We all have a Twin. I finally met mine

Isn't he the cutest thing? But it turned out although we are spitting images of each other, we're nothing a like as I am not able to reach my genitalia with another other than my hands.

In Praise of Rocket Studios

I have this little curb painting business here in SoCal. It's a living, going door to door asking home owners if they want their street number painted on the curb in front of their homes. It's all in how you take off your cap and bring a knuckle to your forehead in a show of obeisance, and quaver out, "I say, guvner, (no, not her) paint yer curb?" That plus my winning smile and I'm able to keep our two boys in 2nd tier state colleges. It's not a Princeton/Yale living, but it's a living.

Anyway, I have a business website. I've had it for about three years. I paid someone to create it for me. I have zero ability to do anything with the website. I've been wanting to update it. On 2-01-08 I received a friendly email from my web hosting business, telling me about the wonderful upgrade they'd just done. It suggested I test my site. I did. The submission pages weren't working. Individual homeowners can submit orders on one page and HOAs and tract builders use the other page. Neither page worked.

I called the hosting service and was told by tech support that it was my problem. The simple, inescapable fact that it was their 'upgrade' that ruined things meant nothing to the young tech support person: my site, my problem.

So I turned to Rocket Studios, aka Katrocket. She switched me to a friendlier hosting service and built me a new website, one that comes with instructions on how I can do things on the extra pages she's provided. She was all the things one expects from a Mother Superior but seldom gets when it turns out you're not Catholic.

Now I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it just had to be said: Kat was my Rock(et) of Gibraltar. If you or someone you know needs professional (meaning you have to pay for the service) website building or remodeling, I insist that you ask her for a friendly, free review and quote. Plus mention my name and she'll add 20% to your fee and give me 5% of it.

We've done our taxes!

Okay, my wife did our taxes. She used TurboTax, referred to as "the box" in a certain TV commercial. It took her two and a half days. She says we're getting a refund. Mistrusting the beneficence of the American federal government, I'll believe it when I see it. But at least they're done and filed. Which lessens the charges they can lay against me in the future. Naturally if there's anything wrong, I say it was all my wife's doing and testify against her. But on the plus side, I promise to wait for her.

Why can't we find a less burdensome way to pay for the services we receive? If you're Nancy Pelosi, you think the current system is fine, taking from the rich and giving to the poor as it does. But doesn't she see that the money that the poor are given is spent by them for goods and services is the first step of that money's journey back into the wallets of those rich? But maybe there's no way to get around that inevitable cycle.

You know how people obey speed limit laws? Or don't? That's the kind of behavior we need from the American public when it comes to the IRS. A massive popular uprising of non-compliance, with people refusing to pay personal taxes would quickly result in a VAT or a FAIR tax being implemented and hopefully the IRS would turn it's enormous power towards policing manufacturers and sellers instead of individuals.

But hey, for this year I'm cool with the status quo.

I was talking to a guy the other day...

and we went on and on about life itsownself, but when we were finished, I realized that at least on my part, I hadn't really said anything. I was just blathering. Something we are all forced to do way to much in life: pretend to communicate. Mostly this pretending goes on when we know the guy isn't worth listening to or the woman isn't going to sleep with us for free.

Because humans use 'language' and 'language' is inexact and slippery, humans can't really communicate. Everyone thinks he can communicate, but no one really can. Sometimes we get darn close to it, but it's almost always an accident.

People who insist on precision in their use of words, and who use techniques to try to ensure that correct communication has taken place are almost universally shunned. Plus whether they are or not, the males who do this are always thought to be gay. And while I'm thinking about it, I can't ever remember meeting or hearing about a woman who strove to be precise in her communication efforts. At least in any situation that doesn't involve her explaining what she "wants."

And so we come to another difference between the sexes: Women want things; Men want to do things. How we all try to achieve our disparate goals is what Hollywood calls entertainment. But for us ordinary Joes and Janes, we are like the blind leading the double life of a secret agent who thinks he can see, but forgot his glasses. The fact that you finished that sentence and didn't hurl your breakfast proves my point: you're not listening to me. I should have listened to my mother and become an accountant.

Terror in Lower Manhattan!

First, the story EXACTLY as it appears on Fox News:

Police say a Parks Department employee took his city-issued golf cart on a rampage, running over and killing five birds in a public park.

Police say they arrested the 45-year-old employee Friday evening after receiving complaints that he was driving erratically in the park in Lower Manhattan. He faces charges of reckless endangerment and intentional injury to an animal.

Three pigeons and two sea gulls were killed.

I did some digging to get to the story behind the story. That is, after I had my mourning coffee; it was a somber breakfast, knowing the world was a poorer place, what with five birds taken in the prime of their lives.

I learned that the pigeons were members of a Bronx gang, Las Mierdas, and had been taunting employees of the Parks Department.

But the sea gulls just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But isn't that a necessary ingredient when it comes to senseless tragedy? It all could have been avoided if anyone, be he man or bird, who wants to can drive a vehicle could do so, instead of just people who are "licensed." Yeah, like not having a license stops criminals from getting behind the wheel.

I just know that if those sea gulls had had their own cars, they'd be alive today. Food for thoughts, people, food for thought...

Founder's Day

Laztheism marks it's second anniversary. The exact date is unknown, but it's sometime between today and next year's third anniversary. Not all details are important.

For those new to Laztheism, or those currently too inebriated to make sense of the memories, I offer these highlights:

Laztheism is the religion of non-religion.

Laztheism demands that you make no demands. This contrasts with atheism, which demands you deny the existence of god... Or Ghawd, as He is unknown to Laztheists. Laztheists neither insist nor deny that Ghawd exists; that's entirely up to Him.

Laztheism is a disorganized religion. There are only two things that are important about the fact that I am the titular head of the Laztheism: 1. The "tit" in titular is extremely distracting, and 2. my phone number is unlisted, meaning that you're on your own.

The principle tenet of Laztheism is that religion should not distract, impede, hamper or intrude on the art of living a good life. If you think this leads to chaos, then you're not hanging with the right people.

It's been said (in today's comics page) that Laztheism puts the 'fist' in pacifist. Since we have no scriptures (other than this blog) there's no way to prove or disprove this sentiment. But I like it.

Parking my horse went off without a hitch ...

... and now I'm on foot.

I found ten chapters of a book I more than half wrote some years ago. I was rummaging around the detritus of my office and so I promptly sat down and read it. It was semi-autobiographical, meaning it was all lies, versus a true autobiographical effort, which is just mostly lies.

Have you ever thought about writing your own eulogy? There is probably a viable market now for Professional Eulo-ologists. University Schools of Communication need to address this issue and need to offer degrees in Eulo-ology.

Besides the actual need to have a eulogy at the ready, crafting these eulogies on a yearly or biannual schedule would give you a history of your life as you wished you'd really lived it. If you think it's weird now going back and taking a look at your high school senior yearbook, imagine the delight in reading the eulogy prepared after your 25th birthday. If you add the power point presentation that now seems to be de rigueur at funerals, you'll eventually have a complete chronological history of how you want Ghawd to think you lived your life.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie (via Netflix) that has an elemental scene in it where a beloved character has the power point presentation for his funeral swapped out by a bitter enemy. The new new power point presentation starts with requisite smarminess and then descends to clips of the deceased doing gross and disgusting things, like writing a blog, or something equally hideous.

Think of what you could do in this vein for Bill Clinton's eventual funeral...

My Blackberry Kept on Working!

Of course I've always felt special, so today when my wife came in to tell me that Blackberry's all over North America weren't working and asked me if mine was, I checked and it was working fine. Since I was standing at my computer (Yes, I stand now to do desk work, so it's not desk work anymore, it's counter work, and saying that I do counter work makes me sound like I'm counter work and pro fun!) I did a quick check and every new email through out the day hit both my computer emails and Blackberry.

Why was this, why didn't my Blackberry suffer the service outage that apparently struck all over the Americas? I haven't a clue, except to pontificate that I'm special and as with any special Laztheist, nothing and no one watches over me, so it's just a current of history sweeping me along.

But to balance things out, Ipowerweb says my website has been upgraded, but when I went to test it, my forms submissions didnt work and now my username and passwords are working. I'd rather it had been the other way around...

Three Days to St. Valentine's Day...

Every year it's the same old Valentine's Day massacre, but without the machine gunning. But there is rattling off at the mouth... But the high speed in no way implies negativity. It's just that we like to get it over with quickly.

I will totally ignore the concept and practice of buying my wife a Valentine's Day product. Millions of dollars of advertising will be completely wasted on me.

My wife will let the day pass without comment, until after dinner, when she will hand me a Valentine's Day card, in an envelope. On the envelope will be my pet name... you know, something very youthful sounding, but yet kind of degenerate.

I will pretend surprise. I'll open it and read the message. (It's been the same card for, what?... maybe seven, eight years now.) I'll thank her for this wonderful expression of her love and suggest that an incredibly complicated and sordid love making technique would have worked just as well. She won't respond to this witticism (again) and then I'll say that I didn't get her anything for Valentine's Day because I won't be dictated to by commercial interests and that my love for her on Valentine's Day is the same as it is on every other day of the year, completely consuming of my very being.

Then she'll say, "Here, I got you this." She'll hand me a package, which I'll open and then hand her back the gee-gaw that she bought for herself. It used to be jewelry, but these last few years it's been socks or gloves.

Who says you have to be romantic to have romance in your life?

YouTube and Culture

I didn't know that you could find EVERYTHING on YouTube. I'm sure you can understand how I was of the notion that YouTube was just about emerging pop culture iconism.

But it's not. As I type this I am listening Herbert Von Karajan conducting Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 In F Major. That's the Pastoral, the one featured in Fantasia. If I typr= wign ny eues colsnotd I cqn see rhe wigned h[infes flyinbg about! Cppol!

Anyway, I am now a YouTube junkie. I've listed to the the last two-thirds of the 9th Symphony and all of the 5th, and last night I found a student orchestra delivering of themselves a very credible Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italienne. That's his opus 98, for those of you keeping score.

And if you promise not to tell anyone, I also listened/watched Peter Cetera doing The Glory of Love, which I will one day learn on the guitar and sing to my wife when she least expects it.

And I listened to Heart and to Richard Pryor and Shania Twain and Reba McIntyre and Dusty Springfield (You don't own me) and I'll keep on searching through the debris of my youth, kicking about among the flotsam and jetsam that keeps washing ashore...

You know how when you went to visit your grandmother in the old folks and all those geezers were just sitting around doing nothing but looking for someone to grab a hold of so they could tell you what they did at the Chicago World's Fair? Well, we, in our old age, won't be doing that. We'll be in our wheel chairs with a laptop and earphones, reliving our lives on YouTube. Go, us!

Stolen from another Blog !!

Literally, but not really...

See, I typed it all in Mrs. LK's blog, as a comment. But I was SOOOO entranced with it (a lot of what I type is new to me as a I read it) that I just had to have it all to myself. This is what men are geniuses at, wanting things! So here it is, freshly copied & pasted from her site, as a response to why stupid things happen:

There are three levels to any organization:

1. the lowest level, where people do what needs to be done,

3. the highest level, where people decide what needs to be done, and

2. the middle level, where people too lazy to do what needs to be done and too dumb to know what needs to be done, sit and make up things they think ought to be done.

Not that it matters, but all politicians at the national level are in the middle level.

A suggestion to my Catholic friend. (Yes, I only have one...)

Today, in the Catholic version of life itsownself, is Shrove Tuesday. (To Shrave: to eat as much as you can while clothed. I'm going to shrave like a pig on my birthday. Oy, I shrove like there was no tomorrow, or like tomorrow was Lent!)

Anyway, to my Catholic friend, give up Lent for the next 40 days. What's ghawd going to do, smite thee? C'mon, how many people do you think are in line ahead of you for a good smiting?

...Or I'll Beat you with a Dead Horse!

Today is the 40th anniversary of when I would have arrived in Vietnam for my first of four tours of duty, had I not french kissed a psychiatrist at my draft physical.

I had a whole day to screw up my courage to commit this dastardly deed. You have to realize that as a very ardent heterosexualist, with a family crest of an erect penis rampant on a field of hardwood bolts, that kissing another man, with or without tongue, was as close to being impossible as was the thought of being away from women for a year or more. (Although I had read The World of Susie Wong, I didn't make the gymnastic mental leap needed to figure out that sex was going to be even more available in 'Nam than it was in Provo, Utah, which is saying something!)

During the back and forth debate that raged in me that day, there were times I just knew I couldn't kiss another man, even to save myself from a year in Vietnam. And during these interludes I would imagine myself as enjoying military life. I pictured myself as a beautiful killing machine, all smiles and death. I could see myself as a drill instructor, loathed but respected by my men, and I rehearsed speeches to platoons of new recruits. And because I've never been a swearer or a taker of a god's name in vain, I had to come up with effective invective so as to instill respect and fear in my recruits. And that's when I invented, "... or I'll beat you with a dead horse!"

But it was all for naught. The psychiatrist was not a bad looking man and I kissed him, deeply, lingeringly, but not passionately. The whole time my arms embraced him and my lips were on his, I was thinking of Paula Bunker. Yeah, Paula Bunker, the one who got away, the one who hurt me so badly that I refused to make love to another woman with that first name or those initials. To this day, when my wife asks me if I want a PB&J for dinner, I cry. Yep, it's almost been 50 years, but the thought of Paul Bunker and Jelly still makes my eyes moist.

I Boated Today, Did You?

I'm not trying to impress you, because that's not my job. J.W. Thompson handles that chore for me, although I've been having difficulty finding an Account Executive whom I feel can really appreciate me.

Nope, this post is just to let you know that I'm a good American, that my Laztheist tendencies don't get in the way of my boating.

I've been boating since I was an adult. Which is a long time ago! That's a lot of boats and boating! But because it helps keep America strong, I'm not going to stop boating.

Remember, you dinghies, every boat counts!


(a tip o' the Banana's chapeau to Gilda Radnor and Violins in School...)

Another Example of bad Nanny-ism!

Again I didn't click on the link, but if you can't trust a Drudge headline, who can you trust?

A school district somewhere in the United States of America is going to outlaw intentional farting.

Smells good on paper, right? Who isn't against rampant pull-my-finger-ism? How many times can it be funny? (Okay, only 'pullers' get to vote on this question.)

But who gets to judge whether it was intentional or not?

True story: in 8th grade we had a kid transfer in to my class. The core of this class, say 20 out of 23, had been together since 4th grade. So here was an outsider. And you know how brutally despotic junior high kids can be. His name was Arthur. I can still see his bespectacled face, but I can't remember his last name. He didn't live near any of the rest of us. His mother made him vegetable sandwiches, like onion, lettuce & tomato (OLTs were obviously going to invite ridicule!) and he had gas.

He farted uncontrollably! (Well, we all assumed he couldn't control it.) Maybe he would have been better off with detention, instead of having Kent Reid, who sat behind him, continually pretend to faint and fall out of his seat. But it was always funny, the way Kent would get our attention with his fake gagging, start waving his hands in front of his face, and then fall over.

Mrs. Morrison finally put Art/Fart (there is no limit to the cruelty children inflict on the weak) at rear of the class, next to the door, which when he started farting, she would open and ask him to move closer to it.

Anyway, we had all better start practicing a credible look of stunned surprise...

Kindness killed him...

This is one of those stories that makes you shake your head. Palsy will also make you shake your head, even if you're illiterate.

In 1952 Roger Storme was a successful garage owner in Hopeful, Alabama, 36 years old, married 16 years to his high school sweetheart and the father of 14 year old fraternal twins, Roger, Jr. and Rebecca. He was also Wizard 2nd Class in the local Ku Klux Klan. He was always proud of how blindingly white his wife bleached his sheets.

On October 21, he was walking with two of his fellow Klansmen down Jefferson Davis St. He was sandwiched between Lucas Morgan and Paul Stuartz, both of whom had recently joined the KKK and were eager to be seen as worthy members. Had they not been present, there'd be no story.

They were walking up a hill, towards the courthouse. Suddenly a shrill cry was raised. Roger looked up the hill and saw a Negro woman (that's how people spoke back then...) crying out and pointing to a baby buggy that was rolling towards the three men and picking up speed.

As he would relate to his wife almost daily in the three months that followed, he acted without thinking. He positioned himself on the sidewalk to catch and stop the baby buggy. As the mother came rushing down the hill to him, Roger looked into the buggy and saw a Negro infant. Then he looked up at the Negro woman hastening towards him. Sweat began to bead his forehead. He looked over at Lucas and Paul, both of whom were backing away from him, horror writ plain on their faces.

By the time he got home that evening, the story had reached the ears of everyone in Hopeful, Alabama and was making it's way out along all the four compass directions.

Roger Storme, a lifelong racist, had become undone because of one act of thoughtless kindness. Roger took his own life the following Christmas Eve. In his suicide note he mentioned his love for God, country and the Klan, and apologized for having let the White Race down.

The Negro child whose life Roger possibly saved grew up to be Black. He is alive and well and living in Atlanta, GA, where he has a prosperous dental practice and has no recollection of that day in 1952, although his mother never tires of telling the story.

There is a moral to this story, but it's not always the same for everyone.

"We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to ..."

According to the title to a link on Drudge, (someone'd have to pay me to actually click a link....) some southern state is planning on ordering/authorizing? restaurants to refuse to serve food to obese people. Meaning the 'slippery slope' is turning into a cliff to fall off of.

Rock-rib Republicans and Libertarians, not to mention anarchists and nihilists, are opposed to governments playing Nanny with their governed. As I am at least one and a half of the above four food groups, I must stand to oppose to Nanny-ism. If you're in favor of Nanny-ism, I can understand the draw and I have to admit that to some extent Nanny-ism has to exist. Obviously I appreciate the vigor expended by the appropriate governmental agencies to deliver into my home uncontaminated drinking water and to see to the removal of waste and excrement.

But I put forth that while I can tolerate Nanny-ism for the group, I must oppose it for the individual. So I'm against helmet rules for motorcyclists. I admit the safety issue is very valid, so why not mandate that all humans wear crash helmets when in public? If the majority voted such a law into force, I'd be happy to obey it. A whole new fashion industry would spring into being! Safety and new jobs!

Drunk drivers are a menace. It's a good thing for bartenders to cut off obviously intoxicated drinkers, but they're doing it to protect the bar against a very good basis for a law suit, should the drinker injure himself or others. So that's not Nanny-ism in its pure form.

Who decides whether a person is obese? Due to an unfortunate glandular problem, I have one obese leg. Will my one fat leg be enough to get me refused service at the Hee-Haw Home of Grits & Macaroni? Can I sneak in my wife if I be-girdle the bejebus out of her?

Again, this is way more than just a small slide down the slippery slope, this is a step of the cliff that will, in a generation or two, cocooned to the max from everything that makes life fun. Or it just could be a reaction by a chain of all you can eat buffets to increase their profitability. After all, we are a nation of special interests...

Please feel free to hyperbole along with me....