I am not sure how many North Americans realize just how ridiculous they look to people in other countries always trying to be Politically Correct (PC). Free speech is no longer an option in the US as there is always some joker looking over your shoulder and telling you how to think, act, and what to say… or what not to say.

Like so many things in the US, PC seemed like such a good idea at the time, but then morphed into idiocy. It just got carried too far… kinda like trade unions, women’s lib and so many other truly good ideas gone bad. Good concepts… overdone.

Of all of them, one of the dumbest (in my opinion) is one of the more popular phrases spoken by young couples regarding a woman’s pregnancy. The PC thing to say is, “We are pregnant”.

Unless it is two women speaking these words, this is perhaps the most ridiculous statement one could utter. I have news for you. WE (the men) are NOT pregnant. YOU (the women) are! I have done pregnancies and it is not the man who has to pee every 11 minutes and who knows the location and condition of every bathroom within 50 miles of his home. It is not the man who cannot sleep at night because getting comfortable just ain’t a happenin’. It is not the man with sore feet, back pain and hemorrhoids. Now I suppose an argument could be made that a woman may not suffer the above issues in silence… but that is not always the case and in fact the many pregnant women I have known tended not to make their partners miserable with constant and ongoing commentary.

This is NOT the case with menopause. Menopause is interactive!

If you men really want to share an experience with your partner, I suggest menopause! I can testify to this! When that female person in your life is entering or is in menopause (which, by the way lasts years… not nine months of which only few are nasty), you may safely say to anyone “We are in menopause” and be dead on the money! You, my man, WILL be in menopause and I can assure you that any semblance between the women you married and the women living with you now and wearing your ring is purely coincidental.

I have had the pleasure of having three such women in my life, including the normally sweet and loving women to whom I am married. With the first two, I was hit, was screamed at, had one chase me in the kitchen with a knife… the list goes on.

ML is in menopause and I can assure you with no political correctness intended that WE are in menopause. It is a truly amazing experience. One moment ML is this sweet cuddly woman who then transforms, without notice, into this…. ummmm… thing. I say “thing” because all my training and education forsake me. I feel as if Rod Serling is somehow taking me in and out of my own personal Twilight Zone. I can I see my wife clearly, then she changes and sadly, I have no idea what is coming. This does not happen in the privacy of our home. Ohhh no! This happens in restaurants, grocery stores, the car and it never seems to be the same. No action is correct. If I keep still waiting for it to pass, I get the “you’re not listening” thing. If I speak, I am being rude. Nights are the best. There is no correct temperature in the house and I am informed of this between 3 and 142 times each night. Fan ON Fan OFF Blanket ON Blanket OFF Husband Sleeping Husband UP! Hold Me! Get Away! Any semblance between this and a pregnant wife is… well… there is none.

So WE change/try medicines. We try pills and dosages (Yes, I take them all as I hope one will make me sleep until she is out of menopause. In fact I wonder if the true story was that Rip Van Winkle had a menopausal wife!).

We try natural medicines that other women say will work like magic, They lie!

We are now trying this jelly stuff that she spreads on her arm! It smells exactly like that antiseptic hand gel you can buy. Supposedly, it absorbs. It does… after an hour. It also does not work. We change dosages. We increase… we decrease. She visits her doctor who commiserates, changes medicine and dosages, then checks her mutual fund to make sure she is heavily bought in to pharmaceuticals.

I think my average reader is perhaps not at the We Are Pregnant stage but maybe more in the We Are in Menopause stage… the Autumn of life.

But for you young men who truly want to “share” your wife’s experiences… just wait a while, like maybe twenty years or so, and remember my words. Only then will you truly understand the concept of sharing.

Me? I am still experimenting with her drugs. The good news is that I no longer have to shave as much. The bad news is that none of her prescriptions make me sleep. I think five years would be enough after which WE will no longer be in menopause!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just goes on and on huh? Why am I not surprised.  Sheesh!

I explained to Maria that should Shakira decide to come to Costa Rica searching desperately for a 60+, overweight Gringo with whom she could spend her declining years, I would have to consider leaving my wonderful wife… forthwith. Well I tried to say that, but I didn’t know how to say forthwith in Spanish. For those of you who know not who is shakira, read on…

Skakira is arguable THE sexiest person of the female persuasion anywhere on the face of the earth.

She is about 30, gorgeous, from Columbia, and can do things with her voice AND her body that quite frankly are not normal. It is the body stuff that sort or causes those sleepless nights.

Shakira is actually Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, born in Barranquilla, Colombia on February 2, 1977 of a Columbian mother and a Lebanese father. She is known simply as Shakira (the Arabic translation meaning “Woman of Grace”).

A quick view of the video below will prove this to be 100% accurate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The title of the song is “Hips Don’t Lie”, and I am here to tell you that HER hips will embed themselves in your mind and other locations whether you are of the male or female persuasion. Those hips are incapable of untruths!

You can have your Madonna, Brittany, whom-evers… for they are but pretenders, wannabes, and frankly… not very good ones when compared to the real thing.

Maria seems to not put much credence in my threat to leave her should Shakira come aknockin’, probably with good cause. The odds are a tad low that Shakira would ever become that desperate. That, or maybe she has some secret performer stuck in her mind.

With the enormous popularity if this video come the other pretenders like the foxy lady below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the other hand… perhaps I’ll just stick with what I have.

Yesterday morning, my wife had a meeting at the CAJA (equivalent to the US Social Security). It was a business meeting with a bunch of big shots, so she dressed to the nines, including the new earrings I gave her last month.

So she is walking about a half a block from the CAJA building with about a thousand people nearby, and this low life, piece of crap, butt fungus sneaks up behind her and rips the earrings out of her head! She is left there with her ears bleeding and of course.. in tears. She calls me crying… I can do nothing as she says she can’t miss this meeting… ARGH!!!!

Street crime is common here and I always warn people to be very cautious about this. My wife is no tourist, yet despite being aware of street crime all her life, this is the fourth time in 2 years she has been robbed… and I am really getting tired of it.

Here is the kicker! She went into her meeting and was told by everyone there that this is the same turd who prays on women in and around the CAJA building EVERY DAY, and he has been doing it for a couple of years! The police apparently do nothing.

I am at a loss of what to do. I am tempted to run an anti-Costa Rica campaign as maybe THAT will get them to clean the streets of jerks like this. Hit ‘em in the old pocketbook… I am just too angry to write more.

Sometimes, lag is not the right word. Sometimes Costa Rica simply ignores women’s fashion in the USA. Often, this is a really good thing as the ladies of North America seem to queue up like lemmings to blindly follow whoever comes out with whatever is the dumbest, most offensive, least attractive item that a woman could possible wear. Some items I am sure, were designed to simply humiliate women because there is simply no other reason for their existence.

Sadly, the absolutely fantastic ladies of this country have lost all use of their mental facilities and are now buying (and worse… wearing) those incredible and stunningly ugly pointy toed shoes. Good Lord… am I the only one who sees this?

I have been a bit remiss in blogging as I the wedding, the honeymoon, and the backlog of work have just weighed me down… but as I was over at the mall today, and I was spurred to a rant because my beautiful Ticas have taken to wearing these stupid looking pointy things.

Do women have ANY idea just how DUMB those shoes look??? Do women have ANY idea how unflattering those things are to their bodies? Do ladies realize that wearing those things with ANY other item of clothing just ruins their appearance?

I feel like that little boy in that fairy tale about the king and his new clothes.. the one where everybody said how great the king looked until some little kids blew the whistle and said out loud, “The king has no clothes!”, or something like that and everybody gasps because of course they KNOW the king is naked, but they don’t SAY it out loud.

Well ladies, I am the little kid and YOU have been taken!

Your legs look misshapen, your feet look huge! I mean ENORMOUS. You look distorted. Forget prior fashions that did the Fred Flintstone look to your tootsies… These shoes make it appear that those babies are suitable for skiing or maybe more accurately, snowboarding.

Today at the mall, I saw them worn with jeans, bell bottoms, dresses, skirts… everything. It was always the same. They look AWFUL! Now, they are being sold in the colors… no let’s call them neon colors. Gee! That’s great. Now you ladies can look dumb from a distance! I saw one hot pink pair from maybe 100 yards away… with sparklies!! The woman was wearing jeans, so the pointy part stuck about about two feet or so.

Thinking I was the only one with this opinion, I did a very scientific study by calling hundreds of men to ask their opinion on this crucial subject. OK I called 100.

The first 98 hung up, but my friends Ray and Ry agreed. Well Ray hedged and said they looked really stupid but now he is used to them so I asked where he was and he said in the kitchen with his wife who just bought pointy shoes so HIS opinion was discarded as useless as his wife would beat him like a red headed step child if he said bad things about her shoes. He is a wimp.

It is my opinion that some fashion is like some drugs. At times, you just have to say NO!

Needless to say, we breezed right through. We made it to the gate with the idea of snoozing a bit. We were toast after the wedding, the party, and a bunch of people who stayed late to watch Costa Rica kick some serious US butt 3-0 in soccer. Head to head, I’ll cheer for my Yanks, but in this case, the USA was already going to the 2006 World Cup and this was the last chance for CR to get on the list. It was a popular win.

So 6:30 came and went with no announcements about the flight. Never a good sign. The a helpful Mexicana employee told us our plane was sick and needed an emergency visit to the plane doctor, but was expected to be well again by…. WHAT???? 4 PM?? Now THIS seriously sucked. This same cheery person then told us we would all receive a $6.00 voucher for breakfast. I laughed so hard I damn near fell off the seat. For those of you not familiar with SJO, you cannot buy a small diet soda at that airport for less than $3.00. Burger Kings START at $7.00 per. Now THAT is a whopper of a price.

So we decided to go eat breakfast ($27.00 less the helpful $12.00 in vouchers) and decide if we just wanted to go back home and wait. This was really a non decision as they would not let us leave the airport. This turned out to be a good thing though as a quick call to my helpful travel agent netted the info that the plane was already back from the plane doctor and would leave forthwith. Cool!

Or not…

This is my first experience with Mexicana, so I will not roast them… yet. I have three more flights though, and I am hoping these will go better. Now those who know me might describe be as …. um…. huge. I can easily block out the sun for small towns and villages. In fact, my ex wife once told me that one of my best features was the ability to provide warmth in the winter and shade in the summer…. but I digress.

The plane was like a meat locker. Large people normally LIKE meat lockers. This plane however, was just silly. You could see your breath! I asked the cheerful flight attendant (HAHAAHAAHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) if I might have a blanket. I might as well have told her that I was visiting from Zebulon. Away she went with that cheery “blow it out your butt” attitude normally found only on US Airlines before the budget airlines taught us that air travel can be fun and flight attendants do not have to be rude bitches.

Needless to say, she disappeared. Flight Attendant TWO (hereafter FA2) stopped by. I again asked for a blanket as now did 4-5 others. She just gave the ol’ nurse Rachett (sp?) smile and left. FA3 and FA4 did likewise. Then comes along control lady from the service desk. I ask her if there are blankets on board. Now SHE is nice, and gives me a cheerful “SURE”, then leaves the plane forever. FA1 returns and completely ignores me. FA3 returns and ignores me AND the other 5 or so people who wanted blankets. We take off.

Now if it was cold on the ground… at 30,000 feet, it could easily have snowed over our seats.

People were getting testy as people DO when being ignored. Finally enters FA4… or maybe it was FA1… not sure as my eyeballs now have a layer of frost which impairs my vision. I again ask her for a blanket. She gives me the “eye roll” thing which I think all teenage girls learn early in life (mine did) and is the major cause of parents murdering teeneage girls everywhere on earth… but I get my blanky!!!

Now this would SEEM to make everyone happy… except now, the pilot has been notified of weather conditions aft (like it’s freakin frezzin!) and happily turns on the HEAT. The woman across the aisle is in heaven. She is a size ZERO with NO body fat and it is likely she has never experienced perspiration in her young life. ML and all the women on board hate her.

The blanket is now extraneous. I am thinking may be FAs 1-4 will now be more cheery. Wrong. The only people they are polite with are the other attendants.

We land in DF about 4 PM. My helpful travel agent has told us to look for the (free) ground transportation to the Nicco. Two problems: First, there is no ground transportaiton anywhere and TWO, free ground transport is not included anyway. “It is!” sez I, showing the people at the information desk the confirmation from my helpful travel agent. They just laugh and laugh and we pay $25 for a cab ride just to get to our hotel. Once here, the hotel people also laugh a bit, (though MUCH nicer laughing) and explain that all travel agents put that crap in the itinerary, but it is just horsepucky and we should ask for the refund when we return. I laugh now.

Now the Nicco is a most excellent hotel and I am thinking that the honeymoon is now in gear. Nice hotel, nice front desk lady who understands my Spanish and would bring me a blanket for SURE if I asked. She could NEVER work for Mexicana! Only complaint is that they charge $16.00 per 24 hour period for the Internet in-room. Should be free at $400 A NIGHT… but I’ll live.

The room is big with a spectacular view! I’ll take some pix to post here.

Maria and I are like veggies… so tired… we showered skipped dinner and hit the sack at 7:30 PM. It is 3 AM as I write this. Later, we are going to hire a driver and tour Mexico City. I am going back to bed. IT’S MY HONEYMOON.

First was the size thing. Costa Ricans are a smaller people. Ticos over 5 feet 10 inches are not common. Large body parts are apparently not either. (Naw… don’t go there. I have no knowledge in that area).

I have large hands. I wear a size 16 ring. This is definitely outside the “in stock” range of most Costa Rican jewelers. I know this as I had to visit personally most Costa Rican jewelers. ML’s hands fall nicely within the norm, so I was, as usual, the problem.

After some days of searching, I found a jeweler who had the style I was looking for and would custom make the rings… OK my ring… by hand. They were to be engraved with our names and the wedding date. I paid a deposit and was on my way.

Simple huh? Ummm. Not.

I went to pick up the rings. They were perfect. OK… EXCEPT for the engraving. I had apparently located the only jeweler in Latin America who was unable to spell the name “Maria”. Go figure. Maria is certainly the Most Common Latin Name winner, hands down. There is about a 96% chance the jeweler’s Mom, sister, wife, and grammy are ALL named Maria something (or something Maria). The Virgin gets a LOT of press in Latin America.

So I was holding a ring engraved: “Mari A Luisa”. Incredible.

A couple of returns trips, and I now have the rings.

Now another crisis…. We are heading to Mexico for the honeymoon, also currently known as “The land of hurricanes just sitting there waiting for ML and Tim”. Sheesh… What next?

“Google has blackballed online technology news service Cnet News.com for googling Eric Schmidt, CEO of the Mountain View company, and including some personal information about him in a story last month. Google told a Cnet editor that it will not speak with Cnet reporters until August 2006…”. I now expect that bloggers and others all over the world are gonna roast Google’s Corporate nuts for this… I know I am.

The odd thing is that none of the information was really damaging… well maybe except for the part about how he hosted a $10,000.00 per plate fund raising dinner for Al Gore. That sorta tells you something about his politics, and more important, his IQ. So much for Princeton grads. On the other hand, he also contributed a chunk to the Bush fund. Hedging your bets old son? On the third hand, maybe $10,000 per plate to honor the inventor of the Internet isn’t so bad, right?

I guess I should say that I am not a fan of Google. I used to be… back when the search engine could actually be used to find something. Now, the never ending quest for profit has turned it into a pretty valueless product (though it is clear Wall Street does not agree). Searches now fail to provide relevant results and their Pay Per Click (PPC) sponsored listings just make the results more confusing. Click fraud is out of control as well. I stopped using Google over a year ago except for occasional image searches which they have thankfully not screwed up…. yet. I prefer the little known Vivisimo aka Clusty. The best SE I have found so far.

Corporate hypocrisy is not new to anyone, but this flagrant piece of ass-holiness from Google just about has to win some kind of award. It is probably the second worst example of hypocrisy (that I know of) in Internet history. The first, of course, was AOL complaining about SPAMers.

Google’s total lack of regard pertaining to privacy is well documented… and now we have them taking this holier-than-thou approach to invasion of privacy. If I were still using Google, I’d threaten to switch… but as that is now sort an empty threat… I guess I’ll just say Google Sucks.

After due thought, I am getting really tired of the position taken by some of the far-left thinking Democrats and most especially, their ringleader Teddy (big boozer) Kennedy. The press seems so astonishingly biased and apparently has become the handmaiden to Teddy . His 15 minutes a fame should have ended years ago while still at Hawvawd and was caught cheating. Sadly, it didn’t.

I am neither a card carrying Republican nor a Democrat. Maybe I’ll describe myself like as a left thinking Republican, but I feel I am pretty open to all positions so long as they agree with mine.

I was in business all my life in the USA. One thing I learned was to judge performance. It is part of our culture to judge performance, and I think that is a major contributing factor to the enormous progress of the country.

I look at the USA since 9-11. I look at the changes that have taken place. Perhaps more importantly, I look at what has not taken place. There have been no further terrorist bombings or other incidents in the US. I do not have a count of all the terrorist incidents elsewhere in the world, but there have been scores I am sure.

But in the US? In almost four years? Nothing! The evaluation here seems pretty simple. Someone is doing their job and doing it pretty well! To me, it is also odd that nobody ever just says that out loud, especially the press. Isn’t it their job to say when someone is DOING their job and not focus only on the negative?

So who gets the credit? Bush (Heaven forbid!)? The Department of Homeland Security? The FBI? Hell, I don’t know, Probably all. But regardless of who gets the credit, regardless of all this silly political carp, someone has been doing their job, and with my children and grandchildren in the US, I am delighted.

Clearly these successes have a direct tie to some of the loss of our ‘rights’. We have lost some. I DON’T CARE.

I do not think the formers of the Constitution or Bill or Rights ever envisioned for a moment that a group like Al Queda would ever exist. Their idea of gun control was to have one to protect home and provide food. It was NOT to mow down children in schools or use your AK47 for target practice at a restaurant. I do absolutely believe we are at war with an organization who wants to eliminate our way of life and enforce their belief system on the USA and the world. Last week, it was London. This week, London again and Egypt.

I read blogs and news articles about the potential loss of rights. People are upset about the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. They feel their personal liberty is being attacked. Yeah… so what! This ain’t Kansas Dorothy and if you have nothing to hide, about the worst that can happen is that you’ll be inconvenienced. Me? I WANT the FBI or some other group to know who is checking out those bomb building books from their local library. I want them to see who is peeking at architectural plans for public works (like water supplies). Once they know who is doing this… I WANT them to stop by for a visit and ask “Why?”.

Last time I flew through the USA, I had a “sneaker check”. I was late, and I wasn’t particularly happy at the delay, but I made do… tried to crack wise to the sneaker check lady that she must be new on the job to win this particularly nasty chore. I thought my comment was at least marginally humorous… she never cracked a smile, though I guess after several hours of sweaty feet, maybe I wouldn’t be in the best of humour either.

I have taken the unpopular position that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with racial profiling. I can say this safely in my blog as nobody reads it anyway… but I just do not get it when someone says it is wrong. I think it is wrong only if it is intended to harass for the sake of harming or picking on people. I also think racial profiling should just be called ‘profiling’… i.e. looking for people or anything that is just not where they/it are supposed to be.

Before I left Chicago, there was a big uproar because some policemen stopped a trash car filled with Black teenagers as it was cruising the streets of a one of the rich and predominantly white suburbs. Suits were filed. Everyone was righteously indignant! Why? Why was it wrong for these cops to wonder what four Black kids were doing in that neighborhood at 2 AM? If I lived there, I would WANT my police department to do exactly that.

I also think that a car full of WHITE kids should be stopped in a predominantly Black neighborhood at 2 AM. Why are they there? Likely, it is not because they are returning from a midnight mass. To me there is just nothing wrong with investigating. I truly believe that while there are some real racist pigs on some police departments, that most of these people are just doing a nasty and relatively thankless job.

To be fair, that same police department also had stopped other minorities during the daylight hours and in circumstances that appeared to be far more racially motivated. THAT I am firmly against.

Now, the New York cops are searching bags on the subways. Whatta violation of civil liberties! Bullshit.

Of course they are under enormous pressure to not appear to racially profile anyone. Why?

Yeah, it IS possible a bomber might be some suburban white bread disenfranchised teeny bopper from Iowa… but come on! It is far more likely that this potential miscreant is from some Middle East nation with a hardon for Americans. If I am a subway rider in New York or anywhere, my advice to the police would be to check out who looks suspicious in general and if they happen to appear to be Middle Eastern… go for it and screw this PC thing. As for the millions of peace loving, law abiding Middle Easterners, I apologize in advance, but sorrry… that is the price that must be paid as it is THAT group that has declared this war. I see no way that those who appear to be Middle Eastern canot be affected. I am also willing to bet that many who ride the subways in London are now perhaps watching a lot more carefully those of darker complexion.

While I am certainly not thrilled with all the decisions made by the current administration (Iraq, etc…), overall, they have managed to keep my country safe from harm. Someone is doing their job… and from me, whoever you are Federal, State or Local… Nice Job! Thanks for keeping my family safe.

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Patriot Act
Racial Profiling
Homeland Security
London

This is not surprising to me.

Last week, some pundit on cable announced (with the arrogance and confidence of all pundits) how the British would just fold their tents and cave in to the terrorist threat exactly as Spain did over a year ago. I just laughed at this ignoramus.

My immediate response was “horseshit!”.

If ever there were a people on the face of the earth who who never cave into anything anywhere at any time, it is most assuredly the British.

These are the people who weathered incredible hardship in World War 2. The bombings, the deprivation… incredible people… incredibly tough people. They dealt with the IRA. They already know terror, and they will face this challenge as they always have.

In fact, of all the countries in the world, about the only two I am pretty sure will never cave in to the terrorists are the United Kingdom (specifically Great Britain) and the USA. Once again, the terrorist picked the wrong target.

To you Londoners, I am so very sorry for your tragic loss, and I wish you strength and courage as again you are faced with an enemy totally devoid of honor.

Also interviewed this AM was Gerald Posner (crummy website alert) who was making comments that Londoners should have had ample warning of these attacks as they have allowed to flourish a relatively large population of Islamic mosques advocating terrorism, and more specifically, terror attacks against Great Britain. I have no idea if this is true. My position on the pundits should be clear. In any case, if it is true, that was and is a great mistake. I find it personally sad that in these days, normal peace loving and abiding people may have to sacrifice some of their rights… but I am more than willing to sacrfice some of mine if it means greater security for the whole. The world has changed and we are most assuredly at war.

Technorati tag: London