No Cell Phones While Driving in North Carolina

I just heard via the radio, that drivers in North Carolina may not be able to talk on the cell phone while driving any longer. The NC house has just drafted the bill and its on its way to be passed and will go into effect in December if all goes 'well'. Having lived in North Carolina, I can't help but say that this may not be a bad thing due to the extremely fast driving I've seen there.

Then again, I don't like the over-reach on the half of the gov. Its just one of those things that will pile up over time. Can you imagine what people are going to be 'allowed' to do 20 years from now? Other than walk on a sidewalk, I don't know if anything else will be legal. On a good note though, the US House of Representatives voted against an extension of the 'Patriot Act' in a recent session. No reports yet on how that's going to hold up.

Flaming Youth

I was laughing at a pic of Phil Collins that one of my friends posted on Facebook today. The photo shows Phil here with an awesome mullet on one side and some British actor from a new movie "The King's Speech". Whatever. Don't really care about it... but the picture of Phil in the photo is one of the classic one's of him from the early 1980's - back when I'm guessing he guest starred as a drug dealer in Miami Vice.

Phil started in a band in the late 1960's called Flaming Youth... the album I came across last year in a thrift store (yeah, vinyl!) was called Ark2. Classic psych album actually... lots of great grooves, harmonizing and such. I had no idea Phil was in this band actually until I heard a song that had the classic Phil voice carrying through. I flipped the cover over and there he was!

Bellagio Bandit Bum

Bellagio Bandit Bum. Why couldn't this guy just be smart about it all... I mean, he really screwed up when walking into the casino with his helmet on then demanding chips... his first mistake was committing the robbery in the first place, the second was the $25,000 chips that he stole, the third was sending pictures of the chips with "the biker bandit" from his cell phone.

Idiot. He could have had a comfortable life soaking up his score from this mob's big business but instead he acted like a true criminal - and - acted stupid.

Dumb. Oh, and his dad is a local Las Vegas judge.

Howard Stern Crushes Leno

I've stumbled across a funny bit on the Letterman show from Howard Stern's recent appearance. Great stuff actually. Every time I hear Stern I think of the Jerky Boys for SOME reason. But in this clip, Stern is classic because he completely upstages Letterman. This is great - because personally - I don't care for Letterman.

I've seen Letterman live. Its not all that and a bag of chips. And if you've ever heard someone say "the set is a lot smaller live than what you see on tv" - they're RIGHT. Its a small stage, just filmed with huge lenses. Its filmed in a high rise after all. The ground floor or whatever, but still, its not that big of a place. And, Dave isn't that funny.

Here's a link to TMZ's link to the Stern appearance. Howard makes this clip... he is the king of all media, but only in short spurts.

SUPERBOWL!

The SuperBowl is coming... and the commercials with it. All I care about are the commercials. I don't like the game thing really. My competitive nature left me after 10 or 11 years old. Everyone comes upon these milestones in life sooner or later, fortunately for me it came before I hit the teenage years.

However, this mass mania for football - our modern day version of old Rome's gladiator events - means HUGE business. People will be parked outside the stadium this year, being charged $200 a head, just to watch the game from OUTSIDE the stadium. "Moronic", I say to myself, but that's not my reality and I shouldn't judge.

The powers at be love this predictability in human nature. They feed on it, get fat gorging on it. Now, we have rolling power blackouts in Texas of all places, just a couple days before the game. Perfect timing for conditioning people - if you want my opinion. For most though, this is simply an inconvenience and a bit of news that the average taxpayer will just shrug their shoulders to.

When there's talk of having to get our Texans power from Mexico, my ears perk up. That doesn't make sense. But then, neither does the fact that the mass rolling blackouts that have been plaguing Texas for the past couple days haven't ONCE touched the 'Colosseum' where the two teams will be meeting on Sunday. The multi-billion dollar stadium has experienced no power outages at all.

But the hospitals have.
This is where our priorities have shifted (or sunk in the mud).
This is not good.

In Come The Camels!

The time has come for the camels to show up in Egypt. I've always found camels interesting. There's so much a camel can do, but I never thought wrestling through crowds and carrying a rider through a riot was one of them. There's a lot going on in the Middle East. The people up top know what's going on... they're letting this act of the play go on as long as it takes I guess... as long as it takes to escalate things to the next level.

Prophets across time seemed to think that the final days would come to pass with trouble in the Middle East. We've always seen problems there but this is bigger than those relative skirmishes. Apparently, there are similar protests all over the Middle East now. I don't know how this will all get settled but I bet there's going to be more violence before calm comes. Its a violent, more archaic society over there, all we can do is have hope.

3 Branches of Government by Chuckie Schumer

This is great. A sitting Senator in the United States senate apparently doesn't know what the 3 branches of government are. Now one would argue that he just made a mistake, but he clarified the branches he was talking about and then continued to try to prove his point. My question is, does he really think that the House, Senate and the President are the three branches of government or is he just trying to see how far he can get with misinformation? I'm thinking he's no idiot - so I'm going with my second guess.

And... I think if the people up top think they can rewrite history, they would. That's pretty apparent. Evidence of this can already be seen in certain history books claiming that Bush the Second was a 'great' president. I don't know who's giving him props - or why - but clearly if one looks through the videos online of him tripping over his own tongue and often acting like the village idiot, they would quickly think otherwise.

Anyway, here's the video everybody's been posting recently with Schumer's ridiculous statement. Watch in amazement.