the Republican Tea Party and the Republican Supreme Court have gone in destroying any counterbalance to the wealthy ruling America as a Plutocracy. It's very scary that so many average American workers don't see this and applaud destroying public unions.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Portions Of Scott Walker's Anti-Union Law Struck Down By Federal Court


The man's an enemy of all laboring men and women. Most conservatives are, specially, the RPT (Republican Tea Party).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Facebook Protection Amendment Voted Down In House


Republicans don't like big government looking over our shoulders, but they have no problem with big capitalists, like Koch Bros, looking over our shoulders, do they? They want to make sure that we Americans can't safely exchange views on the internet. Like everything they do, they don't mind dumbing it down with advertisements, but they want to make sure that like minds don't meet on the internet.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Monday, March 26, 2012

Jan Brewer Called 'Trashy,' 'Tasteless' After Obama Incident


When I was young and stupid, 50 to 60 years ago, I used to treat all those who disagreed with me in exactly the same manner as Ms. Brewer. Of course, I was a heavy drinker back then (as are many conservatives). Now I'm all growed up, and people don't laugh behind my back for my being so impolitic as I once was...(in person). I think her road rage ought to have been hauled off as a threat to the president. You just never know when one of those right wing people is going to pull out the hidden gun she carries around. The secret service should have restrained her. Seriously. Who knows when a raging Tea Pot might boil over and lose it?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Monday, March 19, 2012

Rick Santorum Making Mitt Romney-Like Gaffes On The Trail


A fundamental lie of the conservative argument is that the government doesn't create jobs. I beg to differ. I pay taxes in order that the government will hire people to do the jobs I think the government ought to do—non-profit sorts of jobs that aggressive and dishonest types don't consider worthwhile. When I buy a product, I expect that some of my money will go to create jobs in the private sector. Either way, my money employs people. The best thing about the jobs my money creates in the government sector is that most of that money stays in the United States. The bad part of the money I spend in the private sector is that much of it goes into Chinese workers' pockets while our wealthy capitalists skim off large amounts of my money to enrich themselves in the form of dividends and profits. I think my money is better spent on government jobs than on Chinese jobs. Think about that, folks! I also think of my government as my non-profit corporation aimed to create a better society for the average citizen. Think about that too, folks!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Gonzaga Routs West Virginia 77-54 In NCAA Tournament


That's our team. My wife and I cheered our way through dinner. And the Zags cheered us. Now on to Ohio State which is the big team in the state where I was born and raised. But I'm cheering for the Zags.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, March 09, 2012

On International Women's Day, Congress Debates Measure To Limit Reproductive Rights


Anytime any Republican candidate anywhere, local of federal, talks about BIG INTRUSIVE GOVERNMENT, shove this information up their left nostril and pull it out the right.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Breakaway Anglican Churches Ordered To Return Property To Episcopal Church By April 30


The one consistent message we are getting from religions all across the board is that religious ideas have no place in a free society. They do not understand that they are wrong and immoral in their consistent stands against the Constitutional rights of people in democracies to live their lives as they choose, free from harassment by church or state. The current Santorum argument that church people cannot be taxed to support contraception in health care insurance ignores the fact that if contraception is not easily available for all, then the state will have enforced Bible nonsense on freer less repressed Americans. No one forces people to use birth control. If they want to contribute to the overpopulation and degradation of life on planet earth, they can do so. The Bible has no place in state decisions. That's at root of the separation of church and state. If Santorum is correct, then those of us who oppose war should not be taxed to support war either. Santorum's way is the way of anarchy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost