Rowdy A-Rod

Philbony asks:  Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez issued a mea culpa last week for past steroid use.  Said doping allegedly helped him become the best ballplayer of his, and perhaps all, time.

I'm no baseball fan, that should be understood.  And I certainly don't condone cheating.  Ultimately, he was rightly criticized.

But why should A-Rod (heh heh heh, he said "rod") have to explain himself to -- and be condemned by -- a pack of reporters, interviewers & analysts hopped up on Botox and cosmetic surgery?

After all, what's the difference between a top athlete using artificial means to enhance his on-field play vs. media all-stars employing artificial means to make themselves more visually appealing?  They're both gaining that last little extra boost to excel in the qualities held in highest esteem by their profession.

Perhaps I would be willing to listen to more worthy "naturally gifted" correspondents who have been passed over for promotion or ignored by the mass audience because they are ugly.

On radio only, of course.

He Hate Me

Great news item on the internet today.  London's Financial Times reports China "will continue to buy US Treasury bonds even though it knows the dollar will depreciate because (US debt) remains its only option in a perilous world."

That quote says so much about how incestuously addled the world economy is.

To promote order at home, China fuels its economy by exporting its goods to the USA and other first world countries.  Meanwhile, the US willfully racks up ever larger trade deficits to enable its citizenry to buy ever more goods -- cheaply -- while exporting its EPA-regulated smokestacks and OSHA-protected jobs to countries where pollution and labor injuries are seen as a cost -- nay! a virtue -- of progress.

Then the bubble pops.  The US realizes for years it has outsourced its jobs and industriousness.  China faces fact that it has nowhere to send its goods; no way to employ its oceans of people.  The populations are rebellious:

• Us:  Swimming in crap we don't need leveraged by debt we can't afford, governed by incompetents and vampires.
• Them:  Swimming in glitzy squalor (you can't drink tap water even in Beijing's best 5-star hotel) and slavelike working conditions (no pensions, unemployment insurance, or medical coverage), governed by thugs and snakes.

Or as Luo Ping, Director General of the China Banking Regulatory Commission put it:  "We hate you guys...we know the dollar is going to depreciate...but there's nothing much we can do."  Hey Ping: Ditto, dude!

In the absence of true progress -- ie. radically new products & technologies -- the world fights over thinner slices of the same pie. That's the real reason why we're being subjected to more regulation and government intrusion into the private sector.

The crazy part is the USA is still viewed as safe(st) harbor in an otherwise "perilous world."  I guess that's true.  Unlike England, we can actually still make something here.  Of course, it all causes global warming.

Mucous, is the Yurt on high ground?

ill-Litter 8

Mucous emails:  Riddle me this Philbony!  Why would a woman who already has 6 children decide to get artificially inseminated (again) and have 8 more?  I got my own take on it, of course I do, but I'm curious as to your perspective.

Philbony says:  Frankly I'm offended at your misogyny, Mucous.  You obviously missed the last 40 years man.  See, women are no longer required to be barefoot and pregnant.  It's their choice, dig?

Just who are you to question the motives or mental state of anyone -- man or woman -- that wants to give birth to as many children as they wish?  Whether or not they can support the children -- emotionally, spiritually, or financially -- is irrelevant.  It takes a village to raise a child.  Therefore, it takes the entire state of California to raise 14.

It also matters not a whit that in order to get a nose job or boob lift or botox injection, doctors must perform a cursory psychological profile.  After all, those are dangerous elective procedures.

To help you remember who this is all about, I leave you with the blessed mother's own words, joyfully telling her therapist that having a baby "certainly help my spirits.  I have a child.  That's the most important thing in (my) life."

Hmmm, where have I heard this before (3rd item)?

Cold Comfort

Proof positive (picture below) that global warming is inducing global climate change.  That's the sinister nature of global warming:   how it perversely makes things colder before getting hot.

In fact, I guarantee that precisely 6 months from today we'll be talking about how hot it is!

Summer Winters

Meteorologist

WFUK-5:  Cleveland's Official Weather Station

Rueful of the Western Dream

...I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft

We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping

This is the land where the Pharaoh died

The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered

They are saying "Forget the night.

Live with us in forests of azure.

Out here on the perimeter there are no stars.

Out here we is stoned - immaculate."

I'll tell you this

No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn...

 - Jim

Human League

Mucous writes:  Riddle me this, Philbony!  Do all people suck or is it just me for thinking they do?

Philbony says:  Life is complicated.  Human nature even more so. That makes answering your question difficult.

In general, I live by the following rules:  People suck.  Unless they prove they don't.  Even then, they probably do anyway and you just can't tell.  Then again, people might just blow instead.  Like I said, complicated.

Hope this helps - you suckwad.  I mean that in the nicest possible way of course...

Damp English Air

Dear Dr. Philofbaloney, uh, I mean Philbony:

When I was young (under 20) I might get a common cold during winter.  It might last 3-4 days and be over with.  Now any time I get a sniff of a sniffle, it turns into a full 3-4 week ordeal.

Symptoms include clear stages of severe sore/swollen throat, accompanied by uncontrolled headache-causing, almost blackout-causing, no-sleep-at-night-causing coughing; followed by a thick yellow/green, blood-spotted nucleus spitting sludge; cannot breath head full of snot congestion at night, usually followed by more, dry, rib-cracking, skull-splitting coughing as the infestation finally begins to leave.

What the hell has happened?  Can I go back to having a simple cold?

Thanks,

David Snotgroaner III

England

Dear English Dave:

The symptoms you describe actually induced me to vomit.  I'm 99.89% certain Dr. B will have the same reaction.

Answer to your first question first:  You are doomed.  And you're bringing the rest of us with you.  Like someone -- or something -- out of '28 Days Later'.  Do you feel angrier than usual?  For you own sake hope you're merely a carrier.  Abandon, Dave, those you know and love!

Hmm, you could also be afflicted by a mild form of the Andromeda Strain, the deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that fatally clots human blood.  Has your liver gelatinized recently?

In response to your second question, you might try moving to the desert.  Your fragile immune system would welcome the contrast of warm, dry air to your current environs.

I experienced similar bouts of near-death, uh, "thick-spit" illness while living in Germany.  It's a European thing.  Like techno music.  Or wearing socks with sandals.  Or those funky horn-rimmed glasses that scream "I'M EUROPEAN!!!!".

English air is notoriously cool, damp, and stagnant.  No wonder it's rife with the Rage Virus.  Get out before the quarantine, Dave.

Good night, good luck, and may your god go with you.

 - Philbony