A glimpse into idiosyncratic lunacy

I just finished watching “Saw”, one in a long line of recent movies that have given force to resuscitating the dying horror genre. While watching the movie I became keenly aware of one of my most debilitating phobias. I am genuinely afraid of wooden puppets and ventriloquist dummies.

Without delving too much into the plot there was this part where a freaky assed wooden puppet rode a tricycle across the screen. For the first time since I watched “The Exorcist” when I was twelve a scene in a movie genuinely frightened the bejesus out of me and I had to avert my eyes until the weird little marionette passed.

When I was a kid, maybe 12, I watched a movie wherein this demonic wooden ventriloquist dummy with a black tux and top hat took over the mind of its unsuspecting owner. To this day I don’t know why that flick scared me but it did. And I’m comfortable with that.

So please, for your own safety, stay away from the puppets. They’ll get you.

Our fat booty nation

This from Reuters:

“Average life expectancy in the United States rose to a record 77.6 years in 2003 from 77.3 years in 2002, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although women on average still lived longer than men in 2003 -- 80.1 years versus 74.8 years -- the gender gap in mortality narrowed, continuing a 25-year trend, the CDC said in a report…
Chief among them were significant declines in mortality from heart disease, cancer and stroke, the three biggest killers. Death rates for these conditions fell between 2.2 percent and 4.6 percent…
Lower death rates from HIV, drug and alcohol abuse and use of firearms also helped boost life expectancy.
There were 2,443,930 deaths in 2003, according to the CDC data, which is preliminary. The overall death rate fell 1.7 percent from 2002 when adjusted to account for changes in the age distribution of the population.”

But the CDC has cautioned that the current so-called obesity epidemic could reverse the trend. As a nation, we are now fatter than ever.

The moral of the story…STEP AWAY FROM THE SALAD AND STEP UP TO THE BURRITO. You’ll live longer.

Of Jr. and foreign policy

I’m baaaaaaack!

The bar exam was brutal and the closest thing to intellectual sodomy one will ever experience. As they passed out our exams and answer sheets a fleeting thought passed through my brain, “What, no lubricant?” So now my self-imposed sabbatical is over and I can once again pollute the world with my insipid tripe.

So allow me to vent about our illustrious president.

Jr. is in Europe meeting with the leaders of several European Union countries. These are the same people, particularly Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, that have yet to lift a damn finger as far as the Middle East is concerned and now we’re cozying up to these nit wits. Bush met with Chirac in Belgium and painted a phony smile on his face the likes of which we haven’t seen since Blinky the Clown passed.

Today Jr. is supposed to meet with Vladamir Putin during their much anticipated summit in Bratslavia, Slovakia to discuss a nuclear security and anti-terrorism agreement. Let me get this straight. Our president is discussing nuclear protocol and terrorism prevention with the guy who is selling plutonium & enriched uranium to Iran, who sabotaged the election in the Ukraine, who’s jailing political dissidents left & right, and who has now taken government control over the Russian media. This is like conferring with Courtney Love about fashion and table manners.

Now I realize that trudging through the morass known as foreign policy is akin to tap dancing in a mine field but, as the sole super power left in the world, are we going to start courting thugs like Putin. Four years ago Jr. said he “was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.” What the ?! Talk about your major Pollyanna complex. Jr. apparently had his head stuck so far in the sand he could drink ground water with a straw.

This is the very same US President that stated to the world after 9-11 that “you’re either with us or against us.” This is the equivalent to telling all those who didn’t support us to F off. And now he’s schmoozing the very same leaders who turned their collective backs on us three years ago. Bush is now talking in circles so much his tongue could open a wine bottle.

Bush has all the deftness of a blind man throwing darts. It’s more likely that he’ll nail the bartender in the forehead with a pointy projectile than actually hit the board. Watching Jr. conduct foreign policy is like watching the Marx Brothers screw in a light bulb. It’s like asking Captain Hook to give you a colonoscopy. It’s just painful.

Why didn’t Jr. do this three years ago?