Biden gets it wrong

HuffPost headline: Joe Biden calls Julian Assange a 'high-tech terrorist'

Hey, Joe: Terrorists cause terror. Assange, not so much.

Causing terror is in the terrorist's job description. Scaring the crap out of hypocritical politicians is a civil duty.

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Doing wrong freely

Pathetic proof of the state of the United States: A lot of the experiments on "Mythbusters" deal with guns ... will a laptop computer stop bullets, will a wig stop bullets, and on and on. Americans sure love their damn guns.

***

A discussion of various philosophies pointed out that there are people who would rather do wrong freely than do right by coercion.

Sounds like the Tea Bag Party and the GOP.

***

The host of a Science Channel show, "Sci Fi Science," was working on plans for a cyber-soldier 50 years in the future. He cited current technology that might be expanded to create a biomechanical blend of human and machine, with super strength, mechanically enhanced eyesight, built-in weapons, a hive mind, fueled by broadcast power. My problem: Who thinks that, 50 years from now, individual soldiers will be on a battlefield? Dick Cheney doesn't.

The post-Vietnam wisdom is that the military is always fighting the last war, not the current one. This guy's imagining a 2010 war in 2060. But 2060 warfare won't remotely resemble 2010 tech. Could the GIs of 1944 cope with today's weapons in Iraq and Afganistan?

The entire show's a waste of imagination.

Another thought: "Star Trek's" Borg were cited, but "Doctor Who's" Cybermen preceded the Borg. The Borg are terrifying and the Cybermen are hilarious.

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Fire Seagal and Danza

Forget Sharron Angle's hysterical claims that undocumented workers (aka illegal aliens) are taking Americans' jobs.

Hollywood actors are the culprits. Steven Seagal's working as a cop and Tony Danza's pretending to be a high-school teacher, on cable TV "reality" shows.

Give back our jobs, actors!

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Lack of imagination

Waste of breath: A recent Discovery channel documentary repeatedly called dinosaurs "monsters." This word is so overused it is now meaningless.

Ditto: "miracle."

Rick Sanchez' CNN departure: LOL! Looks like getting tazed voluntarily was the high point of his career.

Sick and tired: Of TV dramas that begin with a brilliant "hook," then turn the clock back, i.e. "36 hours earlier." New show "The Event" and so bad it's good "The Good Guys" have an excuse, but nobody else. Hey, producers! Pay your writers more, stand back and let them tell stories. Drug the network suits into a coma.

Sick and tired, two: Shows where some kind of rite includes somebody slicing his or her palm with a knife to prove loyalty, commitment or whatever. The Klingons drove this action into the ground. Now, "Caprica" is doing it. Hey, producers! Let your writers use their imagination. Cinematic shortcuts are just lazy.

I know it's fiction, but none of these characters ever need bandages afterward, and none of them have to do anything one-handed, while healing.

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Listen up, dimwits

Note to TV drama producers: The trick of ending an episode with a song sung over scenes of your characters living their lives is worn out. After seeing it three times in two days this week, and multiple times last season, I'm sick of it. Write the whole episode. You're not like "Moonlighting," which burned through dialogue like rocket fuel.

Note to Christine O'Donnell: You think the claim that monkeys aren't evolving is evidence against the Theory of Evolution? Prove that monkeys aren't evolving, dimwit. They very well might be doing just that, at a biological snail's pace.

BTW: A "theory" is an explanation for a congregation of facts. Science doesn't aim for truth. Just the facts, ma'm.

Change that dial

Quick hits after a busy two months in the sunshine and fresh air:

Coping with new prescription computer glasses is bad enough, but I'm also adjusting to a new monitor. The monitor was not my idea, but collateral damage from the power company's hard blackout at 12:30 a.m. one weeknight in early September. After the repair guy installed a new power supply in the computer, I then discovered the monitor was dead, too. Oddly, being off line for a week and a half didn't hurt as much as I expected. I'm not addicted, apparently. My neck's killing me, though.

***

Why I reject the TV series "Detroit 1-8-7" after one episode: I figured out how the story was going to end, 15 minutes into the pilot. I guess it's too much to ask for a little creativity in today's dumbed-down entertainment world.

The book "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare," by James Shapiro, says that, in 1599, when the London theater — excuse me, theatre — scene was overflowing with competition, W.S. didn't take the path of least resistance, that is, dumbing down his plays. Instead, he made them doubly complex ... "As You Like It" and "Hamlet," for example. He made the paying customers work harder. Gee, I wonder how that worked out?

Any current TV-network entertainment execs ever even heard of Shakespeare?

***

Whiz kid Sharron Angle's running an attack ad that includes the (false) statement that Harry Reid favors amnesty for illegal aliens. Were I associating with illegal aliens, I'd find that reason enough to vote for Sen. H.R. I hope Mrs. Angle sticks with this advertising team.

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The madness of Stephen Colbert: Dude, I hope you understand that in today's political world, everybody in Washington, D.C., has had a humorectomy. The conservatives cannot afford to crack a smile, because their voter base is utterly humorless. Even the White House can't chuckle, until Rahm Emanuel bails out; he's the hack who ordered his fellow Congresshacks to not go on Colbert's show in its early months. And the rest of the crowd can't laugh, because the conservatives will use it to attack them.

Soldier on, Stevie baby!

My great-aunt, Susie, and one of her two sons were the first people I met who had no sense of humor. They were utterly scary.

Naturally, the second son excelled at practical jokes and such. He successfully compensated, according to my mother, a co-conspirator and punishee.

***

Say amen: So, a lot of Americans are brain-dead about the facts of their religion, according to the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Happiest about the numbers: every evangelical preacher in the country. They are doing something right. Kudos to the Catholic clergy, too. Ignorance is bliss, and, boy, are lots of people blissful.

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What'll Hollywood do without its clippings?

Hey, Hollywood producers ... listen up! Print news media is dying. It just needs somebody to put it out of its misery.

But ... the espionage show on AMC, "Rubicon," has spies pouring through newspapers for secret messages, clues and stuff. They seem to be big on crossword puzzles. The opening titles have several shots of newspaper classified ads.

And, some movie I've seen recently — "Inception," maybe — has its characters looking at a collection of newspaper clippings.

Somebody tell the set decorator to get with the Internet, baby.

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Joe does Hollywood

As you watch the new movie, "Love Ranch," please note that it is loosely based upon the lives of Joe and Sally Conforte, formerly of Northern Nevada. Conforte is a pimp and the late Mrs. C. was a brothel-running madam. They got very, very rich by selling women's bodies. The whores didn't get rich; they just got screwed.

I have not yet seen the movie, but there's no way that this movie tells the truth about this slimy pair.

As a human being, Conforte makes Bernie Madoff look like Mr. Rogers. When Joe last spoke with a U.S. reporter, he was living large in Brazil, playing bridge and enjoying the ocean view. He's in Brazil because he's a fugitive from U.S. justice; after doing time for tax fraud, he got out and committed more tax fraud (like Al Capone, who was guilty of many crimes but could only be caught for taxes). Brothels were a cash-only business then.

When I was at UNR in the late 1960s, a professor invited Joe and Sally in to tell the class how they were going to perform humanitarian acts to make the world better. They talked a good game, but, strangely, never got around to those acts of charity, except for giving out free frozen turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Sally's nephew continues the tradition.)

When Joe started his Northern Nevada career as a pimp — a job description he refused — he tangled with Washoe County district attorney Bill Raggio, who had Joe arrested whenever he showed up in Reno, as a vagrant with no visible means of support. In return, Joe tried to set up Raggio, plotting to catch the DA in a hotel room with an under-age girl. Raggio didn't fall for the trap.

As for prize-fighter Oscar Bonavista, Joe's rule was: Screw the girls, screw my wife, but keep your hands off the money. Oscar violated Rule No. 1 and died for it, shot to death in the brothel's parking lot.

The Reno Evening Gazette and Nevada State Journal won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for a series of editorials spotlighting the web of bribes and corruption Conforte wove across Northern Nevada.

If you want to see the real Joe, there's a fun little movie, "Charley Varrick," in which Mob enforcer Joe Don Baker stops by the Mustang Ranch, and is welcomed by Joe C.

In "Love Ranch," New Mexico stands in for Northern Nevada. In "Charley Varrick," Northern Nevada stands in for New Mexico.

As for legal prostitution: There's a brothel about 10 miles east of my home, in Storey County, and others about 30 miles southeast, in Lyon County. Prostitution is illegal in Reno, Sparks, Washoe County, Carson City (the state capital), Las Vegas, Clark County; prostitution is illegal where 95 percent of the Nevada population lives. Are there whores in Reno and Las Vegas? Yep. Free-market economy ... where there are buyers, there will be suppliers.

A friend once waited table for a young man and his friends who had obviously just come from a now-closed brothel near the Fallon Naval Air Station. Why did they go there, she asked. His answer: A girlfriend or wife gets all insulted when asked for special services, but a pro just does the job.

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True-blue citizens

Stray thought as I push paper at the Reno office of the 2010 Census:

Numerous (I don't have actual numbers and if I did I couldn't reveal them anyway) people are refusing to give basic information to Census enumerators, throughout Northern Nevada.

Whatever happened to "stand up and be counted" as a show of patriotism?

Are these people ashamed of being Americans?

Why else would they refuse to answer a knock on the front door? Peek out the curtains until the visitor leaves? Slam doors and hang up on telephone calls?

Hey, chump! We've got your address and telephone number already. Not coming to the door isn't going to save your privacy. (And most of these holed-up yahoos are not Hispanic, by the way.)

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Heil yourself

I'm trying to stop wondering why Glenn Beck's so obsessed with Nazis, and with using "Nazi" as an insult.

Does he use Nazi because he believes that his radio-TV audience is so ignorant that members don't know any other historical references?

Does HE not know any other historical references?

Does he not understand that all those Hollywood movies with Nazi villains were fiction, not fact?

Does he not realize, when he looks in the mirror, that he perfectly illustrates the Nazi image of Aryan racial perfection, with the blue eyes and blond hair?

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Tea and hypocrisy, oil on the side

Why is it that the people who, during "tea bag party" season, screamed the loudest about the evils of big government are now the ones screaming at Obama because he didn't thrust the federal government into the BP disaster in the Gulf?

I got your cognative dissonance right here, jerks.

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Chicken, little

Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden's proving to be a suitable replacement for the late U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht, R-Nev., who is memorialized with several entries in "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said."

Lowden, it seems, lives in the 1930s, when unemployed families and other impoverished Americans turned to barter in lieu of cash. I'd try the "chicken for medical care" idea, except for the fact that my medical guy would fall over laughing, hit his head and have to go to the E.R. for stitches.

Or, maybe she's stuck in the 1870s. Hard to tell.

There used to be a right-wing political party in Nevada that demanded a return to the barter system. Oddly, Nevadans, who rarely exhibit such smarts, turned away from the idea.

Side note: The polls showing Lowden leading Harry Reid undoubtedly include some of the three-quarters of a million people who haven't lived in Nevada much longer than 15 years. Tightwad Orange County Californians sold their cheap houses for zillions and moved to no-state-income-tax Nevada. Sadly, they have little to do in their lives except vote to prevent people who aren't them from getting help.

***

I'm no fan of big airlines, but I hope they tell the passengers demanding compensation for being stranded by Iceland's volcano to go pluck a chicken.

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Unsure on the concept

Junk mail addressed to "Our friends at" my P.O. box Monday included a Special Limited Edition Golden Ticket Spring Special from the Peppermill in Reno. It's full of coupons for this and that, including a discount on an Elvis Costello concert May 15.

The main message is a pitch for people to sign up for the "Passport" club.

However ... farther down the front page, it promises "Guaranteed Luck."

If I were on the Nevada Gaming Control Board, I'd have lots of questions for the Peppermill.

And give management a dictionary so they can look up "luck."

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Take your ego and shove it

Apparently, Sarah Palin spent part of her new Fox TV show praising Americans for being exceptional. And, apparently, the far-right nutballs have proclaimed that American Exceptionalism is back.

If that's true, and if the USA were a person, it would be a full-on narcissist. I used to work for one and came close to murdering another, saved only because that jackass moved away. Anybody who lives with a narcissist will tell you that he/she is a horrid person.

Wikipedia says: Narcissistic personality disorder is ... defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ... as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy."

Sadly, believers in American Exceptionalism are massively narcissistic, leading other countries to despise or hate the USA. Too bad these exceptional jerks won't leave the neighborhood. Insert your own Texas joke here.

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Does compute

So, I just watched a "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode from February 1998 and there was the Starfleet crew using handheld, 8 by 12 computing devices, rectangular, touch-screen, wireless ...

Turn an iPad beige and you've got the idea.

And people think Apple invents its own stuff.

Speaking of computers, the incessant commercials for Windows 7 show that Microsoft is turning its OS into an Apple clone. Microsoft's ads are always lame, but this cycle is beyond annoying.

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Up the Republic

Can't help but think of the Tea Party today while reading the late Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." I'm up to the "Robber Barons and Rebels" chapter, which talks of the Populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s.

Strikes swept the country — railroad workers, miners, steel mill crews, women factory workers — while the Farmers Alliance "showed sympathy with the growing labor movement," Zinn says.

He discusses the economic collapse of 1893, which puts our current economic disaster to shame, but which gave national impetus to the People's (populist) party. By the time of the 1896 presidential election, however, the Democratic Party had engulfed the Populists.

" ... where a threatening mass movement developed, the two-party system stood ready to send out one of its columns to surround that movement and drain it of vitality," Zinn says.

My point: news stories today report that Tea Party demonstrators are using signs that were printed by the Republican Party. The GOP is surrounding the Tea Party. So long, suckers.

***

Reno newspaper story today quotes a Republican candidate for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's seat as referring to the "Democrat" party.

If it's Democrat rather than Democratic, shouldn't her party be called the Republic Party?

Of course, republics are rarely democracies. On the other hand, the GOP's masters don't want democracy anyway. Which brings us right back to robber barons.

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The quest for power

So ... another batch of pervert Roman Catholic priests, this time in Germany.

The men who maintain the rule of celibacy cannot understand the power of the human sex drive. Not that perverts are acting out of an actual sex drive; they use sex as a weapon to hurt the weak and make themselves feel strong.

But any priest who can live celibate, untroubled, cannot grasp the need for physical release that sexual activity brings. It's like a deaf person's understanding of Bach or Lennon-McCartney, intellectual but not visceral.

Celibacy was forced on the priesthood, not that long ago, in an effort — mostly successful — to maintain power, imposed by men filled with hate, envy and lust. Get a man by the package and he's yours forever. Like frakking him without actually touching him.

Jesus Christ would not recognize any of today's "Christian" churches.

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Twilight hours reading twisted history with the Beckster

Dear Rachel Maddow: I'm so glad that you "love" daylight saving time. It's just that there is a horrid trade-off for your evening revels. Millions of school children must roll out of bed, dress, eat and travel to school in pre-dawn darkness.

How about this: Ignore what the clock says and do your evening thang according to where the sun is. Leave the rest of us alone. You're a big TV star, lady. Own your life.

***

Dear Glenn Beck: Thanks for the warning about social justice and economic justice being code words used by the Nazis and Communists.

One problem, though ... the Nazis lost the fighting war, and the Communists (even China's communism is mutating) lost the economic war. Their philosophies went bye-bye. Game over.

Did you go to school in Texas?

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Dear Texas State Board of Education: Congrats on the victory that will let you rewrite the history taught to Texas students ... history with an ultraconservative, Christian slant.

One problem for your brainwashing program: The Internet. Heard of it? Used to be that students had no access to alternative points of view, on any subject. Nowadays, the Web overflows with info, facts, and balance. E-books, cable TV ... there are a zillion outlets for actual facts.

Only the most stupid of Texas children will never learn what the rest of the world already knows.

Ignorance can be fixed; stupid is forever.

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Oh, Sarah, you silly goose

Criticizing a speaker for using a teleprompter is like criticizing a surgeon for using a scalpel. It's a tool. Nothing more.

Palin's followers are so easily bamboozled, however, that they probably believe those frauds in the Philippines who pretend to do surgery with bare hands. And no teleprompters.

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Worst job in the world

I pity the poor sap among Sarah Palin's handlers who draws the short straw and has to tell her that she's too old for her hairstyle.

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The spice of life

How boring life would be without all the little contradictions that pile up and up and up.

Case in point: I just applied for a multimedia "boot camp" that teaches audio, photo and Soundslides.

Multimedia, 99.99% computerized. But this application has to be snail-mailed; no email, no online application.

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Can I get an amen?

The reason I'm not joyfully awaiting "Caprica," spinoff from "Battlestar Galactica:" All the multiple gods versus one god nonsense. And a human as creator of a new race.

Your god-my gods worked for Cylons and humans searching for their planet of origin, but a little religion goes a long way. Especially a fictional religion.

More and more Americans are dumping organized religion, but here's a "science fiction" TV show playing it front and center.

Don't preach, boys. No matter how good you tell stories, you can't make religion real.

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Personality transplant needed but not wanted

OK, yet more proof that I am out of step in 21st century USA:

I do not want "friends" on Facebook. I do not want to chat electronically, look at their vacation photos, or anything else. I do not want pages on Google, Phatchat or anywhere else. I do not care, will never care about them, and I want them the hell out of my face. (Six — count 'em six — emails from Facebook today because I clicked OK to I know not what via Facebook for a friend in Seattle.)

I do not want mousers knowing every last thing about me and my life. "None of your damn business" is a phrase not used nearly enough.

And yet, here I am, posting my bitchy little whine on a social networking site.

Contradiction personified.

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Pardon me whilst I surf

Not dead in Hollywood — "NCIS" episode Jan. 26 placed a major clue in a dead man's safe: a file of newspaper clippings.

I guess TV drama producers haven't noticed that print papers are old hat.

On the other hand, printouts from Web sites just don't have the visual impact of full-page headlines about unsolved murders.

***

Galactic impressions — The pilot movie for the next "Battlestar Galactica" TV series, "Caprica," proves why BSG was such a big hit in the small pond of sci-fi audiences.

Take away the spaceships and chrome toasters, and you'd never know it was science fiction. Everybody looked, dressed, talked and behaved just like 21-century Americans. Tobacco, booze, telephones. Not to forget Starbuck's Hummer.

No space aliens to creep out the unimaginative; no "doesn't-look-like-me and my friends." Just comforting, non-threatening Americans. Mostly pink-skinned, too.

This brilliant concept got around a major roadblock: U.S. TV viewers' deep-seated fear (and hate) of people who are "different."

The first two hours of "Caprica" exhibits the same concept, which is good for drawing an audience but very bad for science fiction, in any format.

"Caprica," however, needs to lighten up, add a character or five with a passion for life. No matter the genre, character sells the show.

***

Howling with laughter — A fact that Jay Leno and NBC missed but David Letterman and Conan O'Brien recognize: People who watch late-night TV have mentalities vastly different from the "lights out" at 10:30 p.m. crowd.

Laughter may be universal, but sense of humor varies from person to person.

I used to work for a man who thought 6 a.m. was an actual hour. One day, we were talking about an auto wreck that occurred at 2 a.m. on a weeknight. This morning lark could not imagine where the injured woman was going at 2 a.m. "What on earth was she doing?" is a paraphrase. Here's a sample: Buying groceries, gasoline or fast-food hamburgers, meeting friends after working the late shift, making whoopie ...

The world doesn't stop when the sky turns out the light.

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Smokin'

Medicine isn't always a good thing: TV commercials tout a drug, Chantix, to help quit smoking tobacco. Now there's other commericals from lawyers looking for people made sick by Chantix. Cold turkey, anybody?

***

TV cliches that produce yelling at my TV:

* A doctor says to a patient's family: "We're doing everything we can," or "We're doing the best we can." Gee, would medical people skip treatments, because they don't feel like "doing everything we can"? Real writers can come up with better, but TV producers and the network suits' imagination is brain-dead.

* One man calling another man "son." Lt. Caine of "CSI Miami" and Gen. Hammond of "Stargate SG-1" do this all the time, and it drives me bats. He's not the father. Age does not automatically bring wisdom. If an older woman called me "daughter," I'd tell her to kiss off. Not politely.

* Deceased shills such as Billie Mays should be off the air. Dead men can't sell.

* CPR done wrong, especially by characters who should know better, like police. The only person I've seen lately doing it right was Hawkeye in a rerun of "MASH." Way to go, Mr. Alda.

* Cooking shows or travel programs that show people eating. Chew with that mouth closed, please.

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Why I dislike "marketing" methods

I just viewed a 30-minute presentation for an online job-search assistance company, and, wow, am I impressed. Thirty minutes and not one word about what it costs. Perfect performance, marketing weasels.

Thirty minutes and not one actual, usable fact. If they want my business, they should have put the price tag up front.

Last week, I signed up at a forgettable online job board and now I get emails from some broad wanting $400 to write a "good" resume for me.

If I don't get a job soon, I'm going into the "help jobseekers" business.

Twenty years in print journalism left cynicism deeply engrained in my personality. Answers up front, people. You're not U.S. Congresscritters, people. If you want to sell something, don't pretend you're not a used-car salesman.

The gentleman called "Honest John" who sold me two leather purses in Nogales, Mexico, was more "honest" than these jokers.

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Keep your hand off my wallet

I just rudely hung up on a fundraiser for some fraternal order of police.

Don't these people get paid? Don't they have health insurance?

Why do they beg for money from the public when the tax-paying public has already paid them?

What a scam.

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All atwitter in the locker room

While I filled out a couple of online job applications just now, I came to wonder why application forms still differentiate between telephone numbers and cell phone numbers. Cell phones are everywhere. What does it possibly matter what hardware is on the far end of a phone call?

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"News" headline on some Web site commented on Kathy Griffin dropping the "F-bomb" on live TV. Grow the hell up, people. "F-bomb" happens. Have no TV people the ability to think about actual important events? Have they no respect for their viewers? Crude language, hookers mislabeled as "mistress" to Tiger W. ... even in the 24/7 pressure cooker, there should be ideas of more importance than what 15-year-olds titter about in the locker room.

And, no, this complaint does not make me an old fogey.

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