Sunday Question 3

How much do you decorate for Christmas?

A. The whole enchilada: Outside the house lit up like a flood light, christmas tree, stockings, wreaths, etc.

B. Medium: Some lights outside, tree and stockings.

C. Light: Just indoors

D. Zilch: as little as possible

I'm a medium sort of guy. The other guys can run up a huge light bill.

Have a safe weekend

Well wishes to all my readers for a fun and safe weekend.
Wife and I are planning to see the Harry Potter movie sometime this weekend. The kids are going to see it while we watch the grandkids. Other than that we're staying away from the crazies battling for goods that will be half the price in a few weeks.

Crossed Fingers

I've sent off my manuscript of Human Sacrifices to a publisher that deals mostly in e-books. Now I'm waiting to hear back from them.

In Need of Prayer

My friend Russ and his wife are in need of prayer. Please be kind a leave a comment of support on his blog.

Sunday Question 2

What 5 songs that if you hear them you can't get out of your mind?

Mine are:

5. Amazing Grace

4. Are You Lonesome Tonight - Elvis

3. Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter - Herman's Hermits

2. Do You Hear The People Sing? - From Les Miserables

1. Oobla Dee Oobla Da - The Beatles This one drives me crazy!

Sunday Question

Name five of your favorite Manly Men from TV, past or present.


1. Magnum - Magnum PI

2. Kirk - Original Star Trek

3. The Fonz - Happy Days

4. Michael Weston - Burn Notice

5. Grisham - CSI

Now it's up to my readers to comment and leave yours.

First Impressions

A few months ago I was given a book to read as a part of my legal assistance job. The book was about the importance of opening statements in trials. Hollywood seems to think trials are won in closings, but this books premise was that trials are won in opening statements.
The theory behind the premise is that people usually make up their minds quickly no matter how objective they claim to be, and that once a person has made up his/her mind concerning guilt or non-guilt it becomes very difficult to change their minds.
This was preamble as a way to explain why the general public seems to be so gullible on certain issues and why control of the main stream media is so important to dupe the general public into starting wars and voting against their economic interests. When the truth comes out it doesn't matter for the general population their minds are made up, don't confuse them with facts.
Children grow up in religous schools being told that evolution is a hoax and the world was created in six, twenty-four hour days. It becomes very hard to change their minds on the subject after that. The media declares climate change to be a hoax and the rubes eat it up no matter how much evidence to the contrary.
Thought control doesn't take brute force, just quick lies told as truth. How else do you explain the demogogues that have our governments by the throat.

Foul fortnight

I've finally feeling human. Had a cold for the last two weeks. I'd start feeling good for a day and then it would rebound. Yesterday was the first day I didn't feel like a zombie. I need to get back to working on my newest novel I didn't have the energy to do any typing, but a few plot points have popped into my head.

Boardwalk Bossism

HBO has been running a mini-series ostensibly about prohibition and gangsterism, but what I've seen so far is a political boss who gets into the rum running business. That gangsters are in embryo form at this point in the story line.
There's this great scene where boss Thomson has given money and a job to a widow, whose husband he had killed, and she asks him what he wants in return. He looks at her and says, "I want you to vote Republican."
As evil and corrupt as bossism was it was based on a quid pro quo. The boss found people jobs, places to live, health care, etc. It was chump change compared to the money they got from the kick backs and bribes their guaranteed votes garnered. The secret ballot helped end most of the excesses of bossism. The New Deal's social safety net took a lot of what the bosses doled out in favors to benefit everyone. But when all was said and done the people who sold their vote to the boss got something in return. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
Today bosses don't have to help the people. They deceive them by advertising. They don't have to mingle with the little people, buy up all the media outlets, get your message out and make a fortune in campaign spending from both sides at the same time.
As horrible as it was for the Supremes to open the cash drawers of corporations on political spending, the real democratic disaster was when the FCC dropped restrictions on who could own more than a small percentage of radio and TV stations. We no longer have local Boss Thompsons. King Rupert Murdock rules America, lock stock and entertainment.

Mixed Bag

We're stuck with another governor veto, but only lost one congressional seat. I'm sure she'll invite the mouthpiece from Alaska to hunt wolves from helicopters down here to piss off environmentalists.
Hats off to Russ Sype for working tirelessly for Martin Heinrich the past two elections as a volunteer on the technical side.
Jimmy Carter in his interview with Bill Maher last week said he thought if the Republicans take control of House they'd have to start being responsible. I thing he's been a great former president a wonderful humanitarian, but is a lousy politician and even worse historian. Since 1994 the last thing the Reptilians have been is responsible. They have made an art of blaming everyone else for their mess and this election is another prime example. As Paul Krugman says, "It's always heads they win, tails you lose."

At Last

At last the political ads will be over. The crying begins. Watching anything but network TV tonight to avoid all the dipsticks chattering away about nothing.

Oh to be Val Kilmer

While trying to get over the cold this weekend I watched a lot of late night TV. Caught a movie entitled Double Identity with Val Kilmer and this lovely lady. Shazaam is she gorgeous. New Mexico resident, Val Kilmer is my age which means he's old enough to be her father. It must be nice to be an actor and still rate beautiful women like this as a love interest. Maybe that's why Hollywood keeps casting older actors with the twenty-somethings: so old farts like me can dream...

I forsee many more movies with this heart stopper.

Catching Up

• I've been down with a cold for the last four days; hate the fever/chill thing. Finally feeling human.
• This fall is a total bust favorite teamwise. Cowboys and Broncos are awful, Lobos not only can't win they lose by thirty or more points a game, and it looks like the Rangers are on the ropes in the World Series.
• The last is kind of unusual. With the Dukes and now Isotopes being the AAA team of the Dodgers that's my usual MLB team, but the lone summer I lived in Fort Worth and was a security guard on the night shift listening to Ranger games helped make the night pass quicker. All I can hope for now is that they win tonight's game and send it back to SF.
• Bush 41 was looking rather feeble when Jr. threw out the opening pitch yesterday. I don't think he's up to sky diving on his birthday anymore. Interesting that they sat behind the dugout to watch the game with the proletariate instead of rubbing shoulders with the hoi paloi in a luxury box.

Hollywood Sweethearts 4

Once upon a time there was a silly night time soap opera named Dallas. The first season introduced me to two of the most gorgeous women alive. Forget Charlie's Angels, this show had the really hot women. Morgan Fairchild (left) as Jenna Wade and Victoria Prinicpal (right) as Pamela Ewing. Poor Patrick Duffy as Bobby who had the enviable task of choosing one over the other. The second season Morgan Fairchild was gone and Priscilla Presley would take on the role of Jenna Wade. To me the show lost a lot of its steam when the really hot blonde left.

Subhuman

Excerpts from School Law:

Teachers have no First Amendment free-speech protection for curricular decisions they make in the classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

A little known fact is that the Bill of Rights only applies to the government's criminal power. Employers are not bound by them. Still when the government is the employer courts used to have a tendency to favor applying them to employees. It seems that is a thing of the past. Free speech is a part of a blanket right teachers are trying to keep known as Academic Freedom. The courts have put the last nail in the coffin on that.

The decision came in the case of an Ohio teacher whose contract was not renewed in 2002 after community controversy over reading selections she assigned to her high school English classes. These included Siddhartha , by Herman Hesse, and a unit on book censorship in which the teacher allowed students to pick books from a list of frequently challenged works, and some students chose Heather Has Two Mommies, by Leslea Newman.

What is not disputed is that these books were a part of the state adopted curriculum. The fact that parents were upset with what was assigned and the student's choices, why is their beef with the teacher and not the state curriculum committee?

"When a teacher teaches, the school system does not regulate that speech as much as it hires that speech," Sutton wrote, borrowing language from a 7th Circuit decision in a similar case. "Expression is a teacher's stock in trade, the commodity she sells to her employer in exchange for a salary. And if it is the school board that hires that speech, it can surely regulate the content of what is or is not expressed, what is expressed in other words on its behalf."

Ok judge, got the message, teach the curriculum we give you, but if parents complain you're on your own. School boards have the right to throw a teacher under the bus. Nice to make it sound better in legalese.

Is anyone in their right mind wanting to enter this profession anymore? How are we going to educate our children when the politicians, courts, parents and students have all the power and the ones with all the responsibility are treated like trash?

Hollywood Sweetheart 3

Natalie Wood

Was there ever a starlet that could mesmerize by simply walking down a hallway?
Splendor in the Grass, West Side Story, This Property is Condemned, Gypsy, Love With a Perfect Stranger.

The list of fantastic movies where she graced the screen and our hearts with her presence is almost endless.

Her beauty was forever etched in my memory in Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. Overall a dreadful movie, boring beginning, stupid quasi avante garde philosophy about being free spirits, and lame ending. There's the one scene where Natalie walks down a hallway in white turtle neck and mini skirt and I melted. Lately it's the movie has been on premium channels and I watched it again. Oh fast forward is a blessing in this movie. That scene is still as hot today as it was over forty years ago.

A life so tragically cut short.

Balloon Pictures

Here are some of the balloons that flew over the house during the balloon fiesta.

Hollywood Sweethearts 2

My heart went pitter patter for Diane Keaton in the movie Looking For Mr. Goodbar. Sexy, beautiful, smart, funny, loved working with deaf kids; too bad she liked picking up one night stands. The movie had a great cast: Richard Gere, Brian Denehy, Tuesday Weld, Richard Kiley, Levar Burton. It's not the type of movie grinnygranny appreciates because of the nudity. After I saw the movie I wanted to marry a woman just like Diane Keaton.
I know she got an oscar that year for Annie Hall, but would anyone be so pathetic that they'd want to watch Woody Allen whine non stop a second time?
I'm glad she's kept on with her career and has lately made some excellent movies; First Wive's Club, Something's Gotta Give, and others. I still find her very sexy.

Hollywood Sweethearts 1

The first woman I remember captivating me with her beauty was Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's.

I was eight years old and didn't understand the nature Holly's line of work. I picked up the romance between her and George Peppard's character. Years later when it came out on TV I was older and had a fuller understanding of the story, but it didn't make me think any less of Ms Hepburn or Holly Golightly.

I also remember the music. Moon River is such a beautiful song that coming up fifty years later I still catch myself whistling it from time to time.

Fiesta's Finished

This year we had a spectacular Balloon Fiesta. Ten days of clear calm days. Maybe once in a decade we get a stretch like this. We stopped trying to fight our way to the balloon park years ago, too much hassle. We also stopped taking picures as balloons come over our house pretty much year round.
Last Monday I dropped wifey at work and went to play with the gaggle. I turned off Academy onto San Mateo and the sky was full of balloon looking close enough that if they were apples I could reach out and pick them. Quit a sight. As I drove on Paseo to Paradise Hills a bunch of balloons were in a vacant lot inflating for one of their competitions. When I got to the golf course a couple flew over while we were getting ready to tee off.
Saturday we had our own little fiesta behind the house. The wind pattern we northeast pushing them southwest. Right over our house. Normally we get the balloon companies that sell rides taking off from Rio Rancho that come over and land on the mesa behind us not the ones from the fiesta. We recognized some of the balloons that had been on TV taking off landing behind us. There must have been a dozen of them. I took three rolls of film and am having them developed. I'll have some of them posted in a few days.