Preoccupied

The Occupy Wall Street movement officially marks its 2-month anniversary today, and I'd just like to say congratulations!

Now pack up your tents and go home.

The protest, and its various offshoots around the world, calling for big banks and other multinational corporations to pay their fair share of the national tax burden, has certainly put a microscope on the financial inequities of life in the 21^st century. Millionaires, billionaires, banks, corporations – they should all be hanging their heads in shame, realizing, perhaps for the first time, what greedy bastards they are.

But you see, here's the thing: they're not. And the protesters should get it through their collective skull that camping out, having a nationwide pajama party – even if it goes on for months – is not going to lead to the changes they for which they apparently hope. Because really rich people, and the corporations they run, serve on the boards of, or receive dividends/profits from, don't pay any attention to the likes of folks like you. If they did, they would most likely say something like, "Go ahead! Camp out! Knock yourselves out! Freeze to death! Just don't come near my villa or I'll have you locked up."

Don't believe me? Just listen to Republican lawmakers like John McCain, or GOP presidential candidates like Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich. McCain is calling for lower corporate tax rates (although, one has to ask: how could they go below the 0% that many are paying now?); Cain and Gingrich are suggesting that Occupy protesters are nothing more than layabouts who favor food stamps over a paycheck. Who do you think is funding their campaigns?

If the Occupiers really wish to see the rich take notice of their plight, here's your formula for success: vote with your wallets.

Seriously: stop lining the pockets of the corporations that are making these people rich. Stop going to Wal*Mart. Stop going to Target. Stop going to McDonald's. Stop going to Starbucks. Jesus, stop buying iPhones and Androids and all that other crap that's getting made in China anyway – thus destroying any chance that there will ever again be an American manufacturing base.

If the Occupy people could convince one-third of Americans – plenty less than the vaunted 99% – to boycott General Electric or Microsoft or Apple or (good luck with this) all Chinese-made products for a month, or take their savings out of the big banks and transfer them to local credit unions, you'd see rich people sitting up and taking notice.

Why? Because you'd be taking their money back from them. Most of their millions are only on paper anyway – the value of a stock or a mutual fund.

But this marching in the streets crap? Chanting meaningless, overbaked slogans and tying up the police, costing already cash-strapped cities millions of dollars in overtime and clean-up costs? A waste of time and breath.

Do the smart thing: declare victory, pack up your encampments, and go home and organize a nationwide boycott.

You can start by refusing to read this blog.

Now get outta here, and I mean it.

The Pimping of 9/11

Never forget. Always remember.

Yeah. Okay. Happy 9/11.

At the risk of appearing callous to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, on one of the most horrific days in American history, I just want to take this opportunity to say: Enough already.

Yes, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were a seminal moment for many of us – you'd practically have to have been in a coma to not remember where you were when you first heard the news of twin jetliners slamming into the tallest buildings in New York City. And it's perfectly fitting that we would remember those events on the 10^th anniversary of the date. And yet…

"Now is the time to reflect on those people who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks." That well-considered message, by the way, came from my bank ATM, which reminded me of the upcoming anniversary all of last week. Thank God I don't do more banking; I might be a mirror by now, what with all that reflecting. Perhaps next week there'll be a message saying, "Now is the time to reflect on all the millions of people who lost their jobs, homes, retirement, and veritable future, thanks to the gross mismanagement and greed of banks like ours. By the way, may we interest you in an adjustable rate mortgage?"

FOX Sports promoted their upcoming NFL football lineup during an Oakland A's-Texas Rangers baseball game yesterday. Among the features they would air on FOX NFL Sunday would be "Terry [Bradshaw] and Howie [Long]'s thoughts on 9/11!" Excuse me? Unless they rescued injured staffers from the Pentagon, or helped overpower some of the Flight 93 hijackers, why would I possibly care what two former football players had to say?

There's just something truly perverse and ghoulish in the way that the media has approached the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, and I find myself repulsed even though, given a week or so to anticipate the coverage, I expected nothing less.

On the upside, we now can forget about 9/11 and its world-changing events for the next – how long? 10 years? – before we have to review the stories of heroism and loss. But the truth is – and this is, at its heart the reason that this anniversary overkill is so galling – that there isn't a single day that goes by that we aren't touched by the events of 9/11. Going to the airport is only the most obvious example. Entering a government building, parking in an underground garage, or even making a photograph of a "public" place – fear of terrorism has subjected us to increased surveillance, scrutiny, invasion of privacy. It's become so pervasive as to be second nature for most of us.

But every time the government decides to rob us of our fundamental freedoms – of movement, of assembly, of speech – they'll trot out the terrorism boogey man, and he will always be wearing a tee-shirt with the silhouette of the Twin Towers on it.

So, yes, let's never forget. Let's always remember. But let's try not to wallow in the grief, or be swallowed up by the fear.

“The Unbearable Lightness of Funny Bitterness”

"Good news, everyone!"

Yes, we all knew the bloodbath was coming, but who knew that it would be so… bloody?

Now, I'm no media expert, but I am pretty sure that changing the name of the newspaper(s) to make them more appealing to all parts of the geographic spectrum probably ensures that you will endear them to no one. After all, I live in the East Bay, but do I think of myself as an East Bay-ite –oid –ian? No, I think of myself as an Oaklander. Preferably, I would like to get my news from a paper that identifies itself as Oakland-based. Even though I frequently avail myself of the stories in the San Francisco Comical, I do so with the knowledge that they are out-of-towners who care little for me other than my subscription dollars. Unless Oakland burns to the ground, I suspect that the Comical will lead its paper with some event that transpired on the streets of the Baghdad by the Bay.

Meanwhile the East Bay Tribune… I'm sorry, I just threw up in my mouth typing those words. The E.B. Tribune will emphasize the news of the… East Bay?

If you are a Bay Area resident, you are aware that the East Bay is a huge geographical area, comprising the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, San Leandro, Hayward, Castro Valley, Pleasanton, Sunol, Union City, Fremont, Newark, El Cerrito, El Sobrante, Richmond, Kensington, Albany, Hercules, Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, Walnut Creek, Concord, San Ramon, Danville, Alamo, Livermore and Dublin, just to name the ones closest to the San Francisco Bay. The residents of Martinez, Rodeo, Benicia, Vallejo, Clayton, Blackhawk, Brentwood, Discovery Bay, Rio Vista and (especially) Mountainhouse, having the read the previous sentence, are incensed at having been forgotten. This is a perfect illustration of why the E.B. Tribune concept is doomed to failure.

The Oakland Tribune has a proud history, dating from its start more than 137 years ago, including two Pulitzer Prizes for photography. It's hard to believe that we will abandon that pedigree simply to make the paper nominally more appealing to the readers who are, according to management, apparently afraid that Oakland moniker will... I dunno – break into their homes and steal their big screen TVs? "Oh, dear God! It's the Oakland Tribune! Somebody stop it before our property values go down!"

Meanwhile, the name change is the least of our worries – it's the accompanying 120 layoffs that are what really keep me up at night. Can I really survive another round of layoffs? What is this, my 18^th since arriving here in 1990? How can there be anyone left to eliminate and yet still have personnel with which to publish a paper? Are we using Chinese prison labor?

Well, if I start writing a blog entry every day after October 28, you'll know that my luck – and, if you actually deign to read this drivel, yours – has run out.

Until then… savor your Oakland Tribune.

P.S.: Thanks to the lovely and talented AP staff photographer Marcio Jose Sanchez for the inspired title of today's entry.

The Pride of Pequannock

Derek Jeter in 1996

Some of you may have noticed – and I assume that most of those of whom I'm speaking here are, in fact, inmates at a prison for the criminally insane – that Derek Jeter, shortstop for the New York Chubbywallets and erstwhile All-Star, slipped a couple of balls past the Tampa Bay Slurpee™ Drinkers' laconic defense yesterday and thus became the 27th Major Leaguer to accumulate 3,000 or more hits.

Lest you wonder how it is that I came to be aware of this revolting development, please remember that I do pretend to cover the news; also, I have four [reputed] family members who follow the Chubbywallets in a less-than-casual fashion. Their untoward caterwauling at the moment Mr. Jeter achieved this milestone was unavoidable, even from 3,000 miles away.

Let's be frank: Mr. Jeter is a fine ballplayer; certainly, as Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Comical wrote today, a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But, as Mr. Ostler also wrote, the idea that Mr. Jeter could have won all those championships – or, indeed, even had the opportunity to achieve the 3,000-hit plateau – without the complement of the very expensive machine that is the Chubbywallets' perennially star-studded roster is far-fetched, to say the least. The supporting cast at Chubbywallet Stadium, either the old or the new version, is such that many a player has seemed just that much better as a result. Unlimited resources will do that for a team.

I'm more impressed by players like Tony Gwynn or Carl Yastrzemski – players who excelled despite the relative weakness of their respective teams. Let's see Derek get his 3,000 hits playing for Pittsburgh, shall we? He probably wouldn't even have 3,000 plate appearances yet.

Still, because I'm not a hater (so far as you know, that is), I extend my congratulations to Mr. Jeter, and remind him that he still has to get another 181 hits to catch Cal Ripken, Jr.

The Dream of the Blue Umbrellas

Henlopen Acres Beach Club on a perfect summer day

Not that I don't love California, but…

 I can hardly wait to get back to Rehoboth Beach and sprawl on the warm sands by the Atlantic.

The countdown has started.

“Celebrate the Birth of Your Nation By Blowing Up a Small Part of It!”

The Rockets' Red Glare over Oakland, 2009

Now we know what it's like to live in Baghdad.

After spending the last two nights listening to the soundtrack of a war movie, all I can say is, how could so many people be so unclear on the concept of "illegal fireworks?" Aside from the constant assault on the eardrums, the danger of maiming and dismemberment, and even the possibility of starting a fire that could destroy one's neighborhood, why do some Oaklanders think it's okay to keep the rest of us awake into the wee hours of the morning with their M-320s?

I confess that, in my younger days, I thought it was fun to set off a few firecrackers and light some sparklers on the Fourth of July. Why, we were even known to set off the occasional Roman candle.

But all of that pales in comparison to the artillery barrage we have witnessed this past weekend in Oakland – and one can only guess what it would have been like if the city's police and fire departments were not supposedly enforcing a "zero tolerance" policy. Mixed with what could only have been occasional bursts of automatic gunfire, there were non-stop explosions audible last night until well after one a.m. Some of the blasts sounded like dynamite charges. What's next, C-4?

Perhaps this is what we get for not having any "official" fireworks display in the city this year – the traditional Jack London Square show having fallen victim to the budget axe. But then again, these imbeciles would probably have their own fireworks show even if the city's display was in their living room. (Which might not be a bad idea, incidentally…)

Lest you think I'm some kind of Independence Day killjoy, I will tell you that I went to my usual spot in the Oakland hills last night to watch and photograph the San Francisco fireworks, which were mercifully only obscured by smog this year, rather than fog. It's just that I feel that 25 minutes of fireworks are sufficient, thank you.

If You’d Like to Make a Call…

Dark days ahead at [The Big Newspaper], no question about it.

The e-mail came this morning, out of the blue: Head Honcho and Head Honcho #2, are now, uh, Headless. Their last day? You're lookin' at it, buddy.

Further consolidation had been talked about for months, and now, on the final day of the fiscal year, here it was, in all of its please-show-yourself-out-the-side-door-immediately glory.

But in the meantime… conference calls! Except that, for some reason, we can't even do that right. Reporters and editors all gathered in the conference room, poised by the speakerphone, awaiting the "big news" from our new Supreme Leader, only to discover that he was apparently addressing us from the bottom of a missile silo somewhere, and it was nigh impossible to make out his words, much less the message. Interspersed with his echo-y, static-filled droning came the endless musical doorbell chimes of other employees trying to join the call from around the chain. At times, the cacophony from the speaker more closely resembled the soundtrack of an old pinball machine than a discussion of the future of the newspapers.

I lasted about 5 minutes before giving up and going back to my desk.

Those hardy souls who stayed for the rest of the hour(!) informed me that it was all downhill from there. We're not, he said, producing the kinds of news that make readers want to buy the product, and subsequently make advertisers want to hawk their wares in our pages. Which means, I guess, that we don't have enough celebrity gossip, but I could be oversimplifying here.

Apparently, the Patch.com model of hyperlocal journalism is failing miserably. Readers don't care what's going on in their neighborhoods – or, at least, not enough to fork over 75 cents to read about it. The only answer, of course, is to go in the opposite direction and produce all regional, over-arching stories with which everybody can identify.

"The world spun on its axis today, causing dozens of people to die at various points on the globe. President Obama held a conference call with members of the G8 to address the issue."

That regional enough for ya? No. What about our extraterrestrial readers?

Luckily, the flagship of [The Big Newspaper] – which, coincidentally, is where the new Supreme Leader has held sway up until this morning – has been producing the kinds of stories that readers and advertisers do like, and with many fewer resources than the slacker, do-nothing losers who populate its sniveling, pus-filled satellite publications. Elitist snobbery being my stock in trade, I like the way Supreme Leader thinks.

And I feel 100% certain that when the layoffs come – and they will – my job is so safe you could invest your 401(k) in it.

The Never-Ending Story

So, being hopelessly anal retentive, I've been working on sleeving, archiving, scanning, captioning and otherwise organizing my old film negatives – all 42 years worth of them – and I've come to the conclusion that this is a job that will never be done. It's a daunting task, and that could be one of my larger understatements. Naturally, it's not enough to simply sleeve the negatives; I also insist on properly dating the sleeves, labeling them completely (it's not just the "Coliseum," you know – it's the "Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum; Oakland, Calif."), and putting them in labeled binders in chronological order.

Mind you, I've been a professional photojournalist pretty much since college, when I spent my last two years photographing everything that moved on the campus of Ithaca College for the Cayugan yearbook. So there's a lot of negatives – hundreds of thousands of them – and a lot of events. Some of them deserve to be saved (think Game 7 of the 2002 World Series or President Ronald Reagan visiting Whippany, N.J. in October 1987), and some, well, not so much (think Rodney P. Frelinghuysen election headquarters in November 1987 or the Denville, N.J. street fair in June 1986), but I'm treating them all equally.

The floor of my office is slowly disappearing under an ever-growing sea of 1000-sheet three-ring binders, and it could be worse: there's a two-year window in there, when I was working for The (Easton, Pa.) Express, from which I have almost no film – it was filed at the time, and now is rotting in a landfill somewhere in Bucks County (or was that Berks County? I can't keep them straight). Thus, my trip to Jim Thorpe, Pa. remains woefully undocumented. That's a shame, don't ya think?

Further, this is just the sleeving and labeling portion of the program – next comes the actual scanning and captioning. Thank God for Baseball Reference.com, without which captioning all those baseball games would be impossible. I'm hoping that, by the time I turn 60, I might actually be close to finishing.

Then I can start on the color slides…

The Bonfire of the Vagaries

Leave it to the combination of Facebook and Father's Day to leave me feeling all weepy and mortal.

Seriously, all these Father's Day wishes, and old photographs of fathers long dead (or only wishing they were) have got me thinking about the basic, irrefutable unfairness of life. I mean, how did my father – a God-fearing, exercise-crazy, all-around nice guy (at least with these rose-colored, 20-20 hindsight bifocals I'm currently wearing) – end up dead when most people his age were just getting around to picking out their next Cadillac? He didn't smoke. He barely touched alcohol. Not a caf-fiend. He was in better shape at 60 than I was at 45. I go out and photograph centenarians who tell me that the secret of a long life is smoking a stogie every morning and then jaywalking on Interstate 80. How did the Grim Reaper get my dad's name and address?

I want an answer! And, "It's a mystery!" is not gonna cut it.

Father's Day also leaves me wondering – in a speculative, road-not-travelled kinda way – about my own decision not to be a father. Which was not so much a decision as I was just so terrified by the prospect of taking care of (read: paying for) raising a child. As I've grown older, and watched my nieces and nephew grow up, I think, "Hmmm… that doesn't look that hard…" Of course, none of their parents are living on subsistence wages…

In my previous life, when I was co-habiting with the Bird Whisperer, we scoffed at the notion of children, and the result was that we ended up having none. In my present life, there's been no scoffing, but a distinct lack of fecundity. That's what we call "getting old."

Not that I spend a lot of time on it, but every so often, when I see some parent savoring a moment of childish innocence, I think to myself, "That'll never be me." And it makes me wistful, not to say sad.

Of course, it would make me sadder when I had to send them off to an Oakland public school…

Don't worry, I'm recovered, but look for something similar to this tear-jerker next Father's Day. Or right after It's A Wonderful Life airs at Christmas. Please don't suggest that I adopt – I am so not interested in raising somebody else's kid.

Unclear on the Concept

From our No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department:

Is there some reason why organizations that pose as "green" – i.e., environmentally friendly – often turn out to be peopled by such pedantic pinheads?

I took a shopping bag (paper, not plastic, thank you) of 3.5-inch floppy diskettes to the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse (http://www.creativereuse.org/) this afternoon, as it happened to be not too far off my beaten path in the course of other errands. I had photographed the manager of the place for [The Big Newspaper] a couple of months back, liked the mission that they seemed to be on, and decided that, rather than feeding my unused storage media to a landfill somewhere, I would offer it to them, and see what good things might come of it.

So I was mildly annoyed when the clerk – who was one of my photographic subjects earlier in the year, but who understandably didn't recognize me months later, and without a camera hanging around my neck – asked if I was there to make a donation, then upon my assent informed me that they didn't accept donations "after 5 o'clock."

(Uh, parenthetical note to the people running EBDCR: your hours for accepting donations should be… the hours that you are open for business. Duh. Or perhaps I could waste more of my time and gasoline to come back another day and donate stuff to your stupid business. What part of "donation" didn't you people get?)

To be fair, the pretty, artificially perky clerk relented a moment later and said that she'd accept my donation, because, after all, it was only one paper shopping bag's worth. She was still attending to another customer, so I stood off to one side and waited.

It was at this point that some other male, 20-something clerk who apparently works as an extra in a Beat Generation coffeehouse, complete with gray herringbone vest, fedora and scraggly goatee, approached from the back of the shop, and deigned to be of service.

The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

Kerouac-ite: Have you been helped?

Me: Yeah, I'm here to make a donation.

Perky Clerk: So what are you donating?

Me: Floppy diskettes.

Perky Clerk: I'm sorry, but we don't accept floppy diskettes.

Kerouac-ite: I really don't believe in floppy diskettes. We don't want something that will just sit here. And besides, we don't accept donations after 5.

Excuse me, you Luddite, you "don't believe" in floppy diskettes? Tell you what: why don't you e-mail that thought to 1998, when I might have cared? I had no idea that your shop had an ideology regarding what it would accept. They're floppy disks, not a lifestyle choice. And besides, the whole reason I'm here is to make sure that they don't end up in a landfill somewhere, and your part of the bargain is that you figure out a way to "creatively re-use" them. Maybe they'd make great ceiling tiles, or drink coasters, I don't know. Go outside and read the sign on the side of the building, jackass! It seems to me that you're abdicating your responsibility to a place that claims to keep things from going to waste.

What's more, I'm pretty sure I came here to make a donation to your second-hand store, buddy, not listen to your smug value judgments about computer components that were popular when you were still in kindergarten. Oh, I'm sorry – next time I'll only come in with my cloud storage, okay? By the way, I don't have an iPhone – can I still stand in the same room with you, Mr. Cool Guy?

Oh and – just wondering – do you guys accept donations after 5?

As I walked back to the car, shopping bag still cradled in my arms, I silently made a vow to never return there for any reason.

Again, to be fair, the perky clerk offered to give me a list of e-waste recyclers, so at least she wasn't a complete waste of skin. But the other guy…

The positive aspect of it all is that it made me so angry that I actually had to sit down and write something about it. I hope you're happy.

Congratulations! You’re (Not Quite) A Winner!

Contest time is always one of my least favorite times of the year, mostly because while I would very much like to win (and thus be recognized by my peers as the unbelievably talented artist that I am), I have every reason to surmise that this will be just another futile gesture on my part and the prelude to another sobering judgment that says, "You're a loser! But thanks so much for playing! Do come again!"

Recently, the results for a statewide journalism contest came back, and I was presented with a "Certificate of Achievement." Yes, on fancy faux parchment paper and an old English typeface, just like your average high school diploma. "For submitting an outstanding entry in Sports Photo," it says, and then has the title of said entry printed out below, so I'll know which photo was good – but not quite good enough. And then, in even smaller type, it says, "This entry was among the top 10% that advanced forward to the Blue Ribbon Judging. While your entry was not selected for 1^st or 2^nd place, we would like to congratulate you on being a finalist in the [Great Big Statewide Newspaper Contest]!"

So I've got that going for me.

It's this kind of ego-salving sympathy card that makes me wish I hadn't even entered in the first place. After all, it's one thing to lose, but it's quite another to have someone send you a note saying, "You missed it by this much!"

"Hey, you lost, but we didn't just chuck your photo out in the first round!"

Contest judging being amazingly arbitrary so much of the time, one wonders where a photo might have finished if the judges had decided to have Chinese for lunch instead of the pizza. Or if your photo hadn't reminded one of the judges so much of a picture he missed 25 years ago and it's been eating at him ever since.

Earlier this month, I learned that I was not a winner in a Bay Area photojournalism contest. That was painful, but at least no one sent me a certificate to tell me I didn't win.

And now there's another entry form sitting in front of me, this one for an even smaller and more obscure set of participants. It's like if you had a photo contest with other members of your family, where you were an only child and your parents were legally blind. Should I submit my photos (and nominal entry fee), just for the chance to brag that I took first place in the Sports Division of the Brown-Haired-Right-Handed-Caucasian-New-Jersey-Born-Photography-Contest-For-Men-Over-Six-Feet-With-Hazel-Eyes?

Nah. I'd probably lose at that, too.

Are You My Mother?

I've just been thinking again today about my poor mother. At the ripe ol' age of 82, she's been put in the position of finding a new place to live – being summarily tossed out on her ear by her soon-to-be-ex-husband, whom I shall refer to here as "Mander," because, frankly, using his real name would make me nauseated.

In any case, way back in 2006, Mander relentlessly wooed my mother, a strong independent woman who'd been living on her own since her divorce from her second husband in 1987 (and now, let us never speak of this again). She was aging, mostly gracefully, in her suburban New Jersey home, and living the life that most of us aspire to in our retirement years – except for the multiple church services, that is – close to her children and her Delaware vacation home.

Enter Mander, who had lost his own wife to a distinct lack of interest on her part, misdiagnosed by doctors as cancer. His late wife and my mother had been cohabitants during their college years, more than half a century ago, and had maintained a friendship in the ensuing decades, so who knows for how long Mander had been coveting my mother, but now his chance to win her heart was upon him.

He coaxed and cajoled, nagged and nudged, for more than a year, attempting to convince my mother that they could share a happy future together. In December 2006, my mother married him at her church, in front of a good dozen or so witnesses. She then set about relieving herself of the lion's share of her furniture, books and other belongings, sold her home and moved to Outer Sticksville, Virginia, to Mander's home in the country, where the television plays nothing but FOX News and reruns of Law and Order. The things we do for love…

No one would accuse my mother of being an easy woman – or, at least, no one who has known her for more than, say, eight minutes. Still, it came as a shock to her when, 2-1/2 years later, Mander intoned that he thought it might be a good idea for them to set about getting a divorce. That was the summer of 2009. I know what you're saying: it's now 2011 – were they waiting on government paperwork? Perhaps the slow pace of this divorce can be attributed to old age – after all, Mander is only five months younger than my mother. Maybe he just got drowsy and forgot what he was talking about.

Last month, however, he remembered and served my mother with a "separation agreement" – that sounds so cordial, don't you think? Hi honey! Here's your separation agreement! Now get your stuff and blow outta here, huh? This left my mother in the awkward position of having to find a new place to keep that stuff, not to mention herself. He did offer a nominal sum to help her with the move – and when I say "nominal," I mean "cheap." Perhaps she could hock the wedding ring.

I just find it… interesting that he who would have moved heaven and earth to help her relocate to Bumf*** now can hardly be bothered to help her move out. Just shows you that men, no matter their age, never quite outgrow the douchebag thing. You'd think we'd evolve, but perhaps Darwin was wrong.

I know that it's petty of me to wish any evil on Mander, but I really hope that he'll be quite lonely and miserable in his (very brief) future. Justice of the poetic variety, I would say.

Birth of a Blogger

Someone actually told me that they thought I would make a great blogger. But you should always discount anything your mother tells you (except, perhaps, that admonition not to hold one's penis in public).

Still, the idea that I have thoughts, and that those thoughts might entertain you, the reader, however briefly, has convinced me to render this digital version of my erstwhile newsletter.

Sadly, I am already bored.

Anyway, some random thoughts, and then I'll leave you to mull all this over in the privacy of your own cubicle.

One: the Oakland Athletics. What part of "Opening Day" didn't they get? I don't care if it was a Friday – play the game in the sunlight!

Two: am I just too cynical, or is there something completely jingoistic and simultaneously infantile about a political candidate who would aspire to make the United States "the greatest nation in the history of the world?" Uh, numb-nuts? The Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Gauls, Huns, Celts, Aryans, Egyptians, Africans and every other country, culture or people that ever contributed to this country we call America just called to say, "Go down to the bank, take out a big withdrawal and buy a clue!"

Three: there is no number three.

Four: speaking of self-important crapola, just where do I get off thinking anybody would give a rat's ass about what I think? Hey, if you're still reading this far, I blame you.

Five: this was all so much easier when I had pictures to fill up the blank space.

Later, gators,

D. Ross