I work with boobs every day

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is defending his cameo appearance in 'Wedding Crashers,' the sexy comedy the Drudge Report called a 'boob raunch fest.'

'In Washington, I work with boobs every day,' joked McCain during an appearance on NBC's 'Tonight Show with Jay Leno.'

McCain was responding to Leno, who noted Matt Drudge ran a headline last week screaming that the Republican was starring in a 'boob raunch fest."

-- WorldNetDaily: McCain on sexy film: 'I work with boobs every day'

Now the sycophantic, blow-hard gadflies like those at the Drudge Report are projecting their morals onto what films a Republican senator, veteran and prisoner of war should and shouldn't appear in? The man spent seven years in the Hanoi Hilton. He's earned all the boobs he can get.

I'd not lift a finger to save a single Republican currently in office except John McCain.

Big Mother

"The irony is that, although news reports paint a bleak picture, independent statistics show that life has become less dangerous for kids in recent years -- with violent crime in particular dropping by 38 percent since 1975. The short spin cycle of cable TV may anoint a new child victim every week, but the actual numbers are far less grim: of the 800,000 kids that go missing each year in America, only 150 cases involve what the Justice Department calls 'stereotypical kidnappings,' in which a child is taken by a stranger and either held for ransom, abused or killed. Scores more 'missing children' are teenage runaways or 'throwaways,' abandoned by their parents. 'Truly, the real news story of the last 10 years has been the astonishing decline in crime,' says Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, a New York City child psychologist. 'But we are assaulted by a media that is more interested in scaring people, so it is almost impossible for parents to assess the real level of risk. And of course, there is no shortage of people willing to sell products based on those fears.'"

-- Salon.com Life | Big Mother is watching

It has been my contention for years, without any proof other than simple reason, that crimes against children have not grown in past years. There are not necessarily more murderers and pedophiles stalking our children than there were, oh, 25 years ago. What we do have more of, however, is the 24-hour cable news cycle, which didn't exist before. With nothing to report, CNN and its ilk will report whatever tragedy last occured, no matter how long ago, to fill airtime. Look at Fox News and its dubious fixation on the disappearance of this teenager in Aruba, what, eight weeks ago now? While tragic, it's not news anymore, and yet Fox is still dedicating plenty of airtime of talking, smirking heads to it.

Parents can lower their anxiety not by monitoring their children more, but by controlling their own consumption of the 24/7 news cycle. If you really want peace of mind, turn the TV off, or at least off of Fox and CNN.

Crappy Happy Face

I've begun a new obsessive-compulsive behavior at work. As I walk around people's cubes and offices, if they have a white board with any space on it, I draw a crappy happy face.



I have no idea why I feel like doing it (utter boredom?) or what it means. But, there's definitely something going on inside.

Loving Weird and Weirder

It scares me that I actually live near people like this.

In Fort Worth, Texas, an intoxicated woman involved in a collision got out of her car to investigate and was killed when a beer truck accidentally rammed one of the cars into her (and the truck driver, too, was found to be intoxicated) (January).

-- NEWS of the WEIRD - Current News

Still, gotta love NotW.

I'm still on my Scientology kick. Today, while waiting for my computer to finish some work, I decided to read Wikipedia's entry on L. Ron Hubbard. Fascinating. I was particularily impressed with his ignoble career in the navy during World War II. Still, he pulled down, according to Forbes, $40 million a year; not bad for a hack with a navy fetish.

Contegrity

Chuck the Eater is a member, or at least participant, in Contegrity. He sends me little daily quotes like this one...

I think that some major human relational alterations are going to be due before too long. There is a need for fundamental, strategic alterations in our relationships from I'll get mine to We all need to get ours. And if that alteration doesn't happen, things will get worse and worse until it does.

If we're going to have a base for resolving pollution, disease, war, poverty, crime, and so on, we need to give up the base for exploitation, cheating, dominating, protection, and avoidance. Otherwise, we cannot resolve these issues.

Ken Anbender from Belonging To Life
(Special Program, January 2002)

...every now and then. My respect for Chuck is pretty high, so there must be something to these guys. Check it out: Contegrity.

Of course, my fear is that Contegrity is a Scientologist front organzation for recruiting Xenu worshippers...but that's just crazy-thought...

Wonkamaniac

An op-ed just appeared on Salon.com which I really empathize with. You can read the full text at Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Me & the chocolate factory.

I am in almost complete agreement. Although I don't have a candy fetish like the author, I did wish, when I was 10, that I was Charlie Bucket. I felt like Charlie Bucket, after all. I saw in him what I wanted to see in myself, and how I wanted to be. When my classmates were into the Wizard of Oz, I was into Wonka and Oompah-Loompahs. And the movie has remained fresh and true for me ever since.

Just a week ago, over the July 4th weekend, I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the upteenth time with some friends in a beachhouse filled with adults and children. I still felt my chest tighten with hope when Grandpa Joe uses his tobacco money to buy Charlie a Wonkabar, then deflate with terrible sadness when they don't find a golden ticket and Charlie resigns with "The ticket probably makes the chocolate taste funny, anyway." I still smiled when "crippled" Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) stumbles and then gracefully tumbles when he first appears. I still chuckled everytime Wonka confuses a parent with his twisted logic or warns one of the awful children that their choices are about to cause their doom (his quiet, bored pleading with Veruca, "Please...Don't...Stop...", which can be read two distinctly different ways, as she throws a tantrum and falls to her demise, causes me to burst out laughing). And I still fought back sobs when Charlie gives back the Everlasting Gobstopper saying nothing but "Mr. Wonka...?" and laying the candy on the table next to him.

Charlie Bucket is my model on how a person should act, with fecund decency and deep kindness, even when faced with his own mistakes and errors. My fantasies are fulfilled, just like Charlie's, when he wins what he most wanted in the world.

Sniff.