Random Esquire

1.  I caught Andy Rooney on 60 minutes today.  He was talking about kitchen gadgets and he held up a device used to remove stems from strawberries.  It was a small hinged pair of rusty metal tongs which he held between two fingers with fingernails that looked like they’d be equally effective.  It looked like a torture device.  I wouldn’t normally recommend a manicure for a guy but I might suggest a buzz saw and a sander for those claws Andy calls his fingernails.

2.  Boss called me yesterday and invited me to brunch.  Then she insisted on paying for it. For the first time.  In about 7 years.  I am…how do you say it…pleasantly suspicious.

3.  I reached for a Kleenex this evening and paused when I noticed something odd.  The Kleenex peeking out of the box had small little pinched looking places in a few different spots.  I did not think much of it until later when I saw Little Filthy, front paws on the coffee table, delicately trying to pull a tissue from the box with his front teeth.  Marvelous.

4.  I need to cut down on caffeine.

5.  Looking forward to a fantastic dinner out on Wednesday and I hope to take some pictures to share.  It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

The media is rubbish.

I read MSNBC and this headline/byline stood out to me:  “$60,000 in debt, and nothing to show for it: Mary Uhazi is drowning in a sea of debt that she built up slowly over more than two decades of easy credit. But now she’s worried she won’t be able to pay it all off.”

Does anyone read that and boggle a bit?  First of all, I have to laugh.  This woman used credit for 20 years and accumulated $60,000.  Okay, that is mind boggling but part of me accepts that this, while an extreme case, does happen and many people do find themselves swimming in credit card debt.  The part that made me laugh was this:  But now she’s worried she won’t be able to pay it all off.

Is it just me or does anyone else think she should have hit that point a long, long time ago?  The article goes on to say:  “Now she worries she won’t be able to pay it off because of the recession, which has led to a reduction in her salary and an increase in her credit card bills.”

Seriously?  The recession has caused her to question if she’ll be able to pay of $60,000 in credit card debt?!  I just have to laugh.  People, the recession is not a catch-all excuse for the failures (human though they may be) of personal responsibility in spending.  Even if her credit cards completely eliminated her interest rate and even if her state job’s income was not decreased due to furloughs…I’m thinking that Mary should have had some doubts long ago about her ability to pay off this mountain of debt.  In fact, it would have been helpful if she’d had those reasonable thoughts before she incurred the debt.

This also caught my eye:  “She’s thought about trying to get a second job in the evenings, but such jobs are hard to get these days, and she worries about taking a position away from someone else who has no other means of income.”

Am I reading this correctly?  She just said: “I thought about trying …but it sounds hard.  And, from the goodness of my heart, I don’t want to take the job away from someone else.”

And this:  “Financial goals she once dreamed of, like buying her own home, have been put off indefinitely.”

Owning a home isn’t some *impossible* dream.  You have to take steps to do it – and I suspect she never seriously looked into those steps because, at some point, she would have learned that having that much credit card debt was going to make her home owning dream that much more of a fantasy.  I think her home buying dreams were probably put off $40,000 ago.

This reminds me of my first entry on the media – where some spammer sent pictures of women having sex with animals and the news group spent all this time and money tracking down the spammer.  No, media, NO.  You go find the woman having sex with these animals because 1) you have her picture and 2) people have more serious questions about her than some dude hitting the send button.
BAH.

I realize that what some people like about Sarah Palin is that she seems like an average American.

What I don’t get is why that’s a good thing.

Don’t get me wrong.  America is a great country and the Americans sometimes amaze me with their strength.  But the average American isn’t wowing me with average intelligence.  Can I say that?  The average person is just that – average.

I don’t want the country being run by someone with average intelligence.  (I know she’s a VP candidate but let’s face it…with a 1 in 3 chance of McCain dying in his first term, I have to consider the possibility of her being President…and anyway, I want someone smart for VP, too.)  And I don’t get these McCain comments in which he says that Palin won’t impress anyone with her Harvard degree because she doesn’t have one.  Okay, so, when did having a degree from Harvard become some badge that indicated the recipient was no longer human and down to Earth?  Did I miss something?  And you know what, John McCain?  I’m not so stupid that I’d vote for someone purely because they had a Harvard degree so don’t insult my conscious choice of who I want to be President by reducing it to where someone went to school.  That’s ridiculous.  You don’t have to go to Harvard to be smart but it helps to be smart to go to Harvard.  Which brings me to my next point:

I want someone smart running the country.  I want someone infinitely smarter than me.  I don’t want Joe six-pack running the country.  Is that wrong of me?  I don’t even want an average dentist working on my teeth or an average contractor working in my home.   We don’t trust average Americans to run our companies and just become CEO – why the hell would we want an average person running the freakin’ country?  I don’t get it.

I wonder if people in other countries are looking at this campaign saying, “Look at those Americans. They don’t even care if someone is smart…they are going to elect this woman because they think she is pretty.  Quick, hand me something that glitters…they will make it Secretary of State.”

1.  I broke up with a girl once because she had, in my humble opinion, too much facial hair on her upper lip.  I figured the problem was only going to get worse.

2.  I have bad eyes.  Like…really bad eyes.  In fact, if you tell me your prescription, I will probably laugh and offer to trade you peepers.  I jumped into the shower (why is it people ‘jump’ into the shower?) this morning in a bit of a rush and did so before putting in my contacts.  Result?  I used Little Filthy’s conditioner.

3.  I don’t understand movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding or Made of Honor in which the point of the movie is to convince you to cheer on some asshole who didn’t love someone until that person was about to get married.  God, I hate romantic comedies.

4.   You know, John McCain, I’m pretty sure that Obama isn’t suggesting we teach kindergarten children how to put Tab A into Slot B so quit acting like he is.

5.   Hey man, you’re taking public transportation.  Which means that members of the public will be on the train and may sit next to you and you should accept that as a matter of due course.  So don’t put your damn bag on the seat next to you and act like you’re sleeping.

6.  Holy crap, AIG – for real? 85 Billion dollars?  Assholes.

7.  Don’t serve me raw shrimp with squeezed on lemon juice and call it ceviche because if the shrimp are still translucent, it’s just raw, lemony shrimp.  Idiot.  And don’t split a shrimp down the back unless you’re going to clean out the poop chute because I’m not eating what even a lowly shrimp decided was waste product.

8.  Escalator laws:  Stand on right.  Walk on Left.  Don’t block the whole way.  Don’t fall down.  Tie your shoes before you get on.  Don’t stop moving at the top.  Got it?

9.  For God’s sake, man, do not wear freakin’ penny loafers with a suit.  What’re you, 7?

10.  Why the hell is my blog now underlining every link?  Why must you hate me, blog?

1. Babies are made out of food. I know they don’t come out with a turkey leg and a carrot arm. It’s just that it sometimes strikes me that:

Woman + one sperm + food = baby. What the hell?

2. No one ever says “What?” in books. A book can be totally realistic and still nobody says, “What did you just say? No, before that. No, after that…what did you say?” That bothers me.

3. In books, there are never two people with the same name. I know no less than 3 Roberts and yet, in books, there’s always only one of each name. Only one Robert. That bothers me, too.

This post features the Andy Rooney stamp of cynicism, gracing all things wonderfully crabby.

There are two things I do not understand at all:

and .

Criss Angel and Robin Thicke. I just do not get it. I know they have talent so I won’t dispute that.

Criss Angel reminds of the kid who rode his skateboard to school. The major difference being that he seems to be surrounded by attractive women. Not only is he perpetually dirty, he’s a magician (formerly a kiss of death to any young man’s sex life) and he has a speech impediment. At what point do these gorgeous women look over and realize that they are with a makeup-free Marilyn Manson-esque David Copperfield who looks about 3 days shy of sleep?

Robin Thicke, I admit, is more of a puzzle to me. Did you know that he thinks he’s

? That’s right. He thinks he’s a black man. Except he sings in falsetto. Which makes him more like .

I heard him sing and he broke out the Michael and I think my jaw dropped because women were popping their trunk for him. So, if you’re a woman and you like either of these two, please, explain the appeal because I’m stumped.