File Under: Economic Crisis>Where's My Bonus?

Well the economic crisis is on my mind a lot lately. Truth to tell, it hasn't really effected me or my peeps yet. All my friends still drive their SUVs, no one I know has lost their job or invested with Madoff. Shirley and I still go to movies and eat out once a week. Things are pretty much normal. What gets me really worried is that I kinda bought into the whole Republican illusion that the guys who were getting 100 million dollar bonuses deserved them because they did things and knew things that no one else in the world could or did. As it turns out, they were getting these obscene bonuses simply because they were greedier than anyone else. About 5 years ago I read an article that said that the typical CEO of an American company made 5 times as much as a typical Japanese CEO. Even back then I wondered; 'Are American CEOs really 5 times better than Japanese CEOs.' Of course, it only got worse in the last 5 years. Corporate executives were sucking money out of there companies as fast as they could.

Filed under: New Beginnings>The Return of the Blog

Today is a new day!

My blog begins again. I know the blog-o-sphere is sceptical. They have heard all this before. But this time I am serious. I won't pressure myself to write everyday...just to keep up a steady stream of enlightened thought and commentary to make the world a better place.

With my wife by my side, giving me strength, I raise my arms wide to greet a new dawn!

File under: New Beginnings>Worlds By Storm

Here I am rocking out to Abba and planning my grand return to the blog-o-sphere. If you felt that emptiness in cyber-space...that was me...or the lack there of.

Filed under: Fame > Comments

Sigh! Everyday the new naive blogger checks to see if anyone left any comments. Comments from his wife don't count...cause she knows how often he sighs and wishes someone would leave a comment. Sigh!

Filed under: Publishing > Egalitarianism

Getting published used to be an expensive operation...I mean back in the 1800s they had to set type by hand. Now that'll run up your prices. Today any Joe Shmoe can get published. Please read this New York Times article "You're an Author? Me too!". Printing books is very cheap now, in part because of computers, but also there are different ways to get read now...like blogging for instance. Once I publish this blog it could be potentially read by almost everyone in the world. There's a good chance that no one will read it...but that is not the point. Of course, some would argue that allowing everyone to be published means that anything of real quality will be buried under a heap of mediocrity. But real literary genius had always taken centuries to rise to the top. In the US an average of 172,000 titles are published a year. Since most Americans read less than 5 books a year, we are falling way behind the curve. I myself won't read anything written after 1900. I think it takes at least a hundred years for the good stuff to rise to the top. Another way to look at it is, say 5 good books are written every year, the average American has almost no chance of reading any of them! So my attitude is; relax...stick to books published a hundred years ago and you will be fine.

Filed under: Gravitational Pull > Global Warming

Quick note: I checked this morning and I have the 7th, 8th and 9th spot on a Google search. Keep up the good work me!

I believe Global Warming is contributing to an increase in the gravitational pull of the Earth. Yesterday, Shirley and I went climbing for the first time in a year. My harness had shrunk so I had to use one of the spare gym harnesses I had lying around. Our first climb was Bunny a 5.4...considered an easy climb. Now I climbing in the Gunks like a madman from 1994 to 2004...and I'm sure I climbed Bunny several times a year, so I've climbed it at least 30 times. You could say I'm familiar with the climb. But this time, it was a real struggle. I didn't even try to do the small roof at about 60 feet...which I soloed once. It didn't help that my climbing shoes had shrunk also. I was in real pain. I did make it to the top eventually, but I think Global Warming is going to be really tough on my climbing career.

Filed under: Feeding Frenzy > Caffeinated Piranhas

I didn't start drinking coffee until I turned 40, so I feel like I missed out on a large part of American culture. Every morning now at 9:00 I go up to the cafe on the first floor to get my mega-iced coffee. And boy do I get surly if there are a lot of people there before me. There's always one person blocking the coffee machines and doing inexplicable things like slowly adding packets of sugar to taste. I feel like screaming, "You should know how many packets of sugar go into your coffee, you moron!!!!" Or if some schmuck is searching for lids or holders, "You are standing between me and sanity!!!" In fact, the whole scene, as a mob of people desperately cluster and surge around the coffee machines every morning reminds me of a mob of Hyenas feeding at the carcass of a Gazelle or over-caffeinated Piranhas feasting on a surfer.

Of course, after I've had my mega-iced coffee, I can gaze on my fellow humans with a great deal of complacency. At that point its more like, "Go ahead my good man, take your time...there's plenty of coffee to go around...and no Piranhas in sight."