Lord I Was Born a Ramblin' Man

The strange thing about doing this blog is that I'm never really sure if anyone's reading it or not. If you're a real writer with a job at a magazine or a published novelist or something like that, then you can naturally assume a certain number of readers, but unless a blogger checks his stats he never really knows for sure if anyone's reading, and I never check my stats. I find it takes a lot of the pressure off if I just assume that there's no audience. No need to be interesting or relevant if it's just you typing away in cyberspace, and if someone is unlucky enough to have their browser land at this url then that's their problem, not mine.

So with that in mind I thought I'd just ramble on tonight. I don't really have anything in particular on my mind, and since no one reads this crap - who cares? So let's start, shall we? Let me just see what's making news.

Well, as you may have heard the Oakland A's lost a close, down-to-the-wire league championship series to the Detroit Tigers. It was a real nail-biter alright, and other than the A's inabilty to pitch, hit or catch I thought they played a pretty good series. Kudo's to the A's, and too bad they didn't play a best of nine because I'm sure they could've taken the Tigers for five straight.

Ok, enough of that. Let's find some happy news. Over on Wall Street things have been looking pretty good lately. There have been quite a few new highs on the Dow, and the Nasdaq and S&P have been improving as well. That's good news for me. At least now I don't have to down a bottle of Scotch before looking at my brokerage statement each month (actually I don't drink. I just thought I should make that clear in case any future employers might be reading this...) In fact my nest egg wasn't growing and I was beginning to worry there for a while. You know things are bad when planning for the future means testing out grocery carts and reconnoitering local parks and bridges for any that might fit future retirement needs. No need for that anymore. The market is picking up a little, and it looks like I just might have enough scratch be able to retire to that little dream hovel in the tenements after all.

Sure is a load off of my mind.

What else can I talk about. Hmmm... They had a debate up in Sacramento last weekend, and yeah, I actually watched it. Truth is I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. You know, Lincoln-Douglas, Kennedy-Nixon, Schwarzenegger-Angelides(?).

Anyways, it wasn't a real debate. It was more like a chance for Angelides to prove that he was a real gubernatorial candidate and not just some guy at the door taking tickets. How did he do? Well, rather than answer that directly I'll just read you this little item from today's Murky News. Seems that Willie Brown, a very well known Democrat in this state, speaking at a luncheon in front of a mostly Democratic audience, declared that Schwarzenegger would win the election "no matter what". What was really strange, though, was that Brown had invited Schwarzenegger to speak at the luncheon, but had not sent an invitation to Angelides.

And that's how well the debate went. I mean, even the bigwigs in his own party don't want to vote for him. I'm no political scientist but that doesn't smell like victory to me.

Like I said, I watched the debate and it went pretty much as expected. Arnold, the incumbent, did his best to look cool and in command while Angelides accused him of ruining the state and destroying lives and pretty much everything else short of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. I could have almost felt sorry for poor Phil if it wasn't for the fact that he kept pissing me off with all of his talk about "the working people."

I mean, there's Phil Angelides, pockets full of money sent to him by the various Public Employee's Unions around the state, taking a stand for the "working people" of this state, "working people" being his codeword for public employees. Geez Louise, does this guy think that people in the public sector are the only ones who work for a living? How about the rest of us? The ones who don't have guaranteed pensions and lifetime health benefits and cost-of-living adjustments. What does he think we do all day? Sit around the pool making eyes at blondes in bikinis? And besides, have you ever been to the DMV? Do those people look like they're working to you?

Aaaahhh, it really started to make me mad after a while, this whole Angelidian notion that the role of government is to raise my "non-working people" taxes so that we can pay ever-escalating benefits to Phil's poor, beaten-down "working people." That's his real agenda - more money for his union backers. He thinks he can get it by soaking the rich, and while I'm all for soaking the rich I know enough to know that it's the folks in the middle who usually wind up taking a bath. All I can say is if Angelides wanted to alienate me as a voter then he did a pretty good job of it. As far as I'm concerned, Jessica Simpson has a better chance of winning the Nobel Prize in Physics than Phil Angelides has of getting my vote in November.

Grrrrrrr politics - it always puts me in a bad mood.

One last thing and then I'm calling it a night. I was watching TV the other day (or was it the other week?) and this show came on the History Channel called "The History of Sex." Now, dear readers, this is the History Channel we're talking about. I always figured that if you have a channel called "The History Channel" then you're gonna have shows about historic things like great battles, or social movements, or important figures, or things like that. But "The History of Sex"? Are you kidding me?

Anyways, as far as I'm concerned the very fact that The History Channel has to pander and pimp for an audience with shows like "The History of Sex" goes to the very heart of what's wrong with this country. I'm not sure what that is or why, but it's gotta be central to whole problem, whatever that may be. And besides, don't people already know the history of sex? Let's see, first Eve bit the apple, and then people have been doing it ever since. Doesn't seem like much of a show to me (but I'm gonna Tivo it just to be sure). Can't wait to see what series they come up with next. Maybe "The History of Hemorroids" or "The History of Post Nasal Drip".

Now that's some TV worth watching.