Sunday Morning in Tribeca

I was walking out the deli with my croissant and coffee when who should I see coming in but Dan Rather! To all the non-Americans out there who are collectively saying "Who?' - Dan Rather is the grizzly old journalist who put George's Bush's Vietnam war record on the front pages during the election in 2004 by saying that he had managed to avoid active duty. Rather had the memo's to prove it as well but unfortunately they were fake!

Now, the irony to this story is that everyone knows that George Bush used his privileges to get out of serving Vietnam, even Republicans don't deny this, hell, half of them did it too! Wouldn't you if you had the choice? The story was true - the memos were fake, the Republicans managed to spin the story so the memos became the issue not Bush's draft dodging and the rest is history! Rather retired and a cetain type of American journalist was consigned to the pages of history.

Well, anyway, I have a lot of respect for Dan Rather and when I saw him this morning I wanted to shake his hand and punch him at the same time! "Thanks for all the good stories Dan, especially the one where you interviewed Sadan Hussien before the first gulf war in an effort to avoid more bloodshed, but on the Bush memo story, what the hell were you thinking???". In the end I said "Good Morning" and stepped around him to the door.

It's been a strange week in the news - here is an article about the guy who started Domino's pizza. Apparently he is a devout Catholic and is currently building a town in Florida where Catholics can live out their guilt-ridden little lives in peaceful observation of the laws of Rome. Think of it as a kind of Celebration (the Disney town) for people who hate heretics!

According to published reports, "the $240 million first phase of the campus plans to be centered around the 'Oratory of Ave Maria,' a 60,000 square-foot church with aluminum and glass arches, and will include the nation's largest crucifix in stained glass with a 60' high bleeding Jesus. Officials say the church would be the largest fixed-seating Catholic Church in the nation, with room for 3,333 to 3,500 worshipers"

Meanwhile thousands of miles away a man was caught fucking a goat and was made to marry it. One day I would love to discover that these two stories have some kind of holistic connection! Think about that the next time you order the Deep Dish!!!

Free Forming

Okay I am free-forming now as I may have finally run out of things to complain about! This blog started off as a place where I could talk about the process of going blind and getting blind drunk with a few Buddhist philosophies thrown in.

Somewhere along the way it seems to have turned into a place to dump negative thoughts. For Me, this is healthy - it gets them out of my head. Unfortunately, for you the reader, it gifts you these little turds to think about that you may not have considered before. As the drunk guy said after peeing on the rug... "Eh... sorry about that!".

I just finished reading a book called "Into The Wild" about a middle-class kid from the Washington subrbs who gives up everything he knows and owns (including his family), then heads off to the wilds of Alaska to commune with nature, he is found a few months later starved to death in the back of an abandoned bus.

It was a really well written book and it awakened a bunch of conflicting feelings in me about the main protagonist Chris McCandless. He seemed like a noble, if highly naive guy - borderline madman also! You want him to reach his goal but when he doesn't you kind of react with "Well, what a stupid fuck!". It's weird and although I finished the book a few days ago, I've been internally debating it ever since. Check it out.

We've had another winter storm blow through today no snow but the tempartures dropped from the mid 50's to below freezing within a few hours. Another strange strange weather front. As my Mum used to complain "You don't know wether to wear a jacket or not!".

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" - Hunter Thompson

The Winter Games

My friend Thornton rolled into town on Feb 3rd and rolled out again about an hour before the record-breaking snowstorm dumped a couple of feet of snow on Newark airport and shut it down. Lucky Bastard! Thanks for all your help on the house Thorn!!!

Anyway, this is just a lead-in to my next boring moan. Thorn is a big snowboarder and I've been thus inspired enough by him to sit on my arse and start watching the Winter Olympics. Would I go snowboarding? Well maybe, but I don't like cold weather and I'd sooner go snorkling in the Bahamas!

The Winter Olympics... what can you say? The American team went into the games with high hopes after taking a record medal tally at the last games in Salt Lake City and so far, as far as I can see, they've won naff all worth talking about! (Not including the snowboarding events of course but that doesn't count as there seems to be as many snowboarders in the US as there are people in Scotland!).

Bode Miller, everyones favorite redneck, beer guzzling skier won sweet FA. Michelle Kwan didn't even get to do a pirouette for us, but hell, who cares!

My big gripe about this Olympic spectacular is the TV coverage. Every event is preceeded by a short film about how an American athlete overcame adversity to get to the games. It mught just be my highly developed sense of paranoia but most of those films remind me of the Nazi propaganda films Leni Riefenstahl shot.

Can we just enjoy the sport and leave the puke-inducing promos in the can. Please? Please?

Product Endorsement and Lead Paint Blues

I've never endorsed a product but I can heartily recommend Peel Away paint stripper! This stuff is great! Paste it on like you are icing a cake, cover with paper, wait a day or so, remove the paper and all the crappy paint comes with it!

Hell, you can't even drink it and believe it or not it smells nice too!!

Aye! It's a pleasure owning an old house but it can be a pain in the arse as well! It turned out that most of the old paint in the house has lead in it so it all has to come down or get encapsulated! Lead paint in itself is not a major hazard if left undisturbed but a lot of the lead paint in our house is flaky so it has to go.

This is what I have been doing for the last couple of weeks. Working on the bannister in our hallway and I will soon start working on all the beading and door frames. The attic is progressing nicely and hopefully will be finished by the end of the month. Because of the lead, all the high-friction areas have to be done before the baby gets here.

They say the lead can cause behavioural problems in kids and it can lower your i.q. if you are an adult and you get overexposed to it. Yeah? Well, beer makes you stupid too and all the adults I know were kids when all paint had lead in it! Doesn't it seem that kids were so much more polite back in the old lead paint days!

No, I'm kidding... It's a serious problem and I am treating it seriously which is why Peel Away has been a godsend! The paint stays wet when it peels off so it is easy to clean up and more importantly, there is no dust!

Next week we find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. I'd prefer a girl but Alma wants a boy. We'll see happens...............

Warm Winter Blues

I worte this two weeks ago but never published it:

"Last year we had a major Tsunami in Asia, so many hurricanes in the Atlantic that they ran out of names, and earthquakes that displaced millions of people. The author Kurt Vonnegut said that the reason for this was that the human race is actually a flu virus and the earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us.

I was thinking about this yesterday when temperatures reached 64 degrees in Manhattan. It's the end of January, usuallly it is 10 below! Mad people ran around in shorts and people were sun bathing in the fountain at Washington Square Park.

Now, I like warm weather as much as the next guy but it simply isn't supposed to be like this! What next, snow in July? It might be just me getting paranoid but it seems that climate change is coming on a lot faster than we expected."


Well! Since then we have had record breaking snowfalls (2 and a half feet in Central Park) and we are due to be in the 50's again by the end of the week. Look out for record breaking melting to flood the streets of Manhattan!!!

But hey! If you were afraid the world was coming to an end you can always rely on Dick Cheney to provide comic relief! The same guy who told all those hilarious lies about WMD's is shooting people in the face with birdshot! What a hoot!!!!

Does it get stranger than this? Here is a comment I found on the Guardian's Blog page, I kinda liked it!

"Dick Cheney - I've never met the guy, so I don't know what he's really like as a person, but, hey, if I was given the opportunity to drag him behind a car through dog-shit, I'd do it.

What about everyone else?".

Nuff said.....