Grouchy Olbermann

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann appears to be getting desperate.

What was once a rather humorous talking head on television has become obsessed with his obvious hatred for anything or anyone non-liberal. I figure one of two things has happened here. Either MSNBC has decided that in order to boost their ratings they would try to appeal to their estimation of the number of ultra-liberals that actually watch channels other than C-Span or Comedy Central by convincing Olbermann to make a fool of himself nightly on Countdown, or Olbermann himself is so envious of the success of others that he thinks attacking and insulting them on his show will somehow entertain the few morons that enjoy that stuff. First off, MSNBC has never had much in the way of ratings as far as I can tell. Little success if any at all. It is obvious what the agenda is at MSNBC. After seeing how miserable the ratings have been for their "top dog" Chris Matthews,(So far they have refused to cancel Hardball) it is easy to realize what this network is all about.
It is obvious that alot of people don't enjoy watching a biased political propagandist continually interrupt and sometimes shout over their guests. If I did that, I would be called "rude". Perhaps his show would get more ratings if it was called "Rudeball". That way the masses of illiterate viewers out there would tune in to something other than a show listed in their channel guides that implies "baseball". I see it now......they tune in, expect baseball, see Matthews, and turn to some other channel. Duh!
Maybe Olbermann is just a working stiff trying to please the bosses so he can have a job on t.v.
Other networks would rather hire some original performers. Groucho Marx was an original. He could insult people in a way that was really slick. Olbermann ain't no Groucho, however, if he would just let the hair under his nose grow, at least he would look like him.

While I am on the subject of MSNBC, I should mention Rita Cosby. I just cannot understand how anyone could even get a job on television or radio and sound like she sounds. Maybe she sounded okay when she first started and her voice deteriorated over time, but let's face it, if you or I sounded like that, our services would "no longer be needed". This woman sounds out of breath, tries to talk faster than a crack addict, and is always showing up on MSNBC whenever there is breaking news, like when Dog Chapman was arrested. "Breaking News!........"Dog Chapman arrested!" Its a news item yes, but breaking news worthy of having a woman short of breath and gasping for air rattle out the few known details...........no wait, I get it......Rita is the only woman on the planet that can call Chapman's wife on her cell phone LIVE on the air! Jesus God, this HAS to be one of those signs of the end!

No wonder the Food Network is doing well.

Did You Notice This Too?

I feel the need to share some of my more bizarre observations here.
Is it just me or have you noticed this stuff too?

One of these people pictured above is NOT Sandra Bullock.
For years I have had the impression that Michael Jackson really wasn't going for the Pinnochio look. There was a period of time there that he was going for the Sandra Bullock look first.

The picture above is of comedian David Brenner. I haven't seen much of him lately. Ever notice that you never see David Brenner and Barbra Streisand together?

For a while there, ole Bob Dylan was looking disturbingly like Tiny Tim. Remember Tiny Tim? He showed the world that just about anyone can have more than fifteen minutes of fame. Bob seems to be looking a bit better these days.

I have more of this stuff coming your way soon.

Brother Can You Spare A Dime?

I took a trip to the French Quarter in New Orleans back in July. It was something my wife said she had always wanted to do. I really never ever thought about going there but I would go wherever the love of my life wants to go. Some things you just have to go see for yourself. I had seen the Hurricane Katrina news coverage. Terrible enough.....yet as we all sit at our own comfortable place on the planet we cannot even comprehend the magnitude of destruction. From a distance everything can seem small.

We stayed at the Maison Dupuy hotel a few blocks from Bourbon Street. On the way to the hotel from the airport, we couldn't help but notice that 90% of what we could see looked as if it was relocated from some Third World country. As I think about it, there are probably places in Third World countries that are in better condition. Its almost impossible to go into details about what we could see from the shuttle bus. I couldn't help but wonder just what it was we were getting into. Its not a very comforting sight. We arrived at the hotel and immediately went to our room. Very nice it was. At the hotel, I saw no indication, on the surface, of problems from Katrina. It took little while to understand since we had not been there before and if we had, we would have been able to compare our experience with something.

After unpacking our suitcases, the love of my life wanted some of those beignets. Everyone says you can't go the New Orleans and miss out on those. We started out the door of the hotel and headed down Toulouse Street and it hits you.........the stench. Stagnant putrid stench. This may be a normal thing for the French Quarter, I figured that since this section was supposedly only flooded
about two foot or less, the stench is something that is the result of years of visitors and locals vomiting up their gumbo and jumbalaya into the gutters after participating in what can only be described as a five or six block long open-air binge drinker heaven. I still didn't quite understand the magnitude of the effects of Katrina at this point until it dawned on us that it just didn't seem very busy. Sure there were people passing by, deliverymen stocking up the restaurants and bars, but THIS is supposed to be a busy place. It wasn't. There was more activity at White Marsh Mall at home, than here.

Lot's of businesses were still closed up. Some for repairs, some for lack of business, and yet some for lack of employees. We were just a few blocks away from Jackson Square, which was where the beignets were. I had read about the various street vendors, artists, entertainers, that you would normally encounter in Jackson Square. We got there and I only saw ONE guy camped out under an umbrella selling caricature drawings. It hit me again. The locals were gone. They had to leave. While they worked in the French Quarter, they lived in the surrounding areas. No home to go to. No place to stay. What good is working here when business is no longer good. The one artist said he would be doing good if he had three people a day buy his stuff. That day, I didn't see anyone even stop at his umbrella. On a normal pre-Katrina day, he would probably have a crowd waiting for him to draw them.

We crossed the street and got our beignets at the Cafe Du Monde. Excellent stuff! While eating, there were all of these pigeons roaming around all of the tables in the outdoor cafe. No harm there, they obviously enjoy beignets as much as tourists do. They patiently wait for you to either drop some crumbs on the ground or get up and leave behind some leftovers. I have seen many pigeons before. I used to feed the pigeons in Patterson Park, and walk through crowds of them in downtown Baltimore. But something seemed different about these pigeons. They were ugly. Cancerous looking growths, unhealthy looking wings and disfigured feet. I don't know if this was due to all of the years of eating the powdered sugar from the beignets or perhaps New Orleans was toxic. As I think about it, during the Katrina coverage the reporters often referred to the flood waters as a "toxic soup". This area obviously had alot of problems building up over the years before the levees breaking.

We crossed the street and headed back through Jackson Square towards our hotel so we could get out of the excrutiating heat and humidity. There was this mime standing there like a statue, never moving an inch yet sweating from the heat. His donation pail was on the sidewalk in front of him. I glanced down into it and put a couple of dollars on top of the handful of change. I looked up at the mime and he reached his hand up from its stiff position to tip his hat in appreciation. I doubt he made very much money that day. The impact of Katrina is huge. You have no idea. I bet if the mime would speak, he would say far more than "brother, can you spare a dime?"

And God Cleansed The Land

This past summer I had the opportunity to hop on a boat and go out on the Chesapeake Bay for a day with the wife and some friends. You think "bay" and immediately get visions of blue crabs in abundance, fishing, sailboats, oysters, seagulls, and beautiful sunsets. We had just gone through a period of heavy rains....not just "some" rain.....but a deluge. The kind of rain where its hard to guess if it would ever stop. The entire Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the USA were affected. All of this water has to go somewhere. Fears of floods in Pennsylvania, the rivers overflowing, and reports that the authorities would need to open the floodgates at Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River because of the amount of water heading toward the northernmost points of the Chesapeake Bay......this stuff was all over the t.v. and newspapers. Some of us were anticipating the demise of Port Deposit, MD since it usually gets flooded when they let loose the gates at the dam because of its location downstream. It never happened. Oh the gates were opened up alright, but Port Deposit dodged a bullet and survived once again.

What wasn't spoken about or reported in the media was what would be the end results of this event. When you have extraordinary amounts of rain, it rinses off the entire area of land. Think of it as God's way of giving us a bath. This sounds all well and good, except that there is always a price to pay. So what was the price? The media didn't tell us. Neighbors never spoke about it. And most people probably never get to see the price. As our boat zipped across the Bay towards the Eastern Shore we were suddenly stunned to see all sorts of stuff floating around and it kept getting worse and worse. We were zig-zagging straight through it all. Unbelieveably huge amounts of refrigerators, washing machines, worn tires, tree stumps, tons of garbage, and other assorted items wafting about amongst the crab-pots and bouys. My friend had to bring the boat to a crawl to get through all of this stuff. I guess the large majority of it all headed right on out to the Atlantic Ocean, but an awful lot of it did wash up on the shoreline as you can see in the picture. What was once beautiful and clean shore was now a total mess.

Every time you toss a wrapper or bottle on the ground you probably never think about what you just did. God sees what you have done and I saw what He did with it.

Momentary Break In The Madness

Every once in a while something catches your eye and you just simply have to take a moment to absorb it.

One evening I stood at my front door watching the mayhem created by an exhorbitant amount of vehicles inundating the street in front of my house. These people apparently all decided, at the same time, to arrive home from wherever they were, creating a traffic jam in our otherwise quiet neighborhood. I stood there shaking my head at these morons for their lack of driving skills. As it was, I looked up at the sky........and WOW! It was a keeper. The kind of sky you wouldn't want to fade away. I grabbed my camera and clicked that sight to behold so I can see it again and again. It occurred to me yesterday, that probably none of the morons in those cars even noticed the sky that day. Thanks to technology, today you have the opportunity to see what I saw that evening. Stare at the picture and enjoy God's artwork.

Sometimes the signs of the end are obvious.
Sometimes somebody has to point them out to you.

Sign 1. In 1998, during the Grammy Awards, Aretha Franklin fills in for Luciano Pavoratti and signals the end with her rendition of "Nessun Dorma". (That pretty much convinced me that we were all doomed)

Sign 2. If ever anyone needed proof that aliens exist and have arrived. Every Jimbob that has been abducted from their corn fields have described their abductors as looking exactly like..............James Carville! (I could be wrong here. I forgot to consider that Mr. Carville might be one of those Jimbob's offspring!........I wonder if his middle name is Bob.....hmmmmm)

Sign 3. The current plan for the widening of Interstate 95 in the northeast area of Baltimore. This one probably comes off a bit of a stretch to you, but just think about it. First off, they build this highway without any clue that it would become obsolete in a short period of time. For example, the powers that be added insult to injury when this are became a "targeted growth area" for Baltimore County. Surely you can't have plans for a targeted growth area without figuring out a plan how to handle all of the traffic. Well, they targeted the area anyway and now it has been decided that since I-95 is probably the busiest highway on the East Coast we ought to widen it and add a toll lane so folks can completely bypass this targeted growth area. Smart eh? Don't get me wrong, I-95 is a big problem and it needs to be improved. Unfortunately its gonna take at least ten years or so to complete it. By that time it will be already obsolete....again!. You might ask....."how is this even a sign of the end?" Simple actually. Think about the morons that we have in charge of planning. Such leadership and inept visionaries are probably causing the planets to misalign. If the planets misalign we are doomed. (OK, that WAS a stretch.....but consider the stress and mayhem this has caused people...alot of people. These people can become suicidal. Sounds like a sign to me)

More signs are coming!

You most likely have seen this stuff before in laundromats, waiting rooms, and "placed" in your front door. Yep, time tested propagandic fear magazines "placed" with the intent on sucking in the vulnerable, the spiritually weak, the mentally inept, and other assorted fools.

The largest purveyor of nonsense has been the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society. If that organization doesn't ring a bell for you, perhaps their braindead book club members have. The Jehovah's Witnesses. Frequently I will be mentioning these idiots here. I intend to inform you of the things you never knew about them...lest you get sucked in by one of those false smiling, glassy-eyed staring morons that come to you door.

Nobody has erroneously predicted the "end of the world" more than these people. Notice the picture of theirs above, from one of their magazines. See the excited and happy Jehovah's Witnesses? Notice the great delight on their faces? Would you entertain the notion to be like they are when buildings are being destroyed and innocent people are being killed before your eyes? These morons look forward to this stuff and 90% of them don't even know why. More about that later. The Watchtower claims to be a "religious organization". Actually, it is a scam. A book club where its membership eternally funds its enigmatic and hardly known leadership.

Ask any former member of this nonsense and they will unanimously tell you of the horrors they have suffered. Aside from being brainwashed to the extent that an individual becomes "not up on the world that surrounds them", they are also "mentally regulated" into a state of dysfunction of biblical proportion. Appealing isn't it?

As to the "end of the world", it may happen eventually and sooner or later somebody may guess it right and cough up a decent prediction. Honestly, you would be better served if you take notice of other things that clue you in on the looming demise of the world.

Next post, stay tuned..........signs of the end!

Let's Get Started Shall We?

This is gonna be a challenge.

You never know what you may find here on this blog, just as I have no pre-concieved idea what I will put here. One thing is for sure.........some may find it interesting, while others may be dissappointed that I never seem to mention flying purple elephants that drink green tea while watching HBO's The Wire as they channel surf...............wait a second!......if you are the type to whine about such stuff, you might want to get a check up from the neck up regarding your belief in flying purple elephants. One more thing is for sure at this point.......the fact that I even mentioned flying purple elephants here right off the bat here should at least be satisfying the aforementioned "dissappointed".

Sooner or later, I intend on writing about stuff that I have noticed is either hardly ever written about, discussed, or that anyone seems willing to admit. Music, Religion, Politics, News, Entertainment and Deep Things. Mmmmmm, I sense that as you just read that previous sentence, you said to yourself "Music, Religion, Politics, News, Entertainment and Deep Things..........EVERYBODY writes about that!".......and you are absolutely right! Therefore, I promise to share with you items from those categories that others refuse to mention or notice.

I hope this first installment will suffice in generating at least a little sustained interest from you that you may come to appreciate this effort and return often.

Now that that is out of the way...........my fingers are greatly anticipating whipping out some immediate observations.......unfortunately, my eyeballs disagree.......until tomorrow!