I'm only happy when it rains....

actually.. i kind of hate the rain but what I really can't stand is the humidity, especially the kind that is so thick you can cut it with a knife and this spring we must have had more rain in NYC than I can recall having in the last 5 years. Not sure if we are talking global warming, global cooling or global weirding but I'm sure there is something different about how humid and nasty the months o May and June have been relative to when I was a kid.

This got me thinking about other 'greening' initiatives and how ridiculous it is to think it is that a company like British Petroleum has convinced the world that they are now 'Beyond Petroleum'. This is a marketing scheme which the guys at MadMen would be proud of. I have been reading this book Supercapitalism seemingly forever and it describes how instead of getting regulated by the government they went to convince law-makers that the old reliable 'self-regulation' would be better. In a matter of months hey seemingly transformed their company into a renewable energy generator which they promoted through their endless commercials showing windmills, water-dams and hamsters. Well research has shown that BP has not been a leader in renewable energy at all, having spent no more or less than any of their main competitors. What they have done though is convince stupid people like myself of spending $.03 a gallon more when I had a choice between BP and Citco a few weeks ago. See the rebranding got the government regulators off their backs and allowed BP to not only look like a leader in renewable energy but also gave them an advantage over their competition, it was a win-win situation and because there is no real regulation they are able to cut their renewable energy projects at will. They then only have to answer to the consumer who is too stupid to realize that what the marketing jargon they are force-fed may not in actuality be true.

New Memories

The great things about a great night of drinking is that there is always the potential that the night ends with a couple of great new stories. The problem is that some people black out and don’t remember urinating on the subway platform, jumping in a pile of garbage or making out with a fat chick but I have a memory like an elephant and we all have a good laugh about it for years.


I stood in the audience at a funeral earlier this week and it struck me that everybody talked about some memory from 20 years ago, nobody talked about last week or last year, it was all buried somewhere in the 1900’s.
This got me thinking the other day is how crazy it is that people who have known each other for years hang out at bars or at dinner and talk mostly about the memories they formed years ago which in itself isn't a bad thing but it’s living in the past.
I can't figure out if the funniest stories just happened between the ages of 15 and 25 or that they are just the drunkest.  Shit maybe it’s just that people get lame and nobody thinks the first time their buddies kid took a dump in the can and not his pamper is just not a great memory for his them, but how many times do you get together with a couple of buddies and sit around and just bullshit about the old times and laugh about some ridiculous event that happened years ago.

What is crazy about it is that in these cases it almost seems that everybody is resigned to the fact that there are no new memories to make. This isn’t just about getting drunk, it’s just good genuine fun people have. Why aren't there any funerals where the best stories where from this month or last week, they are always about years and years ago.

What I can’t seem to figure out if new funny moments can't happen anymore or that the memories bank is full. It sometimes feels as if you spend your first 25 years to make memories so that you have something stupid to talk about years later.

TOR takes on Gaza

I’m sure you guys have all been waiting on the TOR take on the Gaza situation, so here it goes.

I think it is time to consider a new alternative, Fatah is too corrupt and has failed to often to ever speak for the Palestinian people, Hamas is too militant, Israel is to self involved, the Israeli people are too hardened, the Palestinian people are too battered, the US has been too hands-off in protecting Israel, the European Union has been too uninvolved and the Arab world has been too quiet to condemn Hamas. The Hamas rockets are inexcusable, the cease-fire has been too temporary, the Israeli retaliation is too aggressive, the Hamas leadership is too irresponsible and the Israeli leadership has been too shortsighted. Hamas' insistence that they not recognize the State of Israel is stubborn and idiotic.  There is no long term plan, no consideration for innocent people who have nothing to do with 1000’s of years of conflict on either side of the border. There is no reason within the leadership, there is a complete lack of judgment when it comes to long term goals and there have been too many people who have suffered for their not to be some hard feelings. . The Palestinian people living in Gaza have no hope for the future and it doesn’t surprise me that they fall in line with resistant fighters, the Israeli people have seen too many attacks from suicide bombers to rockets fired from Gaza to no expect their government to retaliate.

I'm only half kidding when I suggest that that we should to throw everybody out of the country, build a huge see-through fence, lock it up and throw away the key.. This way people can look through the fence at the desert they have left behind and wonder why they screwed it up so royally.

If they are going to act like children we should treat them like it.