Federal Government Moons Entire U.S. Population! 

The Federal Government’s favorite domestic welfare recipient, NASA, is at it again. The latest proposal is for a return to the moon, via manned spacecraft, and, the possibility of the establishment of a permanent manned moon base. It seems that China, apparently in an effort to prove that they are as stupid and wasteful as the USA, is planning their own mission to the moon and the possible construction of a moon base.

A spokesman for our government said: “We don’t want them (China) to get there before us. We want to claim the choice spots where the best resources for observing are located.”

What? Observe what, the Earth, as it quickly deteriorates? What’s next, a Levittown on the moon?

I say let the Chinese go there while we watch. Let them spend their money so they can discover what we already know, that except for keeping our ocean’s tides predictable, the moon is a worthless piece of shit.

Of what possible use is a moon base? What benefits will the citizens of our country reap that could possibly justify such a colossally stupid undertaking? What a friggin waste of money just for bragging rights. Not a penny to rebuild our sagging infrastructure which would create thousands of domestic jobs, but there’s going to be virtually unlimited funds so another “hero” can whack a golf ball on the moon.

That’s another thing that gets in my craw, calling astronauts heroes. Why? I don’t deny that they’re brave for sitting atop the world’s biggest fireworks device, but heroes? Horseshit. These folks are mere thrill seekers of the highest order, no pun intended.

While their accomplishments are certainly remarkable because of the difficulties they encounter I don’t see what practical value is derived from them. Doctor Jonas Salk is a hero; he found a way to prevent polio. He helped millions of people, worldwide, whereas the Space Program benefits only the government contractors, and the miniscule number of people they employ.

This is corporate welfare, plain and simple. I’d be prouder if our government provided the things that other countries provide for their ordinary citizens and not just the ride of a lifetime for the privileged few.

Members of our armed forces are heroes. Our police and fire departments employ heroes. They face death for a reason, not a thrill. What am I supposed to do get all excited over an astronaut because he or she has mastered the use of a zero gravity toilet? Big shit, pun intended.

And don’t dare give me that “you’re not patriotic” bullshit either just because I feel that it’s patriotic to help and benefit as many American citizens as possible and not just a few of Corporate America’s CEO’s and their shareholders.

Let’s not forget the children either. Organizations like NASA always go after the kids. They want them on their side so they can pester their parents to go along with the program. They want these kids to grow up loving the very people who have seen to it that there aren’t any government funds left for them.

Seventy years ago in a country that was our enemy, and is now our ally, and doing much more for it’s citizens since losing WWII, had a fun social club for their own little Wolfgangs and Gretas called the Hitler Youth. They went along too, in order to avoid being called unpatriotic.

NASA’s publicity agents are very good at having a few kids on hand whenever they conduct a publicity campaign. Aw gee, who wants to disappoint an impressionable six-year old by denying him or her the chance to witness another shockingly expensive rocket blast off into space.

They give these kids a five-dollar model of some useless space contraption, a hot dog, and NASA ball cap, and then ask the awestruck youngsters what they think about the whole event. The results are predictable: “I love the rockets and stuff. I wanna be an astronaut and go up in the air.” Good luck Skippy, hope you’re parents can afford MIT or Cal Tech on their Wal-Mart salaries, because chances are you aren’t going to learn enough in today’s schools to qualify for any scholarships. 

Another government gadfly, while sporting a look of grim determination, almost a “dare to disagree with me” stare, stated that, “great nations do great things and stand on the cutting edge of science and technology.”

Really? If so how come the USA can’t seem to find a way to provide health care for all its citizens? How come there aren’t enough schools? How come the kids that attend our existing schools are less intelligent than their predecessors? 

In addition to announcing that a new fleet of space vehicles is needed to replace the silly Shuttles they hope to start flying again in 2005 NASA also mentioned that a manned trip to Mars was on their wish list. Holy shit, what a Christmas list! What the hell ever happened to wanting a red wagon or a pair of ice skates for Christmas? Sounds like full employment for Santa and his Elves for quite a few years to come.

Vice President Dick Cheny it’s said, is busy twisting arms, or lobbying, as they call it, members of congress, to convince them to do the patriotic thing and vote for another blank check for NASA, which, in turn, will fork it over to the Contractors of Corporate America, which will probably outsource most of the work to foreign countries.

I wonder if he’s under the notion that the launch vehicle will be oil powered so it can tank up at one of his outlets? I heard he’s having a rough time getting by on his 38 million a year from his various interests and is looking for a little boost in his allowance.

Please see:
"The Space Program, What's In It For Me?"  

VACATION VILLIANS, VANDALS & VICTORS 

You meet all types of people while on vacation. People in the hospitality business are paid to be nice to you so they usually aren’t a problem. But there are other vacationers, and locals who are not interested in separating you from your money. They have other plans for you.

Most of the time one’s fellow travelers are quite pleasant because they are out for a good time and have left their cares behind. Unfortunately, hordes of manner-less monsters also take to the road, and they bring their rudeness and “I don’t give a shit” attitudes with them.

This curious cat has questions about such people, and here they are:

How many times can someone slam the door to their hotel room, in five minutes?

Why do people pause in front of the door to your room and scream down the hall for someone to put the do not disturb sign out on their doorknob?

Must every kid in the room above me endlessly perform the Sabre Dance, while wearing concrete shoes?

How come the only parents who discipline their kids do so outside my room window, at 3am? “Will youse kids shut the hell up before ya wake up the friggin’ dead!”

Must the couple in the room next to mine, after driving 1753 miles to get there, decide to break up at 11pm?

Is it necessary for every lame-brain ahead of me at the breakfast buffet to hog up the serving counter while they butter their damn toast there rather than at their table?

Now we’re in the great outdoors and I have to wonder why do people bring dogs on vacation? Is it so they can shit someplace different, like the beach and parking lots? What’s the deal, do dogs realize that they’re on vacation?

After cleaning our shoes we move on and are now bothered by a different breed of loser. I’m not paranoid. I have photographic evidence to back this one up.

These are the people who enjoy giving themselves a cameo appearance in your vacation photographs. They are the picture pirates. 

They’ve always been around. I have a picture, circa 1952, of me, and some unknown, genetically challenged individual, a friggin’ yo-yo that deliberately got into a carefully composed picture of me. There I am contemplating a handful of something or another, next to a tree, the old kind of tree, made entirely of wood, with an interloper slightly behind me, staring directly into the lens.

This picture was taken during the annual Ippolito family vacation weekend down the shore, in Screwyew, N.J. I recall my father yelling out “OK, stay still, OK, got, aw shit! What the hells amatter wit’ ya? Ya goddamn blind or sumpthin, or are ya just stupid? Ya walked inta the picture of my son, and that was the last one on the roll too, ya stupid sonuvabitch!”

It still happens to me. A few years ago, just as a friend touched the camera’s shutter-button, a dork-like character literally jumped into the frame along with my wife and I, against a backdrop of The Golden Gate Bridge. 

Do these image intruders think we’ll look upon their likeness with fondness in the coming years? 

The S.F. yo-yo, gets pointed at by everyone while they ask, “Who’s the leaping asshole?” Makes for a good laugh, and we have a framed picture taken in the same spot sans the sad sack. 

I don’t get mad anymore though. No longer are cameras strapped with only 8 or 12 manually wound shots, we have 36 or even 40 now, and automatic film advance.

So what if a few have an unwanted rearend in them, you shoot him or her a dirty look, take a few more, and an hour later you can see the finished results while you have ice cream at the same drugstore. And, for a mere few cents you have a photo of someone worse off than you to laugh at.

Of course digital camera owners can instantly erase the photo felon if desired. Just delete the sumbitch and send him to digital nothingness, where these people belong. 

Ever see a monument malingerer? They’re all over places like Washington D.C., perfectly positioned at every monument you want to photograph. There’s a bozo sitting in front of every statue either listening to a headset radio or reading yesterday’s newspaper. “Hey Dad, who’s the guy under the statue of Lincoln? Is he a relative? I don’t remember him.” 

And then there are the scene spoilers. These schmucks can obliterate great expanses of natural beauty because they travel in mobs.

Last year we took a trip to Lake Mead where a bunch of partiers had set up shop in a restricted area of desert, in front of the millions of years old, wind-scarred mountains that everyone photographs. They effectively made themselves, their unleashed dogs, their beer coolers, and their brightly colored picnic umbrellas, tables and chairs part of the scenery. No cares, no concerns, only themselves to please.

I can go there anytime, it’s only an hour away, but the people who traveled cross-country missed their once in a lifetime chance to take pictures because of these spoilers. Of course there weren’t any Park Rangers around to banish the crowd to a designated picnic area.

This year it was a local pain-in-the-ass on a friggin’ cell phone at the Mount Hood train station trying to look important while taking down his wife’s grocery list. He was strategically positioned so as to insure inclusion in any shot of the historic signs with a train in the background. My wife evicted him by aggressively brandishing her Konica in his direction, zoom lens fully extended.

One pathetic creature got us though as I was posing in front of the locomotive of the Mount Hood train we had ridden to the town of Parkdale, Oregon. An ungainly brute of a woman consciously chose to gallop between me, and my camera-wielding wife, about ten feet away.

Why? We had as much right to be in that particular spot as her, and we were there first. We weren’t blocking her. There were plenty of places for her to cross the tracks. She scrambled to get into the shot, and then slowed to a snail’s pace, as people like her always do.

Are we supposed to believe that these people, whose only other athletic endeavor consists of catching up to a fast disappearing dessert cart, are really trying to avoid being recorded on film? 

You know they’re doing it on purpose. They always have that little half smirk on their faces. They always look around too, to see if people like me are giving them the finger.

That arrogant bitch got snipped out of the photo and trashed with the breakfast bacon grease, eggshells, and coffee grounds.

We almost had another unwanted subject in a picture of us on top of the cliffs overlooking California’s Bodega Bay. I put the camera on a picnic table, set the self-timer, and then trotted over to stand behind my wife who was sitting at another table.

This old clown, who had been content sitting in his pickup for half an hour watching us devour lunch, suddenly got out of his vehicle and apparently felt the need to cross between us and the camera so he could better see the same ocean he’d been looking at all his pathetic life.

I knew he wanted to jump in. He was an old jumper all right, but I gave him a last second Guinea look which froze him in his tracks. As soon as the shutter tripped he pranced over to his coveted spot, right behind us, precluding any follow up shots. Asshole. 

Guys like him are in what I call the “local losers who like to look” category. They’re always the ones with pickups equipped with noisy, stinking diesel engines, which they allow to idle while they engage in the extremely boring sport of observing me.

”Holy shit, they think, lookit the guy lookin’ at the ocean. Lookit him pickin’ up a pebble. Wow the guy with the pebble has 3 cameras. I wonder what he’s doin?  Hey, what’s this, the guy with the pebble and the cameras is lookin’ at me, lookin’ at him. I wonder what he wants?” Asshole, get a life.

My final encounter with a photo felon came on the next to last day of our trip. I was composing a photograph that would have included some old stone steps that led down to the beach, when a young, local cretin, bumped into me en-route to the steps.

Why did he have to collide with me? There was 20 feet of unobstructed land on my right and left sides.

The asshole descends the steps halfway and then just stands there, leering at the women in thongs. Why couldn’t this perv be normal, like me, and use a camera with a 400mm telephoto lens to observe the local wildlife?

I think that for him this activity is as close to sex, with another person, as he’s going to get.

You know the type, weird, quizzical expression on his face, nose askew, the constipated look. The balance of his visage included a Neanderthal forehead with monobrow, cheap cap on backwards, and Clark Kent eyeglass frames, no Brad Pitt look alike here. 

I’ve decided that since these people are obviously starved for attention and force themselves on us we have the right to mock them in return. Just be sure to bring extra film on your next outing. 

THE BLAIR ENRICH PROJECT
OR
WRITING ABOUT WRONG

I knew it would happen, and now that it has it’s every bit as galling as I expected.

Jason Blair, former N.Y. Times fact inventor and plagiarism expert, is having his “tell all” book published by L.A. based New Millennium Press.

You know the story; Blair invented facts, used other writer’s work, and filed reports on people he never met and interviewed, and so forth.

Burning Down My Master's House: My Life at The New York Times goes on sale March 9, with a first printing of about 250,000 copies.

"It's a marvelous story. I think (Blair) is one of the best writers in the country today," New Millennium publisher Michael Viner said Wednesday. "(Blair) is a compelling individual and very honest, very self-critical, and that's part of the reason I wanted to do this."

What horseshit! “Very honest?” What? Excuse me but it was his dishonesty that made him famous. This guy, Viner, wouldn’t have known Blair existed if not for Blair’s dishonesty.

“Self critical?” It’s easy to be self critical when you’re caught inflagrante delicto. It’s the old criminal as victim story. What’s behind this one? This is just another one of those, “Oh he once got a stale potato chip as a child and it’s bothered him ever since, so he has issues, and should be allowed to break the law and be rewarded for it” stories.

As I have often said, “Everything that’s wrong is right these days.”

He’s getting a mid six-figure advance too, which is a hell of a lot for a first book by a non-celebrity. Although, his deceptive practices have made him a celebrity, I guess.

It’s very hard to get a book published, believe me it is. In fact it is perhaps one of the hardest things to accomplish despite the vast number of books that are published each year. Millions of books are submitted annually, and about 50,000 of those make it to print, not a great percentage.

What kind of book gets published? Well, aside from school and scientific works just about anything that a publisher feels will make money, regardless of the work’s merit, or the lack thereof.

So, it’s a business and it’s all about money. OK, I understand that businesses need to be profitable but what about scruples?

Years ago publishers took pride in what they produced. They wanted to offer quality writing they could be proud of. Now, it’s all about the bottom line and because of this the scoundrel type books are what’s sought.

It’s a sad commentary on the world’s readers but it seems that knowing what goes on in a movie star’s bedroom, or how some corporate CEO got away with stealing billons is what turns people on. Are these readers hoping to learn something so they can emulate their hero’s outrageous acts? I’ll leave that one to the shrinks.

Now we have Jason Blair, a seemingly mild-mannered, intellectual type, who is about to tell the world how and why he duped The New York Times management and it’s reading public. He’s going to be handsomely paid to chronicle his sins and this amounts to nothing more than rewarding a criminal for his acts.

Are people are so bored with their lives that they will fork over hard earned money to read about a shameful ruse? We’ll see how the sales go. In my opinion those who buy his book are fostering the concept that crime does indeed pay.

We live in a perverted society in which parents want everyone in the news to be role models for their kids. This way when their offspring screw up it can be blamed on a movie, or a video game, or a CD, or a TV show, or a sports figure, or a performing dog, rather than themselves.

If the book sells well Mr. Blair will be considered a successful author and therefore, to many, a role model.

A writer’s job is to enlighten, entertain, amuse, stimulate, and inspire the reader, not to deceive. Writers are not supposed to invent stories unless the piece is put forth as fiction.

The fact that Blair is being published because of his notoriety is not what pisses me off. If a publisher wanted to cash in on Blair’s current newsworthiness and was publishing a novel of his I would consider that to be good business sense and continued good luck on Blair’s part. In this case though, the publisher’s greed will cause him to profit from a criminal act, and that’s just wrong.

The NY Times should demand repayment of the wages he didn’t really earn and try to attach any income he derives from matters connected to his wrongdoing so he doesn’t become enriched by virtue of his crimes.

Of course I could try to turn this despicable situation to my advantage. Perhaps I can convince Blair to hire me to ghost write his book. I would gladly sign a confidentiality agreement forbidding me from revealing myself as the true author.

After the book runs it’s course I could then release a tell all book of my own. Next, Blair and I collaborate on a story to sell to Hollywood as the tale of a prank perpetrated by us.

Seems like this is the only way to get published these days. Sad, but at least the story would be true.

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