Unfortunately, We're Not Allowed To Shoot Them On Sight

As the three regular readers of this insane screed know, I watch entirely too much television. I usually watch "the good stuff", that is to say, documentaries, History Channel, Fox News, Discovery this-that-and-the-other, and my fave hit series on HBO and stuff (Yay! Game of Thrones is back!).

But ever since I began co-habitating with the lovely Tess Trueheart (a.k.a. my girlfriend) my television viewing habits have been radically altered. For Tess is a devotee of the genre of programming called "Reality Television".

Personally, if this is what reality looks like then something is seriously wrong with America. So wrong, in fact, that one begins to have -- against one's best judgement, too -- feelings that the old-style Progressives (you know, the ones who advocated euthanasia and forced sterilization of "inferior" people?) might just have had a point, after all.

Good Lord, Make it Stop!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A Trip Through My Mailbox,Part III...

There are an awful lot of new visitors to the Asylum this week. I welcome you, and hope you enjoy your visit. Feel free to read anything you want and to post anything you like. I usually don't answer my e-mail (unless it's really good), but the Asylum Elves are on strike (they want dental, you see) and so in my capacity as Management, it behooves me to take on the menial tasks that they used to do in the name of good customer service.

Q: Wow! You've been blogging for a long time now! How come I never saw this blog before?

A: Because you weren't looking for it, obviously. Then again, I wasn't sitting here trying to be noticed. I don't advertise, and frankly, when I started this crap seven years ago it was supposed to be therapy. I never really expected anyone to actually read it, so I didn't promote it. Really, I mean, some of the stuff I wrote back then is absolutely awful, but in my defense, if I wasn't drunk, then I was zonked on Xanax or Zoloft , or suffering from severe sleep deprivation. Promoting my blog -- with my mental distress pasted all over it -- wasn't exactly something I was out to achieve.

If you've found this blog in the past, it was completely by accident. If you've found it in the last week or so, it was pretty much under the same circumstances. I didn't expect to find my rantings on Twitter, or for the New York Times to come a'callin' with a request for an interview. Anyways, so long as you're here, you might as well get a drink and fasten your seat belts; it's a wild ride pretty much all the time.

Q: Why are you so angry?
A: This is NOT anger. Believe me, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry -- as it's not even half as funny. What some take for anger is simply me being at a point in my life where I simply do not give a shit about what anyone else thinks of me. Therefore, I pull no punches, and I say exactly what is on my mind. Some people are uncomfortable with this level of frankness, but as I said, I really don't give a shit what you might think about it. This is still America, and I can say whatever I goddamned please.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I certainly expect that most won't. I'm also aware that this sort of blunt expression makes some people shake their heads and tsk-tsk, especially with the language that gets used here, but I'm sorry: I'm a native New Yorker and it's fucking genetic. Deal.

Q. Why do you hate Muslims/Christians/Women/Blacks/Poor People/Democrats so much?
A. If you seriously have to ask why anyone should hate Muslims, then I suggest you have your family sign that Do Not Resuscitate Order right fucking now. But if you must know, the story goes something like this:

I had a freakin' absolutely awesome life before 9/11. I had a bitchin' career. I had a ton of money. I was comfortable, and although I had to work hard, that never really bothered me any. Then 19 idiots who couldn't get the blond girls to chuck' em one decided that it would be a good idea to ram a couple of airliners into the tallest buildings in New York City in the name of their phony-baloney God. I was lucky --no one close to me was hurt or killed that day --but mostly because I had only left 1 WTC a minute or so before the first plane struck. But I did find myself directly underneath the first kamikaze, and if that, plus witnessing the murders of 3,000 other people, doesn't freak you out, there's something wrong with you. The resulting mental disorders cost me everything, and seven years of my life.

As for Christians, well, if one God would force 19 douchebags to kill themselves in order to get it's attention, then any God is likely to do the same. Besides, I get a chuckle out of people who tell me their God is all-powerful, all-knowing, knows what's in my heart, and is watching me 24-hours a day who can then turn around and tell you that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are pagan constructs that will lead the True Believer off the Righteous Path.

I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time Peter Cottontail or Ol' St. Nick demanded the blood of innocents, flooded the planet because no one would listen to them, sanctioned war and slaughter,and threatened to return to lead the last great battle that will destroy the world. Apart from a little bit of good-natured breaking-and-entering (in which they actually leave stuff behind!), Kris Kringle and Peter Rabbit are actually far more amenable; the worst they ever did was to skip someone's house, or leave a lump of coal as a gentle reminder of the wages of sin; Yahweh tosses people into great big lakes of fire and brimstone to their eternal torment at the hands of a fallen angel that She created, but then couldn't control, either.

I don't hate women. I love women. I just hate the confused-by-feminism little girls hiding in a woman's body. Especially the ones that tell you "I don't need no man!", and then beg you to pay their rent, buy shit for them, and then solve all their problems brought about by their own stupidity for them, and then take out their unrequited revenge fantasies against the Ex Husband/Boyfriend that did them wrong on you. Sorry, but there's plenty of vaginas out there, and I prefer the ones without baggage and some common sense.

I don't hate blacks, either. I just think it's easier to automatically assume that all black people are clueless, insensitive, loudmouthed, selfish. pigheaded, bigoted doofuses, because after a lifetime of ersatz "Reverends", Affirmative Action, and spending what seems like a year of my life in Diversity Training and monthly Diversity Meetings, that's what they seem to think of me, sans evidence. What's good for the goose, and all that. However, if a black person should happen to earn my respect (much like I expect to have to earn theirs), then we're cool.

As for the rest, what's to LIKE about welfare queens and democrats (sorry, that was redundant)?

Hope this answers some of your questions, Newcomers! Oh, and Merry Fuckin' Christmas.

Helping Mom "Feel Human" Again...

We're into our third week of recovery. The physical therapist says that Mom should get up and exercise some more, and that short walks would be a nice idea -- so long as we don't over-do it. This dovetails nicely with Mom's re-discovered ability to shower on her own (she still needs a little help into and out of the tub, though), which she says gives her a feeling of being a"decent human being, again". She is regaining mobility at a rate which is greater than expected, which means she gets to do things that she hasn't been able to do for the last few weeks: like look in the bathroom mirror, and notice that them stubborn grey roots have returned.

With the pain and anxiety gone, for now, she can turn her attention from harassing me to an inhuman extent to paying attention to her personal appearance.

So, a trip to the Beauty Parlor is in order. The one she normally uses is within walking distance, so why not kill two birds with one stone and get her a little exercise while she engages in the futile battle to hold the ravages of Old Age at bay? I'll accompany her (despite her protests) because I don't want her falling over in the street, and because there are two public high schools in this neighborhood full of bussed-in Urban Aborigines who's only apparent contribution to campus life seems to be to make the white kids look physically un-coordinated by their superhuman ability to break tackles, or dunk a basketball.

When some of these...ahem...students...aren't under the direct supervision of their zookeepers, they're notorious troublemakers and petty criminals. A fat white lady on a cane who moves at a snail's pace with a nice, plump pocketbook is simply too tempting a target. Low-hanging fruit. So, I decide the best thing to do is to ride shotgun, just in case.

The first indication that this is an exercise in futility is that you realize that there is very little correlation between the name of the place (i.e. Beauty Parlor) and the activities going on within; You know you're in trouble when the "beauticians" are all misshapen lumps who seem to have put their make-up on with a spray gun and spackle trowel, and none has a coiffure that can be considered "attractive" if it wasn't on a Shetland Pony. It seems the only purpose of a Beauty Parlor is to give the high-school dropouts within the opportunity to gossip all day and experiment upon each other's hair and faces, mostly unsuccessfully. I could see before we even entered the establishment that this was going to be an interesting ordeal.

The second indication that something is cosmically wrong is that smell. If I had to describe it, it's somewhere between dead skunk and burning muskrat, with just a hint of decomposing possum. This is the odor given off by the myriad of toxic chemicals that will be combined to give my mother that Cesar-Romero-Redhead color that is so popular with the over-60 set in these parts. You can't spit without hitting one of these bottle-redhead seniors, these days.

So, there I was, sitting silently and impatiently in this heady atmosphere: my mother is getting a hairstyle that I would describe as "butch", and having it tinted with some godawful mess of chemistry that will probably ensure that the patch of ground this place sits on will be declared a Superfund site by the EPA any day now. There isn't a thing to read...well, there is, but you'd have to be Gay to find it of much interest, and since I could give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about "Jennifer Anniston and Chelsea Handler: Budding Romance?", or the problems of getting your sexless marriage restarted with 101 new applications for chocolate syrup and Vick's Vapo- Rub, or whatever they're selling this month, I'm bored out of my skull. (It is somewhat funny to note from the covers of the magazines just what the current mental state of the American Housefrau is these days; if the magazine isn't all about selling fantasy to them, it's all about the sexual desires of the Average Man, As Told by Another Chick. Strange).

I go outside to smoke. I go out for coffee. I amuse myself by looking at the puppies in the pet store two doors down (I'm asked to leave, as this store has experienced a rash of attempted puppy-nappings in recent months). Finally, Mom has had her head re-enamelled and her female crewcut trimmed, and it's time to go home.

Except that it ain't. One cannot get a hairdo, and leave things at that. Only a barbarian would do something like that.

Part of this "feeling human again" ritual involves a second stop at the manicurist's. Point out that this place that just wrecked your hair also gives manicures, and you get a look that could curdle maple syrup; One comes here for a really bad, overpriced hairstyle, but for a really good manicure, you need to go some place else. Some place where there's Koreans, you fool. Some place a further two blocks away.

And so we shuffle off at approximately 0.001 miles per hour because now her knee is stiff, to the manicurist. If I was bored to tears before, I'm about to be bored to death. The only consolation was that at least the Korean chicks look better than the ones in the hairstylists. Except that that there's not that many Korean chicks to look at.

Because while the proprietors of the manicurist's shop may be Korean, the workers within are Hispanic. The American Dream in microcosm; the former labor class, Korean immigrants, are now the Industrial Overlords, and the new generation of immigrants, the illegal ones, have taken their place. If you thought the process of a woman getting a hairdo was an ordeal by fire, try sitting around waiting for one to get a mani-and-a-pedi! The truly disgusting part of this hell is that the air is full of fine dust, and it's the particulate matter that has has been scraped, sanded, rubbed, cut, and otherwise stripped from a multitude of feet and fingernails. Every woman in that place wore a surgical mask, and I can see why: I had to wash my coat just as soon as I could, for it was covered in a fine layer of unsanitary dust from some oversized bag of skin's hooves.

Needless to say, I spent the majority of this time outside, in the freezing cold, just to avoid picking up whatever pathogens are in the air in that place.

Eventually, the whole thing is over and we go home. I've had three hours of my day completely wasted. I'm covered in the dead-skin-dust of perhaps 12 strange women's feet. My nosehairs have been burned down to the follicles by the noxious aroma of hair dye. I want to shower and scrub myself thoroughly with a Brillo Pad just to get all that crap off of me. Oh, and it all cost me $75. Don't ask me how.

But Mom feels "human", so I guess that's something.

Hell Hath No Fury...

...like a woman you took on a "date"... and then painted an unflattering-but-accurate portrait of in your blog.

And herein is the lesson to be learned in this day-and-age where romance, culture and technology have combined to turn women -- I'm sure it does it to gay men, as well --into stark, raving lunatics. Pay attention, Men.

A certain lady that I briefly met, and to whom I then suggested we perhaps never meet, briefly or not, ever again, apparently was under the mistaken impression that I just didn't get to know the "real" her, and that I was too hasty in declining her invitation for a second encounter. This is a common trait in single women these days, and it apparently gets worse with age; I wasn't turned off by her manners, demeanor and drinking habits, I just wasn't prepared to do the work of peeling back all the layers, and so I missed the "real person" beneath all the bulging spandex.

Perhaps if you ladies would help us out a bit by not presuming to turn the whole relationship thing into a mind-fuck by making us work to "peel back the layers" of anything, life would be considerably easier for all involved. I'm not your fucking psychiatrist, and I don't like being made part of your little head games. There's a point beyond which some of it surpasses "flirting" or "protecting yourself" and this lack of communication on intimate matters -- defined as personal feelings/beliefs, not sex -- becomes a fucking ridiculous exercise in vanity and stupidity. Don't be surprised that when a man believes you're hiding something (or trying to), the thing you're hiding looms ever larger and more dangerous in his head the longer he can't discover what it might be. A little honesty would be refreshing.

I know women do think this way all the time (I've listened to them whine in group therapy about just this sort of bullshit), and apparently don't believe that men do, too. But we do. At least the ones who don't consider a woman to be just a convenient place to park a boner every now and then do. On the other hand, some women set far too much stock in simple possession of a vagina, and believe that having one is a license to be insufferable. That was, naturally, the driving idea behind Modern Feminism, a truly mentally-destructive ideology if ever there was one. Trust me; Vaginas are notoriously easy to come by, but Ladies are hard to find, because for every woman who is judicious in the bestowal of her Favors, there are at least five who are dumber than dogshit and would fuck anything without a thought about commitment -- or even of calling you the next day -- for a Jimmy Buffett t-shirt.

And believe it or not, that sort can typically at least fake more modesty than you when she tells you, with a straight face, "I've never done this before..." as she opens your zipper...with her teeth. (Yes, I have lead an interesting life in that regard. It's nothing to be proud of, really).

All the Sexual Revolution did was make that which was somewhat-difficult to obtain (Sex), low-hanging fruit for the opportunistic Neanderthal with an erection and no conscience. But I digress...

And really, it wasn't about me missing anything about Her. I think I got everything there was to get; If I wanted a bitter, immature, borderline-personality barfly who has probably been down on everything but the Titanic and probably killed or wounded a lover or two, I know exactly where to find one. Several score of them, actually. They're not all that hard to find, and great many of them won't even ask for as much as a cocktail or a hotdog for the pleasure of their company, either. Then again, I can see where she might want to keep that maladaptive personality thing under wraps. If I wasn't supposed to "peel back the layers" and find that out, then I guess I didn't do my "job" (to be willing dupe and adoring lapdog with bedroom privileges) properly, and it's not as if she didn't make it all-too-easy to discover.

I was polite the four times she requested the pleasure of my company after that initial meeting in saying "No, but thanks". I tried to be nice and show a level of patience and forbearance that was, in my estimation, far more than she was entitled to. I thought I was particularly and unmistakably definitive during the fifth and sixth rounds of "negotiations" (she was actually bargaining for a second date!) with her when I not only said "No, I don't think we should see each other again", but embellished this basic premise with "Would you please leave me alone, you fucking psycho?" when my temper finally got the better of me. I was totally within my rights when I asked the "service" to block contact with Her. I would have thought the message would get through, and she would eventually give up and inflict her nonsense upon some other loser.

But I guess that by that time it was no longer just a question of a desperate woman clinging to the idea that she can make you love her (trust me: that mindset never gets you anywhere, Sunshine). No, there was a revenge factor brought into play, primarily because I rejected her, but mostly because of what I wrote about her here.

This moonbat hired another "service". This one tracks people down online by picking up the electronic "trail of breadcrumbs" that we all leave behind in cyberspace. Nevermind how a) presumptuous, and b) fucking creepy, this sordid idea is, it's all legal. The records in question are Public Domain. This "service" also found my blog, and brought it to her attention. She read it (frankly, I was surprised that she could read)

She realized that one of the failed "dates" I had blogged about a week or so ago was HER, even though I did not use her real name in the post.

Guess who found my address with the help of the same "service", proceeded to hop on her menstrual cycle and then peddled her skinny ass on over to the Lunatic's Compound to do the full Glenn Close routine? Thankfully, there were no sharp objects involved.

Oh, it was a scene. The only way it could have possibly been worse would have been if I had actually taken her up on her offer(s) and Made the Beast With Two Backs with this pig. Then there might have been some sort of obligation to her on my part, and a real emotional attachment on hers.

It began with "What's wrong with Meeee? Why don't you like Meeee?" Oh, where to begin! Let's start with the fact that you're such a psychopath that you dropped $99.95 to hire the electronic equivalent of a Private Detective to get my phone number and address...and I'm a complete stranger who never took anything from you, nor laid a finger on you. I'm not your cheating husband; I'm not your Baby Daddy skipping out on child support; I have no connection to you AT ALL, except that I spent a few hours in your company strenuously avoiding any physical contact or making any sort of unwarranted commitments that might be misconstrued for exactly this reason -- you showing up on my doorstep to make a fucking spectacle/pest of yourself. I don't remember inviting you over.

It then progressed to "What? Is there someone else?" Umm...there wasn't even an "Us" to begin with. I had three or four drinks with you, that's it. During that time you spent the majority of the evening showing me off as some sort of trophy to your girlfriends (the first indication that there's something wrong with you!) then you did in speaking to me. In fact, I found most of those other women to be far more appealing than you are. At this point in time, Sunshine, ANYBODY ELSE would be as good, and probably a fair sight better. Mussolini in a cocktail dress, Pol Pot bearing Valentine's Day Wishes with a Whitman's Anthrax Sampler, a Bullwhip, and a 55-gallon drum of KY in hand, would turn me on more than you do. And besides; it's none of your business if there were anyone else. Boundaries, woman; respect them!

She was especially upset about the blogging, even though I didn't use her real name. Apparently, the description I gave was accurate enough for people to infer who she might be-- I got the impression that someone might have already -- and was quite unflattering. Well, if the shoe fits. I tried to explain that I hadn't really "done" anything to her, and that only brought on the predictable eruption of two-fisted, full-blown, estrogen-fueled fury. I figured the best thing to do was to let her have her say, let Nature take it's course, nod my head a lot, and just agree with her that, yes, I am a fucking dick, and then let her leave. If it meant she just went away, she could have her pound of flesh.

Which is exactly what happened. With any luck, she'll be well-and-truly out of my life, but I expect she'll stop in here to see what's being written about her, because, well, let's face it; the whole episode was all about her, wasn't it?

Maybe if you read this Sweetheart, and take a second to reflect on what you've done and how you've behaved, perhaps you'll realize why I would rather lose a limb than see you again. And get some help, will ya?

Dear God: Can I Have My Rib Back? - Part II

"Janet" is a handsome woman. Pleasant looking, she has a little bit of "extra" here and there, but it is mostly in all the right places. Sandy-colored hair (natural, she assures me), not a speck of grey. She is 44, and is a Nurse-Practitioner. She wears a bit too much makeup for my tastes. Her most outstanding feature (apart from an ample rack) is her eyes; Janet has hazel eyes that seem to change color, blue or green, with her moods. Really unusual.

Anyways, the date had been arranged for us. Janet and I are both sports fans (me, hockey, she baseball), so the "service" arranged tickets to a Staten Island Yankees game (that is the New York Yankee's A-ball affiliate. See tomorrow's Stars Today!). We met at the Ticket Window for an afternoon game. Janet arrived in full S-I-Yanks regalia.

That should have been my first clue.

Janet is a rabid baseball fan. "Rabid" might be too tame a word. From the second she arrives at the ball park she's into every pitch, every crotch grab, every call of ball-and-strike. She calls the pitches before they're thrown (and often, she's right!), and will tell you all you need to know about which strategy the coach should use in this situation, does The Wave at every opportunity, leads the cheers in your seating section. explains the nuances inherent in the way a particular player spits his sunflower seeds out. It's like watching a game with Tim McCarver off his meds...only with bigger tits.

Okay, that's a little intense, but it's not catastrophic. It just means she has a passion for something, and it may be off-puttin, but now that the game is over and dinner is on the horizon, perhaps things will take a different tack, right? That optimistic thought was nearly annhillated when she started dressing for dinner....in the stadium parking lot. I was asked to "stand guard...and try not to peek" while she changed clothes for dinner in the back seat of her SUV. Okay, kinda strange, but not terrible.

Dinner, however, revolved around three subjects; her ex-husband (a.k.a. the Fuckin' Bastid!), her job (all you ever wanted to know about vile bodily fluids, but were afraid to ask), and....baseball. In fact, she asked the waiter it if would be possible for the television over the bar to tune into the Mets game.

I figured I must have been pretty boring company, or that she just wasn't interested. The ballgame on TV, and all the talk about puke and enemas were designed to make me lose interest, so that she wouldn't have to tell the truth when the dreaded"Shall we do this again?" question was asked later on in the evening. Apparently, this is not the case at all -- I'm "a blast" --and a gentleman -- she says, and would go out with me again. However, "Janet" is a bit too much of a tomboy for my tastes. I'm thinking "no".

Date #2 was "Tara". Tara is a brunette, a hairdresser (although she kept correcting me; the proper term nowadays is Professional Stylist). She is 41 years old. She's not unattractive, but for someone who is a"professional stylist" she seems to have none. Her hair reminded me of those curly up-do's you often see on girls attending the Junior Prom. Her makeup is slathered on with a trowel. it's far too obvious which parts have been surgically altered. She has a voice that makes you wonder "whatever happened to Fran Drescher ("The Nanny")?"

Tara is dumber than a sack of hammers once you get past the surface chit-chat...and the second Margarita. I should have known when the date she had arranged involved a noted meat market for the over-35 set that this was not going to go very well. Tara, you see, is still single, always has been, and it's because she's a barfly. Not an alcoholic, mind you, just someone who never outgrew the 80's, when all the happenin' young folks in Brooklyn were out in the bars, or"down the Shore". Mentally, as far as her social life is concerned, this is where she still is. It's like having your own personal version of the "Jersey Shore", only with more fake tans, more fake nails, and more nasally conversation.

She's a nice woman, though, seems very decent underneath it all, and I'd decided to give the evening one more chance, nonetheless.I might have missed something in a rush to judgement. I shouldn't have bothered.

"Tara" chose this particular bar because that's where all her girlfriends hang out(also all single Professional Stylists with too much makeup and terrible haircuts...go figure) and she wanted to be seen with someone. Presumably so that they would have something to talk about in the salon for the next six months. While I was flattered that they all loved my hair (Oh my gawwwd! It's so thick and sawwwft! What do you do to it?) and couldn't stop running their hands through it, and the compliment that they would all "kill to have eyelashes" like mine was, to say the least, a new one on me, I don't think I could take this sort of mentality for anextended period of time without reaching for a pistol.

I grew up with "Tara", in a manner of speaking, in that she is the Prototypical Brooklyn Club Girl, but whereas most of the ones I knew grew out of that Club-and-Bar-hot-makeout-session-in-the-parking-lot lifestyle, she most certainly did not. Viewed in that light, all the makeup, the plastic surgery, the sparkly spandex catsuit with the oversized rhinestone-studded leather belt and four-inch stilettos, suddenly made sense: this is someone who wants to stay 21 forever.

Date #3 went surprisingly well, however.

"Kim" is a VERY well-preserved 43 year-old librarian. She's a bike rider and swims. A natural redhead (so she says!), with a wonderful sense of humor. She is delightful, intelligent, extremely well-read, but not nerdy. She has two children (one about to start architectural school, the other joined the Air Force after graduating from high school), who apparently have never given her any grief in their entire lives, which probably accounts for why she didn't say a word about them after acknowledging that they exist. She seems extremely well-adjusted and happy...which scares the shit out of me.

Kim and I met at the Rambles in Central Park, where she suggested a picnic. I'm not one for picnicking, but I figured "what the hell?". She said not to bring anything, and she would handle it all. And she did!

Kim apparently likes to cook, and does it well. Somehow, she managed to cram quite the spread into that little cooler of hers. It was like a walk down memory lane for me; Bocconchino with the REAL Mozzarella -- not that plastic supermarket crap -- roasted red peppers, fresh olives, Sotto Aceti (an Italian pickled vegetable salad), Parma ham, three kinds of salami, fresh bread...and two bottles of the Orvietto region's finest. She made it all, she said, THAT morning. This is how my Grandmother used to cook. As soon as she had discovered that I am Italian, she decided that this was THE way to meet. We spread a blanket out under a tree on the edge of the Sheep Meadow (it was "only" in the low-90's that day; the week before had seen 100+ temps in New York City), and feasted and had a blast.

And then the cop caught sight of the wine bottle, and gave us a choice: pack it up and leave in the next five minutes, or take the summons -- and possible arrest --for drinking in public. So, we left.

We found a coffee shop, and had a couple of cups each, and had a wonderful time. It turned out that six hours had passed since we had first entered the coffee shop until someone checked a watch. "Kim" has already gotten a call for a second date, and has accepted.

Fingers crossed.

Dear God: Can I Have My Rib Back? - Part I

One of the reasons why I haven't been here on a daily basis screaming uselessly into the wind is that I have some new pre-occupations these days.

The first of these is (arguably) gainful employment (see next post), and the second is that I have started dating again. If my first three "dates" were any indication of what the "Singles Scene" is for over 40's, I'm thinking an Asian Mail-order bride might be in order. At least they don't speak very good Eng-rish, do the laundry without complaint, and won't talk the hind leg off a donkey.

To begin with, let me make this clear before I take my dates apart at the joints; I am no Prince. I'm a good 40 pounds overweight, I'm so stubborn that stubborn oxen look at me and say "Hey, that guy's a fuckin' douche!". I'm opinionated, can be arrogant, and I'm one of those people who is psychologically hard-wired to point out the stupidity of others and make obnoxious comments about it -- without noticing my own stupidity in the process.

In my favor, however; if I care for you, you will have no better ally, no more intrepid defender. I will shut up just long enough to listen to you (if I must --heh!), and you can be assured that when you TRULY require my undivided attention -- in all things -- you will have it. You will be respected, valued, and loved. Loyalty, Respect and Consideration are all I have give, and they're also all I'll ever ask for.

Now, here I was thinking about dating again, but taking a different path than I have for, say...the last 25 years of my life. Part of my problem with women is that I seem to find the same sort over and over again; women who need to be rescued. I've been told I have this "White Knight" syndrome by my female friends for like...forever...and it's led me to nothing but trouble. So,this time around, I have decided to be especially critical in my choice of potential mates. No more losers for Your's Truly, because I've finally learned that I'm not capable of fixing someone else's problems, and I'm not going to anymore. I have my own, Thank you Very Much. Leave your baggage at the door, Lady.

Having been on the shelf for a bit, I have had to learn a few things all over again, like making small talk. At first this was difficult, but with my natural fucking charm (ha!) and acute sense of humor, this becomes easier as things move along. I've also had to learn that we live in a different day-and-age: there was a time when Women were expected to be Ladies, and Men were expected to treat them as such. Not anymore. I mean, I have a foul mouth, and use the coarsest language you might imagine, but can manage to control it in (most) social situations. Imagine my surprise when I find myself out on the town with three...ahem...ladies who can a) outcurse me, b) drink me under the table, and c) make no secret about their sexual desires -- and/or deviances.

I'm meeting chicks through a dating service, which is local, and I shan't talk about here -- just in case this all turns out to be a huge pile of dogcrap.

I've had three dates so far, and none of them were anything to brag about, primarily because the selection of women available after 40 leaves a lot to be desired, although this is not entirely fair to them; the selection of men can't be that awesome, either. Suffice to say, at this stage in life, you're dealing with a few, basic categories of females:

1. The Career Chick - she's never had time for a husband or family because she was busy trying to break glass ceilings, or to out-hustle the Boys in the Office to make Salesperson of the Year, and up until now, she has been filling her emotional holes with the trappings of success; cars, vacations, clothes, etc. She presents a dichotomy; she wants you to believe that she's tough, aggressive, able to take the rough-and-tumble of the Board Room and the Bedroom, worthy of your respect and admiration, but all she ever talks about is how tough it is to be a Woman. In fact, she never shuts up about it. She does nothing but give you her resume...all evening.

When she's not whining about having a menstrual cycle, she's a fucking predator. She's learned, through the Darwinian process of the Business World, to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself, whether that's professional, financial, or sexual. One minute, she's complaining about the burden of her vagina, and the very next offering it you on a silver platter. She's torn between a lifetime of bad habits, and a biological/psychological need; she behaves like a Man, but wants to be treated like a Woman, and the lines about where one should start and the other end are often entirely too blurry to discern.

2. The "Second Lifer" - This is a middle-aged woman, usually recently widowed or divorced, who has decided that NOW is Me Time. Her children are grown and have left the nest. Her duty as Wife and Mother have been dispatched to the best of her ability, and are now no longer required; she can enjoy the remainder of her life free of responsibility. It is now time to see to HER needs for a change.

Except that she can't stop talking about that former life, because it has been, for a very long time, her only frame of reference. This sort usually married young, and was not very socially active in a way that didn't involve her children or husband. Consequently, every activity you engage in, every conversation you have, every passing reference to anything in creation, usually results in a long-winded tale originating from deep within the Old Life, and you are expected to fake nostalgia for people and events that you never knew or experienced. This kind of woman is usually very nice, very lady-like, but about as interesting as a tunafish sandwich.

3. Lucy the Loser -this woman has, as the saying goes, been "ridden hard and put away wet". Lucy types come in two varieties; an original thought and a cold glass of water might put her into a coma, or the ones who don't have a thought that originates above the waist. Usually they're both.

You can smell this one coming from a mile away because she's just too eager to please. In all respects. It's all forced, it's all an act. Here's a mental checklist to use, to see if you've ever hooked up with Lucy before:

a. Divorced more than once, often three times or more, and quite possibly abused along the way.

b. Talks freely about her boobs/oral sex skills/the threesome with another girl that she had in college, and makes certain that everyone in the room hears her. She might even repeat it all several times for the benefit of those who didn't get it the first seven times.

c. She can't go five minutes without complimenting you/buttering you up, even if she has to interrupt you and change the subject to do it.

d. Everything anyone says or does immediately evokes a sexual reference.

e. Despite the dazzling smile, the girlish laughter, the come-hither eyelash batting, the all-too-obvious low-cutness of the dress, and the inviting sexual undertone, one look into this woman's eyes reveals....nothing. Her eyes are dead; there's nothing there. That's your first hint that Lucy is a fucking psycho, and that no blowjob on Earth is worth that much trouble.

4. The Reluctant Traveler-This woman insists that she's only doing this because "my girlfriend made me", or "I had nothing better to do, so why not?", but she's playing a game that makes you want to reach across the table and fucking choke her within an inch of her life.

This date is a mental minefield; she's really toying with you in a passive-aggressive manner, dropping (often-contradictory) hints all the time -- because plain talk would blow her "cover". If you do manage to pick up a hint along the way and follow this thread past a certain point, she suddenly changes direction. It's a game of Encouragement-and-Discouragement, and it serves two purposes;

a. It's a test to see just how into her you are. This is judged by your willingness to play this stupid game; respond to her like panting puppy, and you might be getting somewhere...but not very far.

b. It's a test to see just how into you she is. Refuse to play her game, and you're toast. But, she will be nice about it and let you pick up the check, anyways.

In both cases, it's all about what She can get out of You. She's a selfish cunt, best given a wide berth, and perhaps a punch in the mouth.

Next, the Dates....Or, at least, the best of them so far.

Words I'd Thought I Would Never Type...

"Al Gore" and "Sex Scandal". In the same sentence. Allegedly.

Though I struggle not to form some mental picture of the Goremeister wrapped in a towel, rivulets of white, doughy flesh hanging over the tuck, my inner eye has just such an image burned into it. The very thought is profoundly disturbing, and if I don't keep my guard up, it pops, unbidden, back into my tortured mind and activates the gag reflex. I've thrown up into my own mouth so many times in the past week that no amount of toothpaste or Scope will wash away the lingering taste of involuntary bile. Even Cayenne and Jalapenos have not scoured the residue of nausea away.

The scene my subconscious insists on creating has me on the verge of committing a violent act, as if the release of all that pent up disgust and rage will somehow scrub the grey matter clean of the mental version of ring-around-the-tub. I shan't link to any of the stories floating on the Web because they'll only make you projectile vomit, but all the highlights of this sordid..ahem...affair (allegedly) are included. It's always the same unwanted vision running through the diseased landscape of my inner mind:

"...His swollen, puffy, corpulent body lay stretched out upon the masseuse table, face-down. A towel covers his flabbier parts, but he's still clenching his butt cheeks together in an attempt to leave the impression that there's still a few remnants of sinewy youth there beneath it all. His manly back, covered in a thick, Brillo-like fur, was glistening with scented oils and lotions. Somewhere in the background, Barry Manilow was softly playing; the Muzak of the Rutting Bore. Manilow knew how to make chicks cream. Al had selected it exactly for this purpose. The masseuse, a vision of early-middle-aged American womanhood -- thrice-divorced, a stray hair protruding from the mole on her chin, face frozen in a mask of permanent surprise from the combination of poor eyebrow-pencil skills and Botox, the Low-End-Store-Brand-Danny-Kaye-Auburn dye job -- leaned over the Beached Whale of an ex-Vice President in that starched, institutional-green smock that always turned him on because it reminded him so of the Good Old Days of Soviet Communism. She was rubbing away the knots and strains of the rough-and-tumble universe of The Sanctimonious Bullshit World Tour, and the absolute Roman-Coliseum Fishbowl that was the Modern Indulgence Selling that used to characterize much of pre-Reformation Christianity, but which still smelled slightly enough of capitalism that the rubes hardly even noticed.

Her strong hands, much like her donkey-like Slavic ankles, swollen from so much water-retention that she had been unable to file the Last Wedding Ring from her finger -- even though her last divorce was finalized five years before -- found a tender spot. The Gorebot winced momentarily, and then relaxed as her expert digits rubbed the tension away. He sighed, a sound that was almost half-seal-bark-half-phlegmy-rattle. She paused to pluck an errant, wire-stiff back hair or two from under her fingernail, and in that moment, the former Vice-President-in-Litigation made his move. With a great deal of grunting but less struggle than usual he had turned over on the table, and a hint of his manhood became visible as a bump under the hospital-white towel, like a miniature Washington Monument caught beneath the the thick, cold layers of another Ice Age. But that was an illusion: were it not for the triple-layered rolls of belly fat that slid past his waistline and sloughed off between his spongy, varicose-veined thighs, there just might be a whole whopping four, perhaps four-and-a quarter, inches of pulsing Inconvenient Truth lurking beneath that linen.

She was taken aback. She caught her breath, a staccato-sigh of surprise, nay, perhaps even fear. She tried not to look, but couldn't help herself; for even laying down the Vice-President's boobs were strangely bigger than her own, with great, fleshy, earth-toned nipples and the same thick, stiff hairs pointing out of them. They strangely reminded her of Sputnik for a moment, and she was caught in a web of confusion, embarrassment...and lust? She flushed and appeared faint, the first sign of the coming glow of perspiration began to darken the smock beneath her armpits. Her slightly fried-onion-y underarm scent aroused him further -- but this hunter liked to play with his prey first.

"They all react that way...at first", said Al. His dark eyes looked into hers. They were hypnotic, but she could not decide if it was because he was such a magnificent specimen of Old-Money-Hypocrite-middle-aged pork, or because even when he spoke in short sentences he was still such a dashing figure of bone-crushing boredom and banality. She stepped away from the table, but he grabbed her wrist -- gently-yet-firmly and still somehow clammy-and-slimy. She was strangely aroused and repulsed, all at once.

" You know", Al begins., "I was the Inspiration for Love Story..."

Her Drug-store false eyelashes fluttered, her face reddened, and she nervously licked at her lips. Al knew that he had her now; they all fell for that line. Tipper fell hard for it --- that and the inherited Controlling Interest in Standard Oil. So did that Naomi Wolff, that little vixen. He began to remember fondly the six...no...seven whole minutes he had held Naomi in the sodden grip of flop-sweaty passion. It had been his crowning achievement, and had infused him with a sense of manhood that he had not felt since the days when he was writing for Stars and Stripes and pretending to be fighting the War in Vietnam until Daddy could pull enough strings. He remembered the blazing fire of the assault upon Tipper's head on the campaign trail, when he appeared so passionate and devoted to her that he almost sucked her into his being as if he were sucking the Bavarian Cream from the center of a doughnut.

Yes...panting feminists and women in prisons everywhere around the world mailed him their soiled underwear for months after that. Not even Clinton got that sort of love. But that was all in the past; the future, for at least the next three-to-five minutes -- more if he could manage to contain the raging Beast Totem in the Towel -- was now there before him. She was panting now, her chest ( with one breast hanging four inches below the other, and the thick, reinforced underwire of her brassiere became visible beneath the fabric ("Steel-Belted Radials", All liked to call those. He wondered, "Front-loader or back-loader?) was heaving like the stormy North Atlantic.

The Goremeister had caused a Storm in her Maidenforms. She was dead in his sights now.

"Don't be afraid, Yummymuffins. I may have invented the Internet, but no one will know of our passion. It will be OUR guilty secret...".

She wilted at that, delivered as it was with a slight Southern drawl and that sibilant-yet-slightly-effeminate "s" of his. She was now all his. He pulled her closer and began to negotiate the towel so that his throbbing, massive-relative-to-your-average-cocker-spaniel Pelvis Bazooka -- the Green Hornet, as he liked to call it -- could be unleashed in all of it's glory. Yes...she was well-and-truly his, and She would be yet another notch in his ever-expanding belt. There was a flash, like lightning. A quick stirring in his loins, an explosion of ecstasy that caused white-hot spots to float before his eyes, and which made him slightly dizzy thanks to the Watered-Down-Canadian-Healthcare System Viagra he had been taking, and he had marked her forever with a hot load of Environmentally-friendly Man-Milk...all over that sexy-as-a-Phony-Carbon-Credit-Sold-Under-False-Pretenses (allegedly) starched smock. "Mark your territory well", Bill had always told him. It was a valuable lesson. He held her gaze for another seven, maybe ten seconds, so that she could bask in the afterglow. All women needed to bask. Al knew this, being the quiet, passionate, unselfish type who always saw to a woman's needs.

"I'll bet you keep that smock forever, Snugglelumps. No one does it like ManBearPig". She sighed, and was about to speak. "No...not another word about it", he said as he pressed his thoroughly-gooey finger gently across her lips. "We must part now, and keep our Runaway Passion a secret, for those parts of the planet that manage to avoid being flooded by sea-level rise, de-forested by the Inhumanity of Mankind, the shores piled waist-deep in drowned polar bears, all destroyed in the Name of the Internal Combustion Engine, burned to the ground by Acid Rain, or frosted over by the Next Ice Age could never understand what passes between us...".

With that, Al Gore, The Love-em-and-Leave-'Em Ambassador of Mother Gaia, wiped his sexed-up hand upon her cheek, hitched his towel back into place, and in a motion that was reminiscent of a crippled walrus trying to refloat itself from a shingle beach, swung the massive U.S.D.A. Grade-A hamhocks he called legs off the table, and waddled to the door, leaving a tangled mat of greasy back hairs on the smooth, vinyl surface of the table. An Oil Slick of Romance. He paused to give her one last, piercing come-hither look from his watery-yet-still-somehow-smouldering eyes, that bulged out from beneath his Just-for-Men-treated eyebrows, only to find that she was vomiting copiously upon the floor.

It was always the same. Al always had that effect on women; he made them all sooooo fucking hot -- hotter than a rapidly-heating atmosphere burdened with the excess carbon dioxide of a civilization intent upon it's own doom -- that their bodies just could not withstand the onslaught. Now that his Inner-Beast had been Unleashed, he set about seeking more nubile prey. There must be a sixty-plus-year-old T.V. satirist's wife just dying to be Gored by Gore...."

And now you know why I've been puking for a week...

Me and my goddamned imagination! I won't sleep for a year.

About the World Cup...

There's something about tens of thousands of morons simultaneously blowing horns that produce a sonorous, droning sound that makes it all unwatchable. It also reminds you of those aren't-the-Aborigines-awesome multi-culti segments of the Crocodile Dundee movies, where Paul Hogan gets to make authentic Outback noises with all sorts of Abo gee-gaws that set your teeth on edge.

I played soccer in my youth and found it a pretty decent pastime -- at least the way it's played in America, which is to say, with zip and an ebb-and-flow of attack and defense, and so I have the experience to discern that the International game lacks the same pace you'd find in your local grade school match. It's typically 80 minutes of passing for position, 10 minutes of real action, with another half-hour of grown men grabbing their ankles, writhing on the ground and vying for an Academy Award -- only to pop back up and get into play just as the stretcher and medical team arrive.

I've played ice hockey for many years, and I have never seen a stretcher come out so often as it does during an international soccer match. Hockey is a sport where the players are basically given weapons as part of their basic equipment, and are allowed to throw punches at each other, and rarely do you see a stretcher. If one comes out, someone's unconscious or suffering an actual injury that might involve paralysis. Professional soccer players are obviously great, big pussies.

Anyways, the combination of pussy players, lack of continuous action, and thousands of idiots with the most annoying horns ever devised by man have made what little enjoyment can be garnered from the World Cup hardly worth the effort of sitting through it all. I'm sitting here, not much of a baseball fan anymore (millionaires going on strike and taking drugs pretty much did it for me), certainly no fan of the NBA (little more than highly-paid thugs in shorts. If most didn't play basketball, they'd probably be in prison), and I most definitely WILL NOT watch 50 rednecks drive 200 miles at high-speed, making only left turns, just in anticipation of the accidents.

Golf is not a sport. Sports do not involve carts, or someone else to carry your equipment for you. They should also have some form of defense in them to be considered a sport. Tennis is even gayer than international soccer. There's been more bass fishing on TV than I can ever remember, which means there must be a lot of people with too much free time, a lack of braincells, and a ton of disposable income out there, even in this bad economy.

So far as I'm concerned, there's no sports to watch at all until the Jets start playing real games (and even then, I'm a casual, not a die-hard, fan), and hockey season returns.

If you intend to sell International Soccer to Americans as an alternative to those jonesing for real sports during this in-between time in the major American ones, this World Cup will not help you to do it. Hey, I even have a history with soccer, and I can't stand watching this. It's even worse to have to listen to it. Why is it that wherever there's large masses of piss-poor people, they seem only able to occupy themselves with the most annoying -- and noisiest -- of things? I've seen it at other World Cups, too; cowbells, fireworks, mariachi bands, masses of Germans building pyramids and chanting slogans that make you want to start looking for the torch-lit parade somewhere (not that Germans are poor; just clueless about how stupid they look when they do these things).

I'm not certain you'll ever sell soccer in this country until the demographics change, anyway -- which might be any day now, thanks to the unchecked flood of South and Central Americans entering the country without being shot at at least once. There's another reason to close the borders: who the hell wants to contemplate a future in which soccer becomes a major sport in this country?

My most vivid memory of annoying soccer fans with their penchant for repetitive and mind-numbing noise, comes from the Intercity Rail Station in Watford, England, a suburb of London.
There was to be some"important" match played at Webley Stadium (I think one of the teams was Chelsea, but I'm not certain), and the station was packed with the full panoply of morons these sorts of events attract: the drunks, the gap-toothed-slack-jawed-crowd-followers, the flare-throwers, the idiot who has dyed his hair (even his pubes!) in his team colors, the douchebag who had his infant son tattooed with the team Coat-of-Arms. The Auxillary soon follows in their wake: the gum-snapping-beer-guzzling-muffin-topped slatterns who follow the yobbos (as they're called in England), and who came along on the remote possibility that one of the players will be impressed with their nipple rings and lack of a gag reflex enough to make their "Footballer's Wives" fantasy come true.

The chanting. The horn blowing. The yelling. The Public Urination. It makes you wonder just how it was that the British Empire conquered three-quarters of the globe, if this is it's genetic legacy. If memory serves, the game ended in a 0-0 (or, nil-nil, as they say) draw, yet somehow, someone still won...something...and people were out dancing -- drunk, of course -- in the streets.

The commentators on television that evening took great pains to point out that one team actually DID Play for a tie, not needing a win for some reason or another. That's another problem with soccer: once you get past the lack of action, the brain-dead fanatics and the players who take dives if you breathe on them, you get a "strategy" of playing for a tie, which is too European for most Americans to accept. Not to mention the reports of all the people knifed or disfigured by razor blades for simply having a different team affiliation than one's own (I believe the term is "Chelsea Smile").

I also remember the European Cup final in Barcelona in 2000. I was on vacation in Barcelona at that time, and my hotel on the Rambles just happened to be the gathering point for the Manchester, Munich and Barcelona soccer fans who spent a solid week gathering under my balcony at all hours of the night to bang drums, blow horns, sing, chant, and break bottles. For hours on end, and way into the wee hours. The really sad part? The "Big game" was between Manchester and Munich -- the Spanish fans didn't need to be holding these impromptu parades, except as "host country" they were somehow entitled to make as big a bunch of assholes out of themselves as the English and Germans, I guess. Fights were common between rival "gangs" of fans. Anyways, I'm told it was one of the greatest matches, ever, despite the fact that there was a double overtime and penalty kicks, --which means that one side actually won the game at some earlier point, but the other side had to be given two chances to tie it up again, because Europeans are uncomfortable with "sudden-death" situations...in sports, anyway.

Consider it the sports version of the legacy of the Treaty of Versailles; victory should never be THAT absolute.

When that game was finally played, I was -- thankfully -- already in Palma de Majorca...and catching up on my sleep.

Anyway, this is what international soccer usually entails: assholes given license to behave badly, large, unruly crowds sold the most annoying noisemakers you can imagine, drunken brawls, drunken promenades, a thick residue of prostitutes, riots, nationalistic feelings stirred up -- often to the point of violence -- and in the end, someone has adopted the strategy of "playing not to lose" that makes an already-boring spectacle down-right coma-inducing. The horns just put you to sleep that much faster.

The End of Civilization...

...arrives not with a bang, but with a menopausal whine. For we are now officially living in the Age of Cougarlife. It was advertised on television today, and I nearly choked when I saw it (and not only because it was somewhat funny).

What is Cougarlife? It's a dating website for Cougars. What's a Cougar? Urban Dictionary has six definitions, which I will combine into one, easy-to-comprehend super-definition:

An older woman (35+ years old), often divorced and surgically-enhanced/preserved, but still attractive (if she's unattractive, she known as a mountain lion) found in all the usual haunts (bars, nightclubs, the beach, etc.), in search of younger, energetic, sexually-adventurous men.

The Cougar has an upside for the younger man; unlike many younger women, the Cougar is not likely to play games, or to be coy or confused about what she wants. She is seeking sex, usually consequence-free. There is a special sub-category of Cougar, known as the Bobcat, whose ultimate goal is to simply experience some form of intimacy -- any sort of intimacy -- without actually going all the way. Then there's the Cheetah, who is, I'm told, simply a Cougar-in-training (not quite old enough to qualify for full Cougar-hood, just yet).

This phenomena has spawned a new generation of opportunistic cad, known as the Cougar Hawk: young men on the prowl specifically for Cougars.

Damn, I gotta get out more, because I had not realized that human associations were being categorized in this manner. Then again, perhaps I'm better off staying home, because the more I read about this stuff, the sicker I get, as it seems yet one more sign of the ultimate degeneration of society as we know it.

In another day-and-age, the Cougar would be called various other names, beginning with "Skank", perhaps progressing to "Barfly", but finally arriving at the old formulation of "whore".

There are much cruder terms that I remember from my youth, which are far more descriptive and accurate, but which I will refrain from using. There was a time when women like this would be expected to feel some sense of shame, unless they were completely clueless. Now, apparently, promiscuity is a badge of courage.

Don't get me wrong, Men have been dogs since the model first slithered out of the Primordial Slime, and I do realize that times, fashions and mores change with "progress", but damn...Some of us can still respect a woman just because we're supposed to, you know.

I wonder how many of the padded-bra-and-girdle set who will undoubtedly sign up with Cougarlife (because once it's online, it somehow becomes hip) were probably the same women who spent most of their lives demanding respect from the Patriarchy, putting up with ex-husbands who only regarded them as good for one thing, and complained constantly about what absolute shitheels men, in general, are. They are now more-or-less advertising that they're willing to forego respect, and actively seek out shitheels, because...well, they're only good for one thing, and only to someone who probably won't appreciate them for it afterwards.

I'm not judging any woman who actually joins this site -- I know it sounds as if I am -- but I will tell say this about you;

If you thought you were treated like a piece of meat by every swinging dick on planet Earth before, just wait until the Internet makes this a 24-7-365 proposition. Despite the"Cougar" lifestyle and rules -- in which you're supposed to not form emotional attachments, and not expect him to call you the next day -- you know you ultimately will form bonds, and expect an acknowledgement of your existence because, well...you're female... and just that's how you're wired. This may seem like the greatest idea on Earth right now, but I can promise you that it'll eventually leave you feeling emptier than when you started.

Because, in the end, this isn't about you "empowering" yourself; it's all about Men once again finding yet another way (this time by using the power of Social Networking and Marketing!) to manipulate you into consequence-free sex, and making it seem like it was all your idea.

In The Local Paper...

Around these parts, the local newspaper (it purports to be one, anyway) is the Staten Island Advance. It's not much of a newspaper, being mostly devoted to events that happen on and around Staten Island, so you don't get a whole lot of National or International news from it. The Advance covers the"Big Stories" peculiar to New York City, but reserves almost all of it's pages to What's Happening In Our Neighborhoods.

It's usually rubbish. Birth and Wedding announcements, obituaries, local sports (high schools and the local colleges, Little League sports, and such), with most of it's space taken up by advertisements for yet-another-Italian restaurant, "Full-service" salons, and Jiffy-Lube, or such. The "coverage" of most everything is scattershot and amateurish, and you get the idea that the "journalists" who work for the Advance are merely those punching a ticket in the salt mines before they can move on to a "major" daily in places like Salt Lake City, Des Moines, or perhaps (dare they dream?) even Topeka. Very few of the writers have the polish or talent (like I should talk?) to write for the Daily News or Post, and I would hazard to guess that time spent at the Advance probably precludes you from even writing classifieds for the NY Times, as it's considered a "peasant" paper in these parts.

But then again, everything about Staten Island screams"peasant" to people in Manhattan. But I digress.

Sometimes, probably through sheer luck, the Advance does manage to report something that catches your eye (you mean that blurb about the Staten Island Golden Pins having two 300-games in the same night at the bowling alley wasn't eye-catching?),and might, if you could forget for a second just where you're reading it, make you stop and think.

Today was one such day, for the New York City Council is in session and Mayor McCheese...errr...Bloomberg has taken time off from his important crusade against Cigarettes, Salt and Saturated Fats to see to something that actually concerns the taxpayers. They're all doing important work on behalf of the People, don't you know. And yes, that was sarcasm.

Before I tear the Mayor a new one, he did manage one potentially-useful change in policy; there is a tentative agreement to eliminate the "Rubber Room", a contrivance wrested from City Governments Past by the Teacher's Unions wherein teachers who are awaiting disciplinary action (in some cases, even criminal charges) are supposed to report while their case is adjudicated. I won't explain the convoluted process by which teachers are fired in this City, because I can't understand it myself, but the number of bureaucratic steps involved practically guarantees that the worst teachers in New York can continue to collect paychecks for several years while they're being "processed" (i.e. someone, Lord knows who, decides whether or not they can keep their jobs).

They're also collecting full medical benefits, accruing pension benefits, and I think, the time they spend in the "Rubber Room" counts towards whether or not they're eventually tenured. Some of those teachers have been awaiting disciplinary action for a decade, or near enough. it costs the City $65 million a year to warehouse problem teachers who can't be fired. The article doesn't tmake it clear whether that money is just for the warehousing, or if it's the amount spent to keep these folks on the payroll.

If that revelation, and the figure attached to it, doesn't shock you, the next item on the City Council agenda most certainly should.

The City Council, in it's infinite wisdom and exquisite attention to the needs of New Yorkers hit hard by the economic downturn and higher taxes, has decreed that Carriage horses are entitled to higher rates of pay, five weeks of vacation, bigger stables, and better health care than most of us get.

The horses, to be fair, are a New York institution. Every tourist and Prom Queen in New York clamors for a Carriage Ride around Central Park, at $34 bucks a pop. It's a popular attraction. However, one can't imagine why it is that the City Council saw fit to devote time to this issue, except perhaps because it involves a subject upon which the City Council is expert: horseshit.

Of course, space has been included for the Public Outcry involved over New York's other great Economic Boost, the MillionTrees program, in which the City of New York plans to plant 1 million new trees all over the City. Not only is this a colossal waste of taxpayer money, but it appears that the Parks Department is so badly mismanaged that they're cutting holes in sidewalks for trees that won't be planted for several months, creating safety hazards, and pissing off local merchants. In one incident related to this program, a brand new sidewalk in front of an elementary school was ripped up just weeks after it was installed so that new trees could be planted God-only-knows-when.

This is par for the course in New York City, and especially for Staten Island -- where stories about City Workers installing fire hydrants in the middle of busy thoroughfares, or even in the woods (we actually do have forests here) are more common than you might, at first, think.

People need jobs, The World Trade Center still hasn't been rebuilt, taxes are being raised, the City is financially in the red -- but we need to plant a million trees in a Concrete Jungle, ripping up the concrete in the process? Go figure. The only purpose most of those trees will serve is to give the dogs a more diverse toilet experience. Within five years, I'll wager half of them will be dead, destroyed by automobile accidents, or considered a hazard that will have to be removed for one reason or another. I'll also bet that not a single nursery in New York City, or State, has a piece of that contract to deliver said trees. It wouldn't surprise me at all to eventually discover that we're importing trees from China for this purpose.

Because you just can't get good quality trees in America, anymore, you know.

But the Union idiots in the Parks Department (the people planting the trees), the Department of Transportation (the people cutting up sidewalks),and the Department of EnvironMENTAL Protection (the ones presumably counting the trees) will at least have something to do, and paychecks to collect, I guess.

Not to be left out of the competitive and exciting pastime of following local celebrities, we learn in the pages of the Advance that three bimbos who give Italian-Americans worse names than Tony Soprano -- the Girls of MTV's The Jersey Shore -- are to be given "makeovers" which include personal instruction from a descendant of Emily Post, the Goddess of Etiquette, herself. Who knew there was a proper etiquette to Gum Snapping, Anonymous Oral Sex in a Nightclub Restroom (should you spit, or show some consideration for the next whore to use that stall and utilize a flushable paper towel? Do you serve fruit salad or an arrangement of petit-fours and finger sandwiches?), not to mention the entire gamut of social rituals involved in the use of AquaNet on a crowded dance floor?

I don't know how I could ever have survived without this vital information!

And really, isn't it sad when this is what is considered "Celebrity"? It used to be called "Notoriety", but I guess standards have slipped appreciably.

Sometimes Life is Just Too Funny...

A self-help author who writes books for bitter single females is now suing her former lover for getting her pregnant and then dumping her.

What's funny about this? Well, nothing really. Except this: the woman, Karen Salmonsohn, is the author of "How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Successful Dog Trainers".

She's also the author of ""How to Succeed in Business Without a Penis". I assume she meant that as in 'not having one physically because of your gender' and not as in 'without having to screw the Boss'.

You think someone has an obvious problem with men here, or what? I know women like this and they harbor a strange psychosis about men; there's a man somewhere in their past who wasn't perfect (he probably wouldn't pay for her nose job, indulge her selfish desires, refused to worship her, or something similar, but always, She Didn't Get Her Way), and she places far too much value upon her vagina (understand Ladies, there are millions of women simply giving it away. This is what Feminism has reduced many of you to. It's no longer the Pearl of Great Price; You can almost get one in Wal-Mart now.). She then learns to use sex as a weapon, a means by which to manipulate the next poor, dumb asshole She comes across into doing what She wants them to do. When Life disappoints her -- as it usually will disappoint a Cast Iron bitch with both an unrealistically-high opinion of herself and a weaponized vagina -- she writes books that the other bitter bitches can read and chuckle and nurse dreams of revenge upon their tormentors over.

These kinds of books are basically a field guide on how to find a complete sucker (i.e. stupid man with no self-esteem) and then fuck him over. There is nothing especially new or creative about it, as women have been writing those sorts of things since the 1960's. No doubt about it, Ladies; the key to future wedded bliss and eternal happiness is to make some poor slob who wouldn't hurt a fly pay for the sins of all the Bad Boys in your life. Bad Boys that you creamed over specifically because they were Bad Boys.

That always works out well for y'all, doesn't it? Anyways...

Judging from the picture in the article, Salmonsohn looks like she'd be an absolute pain in the ass, too. The Prototypical Screaching Bitch. I'm betting I'd have to slug her before the first date was over. At least once. I've never hit a woman in my life, but I can certainly see myself smacking her silly if I had anything to do with her.

What's even stranger about this story is that the pregnancy was brought about by IVF treatments. I guess that would be so that Salmonsohn didn't actually have to do the horizontal mambo with this schmuck, and maybe fuck up her hair and nails. Personally, I think this is a newer version of the Pregnancy Trap for older women to use. She's 49 or 51, I think the article said, and if you set out to get pregnant in order to obligate someone, the traditional methods may not work so well at that advanced age.

Big red flag for me right here:

"...Leff said he'd be "very happy" to start another family, and quickly put his money where his mouth was, popping the question weeks later with a $10,000 Tiffany's engagement ring and volunteering to pay for pricey IVF treatments straighway. The couple met each other's families, and told them they were engaged.

"There were no red flags. None," Salmansohn said.

By November, they'd made ten trips to the fertility clinic together, the suit says, and Leff offered to help her out monetarily and pay for renovations on her Chelsea apartment to make it more "family friendly." Over a six month period, the suit says, Leff "spent lavishly" on Salmansohn, shelling out over $150,000 on vacations, renovations and other assorted odds and ends. "He pursued me very enthusiastically," she said.

Leff also promised to pay all of her medical expenses and everything needed to prepare the baby's room, and said he'd support her in excess of the $150,000 she typically made during the year while she was pregnant and taking care of the baby..."

That's $310,000 before the baby is even born, and from what I can see, most of it's not even for the kid! It's her apartment being renovated, she got the Tiffany Ring, it's her lost potential income being replaced, it's her being taken on vacation and receiving medical care. Reading through that article, one gets the impression that she was negotiating her way through the entire relationship; as if she treated it as some sort of contract of business arrangement; She provides vagina, he provides cash. Sign on the dotted line, please.

I'm sorry ladies, but I don't care if you can make a mean pot roast, juggle chainsaws AND have no gag reflex, but there's a word for women like this. It begins with the letter "C" , and is so crude that even I won't use it. But WHORE will suffice for now.

And there's a word for men who let this kind of thing happen to them:

SUCKER.

Sounds like this guy maybe smartened up before this woman ruined his life and left him destitute. And now she's going to sue him and take more of his money? She's a victim? Yeah, right. But then again, this is New York State, and the courts are notoriously biased in favor of women, particularly where children are concerned.

This woman should be caged, for the protection of other stupid men with lots of money. Permanently. She gives the rest a very bad name.

Tiger Spoke...

And, damn if I wasn't right in all of my predictions! Except for the Buddhism thing...I thought Tiger would go the Allah route and have some of those Farrakhan-looking guys around him. Because, you know, that's what Mike Tyson and Tawana Brawley did when they found religion. Anyway, the article makes no reference to it at all, in any case, because the mainstream media even mentioning religion, even a hippie one like Buddhism, causes reporters' heads to explode.

Anyways, Tiger's going back into rehab, to hide, certainly, but to heal? To change? To make himself a better man, husband and father? I wouldn't count on it, and I personally could give a rat's behind. I have my own life, and don't need to to live vicariously through Tiger Woods, thank you.

Randy men, you see, tend to stay that way, until slowed by age and gray hair and the bad back -- and then they eat Viagra like candy, trying to keep the side up for at least one more week. Eventually, they've been worn out, or they get clapped-out, and those are the only ways the rutting season ever comes to a true end. This Tiger is not going to change his stripes anytime soon, I don't think, but I guess the sporting thing to do is to wish him luck and hope that he does, huh?

So....good luck. I really, really, really hope you can finally learn how to keep your zipper closed, like a civilized human being, and you gain a measure of control over your schlong, because you know, you're NOT a baboon. I hope you can manage that easily and long enough to return to that stupid little thing you do with a stick and a tiny ball, that has no body-checking, tackling, or defense of any kind, but which fat, rich white men with no personalities and a lot of tummy blubber still insist is a sport. I guess because if it weren't considered a sport, something for real men, then it would be...I don't know...super-gay. I don't know, something about chasing balls around a manicured lawn in business casual just screams "GAY!", but that's me.

Anyway, about that zipper thing; I can see where you just might need to go to school to learn that you shouldn't leave your seed in every willing orifice you might come (no pun intended) across. I mean, I thought all the higher primates could, to one extent or another, control that sort of thing. Chimpanzees on speed apparently fucked less that Tiger -- who judging from the rogues' gallery of Waffle House and Wal-Mart conquests -- merely required the faintest heartbeat and a body at room temperature.

I mean, it's a disease, right? Being unable to stop fucking everything that moves? It's some sort of disability, the inability to keep a zipper in the upright position and closed. Such a difficult task that one apparently has to get professional help to better explain the concept. I don't buy it for a moment; I think Tiger's just taking an extended vacation in what purports to be a rehab facility, and intends to stay there for as long as it takes the worst of the furor over his...indiscretions...to finally die away, and then he can return to the golf course, and be the same old dispassionate, control-freak, cold-blooded motherfucker he was before this all happened. He's simply hiding until this great embarrassment is forgotten.

The only things he's probably learned from the experience, I reckon, is that the next time he'll make certain the bitch doesn't have text messaging, and signs a non-disclosure agreement before foreplay.

You can fool yourself and hide in your fake-rehab, all you want, Tiger. You're not really there to fix anything as much as you are to avoid the public humiliation; we'll still be laughing at you in another year, rest assured. Why, I bet the second you leave that rehab facility, you'll make an "innocent suggestion" to the boys that "Damn, I could really go for some Denny's right about now..." because I guess to you, a Grand Slam isn't just for breakfast anymore. You can't help yourself, and despite all the high-priced professional help in the world, you never will.

At least not until your dick either breaks or falls off....

Tiger Woods to Speak on Friday...

Big fucking deal.

Expect to hear the words: "I have found God" or even "I have found Allah" somewhere in that monologue (since Tiger will be taking no questions, at all, from the very few and very-carefully-selected members of the Press, it's a televised monologue).

These things follow a set script: admit the transgression, take responsibility whether you mean it or not, go to some form of "rehab", and re-emerge as a "changed man", waving the Scriptural Document of Your Choice, and tell the public you will no longer talk about the past.

Until you DO have to talk about it. That usually happens when your wife calls your bluff and takes you to divorce court, or your ego gets the best of you and Playboy or something wants that juicy, in-depth interview, or the National Enquirer digs up even better, and juicier dirt, and you have to go on Oprah.

Tiger, you should have stayed in the bunker for a while longer, my friend. These press conferences with the press and very little conference will not rebuild the reputation and goodwill you once had.

This is Why There Are "No Good Men"...

Disgusting. A woman basically posts a How-To Guide for breaking up her marriage to a soldier...while he's deployed...and congratulates herself for it. People like that ought to be shot for treason. But then again, that's almost par for the course, nowadays, human beings being the short-sighted, self-interested assholes that they are.

While I was reading that, though, I was struck by the thought that, hey, this is the way to ruin any guy's life -- not just the ones in uniform.

As a single man, I can tell you that one of the reasons I haven't been to the altar yet (despite wanting to go there few times) is that most women of my acquaintance are very much like the woman who dumped her soldier-husband by U.S. Mail; many women nowadays are selfish pigs, who can't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight -- on a good day --mostly because they are possessed of the most infantile notions of what life is about, and how it's supposed to be lived. Even the ones who you would think are independent, intelligent, have it together, suffer from the "I'm supposed to have it all" disease.

Your job as a man is simply to provide for her every whim and peccadillo, even when she says it isn't. You are expected to interpret her moods, gestures, grunts, groans and itches in a way that isn't even made clear by verbal communication, and if you don;t, you' re some sort of cad. She is not expected to make any sort of meaningful effort on your behalf because having the gall to actually ask for something you should be entitled to as a matter of mutual respect is somehow demeaning to her (the Feminists said so), perhaps even abusive. She's allowed to be a complete bitch, and it's your job to just suck it up and deal (she's come a long way, Baby!). She's to be kept in a fantasy bubble where real life is not supposed to invade -- especially not if it means a genuine hardship, or even minor inconvenience) to them. "I don't need no man..." is a common refrain....until they need DO a man; To pay their bills. To keep them in bonbons, pedicures and breast implants. To do something about her kids because their Real Father won't (and what a winner he was! His kids are usually so ill-behaved, spoiled or retarded that their birth certificate probably reads "Random Sperm Donor" under "Father's Name") To buy them the biggest dream house with the biggest, most-modern kitchen that will never get used, or just to buy them shit that they can stick in their girlfriend's faces.

You're supposed to be Deepockets-Supportive-Sugar-Daddy-Ken to her Entitled-to-Everything-But-Free-of-Responsibility-Barbie.

The worst aspect of the modern relationship is the strange need some women have for drama. Constant and of any sort. The more ridiculous and avoidable, the better. Even if they have to create it for themselves. It's like a drug. Where do they get this idea that life is their own personal Reality TV Series, with them in the starring role, and that everything within it should be subordinated to that premise?

When you have women spending literally hours a day watching Lifetime television, Oprah, Reality Television, reading Cosmo, People, Us -- some women are literally patterning their lives by what they see and read, not realizing that what they are witnessing are the exceptions and not the rules -- not to mention the constantly-available, instant self-indulgence and gratification of New Media like Twitter and Facebook -- you can now scream every intimate detail of your life to millions, laboring under the presumptuous idea that any of them care; they're too busy screaming about their own bullshit to actually care about yours. It's no wonder that regular guys never get a decent chance anymore; we're either chased away by the manufactured drama, we're turned off by a totally self-absorbed bitch, or we can't provide enough to brag publicly about.

And no, it's not just the young girls who are like this. I can't tell you how many women in my own age bracket I've met (late 30's-mid 40's) who are precisely like this.

It's already bad enough that if you're a bachelor at my age (42) that your prospects are already limited to the thrice-divorced, the surgically-preserved-and-Botoxed, the battle-scarred, the Clingy-and-Needy, the Desperate, and the Freeloader. It gets infinitely worse when the only role you have in a relationship is to be just someone to talk to...about herself...all goddamned day. That sort of conversation is always boring, absurd, and takes place on the junior-high school level.

But if we can evoke an even more horrible vision; if there is nothing more annoying than the selfish woman who merely expects to be protected from real life, it is the truly-frightening spectre of one who enters a relationship fully expecting to be treated like shit, only to find that she can't handle it when she's treated even halfway decently. This breed of complete lunatic is notable for shitting on you for no for reason she can explain without the Academy Award-winning Pyscho-performance. It's as if all the crying somehow makes it all logical, even though it isn't. You are held responsible for everything any man, anywhere, has ever done to her, and you get to pay for all their sins. This sort has a psychodrama that goes on inside her head. Her own thoughts prey upon her and she enters a state somewhere between half-bewilderment and half-panic which puts them in a state of total mental and emotional constipation. In the meantime, you (the Man) think everything is just dandy...until her Mental Ex-Lax begins to kick in. Here's the process:

1. You've just met:
He hasn't treated me badly....yet. In fact, he's been a perfect gentlemen. He shows me some respect, he treats me as if I'm actually a human being. Perhaps he's just hiding his flaws? Well, eventually, those will become apparent, and then we'll see if he's really this good or is just on his best behavior...

2. A Few Weeks Later:
I haven't seen much in the way of flaws. Okay, his sense of humor can be childish, sometimes, and he's enthralled by hockey, which means he can actually forget I'm here for a whole three minutes at a time...I don't know about that. Still, He's been very understanding. He's actually listened to me, and given me advice or opinions whenever I've asked for them. He hasn't criticized me, even though I have practically begged him to. There's something wrong; He must be hiding something, some tremendous secret that will make this all too good to be true. It must be something terrible, indeed, if he's going through this much trouble to hide it! I can't even piss him off and evoke the truly vile emotional response that I really crave -- no matter how hard I try!

3. A Few More Weeks Pass:
He's been Prince Charming. This is really getting too good to be true. I'm starting to get scared, because I haven't found anything terrible about him or his behavior. There must be something wrong with him. He must want to treat me like a dog. The longer this goes on, the more terrible I'm convinced The Secret must be. The longer I wait for this other shoe to drop, the more frightened I become. He might be a ticking time bomb. I know; I'll start breaking his balls and changing on him, just to see if he'll notice and to evoke some sort of response. Let's see what turns up...

4. A Year Later:
I've tried to start arguments. I've tried to disappoint him. I've pushed all the buttons I can think of. Yes, he got angry when I expected him to, and expressed interest when I thought He might, and perhaps even a bit perturbed when you could expect that, too. But he seems really patient. Even when He's rebuking me, he does so respectfully and patiently...Patient? Oh my god; He's a mental patient! He must be; no man could be this good without being crazy! Have I been dating an axe murderer? I have to find out! Maybe there's another button to push? If I push it, maybe I'll get him to show me the stark-raving lunatic woman-batterer and serial adulterer that I know he really is...

5. Some Years later:
Oh my god! He asked me to marry him! This is too good to be true. I'd better break up with Mr. Wonderful before he rapes and kills me, like that woman on the Movie of the Week. I'll make up some bullshit excuse. I know...I'll tell him that "I Need space" or that "I just don't feel it anymore..." If I cry and babble enough, maybe He'll just get frustrated, stop seeking honest answers, and just go away...

6. Epilogue:
She did it. She broke up with him, even put on the Performance of Her Life. The Self-fulfilling Prophecy that there is no Good Man out there, has now been completed. She has made it so; she chased him off, she tried his patience, she deceived him about the true state of her feelings. She drove him crazy while driving herself crazy. She can now complain to her girlfriends: "there's no good men out there...", and they can sit around getting fat, drinking margaritas and giving each other sympathy they don't even really feel, petty, jealous bitches that they are. A few years later, she'll call Him, and beg for forgiveness -- he'll do it, because he really was in love with Her --- and then she'll dump him all over again for an even dumber reason.

And then a year after that, the process repeats itself again...she expects to be forgiven. It's not as if He could have found a better vagina someplace else, is it? This is what Feminism and the Media have created truly Clueless and Seriously Messed-Up Chicks that are hardly capable of any human feeling whatsoever....except self-pity and conceit.

Writing "Dear John" letters or dumping a man for no other reason than that he didn't meet your very worst expectations, or conform to your never-ending-self-destructive internal monologue of tour-de-force bullshit, takes exactly the same sort of stupid and selfish woman.

I have some sympathy for the men in uniform who get treated this way, I really do, but you know what? This happens every day; the only reason is seems worse is because this particular woman took an extremely weaselly, and unusual, way out; she got her divorce, in effect, courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. Gutless little bitch. But guess what? This phenomenon --Crazy-Ass Females -- that ain't exactly new, or shocking.

Update: If you think I was kidding, or perhaps too harsh, try this: Dating Women Makes Me Sympathize With Men, by....another woman.