Guilt

I see that Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino has come out strongly in favor of “gun control”. What a fargin’ shock.  Lock-step with co-sports wonk Bob Costas.  Good for them. This would be, yes, the same Rick Pitino who was nearly canned a couple of years ago for violation of a moral depravity clause in his contract.  It had something to do with hooking up for a one-nighter with a waitress.  But, I digress. Sports wonks, coaches, etcetras.  What gives this group of idiots who make their livings from the general thug culture of sports (especially basketball, children) any validity to their opinions?  Especially regarding what they call “gun control”?  When they say “gun control”, that’s code.  It means the repeal of the second amendment and confiscation of firearms. That’s what it means. Really.

It's been cold in Northeast Ohio. Night comes early in the winter, you know, and that can only mean one thing......... Movie Notes From the Rust Belt.....Youngstown, Ohio Today's Ed Wood classic is that 1956 favorite, The Violent Years. Not very much story to get in the way of the violence, such as it is, and the preaching, such as it is. All girl gang of, well, girls, get involved in delinquency, burglary, raping a boy (!), armed robbery, pistol-whipping, shoot-outs with the police, fatal car crashes. Man-Oh-Man, a lot of stuff there considering the movie is under an hour. The preaching comes near the end of the flick when the judge reads the riot act to the main bad girl's parents. There you have it. Nihilistic girls. Equal opportunity crime. This movie is notable for a couple of really good reasons: -Ed Wood was only involved in a couple of movies that actually made money, and this is one of them. If all that you know about Ed Wood (a c...

Today's “wiki-how” on my Internet start page included an entry titled “How To Make A Cat Bed From An Old Sweater”. Oh, my. Step by step instructions followed. This can be accomplished in less than 30 minutes, children. Oh, my. Well, I don't really know about the rest of society, but I don't need step-by-step instructions to make a cat bed out of an old sweater. I really don't. Here's my plan: Put an old sweater in a cardboard box. That's all there is to it. Even a Democrat can figure this one out. In other news, I see that a Dallas Cowboy football player (Josh Brent) got himself drunked up a bit, took his buddy (another Dallas Cowboy football player—Jerry Brown) for a ride, crashed the car and killed the passenger. He's in jail now, charged with the homicide. Stuff happens. But, where is Bob Costas on this? He ought to be calling for alcohol prohibition, or banning private ownership of cars, dontcha think? Ju...

When I was attended Windsor Union Elementary School in rural Northern California—that would be back in the 50s children—we carried our own lunches to school. I brought 5 cents a day--”milk money”--to buy a carton of cold milk to have with my lunch. We weren't wealthy, but sometimes my Mom would put in a Twinkie or a chocolate cream filled frosted cupcake, or some other treat. Always made by Hostess. It was a special treat. My kids got the same treatment. But my grand-kids won’t. Hostess is liquidating due to a protracted strike by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union . Hostess is gone, as are the jobs of their 18,000-some employees, and one more piece of the American landscape. Union strikers are probably proud of themselves. The standing joke about Twinkies was that they would be one of the few food items that could withstand a nuclear blast. But they couldn't withstand the union.

I make fun of The Weather Channel often enough. It's not like I seek them out to ridicule them—they do it to themselves, like now. TWC has taken it on itself to begin naming winter storms. I'm not certain at all when TWC decided to name every flurry this winter. I became aware when a Nor'Easter came into New England after the most recent hurricane, and TWC called it “Athena”. Really? Athena? I dismissed it. After all, it was just once, and, well, those New Yorkers are pretty self-involved, so naming their most recent tragedy seems OK—These are the same people who root for the Yankees. These are the same folks who called the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center “ground zero”--9-11 was an act of war and simply awful, but wasn't really quite the same as a nuclear blast, but, well, it was New York. I understand. When I turned on TWC this morning to get my local forecast, I saw that an winter snowstorm in Utah has been named “Brutus”. Uh...

We got hammered by Frankenstorm too—not like those unfortunates on the Seaboard, but we still got hit. That meant that I had some time on my hands while the wind was howling, and the rain was pounding.....Television Notes from the Rust Belt..... Youngstown, Ohio I watched the entire 13 episode run of Terra Nova on Netflix, streamed through my ROKU device into the wide screen high def TV. What a thrill, I tell you. This stinker had all the possibilities. It was a good set-up and good people were involved, but, like Lost, it suffered from lazy writing and not enough story to fill an hour a week. In other words, Fox screwed the pooch here and wasted a really good concept. Essentially, future Earth is polluted, so groups of Earthlings time travel back to prehistoric times for a fresh beginning, complete with futuristic gadgets, but with dinosaurs. How can this be anything but a blockbuster, I ask you? Seemed to have some elements of Mad Max, Lost, the X-Files, Seaqu...

So, being a fan of the San Francisco Giants, I turned on the MLB network this morning to see a little bit about the Giants winning the National League Pennant and going on to the World Series. Instead, here's what I saw and heard: Injured first baseman Lance Berkman of the St. Louis Cardinals crying that a broken bat single (by Hunter Pence of the Giants), that, incidentally, drove in 3 runs, should have been called a dead ball. And then having the normally reasonable Harold Reynolds of the show agreeing. I get it that San Francisco isn't very close to New York, and that according to the MLB network New York is the center of the known universe. I GET IT. So, here's my suggested solution: Take away the three runs that Pence drove in. That will leave the Giants with a paltry 6 runs. Then they will have won the deciding 7 th game of the League Championship Series over the Cardinals by 6 to nothing instead of 9 to nothing. Wait.....did he say “NOTHI...