Trump comes out on top at GOP debate

I watched three minutes of last night’s Republican Presidential candidates’ debate on the Fox News Channel. That was enough for me.

Of course I wanted to see whether The Man, Donald Trump, would appear on stage. He did not. I figured it would be worth my time to see what the other candidates had to say in his absence, so I stuck with it for another two and a half minutes. The first speaker, Senator Ted Cruz, began with a crack about Donald Trump. The second speaker, Senator Mark Rubio, began with a crack about Donald Trump.

Owning the stage when you’re not even there. That’s a winner.

Still sheltered from the storm

Day Five of being snowed in and it’s starting to get a little dull.

 

Nah, who am I kidding? It’s been great! I have especially enjoyed wasting all of this free time when I could have been doing something productive.

Ha.

Wednesday I usually comment on something from my hometown paper (that’s The Washington Post) but I’m eschewing that today. You see, I never got around to reading the paper this weekend. I’m sure it’s out there on my lawn… somewhere… and I’ll find it in about April.

Until then… let the Simpsons marathon continue!

Snow Day 2 (and 3)

So yeah, the storm turned out to be serious business. Being from upstate New York I think I’m qualified to call myself an expert on such things, and I’ll say this one was a doozy. Twenty-two inches of snow outside my door, though I know places around me received much more. No school today or tomorrow for me or my friends, and I don’t plan to go anywhere or do anything. Luckily (or perhaps by design) I’m at a point in my life where no one relies on me and I don’t really rely on anyone else, so I can sort of live in my little bubble and not talk to anyone when such things occur. Thanks, everyone else, for making the world work! I appreciate it!

Snow Day!

There’s not a flake of snow on the ground, of course, but you can’t beat the drums for a blizzard all week and then not even cancel school.

I’ll take a snow day on the come any day of the week and I mean that literally.

This is the first snow day that has worked in my favor in sixteen years and I’ll take it.

I’ll take it.

Everything wrong with society today

Guys are simple creatures. They like sports, beer, and action movies. If you give them one of those things, they’ll be content.

This, from playboy.com, former bastion of classiness and sophistication, now gone the way of the rest of the world.

Yup, civilization is doomed.

This is like National Review endorsing Bernie Sanders for president. Or PETA endorsing Colonel Sanders for president.

Yup, it’s over.

How to celebrate today

When you’re a white guy who doesn’t go in for political correctness you might be stumped for things to do on Martin Luther King Day. Personally I think your best bet is just to lay low, say nothing, and enjoy the day off. Me, I’m going to be catching up on some old (when I say old I mean like a few months old) TV shows that have caught my attention and interest recently.

Not long ago, and after much delay, I got back into watching BoJack Horseman on Netflix and I must say that show found itself toward the end of Season One and into Season Two. It’s worth muddling through some subpar episodes in the middle to get to this point, and if you’ve got the time today I say go for it.

Secondly I recommend Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. Based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel, Castle presents a post-World War II America in which the Axis powers defeated the Allies. The Empire of Japan administers our West Coast and the Nazis rule the East, with a sort of Wild West neutral zone of resistance existing in the inner regions. It’s compelling stuff, and at least one example that Amazon’s original programming is up to that of Netflix.

Good job, world. Good job.

Dr. King would be proud.

No, I didn’t win the Powerball jackpot

I sat with trepidation Wednesday night watching the billion-dollar Powerball jackpot numbers drawn. I thought for sure that because I secretly did not want to win—fearful of the headaches the money would no doubt cause—that fate would surely bring said billion my way.

No. That strategy didn’t work either.

Or maybe it did.

Because after all, if I did hit the Powerball jackpot, I would write this exact same post, wouldn’t I?

Warning: This post may contain sarcasm

A “local-interest” piece in my local rag this past Sunday noted a bizarre phenomenon occurring these days on Capitol Hill.

Congressional staffers, those college kids and twentysomethings who secretly run the place, are wearing expensive clothes!

Yup, you heard it here first (well, Post first here second), scandal on the Hill, expensive clothes and accessories among Washington’s non-elite.

How can this be? Many of those people aren’t even paid, and the ones who are get laughably-low internship stipends that barely cover sublets in this increasingly-expensive town of ours.

You see (drum roll)… most of those kids have… rich parents!

Gasp.

The author notes the problem. These are the people who run our society. (That’s not a stretch: the idea is to parlay your internship into a full-time gig, and most of them do.) So our pool of applicants to run our society is a group of people with rich parents who don’t really need to work who’ve never earned anything in their lives and don’t mind spending other people’s money.

Yup, that’s the group of people I want to send my tax dollars to.

Spot on, author. So what’s your solution?

Give more money to those interns and junior staffers!

Yeah, with higher salaries, a greater cross-section of people will go for those internships and be able to spend my money for me. Awesome idea.

While we’re at it, why don’t we just pay everybody in Washington more to be fair about it? After all, they’ve got that big money tree there, right? Might as well spread it around a bit.

Awesome.

And with that we become hockey fans

It’s too bad the real Redskins and the real Packers had to show up for yesterday’s NFC Wild Card matchup at FedEx Field. I was beginning to like the new alternate reality personas adopted in recent weeks by said teams.

I suppose there’s always next year.

Let’s now hope our local hockey team can keep its regular season disguise on through the post-season for once.

Football, football

Just when the holidays are over and the cold weather hits, just when you think there is nothing good or worth looking forward to in this world, there is football, sweet football. Yes, I realize that through the fall there are way more games on every weekend, but this is special. Four highlighted NFL match-ups this weekend followed by the CFP National Championship on Monday night? That’s the football equivalent of March Madness right there.

I’m a bit disappointed that the game I care about most (Redskins vs. Packers) I’ve got to wait around until Sunday night to see, but I think that’s going to make watching it that much sweeter, and keep me interested in all those undercard games they’ve got going on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Somebody told me there’s some kind of political thing going on in Iowa too.

Whatever.

Reason number one million that following sports is better than following politics.