I swear I am trying not to rant so much but it is difficult when I am surrounded by dumb ass people. Today I’m reading the news and some freaking idiot puts a wire tie around this dog’s throat and leaves it to die.

I hate to admit this but if I could find this individual and get my hands on them, they would end up eating through a tube for a while (if they would be lucky enough to survive). When I think about this poor helpless dog and the suffereing it endured, I almost start crying. So much for giving up ranting this week.

FYI: I have surpassed a milestone as this is post number 101

Reading blogs on MySpace is like trying to find a legible sentence in your alphabet soup. After staring into the bowl for hours you realize you are not hungry and just throw the whole thing in the trash. Well, I was browsing through the blogger groups trying to find someone/anyone who could actually spell, or type with any sense of paragraph or sentence structure and it was frustrating.

These are examples of writing styles on MySpace:

• some people just write with absolutely no punctuation or paragraph breaks.......... maybe an occasional period or exclamation point just to break up the monotony......... but basically just a bunch of words running together......... with no thoughts or anything...after a while of reading this your eyes will actually pop from your skull and quickly roll towards a speeding mack truck

• ThEn YoU HaVe ThE IdIoT ThAt DoEs ThIs SHiT. WhY? I dOn’T kNoW.

• Then you have the ghetto talking white trash trying to act black. For some reason all the girls want to be bitches and all the guys want to be gangsters. They type with many symbols so they look like they are typing in the Winding font; they also use many z’s. Even though they live in Orange County, their gangsta hommiez iz wit it, dont be a biatch?

I cannot imagine any of these people being able to write a simple high school paper, much less a sentence. Many of them claim to be in college but I don’t understand how they could pass the entrance exam with first grade level grammatical skills.

Here are a couple of things I noticed about girls under 20:

• There is a definite sense of desperation in their writing. They must be in a committed relationship NOW and act as though marriage must happen soon or they will be Old Maids forever. I was reading one blog in particular and the girl writes, “I don’t know why I am single?” As if the guys don’t find her attractive or something. Well, I looked at her profile and she was 16!!!

• It seems like most of them already have kids. A teenage girl having a kid today must be like a badge of honor because they display them proudly along with their tattoos and piercings. I cannot understand this but today it must be cool to be under 20, single, with multiple clit piercings, tattoos all over your body like a convict and at least one kid to prove to your friends that you actually had sex. How can you be twenty and already have a five year old kid? In my book that adds up to child molestation.

On the radio last week the DJ’s were talking about a friend who was going to let their fourteen year old daughter pierce her clit because “all of her friends are doing it.” Well, if that was my daughter, she is definitely going to find some new friends and I will quickly move out of town to make sure this happens (in addition to getting a can of whoop ass). No way in hell is she getting a piercing anywhere (especially down there) at 14! But maybe if there was a dad in the home this would never happen in the first place.

In closing, I have a few suggestions and comments for MySpace users:

• Your primary profile picture should be a picture of you and NOT: your dog, cat, kid, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, favorite tree, favorite chair, favorite fairy picture, or favorite body part. Just post a nice clear picture of your face.

• If you think you are ugly, you probably are, so why do you make it worse by making some crazy face and sticking out your tongue. Then you further add to your stupidity-level by putting a caption under the picture saying how dumb you look.

• Never have the same background color as the font color because no one can see anything on your page. This is not rocket science but common sense; preview before you publish. If you can’t read it then nobody else can read it either.

• To Men: Having 4,659 female friends does not make you a stud.

• To Women: If you publish half-naked pictures of yourself don’t be upset when guys hit on you.

• Please take grammar, spelling, vocabulary and phonics while you are in college. It will give us the ability to communicate when you are older and you have to take my order at BK.

• Having a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on your ass or breasts does not make you a philosopher. (I’m sorry to have to break this news to some people.)

• Don’t put hundreds of pictures and doodads on your page because no one can see anything through the clutter. Keep it simple.

• Chain letters are spam, why do you insist on posting them all over the place? Tom is not going to delete you account next week if you fail to respond. Also, sending them to more than 10 people will not guarantee you will be loved. It only guarantees you will eventually end up on an episode of Cops.

• Note to all “friends”: Stop posting large annoying graphics on people’s pages thanking them for adding you. Instead of making people laugh, they make people think about how annoying you must really be in person.

Eventually I did find a vein of educated people but wading through all the crap was difficult to stomach.

Alright I have to get this out of me before I explode. I hate the word “pimp” and it frustrates me that this word has become a positive term used everyday.

Pimp my ride!
Pimp my blog!
Pimp my Wardrobe!

The problem is NOT the word itself but that it is being used in a positive tone; it should only be used in a negative tone. “Pimp your ride” should not be a good thing. If your ride gets pimped it should be destroyed NOT fixed up.

What is going on? Why are letting this hip hop culture (by far the worst of all cultures expect Al-Qaeda) into mainstream? Stop it!!! A pimp is somebody who rapes and enslaves women and then sells them to the highest bidder as a sex toy. There is nothing positive about it and surely nothing worth wanting to associate with this word. Stop it!!!!

What if they would have chosen some other word like “rape” instead of “pimp” (which is virtually the same thing) and started using that in a positive phrases? Imagine all of the stupid phrases like:

Rape my ride!
Rape my blog!
Rape my wardrobe!

I know it sound preposterous but it’s the same thing. If you would have told me twenty years ago my car was being pimped, I would have opened up a can of whoop ass on you.

Also why are we using z’s instead of s’s as a plural? For example: boyz, girlz. If you want to use this tripe in a blog that is your problem but using this in the mainstream media and such is just wrong. The last I heard, English is the acceptable form of language and communication in this country so use it properly or leave.

One more, why is the new generation infatuated with gangs? All the idiots talk about “my gangsta” bullshit like it’s a good thing. Maybe if some real gangsters would get hold of these idiots and pummel them during the hazing they would not be so quick to want to be one.

I still like many of the new rock bands so I am not old enough to be completely out of touch but I cannot stomach this hip hop crap and I wish it would die horribly.

Now that we finally have electricity again here are some lessons learned when the lights go out.

• Candles are very bright
• Reading by candlelight can hurt your eyes
• Although scented candles do give light, the scent is annoying after 3 days and can cause an upset stomach
• You must have lights to poop – otherwise you don’t know when you have finished wiping
• Keep one old analog phone handy as the digital phones all require power
• Cats don’t like heat
• People that have generators are scorned by the people who don’t because the loud noise keeps you awake all night.
• I don’t care about the phone or the TV but loosing the Internet is devastating.
• Even though you know the power is out you will still turn on the bathroom light when entering
• Always buy odorless, smokeless lamp oil
• Always keep some cash on hand, when the power goes out so do the ATM’s
• There are not enough cold showers possible to cool off when the temperature is over 90 degrees with 100% humidity.

I also learned you cannot submit a claim to the power company if the power goes out because they are not responsible. If they are not responsible then who is? Let’s analyze how this deal works. They provide electricity and I pay them. If the power goes out it’s their fault; if I do not pay them it’s my fault.

In total, over half a million people were without power since Wednesday. I guess I am one of the lucky ones because tens of thousands are still without power in the St. Louis area. We only lost about $300 worth of food which is no big deal to us but for an elderly person on a budget, that could be devastating.

Now the refrigerator is completely empty and scrubbed clean so the process of rebuilding begins..............

We interrupt this blog.........

Sorry bloggers but my power has been out since Thursday night and it is not expected to be restored until this coming Wednesday. The infrastructure in St. Louis is horrible!! On average we loose power for approximately twelve days every year because of a few measly thunderstorms. Also, the smallest of rain showers can often turn the phones, televisions and Internet lines into useless static.

I am not sure how these numbers compare with the rest of the cities in America but I am officially renaming St. Louis, Missouri to St. Louis, Iraq. Everytime we have rain forecast, we hold our breath because every storm has the possibility of major outages for all utilities.

Ameren Electric is one of the most profitable companies in the St. Louis area but they must invest nothing in upgrades. They are asking for another rate increase for the upcoming calendar year and they are getting it without much trouble from the State. You would think the government would speak up for their voters but they never do. Ever since Matt Blunt won the Governor's seat, big businesses rules the State with no hope in sight for the working man.

You would think Blunt would force them to spend some of those hundreds of millions in upgrades but not our corporate-sponsored Governor. The only thing he might do is levy a special tax on underprivileged children and retired veterans to pay the increased piece of the State's electric bill. He really likes to take money from the poorest elderly and children.

Ameren Electric in a broadcast over St. Louis radio and television stations, said power would be restored to areas to get the most people up as possible at a time. BULLSHIT!!! After searching through the number of outages by zip code from Ameren's web site, I discovered my zip code has the most people out of power and we are still down after three days but every damn business in my area are again operational. The residential customers are shit out of luck as usual!!

What he should have said was they will restore power to the customers who PAY the most first and residential customers just don't rate. There was a rush to get all of the Hardee's, Dierberg's, Best Buy's, Famous Barr's and QT's on-line but the elderly people in my neighborhood (there are many) who could die from the heat are not important enough. It seems money is again more important than human life. This behavior just pisses me off to no end!!

Due to the hot weather we have left the house and are staying with my parents in the cozy AC but they only have dial up Internet so response to your comments might be tardy. I apologize for my lack of attention but I will be back as soon as possible.

As a little boy my summers were filled with long hours playing ball at the park. To quench our thirst we visited a neighbors water hose or external faucet attached to a house near the park. The water tasted great and kept us hydrated. Those days were before the dark times; before the Empire.

Today the media and the corporate machine (the Empire) have convinced us the water from our faucets is poison. This could be one of the single most successful advertising campaigns ever launched against us; and it’s all built on a huge steaming pile of bullshit. We have now been convinced the free water we drink from our faucets is poison and the water sold in bottles by Pepsi and Coke is pure.

When the notion of bottled water surfaced about 20 years ago I remember laughing and thinking “Who would be stupid enough to buy bottled water when they can drink it out of any tap for free?” Fast forward to today and the bottled water industry is bigger than the soda industry and I still laugh at all the suckers buying bottled water thinking it is healthier.

The picture on the bottle shows mountains with clear running streams when in reality most of the bottled water is from various municipal water supplies, it even states it on the bottle in small print. The municipal water supplies are much better for you because those water systems are subject to vigorous and regular inspections by the EPA; nobody regulates or inspects the bottled industry so there could be anything living in that water and you would never know.

Recently I have been seeing canned air for sale at the check out counters for $10-$15 per can. As the back of the can reads, "In today's stress-ridden, high-energy environment, you've got to be at your peak performance." The first time I saw it I laughed my ass off just like the first time I saw bottled water. But this will probably catch on and become the next big thing.

Did you know they actually have oxygen bars? They have one in Las Vegas and I am not sure how many more are in operation around the country. People actually pay to walk into this place that pumps pure oxygen into a room which you breathe. I’ll bet anything this “fresh oxygen” is nothing but colder filtered air pumped in directly from the outside.

I imagining visions of a future where due to the massive advertising campaign by the canned air companies everybody is convinced the air is poison so they have their own personal oxygen tanks on their back connected to a mask. When in reality the air is fine but air (like water) is free but free is not good for the economy, so they’ll create a market out of bullshit and fear. The public is stupid so we’ll all walk around looking like spacemen.

It’ll be cool though because Apple will have an iMask so you can breathe air for only $29.99 a month and the mask will have headphones so you can listen to music in your portable environment.

Somebody please shoot me.

About a week and a half ago the price of oil jumped to over $75 per barrel. I remember reading an article that same day saying the price hike in crude would cause $3 per gallon gas prices at the pump. While I was driving home that same day I noticed the gas stations changing their prices to $3 a gallon reflect this increase. How in the hell is this possible?

From the time oil is sold until it becomes a refined product at the pump is almost three weeks or more. So how could this increase hit the pump so fast unless we were being gouged? I found only one gas station with the old price and they kept it until last Friday when they finally jumped with the rest of them.

The excuse for the price increase in oil to over $75 a barrel was increasing tension with Iran. This is insane!!! You mean I can charge somebody more for a product just in case it becomes scarcer in the future? Can you imagine charging more for a product for an event that might not ever happen? If the event never happens can I get my money back?

When the Congress investigated gas prices last fall they forgot to factor in the bullshit like this. They found nothing shady about the oil industry. The bullshit factor is when you raise prices in anticipation of a shortage. This should be an illegal practice. If there is a shortage then you can raise prices but you should never be allowed to raise prices for an inelastic good without an actual event.

By finding no wrong doing, the Congress is saying they can charge whatever they want and it’s perfectly legal. When the people got upset with these findings the economists defended the corporations. In the economists’ minds, you should be able to charge whatever price the market will hold regardless of its impact on society.

So in this case we have another example of corporate goals not being in alignment with the health and welfare of society; as well as, another example of collusion. All of the stations except one raise the price immediately even though they had not felt the impact of the higher price yet. The gas in their tanks was bought at the old price. And they all raised prices together even though they are supposed to be different companies.

Many Americans want to eat healthier but I suddenly realized why many do not. Because it is many times more expensive to eat fresher, healthier food? I bought three medium sized peaches at the store the other day for two dollars!! Holy shit!! I could have bought two McDonald’s Big & Nasty hamburgers for two dollars; and they would have cooked them for me too.

Basically, eating fresh should be cheaper but cheaper is not what corporate American wants; they want you to spend more buying their chemically enhanced products. They use catch words like “fresh” and “handmade” but these are just marketing words and do not represent what is in the package. Do they put these additives into our food so they can charge us more?

After the origin of HIV post, I started thinking about other areas where corporations save money at the expense of the health and welfare of society and I found more examples of it within the food we eat everyday.

The definition of poison is:
Substances that cause injury, illness, or death to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale. Some poisons are also toxins, usually referring to naturally produced substances that kill rapidly in small quantities.

Basically the food we eat is poison. Hydrogenated vegetable protein, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, BHT, monosodium glutamate, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, modified food starch, high fructose corn syrup are just a few of the poisons we eat in our food everyday. In my opinion high fructose corn syrup is the worst poison of all.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a high percentage of fructose. It all sounds rather simple—white cornstarch is turned into crystal clear syrup. However, the process is actually very complicated. Three different enzymes are needed to break down cornstarch, which is composed of chains of glucose molecules of almost infinite length, into the simple sugars glucose and fructose.

Consumers may think that because it contains fructose—which they associate with fruit, which is a natural food—that it is healthier than sugar. A team of investigators at the USDA, led by Dr. Meira Field, has discovered just the opposite.

Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose. When sugar is given to rats in high amounts, the rats develop multiple health problems, especially when the rats were deficient in certain nutrients, such as copper. The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy—that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. (Copper deficiency, by the way, is widespread in America.) In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young.

"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."

HFCS contains more fructose than sugar and this fructose is more immediately available because it is not bound up in sucrose. Since the effects of fructose are most severe in the growing organism, we need to think carefully about what kind of sweeteners we give to our children. Fruit juices should be strictly avoided—they are very high in fructose—but so should anything with HFCS.

Interestingly HFCS is used in many products aimed at children. So avoid eating or drinking this crap and especially avoid giving this stuff to your kids. Frankly, I don’t know how these corporations get away with this.

As of October of 2005 nearly 21 million Americans or roughly 7 percent of the population have diabetes. If you can imagine a standard diagram you can see how the use of HFCS and the diabetes rate increase in parallel since 1970. Today, HFCS are engrained into our society. The well funded corn lobby and corporate America has managed to mortgage the health and welfare of our population to cheaply manufacture their goods.

Millions of Americans get diabetes as millions of dollars flow into the coffers of the super rich food corporations which in turn pay off politicians through the lobbyists to keep the cycle going. I don’t want to eat this stuff but I have no choice because it is in everything. Unless you buy fresh produce (if you can afford fresh produce) there is no way to avoid these ingredients.

Most of the America’s farmland is owned and controlled by corporate American now. Is this why fresh produce so expensive? The individual farmers don’t get any of that money so where does it all go?

Just remember that corporations don’t give a squat about you. All they care about is the money in your pocket. In this case, they are getting rich by selling us poison and the government is allowing it to happen. Just as we have created HIV, we have probably created diabetes with our poisonous additives in the food.

More about the dangers of HFCS as it pertains to soft drinks.

I would like to give credit to Linda Forristal for the scientific analysis of HFCS.

For R

She is 25, a beautiful flower just beginning life’s journey but it was almost a year ago she confided in me that she had HIV. I have known her my entire life; she is like a sister to me. After the words rolled off her tongue, I still remember feeling like I was frozen, unable to move and everything started moving in slow motion. Then I went numb. For years I had been the strong one, always able to bail her out of any trouble that came her way but not this time. I sat helpless, unable to remove this demon that had invaded her body. I still get numb thinking about that day.

Only having a few sex partners it was easy for her to find the guy. He was a 35 year old businessman wearing a suit and tie. They had a 6-month relationship and the condom did not come off early. A DNA test confirmed the AIDS virus came from him. The bastard wanted to infect other women to pay back the woman who infected him.

He was taking medicine but he stopped so now he is suffering with full blown AIDS. Today he is rotting away in a hospital bed waiting for death’s hand, so prosecution is not worth it. He killed my friend as sure as if he had taken a gun and pulled the trigger.

From me to him: I hope death waits and leaves you to suffer. When I think about the countless women you infected, the lives you destroyed I want you to get a long lasting dose of suffering. And when you are getting ready to take life’s final breath to relieve your pain, I can only hope the hospital staff revives you to live on another week or month. In the words of Pinhead, “Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell!!” So, live on asshole; enjoy the ride!!!

This is what led to my odyssey into finding out about this terrible disease. Many of my conservative friends believe that God put this disease on our planet to curse the homosexuals. After reading countless books and stumbling on articles and various documentaries, I think I finally have the true story.

HIV is a virus manufactured by humans while trying to cheaply manufacture a polio vaccine in the early 1950’s. HIV is a mutated form of SID syndrome found in primates. They would take the livers of primates and combine those cells with polio cells to produce a polio vaccine. This vaccine was cheaper to produce than the synthetic one.

Doctors warned these researchers NOT to do this as contamination with other diseases was possible but the companies had dreams of making millions of dollars so nothing could stop them. They wanted to test this new vaccine on America but since our population was already exposed to the existing polio vaccine they decided to test it on a virgin test group. Target Africa.

After vaccinating an entire village the first reported case of HIV in humans was reported only weeks afterward. But did they stop there? NO of course not. The thirst for profit and the taste of money is hypnotic to many in our society, so the research and the vaccinations continued. They thought even if HIV spread to other villages that it would never reach America or Europe.

Fast forward almost 50 years and now my friend is cursed to spend her life alone, without love; no husband for her, no kids for her, no white picket fence in her future. Nothing but a future filled with doctors, drugs and experimental procedures.

Countless millions are already dead and many more people to follow; all in the name of corporate greed. We have reached the point where the goals of mankind and the goals of corporations are not in line with each other. I know that greed is the bane of our existence because this greed unleashed the black plague on our generation. This is why I spend so much time writing these articles pointing that out to people.

Change is slow but it must start somewhere. Like throwing a rock into the water, the ripples will eventually reach the shore; that is how change is too. Information like this is one hell of a rock, now we must be the ripples and carry this message to shore. The truth hurts but it must be exposed. I said in an earlier post that I was ashamed to be a man because of the stupid things that men do. I haven’t yet changed my mind because the more research I do into things, the more stupidity and utter disregard for our fellow man I uncover.

You don’t believe me? Then read The River : A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS by Gary Paulsen or see the documentary The Origins of AIDS.

This is too funny to be fiction. Two of the new toys for kids this holiday season are just impossible to put into words so I’ll just attach pictures and links.

The first toy shoots sticky ooze all over a kids face: (click to enlarge)



After reading the above comic click here and play the video.


The second toy is the Harry Potter broom perfect for riding. When you put it between your legs and squeeze - it vibrates; this is sure to be a big hit with mom too:



You can put these two under the Christmas tree next to the stripper Barbie.

Have they now put rejects from the adult toy industry into the regular toy industry?

You might think discrimination should not exist in a free society but it is allowed. I am going to expose the collusionary practice of price discrimination and show how businesses are allowed to charge more to certain customers based on class. The entire wholesale/distributor industry discriminates by selling only to a select few (usually higher class individuals). It is collusion because they have all decided not to sell to consumers to artificially inflate prices for the retailers. Again, this is called collusion which is illegal in our country.

I used to work in produce for Kroger back in the mid-eighties and I remember finding a wholesale price list my boss accidentally left out. The item that stood out in my mind was they paid one penny a pound for potatoes and resold them for 99 cent per pound. But if you tried to buy those potatoes from that wholesaler/distributor at one penny per pound you would be turned away. Why? Isn’t my money good enough? But I’m not a rich corporation or business so they will refuse to sell to me.

When you think about it, we don’t need retailers; consumers should be allowed to purchase directly from the wholesalers. All retailers are good for is driving up prices; they offer nothing else. But consumers are not allowed to purchase directly for the wholesaler and this is collusion at its finest. If you locate one of these wholesalers or distributors and try to buy something you will be denied unless you have a tax ID which you can only get if you have a business license.

Each wholesaler or distributor should be able to sell to any consumer, whether they are business or private homes but they want to maintain a higher pricing scheme so they elect to sell only to other businesses. Do you realize how cheaper things would be if we were allowed to do this?

I’ll give you another example of this collusion. A furniture store near my home announced a going out of business sale. We have wanted a new bedroom set for quite sometime so we went but the prices were horrible for a going out of business sale, only about 10%-25% from the full retail price. I found out later if you were a business and shopped there you could get a discount on the merchandise for as much as 75% from the retail price. Why couldn’t I get that same deal? Who cares who I am as long as they get the money? This industry takes care of its own by practicing collusion which is illegal in our country.

Another example of collusion is I used to work for a printing house, one of the biggest in the world. They printed many of the educational books both in the collegiate and high school levels. We print books at a cost to the publisher of $3 - $5 each. Then the publisher sells them to the students at $100-$150 each!!! They do nothing except ship the books to the schools and give a few pennies to the author. I don’t know about you but that kind of profit really pisses me off!!

One final example and I’m done. When I was younger I collected baseball cards. I used to get the monthly Beckets Guide that would tell me the values of my cards. Well I had several Ozzie Smith rookies that were valued at $90 so I decided to sell a couple. I took them to the local baseball card shop where he had one for $90 so offered him two more but he would not pay me more than $20 for each card. What I did not realize is the Beckets is for a consumer buying cards, but businesses have an entire underground of pricing that was far cheaper than I could obtain. That was my introduction to pricing discrimination practices in our country. Businesses get things cheaper than people.

Collusion is illegal in this country so why doesn’t the government go after these businesses? Because of this, I am going to get a tax ID and a business license so I can gain access to this underground and get goods at a reasonable price. I should not have to do this but the rules are against us, so if we don’t start getting smart these businesses will suck us dry.

Some of the bigger businesses like Wal-Mart have already figured out that cutting out one level in the chain will decrease prices. They use a practice call lateral positioning where they are their own wholesaler\distributor. That is one of the reasons they can sell goods cheaper than anyone else. They cut out a whole level of business. This also gives them the ability to penetrate smaller markets and drive everybody else out, because they can sell items to the consumer cheaper than these smaller businesses pay for them at the wholesaler.

What needs to be done is a non-profit retailer that acts as a wholesaler and a retailer. This business buys directly from the manufacturers and then sells directly to the consumer. Imagine how cheaper things would be. This business would exist to keep prices more affordable for all. All the profits would go to pay employees a decent salary and give them free healthcare. Maybe then the poor could afford more items and those of us with more income could retire earlier. Am I a dreamer or what?

Brought to you by Viagra

There are some people in St. Louis that are going to chastise me for saying this but I hate the new Busch Stadium. Sure this place looks beautiful but not unlike a trophy wife, everything else sucks. This corporate palace was not built for the fans of baseball but was designed with an obvious corporate theme especially for advertisers. Like everything else in life, absolutely no thought was given to the family trying to bring their kids to the game.

We were tricked into spending our tax dollars for a new ball park that was supposed to be a palace to baseball. Instead we built a palace to Viagra, Anheuser-Busch, Dodge and Coke. All the best seats are either private corporate suites or priced well out of the normal family budget.

Top reasons why I hate the new Busch Stadium:

• The new ball park has fewer seats for the average fan but plenty of corporate boxes even though taxpayer money helped build it.
• The new ball park is crammed full of advertisements; there are everywhere and on everything. Walking around this stadium is like walking through a giant spam.
• The ticket prices were raised but the Cardinal team salary was lowered. Where in the hell is this increase in ticket prices going? Right into the pockets of the owners; that’s where.
• A hot dog is $4 and a beer is $8!!!! A small nacho is $5!! You get my point here.
• Over 90% of the ball park is open so if it rains there is no where to go to keep dry.
• Corporate sponsorship is too obvious with too many private areas for them.
• Restroom facilities are too small; when you gotta go, you gotta go.
• Why are seat cushions only in the field box area, why not just put them everywhere?
• There is no place in this park for families.

I am sure no expense was spared for the corporate sponsors, the advertisers or the specialty shops but for the average fan this facility sucks worse than the River port Amphitheatre. The ditto heads in the St. Louis media never see the park from the eyes of the average fan so they have been tricked into overrating this facility. I wonder if all the new parks are like this one?

Ken Lay died yesterday while vacationing in Aspen Colorado. It would be so nice to be convicted of multiple felonies and be able to vacation in Aspen while awaiting sentencing but normal people are not allowed to do such things. But when George Bush is your friend you can get away with anything.

I am already annoyed with all of the articles telling of how generous he was and how good of a person he was. I wonder when Hilter died if his family and friends came forward telling of how generous he was and how good of an artist he was. Ken Lay never murders millions of people but his impact on the American economy and the personal retirement of thousands was one of the worst in modern history and the effects from his crimes will be felt for many years. Certainly Hitler is a closer comparison than the Mother Theresa qualities these articles are suggesting.

He certainly could be compared with any number of con artists, robbers or felons. Just because he kisses his wife and kids before he goes to work or attends Church on Sunday should not shadow the fact that he screwed tens of thousands of people out of their retirement, and stole many millions of dollars from the American public. The only difference between him and the common thug is the weapon used in the crime. Ken Lay used a pen instead of a gun.

I never knew the man but based on his performance with Enron, he will be remembered as one of the most notorious con artists of his time. But was he that much different from any other CEO or CFO? No, probably not but he just got caught. Normally, I believe we should separate the man from his actions but not in this case; his sense of entitlement was beyond normal reasoning.

For people not familiar with this sense of entitlement, the CEO mentality is that they are better than anyone else; we are their servants. In Ken Lay’s mind, as well as the other Enron scumbags, what they did was just business. All the money is theirs anyway so what is the big deal now that it is all gone. I wrote about this sense of entitlement before with The Minority Rules The Majority, The REAL Divide in America and How To Enslave A Free Society.

Anyway, I don’t want to hear anymore bullshit about how great of a person Ken Lay was. His attitude is the microcosm of what is wrong with our country. If there is a hell, I am sure they added a new wing for this asshole.

We celebrated the 4th of July with my parents on Sunday, July 2. My parents brought a new game back with them from Seattle and we had a blast playing it. My dad built it with 1 inch PVC; it's like horseshoes.

My dad gets a ringer:


Nick misses:


My Turn:


My parents dog:


The grand finale:


The awesome fountain: