It’s been a tough week, and the hits just don’t stop coming. Today, it’s a trip to the dentist for a cleaning and god knows whatever other Torquemadian torture they can devise to foist upon me. Other than having a tooth ripped out a couple weeks back, I haven’t been to the dentist in quite a while (the guy I was going to back then was constantly complaining that my insurance – for which he was an official provider – wasn’t paying him enough, and he might have to charge more). I got tired of hearing him whine, then tried another less-than-impressive guy for a while before changing jobs and just kind of getting out of the habit. Things had been pretty good for quite a while, but, well, after 12 years or so, I guess it’s finally time to be a good boy and suffer whatever pain and indignity the Dental Deities feel obliged to throw at me. So, needless to say, I’m really not looking forward to this. Hopefully I at least won’t have to pay too much for the privilege.

There are a plethora of musician-type birthdays to celebrate today, including John Coltrane, Ray Charles, Julio Iglesias (if you want to include him), Bruce Springsteen, and Harry Connick Jr. And Country singer Loretta Haggers (aka Mary Kay Place). Oh, and Mickey Rooney, too. I guess he sang a song or two in his day.

With the elections about six weeks away, things aren’t looking so good for Democrats in the Senate. Russ Feingold is down by over nine points in Wisconsin (and way below that magical 50% that incumbents supposedly need to have). Some Republican schmuck looks to be in good shape to take over Robert Byrd’s old seat in West Virginia. Sharon Angle is one point ahead of Harry Reid (who, again, is far below that 50% thing).

It’s not looking like there’ll be a pickup in Florida (either by Charlie Crist begin an Independent or the Democrat taking advantage of a split vote), with teabagger Ricky Marco Rubio way ahead, nor will the Democrat apparently be able to take advantage of the situation in Alaska.

Here in NY, though, we’ll do our part by returning the “hottest” Senator (according to Harry Reid, anyway) – Kirsten Gillibrand – to the Senate for a full term. I’m not sure Gillibrand is “hot” (she’s no Olympia Snowe, after all), but I’d have to say she’s at least pretty cute. There isn’t an whole lot of competition for the title; she’s at least in the top three with Scott Brown and Maria Cantwell – and since I’m a “homer” (and a straight dude), what the hell – I’ll go with Kirsten.

In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell appears poised to go down in flames, but, with all the nutbag stuff associated with her candidacy, I’m somewhat perplexed that her “dabbling with witchcraft” thing seems to be what’s making the news. I mean, WTF? That’s no crazier than any of these other religious nuts. Of course, with the news that she appears to have been embezzling money from her campaign (according to CREW, anyway), she may need to cast a few spells to stay out of prison.

Oh well, another work day beckons – and the last day of summer at that. In these parts, Autumn rolls in at about 11:08 PM tonight. The days are getting awfully short (well, not the the workday part; that seems as long as ever), and I’m not really looking forward to it getting dark at 4:00 (though that’s a good excuse to go to bed even earlier that I do now, I guess).

So I was crunching the numbers yesterday, and, once I’m in my new place, I should only go into the hole by about $30 a month – as long as I bury and/or burn my garbage, don’t drive more than 10 miles a day on the weekends, and don’t renew my lottery subscription. That’s assuming there are never any repairs to make, and no vet and/or medical bills. Oh, and that Governor Blinky or the next Governor don’t decide to lay me off. So, I guess I need to make some changes. Showtime is definitely not gonna make the cut (I’ll miss Dexter, Weeds, and The Big C – though I predict this will be the last season of Weeds anyway), and HBO may not survive the move, either. I hope Granny is ready for a cold, dark winter. There’s a cheery thought.

I am so completely uninspired this morning, I don’t see how I can possible get out there and function. It was a pretty good weekend, as weekends go. On Saturday, I cut lots of grass. First at home, where I’m really getting the hang of dealing with the extension cord on the electric lawnmower, and then at my sister’s place, where I finally got to play with my new tractor. I cut lots of grass out there, and played around digging with the bucket a little bit, too. That was fun, even if I did have an audience (I don’t like having people watch me). I must say, that little sucker handles amazingly well. I can’t wait to close and get it out to the new place (though there’s not a whole lot of grass cutting weather left this year, it’ll be snow season before you know it.

In other news, Newt Gingich has taken a brave stance against Sharia Law, insisting that federal legislation be enacted to prevent its use here in the good old US of A. You’ll have to forgive Newt’s ignorance (if you want). He and his ilk who always seem to want to impose Christian Law and the ten commandments and whatnot upon the rest of us are apparently unaware of a little known clause in an obscure government document called the US Constitution – more specifically the First Amendment (which, on your hit-parande of amendments, comes in at #1), which starts out something like

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….

So, kinda sorta case closed there, you’d think.

Now, were these wingnuts and teabaggers not so incredibly irony-challenged, at this point they’d realize why people shouldn’t be prevented from building a church, mosque, synagogue, or community center on privately owned property, and also why religious dogma ought to stay the f*ck away from public places. ‘Cuz, frankly, I think you’d could whomp up a fair amount of public (majority, even) support from throwing Fred Phelps and his coven into prison, and maybe even tossing that mosque burning “pastor” Michael Palin or Graham Chapman or whatever the hell his name is, into the stocks to be taunted and hit with water balloons.

But of course we don’t do that in this country, where you’re free to handle all the snakes you want (as long as you don’t try and get little boys to handle your snake for you; but let’s leave the Catholic out of this), thanks to the First Amendment.

Pretty crafty, those founders (for people who condoned – or even actively supported – slavery, were up for wiping out the natives, and who oppressed – or at least didn’t exactly enable women – except for John Adams, who, as an ugly little bastard probably felt privileged to be married to Laura Linney).

None of them could have held a candle to Newt, though (who strikes me as somebody who’d really enjoy having a candle held to him).

Oh well, time to go, I guess.

On Press the Meat today, it’s two of the most popular Republicans of the 1990s – Bill Clinton and Colin Powell.

Faze the Nation also has Bill Clinton, along with fellow Republicans Michael Gerson Ed Rollins.

On Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has AK nutjob Joe Miller, and everybody’s favorite Republican, Karl Rove.

Over at the Goebbels network, Christi Amanpour has the other Clinton – Hillary, plus she’ll interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Iranian Tea Party. Speaking of teabaggers, Christi’s roundtable talks about the effect they’ll have on the upcoming elections with Delaware State Republican Chairman Tom Ross, George :jerk: Will, David Sanger of the New York Times, and Peter Beinart.

At CNN, Fareed Zakaria talks about the Lehman Brothers collapse, an interview with one of Osama bin Laden’s comrade-in-arms, an “all-star panel” with CNN’s newest prime time co-host, Kathleen Parker, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland and Dan Senor. Also, Fareed takes a look at what’s going on in Cuba, and a “last look” at somebody who’s been tapped to fight poverty (but you’ll have to watch to find out who she is).

Then there’s a full day of football ahead, before the premiere of Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson (based on Nucky Johnson) in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

Me? I’ve got work to do.

Have a good one.

I was trying to kill the work week yesterday afternoon (with my mp3 player on shuffle mode, as it typically is, and the tunes cranked as loud as I figured I could get away with – which was fairly loud, what with the office tending to be pretty sparsely populated on Fridays after two o’clock or so) when a thought suddenly came to me: “Keep on Chooglin'” is a stupid song. That, and Stu Cook looked an awful lot like Maury Muehleisen (who died along with Jim Croce 37 years ago this coming Monday; when the hell will musicians learn not to take small charter flights?). What can I say? My mind tends to wander on Friday afternoons.

Fortunately, the day (and week) finally ended, and I celebrated by sleeping in ’til damn near four o’clock this morning (I was awake earlier, rolling back and forth in bed, but finally decided to just get it over with and get the hell up). I have no idea why I’ve been getting up so early the past couple weeks, but I think it has something to do with not drinking beer and reading in bed.

Sobriety gives me no reason to stay up at night, and the reading seems to knock me out like being hit in the head with a shovel. Since it’s nice having the extra time in the morning, I kind of like it (though the inevitable exhaustion tends to make my mind wander in the afternoon). It’ll come in pretty handy in the winter when I have to plow the driveway in order to get to work.

Today I get to go and play with my Kubota (so to speak). My sister is graciously allowing me to cut a few acres of her grass for her (which I will do gladly, even having read Tom Sawyer about 50 times; I should look for free Mark Twain eBooks, now that I think of it), and then later on tonight I’ll watch as SU (hopefully) stomps all over the Maine Back Bears – with Floyd Little (speaking of the Kubota) being honored at halftime. Not that I’ll be going to the game, mind you, but it’s on SNY (though probably not in HD, sadly).

Just saw a commercial for Cialis on the teevee. It cautioned not to drink alcohol while taking it. I guess fat, drunk, and aroused is no way to go through life (besides, you should probably save the alcohol for your partner). Fortunately, that’s one portion of my anatomy that remains in working order, even at my advanced age (worry if it lasts for four hours? Shit, I’ve had one that’s lasted since I was 13). I think it’s the Irish in me (we’re breeders).

Speaking of breeders, the Octomom is facing bankruptcy and foreclosure (her 15 minutes were not particularly lucrative, I guess), due to the rather sizable expenses related to raising 14 kids (and she’s thinking about having another one). A white knight (of sorts) has appeared on the horizon, however, with porn producer Vivid Entertainment purportedly offering a half million dollars for her to star in a one-hour porn video (now there’s an antidote for Cialis). Sounds like a win-win. Enough money to stave off bankruptcy, and a potential supply of dozens of willing sperm donors.

Well, time to get a move-on and quit all this lollygagging. Hell, the sun’ll be up in another hour and 10 minutes.

I hope Sue and everybody else down in NYC are doing OK this morning, after a nasty storm (possibly a tornado, even) ripped though last night. If nothing else, it’s gonna make it a real pain in the ass for everybody down there to get to work today, so I hope Sue and hubby can just stay home and not have too much clean up after (though Mayor Bloomie says he expects all the schools to be open today). The money quote from Bloomberg? “While it may be an act of God, it doesn’t make it any easier for us.” Um. Why would it, Mr. Mayor? I’ve never heard anybody refer to an “act of God” when they were talking about something good.

Anyhow, it’s one thing when a storm rips through up here. It’s not a particularly unusual event, and we aren’t packed in at over 2,000 people per square kilometer (after all, it is a 30 minute drive in the pickup to Sears and all). So something like this down there with all those people definitely sucks. Better than if it happened in Mumbai, though, which has damn near 30,000 people per Km² (who are mostly providing Dell tech support).

Otherwise, we come to the end of a long week for me, and a short week for Granny (‘cuz she was off). I much prefer it when she’s off, because it’s better for the dogs that way. Not as good as it would be for them if I was off, of course. But unless there are some winning lottery numbers in my future, the poor boys will just have to get along without us.

The money hemorrhage continues, as I had to buy homeowners insurance on the new house, and decided to switch the auto insurance as well. More money down the toilet, though it turns out the old insurance company (who I won’t mention, but it rhymes with “Hate Charm”) was screwing me pretty bad, and the new one will be about half price. Still, it means shelling out the cash while I wait for a refund.

After last week’s rather disappointing football game at Washington (where, thanks to fumbles and foibles, a 10-0 start turned to shit), it’s the home season opener tomorrow for SU at the Dome. For the first time, they’ll be selling wine.

Wine.

At a football game.

Oh, the shame.

They’re also introducing a new service, where, if you spill your beer (because you’d never drink wine at a football game, fer chrissakes), you can text the maintenance people to have them come clean it up. No word on whether they’ll bring you a refill or not.

The Republican candidate for Governor, Carl “the mope” Paladino, has given us a little insight into what makes him tick in an in interview with the NY Times. For one thing, he doesn’t care for Andy Cuomo.

Insular I think is a very good word for him. Just carrying around this air about him. This entitlement. And I noticed it first when I was watching him on the newsreels….

Ah, yes. On the newsreels. While most of us were making our way to the concession stand to buy a 5 cent pop (which is what they call soda in Buffalo) and a bag of popcorn, newshound Carl was watching the newsreels, and caught that footage of Andy in between the updates on the War in Korea and the cat playing ping pong.

Carl’s not too keen on all the traffic in Manhattan, either. But there’s good news for Queens and Staten Island.

Staten Island and Queens are much the same as like Buffalo. You don’t have traffic jams every red light, all right? Look at the time you have to spend to get around Manhattan. I mean, try to get someplace.

I guess Carl’s never heard of the subway (which is odd, ‘cuz they’ve got one in Buffalo, though it pretty much just runs up and down Main Street – which is a good all-American name for a street that I doubt you’d find down there in New York will all their fancy street numberin’ and “Avenues” and whatnot), and I’m sure the folks in Queens will be really happy about being called “much the same as like” both Buffalo and Staten Island.

And Carl’s knows what to look for to straighten out Albany.

Who are the political hacks hanging around the office that are there for patronage and causing a morale problem?

Um, we call that the State Senate and Assembly, Carl.

How do they handle take-home vehicles? Does everybody have a take-home vehicle? Because we heard that’s a monster of a problem with state government.

Yes, I heard that too. I think I saw it on the newsreels.

Oh well, time to head off to work before Carl takes my job away. In the meantime, here’s Carl’s favorite newsreel music video. He wouldn’t want his son to marry one, but he sure does admire the way those colored girls dance.

Instead of dicking around with the idiot Republicans (and idiot Democrats like Chris Dodd, who I once thought was a good guy, but I guess they’re pretty much all the same), President Obama has apparently decided to name Elizabeth Warren a “special adviser” to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will allow her to act as an interim head without needing Senate confirmation. Hopefully she can be quietly named as permanent head somewhere down the line (note to the Prez: better do it before the new Congress in January, when your lame-duckedness will officially begin).

In the meantime, the aforementioned idiot Democrats seem likely to push the White House into accepting an extension of the Bush tax cuts for rich people. This is pretty stupid, and whether it’s because they’re so cowardly and stupid they think that the tax and spend label will stick to them, or whether they’re so corrupt that they want to protect their rich pals and donors, I dunno. Both scenarios seem equally as likely.

Democrats (and the President) have nobody but themselves to blame for the upcoming Republican storm. Having entered office with much potential (and with control of both Houses of Congress), their spineless timidity and failure to do what they were elected to do has opened the door for Republicans to take over and send us back to the stone age.

You probably already saw the video of the Tennessee Titans mascot (I think that’s what it is; it doesn’t look like a “titan” to me, but what do I know?) eating a cheerleader, but I think it’s pretty funny and I don’t really have much else to say this morning, so here it is again.

I have to admit, she does look pretty tasty.

Speaking of tasty NFL tidbits, you’ve no doubt heard of the “controversy” involving TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz. I know I was shocked – shocked, I tell you – to hear that a bunch of professional athletes were rude, crude and obnoxious around her. Should their behavior be excused? No. But should we be surprised when a bunch of steroid-infused, muscle-headed, pampered millionaire athletes (who have, no doubt, been treated like gods since junior high) act like idiots? No, I don’t think so.

On a side note, in looking at the photo that Sainz apparently posted to Twitter as an example of the type of outfit she wore when getting harassed, I have to wonder, are those pants comfortable? I mean, they don’t look very comfortable to me, but then nobody wants to see me in jeans that tight anyway.

Oh well, time to get ready to go and get through another day. I’m really not up for this. I’d rather go play with my new (used) tractor, which was delivered to my sister’s place on Tuesday, and which my brother-in-law has been kind enough to go over with a fine toothed comb and PM for me. I guess I’ve have to wait for Saturday.

Well, we learned at least one thing from yesterday’s primary election here in NY State: Rick Lazio is an even bigger loser than we thought. Not only did little Ricky lose to Teabagger Carl Paladino, he got freakin’ trounced by almost 2-1. Uncle Carl now faces Andy Cuomo in the general election, and, while I’d normally think that Paladino wouldn’t have a chance, who knows? We the People aren’t very happy with politicians, making a mope like Carl seem appealing (apparently). He doesn’t do much for me, but then neither does Cuomo.

This election will an exercise in moving to the right and demonizing the government and public service, and it looks like my choice for Guv will be to decide which candidate who will demonize public employees less (Cuomo decided that Labor Day – of all days – would be a good opportunity to pen an op-ed in the NY Daily News declaring that “public employees unions must make sacrifices for sake of the state” and comparing NY State’s budget problem to that of NY City back in 1975; sadly, it doesn’t surprise me that Andy sees NY State in terms of NY City). That’s how it works here.

They can pretty much ignore us, unless they want to ram power lines through or something. As Hizzoner the Mayor Ed Koch has stated, Upstate (where you have to drive half an hour to buy a gingham dress at Sears) should aspire to be the source of cheap labor and raw material that NY City needs (we’re kind of like Colonial Africa, and NYC is Belgium or something).

So maybe I might as well get some teabagging meathead from Buffalo. He might be interesting, and, as David Paterson has showed us, the Governor of NY really can’t do shit if the dysfunctional State Legislature doesn’t let him.

In other primary news, not everybody I voted for lost, amazingly enough. The guy I voted for for State Assembly in my district (to replace the woman who was a friend to labor, seemed like a nice person, always showed up at any union event I’ve ever gone to, and had been in that position for longer than I can remember – which isn’t necessarily all that long) actually won. Even better, he’s a black guy, which really shouldn’t matter, but in the ‘burbs where I live, that’s pretty impressive (and, I think, somewhat unprecedented).

And Eric Schneiderman actually defeated Kathleen Rice in a close race for the Democratic nomination for NY Attorney General. I thought this was pretty surprising, since I saw zero ads for Eric. My guess is his campaign just didn’t bother with Upstate and concentrated where all the people (and Democrats) are, Downstate.

The thing I like best about NY’s system is that the primary is one of the latest ones of the season, and we’re only subjected to the political ads for a relatively short time. In about seven weeks (still too long) it’ll all be over.

There were a few glitches with voting machines around here, but not to the extent they had them down in NYC. Of course, if you had, say, problems in 1% of precincts, that’s a small number up here, but a much more sizable number down there.

Where I voted, there was only one ballot scanner. So, if that sucker crapped out, you’d be SOL (presumably they’d just collect the ballots and scan them all later when the thing was fixed or replaced). Assuming they didn’t lose them. They also ran short of ballots in some places, and had to hand out “emergency” ballots, that of course won’t get counted unless there’s a close race. That doesn’t seem right to me.

What I didn’t like (and as Sue alluded to yesterday) was that the machine didn’t tell you who you voted for and give you an opportunity to confirm or reject the result. I’d wondered about that when reviewing how the machines worked, and my suspicions were confirmed when I voted. All it tells you is the number of things you voted for, and that it got accepted.

This would seem like a no-brainer to me. It should say, “You voted for X, Y, Z. Is this correct?” I think that blows, but then the lever machines never confirmed who you voted for either (and at least they can go back and count the paper ballots, though that doesn’t help if you marked it incorrectly).

Oh well, that’s progress for you.

It’s Primary Day here in New York State, and I’m in a bit of a quandary as to whether I want to bother with it, but I suppose I will. It’s a good opportunity to how many of the old people manning the polls croaked since last November, and if nothing else, I want to get some practice on the new ImageCast ballot-scanning voting machines. It’s the first election of any sort for me (ever) without my good old friends the lever machines (which were good enough for my parents, damn it), and since I doubt there’ll be much of a line, it’s a good opportunity to get acquainted with the new system. Not that it should exactly be difficult, but, as we all know, change is bad. I’m not sure these things even give you a chance to verify your selections. You mark the ballot, and then stick it in the shredder scanner, and off you go. Not that you could tell anything was happening with the lever machines, of course, but it felt like you were voting when you slammed that big old stick back and the curtains snapped open. Now I guess you go to a table with a urinal privacy screen around it and mark your ballot with a “special” pen (hint: it’s a Sharpie).

As far as who to vote for, there aren’t many exciting races. Though I don’t really feel like a “Democrat”, I’m registered as one (you have to register one way or another here in order to get a voice here in NY), so I’ll have to vote in the Democratic primary, and there aren’t really many interesting races. Katrina vanden Heuvel seems to feel entitled to tell me who to vote for AG. No offense, Katrina, but I don’t recall asking for your opinion. The Working Families Party seems to concur, though, so I reckon I’ll vote for her candidate anyway – Eric Schneiderman. Since my vote is typically the kiss of death, I reckon that means he’ll lose, plus Kathleen Rice seems to be the one with all the money and the teevee commercials. I honestly don’t know much about either one (except that Kathleen is a nice Irish-Catholic girl – single with no kids, though, so you know what that means – who went to Catholic University, and, for all I know, may very well have lived in the same dorm room I spent my DC summer from hell in, back in ’06), though that I’m guessing that I could count the number of times either one of them have been north of Westchester on one hand, and odds are they think the most prevalent crime in Upstate NY is cattle rustling.

There’s no option in the Governor’s race, as Andy Cuomo has that locked up. It’s unfortunate, because I don’t like him, and I think he’ll be very bad for public employees and organized labor. Not as bad as either of the Republicans running, though. That’s a close race, and it’ll be interesting to see which one of them wins (Loser Lazio vs. the mope from Buffalo, Carl Paladino). At any rate, come November, I’ll be voting for perpetual Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins.

Oh well, I guess I better go study my ballot options (which, of course, is code for “shop for tractor implements”).