better living through chemistry

I repeat: This does NOT suck...

2009-01-21T03:35:45Z

Posted via Pixelpipe.

This does NOT suck...

2009-01-17T19:07:40Z

British Virgin Islands

Posted via Pixelpipe.

NYC Marathon

2008-11-02T16:55:45Z

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Fog is cool

2008-09-27T01:48:52Z

Fenway Park

2008-09-10T23:05:36Z

I saw a guy with a t-shirt that said:

I like two teams: the Red Sox, and whoever plays the Yankees.

As a Mets fan, I can get behind that.

Vegas, Baby, Yeah!!!

2008-08-17T21:16:49Z

Let me just say - it's freakin' HOT in Las Vegas in August...

Roof decks rock

2008-08-08T00:52:04Z

The view from Avenue B & 6th...

So long, George...

2008-06-23T12:55:29Z

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits.

You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American english is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. For some reason it just keeps getting worse.

I'll give you an example of that. There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum, can't take any more input. The nervous system has either snapped or is about to snap. In the first world war that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables. Shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was 70 years ago. Then a whole generation went by. And the second world war came along and the very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to be as hard to say. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock...battle fatigue.

Then we had the war in Korea in 1950. Madison Avenue was riding high by that time. And the very same combat condition was called Operational Exhaustion. Hey we're up to 8 syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase now. It's totally sterile now. Operational Exhaustion: sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then of course came the war in Vietnam, which has only been over for about 16 or 17 years. And thanks to the lies and deceit surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Still 8 syllables, but we've added a hyphen. And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I bet you, if we'd still been calling it shell shock, some of those Vietnam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I bet you that.

But it didn't happen. And one of the reasons is because we were using that soft language, that language that takes out the life out of life. And it is a function of time it does keep getting worse.

Give you another example. Sometime during my life toilet paper became bathroom tissue. I wasn't notified of this. No one asked me if I agreed with it. It just happened. Toilet paper became bathroom tissue. Sneakers became running shoes. False teeth became dental appliances. Medicine became medication. Information became directory assistance. The dump became the land fill. Car crashes became automobile accidents. Partly cloudy became partly sunny. Motels became motor lodges. House trailers became mobile homes. Used cars became previously owned transportation. Room service became guest room dining. Constipation became occasional irregularity.

When I was a little kid if I got sick they wanted me to go to a hospital and see the doctor. Now they want me to go to a health maintenance organization. Or a wellness center to consult a health care delivery professional. Poor people used to live in slums. Now the economically disadvantaged occupy sub-standard housing in the inner cities. And they're broke! They're broke. They don't have a negative cash flow position. They're fuckin' broke! Because a lot of them were fired. You know, fired. Management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area. So many people are no longer viable members of the work force.

Smug, greedy well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill people anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The pentagon actually measures radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos. Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it to us, do they?

And some of this stuff is just silly. We know that. Like when the airlines tell us to pre-board. What the hell is pre-board? What does that mean? To get on before you get on?

They say they're going to pre-board those passengers in need of special assistance ...cripples! Simple honest direct language. There's no shame attached to the word cripple I can find in any dictionary. In fact it's a word used in Bible translations. "Jesus healed the cripples." Doesn't take seven words to describe that condition. But we don't have cripples in this country anymore. We have the physically challenged. Is that a grotesque enough evasion for you? How about differently-abled? I've heard them called that. Differently-abled! You can't even call these people handicapped anymore. They say: "We're not handicapped, we're handy capable!" These poor people have been bullshitted by the system into believing that if you change the name of the condition somehow you'll change the condition. Well hey cousin ... doesn't happen!

We have no more deaf people in this country. Hearing impaired. No more blind people. Partially sighted or visually impaired. No more stupid people, everyone has a learning disorder. Or he's minimally exceptional. How would you like to told that about your child? 'He's minimally exceptional.' Psychologists have actually started calling ugly people those with severe appearance deficits. It's getting so bad that any day now I expect to hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient!

And we have no more old people in this country. No more old people. We shipped them all away and we brought in these senior citizens. Isn't that a typically American twentieth century phrase? Bloodless. Lifeless. No pulse in one of them. A senior citizen. But I've accepted that one. I've come to terms with it. I know it's here to stay. We'll never get rid of it. But the one I do resist, the one I keep resisting, is when they look at an old guy and say, "Look at him Dan, he's ninety years young." Imagine the fear of aging that reveals. To not even be able to use the word old to describe someone. To have to use an antonym.

And fear of aging is natural. It's universal, isn't it? We all have that. No one wants to get old. No one wants to die. But we do. So we con ourselves. I started conning myself when I got in my forties. I'd look in the mirror and say, "Well...I guess I'm getting ...older." Older sounds a little better than old, doesn't it? Sounds like it might even last a little longer. I'm getting old. And it's okay. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die. I'll pass away. Or I'll expire, like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they'll call it a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it as negative patient care outcome. And if it's the result of malpractice they'll say it was a therapeutic misadventure.

I'm telling ya, some of this language makes me want to vomit. Well, maybe not vomit ...makes me want to engage in an involuntary personal protein spill.

Caroline and the Bull

2008-05-09T12:45:59Z

We were at Johnny Utah's in Roc Center last night.

Beer + mechanical bull = temptation too strong for Caroline to resist.

My lousy back was reason enough to stay off that thing.

Sunset Over Treasure Beach

2008-03-13T03:10:49Z

We heartily recommend honeymoons - they're good for what ails ya, mon...

Pre Parade

2008-02-05T18:05:12Z

My building is one block west of the beginning of Broadway, where the ticker-tape parades start.

I'm at home working, and I hear a commotion. Looks like Trinity (a.k.a. Church street) is the staging area. So I grabbed my camera.

I really like the composite piece of music that resulted from all the different bands playing at the same time.

Blues City Cafe - Beale Street, Memphis

2007-09-12T04:20:23Z

Deep Fried Dill Pickles

2007-09-10T00:29:21Z

I LUV Tennessee...

Millenium Park, Chicago

2007-08-17T17:13:36Z

Patti Smith unplugged in Philly

2007-04-21T22:00:54Z

En route to the Franklin Institute to see King Tut, we go to this book fair at the library to kill some time. And run into this performance. Sweeeeeeet.

P.J. Clarke's

2007-03-18T00:41:27Z

Another year, another amateur night...

My weather program tells me it's 24 degrees in NY right now...

2007-02-06T19:56:02Z

Washington, DC

2007-01-13T22:09:34Z

I'm getting tired just watching

2006-11-05T17:41:46Z

These seats are pretty awesome

2006-09-24T17:35:31Z

We've always had nosebleed seats to these games. This rocks.

The "Old Pink" in Allentown, Buffalo

2006-09-24T06:42:18Z

Keith Olbermann: Mr. President, may this country forgive you.

2006-09-12T13:38:47Z

Thank you, Mr. Olbermann, for putting into words what I've been thinking lately. Unfortunately, my cynical mind is of the opinion that these words fell on increasingly deaf ears...

Quicktime
Windows Media

...And lastly tonight a Special Comment on why we are here. Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter. And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers. And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is, and always shall be, personal. And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President. However. Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this.

Five years later this space… is still empty.

Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field, Mr. Lincoln said "we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract." Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice. Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground." So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all. Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning. And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution. The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage. Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country. Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11. Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible — for anything — in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night? A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes. The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11.

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero…
So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things. And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.

The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves." And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American. When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.

Thanks to nemesisbecoming for the transcript

Getting Ready For Monday...

2006-09-07T00:27:14Z

If you've ever wondered, this is what the "Tribute In Light" looks like up close.

x-posted to newyorkers

Shut Yer Pie-Hole

2006-08-28T01:25:50Z

Now is the time for all good boys and girls to start dieting. Well, not really now, but soon.

And, so, if you're about to start exercising a little self-discipline and deny yourself some things in the name of hotness, what better way to go out with a bang than with...

PIES!!!

This post is a bit of an homage to sucheela and her awesome baking blog. But unlike her, I don't have the patience and dedication to type in three different recipes. Especially when the Dutch Apple Pie recipe was incredibly detailed, and two pages long. Also, I suppose that I should have posted this early this morning (or late last night, however want to think of it), but, hey, cocktails don't drink themselves, you know.

Anyway. Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to the pies:

First, the Zucchini Pie:

A wonderful savory pie. Yummy hot or cold. One important note: remember the Dijon mustard next time (although I must say that it was still delicious).

Next, the Blueberry Pie:

The sugar on the crust adds that extra blast of sweetness - just in case the blueberries weren't enough by themselves.

And Finally, the (Sorta) Dutch Apple Pie:

It's a "sorta" Dutch Apple Pie because the recipes calls for raisins as well as apples. But, outside of oatmeal raisin cookies, I'm not a huge fan of raisins in my baked goods. So, it's just full of apple-y goodness. And sugar. The streusel topping is chock full of it. Mmm, mmm good!

Now, of course, even if you're trying to gorge yourself before a diet, there's only so much pie you can eat in two days. And you know what this means, don't you? That's right, folks - these pies (or at least what remains of them) will be at work Monday morning.

It's OK - you don't have to thank me, Rebecca.

BBQ

2006-08-13T23:08:15Z