March 29, 2011

A lot has happened since my last blog. 2011 has roared in with a lot of turmoil. The turmoil in my personal life so far this year includes the loss, gain, and loss of employment, health problems (involving skin infections I never had to deal with when I lived in NYC), and lost friends. I lost several friends to paranoia, one friend to Kregeritis, and another to a heart attack- at 28. Unfortunately, Jeff Braverman's surviving family is still struggling over his death, and to be honest, they need the prayers more than he does.

There's also been a lot of political turmoil. Some of it could have been predicted with the Republican wave last election day. But the current turmoil in the Middle East is what will affect world history more than any union attempts to convince public opinion to support their attempts to milk more money out of a broken and overtaxed economy. Tunisia and Egypt are free of their autocratic leaders, and there is civil unrest in Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, and Syria. The biggest news in the Middle East right now is the civil war in Libya. Muammar the wacko (I won't print his surname here because there are at least 4 conflicting Arabic-to-English spellings of it in various media sources) is fighting to keep power after losing the eastern part of Libya to insurgents inspired by the revolutions in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. After the Arab League and EU "discovered" that Muammar was targeting civilians (I guess they forgot what his agents did over Lockerbie in 1988), they lobbied the UN to approve a "no-fly zone" over Libya. President Obama used the resolution as an excuse to supply most of the airpower to enforce the no fly zone. This has caused some weird shifts in the US political dynamic. Conservatives are split on Obama's actions, as are the various tea party contingents. Many Democrats are calling for Obama's impeachment over enforcing the UN resolution. And Obama is making a poor case as to why the US is even involved in Libya. But if anything, Obama should point out that we are finishing an action that Reagan should have completed in 1986. If Reagan had bombed Muammar the Wacko into hell during the 1986 bombings, we could have been spared the Pan Am bombings, various terrorist attacks, and the buildup of a chemical weapons program that was only stopped when Muammar saw the damage that the US Army did in Iraq in 2003.

George Soros and the wacko leftists are at it again. Soros is using his non-profit Media Matters organization to plot a "guerilla warfare and sabotage" against News Corp and Fox News Channel. While I think that one of the big 4 networks should be out of business (mainly because the FCC didn't do its job in 1993), I diasgree with the Soros war against Fox, especially since Fox is no more biased to the right than MSNBC and NPR are to the left and has certainly not done anything illegal other than tear Soros's worldview to shreds.

First of all, Fox News Channel is a cable channel. The FCC has little influence over cable, except to dictate competition and rates bargaining. While I tend to agree with news coverage on Fox News more than I would on ABC News or MSNBC, I do have some issues with Fox News's management ideas. While I know of various web sites that stream CNN, Fox has done everything in its power to shut down sites that try to stream its news. Why? Not everyone has or can afford cable. And why should any commercial network (Fox News, USA, Spike, or any of the over-the-air networks) charge to transmit their programs onto cable on the first place? What the hell are these networks doing with their advertising revenue? And are they so broke that they can't live off that? And if Fox News gave a damn about trying to have as many viewers as possible to watch their "fair and unbiased" news, they should do an end-run around cable by making Fox News and little-watched Fox Business available as subchannels on every over-the-air Fox affiliate in the country.

If Soros wanted to use his powers to destroy a network/media company that actually has violated the public interest (the modus operandi for the FCC), he should go after NBC. Soros probably won't since NBC's news divisions are closest in line to his worldview. But NBC never got punished for the most egregious violation of public interest in my lifetime- the Dateline report where producers tried to prove GM trucks were explosive by rigging explosives on a truck and passing that off as a fuel tank defect. Sure, the NBC News president (Michael Gartner) was forced to resign, but NBC News is still on the air. Dateline NBC is still on the air. And NBC received no fines or sanctions from the FCC for staging the GM story. Meanwhile, CBS got fined $550000 for an accidental nipple flash during the 2004 Super Bowl. How the hell is that a bigger violation of the public interest than anything NBC News has put on the air over the last 20 years? And I still haven't forgotten the "Syracuse Peacock" incidents from March of 1997, when a Syracuse grad employee of WNBC (NBC's low rated flagship station in New York) made threatening calls to the Brooklyn College Excelsior student newspaper concerning my articles that mentioned his pathetic excuse for an employer.

General Electric was so upset with what NBC was doing to its image (and its profits) that they sold NBC to Comcast last year. Comcast now controls the largest collection of cable systems in the country and 3 over-the-air broadcast networks (NBC, Ion, and Telemundo). Since most liberals hate media monopolies, why aren't they crying out over this illegal (under most FCC rules) media combination?

Getting slightly off the NBC tangent, I have replaced the Windows 2000 system that was installed on my Dell in favor of a Linux-based OS called Ubuntu. Trying to figure out Linux and trying to re-learn UNIX (the MS-DOS for Linux) for the first time since 1997 should be a fun challenge between job searches. This is the first blog I've composed in a completely non-Windows format- using Ubuntu 10.10, Leafpad, and Ubuntu's generic version of Firefox. But then, I have used Firefox's Windows version for most of these blogs between 2005-2010. And if I can master these new programming languages, there's another thing to add to my resume.

April 4, 2008

Today is a big anniversary day. On this date 40 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. He was 39 years old. My grandparents' (George and Hazel Clarke) 39th wedding anniversary was also on April 4, 1968. Needless to say, their special dinner planned for that night was cancelled.

A lot has changed since 1968. Race relations are much better now than then. Hate groups like the KKK are no longer in political power (with the possible exception of West Virginia Senator Robert "Sheets" Byrd). The KKK no longer controls the governments of Colorado or Indiana. But there still is a memorial statue of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, TN. But it probably is a good thing that a man of African heritage such as Barack Obama can be a serious Presidential contender. It is also a good thing that criticisms of Barack Obama have nothing to do with his racial heritage and everything to do with his liberal viewpoints on issues. And there may be a non-white Vice President, too- several top names for John McCain's VP list include J.C. Watts, Michael Steele, Condoleezza Rice, and Bobby Jindal.

I spent a good part of the day on the job interview circuit. I also tried googling certain names that popped up in my Prodigy Posts page. 2008 marks 15 years since I entered the online commentary and message board world. Within a week, I got dragged into an online war involving a sexual psychopath named Mark Pena and dome of his victims. By the time Pena was vanquished (late 1993), I found out about another online flamer named Mark (whose last name wasn't Pena) who also went by the name of Vito. A Fresno police detective named Frank Clark was investigating the Vito case (and was also being impersonated by Vito). And just when I thought this was too surreal, CBS News did an investigation of their own on Vito. Vito was eventually arrested, although I don't know if he was ever imprisoned for any of the charges brought against him.

With Vito out of the picture, another flamer appeared by the name of Gerald "Gerbil" Jones. Pena critic Jerry Vasilatos at first thought the Gerbil was Pena. That launched a yearlong harassment and death threat tirade from the Gerbil against me, Vasilatos, and anyone else who called the psycho out for who he was. Even after the Gerbil finally vanished, his online buddy Tommy Davis (who also went by such names as Sean Kelly and BJ Backus) continued his slime campaign for another 3 years. The last I heard of him (1997), he claimed to be a talk show host on WTTM-920AM in Trenton, NJ. That station is no longer a talk station, and if Davis ever worked for them, I'm sure he's unemployed now. Davis also claimed to be a parishioner at St. Thomas Aquinas in Flatlands, Brooklyn. My friend George Brice attends Mass there now, maybe he should investigate if Mr. Davis ever got physically abused like he claimed 11 years ago. Maybe George should also find out if their priests are willing to go to Washington Crossing, PA, to do an exorcism.

The last online war I got involved in was not with a stranger, but someone I considered a friend. It started during my days at Brooklyn College. Someone going by the AOL name of "Danihottie" harassed most of the staff of the student newspaper I worked for, the Excelsior. It took until after I left Brooklyn College (and one virused-out 486 computer and more Danihottie harassment against my sister and some friends who never attended Brooklyn College) that I found out that Danihottie was the Excelsior's supposedly ditsy editor Alyson Walansky.

I'm not sure what really happened to Mark Pena. If you Google his name, some of his posts I put on my website might pop up, but there's also an Austin-based 30something singer with that name. It might be him- after all, he did claim to work at a nightclub in Austin called Dante's. Former Prodigy member Beth Donovan has a blog on Pena that links to my Prodigy Posts page on my website. Despite the Pena fiasco and other tirades, she met her now-husband on Prodigy.

Jerry Vasilatos is still alive, and for the most part doing well. Unfortunately, a decade in Hollywood has turned the filmmaker into a raging anti-Bush leftist. I tried adding him to my MySpace friends list last year, but no response. But he probably knew beforehand that the guy he's trying to get impeached is my distant cousin.

Alyson has probably a bigger online presence than I do. But I did see a recent picture of her, and for someone who was born when I was in the first grade, she sure looks older than me. She is still friends with Scott Kuperberg (the BC Campus Democrats leader whom I often clashed with). Her Friendster page (which I knew nothing about until an few minutes ago) even jokes about the Danihottie fiasco from 8-10 years ago! There is another Danihottie that showed up on Google, but this other Danihottie was 8 years old when Alyson went on her flaming ego trip.

No one has seen or heard from Gerbil Jones since he made a brief appearance on Prodigy's Gay bulletin board in late 1995. I tried doing an "online obituary" for the Gerbil based on his "diaries", and there was also a Gerbil Jones based tirade that appeared in the Excelsior in May of 1997. There apparently is a filmmaker that goes by the name of Gerbil Jones. One Gerbil Jones is more than enough, thank you.

April 6, 2006

Greetings, all, from the Netscaper 113 sickbed in Queens. I still don't know what caused me to get sick, but I missed work yesterday and spent most of this morning at Elmhurst Hospital. I have to return there tomorrow to get back the last of my test results. I did get one test result back this morning: I am not HIV positive. Not that I fall in any of the risk categories for HIV, but I did get a free HIV test to go along with my other exam. The HIV test was administered orally, as opposed to using needles. And I was able to get the results back in an hour. I still have a stomach ailment and a bad skin condition, but at least I don't have a killer virus. I am stuck on a soup and bread diet for a few days until the stomach ailment goes away.

I don't intend on discussing the rising gas prices or Spitzer campaign in this post (I'm sick enough as it is), but there has been major news that will affect my TV viewing. When Bob Schieffer took the anchor job at CBS Evening News in March 2005, he said his job was temporary. Well, CBS finally found Bob's replacement: Katie Couric from NBC (also known as National Bull Crap for the way they treat news). I don't blame Katie for wanting to leave the cesspool of broadcast journalism, but I don't think her signing was a great move by CBS. CBS's evening news ratings have risen considerably since Bob Schieffer took over last year. Do they really think the co-anchor of a morning show that omitted the most newsworthy event at last year's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a good choice? And NBC has already announced Katie's replacement: Meredith Viera, who currently hosts "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and the odious ABC talk show called "The View". Wasn't Meredith Viera the same 60 Minutes former correspondent who announced how glad she was that she was out of journalism following the September 11th attacks? Well, Today isn't a news show, it's a crap fest. And Meredith, no amount of Lysol is going to get that smell off the new entry on your resume.

February 11, 2006

I recently read an article on Netscape ISP's homepage about how everyone born before 1987 is now considered old. But since I was born in 1972 (and turn 34 in 3 months), I'm not quite over the hill just yet. Maybe I should set the geezer year at 1968 and make the following remarks about all non-geezers:

They don't remember a living JFK, and Ted Kennedy has always been a Senator.

A Klansman has always been the senior Senator from West Virginia (Robert Byrd).

PBS and Sesame Street have always existed.

60 Minutes has always been on CBS.

The Super Bowl has always existed.

The Internet has always been in use, although some may remember it being called ARAPNET.

The US has always been involved in some type of Middle Eastern political affair, crisis, or war.

Richard Nixon has always been remembered as a current or former President.

Ronald Reagan has always been known as a current or former politician and not as an actor.

Segregated schools, theatres, water fountains, etc. have always been illegal under Federal law (although if I had been born in 1971 or earlier and lived in Memphis before 1978, I would have briefly remembered being in an illegally segregated school system).

Detroit has always been a declining and very dangerous city.

Houston and San Diego have always been bigger than Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.

California has always been the most populous state in the Union.

The only civil rights leader with a surname of King they remember had the first name of Coretta.

Michael Jackson and Elton John have always been famous.

In half the Presidential elections they remember, the winner won with less than half the popular vote.

The computer has always been around, although some can remember when cassettes were used to run them.

McDonald's, K-Mart, and Wal Mart have always been in existence.

And, finally, Flintstones Vitamins and Geritol have always been around and suggested for people who are older than the year listed on these type lists.

And in distressing news, the NYC area is expecting a blizzard overnight, which means I will be walking right through the middle of it on my way to work tomorrow morning. Also, Tom Golisano decided not to run, which means the Republicans are really screwed. But hopefully, Tom Suozzi will beat Spitzer and the state won't get screwed.

January 25, 2006

Well folks, the year is only 4 weeks old and already some major news has rocked the broadcast media world. CBS and Time Warner have merged their UPN and WB networks into something called the CW Network. Why UPN and the WB had to go out of business while NBC is still polluting the airwaves is beyond me, but now we're down to 5 major English-language broadcast networks. But there are a lot of markets in this country that don't have both UPN and WB stations, so they should be delighted by this news. It's also a vote of confidence for WWE's Smackdown, which along with "Everybody Hates Chris" and "America's Top Model" was the UPN show most mentioned during the merger announcement. In fact, those shows will be moving to higher rated stations in NYC, LA, and Chicago. The biggest losers in this new network announcement are the soon-to-be-ex UPN stations owned by Fox such as WWOR 9 New Jersey, KCOP 13 LA, and WPWR 50 Chicago.

In other news, the NY Governor's Race is getting into gear. Overconfident Eliot Spitzer has already picked a running mate, who is not sitting too well with certain Democrats. This may end up boosting Tom Suozzi's candidacy, as he is far less odious (and far less likely to drive millions of jobs out of this state) than Spitzer. If you're to believe the blogs and internet news sources, Senator Chucky Schumer and various Wall Street types are trying to help Suozzi's candidacy. I recently got an automated voice mail message urging me to help Spitzer's campaign. If I knew what phone number left Spitzer's message, I'd return the favor with a 3 minute answering
message consisting of the Box Office Poison song "Inconsiderate" and reasons why Spitzer should move to New Jersey and kill their job market instead of New York's. At the very least, a Governor Spitzer would drive NYRA and me out of New York. A Governor Spitzer could also drive the stock markets out of New York, which is why so many conservative Wall Street types are supporting Democrat Tom Suozzi's challenge against Spitzer. Hopefully this race will be a battle of two Toms- Independent-turned-Republican Tom Golisano is exploring whether to run as a Republican. He would instantly be the front runner for the Republican nomination if he ran, and would probably get most of Suozzi's support if Suozzi lost the Democratic nomination to Spitzer. Most importantly, Golisano is a self-made millionaire who wouldn't need outside money to counter the MoveOn.org, DNC, and left wing PAC money that would bankroll Spitzer's
campaign (which could easily be around $100-150 million). Either Golisano or Suozzi is welcome to use my anti-Spitzer ad idea that compares Spitzer's job killing record to the jobs lost because of Osama bin Laden's terrorist attack in 2001.

I would also like to thank the left wing wackos at Air America WLIB 1190 for the anti-Bush materials they keep sending me. It reminds me why I support our President against these wackos, and it saves my landlord money on kitty litter.

January 1, 2006

Well folks, 2005 is over. I'm fairly glad it's over, since I managed to lose several friends, 3 jobs, 3 vehicles, and had to face the premature deaths of a cousin and a roommate (see December 25, 2005 blog- that story was not made up).

2006 started out as most years do in NYC, with a lot of fanfare in Times Square. I spent midnight at home, since I had to be up early this morning. I flipped between New York 1, Fox 5, ABC 7, and CNN (Channel 10 on Time Warner Queens cable). ABC 7 had the return of Dick Clark (no relation). He sounded awful- but supposedly because of his 2004 stroke, he had to re-learn how to talk. The real host of ABC's New Year's Eve celebration was the smarmy Ryan Seacrest. Fox settled with the more conventional Regis Philbin. Normally, Fox employs Seacrest for their American Idol show, while Philbin's normal employer is ABC 7. CBS 2, which normally is on top of news stories, eschewed Times Square coverage in favor of a CSI rerun.

I usually spend New Year's Day at work at Aqueduct Racetrack. Today was my 9 year anniversary there. I handed out and stocked the tables with calendars. I have been there every year since 1997. But due to NYRA's financial troubles (and the threat faced by a potential Spitzer administration), the calendar giveaway may be the last giveaway held at Aqueduct. The promotions department isn't sure when the next giveaway will be. Supposedly Aqueduct will become a slot machine haven next year, and assuming that happens, the track will be saved. But now the track is in bad shape, and that affects the promotional department's budget, which in turn affects my budget.

But 2006 is starting on an uncertain note. Now that the giveaways are over, I have to go on unemployment again. I found out my sister has spent the last 4 days at a hospital in Louisiana. My friends Jon and Tyrone are feuding, and I'm caught in the middle of their noncommunication. There's a tropical storm in the Atlantic (which has only happened once before in January). And the destructive job killing Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is still way out in front in the polls to be NY's next governor. I hope he doesn't win, but I have saved several potential employers' names in Colorado Springs and Las Vegas in case he does win. But I would like to go to Times Square for New Year's one of these days.

August 14, 2005

Maybe I got too religious in the last (February) blog, so I'll try not to offend the non-Catholics out there in this one- except to remind Catholics that tomorrow is the Feast of the Assumption. Since it is on a Monday this year, it is not a Holy Day of Obligation. I'll probably be ushering at tomorrow night's 7:30 PM Mass, though.

Now onto other things:

This summer is too damn hot. So far it is the third hottest summer in NYC history. I don't have air-conditioning, so that means I have been sleep deprived lately. Some people do not adapt well to 90+ degree heat. It is one of the numerous reasons I moved out of Tennessee right after high school (although at least there I had air conditioning). And if these temperatures were effecting Memphis right now, they'd be happy to have a summer with much fewer than their normal 60+ 90 degree days. (NYC has had 20 so far, if you count today.)

Another gripe has to do with gas prices. Gas is up to $2.63 in this neighborhood. I filled up at the Hess on Cypress and Cooper on Friday, which was at $2.57 on Friday evening but up to $2.63 by Saturday morning. My Taurus gets better mileage than my old V8 Caprice did, but still, $26 to fill up half a tank? I am pretty active now on the GasBuddy.com sites (screen name there also Netscaper113).

And finally, I discovered sites that make the loony left go absolutely bonkers. Some people don't have a sense of humor. My psychotical liberal former roommate Lynda Kreger went haywire when I suggested that people give me money so I can use the services of hire-a-killer.com on her. First of all, hire-a-killer.com is not for real, and its creators admitted as much on a recent CBS Evening News profile earlier this summer. Thanks to the psycho whining to Delphi, my internet forum got deleted- even though death threats posted against me and my sister on that forum in 1999 and 2000 got nary a peep from Delphi. Maybe I should create a "live or die" website for Lynda- but then I'd pocket the money and move to Mexico and this (bleep) who was twice fired by the NYC Department of Education (it's hard to fire a teacher once in this system, but firing her twice proves she's a major threat to kids everywhere) would still be roaming the Brooklyn streets pissing off countless others with her rampages and threats to give "doggie lithium" to her neighbor's dog. And last time I checked, the original hire-a-killer site was down.

The threat of hire-a-killer.com made only one liberal go bonkers that I know of. A much more successful (and hilarious) website appeared last February to numerous animal rights wacko protests. I am talking of savetoby.com. Supposedly, this guy wants $50K in rabbit upkeep or else he will cook his rabbit Toby using one of the recipes on his site. The fact that the site's owner threatened to cook Toby on NBC News (the most unethical news organization out there) should have proven right away that this was another spoof. My initial reactions to the site were "funny" and "why the hell didn't I come up with this site first?". Copycat sites have come since then, including saveophelia.org (where a woman wants to eat her saved Pepperidge Farms goldfish), whereistoby.com (where savetoby.com's owner is supposedly outed), and tobystew.com, which encourages people to not donate and to enjoy eating rabbits. Thanks to these sites, I now know why Bugs Bunny didn't want to be turned into hassenpheffer in that 1950s cartoon.

Another animal wacko's nightmare is the long-running bonsaikitten.com . The Bonsai Kitten site is funny as hell, but people are claiming it's abuse to glue kittens' butts shut and to stuff them in glass boxes. That's certainly more humane than what certain restaurants do to cats or what most liberals propose doing to the unborn in this country, but the fact that a joke website is so popular just ticks them off. I'm sure they'd love eatbabies.com . At least that site comes with a disclaimer- and recipes.