Another One Bites the Dust

I haven't checked the news this morning about Sarah Palin on account of I hate this part of the news cycle when nobody really knows what's going on but they insist on talking and talking and talking. With around the clock news on multiple channels, TV news is complete bullshit these days. Most likely, there have always been issues with the corporate interest of networks, advertisers and robber barons in the news business. I'd have to ask someone who knows about that stuff -but it seems to me that TV news was more substantive back when Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Howard K. Smith, Roger Mudd and all those guys were bringing us the news from Vietnam and Kent State. When the news was confined to certain programming hours, we did not have endless chatter.

Fox News hadn't been introduced to Americans back then either. The Soviets had TASS, but Rupert Murdoch hadn't had an impact on News yet. Which brings us back to Sarah Palin.

I'm betting that Rupert Murdoch is somehow behind Sarah Palin's announcement. Maybe she's going to work for Fox News. Maybe she's getting her own show and her own line of cold weather gear, ready to wear, baby products and home decor to be sold at Walmart. They could have cooked up anything, but one thing is sure: Sarah Palin would not quit being governor of Alaska unless there was money to be made fast. She's got a family to support, after all, and Todd is a worthless douche bag when it comes to making money.

My mother is hoping that Sarah Palin quit because someone has finally established a connection between a sports complex Sarah Palin insisted on building when she was mayor of Wasilla and the brand new house she built for herself concurrently. Apparently, the community sports complex and the house have the same windows. Sarah Palin is not the first elected official in Alaska whose home pointed to ethics violations. Even if Sarah Palin follows in Ted Stevens' footsteps, she still makes good TV and could easily wind up as a regular on Fox.

Next week, when some clever, hardworking journalist has uncovered the money trail that explains Sarah Palin's decision, I'll watch the news. I'll read the NY Times in the meantime, maybe.

As entertaining as Sarah Palin can be, there are more pressing concerns here at Menopausal Stoner World Headquarters since I remain unemployed. Even if I get a job soon, I won't start work until September - and I might be making less money. You never know. It's time to economize.

HBO has had to go, and I'm going to have to get rid of the maid. I only had HBO so Velvet and I could watch True Blood together, and he's in Texas anyway. Overall, I believe HBO and other movie channels are problematic because you wind up sitting in front of the TV for 45 minutes watching the end of some movie you've seen multiple times already or you waste two hours on a movie you would never have actively chosen to watch because you found it while channel surfing. Either way, you've parked your ass in front of the TV for no reason.

I'm not going to miss HBO, and I'm not going to miss that impoverished musician who was on my terrace last night either. Turns out that he was not Brazilian at all. He just happened to live in Brazil at the same time as the friend we have in common did. Turns out that his family are Italians from New York City.

That's not why he won't be allowed in my house again, though. He can't come back because he's stupid.

I had suspected he might be stupid before he came over because (1) he has a soul patch and (2) he posted a link on Facebook to some rant by Bob Basso about the "We The People" stimulus package which urges folks to send tea bags to congress people and President Obama. I wasn't quite sure how an Impoverished Brazilian Musician could be a teabagger, and figured that he must be a Libertarian. I can find common ground with many Libertarians as long as they aren't foaming at the mouth about one governmental conspiracy or another. Libertarians often run off on tangents. They might make a number of interesting points along the way, however.

When he first arrived, I was inclined to listen to him with an open mind especially since he had brought me flowers and liquor and was mixing Caipirinhas. While he was telling me his life story, he mentioned that he's been out of work for a long stretch which can happen to anyone these days, so I didn't hold that against him. Then he revealed that he paid some car dealership $300 for sales training, then was surprised to hear he'd be working on weekends.

Logic dictates that anyone who is unemployed and pays $300 to a car dealership for sales training can only be stupid. If he is stupid enough to do that, then he's stupid enough to be a teabagger, and I'll have no teabaggers on the terrace - with or without soul patches.

I have always though that a soul patch looks like a man has schmutz on his chin. Foolish facial hair is understandable on young men for whom facial hair is still a novelty - like Apolo Ohno, a testosterone driven competitor with no body fat:

If memory serves, the year the Red Sox stomped the Yankees in the series, there was a lot of bad facial hair on the Boston team. More testosterone driven foolishness, if you ask me, but it's no worse than warriors painting their faces before going into battle. Like Braveheart:

Braveheart might have been a handsome, sturdy Highland Warrior, but in real life Mel is a jerk from a family of jerks. His father the crazy preacher says all you have to do to prove there was never a Holocaust is count the Jews in Brooklyn.

Soul Patches are not for men over 40 with paunches. I might overlook a mid-life crisis soul patch if the fellow weren't stupid, but I'm too old to put up with a dumb ass in my own home.

It's a shame, though, because I liked the idea of a studio full of Brazilian musicians as summer entertainment. Until I started developing that fantasy, I had forgotten that the first Summer Boyfriend Reality Show was back in 1978 when my dear friend Tish was living with family friends because her dad, who was in the oil business, had been transferred to some boring place.

These family friends were also in an oil related industry which is how the dad arranged for the youngest son, who was a couple of years older than us, to spend the summer as piloting a submarine that checked out pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico. The son had a pack of friends who were also spending the summer as deep sea divers and submarine drivers. Mostly they were Canadians with no friends or family in Houston, so the son brought them over to his parent's on the weekends which worked out well for me and Tish since we were floating in his parents' pool waving away bees hovering over us because our suntan oil smelled like pina coladas. Next thing you know, the pool was filled with silly girls from UT Austin and boys who were working off-shore for the summer.

I didn't realize it until today, but that was the first summer boyfriend reality show. It was much easier back in the day when the we were just beginning to understand certain characteristics are deal breakers.