Blogging by Numbers Time!!!

It's that time again - That special time when the alpha and the omega merge; When kittens and dogs march in unison and helium balloons gently lift giggling children up in the air; That special time when it rains gumdrops and gummy bears and you don't have to wait until December to watch season 5 of Lost on DVD; It's blogging by numbers time!!

1 - How are you liking your "Hope and Change"? The President and part time saint, Barack Obama, who one month ago was proselytizing about how we have to stop living in a climate of "fear" and start living in a climate of "hope" and bi-partisanship, spent the last two weeks telling the world that unless his stimulus bill is passed - RIGHT NOW - horrible things are going to happen, and everyone better stop disagreeing with him if they want to get anything accomplished. Well, he got something accomplished, all right - A monstrous $800 billion spending bill that has little stimulus and a lot of pork barrel spending and broken promises. Over $500 billion of the stimulus package contains nothing in the way of job creation, and the rest of the money is to be carelessly thrown at a hodge-podge of baffling projects that the President admitted "may" create "some jobs" 2 years from now. If it's going to take 2 years, what's the rush? What about the President's often heard campaign promise that he would show where every single dollar he spent was coming from? That's going to be one hell of a long press conference. The great "unifier" has Canada and the EU in a panic over his broken promises on free trade, and global markets are in a frenzied free-fall as the details of this awful package are coming to light. At least Russia and Iran still trust you, Mr. President.

2 - Memo to Arlen Spector: You are off my "jellies of the month" Christmas gift list, you treacherous little crap-weasel. May you be run out of office to retire in shame - slime bag.

3 - Imagine you're a Hollywood hot-shot executive who just put down F. Scott Fitzgerald's whimsical short story based on the humorous observation by Mark Twain that youth is wasted on the young. Now suppose, instead of handing this kind of light-hearted and fanciful subject matter to someone like, say, Tim Burton (Big Fish, Edward Scissorhands) or Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition), you hand it over to guys like David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club) and Eric Roth (Munich, and The Postman). What do you get? You get a really long, boring movie written and directed by two guys who are incapable of understanding the essence of the subject matter. The tragedy of Benjamin Button is that it could have been a magnificent gem, had it been given to the proper people. Instead, we get a mildly retarded Brad Pitt narrating his simplistic "Gump-isms" in a film weighed down with stilted acting, drab cinematography, and an uninspiring score. You know a supposedly light-hearted movie released on Christmas day is in trouble when it starts off with a scene of a barely coherent lady dying in a New Orleans hospital bed as hurricane Katrina begins to roll into town. Barrels of laughs, I tells ya! It was kind of like watching a two and a half hour version of Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", narrated by a young Gomer Pyle.

4 - I think Nancy Pelosi keeps aging at bay by drinking the blood of puppies.

5 - National Review just released it's list of the top 25 conservative movies of the last quarter century. Somewhere in a padded cell, James Bowman is screaming "THEY'VE ALL GONE MAD WITH POST MODERNIST VIRULENCE!!"

6 - Gourmets say that really good bread doesn't need butter. I do not prescribe to that ludicrous notion.

7 - I can't have butter anyway because I've already lost 16 pounds on Simply For Life and I don't want to find them.

8 - I'm going to be 36 on Sunday.

9 - You guys go ahead and eat your stupid butter-laden toast. I don't want any....actually, I really do.

10 - Valentines day is coming up and I just wanted to tell my fiancée and associate editor, the lovely Miss Claire, that I love her - and I don't tend to love editors, as a rule.

Have a great weekend and check out a great band that my good buddy Ace recommended. Also take a minute to read his indispensable blog.

Cordially

Joe