I'm not one of those, "Don Knotts was on the 'grassy knoll'"-conspiracy theorists, but how come every time the Republicans are up for re-election, gas prices go way down?
I mean, the last I heard Iran still hates Israel, and it is still within the loose definition of "hurricane season."
I guess I wouldn't mind making a deal with the devil so much if the devil (and Republicans are clearly the ones with the Eau de Sulphur cologne) would keep his part of the bargain.

But as soon as they get back in there, mark my words, they will go back up. And the official reason will be something like, "Well, people are traveling for Xmas," or "We're anticipating a really cold winter," or, "Well--you know--Iran still hates Israel..

."
Here's an idea: Could we have elections twice every year? Like, in the middle of summer and winter?

That's when we really need gas prices to go down!

Mel Gibson's new flick is set 3,000 years ago in ancient Mayan civilization.

That's 500 years before the Spanish conquest.
The film will use indigenous Mayan actors speaking an obscure ancient dialect.
That worked in The Passion of the Christ--but there were plenty of Christians who were willing to do some work for the religious payoff.

Hopefully, there aren't too many people around who believe in the religion of the ancient Mayans, because it involved gruesome human sacrifice.
The film has no stars. It has what appears to be a nice "eye candy" look.

It will probably be EXTREMELY violent. (In other words, it will make look like a comedy.)
So call it now: Is this a runaway hit.

..or a dog?

I say it just breaks even in the US and then finally makes money in the foreign market.
The show, "America's Next Top Model" came to the ATL. It dipped down to almost record cold this morning (55-degrees).

Thank God--I mean, for those of us who don't have delusions about being a model--I'm talkin' for ME, who fried all night and wants to air out the crib. (That's what us brothers from the 'hood call our apartment.)
And some of these people camped out overnight in the rain--okay maybe it wasn't raining right there exactly where they were, but there was some heavy Dixie dew.

I know I am disparaging somebody's sister or girlfriend here, but--okay, this needs to be said--I am not seeing a "next top model" in the bunch. (That woman third from the right has SOMETHING going on that MIGHT be an interesting look, but she is kind of buried behind everyone and it is hard to tell.) I am not saying that they are BAD looking, it's just.

..well, they shouldn't be waiting outside in the cold getting their hopes up, maybe.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I am sure to some dude somewhere, they are the most beautiful woman in the world.
And you would probably be happier with THESE women than you would be married to Deborah LaFave (below)--whom I could see as maybe not "America's Next Top Model," but getting paid to pose with a power tool on a calendar somewhere--and then finding out your wife is doin' a fourteen year old 'cause presumably YOU are "not enough..

."
I know, I know: "Don't step on a dream, blah blah..

.It's a free country so if they want to take a shot, blah blah..

.Nobody put a gun to their head, blah blah blah..

."
And like all Emperor's New Clothes phenomena, who wants to be the one to tell them this might be a waste of time? It's like Peter Lawford telling Frank Sinatra that Kennedy is not really coming over to the vacation house he is building; he was just blowing smoke up the Chairman of the Board's ass for some free 'tang.

Or the guy in Tom Cruise's entourage who has to tell him that he might have to come down from 30% of the gross on his next movie...

nobody wants to be Mr. Buzzkill..

.it's not all about "not having the balls to say the truth." That's certainly part of it.

But more of it is nobody wants to "be negative."
And, to these ladies' credit--and keepin' the playing field level--when you see some of these "hot actresses" in Hollywood before those hair and makeup artists get ahold of them, this is maybe exactly what you see.
The irony of course is that if one of these ladies had camped out outside my office.

..well, "camped out" might scare me a little bit.

..but let's just say if they had been this aggressive with ME as they were with this fantasy job, they would be making $40k and full benefits tomorrow.

So I guess what I'm saying is, "How dare these people 'have a dream'? Don't they know they are supposed to sit in a cubicle with a telephone headset on, taking Sears catalog orders with the rest of us for the rest of their lives??

"

Did anyone see that Matt Lauer/Debra LaFave interview last night? For those of you who have been living with the Taliban in the hills of Afganistan for the past five years, she is the twentysomething teacher who had sex with her 14-year old male student.

I hear a lot of people say, "That 14-year old will be permanently scarred for the rest of his life."
None of the people who are saying that are ever male, but I hear a lot of people saying that.
(Well, Matt Lauer, but I suspect he surrendered his Y-chromosomes to Katie Couric a long time ago.

She probably keeps them in a pickle jar on her shelf...

)
I can remember when I was fourteen--there was this History teacher--suffice it to say, I used to pray that she would ask me to stay late and help clean the chalkboard.
Anyway, I wonder if I could have pulled it off? Probably, my MOUTH would have gotten me in trouble.

But maybe not...

There was another teacher whom I had the hots for...

actually, there was more than one, but this one really stuck out. In her case, I might "no longer be with us," because she was married to the Wrestling coach and he was a dick who hated me anyway..

.I probably would have been caught and smothered in a
I think that this fourteen year- old will be scarred by the judicial proceedings--i.e.

, recounting the sex to the geezer district attorney who doesn't clip his nosehairs, or whatever--even though the judicial testimony of the youngster was cut short.
I think that Debra LaFave's EX-HUSBAND will be permanently scarred..

.
I'm just not sure that this event was that much of a "crime." Old school, it was obviously "adultery.

" And if you really stretch things, "statutory rape." It would certainly not look good on a resume' or in a divorce proceeding, but I don't think she should have to wear the ankle bracelet for the whole ten years, is what I'm saying.
She probably won't.

Memories are really short on this type of thing.
But there are way worse things that can happen to a fourteen year-old. Like my Geography teacher.

Her arm was amputated at the elbow. There was this little wart-like nubule at the end of the amputated arm.
When she really got mad, she would hold your head down with the good arm and take the nubule thing and rub it around in your ear.

She is probably deceased by now, but I really should have pursued HER on a battery theory.
I still "have dreams" about her.
They are just not the same kind of dreams as the History teacher, the Music teacher, et al.

Does anyone make it through junior high without being "permanently scarred," I guess, is the theory which today I postulate.
as well as Jerry Garcia ties. I think this is because the hippest thing a white guy over 40 does all day is pick out which tie he is going to wear.

I used to have a lot of John Lennon ties. I guess all I have to say about those is that John Lennon the lyricist and John Lennon the African American music appropriator sure beat John Lennon the stickman doodler.
Anyway, today I was picking out a Carlos Santana tie.

It is fuchia and purple with a lot of guitars on it. I like the tie; two people have said something already today and it is only 11:00.
The Lennon, Garcia and Santana ties all have these sayings and titles on the back.

(I just had a mindfart--why didn't Lennon--or I guess more correctly his estate--make a "looking glass tie"? Maybe they felt the stickman art had been overly neglected..

.maybe Paul wrote that line..

.I dunno..

.)
The Carlos tie I wore today on the back says, "Wherever the music takes you, it was worth the trip..

."
Therein lies the Achillies heel of my generation. Or, more correctly, "My G-G-Generation.

" I can think of a
In fact, I think if I said to the Village Retard, "Wherever the music takes you, it was worth the trip," even he would realize that is a faulted premise.
Certainly, a recording star wants us to think that wherever music takes us is worth the trip. Probably, a Mafia-affiliated record promoter would join him in this hope that we believe this fallacy.

A friend of mine tried to go to Woodstock (the original one) from Jacksonville, Florida. He made it to Brunswick, Georgia--a town that has more cops-per-capita than probably pre-Glasnost Moscow (still to this day)--and spent a week in jail for an eighth of a joint.
"Music took him" to a jail cell in Brunswick, Georgia, and the bail was $500 in Sixties dollars.

That was not worth the trip.
I once opened a telemarketing season-ticket renewal office for the Atlanta Opera. I bought an ad in an alternative newspaper, and I said in bold letters, "MUSIC LOVERS WANTED!

"
I got 150 calls per day on an ad that cost $25. For a telemarketing job..

.so in effect I deceptively used the MISCONCEPTION that "wherever music takes you is worth the trip" for my own financial gain. ("Wherever music takes you is worth the trip.

" Anyone who says that had a way different high school band camp experience than I did...

.)
Of course, many of the callers in my Want Ad preferred the genre of Hip Hop to opera..

.but both Hip Hop and opera have high body counts in the lyrics, so I was able to talk some of them into taking the job. Plus, we had a really nice guaranteed base salary, and you got to call the leads of the people who joined the opera last year if you got really good.

(And "really good" meant not sounding like
One nugget of wisdom you gain with age is that music is overrated.
Don't get me started on the rest of the Holy Troika, which would be "Wine Women."
They never seem to look exactly like THIS, however.

And their dad is never a rich lawyer; he's always an asshole. Well--I mean, rich lawyers are sometimes assholes, but you know what I mean.
And the women I hook up with never have an apartment that looks like THIS.

Their daughter is usually not that hot, but I am not kvetching about THAT; that is probably a good thing.
I guess I could go off on a rant about how primetime TV misrepresents reality, but that is not my point.
My point is, if women supposedly have such great "instincts" and "intuition," why do women with kids pick ME?

I hate kids. I even hated other kids when I WAS A KID.
Oh well.

..
When the Vending Machine Guy mixes items in that row of the little spiral things that come forward, and there is something shitty like Little Debbie Nutty Bars in front of something AWESOME, like a Mrs.

Freshley Cherry Pie, and you wait most of the day for someone to buy the shitty thing out of the row to "liberate" the Cherry Pie in the row, and nobody buys the shitty thing so about 4 p.m. YOU buy it so you can get to the Cherry Pie, and you go around the office doing that "auction off" thing for the Nutty Bars, and you eventually take 50-cents on the Nutty Bars which cost you 65-cents, and then you figure out that you are a white collar professional making over $20 an hour and it was really stupid to waste 15-minutes "auctioning off" some Nutty Bars that cost 65-cents, and plus you really looked like an ass, and why didn't you just throw them in the trash?

?
And you can deny it all you want, but you've done it; you just hate to admit it, which is fodder for another "Don't You Just Hate"-posting--which would be "Don't You Just Hate People Who Pretend to Disagree With a 'Don't You Just Hate'-Posting."
There's something about an Aqua Velva Man.

.. He's not like other guys.

He has a certain je ne sais quoi; an X-factor.
He stands apart from the pack. Put him in the same uniform as a whole cadre of other men, and there's still something about him which is unique.

When he enters a room, he seems to project some type of invisible aura; call it a presence.
There's something about him. I wish we could isolate it, and bottle it; we could make a million dollars.

..