Did I mention I hate flying?

I hate flying. I hate planes, I hate airports, I hate flying. I hate the smell of jet fuel, I hate the germy recycled air in planes, I hate the baggage check. And did I mention I hate flying?

I had to fly, however, to get to San Antonio to see my family. I'm here for a whole week!, basking in the well-above-freezing temperatures, so I thought I'd bring you along. You can see accompanying SA posts on my other blog as well.

Here's a view from waaaay up high:My God, how I hate flying. Somehow, however, I made it through from State College to Detroit, and then Detroit to SA. Ugh. I had to keep telling myself "it's only four flights. Four parts. Two today, and then a whole week before you have to do it again. And you'll see your family!" That, plus two bourbon-and-cokes and a margarita, helped pass the time.

The airport in SA has some crazy stuff:
This tunnel had jungle-y music piped into it, and the walls lit up and pulsed in different colors. I think it was "art."

Here's an idea of what Central Texas looks like as you drive from town to town:
Scenic, no? Honestly, there are prettier parts, but these were taken on I35 between San Antonio and Austin.

Later today, there's some shopping and birding and goofing off to be done. I'll be posting from time to time, and I'll also try to make the rounds and visit you guys. That whole no-blogging-from-work thing really sucks; I miss you all so badly!

Have a good week, wherever you are, and greetings from my native state!

Calling all Central Texas Bloggers!

I'll be in San Antonio/Austin all next week, and I'd love to meet such bloggy heroes as Karen Zipdrive and Freida Bee and any other Texans who'd care to see me in person and share our tales of woe and intrigue. Email me at dguzman1964 at gmail dot com if you'd like to meet up!

Dear Dr. Monkey,

I'm sorry to hear that your erstwhile wife Salma Hayak seems to have married someone else. I like to call this photo "Pasty and Tasty." I thought you'd appreciate that.

I know your little monkey heart is broken, my friend. But take heart--she'll probably dump him in less than a year, like all celebs do!

Obama puts Czar out of work

Hello and Das vadanya to my loyal subject dguzman for allowing me to talk to you all today. This is Czar Nicholas Romanov, of the Ruling Family of Romanovs, circa 1914 Russia. I must tell you that I have been needing a vodka since I heard that your President Obama has denied me my throne! Just when I thought I was at last returning to my rightful place as car czar, President Obama pulls the throne out from under me! Think how wonderful I could’ve been, little potato-eating subjects!

I had already started doing the legwork for the job, talking to the little people! Here I am, Czar Nicholas Romanov, talking with one of the hard workers in an auto plant in Lansing, Michigan. See how effective I was?

And here I am on a used car lot in some little village Illinois, along with my whole family of car-czar relatives!
First the assassinations, and now this. Is there no justice? What will I do now? What work is there in this economy for a czar of any sort?

More cafeteria bloggin', and an idea

I think what I'm going to do to solve this no-blogging-at-my-desk thing is to write up posts at my desk in Word, then send them to my webmail account, then post them once I get to the public use computers here in the Fucked-Up Nooz Channel Cafeteria! Featuring NASCAR today! Thrilling!

Sorry, but I can't hear myself think with the roar of the engines and all the twanging in the background.

Future posts coming--I promise! Exciting ones!

Cafeteria bloggin'

So I'm stuck blogging in the work cafeteria for now, as I heard a rumor that our desktops were being monitored for non-work-related internets usage.... Not me! Never me!

I'm sitting here in Faux Nooz hell, too -- listening to some "fair and balanced" "expert" ragging on Tim Geithner for supposedly not staying up late enough to get the details worked out on how the stimulus money will be spent. "THAT'S A BAD FOOTBALL TEAM," he's spewing. Funny how they never criticized the morons and thieves of the Bush administration for their bald-faced robbery and clusterfuck of the last eight years. Good lord, now they're wondering WHY these repugs DARED to vote for the stimulus. God, I HATE this channel. "John McCain, who is very prone to cutting deals with democrats.... SENATOR Obama" this idiotic pundit they have on now just called OUR PRESIDENT a "senator!" Can't they all be sent to Gitmo for that?

Meanwhile, life is okay. We've had mild temps and some rain rather than snow--thrilling! Bring on the spring!

I really had nothing more gripping to say today, and whatever thoughts I did have were blown out of my brain by the mind-numbing stupidity of Faux Nooz. I gotta get internets at home.

the one in which I take a break from politics

It's been getting harder and harder for me to post about politics on this blog, or even to make the usual rounds of all my snarky pals' blogs, lately. Even as I've realized that I might (just might!) be starting to come out of my winter blahs (which have been fucking BRUTAL this year), and as I've started to get all excited about birding again--which makes me ever so happy--it seems like reading about the same-old same-old happening in Washington just gets me down again.

We make logical arguments about the stimulus package, about the direction our country needs to go, and still the repubs act like THEY are in charge -- and the dems let them. President Obama adds a bunch of corporate giveaways to his stimulus plan, and STILL the repugs complain. We're still letting the Rush Limpdicks and Bitch McConnells of the world dominate the discussion.

Why?

I guess there are a million answers to that question--but any of those answers will just depress me. The fact is that I'm exhausted. I'm sick of politics. I'm so sick of it that even making fun of it isn't fun anymore. The outrage is just too much for me.

Maybe I'm just lazy--my guy's at the helm now, after all, so why not just trust him to do the right things? Of course, that's no foregone conclusion, though--cases in point: Why are we still in Iraq? What's going on with Gitmo and all the secret torture camps? What's with the (alleged) threat to the Brits to keep quiet about our torture of prisoners?

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: you might see more posts on this blog, but they will be few and far between and they probably won't be about politics. They'll be about other things I think about. I changed the name of this blog because I am no longer for impeachment; instead, I'm dreaming of prosecution of the Bush Administration, and I'm dreaming of an Obama Administration that can and will make changes for the better in this country.

So don't be surprised if my posts are a little less political and a little more personal or just "other." Hope that's okay.

Obama gets tough on bailout execs

(h/t to Yankee Pot Roast for this graphic, which I changed a little)I always hated the idea of a salary cap in sports, because all it meant was that the rich teams were going to overpay for the big stars and everyone else would get screwed. The whole idea OF a "cap" was just a sham, as was clear when ARod got $150 million bucks to play baseball--but somehow that was still okay under the "salary cap." (that was just around the time I started boycotting baseball)

However, Pres O announced today a set of rules for the banking institutions who've taken bailout money, the first of which is a salary cap of $500K for execs of these institutions. It's about fucking time! Call me a commie or a fascist or whatever, but I've always believed that NO ONE should make more than, say, a million a year for ANY job, period. Paying more than that creates an environment where companies HAVE to raise prices, or cut employees, or cut production, or move overseas simply to "stay competitive." If they weren't giving such a huge amount of money out to top execs (or top players, etc.), they'd certainly find it easier to maintain profitability, no? Besides--unless you're maybe finding a cure for cancer or saving lives or solving our energy problems--does ANYONE really deserve that much money? Just for a job?

Should anyone make more money than the president? I don't think so. Certainly not these pigs-in-suits on Wall Street, who've turned the stock market into nothing more than an entirely fake system of fake wealth. They manufactured "money" out of air with their hedge funds and other "creative" accounting and created a system of financial bullshit. So when the economy went into the shitter because these people had made bad loans and bad decisions, yet still profited greatly from them, I wasn't that surprised. When you build a house out of bullshit, you've got to expect that it's gonna dissolve when a good rain hits it; otherwise, you're either stupid or you just don't care what happens when the rain comes.

It remains to be seen how these new rules will be enforced. Will Citibank still get to spend millions on the naming rights to the new Mets stadium, despite having taken bailout money? Will the asswipes at Wells-Fargo still take their big Vegas Vacation? (turns out, the answer is no on that one) Will these execs' paychecks really shrink down to $19230.76 (my calculation of 500K divided by 26 weeks for bi-weekly pay, before taxes--ha ha, as if they pay taxes!)?

What are the odds?