Sounding off at the Canon

The comparison may never have occurred to me except for parallel intervention. After consuming part of my lunch break hour to run errands, I sat reading the headlines from a newspaper. Although a Canon series 40 inkjet cartridge sat beside me, it was dirty newspaper ink that transferred onto my hands. A newspaper dusting should never take place beside a brand new black ink printer cartridge without risking comparison.

Judging by the amount of ink on me and what remained on the newspaper copy, I reasoned that there must be as much ink printed on any .75 cent newspaper than toner housed in a brand new ink cartridge. The question begs asking, why do consumers pay a measly .75 cents retail for ink and paper only to be extorted $24.99 for an ink product that has paper sold separately? Compounding the cost factor, my printer's ink cartridges are not available in cheaper generic models, the well containers cannot be economically refilled and no competitor cartridge can be substituted due to a lack of standardization.

Exorbitantly paying the manufacturer for continued use of a product is eye-gouging greed. It is revolving systemic obsolesces lining corporate pockets. I detest this ink industry like nobody’s business. Cloaked in the anonymity of a technological revolution, this may be the greatest consumer scam of the century. For me it has moved beyond an Andy Rooney pet peeve rant to a Michael Moore mission for reform.

From their ivory tower, the kind folks at the office supply store where I bought the ink expeditiously emailed me an Internet coupon for an identical purchase. Once printed, the paper coupon could hail eight quarters off my next purchase of ink. I studied the full page advertisement in huge thick text fonts displayed in a rich crimson color surrounded by superfluous decorative margins. I just could not summon the courage to hit print on my computer screen then watch the ink run dry.

The BP in Crude Oil

As oil giants boasted billions of dollars in record profits for decades, I wonder if the BP oil disaster could have been averted or better contained with more profit allocated to the science of developing better emergency management safeguards. Let's break it all down for the kin folk. As far as government regulation goes, I am required by law to wear a seatbelt restraint just to operate my personal vehicle with the gasoline in question.

In an age when we need to lessen our dependency on petroleum and explore greener alternatives, drilling for oil should not occur this close inland or at an ocean depth that we risk destroying one side of the country in a single accident. Watching an underwater smokestack of oil pollute the ocean at a rate of millions of gallons per day exposes corporate greed at the expense of a social responsibility to the planet. Spectating a man-made disaster day after day for months with no end in sight is unmerciful.

The first thing you know old BP is a millionaire but the kin folk say its called crude oil for a reason.

The More Things Change

I can’t resist sounding like Andy Rooney here. The more things change, the more I can't stand the change.

In 1978, I bought a 19 inch RCA color TV from Sears and Roebuck. I told the prickly pushy salesman that I did not want a higher priced model powered by a easily lost gadget called a remote control. I liked my dial knob just fine and he wasn't suckering me into buying a lifetime of replacement batteries. Besides, a handheld remote seemed like an invitation to a sedentary lifestyle. I should have accepted the technological revolution clickety click but it took me another decade before I did. Who could have predicted that three hundred television channels would broadcast over a cable bandwidth? Now you can find this couch potato grumbling when I have to hit pause on my remote to get up to go to the bathroom.

Call me shortsighted but I never thought oxygen would cost money. I curse this greedy grubby world every time I pump air into a flat bike tire. Only the health care industry should bottle what we breath freely for profit.

When facsimile machines were invented, I wondered what was wrong with waiting for the mail to arrive. Who sped up the rotation of the earth to demand things instantaneously anyway? I blame some upscale impatient business executive who labeled regular mail, snail mail. Now decades after facsimile acceptance, licking stamps is on the endangered list and very few people look forward vistiting their mailbox. Everything needs a paper trail so just the fax please.

When bottled water hit store shelves, I wondered how many impulsive idiots would buy pretty labeled bottled containers whose contents poured freely on tap from faucet and fountain. It seemed ludicrous to think thirsty people would actually drive to the store to purchase a commodity that runs from their home spigots for pennies on the gallon. Now some eateries even refuse to serve tap water in an old fashioned glass with a lemon wedge. I cringe when I hear upsale pitches that their water only comes in a bottle. When I drink bottled water, it tastes no better than tap in most parts of the country. I have also concluded that tap water doesn’t make me feel stupid when I consume it the way a plastic bottle of water does. It’s not like we live in a third world country without indoor plumbing.

Now that I have exposed myself to the scrutiny of being called a blind visionary, I wish to go on record again for the Tornatore Time Capsule. Perhaps, I actually may predict one trend before it becomes a part of mainstream culture. While the next generation of automobile drivers may enjoy no emission electric cars, please be prepared to plug your glorified golf cart into merchant’s public outlets where they will charge you big money for a little electricity.

This is Andy Rooney, and you can take that to the bank.

Burning Sixteen Candles

For the last couple of months, I have morbidly saved the newspapers clippings about a double suicide in Norwood, Pennsylvania. I find myself occasionally staring at the smiling profile pictures of two pretty teenage girls, Gina Gentile and Vanessa Dorwart. One harrowing detail about this case haunts me. The social ease of an instantaneous text message the girls shared moments prior to committing suicide may offer a human x-ray of their derailed psyche.

It read, “Hurry up! The train is coming.”

To express concern about being late for your own funeral is a suicide note in and of itself. The text message is received right as the southbound train blows its approach whistle. The sixteen candles their parents readied to top their birthday cakes were about to be snuffed out and nobody close to them apparently saw the train coming.

I suppose my zest for a measured life makes the act of suicide inconceivable for me to fathom as anything but an irrational desperate act of surrender. Life should be revered as a miracle, a coveted blessing to be time honored for its natural duration. After squeezing every possible experience out of this world, mark my words that I will fight for my last breath. I bask in this thing called life so much so that I wish that I could live longer than Methuselah. Perhaps, I should count my blessings because I have not experienced dire circumstances that would prompt me to terminate my existence. For this logical reason alone, I keep staring at this newspaper article trying to make sense of it all.

Possibly suffering from untreated clinical depression, these two high school girls mourned the recent accidental death of their mutual close friend, Bill Bradley. Believing that they could not live without their departed friend, who got hit by a car while riding a bicycle, they trumped his death by kissing a speeding train. These distraught girls gained strength in tandem what they may not have been strong enough psychologically to carry out alone. With truth a stranger, they stepped onto the tracks together. They embraced each other through the train steamroll. As far as suicides go, its execution proved flawless.

I wonder whether their souls in the hereafter are accountable for murdering the breath of life that was given to them or is suicide nothing more than exercising freedom of choice? I pause to think that maybe they must make amends for the pain and suffering they caused on their loved ones suddenly left behind.

Life moves faster than a speeding locomotive to begin with. Getting in its way, does not seem an answer on any level. We should follow profound light or seek professional help. Life not death should be kept in front of you…maybe no more so than at sixteen candles.

Ukranian Sand Art

This You Tube video is the most inspirational sand art that I have ever seen created. It is a young girl's moving pictorial on the devastating effects of wartime on ordinary Ukranian citizens. It is astonishingly done in real time in front of a live audience in tempo with piped background music and timed soundbites.

If only the world could peacefully unite based on such artistic displays of human spirit alone, the earth in which she so masterfully moves would be a better place. I have not been able to watch this tribute without shedding tears. I have always felt that if people truly listen to the arts, war planes would never fly.

Nightmare Before Thanksgiving

Why do we need to push up the Christmas holiday season before giving Thanksgiving its proper due? It is only after the hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving that I can begin to think about shopping and unwind enough to enjoy Christmas music. It is a pet peeve to hear radio stations playing Christmas music before the arrival of Thanksgiving. Bing Crosby's voice confuses me on what Americans need to be next thankful for on Thanksgiving and Christianity has got nothing to do with my November holiday meal. The last time I checked Rudolph the Rednosed Reindoor flew only one night in late December and there isn’t even venison in a turducken! Yet the gaudy department store displays of Christmas holiday decorations seem to want to trump Thanksgiving. If only Thanksgiving had a commercial upside, retailers would be traditionalizing us into decorating our front lawns with glow-in-the-dark strung turkeys.

Am I missing something here? Do farmers need to lull turkeys into a false sense of security by piping Christmas music into the farm pens? The stupid dodo bird turkeys hear the cheery rump pa pa pum music and think they got a stay of execution then the mercenary farmers sneakily yell off with their heads. Remembering the pilgrims and the birth of Jesus should be separate and not equal. I don’t hear anyone setting off firecrackers on Easter morning so don’t go playing Little Drummer Boy in my ear until Black Friday cometh. Celebrating gifting before fowling seems like a misgiving.

Without Bread You're Texas Toast

While sitting in the doctor’s office going out of my mind in the sprawling waiting room, a developing story came across the TV news desk. The channel interrupted regular programming and went to a live video feed for what I hoped would be a newsworthy story. Since my life was on hold at the time waiting for medical treatment, over the next hour I watched a single camera high in the sky film multiple police officers engaging in a ho-hum high-speed chase of a heavy-footed motorist across Texas. After I started to wonder how much gasoline this person was wasting trying to get away without incident, a reporter mentioned stolen gas from a pumping station actually put the situation into motion.

I don’t like paying for food on a credit card because it is gone by the time the bill comes in. This derelect soul used up exactly the commodity he stole before he was even arrested.

Hotties For Sale!

I still haven't figured out all the facets of Facebook. I don't want to grab a Tommy gun and join a mafia. I don't want to put on hip boots and raise a farm. I don't want to be poked or farukled or tagged unless I'm it. I don't care enough to score high on obscure trivia contests that Cheers' Cliff Claven would wrap his head around.

Now a dear Facebook friend from a continent away has added me to a photo collage implying that I am not only desirable but for sale as a Hottie? I harken back to the time when only social blogs existed because they seem like simpler times right now. Hold on. I'm getting a text message on my cell phone...something about 700 rubles for an hour of my time. Will travel.

The Garden State of Mind

Perhaps the thought came to me because the arrival of the Labor Day weekend officially marks the end of summer and the ushering in of cooler weather. Maybe the thought came to me because I am psychic. Maybe the thought came to me because deadpan irony follows me. Maybe what I was thinking was led by a subconscious linkage to the matrix. Maybe nothing has to do with the other.

What I do know is that I found myself walking and not driving my vehicle to my next work appointment. After slinging my briefcase in between two buildings, I entered an alley way. For whatever reason, I began to think of my limp lackluster crop-less tomato garden back at the homestead. My tomato plants hunkered in fresh tilled black soil, regularly watered and sprayed with Miracle Grow have failed to thrive all summer. As I longed for my own ripe tomatoes to make fresh salsa, spaghetti gravy and lush salads, I spotted something familiar ahead of me. Growing in between harsh curb and hot blacktop and somehow missing lawnmower haircuts lived a healthy tomato plant stalked with two little promises.

I'm just a paint brush and craft paint shy of a green thumb.

The Lovely Bones In Deed and Misdeed

In December 11, 2007, I stood dumbfounded in a drab convenience store in Holmes, Pennsylvania staring at the front page of The Daily News. The innocent headshot of a murdered teenage girl headlined the cover. Its starkness struck me as profoundly odd. Ebony Dorsey’s magnetic smile seemed to jump off the pages at me like a haunting poster child to the violent society in which we live. It also spoke to me in an unexpected way because I was en route to work as an actor on the production of The Lovely Bones.

An elderly black woman grabbed a copy from the newsstand and literally shook its pages trying to make sense out of it all. “You can never be too cautious. You just never know from one minute to the next!”

The stranger’s words rang true. Flipping through my own copy now for somewhat different reasons, I turned to the interior pages to check the victim’s age. Ebony Dorsey was a spry fourteen years old when she was tragically murdered by someone she knew. That meant Ebony was the same age as Susie Salmon, the girl snuffed out by a serial killer who lived as her bone-chilling next-door neighbor in The Lovely Bones.

Like a portable tomb, I took my all too real newspaper hardcopy with me in my travels. Not one mile down the road, I walked on to the make-believe set of The Lovely Bones, a mall refurbished and time date stamped as a 1973 movie backdrop. I heard light-footed heel clicks. The young bubbly starlet actress Saoirse Ronan walked by me in white hose around tall boots below an outdated tight purple skirt.

Indeed, Susie Salmon was alive and well but you just never know from one minute to the next. The Lovely Bones will be released on...December 11, 2009.

Deadliest Catchy TV Show

I have never owned a boat.

I have never been deep-sea fishing.

I am disinterested in the subject matter.

With those disclaimers being said, the television show Deadliest Catch has such superb camera lines and top shelf post-production work by way of editing and sound mixing...well it caught me too. I now watch this show whenever I can. It is no wonder this show won an Emmy hook, line and sinker.

A Showcase for Sportswomanship

"Sportsmanship, next to the church,

is the greatest teacher of morals."

-Herbert Hoover

Sportmanship can be defined in many intangible ways but this video may be the purest display of it on film. It won a 2008 ESPY Award for Sportsmanship although I dare say that it seems a misnomer to interject the word "man" in the middle of the word sportsmanship if one of its greatest examples does not involve a single man but two teams compromising females.

This sports moment is about teamwork but not in the known sense of the clanish word. It is about two teams suspending competition against each other to come together at a single pivitol moment on a baseball diamond where exalted compassion conquers to blur the lines between winners and losers. Although the play ended a season and a player's career, the thrill of victory got erased by the agony of injury until the opposition decided that the outcome of the game itself mattered secondary.

Without further adieu, I take you to women's collegiete softball where the losing team eliminated itself from the playoffs by carrying out an uncommon act. After Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon hits her first career homerun, she tears a ligament in her right leg rounding first base. She is unable to move on her own accord to finish her requisite homerun trot around the bases. If her teammates come to her aid and merely touch her she will be declared out by umpire rules. If a pinchrunner is used, the scorekeeper records the three-run homer as a two-run single. Members of Central Washington, the opposing team, swiftly decide to carry Sara around the bases touching each bag with the non-injured leg thereby completing the homerun.

While this may not be the fastest two minutes in sports, the timeout here from the mechanistic avarice of sports is so refreshing that it celebrates the human spirit with punch-drunk tears and ovation.

Face-Off: El Wingador vs. Brutus Beefcake

Bill Simmons, aka El Wingador enters the boxing ring.

An estimated one thousand patrons gathered on July 24, 2009, in Aston, Pennsylvania at the Ice Works, which hosted Celebrity Boxing 10, When Worlds Collide. The main event pitted former major league baseball slugger Jose Canseco verses Bill Simmons, the Five Time Wing Bowl Eating Champion called El Wingador. Canseco made it to the pre-fight press conference but he ditched town before his heavyweight fight. So the much-anticipated Juiced verses Sauced titan matchup had to be shelved. Former WWF and WCW wrestler Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake got added as a late substitution to fight 6’5” three hundred pounder El Wingador.

I had the privilege of traveling along with El Wingador’s camp to cover the fight from behind the scenes. Arriving at his house, barefoot El Wingador had just woken up having napped like a baby before the fight. A self-proclaimed street fighter, El Wingador reported that he dropped about a dozen pounds professionally training for weeks inside a boxing ring. He also studied tape of Jose Canseco’s previous fights but there was no way to prepare last minute for his match against Brutus Beefcake. He expressed disappointment about not squaring off against Canseco but accepted his new challenger.

Soon after he confidently shadowboxed in his family room to channel his building adrenaline, Adventure Limousines transported him along with his entourage of family and friends. Riding in the plush limousine, El Wingador conversed freely in the relaxed cabin as a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert played on the big screen TV. The limousine aptly rolled through a tremendous downpour en route to the fight but El Wingador exited the limo all smiles with the skyline beaming a rainbow color burst like a lucky charm backdrop.

Pot of gold for a purse aside, I tried to pump El Wingador up before we parted company. “Tonight you’re eating Beefcakes, hold the chicken.”

He smiled but he needed no pep talk from a wit writ like me. Inside the arena, the converted facilities lacked suitable posh for the circumstance. The paying guests weathered unfriendly sixty-degree indoor building temperatures. Forty-five dollars cold cash got you a ringside seat in the form of a freezing metal folding chair placed on the covered ice. By the end of the night, my toes felt frostbitten. I wondered how the scantily clad ring card girls kept up their manufactured smiles or how the hired help cleaned the spit buckets without wielding an ice pick. The wireless microphone either froze or never recovered from Zaughn Ivins’ powerful rendition of The National Anthem. The sound system caused numerous delays and literally muffled the ring announcer’s every third word on a shuffled line-up card. The boxing matches promoted as an exhibition lost professional starch and gained consideration for a spectacle.

Entering the boxing ring to the tune of the Black Eye Peas performing Boom, Boom, Pow, El Wingador displayed pageantry wearing a gorgeous custom tailored robe that had furly blood red chicken wings on the back. When the ring announcer mistakenly introduced Brutus Beefcake as Hulk Hogan’s real life brother, it proved how this longstanding urban legend manages to survive. Aside from putting anyone named after food in front of El Wingador, Brutus Beefcake recklessly accepted this fight having undergone total facial reconstructive surgery following a freak parasailing accident. I do not care how comfortable padded headgear feels to the touch, a fake wrestler’s reconstructed face held together by screws and steel plates should not change professions to eat El Wingador’s authentic sledgehammer fists.

From the opening bell, Brutus Beefcake ate a steady diet of El Wingador’s powerful body shots. El Wingador controlled the fight and he needed to land only one solid right hand punch. The right on right crumbled Brutus Beefcake's knees before he stumbled backwards into the corner. His marble eyes rolled wildly in his shaken noggin and the referee signaled a TKO towards the end of round number one. Beefcake, fighting a bigger side of beef in an icehouse, got knocked out cold in what could have easily turned into a literal bloody face-off.

While El Wingador may consider fighting again, return to competitive eating or whether his next publicity stunt will be going over Niagara Falls in a big barrel, I know one thing about this gentle giant. Be careful stepping into any competitive event with El Wingador. He has the guts to eat you alive.

New Jersey's Budget Woes: Reaching A Greener Forest Through the Trees

These recessionary times have forced me to examine my household budget in order to keep making ends meet. After reviewing my ledger, I arrived at the following conclusion:

One full time job

Three part time jobs

843 FICA Credit Score

A spouse who works full time

No MAC card in the last 18 years.

Pays child support on time without the court garnishing my wages.

No credit card debt

Enrolled in a deferred compensation plan.

Paying down a 15-year mortgage.

Pays bills exceedingly on time. No late fees or cycle service charges.

Proactively uses debit cards.

Clips store coupons and buys generic brand names

Avoids buying retail whenever possible

Owns company stocks

Saves for children’s college

Invests in US savings bonds

Reconciles checkbook.

In order to help fix New Jersey’s irreconcilable budget, the Governor of the thirteenth state of the Union with the highest cost of living in the nation has mandated me to take unpaid leaves of absences from my job… so he can ergo balance his own budget.

Money does not grow on trees but I do not believe it should be deforested from my pocket either. Where does fiscal responsibility begin and end? If a New Jersey budget falls for years in the woods without trimming why wasn't anyone listening?

Summer Survival Tips for the Northeast

Summer is officially here although you would not know it by the abundant overcast skies that have cast gloom over our lives over the past month. Here are some survival tips for this summer.

• Seasonal Affective Disorder has been extended until further notice.

• Stop tracking weather forecasts. Every day is contrastingly dreary.

• Cancel scheduled vacation time from work until August.

• If you are hosting an outdoor event, rent a tent or canopy to pamper your guests.

• If you see the sunshine, drop to both knees and worship it because it won't last long.

• In the even of continued overcast benefited by the absence of rain, start mowing your overgrown lawn. Chances are it is almost one foot high.

• If you have yet to turn on your underground sprinklers as a homeowner, you might not need to.

• Do not replace your solar powered landscape lighting. The gizmos will eventually jump start the first nightfall after the return of the sun.

• If you were considering joining a water park this summer, it may be coming to you.

• If your tomato plants are not water rotted, register your magic garden in the next Farmer’s Almanac.

• If you are a shoobie vacationing at the shore, the word “sucker’ now appears on your purchased beach tags.

• Along with a $10..00 non-refundable deposit, reservations are now being taken for new windshield wiper blades at your local autmotive parts store.

• Mostly cloudy is now considered an awesome forecast.

• Dollar Store umbrellas are not made to work for thirteen straight days.

• For you sun worshippers, SBF 3 sun tan lotion may be enough UV ray protection.

• If you ever ruled out moving to Seattle because of their wet weather, now is the best time to change your mind.

A Bright Idea

I received a ritz pair of designer sunglasses for Father’s Day. It might be a long time before I seize the opportunity to use them becaused this spring sure has turned out shady. With the deluge of rain and overcast skies I doubt solar powered landscape lights are working.

Eminem..Melt in Your Mouth, Stick in Your Ear

My stepson hurriedly hooked up his Ipod to my swank car stereo. He wanted me to hear Eminem’s new album driving out on the road broadcasting thru Bose speakers. After a few minutes of listening to Eminem’s rap songs blurt out catchy hip but vile expressions, my hands uncomfortably gripped the steering wheel. It wasn’t just the sheer number of Eminem’s curse words that made me uneasy, it was the x-rated carnal knowledge that he was singing deep throated about. I was embarrassed for my stepson who accompanied me driving his young girlfriend home. As I drive,I realize that I am the only one who feels this way. His generation does not even blink at the streaming downloaded culture in which we live. It knows no taboo.

My stepson comments about the lyrical screaming overtop the music. “It’s just not rap without the cursing.” I muse about what the moral compass of Bill Cosby might say to all this: Talented Eminem diluted by his cesspool potty mouth.

Just the previous week I heard my stepson school me on the merits of heavy metal music…”It’s not heavy metal music unless they belt it out angry.”

My stepson knows infinitesimally more about music than I do but this seemed to be an issue disregarding of taste and deserving of tolerance. I harkened back to when I was just two years older than him. On a slimy spool of a cassette tape, we listened to Tom Petty with rolled down windows in my first car. The image of Tom Petty’s shoulder length hair locks made him anti-establishment in my vanilla world. We thought we were so coooooooool..

Thirty years passed me by like a petty concern. Somehow, the memories of the angelic soft voice of my best friend’s girlfriend got consumed by a radically changed world that now hung on my stepson’s girlfriend’s voice. “Could you please turn up Refugee?” had been brazenly voiced over by “Crank that shit!”

My Neck of the Woods on Earth Day

I spent Earth Day contacting hired engineers and township officials to protest a proposed residential development that will border my three acre wooded property and affect preserved wetlands. Something has got to be wrong in my neck of the woods when I am fighting urbanization on Earth Day.

I'm not McGrubbing it!

My writing style was recently compared to the stern objectivism of author Ayn Rand by co-workers. I question whether that is a good thing but she is a helluva writer. As my friend Pax Romano preaches from his one-hand clapping choir, there is no such thing as bad pubilicity.

There are enough reminders and bad publicity about American society being obese. After a few months of inactivity on my part, I am getting almost as guilty as the fat man in the circus. I believe that home cooked meals are too often replaced with fast food takeout in this culture. After a few billion people served at Mcdonalds alone, the biggie supersize craze was introduced as a convenient way to ordering larger quantities of unhealthy food.

Since we got that all behind us literally and figuratively. What's my beef pattie now? Well, something is wrong with the way we do business when we can now buy something so consumeable as McDonald's fast food using credit cards with double digit compounding interest. That's right with a wave of a plastic credit card you can eat now and pay later. Ten years from now, these consumers will still be burping up the sorry remants of $23.00 greasy burgers. No thank you. I'll pay cash. I'm not McGrubbing it on credit! Thanks for listening to another Ayn Rand rant.

Club Ped

A Barbie Doll TV newsreporter covering the dreadful disappearance of five-year-old Haleigh Cummings tossed out a statistic too matter of factly for my liking. Without batting her fake eyelashes, she reported, “within a five mile radius of where the girl disappeared from her house, there are 44 registered sex offenders.” I don’t want to sound like an alarmist but Satsuma, Florida is described as a sparsely populated retirement community. I have never been good in arithmetic but unless they live next door to a maximum-security penal institution, this neighborhood sounds like a hotbed called Club Ped!

Take a compass and mileage markers to the scene of the crime. This means no matter which way the little girl might have tried to flee for her life…north south, east or west…a sex offender lurks within every tenth mile. Have we become that sinister of a society to prey on our most innocent and vulnerable members of the human race at such a proclivity? Maybe some ostrich people are better of not knowing the danger circling the compass. Until somebody tells me differently, I hope these numbers are outrageously skewed and not the national average. What you do not know will not kill you…until it does.