Whenever a Geico commercial comes on TV or radio, I change the channel. I shred their mailings unread. Way too much $ is being spent which ought to go to lowering premiums. And their ads are so annoying.

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Got email from Radar saying to keep an eye out for email from Radar. She's program director for Silicon, I volunteered to be on panels.

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Not going to BASFA meetings till football season is over.

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Had dinner at the Hooters in Fremont. They have a hugely expanded menu since the first time I was in one of those places - back then all they had for food was wings and celery sticks. Now there's a 3-page menu. The parmesan garlic sauce for wings sounded good, but was way too sweet and salty. Many HD TV screens, I watched the Broncos give away the ball way too often, the Bears knew what to do with these gifts.

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On several other screens was ESPN2 showing poker. Poker. I can't understand a card game as a spectator item at all, much less a sport. It is a card game, people. There is little skill required, absolutely no athleticism, and dead boring.

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Almost as boring is golf. Golf at least requires skill and some athletic ability. But it takes all day to get through a game which contains maybe half an hour's worth of action. Pretty much like a low-scoring baseball game, that.

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Let's guess. Sarah Palin quit because:

Poll #1425116
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

She's a quitter

She was blackmailed by the Lt. Governor

She is about to be arrested

She's pregnant

She has cancer

Todd wants a divorce

The voices in her head told her to

She has landed a spot on The View

ADD

On someone else's journal a couple of nitwits are arguing with me about McCain's record of public service, countering with the laughable claims that (a) military service isn't public service and (b) Obama left a lucrative career for one in public service. One of them whines about having given many months and dollars to get Obama elected, and asked what I did, as if I supported either candidate, which I did not. For the record, though, I supported Chris Dodd for as long as he stayed in the race.

I am appalled that anyone would say enlisting in the military and risking death to defend one's country is not public service. Obviously these are people who have never put their lives on the line for anything. I've been there, most of the men of my generation have been there. I'm not a fan of the military, or of war or violence. I don't "support our troops" when they don't refuse to fight an illegal war or perform illegal acts. But whether you think John McCain is a hero or a poser, the fact is he enlisted voluntarily, he flew combat missions which put his life on the line, and was shot down and served 6 years in a Viet Cong prison camp as a result. Regardless of how shamefully you may think he was treated there, that's 6 years of his life he is never getting back, and 6 years more than you wimps will ever sacrifice as a result of serving your country.

Obama left a job on Wall Street which may or may not have been lucrative. Junior brokers are a dime a dozen, and turnover is high in that high-pressure environment. In his first book he says he felt uncomfortable as a colored person in a white world, but he was there during the height of Affirmative Action and a general opening up of the finance community to people of color, so I don't really buy that story. Regardless, I would not compare his minor financial sacrifice of working as a small-time, not particularly successful, community development worker with disinterested church groups to McCain's volunteering to get into a uniform and dodge bullets for a living. Or working in the US Congress for 27 years.

Both men have their good and bad. What I hate most about the cretins is they want to paint their hero as all good and his opponent as all bad. Both men have done heroic and despicable things during their lives, and we owe it to them and ourselves to laud the good while acknowledging the bad.

Maybe it's because I was raised Orthodox Jewish, and maybe it's because I read both Testaments and the Koran in college, and maybe it's because my Medieval History minor was based on researching the Children's Crusades, and maybe it's because I lived in a Buddhist country for almost three years followed by Israel for half a year. Or maybe it's because I'm just an old curmudgeon. Bottom line is I hate Christmas, can't stand Jesus music, and I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out one by one while being waterboarded by a sadistic Abu Ghraib guard with a dog leash and a strap-on than go to a "holiday" party. That includes allegedly multi-denominational/non-denominational parties because, after all, we atheists don't have holy days, hence no celebration thereof.

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( The intellectual argument )

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Playboy used to run the incomparable Gahan Wilson's cartoons full-page, full-color. One of my favorites from, I think, the 60's showed a crowd of people dressed in hooded robes worshipping a sign which said "Nothing". A person not dressed for worship is talking to one of the robed ones, and the caption is "Is Nothing sacred?"

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