Levity For Aliterate Skimmers

Golf Update

I recently read that book - The Inner Game of Golf - at the behest of my partner in preparation for our tournament last week in South Jersey.

It's an old, classic book that I hadn't even heard of, first published in 1979.

Gallwey is actually a *tennis* coach/guru who endeavored to see if he could apply his methods to golf.

Guess what, it wasn't that bad. Without going into unnecessary detail I would describe his approach as very similar to *yoga* in the sense that he advocates *awareness* of all sorts of lesser sensations when swinging a club. His core assertion is that it's impossible for a golfer to be instructing his body to *do* things AND for him to *feel* the club at the same time. As someone who's always tinkering with my game and short on feel....it was a most appropriate read for me.

How'd we do in the tournament?

Well we placed about 28th out of 128 teams which was okay. I did my usual - playing decent one-third of the time, playing mediocre one-third of the time, and sucking big time the other third of the time. We lost our match on Friday on the 19th hole to two South Philly jabronis whom we should have buried. (I missed some short putts....they were chipping in.) On Saturday we rolled, starting 3-up after three holes, gave the lead up and then some, but ultimately won 2-and-1. And on Sunday we ran into a juggernaut. Our opponents birdied 5 of the first 6 holes! We were lucky to only be 3-down at that point on account of making two birds of our own. We lost badly though, 6-and-5.

I really do need to work on my short game and while I've known this for quite some I just haven't been able to shift gears and concentrate on chipping and putting like I need to. I don't have good access to practice greens and quite frankly I've always found it more exciting to smash my driver at the range. Somehow, some way I have to figure out how to turn my short game from a weakness into a strength.

Twentysomething years ago, while a bit of a shrimp, I was not a very good ball handler for the thousands of hours I put into basketball. What could be more worthless than a point guard who couldn't dribble, right? Well I acquired a Dribble Aid and learned some ball handling drills....the next thing you know I was a terrific dribbler who you'd just about have no shot at picking my pocket. This is precisely the type of turnaround I need to effect with my golf game.

I may try to play in my local club championship; and I'll play Bethpage Black a couple of times this summer. But golf is mostly on hold now as I get back to work on my websites and whatnot.

NYC - Going Down...

This may shock Floridians, Nevadans, and the 10 people still left in Detroit...

But New York City hasn't really experienced any economic woes yet. Due to its political connections and access to Bernanke's runaway printing press, Wall Street has continued to quietly boom.

HOWEVER, recently, and I mean very recently like in the past 1.5 months, commercial *for rent* signs have appeared everywhere.

Again, Floridians by now are accustomed to half-filled plazas and malls but it's a new and scary development here on Long Island where I live. Certainly, when NY topples it will mean another leg down for everyone else - no matter how deluded they are that they already saw the bottom!

Of course retail rents are waaaay too expensive and store space is waaaay over-supplied, still. Tiny stores need to make $200 IN PROFIT, EVERYDAY, just to cover the rent, never mind pay the utilities, insurance, the workers, etc. Obviously the spate of store closings implies that consumers in these parts are cutting back.

Even the oldest yacht club in the country, right down the street for me, is boarded up and for sale:

$4 million bucks?

I figure you'd need 400k a year in income to carry a property like that. Obviously it's already failed as a social/yachting/pool club but that's what it's designed for. PLUS right next to it are two other, similar yacht clubs including the one my first wife and I were married in.

Hmmmmm....

$400,000 per year divided by 12 months = $33,333 per month in overhead.

It's a terrific location for say a new private school. I could charge 20 kids $1,500 a month (cheaper than daycare!) or more...

I could pimp out the facility for a wedding or two per month for another $10,000...

I could rent the moorings out if there are any boaters left....and maybe even run a for-profit pool club in the summer - although there are a million pools out here already.

For all that risk, maybe, MAYBE I can earn 100k per year.

Obviously a lower purchase price is needed. Or I'd need some wealthy benefactor to donate much of the purchase price. I'd happily call it Old Coot Academy!

Whatever. There's going to be a whole lot of tantalizing retail/commercial renting opportunities in the next few years - as NYC real estate drops 30+%.

Exercise = Medicine

Alright I just read that book - Spark - and it really got me fired up.

Ratey's thesis is that while good for the body, exercise if VERY BENEFICIAL for your mind/brain.

He starts out with the story of Naperville, Illinois' government high school.

There they experimented with cutting back on academic subjects and increasing the time allotted to physical education. In fact they made the kids do gym class every single day. Furthermore they changed the focus of it to *personal fitness*, e.g. running and rock climbing, rather than stand-around ball games.

The results, if to be believed, were nothing short of spectacular.

Not only did the kids become healthier; but despite fewer hours devoted to seat-work, their test scores also sky-rocketed.

Ratey asserts over and over again that exercise induces positive chemical effects on the brain. In fact he was so thoroughly repetitive that I found myself skimming his book liberally. I most certainly got the point.

They also tried this same Naperville program at a lower socio-economic high school in Pennsylvania. The academic and health progress in Titusville, PA was similarly impressive but there was another important outcome:

Since the program started in 2000 the standardized test scores of Titusville's students have risen from below the state average to 17 percent above it in reading and 18 percent above it in math. Equally important are the psychological effects McCord has noticed: not a single fist fight among the 550 junior high kids since 2000.

All I have to say about *no fights* is WOW.

Who knew that exercise was so all-around healthy? Who knew that desk-bound boys had insufficient outlets for their pubescent angst?

Of course we all assumed it, but we most likely ALL have underestimated exactly how beneficial heart-pounding sweaty workouts are.

Essentially everyone, according to Ratey and his *research*, should be working out for 6 DAYS A WEEK, for 45 MINUTES, minimally at over 60% of their maximum heart rate (220 minus their age). And by everyone he means the depressed, 'old coots' and 'old bags', young whippersnappers, pregnant women, geeks who have no shot at ever impregnating a woman, otherwise healthy people, and everyone suffering from just about any kind of physical or mental ailment.

This is all commonsense, right?

Well not to the institution of Big Medicine. For decades these fat guys have prescribed *rest* to the afflicted when it was the VERY OPPOSITE of what was needed. Ratey provides scores of examples of head cases who've taken to running, swimming, skipping rope, etc. and vanquished the demons inside their brains. Recall those Moronic doctors emphatically told me to avoid yoga (and weight lifting) on account of my injured back!

Just a line here to reiterate what I think was an important insight. While most doctors, for generations(!), have put pregnant women on *bed rest*....it turns out that both maternal and fetal health have proven to profit tremendously from deliberate, moderate exercise. And this buttresses a long-held contention of mine - that women should do what that poor Chinese woman in The Good Earth did. She was working the fields, went into the hut, spat out a baby, and returned right away to the field without missing a beat!

Again the doctors haven't a clue:

In 2004 the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a review of treatments for generalized anxiety disorder that failed to even mention exercise. It was primarily a rundown of our most common antianxiety drugs, with a nod to therapy and relaxation. Of the thirteen pharmaceuticals charted in the review, all bear a formidable list of possible side effects. None have been endorsed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as explicitly safe during pregnancy - not an incidental point given that women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety and depression as men.

The article was positioned as advice for doctors, but how is it that a summary of treatments for general anxiety disorder in the bible of medical research simply left out exercise? It's a case of what I would call clinical blindness. The mounting research on the neurological and psychological benefits of exercise seems to be hidden in plain sight.

Hah! Though I would refer to it more accurately as *institutional blindness*.

Personally I've never really been in tip-top shape as an adult. Sure I played a lot of sports when I was younger and probably was fit in my early teens but back then I was also a Moron. So I've never experienced good physical AND mental health at the same time.

Reading Spark, along with the gospel of Tim Ferriss, has motivated me to a least give it a shot and push my fragile body a little more.

And it goes without saying that homeschoolers should be careful to heed this book. I myself am now plotting how to get my kids even more regular exercise as a strategic educational tactic.

Finally, here's another excerpt from the book that, while a bit non sequitur, I think merits consideration:

Around the same time, I was immersed in studying severe aggression - researching, treating, and writing about what made patients of all sorts so violent. I stumbled across a study by Frank Elliot, then chairman of the neurology department at the University of Pennsylvania. Within a large population of prisoners, he discovered that more than 80 percent of them had had serious learning problems as children.

Go figure!

Broke Down, And Crossed Over To The Dark Side

I just broke down and bought my first wife the iPad 2 (16GB, WiFi + 3G) for $683.25 including tax. Of course we're going to have shell out another $30 a month to Verizon.

The problem is, while my wife has a Blackberry through her job, her firm's network blocks a ton of websites including many quality ones like Marginalizing Morons. The Mrs. has two 40 minute or so train rides each day (Mon-Thu) and she's been pining for an iPad that she can use for a couple months now.

I kept kiboshing it but could do so no longer. The money is irrelevant - since we are so cheap otherwise. But I do hate to think of myself as an iMoron!

I was planning on getting my 4.98 year old daughter her own PC and strongly considered buying her a Mac - if for no reasons other than the that I've never heard anyone complain about Apple products and because I realized I was displaying *extreme closed-mindedness* on this front. But the $1200 price has been giving me pause.

As a compromise, I decided to buy the iPad for $600 and then just get her what I bought her brother - a totally sufficient $600 Dell.

Another reason I did get this iPad is because I, as someone endeavoring to create and sell some content,....I should probably familiarize myself with the technology platforms it'd be delivered on. A Kindle might be next...

One For The 'Old Coots'!

Still Body Hacking

You know I've never been able to use one of those inflatable friends because, well for one thing I can't blow them up.

In fact I can't blow up any of even the smaller balloony type things like balls and water-wings.

I could be an incompetent Moron who doesn't do it correctly (I am squeezing open the valve, I think) but more likely it's just that I have very poor lung capacity/strength.

I've just always been a natural mouth-breather and it was only recently in the past few years that I discovered that I wasn't utilizing my nasal passage AT ALL in the course of my breathing.

While I've taken to yoga in the past few years, I would say that I still have not fixed this problem of mine.

With my tournament over, I'm currently taking a break from golf and I've decided to really change-up the focus of my fitness regimen - and I'm starting with a plan to improve my lung capacity.

Also on the agenda: more running (60 second sprints broken up by 60 second walks), a stab at total immersion swimming in Long Island Sound (only 500 yards away from our house), a whole lot more of Tim Ferriss' *cat vomit* exercises, and the possible purchase of a weight bench (I've never benched before!) and a chin-up bar.

Mobs = Scary

This is what the DrudgeReport looked like after Memorial Day weekend:

Now is Drudge turning into a histrionic alarmist in the mold of Big Media?

For sure.

BUT, there's definitely something going on in terms of escalating *entitled urban* violence. Years ago my grandfather told me, over and over again, that one day there'd be a black/white civil war in America. He said that he might not live to see it but I most certainly would. (Note he's still ticking at 97.5 years old!)

The Boston flash mob was organized on Facebook/Twitter. Now it shouldn't be too hard to locate and delete the accounts of those clowns/thugs who got the ball started. And I do hope they do so.

How long though will it be before there's some massive regulation aimed at *social media*? I bet all it will take is one particularly violent incident. Victims will sue f-book; women will become petrified; pols will grandstand; etc.

Though, now that I think about it,...

A single raucous flash mob that say confronts Congressmen might get the fascist ball rolling even faster!

And as for avoiding potentially dangerous situations....it's always been a good rule of thumb to avoid parks, beaches, and *free* events (e.g. fireworks) on holiday weekends anyway.

Coincidentally, Ann Coulter is presently releasing a new book - Demonic - which addresses this very subject. I'd look forward to reading it so long as it's in the mold of Treason and Godless as coherent theses. The last two of hers I read - How to Talk... and If Democrats Had... - weren't as good as her previous work.

Government Schools - Pay to Play

The following is excerpted from a recent WSJ article:

MEDINA, Ohio—Karen Dombi was thrilled when her three oldest children were picked for student government this year—not because she envisioned careers in politics, but because it was one of the few programs at their public high school that didn't charge kids to participate.

Medina City Schools are in deep financial trouble. To save their vaunted athletic and music programs, the district has enacted a policy that no one in the administration feels good about: Pay to play. WSJ's Stephanie Simon reports from Medina, Ohio.

Budget shortfalls have prompted Medina Senior High to impose fees on students who enroll in many academic classes and extracurricular activities. The Dombis had to pay to register their children for basic courses such as Spanish I and Earth Sciences, to get them into graded electives such as band, and to allow them to run cross-country and track. The family's total tab for a year of public education: $4,446.50.

At high schools in several states, it can cost more than $200 just to walk in the door, thanks to registration fees, technology fees and unspecified "instructional fees."

Though public schools have long charged for extras such as driver's education and field trips, many are now asking parents to pay for supplies needed to take core classes—from biology-lab safety goggles to algebra workbooks to the printer ink used to run off grammar exercises in language arts. In some schools, each class comes with a price tag, to be paid at registration. Some schools offer installment plans for payment. Others accept credit cards—for a processing fee.

The proliferation of fees comes at a time when the cost of public education has been soaring. After adjusting for inflation, average spending per pupil has increased 44% over the past two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Nationally, district after district has eliminated or cut enrichment programs for gifted students, help for struggling readers, advanced math and science courses, music, art, foreign languages, drama, sports. Some have tried asking local residents to approve higher taxes, only to be shot down at the polls. So administrators say fees are the only way to stave off even more drastic cuts.

BAND FEE: $200. Because of new fees at Medina Senior High, Tessa Dombi, a freshman, had to choose between band and choir.

Most states prohibit public schools from charging for core classes. But schools can generally charge for supplemental materials, a category that has been broadly defined. In Iowa, for instance, paper is considered "not essential to the teacher's presentation of a course," and thus need not be provided at public expense, the state Department of Education website explains.

A 52% increase in some fees this year at the Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, Kan., means a typical high-school student now owes $235 at enrollment, plus supplies fees as high as $65 a class. The tab will be similar next year at Wheaton North High School in Wheaton, Ill., after a recent fee hike: $221 for baseline registration plus $150 per sport and class fees as high as $50 each.

Here in Medina, the charges imposed on the Dombi family's four children include $75 in generic school fees, $118.50 for materials used in biology, physics and other academic courses, $263 for Advanced Placement exams and $3,990 to participate in cross-country, track and band. That's not counting the $2,716.08 the Dombis paid in property taxes specifically earmarked for the schools.

Their oldest daughter, Tessa, loves to sing, but they told her she couldn't take a choir class this year, as it would add $200 to the bill. "It's high school," Ms. Dombi said. "You're supposed to be able to try different things and see what you like."

CROSS-COUNTRY FEE: $660. Zach Dombi chose track.

Many states require schools to waive academic, but not extracurricular, fees for the poorest students, generally those with an annual income less than $29,000 a year for a family of four. Those above the cutoff, however, can be sanctioned if they don't pay in full. Schools may withhold their diplomas or ban them from commencement, which itself often carries a $30 to $60 "graduation fee."

Administrators and parents also worry that fees might affect some students' chances of getting into good colleges. Schools across the country now charge substantial "pay to play" fees not only for sports and arts programs, but also for more modest activities, including community service. Among the charges: $350 to join chess club, $200 to participate in Students Against Drunk Driving, $85 to write for the literary magazine—and $50 to clean up beaches with the Environmental Club.

Academic transcripts, too, can take a hit, as the most rigorous courses—the kind that impress college admissions officers—can be the most costly. At Marietta High in southeastern Ohio, it costs $33 to take chemistry, $36 for honors chemistry and $152 for the Advanced Placement course.
Dakota Ridge High in Littleton, Colo., charges sophomores $15 for basic 10th grade English but $50 for honors, which uses additional materials. Juniors can take basic English for $8 or pay $75—plus a test fee of about $90—for Advanced Placement English Literature.

The jump in public-school fees has a back-to-the-future feel for New York University professor Jonathan Zimmerman, who studies the history of education. He's reminded, he said, of the early 19th century, when public schools drew on taxpayer support, but also often charged tuition. That practice began to shift in the 1840s with Horace Mann's drive for free "common schools."

In Medina, a quaint town midway between Cleveland and Akron, school costs had risen 23% over five years to $75 million in 2010, after the district opened two new elementary schools to meet projected enrollment increases. Last year, revenue fell sharply after state funding was cut.

To shave costs, the Medina school board eliminated 106 teaching positions, or 20% of the teaching staff, over two years. Class size increased—from 25 kids per teacher, to 31 or 32. Many AP science and math classes were eliminated, along with the German and French programs. The district also reduced its offerings in art, music and other electives.

To further bring down expenses, the teacher's union agreed last summer to $1 million in concessions, taking a 2.45% pay raise instead of the scheduled 3.45% raise and boosting their contributions to their health coverage from $80 a month for a family plan to $215 a month. These moves, combined with the layoffs, have saved the district nearly $3 million, cutting the 2011 budget by 4%, to $71 million. The district's average cost for teacher salary plus benefits is about $68,000.

The district also sought to raise revenue. Three years in a row, voters were asked to approve higher property taxes to stave off steep cuts to athletic and arts programs. Three years in a row, voters said no.

"We can't afford to get our teeth fixed because it's too expensive," said Joyce Harris, who is 70 and voted against the proposed tax hike. "If we have our taxes go up to pay for little Joey's football, that's not exactly fair."

So the district turned to parents for financial help. Starting last winter, Medina began charging $660 to play a high-school sport, $200 to join the concert choir and $50 to act in the spring play.


Large families didn't get a break. Neither did poor families, though 16% of Medina students are considered economically disadvantaged.

There were to be no waivers, for any reason.

The extracurricular fees, meant to raise $1 million for the district, had immediate impact. The track team, for instance, shrank from 191 to 92 student athletes. "It's like half your family is suddenly gone," said 15-year-old Tessa, a runner.

Some academic costs also jumped. The school cut advanced calculus to save money, so a handful of top students were left with no math class. Worried that would look bad on her son's college applications, Cindy Fotheringham shelled out $850—plus $150 for books—to enroll him in an online calculus class. At the elementary school level, many parents will pay $30 per student next year to cover math workbooks and writing journals, which will bring in about $68,000 for the district.

Administrators say the cuts and fees prompted about 100 students to switch to private schools.
But the fees have brought a few unanticipated benefits. Though participation in athletics and music is down, those who remain are more committed than ever, according to some teachers. Many teens have taken jobs to help pay for their activities and say they're proud of their new responsibilities.

While it has pained him to put price tags on so much of the public-school experience, Superintendent Randy Stepp said the new cost structure may not be all bad.

"Students have to realize, as our country is realizing, that you can't have everything," Mr. Stepp said. "We all have to make tough choices."

Basic Registration Fees
Community Unit School District 200 – Wheaton, Ill.
Elementary school:
Registration fee -- $95
Technology fee -- $15
High school:
Registration fee -- $175
Locker fee -- $6
Music fee -- $10
Technology fee -- $40
Graduation fee -- $30


Blue Valley School District – Overland Park, Kansas
High school:
Learning resources fee -- $100
Technology supply fee -- $15
Activity programming fee -- $120


U-46 High School District – Elgin, Ill.
Instructional fee -- $125
Locks -- $10
Student ID -- $5


Course Supplies Fees
Lakota Local Schools – Liberty Township, Ohio
English 9 -- $12
French IV -- $75
Honors Chemistry I -- $39.50
Physical Science 101 -- $25
AP Microeconomics -- $40


Bloom Township High School District – Chicago Heights, Ill.
Physics -- $13
AP Biology -- $34
Advanced Ceramics -- $25
Freshman P.E. -- $26


Dakota Ridge High School – Littleton, Colo.
English 9 – $18
Honors English 9 -- $38
Honors English 12 -- $59
AP English Literature -- $75
Chemistry -- $10
Honors Chemistry -- $20
AP Chemistry -- $40 plus book
German II -- $20


Leeds High School – Leeds, Ala.
Art -- $40
Business technology -- $25
Chemistry -- $25
Drafting -- $40
Marine Biology -- $25


Extracurricular Activities Fees
Arlington Public Schools – Arlington, Mass.
Cheerleading -- $408
Ice Hockey -- $720
Gymnastics -- $720
Wrestling -- $480


Lakeville North High School – Lakeville, Minn.
Debate -- $190
Fall Musical -- $110
Chess Club -- $150
Science Olympiad -- $150


Lenape Regional High School District – Shannon, N.J.
Activities fee -- $200 to participate in one or more activities including:
Literary Magazine
Gay/Straight Alliance
Students Against Drunk Driving
Asian Club
National Honor Society
Student Government
Stage Crew
Jazz Band


Hamilton-Wenham High Regional High School -- South Hamilton, Mass.
Football -- $864
Volleyball -- $537
Baseball -- $591
Girls tennis -- $372
Boys tennis -- $239
Literary Magazine -- $85
World language club -- $71
School musical -- $200


Miscellaneous fees
Douglas County School District – Castle Rock, Colo.
Riding school bus daily -- $180
Band uniform cleaning -- $15 / semester


U-46 High School District – Elgin, Ill.
Driver's Education
Behind the wheel instruction -- $300
Textbook -- $20
Student parking permit -- $60

Silly me...

I had long known that HS sports had started imposing fees on participants.

BUT I had thought it was more like $100 for the expensive ones like football.

$660 for cross country? $200 for the Asian Club? $720 for hockey???

Only a Moron would pay that much for so little!

It's bad enough that parents have to spend an hour or two helping their kids with government school homework - essentially homeschooling them anyway.

But having to shell out cash for activities to boot is nothing short of pure insanity.

New Jersey - The Armpit Of American Education

I can't believe that I hadn't already heard of this documentary film on the rampant corruption in New Jersey government schools:

They say in Newark alone there are over 400 administrators making over 100k per year!

There are plenty more clips on YouTube. And you can also visit the film's website for more information.

Apparently the full film is on Netflix too - for those of you that subscribe.

Extreme Couponing?

Now my first wife and I might possibly be the only people who hadn't heard of so-called *extreme couponing* - that is until we caught a few minutes of it on the hotel's color TV last week:

There are plenty more videos on YouTube, of course.

I myself as a stock option trader don't understand the *stockpiles*.

If you buy something you don't need for free (we'd say *bought for even*)....flip it to someone else for crying out loud - even at a below-market price. These cheapskates should be selling all that extra salad dressing and Powerade to their neighbors for 25-50 cents a bottle.

A few years ago, while reading Will Durant's Story of Civilization, I first learned that there were other forms of greed besides ambition for wealth. The precise example involved monks or something who'd camped out atop trees for weeks, naked, with nothing to subsist on. Durant characterized this as *spiritual greed* - and you may recognize a strain of it today amongst the radical earth-humping set. See - The Year Without Toilet Paper.

Watching these extreme couponers cursing at the register when they don't get the final price all the way down to a penny I couldn't help but think I was witnessing *miserly greed* or something.

Now I don't think it's worth my time and energy to spend 20 hours a week trying to buy $600 worth of useless, unhealthy groceries that I may be able flip for a $200 profit.

BUT it may be worth my homeschooled kids' time...

It, if successful, could be a great entrepreneurial exercise for them. For example I saw one woman buy 100 Butterfingers for free. She had a 50 cent-off coupon, *double coupons*, and they were retailing for $1. I'd have my kids sell those for 25 cents a piece outside of of the government schools here and they'd be sold out in no more than an hour.

You have to think though....

Once these strategies have hit color cable TV they are probably on their way out. I mean how long before stores and food manufacturers start putting quantity restrictions and whatnot on these coupons?

Intro To A Moron

Not having watched CNN in the past 20 years or so I had no idea who Nancy Grace was. Although I had seen her name a few times before (ratings on Drudge or something).

While she herself is a buffoon, she does reveal and highlight here the alarmist bent of Big Media.

Large news channels NEED large crises so that they can mass-market fear and hate, anger, misinformation, etc. Make no mistake a deadly tornado, a flu outbreak (or fear thereof), terrorist attacks, etc. are boons to entities - at least they think so.

Someone tell this Moron it's *sleight OF hand* - not *sleight OF THE hand*...

Here's my - alarmism tag. (Scroll past this post when it comes up.)

Golf, Golf, Golf

This past week I played golf three times at Eisenhower Park - the White Course. Curiously, I shot 81 all three days. And in between rounds I've been hitting the driving range, practice greens, and flipping flop shots in my backyard.

This upcoming week I will be golfing another 4 or 5 times. I'm playing in a two-man tournament on the South Jersey shore along with a bunch of my South Philly jabronis. Recall I threatened to do that last year. See - Triumphant Jabronis!.

I've played in it before - three times actually - but not in the past 8 years as I moved too far away - from NY, to NC for a year, and then to serve my 5 year sentence in Boston before returning to NY last May.

So the pretext, er excuse, for all this little-white-ball-whacking has been that I'm preparing for my tournament. Is it competitive?

Yeah, at the top anyway. 128 teams qualify on the first day and are then flighted for match play. You can treat it as seriously or as frivolously as you please. Lose a match and start boozing...

Now I'm not that good (7-9 handicap?) compared to the guys that play in these events. BUT I am smart enough to at least choose a partner who's better than me!

While I do practice hard, I don't take the game too seriously. I'll be content to just *not suck* and have a couple streaks of good play, a few low carb beers, and a dozen cheesesteaks/hoagies over the week. Heck you could put bird $hit on an Amoroso roll and I'd lap it up.

Of course the idea of hitting a ball around with a club is intrinsically Moronic...

But that's not the point. Golf, for me anyways, is a rewarding exercise in *self-mastery*.

The spring has been tough on my time. The kids were swamped with organized activities that I had to chauffeur them to; I had tons of yard work to do; and then there was my golf practice. After this tournament I'll be putting my clubs away for a while so I can get back working on my websites.

Marginalizing Beauty And Talent

In case some of y'all haven't seen any of this season's American Idol. Check out this young lass:

I mean, not only can she sing....she's exploding with personality and is one fine-looking broad! Watching her I'm reminded that I'm still one raging heterosexual...

Relax, she's of age, 21 or so, and I look 25 or 26 (despite my 37th birthday later this week).

It's hard to believe that this same girl auditioned the year before but didn't even make it to Hollywood. Heck she's as polished and poised as that invert Adam Lambert was as an amateur.

And like Lambert, she too was ousted by inferior competition, landing in third place.

Why did she lose?

Because of schools of course.

Too many kids - and that's who's voting here - grow up hating the beautiful, the competent, and the self-confident with whom they have to suffer *forced association*. Regular folk may secretly aspire to be them....but explicitly voting for them is another matter.

Another EPA Disaster

You know I had seen pictures of these fish - Asian carp - jumping out of the water in unison a couple of years ago:

But I didn't know that this particular fish was destroying freshwater ecosystems. Apparently they eat all the plankton(?) or something that the little fish need which threatens bass, perch, walleye, etc. up the food chain.

Years ago they brought them over to help clean up the water (they are *filter feeders*) at catfish farms. But they may have escaped into the waterways during floods. So we have another yet *cheap Asian import* that caused more problems than it solved.

Importantly it should be noted that back in the day, it was hardly just a few catfish farmers that were responsible for today's mess. No, in fact the Big Government was singing the praises of Asian carp, recommending them to treat and clean sewerage runoff and other dirty water situations.

Of course if you Google *EPA Asian Carp* it's pretty hard to find the true history of these invasive fish run amok. All that comes up in the search engine results are reports on how the EPA is going to SOLVE the mess it authored. Hint - it involves hundreds of millions of your taxpayer dollars!

And when it fails....the new solution will most certainly demand even more money.

See also:

Worcester Beetle - Another Ill-Conceived Bailout

Big Government Killing The Environment

Me, A Boat Person?

No way, right?

I'm the type that likes to BEFRIEND people who have boats!

I'll bring the hoagies, the Meister Brau....every time. You just keep paying the slip fees and whatnot!

But now we live about 500 yards from Long Island Sound AND we have good access down there via a neighborhood beach. It's got a dock; a place to store small watercraft; a swing set; etc.

I'd be nothing short of a complete Moron to live here and not take advantage of this beautiful body of water.

So I've vowed to get either a canoe or a kayak as well as some fishing gear (but for shore fishing). I actually already have a couple of rods but am not sure they are suitable for fishing in the Sound. I grew up a freshwater fisherman so I'm ignorant in matters of saltwater.

Anyways. I'm surfing Craigslist looking for a kayak or canoe but I have no idea even what exactly I should be looking for. A 2-person kayak or a solo? What kind of material/brand? How much I should pay? Etc.

I even just read now that kayaking WAS NOT for people with bad backs. Really? Even if done with good form?

I've got some research to do so any help would be appreciated.

Unquestioning Morons

My wife recently spend a long afternoon with one of her old *friends*.

Afterwards she remarked that her pal, whom she hadn't seen in ages, didn't ask a single question about what was going on with my wife and her family - this was over a period of something like 6 hours.

As far as I'm concerned, that's not exactly a *friend* or someone worthy of spending any scarce personal time with. When one half of a relationship becomes acutely aware of this kind of imbalance....I say it's definitely time to short that friendship.

We all have acquaintances that, well, don't ever initiate getting together or even make any efforts in that regard. And there is certainly some real value in maintaining skeletal relationships with old friends.  (Of course, some of these clowns need to be severed too!)

But *not asking you any questions* is a clear warning sign and not just with friends; it also applies to strangers and random people that you meet. If you're sitting there at a party or something and some self-orbiting Moron doesn't express any interest in the basics (like where you're from!)....well, I quickly cross them off my list.

I submit that it's beyond merely a sign of vanity or social retardation.

People who aren't genuinely interested in the lives of others may very well be intellectually retarded to boot. Have any of y'all ever met an incurious, closed-minded genius?

I'd like to suggest a new metric for assessing IQ.

How often do you Google?

Seriously. It's sort of a corollary to that old maxim *there's no such thing as a stupid question* which casts the kid who's afraid to raise his hand in a government school classroom.

Think about it. The WWW holds the answers to almost every basic question imaginable. Only a certified Moron would not want to tap that resource, again and again.

Plus....I myself Google stuff all day long! Ergo I'm clearly very...

I Would Do This, Seriously

I particularly like the part of the daughter bashing her father's *big ego*...