life on Mars...

When I was a kid, I asked my dad one time what was the difference between a weed and a garden plant, and his succinct answer was this, " A weed is any plant growing where I don't want it." So by his definition, a beautiful rose bush growing uninvited in a field of cucumbers, is a weed.

As every gardener knows, weeds are the bane of our existence, there is no plant more resilient than the humble garden weed. Be it a dandelion, or a sunflower, if it is growing where you don't want it, it's gonna be persistent and nearly impossible to get rid of. Yet try to get the things that you want to grow to take hold in the same fashion and you will have better luck trying to stuff a wet noodle in a stray cats ass. I have seen sunflowers growing wild, and I can say that some of the wild ones are better by far than half of the cultivated ones I have seen. Yet, try as I might, when I want sunflowers to grow wild I can barely get three or four to make an effort.

If you have ever owned a bird feeder, you know just how easy sunflowers will grow, all they need is moisture and some sunny days and they are sprouting away left and right. You can mow them down all summer long, yet they keep trying. The birds and squirrels will drag those damn seeds everywhere, and they will try to grow. Yet if you plant 20 in a row, you get 6. What the hell? !

Sunflowers are just an example, but it is the weeds that I am concerned with today. I have weeds that are so hardy that they stand up to everything I throw at them. I have hit them with high-end weed killer, I have burned them, tilled them, hoed them and weed preventer-ed them yet they come back again and again. I get more than my daily exercise pulling weeds, and hoeing and cultivating the garden, trying to keep it looking fairly presentable. I get one area cleaned up, move on to the next and 2 days later the original has the pale green haze of weeds showing again! They grow in the dry season, they grow in the wet season, and they grow past the frost and before the thaw! If NASA wants to see if Mars can support life, I will give them a couple shovels of dirt from my garden and they can plop it onto Mars and watch it go! I bet them weeds will even grow on Mars!

You want to find out if there is life on Mars, give them some good old New York weeds to deal with and we may actually end up with our first interplanetary war. The Martians will be pissed, beause they will never be rid of them weeds once they get a foot hold. But the kicker of the whole damn thing is this, some of the blooms on the weeds, are prettier than the flowers I have planted. So I may use some reverse psychology on the weeds and try to grow a few rows of them for the blooms! You think they will actually grow?

kids are fun part II

Pockets..more or less...

Well, the warm weather is finally here and it looks like it may stick around for a while now. I sure hope so, I mean come on!! It's Memorial Day, ( a week early, but so what? right? ) I'm ready to wear shorts every day and get in the pool after work and swim for an hour or so. So this brings out my subject, Pockets.

I was digging my shorts out last night and I realized that more than half of my current shorts are the "Yuppie Summer Uniform", cargo shorts. As I looked at the various styles of cargo shorts in front of me I noticed that there were a variety of pocket styles, but also a varying number of pockets. After counting them, the pair with the most pockets, ( How come shorts and pants are called a pair? You only have one ass to put in them. You have 2 arms on a shirt and they aren't referred to as a "pair of shirts"...) has 10 Pockets! What the hell is someone in SHORTS going to do with 10 pockets? I mean aren't you supposed to travel lite when you're wearing shorts?

I understand the extra pockets if you are hiking or playing tourist. You need a place for extra camera batteries, and perhaps a bottle of water, but let's be honest here, You get much stuff in the pockets of your cargo shorts and you will need both suspenders and a belt to keep them from falling down every 5 steps! Just going through my pockets this afternoon, I had my keyring, a chapstick, a lighter and my pocket knife in one pocket, and money and a debit card in the other. That's it! I had my cell phone and a pen in my t-shirt pocket, like I always do. Later, when I was mowing the lawn, I put the cell down into one of the leg pockets so I could keep the iPod in the shirt, but still and all, nothing groundbreaking or extra special there.

That's just me though, most guys are like little kids. I have never seen a kid with a lot of pockets who didn't HAVE to fill them all up with something. Ask any mother who has done laundry what she has found in a kids pockets. Girls and boys alike. Anything from the missing diamond ring, to a dead snake, there is just no telling, but I'm sure the hands down leader in items found in kid's pockets is rocks. What kid has not looked down at the ground on occasion and found a "pretty" rock they they want to take home to momma? I don't think it's possible to take a 2-4 year old for a walk in the country without them bringing at least a couple rocks home with them. My youngest nephew was a grand collector of rocks. Walking down the beach with him one day, ( Yes, some our beaches here in NY have some rocks, you wanna make something of it? ) and as we walked, he collected. Before we were half way back to the picnic site, his pockets were overflowing and he was walking with both hands holding up his britches! His mom thought he looked cute in cargo shorts. Yeah, and he looked even cuter with his Spider-man undies visible, because his pants wouldn't stay up, loaded with rocks. I was afraid he was gonna break a toe when they fell down!

Men at least don't generally collect rocks anymore, unless they are geologists or just a little unstable. Men collect electronics and tools. More pockets to carry more crap. Cell phone, GPS, camera, iPod, Flash drive. What else can we cram in there? Wallet, keyring, pocket knife, extra batteries, extra memory card for camera. Maybe a flask or a couple bottles of brew. Hey, might get hungry later how about a slim jim or a granola bar? Don't want to get dehydrated, keep a water bottle in there too. Or if you're a pro, a sports bottle. Spare pair of earbuds in case you meet a bud and want to share tunes, or maybe for picking up chicks? Never know when you may need to fix something so don't forget the toolbox from the garage! That's cool!

Think men are the only cuprits? Think again. The mommy patrol has a million uses for cargo shorts too. Who hasn't seen a soccer mom chasing after the kids with a kleenex? where do you think she had it stashed? In her pocket!! and where will it go when she is done with it? If there isn't a trashcan nearby and she isn't a total heathen, it will go back into a pocket! The younger the kids, the more stuff mommy will likely have in her pockets. (Purses are so passé these days) There will be baby asprin, wetnaps, a juicebox or two. Probably a spare pair of undies for each child if they are just recently potty trained or still in training. There will be at least a couple band-aids maybe some hand sanitizer, (If not a full first-aid kit if she's a worrier) and then the usual suspects, the cell and the keys with the clicker for the door locks and security system, some folding money and at least one credit card. She probably has some snacks in there too, cracker packs or maybe some cookie packs. You know how cranky kids get when their blood sugar drops!

I guess it's great if your a mugger, because with more pockest people are carrying around much more stuff to rip off. It's like a quickmart for muggers! Electronics to hock, and money to use immediately, how can you go wrong? I just hope the mugger isn't in a hurry, because they still have to get through the layers of fasteners to get the stuff out of the pockets! You don't actually carry anything in there that you would need in a "real" emergency, because if you have to get those pockets open, doing it in a hurry just ain't happening, unless you have straight velcro. Zippers, snaps and/or buttons, backed by velcro is what most of mine have. I have a pair where the button is hidden under a little flap, if it was a matter of life and death to get something out of that pocket in a hurry, I'm gonna die. It takes at least a minute to manipulate the button around to open those pockets. I challege any good pickpocket to show me that they can get into them without me knowing about it! Velcro is great deterent to pickpockets I think, it talks and they hate that!

Give me my old cutoffs! When I was a kid, mom would take a pair of jeans that I wore the knees out of and cut the legs off above the knee and I had shorts! ( they were almost never even! lol) A few washes and the ends would fray out and then you looked "right", fresh cut shorts always looked so dorky! Too many pockest just complicates life and on shorts it's a travesty, because shorts weather is the time when you should be enjoying simple things. Who wants to have to empty the electronics before starting a squirt-gun war on a hot July day? Not me, but I still do. It's just no fun turning the garden hose on your buddy when you have to replace his cell phone and his iPod that was stuffed into a back stash pocket of his cargo shorts!

Enough with the pockets, if you can't live with 4 pocket shorts, get a purse!

Stalkers

No, I don't think I have ever had a stalker. It has occasionally been intimated that I may be a stalker, but as anyone who really knows me would tell you, I could never be a stalker. I just don't have the necessary task commitment.

First of all I'm lazy. A stalker needs to be a real go-getter. In order to be an efficient stalker, you need to be able to dig for small tidbits of information, you need to be able to spend hours digging through your quarry's trash to find things that you can use for tracking. You need to have dedication to sit in a tree for hours in the cold, wind or rain. Dedication is the hallmark of a stalker, that and mental instability.

Secondly, I don't have the financial independence needed to be a dedicated stalker. Anyone who truly wants to be a stalker needs to have a steady and solid financial base to use for the endless little things involved with good stalking. Listening devices, parabolic mikes and good image stabilizing binoculars are not cheap. What about plane tickets and other travel expenses? I mean, as anyone knows, one of the defining abilities of a good stalker is the ability to follow the target. No matter how that is accomplished, other than on foot, it takes money. If you wish to follow a tour bus, you need gas money, if you are following a jet-setting star, you're gonna need money for the first class tickets to keep an eye on the glitterati who will never fly coach. If you intend to follow them EVERYWHERE, your going to need a passport and visas and all sorts of paperwork that costs money. Nope, I sure can't afford to be a stalker.

Third, I just don't have the level of fandom that would cause me to be a stalker. Just can't see caring that much about someone that I have never met. Sure, I love Kelly Clarkson, but geez, she doesn't even know I exist, and she probably never will, so why would I spend a huge chunk of my life following her around? Or Catherine Zeta-Jones. Yeah, THAT's gonna happen! I can see them better on TV than I could at a red carpet event, so why go and get pushed around by security and trampled by a crowd of papparazzi, when I can sit safe and sound in my livingroom and see them just fine.

Lastly, why would I want a police record for stealing dirty panties or some stupid thing like that? Every stalker eventually gets caught doing something really warped. Breaking into the home of the prey and masturbating in their socks or using their shower, or setting up a shrine in their bedroom. Then the police find them and arrest them and they end up on TMZ looking like Nick Nolte after his DWI. Is that really the way that you want your crush to finally see you? With the bracelets on and the cops guiding you through the crowd of photographers? Come on! If you wanted to make a good first impression that was surely the way to go! They will never forget you, and the restraining order will always remind them!

Maybe a stalker can get lucky and their prey turns out to be just as loony as they are, (ala Britney Spears) and they hook up and have a few dates. It still ends badly when the prey gets sent to rehab and when they get sober they realize that your a freak and probably the reason they had to spend 90 days of their life locked in a padded room, then they kick you to the curb, with a new restraining order and most likely a lawsuit too!

Don't get me wrong, I am not commitment-phobic, I just have a better place to focus my commitments! And besides I don't want to be Commited! I don't fit a straight jacket so well, even though I suppose they make them in all sizes, I just don't wish to find out!

15 minutes of fame

Andy Warhol said that everybody will get their 15 minutes of fame. And this was WAY before reality shows. Back when he said these famous words the closest that most people ever got to that goal was to audition for a game show, probably one of those great quiz shows from the 50's and 60's. Boy how things change, and now Warhol seems as farsighted as Nostradamus.

The popular wisdom is that the reality show got it's start with Survivor, in 2000, but it all depends on where you want to go for the beginning of the reality show. I am not going to do a ton of research here to be the defining authority in the subject, but I do know that there were many shows in Europe that were competitions between everyday people in unusual settings, and perhaps even Japan was at the very head of the curve by putting entire office groups at odd in insane physical competitions. What really intrigues me about this subject is just what lengths people will go to to try and get famous. But I always wonder, is there a line? Is there something so stupid and disgusting or dangerous that some idiot won't sign up and send in a audition tape, or stand in line for hours in the beating desert sun, or the torrential rain or freezing cold?

Consider first the gameshows, who remembers Let's Make a Deal? Good ol' Monty Hall and the ever elusive airmail stamp. People put on stupid costumes and yelled like fools and were all ready to trade their first born child for the can of creamed corn that might be behind door number 1. Don't misunderstand me, I was 8 years old and it was the most entertaining thing to watch at 10 am on a snowday stuck home from school. It stuck with me. I will never forget the crazy people dressed in Halloween costumes and digging in their pockets and purses looking for a pair of tweezers to trade Monty for a crisp $100 bill. Jump ahead a few decades.

Millions of people line up for a place on any show you can imagine, for prizes ranging from A million dollars, to a new t-shirt. The biggest prize out there is debatable, and it is a toss up between The possible music career from American Idol or Nashville Star, or the business career possibilities from The Apprentice. But What about the Million Dollar prize for winning Survivor? The very first winner has done jail time because he failed to pay the taxes due on his winnings. Duh!! They even tell you in the paperwork that you sign to get the prize that you are responsible for the taxes. What is the draw of Big Brother? Why do you want to live in a house with a bunch of strangers, schemeing and conniving a way to get them all kicked out, until your the only idiot left. Cameras following you wherever you go, and watching your every move whether you do something nice or something nasty. For prize money, and maybe you turn out to be mildly entertaining and somebody offers you something more. Or maybe you go on to more reality shows. You gain fans and ( what is the opposite of fans? Haters, anti-fans? I'm gonna go with haters.) Haters and before you know it the paparazzi are chasing you around and looking for any opportunity to make you look stupid. The haters win!! They always tear it down. even the up and coming favorite ends up with a whole crop of haters after while. Thruthfully I would be willing to bet that for every supportive fan there are 4 haters out there. They may not always be as vocal, but they are usually the majority. Then there are the other 5 million who are totally indifferent, but we don't bother with them. that brings us to the big one...

American Idol, tonight is the premier of the 8th season of the show and once again the craziness starts. Stupid costumes, lousy singers who whole heartedly believe that they are gods gift to vocals. The people who put all of their hopes and dreams into their auditions and then when they are rejected storm out the door grumbling about what a joke the show is and how they will make it no matter what. If the show is such a joke, why did you audition in the first place? I have to admit that I really enjoy the show, but over the years there have been some odd people make it for a long way into the competition. Ya know why? It's this odd little hater website called "vote for the worst". You have to wonder which of those rejected auditioners actually built the site, because over the years it have really begun to guide the early part of the competetion. To me there are a few true Idols who have come out of this show. Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Katherine Mcphee. Then there are the mid-packers who have made great careers such as Kelly Pickler, Bucky Covington, Tamyra Gray, and Jennifer Hudson. Proving that winning isn't always the first place finish. The Sanjayas, and Scott Savol's of the world will fall away and the cream will rise to the surface. But it take 10's of millions people to audition to find those few nuggets of talent that may end up at the top of the heap. And the producers put the worst of the worst on the screen. America gets to watch as people get their 15 minutes of fame and then get shot down like a tin duck in a shooting gallery. Simon, with his razor sharp comments, Randy, laughing behind his paper, and Paula, smiling in that treakely way of hers, trying to tell them nicely that they suck more than a Dyson Vacuum. Now there is a new judge, Kara DiaGuardi ( not sure I spelled it right, still new to me!) But she seems to be a little bit of all of them rolled into one. She has the experience of the singer and performer that paula and randy have, she has the producing experience of Simon and Randy, she has the sharp tongue of Simon and the humor of Randy and the niceness of Paula. Since this was only the first show it will take some time to learn her true personality. But anyway....

So then there are the odd shows, like The Bachelor, one single guy and a dozen or so women trying to win his attentions. The guy is the prize? Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire? Well, who doesn't? D'oh! Rock of love? You get to be the ultimate groupy and bang your favorite washed up rock star? Skanks lined up around the block! Average Joe? One hot babe and a dozen "normal" guys. She is misled to get there in the first place then the producers toss in a half dozen male models to make things "Interesting". And people watched this! ( I watched This! I watched this... LOL ) You know what the hot babe does, she picks the model. But the truth is that the genetic math rarely works, it is very unusual for 2 hot people to make a good looking kid. Because the good looking people are both recessive genes and when they get together they cancell each other out and the dominant uglies come to the surface. so when you think about it, it's like nature's little joke on hot couples, they end with homely kids to teach them some humility. If you really want good looking kids you need to mix the couples better. Woman need to be taught to look for the homely guys and the good looking guys need to be taught to look for the scary broads and that way the best will continue to thrive!! But how did I end up talking genetics here? Back to the 15 minutes....

So there are TV shows for the 15 minutes, but what else is there? YOU TUBE!!! yes I have my Youtube page and I am even in it, but I also have other stuff that I have put together on my own. What else? Infamy, become a killer!! Or worse a BLOGGER!!! yes indeed there are those who are famous because they write about stupid crap like 15 minutes of fame and idiot politicians. Hi! That's me I am not famous and I don't really want fame, just some discussion. I never expect to change peoples minds or to make a true differenc in the world, but I want to say what I think and even if nobody else ever reads it, I know that it's out there if somebody does want to read it. Then there are those people who are famous for being famous, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and a few others. They do nothing to add to the human experience good or bad, yet the world is so celebrity obsessed that they bestow the blessing ( curse?) of celebrity on someone simply because they have become famous for being famous. Not even sure how it really works, but it happens.

There will always be those who wish to be famous, who live their life wanting the adoration of the masses and they will do anything they can to get it. William Hung, the most famous of the worst auditions ever. He went on a tour and people wanted his autograph. He could barely speak the language and he sure couldn't sing or dance. Yet he was famous for exactly that! Wow, scary what passes for celebrity!

Here's to you and to me and our 15 minutes of fame. I'm doing exactly what I want to do and if it brings me the 15 minutes, great, but if it doesn't, so be it, I would rather have the can of creamed corn behind door number 1 anyway!

Something funny!!

see more Working Daze here >>> *****


Every now and then I find a comic that really makes me laugh out loud, Not literally rolling on the floor, but definitely laughing and enjoying the joke. This is one of those. I read this comic daily so I know the characters quite well, and The Purple faced dude getting choked is the best geek in the world. He is Roy and he is my hero/anti hero. He comes to work every now and then like he was going to a Comic Con. Dressed in his Starfleet Uniform or his Batman outfit. He is a Geeks Geek.

This Comic is the brainchild of one John Zakour, and is illustrated by the fabulous Scott Roberts. I don't think that I could ever break out the humor on a daily basis like these guys do, but I love to enjoy the fruits of their labor! Thank you Gentleman, you make my days a little happier.