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Mrmike's Journal

mrmike
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04/17/2007 09:19 #38924

Mr. State Trooper
Category: potpourri
I have to work in Lancaster today and the journey did wonders for my morale. I was cruising down the 90 doing 55ish. A doofus in a Toyota didn't think I was properly showing my manhood. He was riding my bumper and just as we past the Ogden Street toll barrier, he blew past me, bird flipping all the way. Also at the Ogden St toll barrier is a favorite hiding spot of the New York State Troopers who saw the whole thing. Said Trooper spots the doofus as we collectively make the turn to head north. Trooper waits until the turn is finished for him and cranks on the lights. I pass the stopped cars to see the doofus getting a ticket and looking properly red faced.

Made my morning and we're just getting started.

Hopefully an omen for the day.
theecarey - 04/17/07 11:49
sweet.

usually i am just wishing a trooper would pull the offensive person over- nice that you got to see that :)
joshua - 04/17/07 11:28
Magnificent!
mrdeadlier - 04/17/07 10:30
that is the best feeling in the world.

i remember once i was driving down parker in tonawanda and some jerk zipped out in front of me, coming from a sidestreet. like 5 seconds later a cop appeared out of nowhere, zoomed up next to me and shouted "did he just cut you off?" i replied with an affirmative and then said cop zoomed away to get him some tickety goodness (i assume).

it felt good since it always seems there's no one around when that stuff normally happens. :)
zobar - 04/17/07 10:14
I was commuting Buffalo ↔ Rochester for a while and [well, it was kind of a boring commute] determined my optimal gas mileage was at 68mph - faster than most of the semis but slower than most of the passenger cars. Whatev!

I cannot count the number of times some dillweed would blow by me at 80mph+ only to find, when my slow ass finally made it to the Williamsville toll barrier, he was still getting a stern talking-to and not looking likely to be getting on his way any time soon.

- Z

04/15/2007 13:35 #38902

Another self-pitying personal post
Category: feh
Can't say you weren't warned

Lot of death lately. A couple of peripheral people in my life are gone or feeling the effects of losing somebody close to them. That combined with my recent posting about the passing of my former Anderson Place neighbor has me feeling, well a little morbid. My now former dad-in-law is in week 3 of chemo. His potential mortality has me thinking. It makes me want to pull over on my way to work and kick the folks smoking under the Roswell No smoking banner in the shins.

This has hit my ex even harder. I'm doing my best to help, but I'm coming to the fact that I signed my lease to leave the house formerly known as mine 3 years ago today. In the six months that immediately followed, I got to deal with the useless response from family members, at one point, she told me that she "wanted the family of her, our kids, and her partner" to find their way with the initial holiday season. Given that I didn't stray, that I took crappy jobs at night to support her and be there for the kids, I was dumbfounded. Point of that anecdote, other than to gloat that the partner is no longer in the picture I guess is to illustrate that despite being generally cool with each other, I resent the circumstances that brought us to this point. I think I'm pretty much over it all, but occasionally something can stir and piss you off all over again. I thought it would be best and easiest that I move (and it was), but it sort of felt like that me guilty in some way. I've struggled at times to remain Dad and buy into the logic that we were just broadening the sphere of people who care for the kids. I mentioned to my eldest that I didn't think a certain person held much regard for me. She, being an enlightened child, replied that I shouldn't sweat it, the certain person is like that with everybody.

Alas, it has made me wonder if I disappeared who'd notice, but when you think hope is evaporating, conversations can reveal a lot. We cleared the "table" of a lot, how things progressed too fast at the house after I left, steps we take together for the kids, etc.

I'm not quite sure where I'm headed with this. Figured getting it down would be better than having these things rattle around in my head. The first bad divorce realtionship send me an email the other day to say hi and I guess that triggered the flipping pages of my mental rolodex.

So, I'm trying to help and be a stand guy and help her when her transitional lesbian relationship takes up with a mutual friend, both of whom insist it's not a relationship from next door to the kids. They are pissed off at me because my kids know them both well, so I made them come clean to kids.

I'm such an asshole.

end of pity
carolinian - 04/15/07 21:53
After everything you've been put through, I think you deserve a really awesome father's day gift this year.
paul - 04/15/07 14:08
"It makes me want to pull over on my way to work and kick the folks smoking under the Roswell No smoking banner in the shins." I can't believe they do that. A few of my co-workers walk to the corner to smoke just at the boundary of Roswell property. I think it is totally sick.

04/12/2007 22:41 #38872

The Don Imus Nonsense
Interesting take on the whole soap opera, written by an African American Columnist


metalpeter - 04/14/07 16:36
That is an excellent article. I think a lot of it is true. I think Al and Jesse do the black community a disservice most of the time. They are just trying to push there own agenda and use blacks for there own gain.

Before I get into the music debate I will say that Imus shouldn't have been fired. What he stated was his opinion just like if someone said "Homosexuality is sin and all gays will burn in hell forever and never see their loved ones unless they are in hell also" I personly don't believe that but a lot of people do. Some people believe whites and blacks should intermarry and have kids and with in a few Hundred years everyone will be a brownish color and bye bye to rascism. So people think that intermixing Races is wrong and even nationalities is wrong. It is an opinion and we are free to have differing ones. It doesn't matter whos way of thinking is the majority both sides should be free to say what they believe with out being punished. There is a difference between thoughts an actions and often that is forgot about. Imus didn't take his hate grab a girl with wavy hair and strighten it and then take her to church to un ho her. All he did was express his thoughts.

I admit that I used to listen to rap music a lot. You have the positive stuff and the Gangster stuff . I'm not saying it all falls into the catagory. Then allong with rap there is hip-hop also. The thing about rap is that (or at least in the past) you heard a lot more of the negative stuff then postive stuff on the radio. Yes women are looked down on in the music. But I do kinda agree with Snoop a little bit they aren't singing about mom they are singing about lose girls who really are hos. But now in terms of the videos is where I would disagree (if you ever don't have porn just watch a rap video, yummy, yum, yum those girls look delicous) Because those girls know what they are signing up for. The thing about Rap Music is that most of the time it is a reflection of the culture. It does glamourise it but that doesn't mean that it encourages it. We all know that art reflects life but not sure if it also the other way around, it could be.

I find it interesting that some of what Louis Farakhan (why isn't he the civil right leaders for blacks) says even though it is hateful towards whites is also what whites say about blacks. I haven't heard anything he has said in a long time so my memory may be wrong. But basicly he wants blacks to correct there wrongs of single mothers and he wants his "sisters" to be strong. There are a lot of problems in the ghetto that compound other problems. That doesn't mean that everyone is a drug dealer or murderer but if you listened to rap you would think that.
joshua - 04/13/07 15:20
Imus' problems and the problems in inner city culture are mutually exclusive; neither set understands the problems of the other and most likely don't care either.

I agree with what the writer says about Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. These people are race baiters and opportunists who have a vested personal interest in perpetuating a myth - that racial tensions are still at a 1960's level. Their literal bread and butter depends on shaking down corporations for hush money if they feel that their companies aren't as diverse as they would like. Generally I think their practical usefulness to African-Americans has passed them by.

Setting that aside, dismissing Imus' problems to concentrate on a completely different issue IS misguided. Black culture may have created the words that he used, but they certainly didn't put them in his mouth. Bigotry is bigotry and regardless of whether its okay for blacks and not for whites to call each other "niggers" Don Imus just had his last public case of verbal diahrrea.

Imus was obviously guilty and IMO he is deserving of what he is getting - there is far too much precedent in these sorts of things for him not to have been fired.
james - 04/13/07 14:30
Thank you both.

Just wanted to cover my tracks when I take a plane full of passengers hostage you two can say that I am no hijacker.
mrmike - 04/13/07 08:07
No apologies necessary. The beauty of (e:strip) -- we just chattin. I like ideas and how people utilize them.

I'm fresh out of puppy pix, but you didn't hijack.
imk2 - 04/13/07 07:24
thanks for the clarifications. i don't think you hijacked the post and i dont think mrmike does either...(right mrmike?) i like knowing WHY people think what they do.
james - 04/13/07 00:23
Well, basically I think attacking the culture that arises out of a particular group of people is misguided. Music that deals with drugs and violence, that is mysogonist or racist springs forth not on its own but from a very real environment.

So, in short, attack poverty and not the music of the impoverished.

And here enters arguments about rap music being co-opted and so forth, which is why I shouldn't have entered into it.

MrMike, I apologize for hijacking your post. Feel free to get even by posting random pictures of puppies in any of my entries and we will call it even.
imk2 - 04/12/07 23:55
please elaborate, james...i'd like to know why you think that was a crock of shit?
james - 04/12/07 23:38
Oh man, what a crock of shit that was. An interesting take, granted.

Of course, the culture he wants us to attack exists for a reason. And that in of itself opens up a can of worms too large for a comment on a journal that just linked us to that article.

Thanks for the find, it was a fun read.

04/11/2007 08:54 #38850

A Sure Sign of Spring
Category: weather
Saw the Elmwood "White Lady" twice yesterday and once today on my way to work. Pretty sure I saw the "Buffalo Shall be Judged" Holy Roller outside the Allentown Trading Company this morning on the way to work.

Kinda wished I had my camera with me. I just drove in via Washington St and as you got closer downtown. You could see a veil of frost on the top of the HSBC arena that faces the lake. It would have made for an interesting pic. Alas.

Beatiful thing about (e:strip) -- getting turned on to something new. Stumbled across (e:joshua) 's myspace page and became a fan of Warren Haynes' acoustic work. Went on a mini itunes shopping spree to collect the awesomeness of it all. Knew the great electric stuff, but my ipod is happy to have a bunch of new tunes.

off to work, great day, peeps
jason - 04/11/07 11:47
Warren Haynes is GAWD!

04/10/2007 20:47 #38842

"I fathered Anna Nicole's Baby!!"
Category: rant, sorta
Having stumbled through journalism school and almost home on the Masters, and generally being a bit of a media junkie, I've had a lot of food for thought lately.

Last week's reporting of who raised the most money campaigning for president made me wonder if all the national media outlets (aside from the Onion and Utne Reader) have gone around the bend. The thing that ultimately pisses me off a little is that such reporting basically annoints candidates as viable and to a degree influences voter choices. And before I incur (e:Joshua)'s wrath for picking on Fox again, it struck me that MSNBC (home of the newly color blind Don Imus) was worst at this. They were continually harping on how much the money tally means for Obama versus how much it means for Clinton. Should other candidates reorganize? etc. Since the republican tallies weren't quite as high, MSNBC didn't spend a whole lot on those candidates. Mitt Romney raised the most (the hell kind of name is Mitt?) and they ignored him preferring to overanalyze on Guiliani & McCain. If I haven't bored you to tears yet, you might wonder what difference this makes. All it means is that they can all afford to keep campaigning (shocker there) long before we wanted them to. It's funny because of none of this has anything to do with what any of these people would do as president. It's literally reporting because there is nothing else to say, but continued reporting like that could prop up somebody not worth propping up (cough, John Edwards) or deflate somebody unnecessarily (carping on McCain for being weak as a fundraiser hardly seemed important

(e:jenks) mentioned her love of TIVO. I hold mine in similar high regard. Mine offered up Bill Maher's last show on HBO. Maher was asking about the candidates in talking with Chris Rock. Rock's initial answer was he wished "Gore would get in it soon. He's more qualified than all the others out there." Not sure, I agree, but an interesting take nonetheless.

Don't remember a presidential campaign getting this ramped up so soon. When I was in school the first time, I made a good buck working for all the news organizations who couldn't be bothered to come near St. Bonaventure and the surrounding area. They all hired the week before. If we are voting in February, it would be cool if they (the candidates, the news organizations, etc) would cool it till the fall at least. We're not going to find anything out in the interim.

Argh
carolinian - 04/11/07 20:37
I personally believe that Americans secretly desire street smart politicians more than honest ones. We're like the cheerleader who says she wants the most sweetest and faithful guy in 50'sville when really she lusts after the badboy leader the pack. When we talk about kind of president we want, we describe Jimmy Carter, probably the most honest and decent man we've ever had in the Oval Office. But who do we most fondly remember for getting things done? Ronald Regan, JFK, FDR, Nixon, etc. Guys who had in their closet more skeletons than the catacombs of paris and who knew how to make deals with powerful and obsenely rich people.

Any joe sixpack can be honest, but a good politician the people really want will lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal on behalf of their constituents to get them what they want. And the person who is best at that kind of wheeling and dealing is the person who can raise the most money.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that might just be how our messed up world really works (according to my crackpot theories of political science, at least).
metalpeter - 04/11/07 18:57
First of all often times the news doesn't go into good enough detail. But Here mike I have to completely disagree with you. How much candidate has raised is very important. But the part that makes the news story good is to list each candidate and how much money they have from each source and do it mabye once a week. This will tell what they will do if elected, or at least who they owe favor to. In this country the presidentcy is bought. The people vote for representives who then pick the candidate and they get points the one with the most points wins. But to get to that spot they have to supported with lots of cash. Once they get in then they owe the people who got them elected favors. It is really a scam often. Granted the new elect doesn't have to follow the ideas of the people who paid for there travel and ads, but most of the time they do.
brit - 04/10/07 23:41
well it's statistically significant at national, state and district level in about seven hundred PSC papers I had the misfortune to read but whether or not the guys on TV know that is a whole other debate
mrmike - 04/10/07 22:10
I think it's kind inferred indicator as opposed to empirical, which is what gets my hackles up. Feed a statistic to O'Reilly on Fox or Scarborough on MSNBC and they annoint winners and losers based on the one stat. Any wonder the non-news programming with the "stars" on those networks or Glen Beck on Headline News flirts with unwatchable much of the time.
brit - 04/10/07 22:04
The news networks get excited about this issue because it is an empirically supported indicator of performance in the campaign itself. The normative debate is valid...I.E why do we care at this stage but.... but from a 'news' point of view that is why they do it.... I guess it's hard to fill 24/7 hours of programming so they may have stepped up the gears on this issue
james - 04/10/07 21:03
I am inclined to agree. Somehow people managed to keep up with the goings on of the world without internet news services and 24 hour news channels. The media has to create stories where there might not be one.

But the money issue is a very slightly almost interesting one. Mitt Romney was considered for a long while as a second tier candidate. But he out raised no money McCain (who would have been the de facto candidate two years ago) and Guiliani who didn't so much raise money as empty his piggy bank into the tax shelter known as campaign contribution.

Do we learn anything about them as candidates? No, not really. But people who care about such things can infer how the candidates party feels about them. So, what did we learn. Republicans don't care much about their candidates, and Democrats dig a few of theirs. Wow, a revelation that can turn our hair white like Moses.

But thank god for Tivo to ensure we always have plenty to watch other than the crappy ass news channels.