Almost Nearly Last Parting Shot Time

Ok, now what was my favorite part of 2006?

Looking at pretty women.


What is likely to be my favorite part of 2007?

Looking at pretty women.


Hmmm . . .

You might be thinking that out of all things, I might like looking at pretty women best. And if you are thinking that, you are not far off the mark! It might not be the most favorite thing, but it is way high on my list of favorite things (particularly, On-Line.)


Ok. I am not going to leave my year end message there, on the matter of my close-to-single-minded bias in favor of pretty women. I will go one step further and to a more . . . generally germaine point.

Beyond what I have said in the other N.Y. threads, I am wishing for a saner and safer world for all, for next year.

I hope that covers a lot of the territory that needs covering.

Ok good. Now as that is said and done, back to business as usual.

Presenting Ms. Zeta-Jones:





(How come it has taken me this long to post a pic of her? NO EXCUSE!)

I'll be brief

Ya, I deleted the original post; wtf? Pointless, but I will say 2007!! Come on here come on down. I am ready for the rest of my life!

Beyond that, have I said recently something complimentary about Katie?

Meow!

New Year's Part Deux. What I want out of 2007.

I WANT 2007 TO BE THE YEAR OF ZERO TOLERANCE FOR LIARS!!!

Follow me here.

If 2006's word of the year is truthiness, I want 2007 to be a year where we reject the idea of truthiness, of wikiality, of partisan parochial pontification, of spin, of parsing, of explaining what some other chuckle-head really meant, despite the fact the we -- the rest of us -- clearly heard/read the HATEFUL, BIGOTED, RACIST, INEXCUSABLE or merely WOEFULLY IGNORANT thing that chuckle-head in question actually expressed.

I want 2007 to be the year of NO BULLSHIT!

Keeping in mind my earlier post from a few months ago, lionizing that inspiring (yet fictional) newsman Walter Beale, I want people by the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to

rise as one (or nearly so) and shout out loud:

"Im mad as hell at all this Bullshit, and the Bullshitters, and I am not gonna take it anymore!"

I am remembering something I read on some website I have bookmarked here, that was about how to spot a liar. The remark I have in mind is something like, you know a lie when you hear it, as your inclination is to TURN AWAY from the lie/liar.

That is what I want in 2007. I want this to be the year where when ever anyone spins, snows, lies or bullshits, that the inclination to Turn Away, is always met and always followed.

I am not saying that if 2007 actually ends up as the year of No Bullshit, that the world's other major problems will dissapear.

But honestly (no pun intended)? I can not see a single other real problem in the world being solved, unless we seriously reduce the mountain of bullshit and lies that we have been living with, for way far too long.

JMO!

Jumping The Gun. About New Year's

Hmmm, now I have been thinking about this a few days, and I am ready for NY post #1.

Have I learned anything important this past year?

Not really.

I might have learned that I have a higher threshold for insanity, inannity, and insubstantiality.

I still really can't stand any of that shit, but I have learned how to NOT bug out totally against them when suffering them.

Oh, and I suppose I have learned I have a higher threshold for some of my other "pet peeves" than I once believed. But I still despise pettiness and petty people. Life is too short for shit.

Really.

I am not likely to have more years ahead of my than are behind me. I do not want to waste a single minute more on stupid petty shit!


Beyond that?

Oh ya the most important thing I learned this year:

I LOVE ocean crusing!

Other than that? As we Old School OG Jerseyites say . . . . fuggedaboudit!

Truer words are rarely spoken

Well one of my favorite contemporary writers/series is Laurel K. Hamilton's Princess Merry Gentry Series. I am not going to go long, if you don't know the series I will give you the quick and dirty of it:

We are talking about Tolkien meets Ann Rice (in current day USA.) Immortal Keltoi gods and goddesses here in the USA. Duath du Danu.

Or my way of describing it:

Immortals Behaving Badly (and I do mean badly. I mean, lusty in all senses of the word, badly.)


Anyway I am reading the latest installment in the series, and there have been several good lines but here is the one that I could not resist posting:

True friendship is a type of love, and all love has power.

True that; even if you never find yourself like Princess Merry, on the edge of a battlefield with your goblin allies opposing an ancient and more frightening foe than your goblin allies.

Yes the story is WAY complicated. Just remember the quote, for the wisdom it contains.

Hmm Kay?

Now let me get back to the book. I am putting my money on the Goblins turning the tide.

What the BLOODY Hell? Am I going all WONKY again?

Ok, in my defense, and even before I launch into my defense, a premise:

I DESPISE it when I have to spend too much time on petty matters.

My JOB/GIG has me spending way too much time on petty matters. MADDENING that! But ok, I am going to start looking for an upgrade after New Year's (now is no time to try to jump ship, but after the New Year turns? Opps I digress . . . .)

Anyway, my brain is dying for something to at least occupy it in some worthy tangent.

So I am going to post some logic/rhetoric/heuristic stuff here.

I am not saying you, dear reader, need to read this, but I saying I need to think about such about now. Ok here goes:



Spotting arguments

Spotting an argument is harder than spotting premises or a conclusion. Lots of people shower their writing with assertions, without ever producing anything you might reasonably call an argument.

Sometimes arguments don't follow the pattern described above. For example, people may state their conclusions first, and then justify them afterwards. This is valid, but it can be a little confusing.

To make the situation worse, some statements look like arguments but aren't. For example:

"If the Bible is accurate, Jesus must either have been insane, an evil liar, or the Son of God."


That's not an argument; it's a conditional statement. It doesn't state the premises necessary to support its conclusion, and even if you add those assertions it suffers from a number of other flaws which are described in more detail in the Atheist Arguments document.

An argument is also not the same as an explanation. Suppose that you are trying to argue that Albert Einstein believed in God, and say:

"Einstein made his famous statement 'God does not play dice' because of his belief in God."
That may look like a relevant argument, but it's not; it's an explanation of Einstein's statement.

To see this, remember that a statement of the form "X because Y" can be re-phrased as an equivalent statement, of the form "Y therefore X." Doing so gives us:

"Einstein believed in God, therefore he made his famous statement 'God does not play dice'.

Now it's clear that the statement, which looked like an argument, is actually assuming the result which it is supposed to be proving, in order to explain the Einstein quote.

Furthermore, Einstein did not believe in a personal God concerned with human affairs -- again, see the Atheist Arguments document.


http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html



Ahhhhh!

That was refreshing for me. Hope it was for you too!

Bye Bye, Ahmet.

My eulogy (as it is) for Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records.

And the short version of his exceptional life is found here

http://www.history-of-rock.com/atlantic_records.htm


But here is the short version of it, off the top of my head, instead of hyperlinked.

Unless your name is Clive Davis, or Herb Alpert, or David Geffen, forget it, you are not living on the same exalted plateau.

This is a very exclusive club, the music moguls of the 20th century.


Rest in peace Ahmet. You will (assuming that such sub Heavens are in existence) have an All Access Pass to all the musical Heavens there are, from Jazz, to Blues, to Rock to post punk new wave.

Thank you for your ambition and ear.

Oh and give my Uncle Billy (the Be-Bopper) a shout out from me. You should find him hanging with Bird and all them Hep Cats. Ok?



Edit to add:

(What was I thinking??) Here is the official tribute site:


http://www.atlanticrecords.com/ahmet/

I started this blog, with delusions of Pseudo-Intellectual Grandeur,

and sadly went down the shallow road, straight to the slimey gutter of Partisan Politics.

I got over that shit.

Then I got lost in sociological and other academic topics (among other brain drippings.) And lately I have been focusing on what I like BEST (didja hear me? I said BEST!!!) Pretty Women!

But hey, time to revert back to a little commentary.


Oh shit. I had something all typed out, but it was way too political. Let me find something else, hmm kay?


Ok I will skip trying to remember what ever I said at work that my table neighbor thought was smart. Instead, I will go for some quotes on friendship. Here goes:


"When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character."

W. Somerset Maugham


"When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself."

Wayne Dyer


"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude."

Timothy Bentley


"Where there are friends, there is wealth."

Titus Muccius Plautus.


"Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got."

Art Buchwald

Just so ya know. I do not ONLY have eyes for Katie.

(Ok I meant to post this pic yesterday but Iblogger was messing up.)


In case you don't know well enough yet, here is what I like/believe is BEST about the internet:

finding/seeing pictures of pretty women.

Rest of it is mostly not very interesting to me, but like I said in my last post.

I LIKE girls (or Women, if you prefer that word.)

Oh and just for the record, Jill's show, "Crossing Jordan," is my favorite network (non-cable) drama. Not just becuse Jill is the star. But I confess, it was because of Jill being the star, that I started watching it.

Ok -- that is if for my slavish devotion to pretty women.

Well for NOW at least.

Just In Case You Have NOT Been Paying Attention. Reasons I LIKE Katie Couric . . .

She is a GIRL!!!

I like Girls!!!










More seriously (but I should say, Hell Yes! I am serious about liking girls), I read her bio on the CBS Website today. She is an HONORS grad of U. Virginia.

Didja hear me?

I said HONORS!

My Thought of The Day (not likely totally original, I say . . .)

Now remember kids . . .

with each and every day that passes, your life is ONE DAY SHORTER!

So try to keep from squandering the precious time you have left on petty shit (or shitty people.)

Just a suggestion there.

Just a Quickie . . .

Those who will lie for you will lie against you --


Bosnian Saying



I had some other ideas, but I just recently saw this on one of my old old bookmarks and thought it is as true now, as ever.

And to think some folk QUESTION why I love Katie . . .

Words Matter













Technical Notes:

I did not embed the vid, so click the hyperlink, not the pic!

Oh, and don't mind the Benydryl spot. Katie will follow that commercial (I did test the vid/link already.)


Substantive Notes:

I think Katie really means what she says there. I am making this point here, as I have met (or perhaps . . .encountered??) way too many people who can MOUTH or TYPE the sentiment that they know that some words are really very bad, very, very bad in the sense that if you are caught using the bad words by the wrong people you will have to pay for that transgession in blood, sweat, tears, and loss of reputation across a cross section of the American Population.

Oh, and then there are the people who actually GET IT!! That it is the horrible, mean, nasty-vicious, excuseless-ugliness of character, act, and being, behind the bad words, that make the bad words so bad.

I am confident Katie is the latter (actually gets it) not the former (a phony.)

I think she means it fully and totally, when she says "Words Matter," and to her it is DEFINITELY NOT a mere matter of paying "lip service."


Unfortunately, for far too many Americans, it only is a matter of lip service, or even more merely, just not wanting to be caught saying what they really feel in their hearts.

AGAIN! This is not Politics! Well, not Partisan Politics, at least. The Case Against Ideology.

It is witless.

Damn! I never knew I had it in me to be that succinct.


Amazing, that!