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Groundhogs, Led Zeppelin, and our Existential Existence

March 11, 2012

Who are any of us? Are we who we are now, are we who we used to be, or are we who we’re planning to be one day…once we get past that which we currently consider insurmountable?

Do groundhogs in an African desert ever sit around and contemplate existence, or is this a concept too foreign and complex for them to ever contemplate? Other than being afraid that someone was trying to eat me every day, I’m thinking that theirs would be a pretty stress-free existence. I wonder if they sit around and talk about the images of watching one of their bretheren being eaten. I wonder if they sit around and talk about how they miss their former family members? When humans die, we immediately characterize the individual who died so we can all live better in the aftermath. We usually say, “yeah, but he was old,” or he smoked, or he had been running himself ragged for so long. I wonder if groundhogs say, well he was slow. He didn’t work out enough, and all he ever did was build and rebuild his home. I knew he was going to die, and frankly I say good riddance. Now, I’m sure that other groundhogs will judge you based on the manner in which you keep your home, but you never have to listen to a certain style of music to get people to like you in the groundhog world.

A groundhog would never question spheres of existence in other words. If you live in their community, you’re accepted. I wonder though, if they castigate another groundhog based on that groundhog’s work ethic or his kids’ obnoxious behavior. I doubt though that a groundhog would ever exclude another groundhog that gave him a titty twister.

I used to love to give titty twisters to other fellas. Don’t ask me why. I thought it was funny. There were no sexual motivations, and I didn’t consider titty twisters a proclamation of dominance over a titty twistee. I just thought it would be a funny thing to do that to a guy that was just standing there. I did things to shake everyone around me of out the norm. It’s who I am, who I was, and who I will always be. I don’t force people out of the norm with physical actions in that manner anymore. I’m more subtle now. When I did it to this guy, he punched me in the chest for it. I twisted his titty. I thought it would be funny to do that to a guy that was tough, and standing there, and quiet, and all normal. I had to shake things up. Normally, I would’ve been doubled over with laughter at such a reaction, for I normally loved erratic reactions. This guy’s reaction carried a mean face with it though. I thought we were friends. His punch was an utter rejection of my existence, and he showed it in his face, our friendship never recovered. I’m sure groundhogs reject other groundhogs’ over the top attempts at humor, but do they hold grudges? This former friend told people he hated me after that. He gained a lot of mileage out of that hatred. It served him well.

It’s really a question of complexity versus simplicity of the species as far as I’m concerned. Does a groundhog ever try to shake up his simplistic world, or is he simply happy to be alive, and does it say more or less about the human being that we take life for granted to such a degree that we’re no longer happy to just be alive? Is it complex that we need to shake our lives out of the norm, or is this a simplistic desire?

Let’s put sex into our scenario. If a groundhog decides to perform his act in a different position, would this be seen as complex or simple? What if the groundhog began performing his act on other groundhogs when his mate wasn’t around? Would this be complex or simplistic? If we could see inside the groundhog’s brain, and we saw him fantasize about being shackled to a wall by alien invaders with the aliens intravenously feeding him some sort of semen producing agent while suckling on his organ for the nutrient they need to survive would we consider this a complex fantasy or a simplistic, base one?

Bob Kerry will run for Nebraska’s Senate seat

February 29, 2012

The moment we Nebraskans have been crossing our fingers over for so long that we nearly went blind is finally here! Bob Kerry has informed Democrats to inform MSNBC to inform people to inform people from Nebraska that he has decided to run for the Senate seat that Nebraskans allowed Ben Nelson to occupy for twelve years. For those broken hearted Democrats that have longed for this day, after being rejected so many times for better opportunies, Bob is apparently ready to scrape the bottom of the barrel and give us his representation.

Gas prices in the age of Obama

February 24, 2012

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a complicated problem solving technique that went something like this: “If one thing doesn’t work try another.” The Obama Administration appears to be doing much of the same when it comes to gas prices: ‘If inflating your tires more doesn’t work, we can try solar panels. If that doesn’t work, we [...]

Clash of the ‘ticians 2012

February 1, 2012

Now that Romney has won Florida, it appears to be what some French would call a fait accompli. A win is a win, as they say, but with the figures we now have rolling in, we may not want to don the FA cap on Romney just yet. I’m not saying that Gingrich or Santorum have a shot at this point, but I’m talking about the celebration that would surely ensue if any other such victory by any other candidate. There is still plenty to fear with Romney.

It took Romney a ton of money to put what many consider a group of lackluster candidates away in Florida. Estimates have that figure to be roughly sixty-five to one in favor of the former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney. A win is a win, and Romney did whatever it took in this case to win, but every time the Yankees have won the World Series in the past decade, the sub story has always involved how much money they spent versus their opponent and the rest of the league. The underlying story was, what happens when the Yankees run across a team that is able to spend as much as they are? When the Red Sox reached that point, they beat the Yankees as often as they lost to them. The Yankees lost their mystique. When the Yankees won the Series, however, there was never a next day, a next opponent. If Romney is the Yankees in this scenario, he just won two games, on the road, against the Royals in the Championship Series. (No offense intended to the Gingrich, Santorum and Royals fans, I’m talking money here not quality.) In this money scenario, there are no comparative Red Sox analogies, and there really are no NL analogies, for no team has spent as much as the Yankees or The Sox in the past couple decades, but let’s just say for the purpose of this scenario that the Dodgers were on a scale comparable with the Yankees economically. Let’s just say that Obama is the Dodgers. Romney has just beat the Royals twice on the road. The sub story is Romney has done nothing to connect with voters more than Gingrich or Santorum, and he has done little to nothing to combat his opponents if they were on equal footing.

Buffet cries foul on secretary’s critics

January 27, 2012

Warren Buffet, the oracle of Omaha, and chairman of the Berkshire Hathaway mutual fund, launched his secretary into the limelight by saying that it’s unfair that she pays more in federal income taxes than he does. The first question many have had is if we’re going to reform this nation’s tax code based on how much this particular secretary pays in federal income taxes, shouldn’t we know how much she makes? Both Buffet and Ms. Bosanek have said that that’s private information. Buffet did announce that she’s paying 35.8%, and he’s paying 17.4%. Based upon those numbers, the next logical question is how are each of you declaring your taxes, as total income or dividend or capital gains? Buffet’s response to these questions, thus far, has been to call them personal attacks against Ms. Bosanek. He’s amplified his response by saying these criticisms are ‘ridiculous’.

In an interview with The World-Herald, Buffet said none of the online guesses about Bosanek’s salary are right, and the critics are missing his point. The next logical question to that statement is what is your point? Do you want to raise capital gains taxes and discourage investment in this country? Knowing Mr. Buffet’s position and stature in this country, one would think that that would be anathema to him, as he should understand how vital private investment is to the companies in this nation and the nation as a whole. Buffet has decided not to illustrate his point for us in this manner. He simply wants his complaints about tax rates out there, and he wants the statements he makes about the general unfairness of the tax code to be left as a general statement.

“I’m saying she is being treated unfairly in the tax code, as are tens of millions of others, compared to me,” Buffett said. “They shouldn’t change the rates on all the other people. They should change mine.”

Stressed out, but working, in Omaha

January 26, 2012

Omaha is one of the top telemarketing markets in America. I’ve heard that this is due to the fact that we are one of the most plain spoken people in America today. Me thinks it also has something to do with the fact that the cost of living is low in Omaha, and as a result so are the wages.

Restaurants are also huge in Omaha. The marketing line on restarurants in Omaha is: “If you can make it in Omaha, you can probably make it anywhere.” Again, this may be due to the wages and the cost of living, but Omaha has also been said to have some of the most common tastes in America.

I list the traits of Omaha in this manner to lay the foundation for the fact that I know that working in Omaha is the same as working in Duluth, Albuquerque, Monroe, and Pocatello. If something is going right in America, it’s usually going right in Omaha, likewise if times are getting tough. Telemarketing and restaurant jobs are all over America, so I know that my plight in the workforce is no different than any other unqualified worker in any part of America, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to hold back. I know I’m lucky to have a job, but I’m over that. I usually get over it about two weeks in when the reality of what I have to do slides down on me.

Bob Kerry mulls Senate run

January 24, 2012

Even in the local, Omaha media outlets one never hears who is funding ads designed to make Republicans look bad. How many Nebraska ads are characterized as those run by George Soros? When it’s a Democrat that looks bad, we get sources and characterization of those funding the ad, and we get attempts to diminish the ad before we even read the article about it.

If you’ve read the stories of Kerry’s mulling, you’d think that the only people against Kerry’s proposed run are Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. From what I hear that’s not the end of the list. People from small town Nebraska and…Omaha are saying that this guy has a long road ahead of him if he hopes to win my vote. Ask Nelson how easy it is to win a Senate seat without Omaha, ask Pete Ricketts.

Everyone knows that the only reason Ben Nelson isn’t running for re-election is his vote for Obamacare. Everyone knows that Tea Party pressure dug at Nelson to such a degree, over the vote, that he couldn’t take it anymore. Why someone who publicly supports the same health care initiative that Ben Nelson wouldn’t even consider mentioning in a pizza parlor would run for the seat Nelson once occupied has many Nebraskans scratching their head. He may as well wear a Longhorn cap to a press conference just to see if he can secure the Longhorn constiuency here. (There are some here, trust me.)

Why would the DNC turn to Kerry in a last ditch effort to secure the seat with someone more prone to vote for the Health Care bill than Nelson? Is it celebrity status? Do the Democrats think that we yokels in the cornfields will get so impressed with him that we’ll fall all over ourselves to get some star-studded representation in the Senate? Do they think that Nebraskans will greet him like Elvis returning home to Memphis?

Kerry’s new tag line is: “I’ve probably paid more income and property taxes than all the Republican candidates combined.” Ok, fair enough, you have made a ton of money in this state, but how many times, while president of the liberal New School, did you espouse conservative, Nebraska views. How many times did you even mention this state in your time in the Big Apple Bob?

Senator Ben Nelson retiring from the Senate

December 29, 2011

It was that one vote from Nelson that did him in. It was political suicide in the minds of Nebraskans. It was taking one sixth of the economy and nationalizing it. Nelson could’ve survived other votes, and he has in the past. He could’ve survived voting for the Obama stimulus in 2008, but voting to change the face of this nation was unforgiveable in the minds of most Nebraskans. Others (above) can say that Obama is popular in Nebraska, but he’s not. He won one district, Omaha’s district. In 2006, Ben Nelson lost just about every county in Nebraska, in his bid for re-election, except for Omaha. The votes were so overwhelming in Omaha that Nelson won re-election.

For all of his conservative votes, Nelson still decided to vote for one of the most partisan pieces of legislation this country has ever seen. The pressure must have been intense for him. After casting the vote, Nelson started getting booed out of Omaha pizza joints, and he started ordering protestors’ cars towed away from in front of his offices. It hasn’t been pretty for him, and I’m sure he’s just had enough of it.

Coulter versus Sowell on Newt Gingrich

December 22, 2011

Amid the kerfuffle of primary politics it seems most of the conservative intelligentsia can agree on one thing, they don’t like former speaker Newt Gingrich. George Will has basically called him a communist; Ann Coulter says he has so many ideas from so many different sides of the aisle that conservatives would do well to read the history of Newt Gingrich better; and Charles Krauthammer has said: “(Gingrich is) too erratic or mercurial… a victim of his own creative intelligence. People wonder if he’ll wake up one morning the way he did in the past with a mandate or global warming… and surprise people by being unconservative.” Even Brit Hume joined the fray calling Gingrich “Undisciplined. You never know what he’s going to say next. He’s a provocative thinker, but a promiscuous talker.” The latter two have also gone on record to say that Gingrich’s May 2011 characterization of Paul Ryan’s plan, as regards Health care, as “Right-wing social engineering” was political suicide on the right.

Enter Thomas Sowell. Sowell differs from Ann Coulter on the credit Gingrich is due for welfare reform, balancing the budget, the 90’s surplus, and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress. Coulter believes Gingrich is given too much credit. She says Gingrich did not single-handedly engineer the takeover. Coulter believes that the liberalism of Clinton’s first two years as president is more responsiblefor the takeover than anything Gingrich ever did. (Coulter does not mention the Contract with America that Gingrich engineered.) Coulter does not mention that the 1994 takeover was the first time in forty years that Republicans controlled the house. Instead, Coulter mentions that Boehner’s takeover of Congress, (again, she writes, all glory to Obama for that one) was a greater takeover in pure numbers than Gingrich’s was. Sowell says that Gingrich presided over the party that won Congress for the first time in forty years, and he presided over the Congress that produced the first balanced budget in forty years. “The media called it “the Clinton surplus” but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House,” Sowell furthered. In other words, Gingrich’s seat of power while all this occurred is, at least, more than anything Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts.

Ace Frehley’s book: No Regrets. A Review

December 21, 2011

Ace Frehley has written a book to present his side of the Kisstory. To those not acquainted with Ace Frehley, he was the the guitarist for the rock group Kiss in the 70′s, the 80′s, and for a brief reunion tour in the 90′s. Ace then went onto lead a band called Frehley’s Comet, and he has since released a couple of critically praised and popular solo albums.

Ace Frehley states that he is clean now, and like so many others that adorn libraries across America, Frehley takes the vantage point of an outsider commenting on his past debauchery. Alcohol and drugs were the way Frehley dealt with the ups and downs of stardom, but he has no regrets about any of this. As comedians in the past (Pryor and Carlin) have done, Ace chooses to laugh at his lifestyle choices. He chooses the “now that I’m clean” meme to detail for us the hilarity of being so out of control that you don’t know what you’re doing. As a lifelong Ace Frehley fan, I found many of the aspects of his life story troubling and disenchanting.

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