Tag Archives: opinion

Welcome to the Third Year of My Blog. I Apologize.

Hello.  My name is Tim. Welcome to the third year of my blog.  Please do not protest me.  I apologize.

If you are especially astute you are to be self-congratulated for knowing what that means and noticing that I have not posted now for these three months as I have been engaged in a brief hiatus whereon I sought to learn a good Latin word for ‘taking a break.’   Actually, the real pretend reason I have been wanting in the blog post department is because frankly, between my work, family, and golf club membership, I have been busier than a horsetail at a fly convention.  I’ve been busier than Lois Lerner’s ‘delete’ button; busier than DNC spin doctors after a few off-the-cuff-remarks by Joe Biden—busier than Charles Barkley trying to say, “Irish wristwatch”—busier than…well, you get the idea.

Anyway… After a short but mysterious disappearance I have suddenly returned, which is yet another reason people tend to confuse me with Jack Bauer.  On the down side, returning to the blogosphere means that I will once again be doing stuff and saying things.  Continue reading →

Am I Racist if My School Only Has Two Colors?

SCOTUS is at it again.  For the record, SCOTUS is not some form of severe athlete’s foot as it sounds like it should be, but rather is hipster journalist talk for Supreme Court Of The United States.

“Why does he walk so funny?”

“He has SCOTUS.”

“Oh, Bless his heart.”

Last Tuesday, in a 3-2-1-2-recuse decision, SCOTUS upheld the right of states to ban racial preferences in university admissions, which derives from the great state of Michigan where voters had the nerve to say melanin should not outweigh academic ability or commitment when determining which individuals to allow into their various taxpayer-supported schools.  And which incidentally has ruined my chances at becoming a lawyer, thankyouverymuch, as I was totally going to go to the University of Michigan Law School.  And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.  Thanks a lot, SCOTUS.

In the racially sensitive words of Ricky Ricardo, let me ‘splain: Continue reading →

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Ban ‘Em

‘Groovy.’  ‘Far out.’ ‘Totally awesome.’  There are certain words and phrases that rightfully have been relegated to the trash heap of clichés so lame their use automatically qualifies you for a handicap parking sticker.  Other expunged examples from the past include ‘excellent,’ ‘…from hell,’ ‘gnarly,’ ‘bogus,’ ‘totally bogus,’ ‘Jon-Benet,’ and ‘Starring Pauly Shore.’

Another one is ‘War on Terror.’  Say what you want about President Obama.  Then move on to the next paragraph.

One thing our current illustrious president, P.BO, has accomplished is the abolition of the phrase ‘War on Terror,’ a phrase coined by our former illustrious president, W. Bush.  ‘War on Terror’ was so overused and religiously chanted by media outlets that it became downright meaningless—as evidenced by the continuing proliferation of terror in our society today, to include zombie movies, Stephen King novels and Nancy Pelosi press conferences. Continue reading →

Of All the Words We Should Ban…Really?

So the latest word we can’t use for females is the ‘b’ word.  No, not that ‘b’ word; that one is still okay.  The other one.  ‘Bossy.’  Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (no relation to Andy Samberg) has started a campaign to ban the word ‘bossy’ from our absurdly language-dependent culture.  She claims that the adjective discourages girls from pursuing leadership rolls wherein they can actually be bossy and tell people what words they can and cannot use.

If you ask me, which nobody does for obvious reasons, this whole thing is kind of like the anti-bullying movement that is bullying us into not bullying or congresspersons staying up all night and burning the midnight oil to tell us to stop using so much energy or Al Gore flying around in his private jet to get us to reduce our carbon emissions or Al Sharpton making $5 million a year by telling us how oppressed he is or….You get the idea: we are being bossed into banning ‘bossy’.

Continue reading →

You Kraine, I Kraine, We All Kraine for Ukraine

Given that my primer on last summer’s Syria situation was one of my most popular posts and yet least liked, I thought I would seek to keep my readers misinformed as to what is going on with the whole Ukrainian geopolitical crisis that is so dominating the first five or six minutes of American newscasts these days.  (And just so you know, I will attempt to do so without any obvious lame jokes mentioning that Ukrainian pipelines supply Russian natural gas to Europe; that is, that the primary Ukrainian industry is passing gas.)

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, when I say ‘geopolitical’ I mean it in the classical sense: that is, ‘geo’ as in ‘small Chevy’ and ‘political’ as in ‘what everyone hates more than aspic.’  And when we apply this term to the Ukrainian crisis, we get more confusion than a 2000 Dade County ballot.  This is because nobody knows exactly what is going on due to a decided preference for beer.

As you can see from the map below, Continue reading →