Wussup?

How’s everybody doin? Haven’t been around these parts much lately. There’s a few reasons for that, including a new job, spending time in the gym, and generally trying to live a healthier lifestyle, physically and mentally.

One of the things about blogging about politics and news, is that it’s…….depressing. Constantly monitoring the news was really starting to bring me down, as it becomes a never-ending stream of idiotic bullshit, and frankly, I’m tired of being in a state of perpetual rage.

Instead, I’ve been concentrating on more positive things, eating better, smoking less, working out, and my new job which requires me to work a lot of swing and graveyard shifts, (that’s Vegas baby), so my time is split up all weird now.

I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll do in the coming weeks and months, but it will definitely not be on the level it was, maybe a post a week or something, if anyone is even still checking here at this point anyway.

Just thought I’d let y’all know.

Hi, I’m Still Alive

Sorry for the light posting, but I’ve been busy with all kinds of stuff. Probably get something up later today, as soon as something interesting happens. I hope my absense hasn’t ruined your life, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Oh, and the check’s in the mail.

Russert Over Exposure?

This is an interesting take on the coverage of Tim Russert this weekend, and I have to say I agree with it.

A friend told me Sunday: “I now know more about Tim Russert than I do many members of my family.”

After Russert’s shocking death Friday at age 58, television kept serving up witnesses to his expertise, intelligence, diligence, kindness, faith, love of family, Buffalo and the Buffalo Bills. The self-indulgence was breathtaking.

On Monday’s “Today,” Matt Lauer interviewed Russert’s son, Luke. The show basically gave over the first half-hour to the Russert story. Presidential candidates aren’t questioned at such length on morning programs.

I saw Luke Russert on Today, and while I was really impressed at what an extraordinary young man he was, I thought it was a bit much.

Is the coverage professional? A lot of the comments about Russert should have been saved for the office. NBC should have approached covering Russert as the network would have any other public figure who had died. Hard to do, yes, but that should have been the goal. Instead, Russert’s colleagues used the airwaves to work through their grief. Some people will excuse that style out of sympathy, but that approach just wasn’t right.

Again, I agree, while Russert was a fine journalist, a lot of other important stuff happened this weekend.

Will journalists ask the tough questions of themselves that they ask of others? Not during grief, evidently. Brokaw hinted that Russert had his critics. Could we have heard from them? Well, no. The coverage seemed designed to put Russert on the fast track to sainthood.

Bam. There’s the upshot here, and in particular, my problem with the style of eulogising that has become the standard these days. This is the same mentality that drives people to put up giant memorials on the sites where people (usually unkown to them personally) have died, which I wrote about here.

Or even the coverage of people like Anna Nicole Smith, or Natalie Holloway.

I think in some way, this over-memorialising is a result of the breakdown of the family. People start to feel like the people on TV are their family. In the lack of support they get at home, they find solace in being devastated at someone else’s loss. It obviously fills some vacuum. In this age of more and more single moms and baby-daddies, people need to feel connected to something, a connection they don’t seem to be getting from their families.

Luke Russert seemed to be dealing with this just fine, probably because he has a strong family connection, and lot’s of support, and it speaks highly of his dad.

We should feel sympathy for Russerts’ family, but really, this is not a national tragedy, and it shouldn’t be covered as such.

Tim Russert seemed like a fine man, and his son is proof of how well he raised him, actually handling this in a much more mature way than most of the press. But I wouldn’t say he was an icon, and I found him to be more biased than anyone else on the right seems to have, and in particular, his regular segments on the Today show were p-r-e-t-t-y biased. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great guy personally, but I think he wore his “Meet The Press/Debate” hat, and he wore his “Today/MSNBC” hat equally. That’s just my opinion.

On a personal note, expect to see pretty light blogging here for awhile. Got a lot going on that needs tending to, that’s a lot more important than ranting on the internet, (as much as i enjoy it) and you know…..priorities. Believe it or not, this crap takes a lot of time to produce, since most of my content is original, and I try to make it as interesting as possible, so a single post sucks up about 2 or 3 hours of my day, as well as posting on DPUD, and checking and commenting on all the Moronblogs, and you can begin to see this is starting to take up too much of my time that could be better spent elsewhere, at least right now.

And you know, this shit doesn’t pay.

When Greed Goes Bad, And The Reality Of Business

Boy Band Mogul Gets 25 Years

I just don’t understand this kind of greed. This asshole had made a ton of money from legitimate businesses, and still just had to fuck people over to make more, including his stupid boy bands. This is the kind of guy that makes people loathe the rich. Kinda like Martha Stewart. She was obscenely wealthy, yet she just had to break the law to scoop up a measly (to her) couple hundred thou.

I guess somehow, complete Megalomania just takes over these people. No amount of money will ever be enough, they just have to bulldoze through as many people as humanly possible to prove they’re top dog, at any price.

This is why people get so infuriated at anyone that makes a dollar from something they have to buy, like gas. Assholes like Lou Perlman and Martha Stewart, make the public think everyone is trying to fuck them.

Big Oil makes what, 7% profit? Not much considering all their costs, and all the things they do that don’t generate money, like exploration. What do you think Exxon’s annual insurance bill is? They have “record profits” because gas has never been $4.00 a gallon before, but they have record costs to go with those record profits, no one seems to ever mention that, people just think they’re getting fucked while CEO’s are barbecuing Yangtzee River Dolphins on their solid gold yachts cackling hysterically.

Same with the Airline industry. People love to bitch about that. I heard somewhere, that every one cent increase in jet fuel, costs an airline about 25 million dollars that they don’t get back without raising prices. Not sure how true that is, but it makes sense when you consider one single 747 takes about 60,000 gallons to fill, and multiply that with an entire fleet, and hundreds of flights every day, and you start to get the picture how hard it is to make a buck without pissing people off that have no idea how much it costs to run a business like that.

Not to mention the fact that they put giant fucking pieces of metal in the air everyday with a near perfect safety record to get your ass to any number of destinations on planet Earth within a matter of hours, yet somehow, they must be gouging you.

I got the same attitude from people when I owned and operated my own small business up until last February. They all thought I was rich, because I owned a business, and why can’t they get a discount. I sold moving boxes people. You could get 20 for 40 bucks, and people thought I was ripping them off, I mean, it’s just a box. Two dollars for a box?

It never even occurred to them that this stupid box had to be manufactured, shipped, bought by a distributor, bought by me, and transported again to my business, where I had to pay rent, and pay insurance, and about 800 other bills, to get this stupid box in their hand for two bucks, that is somehow greedily overpriced to fuck them out of two dollars while I laugh hysterically at them as I step into my Bently.

It’s like that Dennis Miller bit. People think they’re getting royally screwed paying four dollars for a gallon of gas that will transport them 10-40 miles, (or two dollars for a box) and not even blink at paying $4 for 8oz. of fucking coffee at Starbucks.

I think I lost the main focus of this post in my rambling, but I think you get a point of some kind.

Update: Nevermind that last sentence.  Changing the title of a post can really bring a point home.

Panhandling Pays!

I kinda knew this. A good spot on a freeway exit can be pretty lucrative.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time at Venice Beach, and there were some world class panhandlers out there. At Venice, there was a guy, probably still there, that juggled a chain saw, an apple and a bowling ball. He had a cardboard box out for “donations”, and I looked in it. Musta been 2 or 300 bucks in there. And he probably did 3 or 4 “shows” a day. That guy was making great money, tax free. He was really good though. At least he worked for it, but his schtick was complete bullshit, and tourists ate it up. In fact, here he is:

He’s been out there for years. Although, when I used to see him, it wasn’t this elaborate, with the fire and everything. Here’’s another guy you may recognize, a total fixture on Venice Beach, Harry Perry:

This guy has been there at least 25 years, so it must be working for him. We used to talk to him, and I have a feeling he goes home to a nice house. He sells his wacky CD’s. He’s not real aggressive about it, but I bet he sells enough to make a decent living. He acts all crazy, and he’ll skate around you in circles singing songs about aliens. Most people just get annoyed with him, but if you are ever in Venice, and you see him, (Trust me, you’ll see him) ask him to sing “Invaders” and he’ll launch into his “greatest hit.” And then he’ll be all normal and ask if you want to buy his cd, and tell you all about the new one he’s working on in “his studio.” Pretty funny.

These guys are harmless, and I’m pretty sure their system of “Panhandling” is just kind of an alternative job. They never seemed like druggies or alcoholics to me. Unlike the super aggressive bums on Hollywood Blvd, that used to threaten and harass people, or scam artists like this girl in the link. Anybody that’s dealt with big city bums has probably lost a lot of empathy for the homeless, and for good reason. Myself included.

Immigration In The Front Yard

Half the Los Angeles workforce are immigrants.

They don’t specify legal or illegal, but they say “many” speak little English. I’ll take that as “many” are illegal. What does this mean exactly?

“The question is: Are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?” he asked. “Right now we’re headed toward becoming a Third World city.

Pat Buchannan has been saying that for years, but people seem to think he’s a kook. No matter how you feel about immigration, the shear numbers are staggering.

Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona wrote: “According to the US Border Patrol apprehension statistics, almost four million people crossed our borders illegally in 2002.” Although many are caught and made to leave the country, a significant number try again. No one knows for sure how many succeed, but Senator McCain’s assertion would mean that the number crossing the border and disappearing into the US economy could be much higher than official estimates.

I hate to keep saying this, but I will, that’s a major metropolitan city full of illegals coming into our country every single year. When will that begin to dawn on people? With those kind of ridiculous numbers, how long before all of America is a third world country?

Let me tell you a little about how this affects day to day life here in Las Vegas. I have a neighbor, a 73 year old guy, nicest guy you’ll ever meet, he’s like the dad of the street. Served in Korea, a vet. Now retired, he still works more than most of us half his age do. He had his own landscpaing business for many years, and he did the majority of the work himself. In the last ten years of his business, here’s some of the harassment he had to deal with from illegals trying to take business from him:

They would “case” him, and his commercial jobs, and learn his schedule, and when he would begin cutting grass at these accounts, he’d run across metal spikes that were placed in the grass, just below the surface, put there to severely damage his blades. Not only is this despicable, but it could have sent his blades flying, hurting or even killing him or others. He had to start walking every inch of every lawn he had to cut, to check for these things, which doubled his time spent at every job.

They would follow him home, and run up to his truck in groups of two or three, and just start stealing his tools off his truck, in broad daylight. This is a 70 year-old man here, trying to chase these dirtbags. If these tactics didn’t discourage him, they simply started undercutting his price, by as much as half.

It was a constant war. He finally had enough, and retired. He had already worked well into his retirement, because he loved it, but he found other projects so he didn’t have to deal with that crap anymore.

That’s just one little example of how this stuff affects an average guy every day. These are the kind of extremely aggressive tactics that are used every day to TAKE jobs that Americans WILL do.

While we sit and bicker over Iraq, and Islamo-Fascism, guys like my neighbor, a vet, are fighting a war in their own front yard that nobody seems to care much about. Immigration is not even a faint blip on the radar screen of this election cycle. More ink and pixels have been wasted on fucking flag pins, than a real, tangible, exponentially growing threat to the American way of life that is actually happening right now.

And we just keep ignoring it.

Charlton Heston

End of an era. Just about the last real man in Hollywood. I especially liked Charlton Heston because he looks a lot like my dad. They could be brothers. I don’t need to go into what a great guy Chuck was, everybody (at least in the dextrosphere) has covered that pretty extensively.

I will add that I think the most despicable thing Michael Moore has ever done in his completely despicable career, was ambushing Charlton Heston for his POS anti-gun propaganda film. Heston was gracious and kind enough to let that dirtbag into his home, only to be edited to look like a racist. This man that stood up for civil rights when it was not fashionable to do so.

There’s a very special circle of Hell reserved just for Moore, just for that.

                  

                        Heston                                                        My Dad

Don’t they look like they could be brothers?  

Love ya dad!

The New Pups

We have two new members of the bmac family, Mikey and Gunner.

Clicky for bigger pic. Mikeys the mean lookin’ one. ( He’s not mean at all)
Ain’t they cute? Both rescues. Both German Shorthair Pointers, a breed we’ve fallen in love with. In case you haven’t noticed, in my left sidebar is a link to the California GSP Rescue, a group we belong to, and got both of these beautiful doggies through. They also helped us immensely (as well as a bunch of very generous and kind morons) when our last GSP, Kramer, had cancer, which he beat twice, before falling to an unexpected heart failure February 8th, just after going into remission for the second time.

These people do great work with these dogs, and if your inclined to such things, you can donate a few bucks, they do what they do for free, out of love for this wonderful breed. Just click the sidebar link, and even if you don’t contribute, take a look at what they do.

We had already planned to get Gunner, when the rescue called us about picking up Mikey from a family in a small town about 50 miles north of Vegas, and bringing him to the rescue when we came to pick up Gunner. The family had taken him in after they noticed him wandering around their property for about three weeks, but they already had 4 dogs, 4 cats, a pig, and four horses, and just couldn’t handle another dog. We were just going to foster him for two weeks, but he imprinted on me like a newborn duck, and in doing so, secured himself a home.

Mikeys history is a total mystery to us, he had a collar, but no name tag, and he was chipped (in Vegas), but the chip had invalid info on it. We figure he’s between 3 and 5. He’s housebroken, and great with people and other dogs, as well as neutered. We have no idea how he wound up so far out of town.

Gunner was taken to the rescue from a shelter, where a family had given him up because he was too “high energy.” They’re both incredibly sweet, loving, smart dogs, and we’re glad to have them.

Welcome to a lifetime of being spoiled rotten, you lucky dogs!

Fun With The DMV!

About 6 years ago, I purchased a Ford F-350 diesel truck, because at the time, I did slab marble and granite for a living. If you don’t know, slab marble and granite installation is stuff like, granite kitchen countertops, marble bathroom vanities, and commercial stuff like walls in fancy lobbys, registration desks, just about anything that can have big pieces of stone on them. I needed a really heavy duty truck to carry this stuff to job sites, because obviously, it’s incredibly heavy. A half-ton pickup just can’t handle the load.

Two years after I bought the truck, I quit construction because, frankly, I was getting too old to carry around 300 lb pieces of rock everyday, and too old to take shit from younger foremen who didn’t know fuck- all about my trade. This is all superfluous information, but hey, it gives you a little insight into what a bmac is.

I was especially happy about the purchase, because 6 years ago, diesel gas was about 20-50 cents less a gallon than regular, and no smog check was needed to register the truck, because you can’t measure smog emissions without a catalytic converter, which does not exist on a diesel engine.

My euphoria at bypassing the system was short-lived however, as diesel trucks became all the rage here in Vegas, and this did not go unnoticed by the DMV, who immediately made smog checks mandatory on these vehicles that cannot possibly be smog checked. Not only can they not be smog checked, they can’t send the results of the non-smog check to the DMV. Know what that means? I can’t pay my registration online, because they don’t have the non-results of my non-smog check, that I paid $50 for.

This happens every year, this being the FOURTH YEAR that they haven’t bothered to figure out how to handle imaginary smog checks on vehicles that CANNOT POSSIBLY BE smog checked.

Which means I again have to go to the fucking DMV, and stand in line for at least an hour, to give the state money for finding an unnecessary way to fuck me out of $50 bucks.

Oh, let me tell you about the first year they did this. I went to get the imaginary smog check at a place that claimed they did imaginary smog checks. The idiot at the place spent about 15 minutes looking under the hood in vain for the catalytic converter, then failed me because he’s a fucking retard, and sent the fail right to the DMV, which meant I couldn’t go find another retard who understood this is all a fucking scam.

I then had to go to the DMV, where another retard had to TAKE A FUCKING PICTURE of the little sticker under my hood that says “This engine has no catalytic converter” to prove I technically didn’t fail the imaginary smog check, then I got to stand in line AGAIN, with the retards poloroid of the underside of my hood. This entire process took almost a full day.

Every fucking year with this shit.

Oh, and diesel gas is now 60 cents MORE a gallon than regular.

Anybody wanna buy a truck?

Frank Lloyd Wright, And How To Kill An Afternoon

I was in L.A. yesterday, just for the day. Can’t really say why, but it was a paying gig. And yes, it was legal. I had the afternoon to kill, so I took a little field trip to see one of only four houses in all of Los Angeles designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. All the houses he designed there had a similar theme, a Mayan block motif.

I find myself fascinated by these houses, not only because I love Wrights design, but because they have an ominous, almost menacing look to them. The house I went to, the Ennis-Brown House, has been used in a bunch of movies for just that reason. It was featured in the original “House on Haunted Hill”, and it’s most famous cameo, Harrison Fords house in ”Blade Runner.”

       

This house is currently in very bad dis-repair. Built around 1924, the materials Wright chose are composite blocks that aren’t weathering too well, and the ‘94 Northridge quake as well as the 2005 deluge of rain that hit L.A. have taken their toll on this amazing piece of architectural history.

When I was there, there were only one or two guys working inside (The public can’t go in) but I understand it’s being renovated with donations from the public. My pictures don’t really capture the massiveness of this house, it’s enormous, taking up almost an entire block, and it’s no easy feat to get to. It sits high up in the hills of Los Feliz, just below the Griffith observatory, and the view is breathtaking, a panoramic of all of Los Angeles.

I like the little details that are uniquely Wright, like this porch light.  

I wish I got a less cluttered view, but click on it to see a little better. It’s a small thing, but here’s this stupid little porch light that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, kind of lost within this massive structure. Simple, but unmistakably FLW.

Or this doorbell.   Here it is in context.

Each block is 16 inches, if that gives you an idea of the size.

Just down the hill from this house, is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. that I thought I’d check out while I was in the neghborhood, the Sowden House, which is also Mayan themed, and has been used in a zillion TV shows and movies.

  

It’s got the added attraction of being somewhat infamous, when it was recently tied to the Black Dhalia murder, by the son of the guy who owned it in the 40’s. He maintains she was killed and mutilated in this house. By his father. There were people in it, ( I believe you can rent it out nightly or weekly) so I couldn’t get too close, or linger around.

These houses evoke a kind of film noir darkness of old Los Angeles, old Hollywood, probably best captured in a film like “L.A. Confidential,” that I find fascinating. In fact, the Sowden House was used in L.A. Confidential. There must have been some twisted parties that went down in these houses.

Anyway, hope this isn’t too boring, but I enjoyed it.