FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

With Liberty & Justice For All and Other Myths

2011-03-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

If television and the Internet did away with normal programming and were limited to giving us only commercials to view, this country would seem Utopian. Commercials bombard and mesmerize us hourly with 30 second upbeat, choreographed and dazzling presentations featuring must-have cell phones, automobiles, prescription drugs, products which make the vagina smell better, creams that heighten sexual gratification, miscellaneous gadgetry, and companies that promise us that, with their sage advice, we will spend our golden years with financial freedom. Unfortunately, that is not the case for these commercials are rudely interrupted each hour with 44 minutes of annoying programs, many of which erode the escapist fantasy the commercials project and reveal to us the reality in which we currently exist…an existence that is in a downward spiral and totally out of control.

Most, if not all of us, know why this reality exists but few have articulated it better than Donald Trump in a recent televised interview on CNN:
http://www.money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/03/21/n_trump_president_smart.cnnmoney/?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin

Please take the time to seek out the link above because, despite of what you might think of Mr. Trump, this interview is scathingly honest and leaves little doubt that we are continually being led and manipulated by ignorant, arrogant and greedy politicians, lobbyists and corporations who have utilized their personal agendas to rip the fabric of our America to shreds and now find that the country is so littered with the years of the subsequent debris that the road leading us back home is too obscure to locate.

My granddaughter recently posted a quote on her Facebook page:

Fairy tales don't tell children that dragons exist, children already know they exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.

Sadly enough for all of us, there are now too many dragons and too few dragon-slayers. As a result, any viable solution will come too late for me but it may not be too late for my granddaughters and others of their age. Perhaps Mr. Trump can find a way to mobilize enough dragon slayers to collectively dig the country out of this quagmire of despair, finally dispense with the dragons and ultimately lead America back home.

-CERASOLI:

2010-03-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

AN UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Everything else is just a footnote. -Yevgeny Yevtushenko

                             PROLOGUE:

That I will not be the first human being to achieve immortality doesn’t faze me. Upon my death I will be greeted either by an ongoing existence or by a dreamless, thoughtless eternal sleep and I find that I’m comfortable with either outcome. Having said that, however, while I do not fear death, I absolutely loathe the process of dying. The process begins at different times for different people, I suppose. For those in underdeveloped countries where medical facilities and health care are scarce; where food and drinkable water are in short supply, the argument could be made that it begins the day they are born.

For me, the process slowly began when I turned fifty and found I could no longer attack the racquetball with savage intensity, could no longer race from center field into left center and make the diving catch that robbed the batter of a triple, could no longer dribble the basketball at full speed, stop at the top of the key and drain a 20’ jump shot. I could still compete but the younger generation would, with rare exception, run rings around me. So it was, then, that I gave up the heavy duty sports and settled for an occasional round of poorly played golf or a half-assed attempt at tennis with people in my own age group, rationalizing the downgrade with the thought that at least I hadn’t sunk to the level of lawn croquet or bocce ball.

Around sixty, the physical changes in me were more than a little disconcerting and the face that stared back at me from the mirror was getting less and less recognizable - totally distorted and irreconcilable with the youthful image of myself that still existed in my mind‘s eye. Still, my health was good, my mental acumen was still at its peak, and although my mind was still rampant with distant memories and haunting echoes of competitive, romantic, and sexual conquests, life still held the promise of additional adventures waiting for my participation.

Now, at seventy-five, feeling the life force slipping away a little more each day; feeling my mind growing brain-weary from the tedious and mundane rituals of daily life, I tend to curse not the impending end but the ridiculous process that’s carrying me there. What in the hell was God thinking? He could have just as easily stopped the aging process at, say, thirty-five, limited us to, oh, a seventy year life span and let us maintain the body and spirit of thirty-five while we lived out the balance of that seventy years with zest and elan.

                      CHAPTER 1 - MY LIFE

I was born, I wrote a few poems, I did lots of neat stuff, I helped a few people along the way, was paired with an incredible brother, blessed with a wife, daughter and two granddaughters, made some remarkable friends and will leave this world in pretty much the same shape as it was when I was thrust from my mother’s womb. Did I make any difference at all? That's like asking how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin? Who knows? Maybe God. Maybe not.

-SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TOO FAST...

2010-02-19T04:57:00.000-08:00

Standing at the crossroad with no desire to run.

There's no hurry anymore

When all is said and done - ABBA

This is starting out to be the worst century of my life. Now, last century, that was a great one! This one, forget about it.

So many things confuse me now. It’s like there’s an entirely new world out there with which I’ve completely lost touch. For instance, there’s this TV reality show called ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians‘. Who in the hell are the Kardashians and why in the world would I want to keep up with them?

Back in the good old twentieth century, your brain had time to digest events before it was confronted with the next one to process. In this century, things are happening too fast for my mind to envelop. I blame a lot of this on YouTube. A middle-aged spinster sings a song in front of three judges in England and four minutes later, the video of Susan Boyle singing “I Had A Dream” has gone viral and has millions upon millions of views (Now over one hundred million). My oldest granddaughter and two of her friends shoot an amateurish video in the back country of San Diego, give it the cumbersome title of ‘Sweet Lullaby by Deep Forest From Pure Moods’ and it gets over 71,000 views. Are you kidding? How would 71,000 people even find it? How many people would click on YouTube, access the Search box, and think, ‘Hmm, today I think I’ll run a search to see if there’s a video called ‘Sweet Lullaby by Deep Forest from Pure Moods?’ How can that even be? Even my youngest granddaughter is getting in on the act. She recently edited some Disney clips, added a Beatles background song and already has close to 8,000 views!

Don't even get me started on cell phones! They now do everything except babysit the kids. Back in the twentieth century, it would have taken a rocket scientist to figure out how to work his way through the intricate maze of the phone's menu just to call someone. Now, teenagers glide through the process as easily as turning on a light switch.

Slow down, world! What in the hell is the hurry? Give an old guy a break!

I'm not a big fan of this century. Hopefully, the next one will treat me a little better.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-GLIMPSES OF CAMELOT

2010-02-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

                   “Don’t let it be forgot,
                    That once there was a spot,
                    For one brief shining moment
                    That was known as Camelot.”
                                                  -Learner and Loewe

Every few years, the world gets it right.

Every few years, athletes from around the world convene, tell the politicians to stick it where the sun don’t shine, and compete in either the summer or winter Olympics.

This winter’s games, hosted by the Canadian gem that is British Columbia, apparently hasn’t garnered too much attention as a CNN poll reveals that only about 15% of us will closely follow the events. I suppose that’s understandable given the pathetic shape of our economy that has diverted our focus and has so many of us struggling to get by from week to week. Still, I envy the athletes who experience the camaraderie born from head-to-head competition and, for one brief shining moment, show the entire world that Camelot can exist, should exist, but, for totally asinine reasons, will never exist except in Olympic venues.

I’ve lived a long time and, by now you would think I‘d have figured out how, as a global village, we can turn off international harmony as casually as turning off a lamp - that once the closing ceremonies of the Olympics have concluded and darkness has enveloped the stadium, all of the exhilarating moments of the previous weeks are erased from our memory banks and it’s back to business as usual. Back to the chaos and madness we’ll have to endure until the next Olympics comes along to again remind us of the Camelot we desperately want; desperately need, but apparently will never attain.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-THE SONS OF THE PROPHET

2010-02-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

The sons of the Prophet are valiant and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear.*
And the man most admired for his warrior’s ways
Was a man called Abdulla Abmeer.

A fighter by trade, a man quite adept
With bayonet, rifle, or spear.
The Arabian winds spread the fame of the name
Of the man named Abdulla Abmeer.

Now America’s sons are also quite brave
Who also don’t cave in to fear.
And the bravest of all, at America’s call
Was a soldier named Jonathan Gere.

Loved family and home, but when bugle was blown
Requesting the troops to appear.
At the head of the line was the tanned, chiseled form
Of Staff Sergeant Jonathan Gere.

These two met one night in the midst of a fight
On the hot desert sand of Iraq.
Abmeer, with a sneer, turned his gun on John Gere
Saying, “Tonight you are not going back.”

In response Sergeant Gere calmly readied his gun
And spoke to Abdull Abmeer:
“I’ve heard of your name; of your warrior’s fame
But tonight your legend dies here.”

The two shot as one; they both slumped to the ground
As their life force drained onto the sand.
Then the battle moved on, leaving both men alone
And Gere reached for Abdulla’s limp hand.

Dying, he asked, “What thing have we done
At the whim of those thinking this just?”
Abmeer nodded and sighed; then quietly died
On top of the desert’s brown dust.

Now there’s a small house in war-torn Iraq
Where a family still mourns for their son.
And back in the States a wife and her child
Weep for the husband who’s gone.

So what have we learned from all of these wars:
Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq?
We’ve learned that both sides send their youth to the fray
And only the lucky come back.

But even the “lucky” still carry the scars
Of the civilians who got in the way.
The millions who cried, were wounded or died
For a government's “Cause-Of-The-Day”

For there’s always a cause or a reason to kill
Or so the world’s leaders all say.
So the warriors stand ready to prove their side right
While the rest of us get in the way.

*with thanks to Percy French (1854-1920)

Copyright 2008 - Phil Cerasoli

-WHY DID A TRILLION CHICKENS CROSS THE ROAD?

2010-02-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, an aggregate of 159,000,000 cattle, calves, hogs, sheep, lambs and turkeys were slaughtered in 2008 for human and pet consumption. (yawn) So? A person has to eat.

Now chickens are another matter altogether. Since the very first man decided it would be a good idea to chase one down, club it to death and eat it, probably raw and with feathers intact, we’ve ramped up the process a bit to the point where, in 2008, we slaughtered an average of 25 million of them a day…or over nine trillion a year. Trillion! There’s a trillion seconds in 32 years - nine trillion seconds equates to 288 years.

As you play the numbers game, an irrefutable scientific fact slowly begins to emerge, that being: THAT’S ONE HELLUVA LOT OF CHICKENS!

With all due respect to all of the animal rights groups, can you imagine what life would be like if we didn’t eat chicken? With the average life span of an unslaughtered chicken being 10-12 years, that means we’d have over one hundred trillion chickens at any point in time roaming the countryside. You think rush hour traffic is bad now?

Just for the sake of argument, assume that the three billion Americans are housed in a billion dwellings and to maintain some kind of animal control - to keep the poultry off the streets - the government dictated that each household had to keep 100 of these in their homes. WHAT? I don’t have that kind of room!

Next Thanksgiving, I think we’ll have chicken instead of turkey and, before we begin the meal, I’ll say grace: Thank You, God, for having the wisdom to grant us Colonel Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-WALLS

2010-02-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes you put up walls not to keep people out but to see who cares enough to break them down" - Unknown

I’ve recently started corresponding via email with a Chinese man named Genrong from Shanghai. He’s a retired teacher of English and is offering me insights into the Chinese culture. Of course, China’s a bit pissed at us at the moment over this whole Taiwan thing. I’m not sure what my pen pal thinks about this issue. Being as he’s Chinese, I would think his opinion would be subjective. I, on the other hand, being objective, can fully understand each country’s point of view: Taiwan wants its independence; China doesn’t want to give it to them, and the United States is trying to ease tension in the region by selling over six billion dollars worth of weapons to Taiwan. What’s not to understand?

At any rate, because of this arms deal, China is imposing harsh economic sanctions against us and I think that’s only fair. It’s the same method America, as well as the U.N., utilizes to slap other countries on the wrist for violating self-imposed rules of global conduct.

At least China has the sense to approach the problem from an economic point of view as opposed to G.W. Bush’s two-phase approach to the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ myth. Plan A: We’re going to send our troops to kill Iraqis, and Plan B: If Plan A fails, we’re going to send even more troops to kill even more Iraqis. I’m afraid to think of what Plan C might have entailed.

Do any of you remember Richard Nixon’s Plan C for Vietnam? The guy was actually considering using nuclear weapons. Thank God, someone with an IQ higher than a door knob intervened. (Maybe Jay Leno was right when he quipped, “If God wanted us to vote, He’d have given us candidates.”)

I’ve always been ignorant regarding the esoteric world of global politics. People have often told me that. Told me that I just don’t understand. Told me that it’s a very complicated matrix comprised of too many considerations, ramifications and repercussions for my brain to grasp. Well, yeah. That’s exactly my point! It’s very, very, very complicated. And, in my ignorance, I’ve never understood why it had to be.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-WHILE HORSE AND HERO FELL...

2010-02-08T21:26:00.000-08:00

“Cannon to the right of them; cannon to the left of them; Into the jaws of Death… rode the six hundred.”
-The Charge of the Light Brigade - Tennyson

So what now, Voyager?

Well, with cannon on both my flanks; with the enemy commander on the hill raising his saber as a precursor to the pending bombardment; with the irreversible treadmill of Life pushing me slowly towards the valley of Death, I’d say the options are a bit limited: Either continue at my current pace and be blown to smithereens or reach over and switch the speed setting on Life’s treadmill from ‘Normal’ to ‘Turbo’ and be violently jettisoned into Death‘s waiting jaws. At this precise and dreary moment; at this nadir of my life, and taking into consideration the fact that I feel that I’ve accomplished about everything I had set out to do, the latter has a certain appeal. But it’s the option I simply cannot choose due to the crushing impact it would have on those who, for some odd reason, still choose to regard me with love, honor and respect.

Damn it! The dictionary declares that ‘death’ is a noun - a person, place, or thing. That being the case, it should have form or substance instead of being an invisible ninja. If it had form, I would choose to go out with a lot of defiance and a little glory - shake the dust off of my horseback riding skills, mount my steed and, with sword in hand and an aging warrior’s shout, charge and perhaps impale the Beast once or twice before the battle reached its inevitable climax. Now that would be a nice way to go! However, back to the stark reality of Life having me in the cross-hairs of its cannons, ready to commence lobbing cannonballs at me from all sides.

So what now? Screw it! Let’s see how well I can still play Dodge Ball.

“Hey, you! Up on the hill! Yeah, you with your fat ass on the horse with your saber in the air! I’m ready when you are!”

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-CURIOUS VOICES OF LESSER GODS

2010-02-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy - Shakespeare

-Even with my bedroom window opened, the summer night was uncommonly silent. Mother Nature must have demanded silence as she planned her next day’s agenda for all of her creatures remained mute with even the crickets foregoing their usual late night communications. Unable to sleep, I was sitting alone at the computer desk in my bedroom, casually surfing the Web when the silence was broken. My guitar, which was propped up against the wall some twelve-fifteen feet away from me, gently emitted the pure sound of each string being played in evenly spaced sequence: E A D G B E. Each note, free from the slight reverberation that is the result of fingers or a pick hitting the metal strings, was as pure as an angel’s kiss. The unexpected sequence of chaste sounds, lasting no more than a few seconds, left me stunned and the event was so far out of my comfort zone, my mind apparently decided it was best not to seek a rational answer to an irrational event.

-My late wife was driving alone one night when she noticed that a car had accidentally driven down a steep ravine - that at the top of the hill were ambulances, police cars, a tow truck and a small group of curious onlookers. My wife began to drive away from the scene when a deep bass voice from the empty back seat of her car boomed out, “You know her!” For whatever reason, although startled, she chose to ignore the voice until it rang out a second time, “You know her!”. Now filled with curiosity, she found a parking spot, walked to the scene of the accident and found out that the injured party was that of our daughter’s best friend. She later related the story to me; then chose to forget the incident, treating it as just a minor speed bump on the highway of her life.

Events such as the ones related in the previous two examples are not that rare. My memory bank has stored a number of these irrational and unexplainable occurrences and I believe if you examined your life, you would remember similar situations that befell you. On a more epic scale, life is full of these annoying speed bumps: crop circles, UFO sightings, things that go bump in the night. All capture our imagination for a moment, then are lost in the day-to-day rush hour traffic of our daily lives.

Who can define with certainty the origin of these mysteries? Certainly not I. Are they messages from spirit guides, earthbound spirits, visitors from other galaxies or simply self-inflicted messages born from the 80% of our brains that we have not yet learned how to fully utilize or understand? I’ll know the answer soon enough, I suppose. When I do, I’ll get back to you. When you hear me, I hope you'll take the time to listen. I don't want to be remembered as just another speed bump.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-SOME ARE STRONG AT BROKEN PLACES

2010-02-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places - Ernest Hemingway

Life and time, one in the same, are inexorable and cannot be stopped. Even for the tragedy of Haiti. As the unfathomable death toll of 150,000 climbs even higher, as the number of homeless on that devastated island surpasses a million; and as the world responds with gracious outpourings of humanitarian aid to the distraught and impoverished survivors, life creeps on. There is a Super Bowl to be played; Oscars to be awarded; a new American Idol to be crowned and how could life ensue in any other fashion? The world does not and cannot stop its daily functioning of both meaningful and trivial pursuits just because Nature has once again decided to show us who’s higher up on the cosmic organization chart.

Even so, having been spared the personal nightmare of having to deal with the after-effects of an earthquake, tsunami, tornado, wildfire or any of the other disasters that regularly assail our planet, I am constantly amazed at the attitude of those who survive and spit in the eye of Mother Nature, defiantly stating that, while they have been badly bent, they have not been broken; that while they have been stripped of all other possessions, they still retain the most important one of all: human resiliency. Although it was a disaster not created by Nature’s whim, it was this intangible attribute that allowed the Japanese to rise from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and rebuild their nation.

The survivors of the Haitian quake will carry their grief for the rest of their lives but they will rebound, rebuild and move on. It can be no other way. Life and time, one in the same, are inexorable and cannot be stopped.

copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-WHAT COST PARADISE?

2010-02-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

Sir Richard Branson is one of the most, if not the most, successful venture capitalists in the world. His London-based London Virgin Group LTD has holdings in about 400 companies involved in airlines, radio stations, publishing, bridal wear, vodka, soft drinks, comic books and too many more to mention. In total, the holdings bring in about $17,000,000,000/year, putting Branson’s name on the list of the world’s billionaires.

Pictures I’ve seen of the iconic Branson reveal that he is a youngish-looking, going-on-60 man with an aura that indicates a high degree of panache and I, for one, am greatly impressed with his attitude on life and his flair for adventure. It’s people like Branson who deserve to reap the benefits of their visions.

In 1978, Sir Branson purchased Necker Island, a small uninhabited jewel resting in the turquoise Caribbean waters and transformed the 74 acre island into an exclusive resort with a guest capacity of less than thirty people. If you want to spend an idyllic week on the island, all it will cost you is $300,000. Of course, if you want to rent the sleek submarine that will allow you to view sea life at depths up to 100 feet, it’ll cost you an additional $25,000.

Necker Island sees a lot of famous people - from royalty to politicians to international celebrities and I have to ask myself, “Why?” For only a fraction of that 300K, they could find any number of Caribbean resorts featuring the same pristine beaches, the same lush foliage, the same fine dining and top-level service. The number one answer, of course, has to be ‘privacy’ and I understand that. (God knows, I wish I could get away from the hordes of paparazzi and autograph seekers that continually camp outside my apartment door). But I wonder how much the ‘Snob Factor’ enters into the equation; the “I’m-here-because-I-can-afford-it-and-you-can’t!”

I’m sure I’m being unfair. I’m aware that a lot of the island’s guests have significantly contributed to charity and/or have given back to society in varying degrees. It’s just that $300K/week is such an obscene figure. The majority of people in the world probably won't earn that in a lifetime. It evokes thoughts of Marie Antoinette’s reply back in the 1700’s when she was told that the peasants could no longer afford to buy bread and she reportedly sniffed, “Then let them eat cake.”

Look, even given the fact that you’ve probably already given a huge chunk of cash to various foundations and charities, why are you laying out $300,000 for a quiet week in the sun? If you consider $300K pocket change, why not seek out a really cheap resort…say, one that only costs $100,000/week and use the other $200,000 to make your community, your country, your planet a better place?

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-10 AFTERNOON QUICKIES

2010-02-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

Here are ten quickies I found on the Internet. If that’s a copyright violation, sue me:

-It’s 98% of the lawyers that give the rest of them a bad name.

-On my last birthday, there were so many candles on the cake that a group of campers showed up, sat around them and began singing “Kumbaya”.

-What year did Jesus think it was?

-When I was a kid, I prayed for a bicycle. But then I realized God doesn’t work that way. So I stole one and asked Him for forgiveness.

-One snowman says to the other snowman, “That’s funny. I smell carrots, too.”

-I finally…! Figured out..! How! ..To punctuate! ..Captain Kirk’s!. ..Sentences!

-I always wanted to be a somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific.

-The trouble with the rat race, even if you win, you’re still a rat.

-Why don’t psychics ever win the lottery?

-What was the greatest thing before sliced bread?

-THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

2010-02-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, one of the younger generations will ask me what life was like in the Sixties. And I tell them that, although the exact date is unclear, it was very early in that decade where the lunatics were given the keys and allowed to run the asylum. It was a massive jailbreak from the straight-laced Fifties - a colossal exodus from naiveté that began with the slaying of a president and ended with 400,000 rain-soaked hippie lemmings throwing themselves into Yasgur's pond at Woodstock in defiant homage to the only thing left they felt they could believe in: love, drugs and Rock & Roll. Sandwiched somewhere in between, hidden among the wars and the race riots and the assassinations and the Beatles and the LSD and the pushers and the addicts and the street violence and the KKK and Charles Manson, was the soul of America. But no-one, if they were even looking, could find it.

The average annual salary was $4743 and the minimum wage was $1.00/hr. It was the decade of the Cuban missile crisis where the Doomsday clock was two minutes away from midnight: the time when the world would experience its first, and probably last, nuclear war. It was the age where the term ‘Negro’ evolved into ‘black’ and the African-American population began to vocally and physically demand what, according to the constitution, had been theirs all along.

It was the time of the Space Race with the Soviet Union getting out of the gate first but having to settle for second place when America landed on the moon and verified that it wasn’t made out of cheese.

It was a decade that was, at the same time, exhilarating and terrifying. I’m glad I experienced it and even more elated that I survived it.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli

-NOT THAT YOU'LL CARE...

2010-01-31T19:31:00.000-08:00

Not that you’ll care, but I wanted to set to print some of my favorites so my great-great grand-kids will be able to see how ~~strange~~ cool their great-great grand-dad was. If you haven't done so, you might want to make one of your own so your great-great grand-kids can see how ~~strange~~ cool you were. My favorites:

Best Stage Production EVER: Les Miserables - London cast

Best Film Adaptions Of A Musical: Evita; Chicago; Jesus Christ: Superstar

Best Movies: Days of Heaven; Godfather ll; Pulp Fiction; The Defiant Ones; (too many more to mention).

Best Foreign Films: Life Is Beautiful; Seven Beauties

Best Rock & Roll Movies EVER: Eddie and the Cruisers; The Rose (Both showed the way it really was back in the day).

Best Musicians or Musical Groups Before The Music Died: Beatles; The Stones; Bob Dylan; ABBA; Neil Diamond; B.B. King; Brian Adams; Van Morrison; Ray Charles; Paul Simon (plus too many more to mention).

Best Song That Never Made It Really Really Really Big: At This Moment (Billy Vera) (The crying sax and the brilliant ending makes it a cult classic).

Best “B’ Side Song Of The 45 RPM Era: I Was The One (Elvis) - (Flip side of Heartbreak Hotel); I'm So All Alone (The Teen Queens)-(Flip side of In Paradise).

Best Tenors: Andrea Bocelli; Luciano Pavorrotti

Their Best Song: Mille Luna, Mille Onde (Con Ti Partiro‘s #2) / Nessum Dorma (best operatic solo ever!)

Box Office Bombs That I Thought Were Great: Ishtar; Heaven’s Gate (The critics blasted both, they both lost tons of money so I guess I'm the only one in America who loved them).

Best Novels: Prince of Tides (Pat Conroy); Skinny Legs And All (Tom Robbins); 1984 (George Orwell)

Author With The Most Memorable Quotes: Tom Robbins (look up Tom Robbins quotes on Google. You'll agree.)

Best Non-Fiction: The Aquarian Conspiracy (Marylyn Ferguson)

Best Cuisine: French (House of Lords - Lake Tahoe area)

Best Dinner I’ve Ever Had: Crab-filled red snapper topped with a light cream sauce that was to die for. (fatigued two- story restaurant in Port Aransas, Texas)

Worst Dinner I've Ever Had: Pick any Taco Bell.

Best City Anywhere: London, England (Hands down!)

Worst City Anywhere: Gallup, New Mexico (got shanghaid there on my way back from Vegas by the Highway Patrol and was hauled off to a kangaroo court. I'll tell you that story one day. 'Dukes of Hazard' from start to finish).

Best Get-Away-From-It-All Place: Anywhere along Jamaica’s north shore.

Favorite Drink When I'm Well-Heeled: A chilled bottle of vintage Puligny-Montrachet

Favorite Drink When I'm Broke: A jar of grape Kool-Ade

Best Car I Ever Owned: New 1957 Chevrolet convertible; black with white top; red leather seats. (So damn cool!)

Best Life Of All My Past Lives: This one (I guess).

-NEWS AT ELEVEN

2010-01-31T11:11:00.000-08:00

I’m not intentionally trying to be humorous here but there are things I hear on the news from time to time that puzzle me:

-“A man was shot to death this morning in a senseless killing.” (As opposed to last night’s murder that made perfect sense?) According to neighbors, the victim was a respectable, God-fearing man…” (Will somebody explain to me why anybody of moral conscience would actually fear God?)

-“During these tough economic times, financial experts warn us not to put all our eggs in one basket.” (Meaning I should ask for twelve individual containers when I buy a dozen eggs?)

-“Police had to be called in to quell a disturbance initiated by a group of rednecks.” (I understand the concept of the term ‘redneck’: a stereotypical depiction of a bigoted, uneducated, usually Southern good ol’ boy, but what does the color of his neck have to do with anything? Is it because the implication is that he has some blue-collar outdoor job and is vulnerable to a sunburn? Is his neck any more red than a lumberjack’s or a crab fisherman and, if not, does that mean that lumberjacks and crab fishermen are also rednecks?)

-”When asked if he would retaliate against the verbal slurs thrown at him by his political opponent, he answered that he would not ‘make any bones about it‘.” (I think that it’s great that he’s taking the high road but please explain to me what in the hell that phrase even means? What does ‘making bones’ have to do with anything? And how in the hell do you even make a bone?)

-When asked how he managed to quit smoking, he simply replied, “I did it cold turkey.” (I‘ve never had any success by trying to quit cold turkey but I did have a little success when I quit warm turkey.)

-”…and remember, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!” (I don’t want any damn chigger-infested bird in my hand! Leave it with the other two in the bush where they belong!)

-NOBODY LOVES ME BUT MY MOTHER (AND SHE COULD BE JIVING ME TOO)

2010-01-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

*The title of this piece was actually a song written by the legendary blues-man B.B. King. Somehow, it seemed to be appropriate here:

Things I learned from my mother:

-She somehow convinced me that Poppa Boone (sp?), which consisted of a bowl of small chunks of old hard bread, milk, and a smattering of sugar was a delectable Italian breakfast dish.

-That my eating all of my tripe, liver and asparagus was somehow vital to the success of our troops during World War ll.

- That “if you start out laughing, you end up crying.”

-That I would go blind if I masturbated.

-That pets are a transient relationship. This became evident when, in preparing the dinner menu, she chopped the head off of my pet white chicken while I watched in horror as the bloody, headless fowl zig-zagged wildly around my feet until it collapsed.

- That it was inevitable that I would poke my eye out while playing with anything that happened to be in my hand at the time.

-That, because it wasn’t in her to physically punish me, she taught me the terrifying feeling of impending doom with her words of, “Wait ‘til you father gets home!”

-That it was of the utmost importance to mark the calendar with a big X on every day my father was out of work, thus easing his already out-of-control paranoia.

So, given all of the above, why is it that I miss her greatly and remember those insane and quirky things with a sense of nostalgia and love? Strange.

-ON EMPATHY

2010-01-29T08:53:00.000-08:00

Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe. - Homer

I have dined with friends and acquaintances in regal halls, downing vintage French wine with the lavish repast. I have enjoyed the transient benefits of wealth; and on those cyclical occasions when I fell from grace and found myself in need, have been the recipient of their generosity. These are all good and honorable people who, for the most part, find ways to aid those less fortunate than themselves. Most of them do so out of pity, sympathy, or simply out of the goodness of their heart. But they cannot do so out of empathy for how can a person of means empathize with those wading through dismal quagmires if he has never had the occasion to slog along with them and feel the misery first hand?

I have dined with friends and acquaintances in hovels with floors of hardened soil where the only item on the menu was boiled white beans with a hambone added to the recipe to add a little flavor and where the accompanying drink was tap water. These are all good and honorable people who view the upper classes with a mixture of envy, bitterness and, in some cases, respect and admiration for what those in the upper stratum have attained. But the one emotion that they will never posses is empathy for how can a person who has never accrued any tangible assets empathize with the complicated problems associated with wealth.

In my life, a cyclical journey that if plotted on a graph would resemble a biorhythm readout, I have had the opportunity to share my years and experiences with those residing at both ends of the societal spectrum. And that has taught me the true meaning of empathy. It has allowed me to feel both the elation and the misery of Man; has allowed me to understand the feelings of those walking down paths that I have previously traveled.

To all those who cannot understand the true meaning of the word, I feel sympathy - not empathy, for I have never experienced first-hand the experiences that led to this void in your life. All I can state to you people is that you have not yet learned one of Life’s most important lessons. And if, after I have bid my farewell to this planet, you should pass the place where they are conducting my elegy, do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.*

*Ernest Hemingway: For Whom The Bells Toll

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ME - VOL. 1

2010-01-28T13:04:00.000-08:00

Hypocrisy:
-One armed man with a bomb is a terrorist;
-Twenty armed men attacking a government are revolutionaries;
-One thousand armed men in uniforms are patriots.

Irony:
-A one-armed man is usually a forgotten veteran of the Vietnam War.

History:
Recorded history is not so much dependent on the chronicling of events, as it is the perspective of those who record it. (Do you think Japan’s version of the atomic bomb attacks during WWll is the same as Americas’s?)

On Murphy’s Law:
Murphy was an optimist!

Cerasoli‘s Law:
Something to do;
Someone to love;
Something to reach for.

Human Nature:
One man’s mission is another man’s migraine.

Humility:
That's what you learn when you think you’ve become a legend and ‘South Park’ devotes an entire episode to show the world that you’re not.

You've Know You've Wasted Your Money When:
A psychic begins your session by asking you your name.

Thought and Deed:
Those who visualize a brave, new world are dreamers; those who draw up the floor plans are visionaries.

On Laywers:
It's 99% of the lawyers who give the rest of them a bad name!

-APACHE ODYSSEY

2010-01-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

This is my signature poem and is dedicated to that race of people who had it figured out until those damn Pilgrims came along.

A million stars were glowing underneath a poet's moon
And the desert's shadows watched as I drove by.
A gypsy wind was blowing a relentless feral tune
As it swept the thunderheads across the sky.

I had overtaken midnight; I was in my car alone
While driving through the Arizona night.
Across the lonely flatlands, no other headlights shone.
My speeding car: the desert's only sight.

Then the gypsy wind stopped blowing, as though turned off by a switch,
And I got this eerie feeling deep inside.
Then, from my car, I heard a sound that squealed with alien pitch
And the engine in my car just simply died.

The Firebird coasted to a stop; I mouthed a silent curse
And knew that I was stranded and alone
Some eighty miles from nowhere and, to make the matter worse,
No way that I could get there on my own.

I stepped outside and listened to the silence of the night
And wondered why the wind had ceased to blow.
Then I saw this cloud formation touch the ground off to my right
And approach me with an iridescent glow.

Rolling towards me like a wave, its billows tossed and turned,
I watched it near while I stood full of awe.
It stopped a hundred yards from me; the cloud no longer churned
And emerging from the wispy haze, I saw

A band of Indian horsemen with warpaint on their face
And feathered lances pointing at the sky.
They rode their unshod ponies toward me at a furious pace
As I prayed to God and then prepared to die.

Their leader stopped in front of me and locked onto my gaze
For what seemed to be a full eternity;
And in his steely eyes I saw a fire begin to blaze
And then the man began to speak to me:

"I am Cochise, the leader of the proud Apache clan
And I tell you there's no reason for alarm.
My body's but a spirit now as are those of my men.
We will not, cannot cause you any harm.

We were once on reservations; subjected to abuse;
You took away our land; our liberty.
You sent us off to places that you thought were of no use
And we had to die to set our proud souls free.

And now we fly the gypsy wind and search the nighttime sky
For cosmic plain and starlit grassy glade;
And now and then we land on earth to ride instead of fly
And check on all the progress that you've made.

You took our virgin country; took our sacred burial plots;
Took the trails that we once rode before you came
And replaced them all with shopping malls and concrete parking lots
And, in so doing, chased away the game.

You've introduced an acid rain that kills the fish it meets;
The lakes and streams now have a sickly stench.
The way of life for people living in your ghettos' streets
Makes our very souls and stomachs start to wrench.

And, in any given village, there's a freeway clogged with cars
And spots where all who walk had best beware.
In any given village, there's a dozen topless bars
And a plant releasing toxins in the air.

And, in my savage ignorance, I have to shake my head
And wonder why you've done the things I've seen.
Have your tribes' ideals and morals all simply fallen dead?
Has respect for man and earth now turned obscene?"

Then, one hundred yards behind him, the cloud began to glow
And that was when the conversation ceased.
The band of Indian horsemen knew that it was time to go
And from their cosmic spell I was released.

They turned as one and disappeared into the veil of light.
And I pondered all the questions that they'd brought;
And as the cloud was lifted up and disappeared from sight
I sent my answer to them with this thought:

I wish that I could ride with you upon the gypsy wind
And let your vibrant history fill my mind.
And I agree with what you said; that many men have sinned
And tainted up the land you left behind.

And there's no justifying the things that some men do
Or those who simply turn the other way.
But you can't crucify us all for sins of just a few.
You can only hope that Justice comes one day.

And some of us have learned that even sinning has its worth
If the lessons learned can serve to make you strong.
And some of us still cling to a dream for planet Earth:
A world where there's more right than there is wrong.

So I shed my tears for what our fathers' fathers did to you
And I wish that I could undo what's been done.
But I can only forge ahead and keep my ideals true
And if I can then it's the battle won.

And maybe one day I'll be there to ride there to ride the wind with you
And maybe you and I will be good friends.
And maybe we'll reflect on all the history we've been through
And how the saga never really ends.

And maybe when we visit earth upon our ghostly steeds
To check on all the progress that they've made,
We'll find a world filled to the brim with men's heroic deeds.
Then the dues of history finally will be paid.

Copyright 2001 - Phil Cerasoli

-LAUGH AND THE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU

2010-01-27T12:05:00.000-08:00

I admire those comedians and joke writers who can create lines that make us laugh. Just because I had nothing better to do, I decided to try to write a stand-up routine without scanning the Internet for jokes I could swipe:

By using a complicated algorithm, Science tells us that 100,000,000,000 people have died since the dawn of time. If you were to lay them end to end, a crowd would quickly gather and yell things like, ‘Omigod! What in the hell are you doing?”

Where do all those missing socks go? If every person in the United States lost just a single sock, that would be over 304,000,000 socks! That’s enough socks to feed a family of four for….oh, wait. That doesn’t really correlate, does it? Never mind.

I had a lousy childhood. As a kid, I was picked on every day at school. To make matters worse, my mother would be there after school at the bus stop to pick me up and she’d always yell at me. Things like, “Where in the hell are your clothes?!”

Because we were kind of poor, my folks wouldn’t let me have a puppy. Instead they got me a stuffed carrier pigeon. It was a decent enough pet, I suppose, but I got a little tired of emptying his “In" basket every night.

A friend of mine talked me into taking part in a ten day fast to protest the war in Iraq. So for the next ten days, I had to restrict my diet to fast foods.

I understand the Internet is full of scams. I hope my prepaid all-inclusive trip from San Diego to London isn’t one of them. It’s a good deal. It includes food, lodging, and round trip train fare.

A guy showed up at my door claiming to be my long lost brother. I let him room with me for about six months until I noticed he was Chinese. He said I was mistaken; that he just had a slight case of tetanus.

Well?

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-CAIO, DISNEYLAND

2010-01-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

Disneyland is a writer's made-to-order metaphor for Life. You enter its world full of vigor and with a sense of adventure - your hands clutching the loads of E-tickets allowing access to all of the thrills the magical landscape has to offer. You madly race to the first ride, only to wait an inordinate period of time in line before you can experience those few exhilarating moments careening down the Matterhorn before you once again scurry to find another line in which to wait your turn. Then, late in the day- after the hours of standing have been exchanged for those moments of excitement, you make your weary way back home.

My life, in fact, has been a trip to Disneyland. But I ran out of E-tickets about six months ago and without them the Magic Kingdom has lost its luster. Now I mindlessly use my dwindling supply of lower grade tickets to pass the time by sitting in the small boat gliding through the shallow water listening to the hundreds of little dolls serenade me with their annoying and never-ending rendition of “It’s A Small World After All.”

Over the years, Disneyland has doted upon me, allowing me way more than my fair share of E-tickets and in looking back I find that when all is said and done, I owe the Magic Kingdom everything; it owes me nothing and how could it have worked out any better than that?

But now - tired, drained and spent, I want to find my weary way back home. But, perhaps due to a temporary power outage, the street lights are off, the night is particularly dark and, by moonlight, it’s hard to determine which is the best road to lead me there.

-WISDOM UNHEEDED

2010-01-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

Ah, Plato, dear Plato. If you were wise enough to have said that the world will not be free of evils until philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers, you must have been wise enough to have realized your words would forever exist in a vacuum.

I honestly believe that the overwhelming majority of the world’s population has always abhorred tyranny and warfare; has always dreamed of Plato’s Utopian city-state; and that the majority’s voice has always been reflected by some of the finest minds in history. The Internet is full of their eloquent quotes. Here are just a few of them:

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Bertrand Russell.

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi

Those who can make you believe in absurdities, can make you believe in atrocities.
Voltaire

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire

After a war, a hero is just a man with one leg.
Anonymous

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George McGovern

As noted, these are just a few of the statements of intelligent men that point out the absurdity of warfare. Albert Einstein has some beauts, insinuating that soldiers should be considered murderers and advocating the refusal to bear arms. And yet, despite the lucid wisdom that has always surrounded us, we turn a deaf ear and continue down this endless, mindless path because the one quote that should be applicable, isn’t, that being ‘Majority Rules‘. Throughout history, it always seems to be the minority - that ignorant or stubborn or maniacal minority who grasp power and wield their will upon us.

I put those like Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin in the ‘maniacal’ category. Those like George W. Bush and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il I believe fit well into the ‘stubborn’ category. The epitome of the ‘ignorant’ category is best illustrated by the statement of former First Lady Barbara Bush who, on March 18, 2003, appeared on Good Morning, America and said: “Why should we hear about body bags and death…I mean it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”

Why, indeed, Barbara. I wonder how much motherly influence your enlightened philosophy had on your son's questionable decisions as you tucked him in on those cold Washington, DC nights and whispered those eclectic thoughts into his ear before you turned out the lights.

Ah, Plato, dear Plato. You were the wisest of your time; would have been one of the wisest of our‘s - one of the silent and helpless majority whose words, like yours, will forever exist in a vacuum.

-copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-EARLY MORNING MUSINGS

2010-01-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

While it’s a blessing that the charismatic and articulate President Obama replaced a man who was continually and unsuccessfully trying to navigate his ship through the stormy seas of the English language, I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed in the lack of progress he’s made during his first full year as our leader. I know that there have been dozens of small successes but none, at least in my opinion, that have had the dramatic impact I had been hoping for. (I know. I know. I should have probably ended the sentence with “…the dramatic impact for which I had been hoping.” Leave me alone. It’s 3:00 A.M. and I’m trying to write here!).

-Dave Letterman says that, according to a recent USA Today survey, 3 out of 4 Americans make up 75% of the country’s population.

-The law of averages is a pointless part of the mathematical landscape. If you believe in that law, then, on average, everyone in the world has half a penis.

-I’ve never understood the hypocritical aspect of parenthood. How can Mom and Dad have the audacity, after years of instilling in you the firm belief that Santa Claus, the Boogey Man, the Easter rabbit and the Tooth Fairy all exist, make your life a living hell for getting caught in a lie?

-According to an article in the New York Times, 150,000,000 cell phones are discarded each year. How come I can’t talk my granddaughters into throwing theirs away?

-There are an estimated ten quintillion individual insects at any given time or, put another way, two hundred million for every human on the planet. Most of mine splattered against my windshield on an August road trip through the Midwest.

-Irate American sales clerk to a recent arrival from Saudi Arabia: You're in America now, for God's sake. Speak Spanish!

-From my brother, Bob's, Thought Of The Day:

The economy is so bad that....

If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico .

Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

Motel Six won't leave the light on anymore.

The Mafia is laying off judges.

Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, global warming, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., that I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan . When I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

-A RARE TALENT

2010-01-25T05:16:00.000-08:00

“Welcome to Good Morning, U.S.A. I’m Jonathan Sommers. Our guest today is Phil Cerasoli who, as you’ll recall, challenged the psychic, Sylvia Browne, to a ‘prediction’ contest in December of 2008. Mr. Cerasoli is here to discuss the accuracy of those predictions. Mr. Cerasoli, last December you predicted that Wichita, Kansas would be totally devastated by a tsunami in March of 2009.”

“I know. I know. You’re going to remind me that it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well, that’s not really the point I was trying to make. Do you know where Wichita, Kansas is located, Mr. Cerasoli?”

“Kind of.”

“And are you aware that there isn’t an ocean within 1,500 miles of Wichita?”

“So?”

“(Sigh) Wouldn’t that make it impossible for… Never mind. What about this one: You predicted that - and I quote: The American public will probably grow a little tired of sushi - more than likely squid or those other little round things that taste like raw fish.”

“And did they?”

“Mr, Cerasoli. I don’t know if they did or not”

“Then I guess you should have spent a little more time on researching the issue.”

“Again, you’re missing the point. Why would anyone even make an inane prediction like that? Never mind. Let’s move on. Here’s another of your predictions: Jasper Koontz will turn up missing sometime during the summer and be found two days later in a local tavern shooting pool.”

“And did he?”

“How in the hell should I know? Who in the hell is Jasper Koontz?”

Off-stage voice: Calm down, Jonathan. We had to ’bleep’ you on that one.

“Thank you, Mr. Cerasoli, I think we’ve heard enough. ”

“Don’t you want to hear my predictions for 2010?”

“No.”

“That little guy who’s the leader of North Korea will start wearing elevated shoes to make himself appear taller.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, that’s not a prediction, you idiot."

“Here’s another one for you. Saddam Hussein will be captured at a fast food restaurant in Dubai.”

“Please leave.”

“When she can’t find work elsewhere, Hillary Clinton will become Barack Obama’s secretary.”

Off-stage voice: Jonathan…..Jonathan, where are you going? We’re still on-air.….Jonathan! You just can't leave! Mr. Cerasoli, why is your hand raised?

"Do you guys have any cookies or something? I haven't had lunch yet."

Copyright January 2010- phil cerasoli

-I JUST GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU

2010-01-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

If God never meant for us to text while driving, He never would have given us knees to control the steering wheel.

-Verse 5:13 Phil Cerasoli's 'The Idiot’s Bible'

Today 16 people will die and another 1400 will be injured because several people who think they have the reflexes of a cheetah and are as bulletproof as a Pershing tank will deem it absolutely vital to text someone while driving. I know this because, dependent upon which statistical database you access, between 3,000 to 6,000 people die and between 300,000 to 515,000 are injured annually as a result of this insane and escalating practice.

I can visualize the final text message being sent by one of these bulletproof cheetahs:

So I said 2 him, listen, if U want 2 take me out, U have…hey, I just realized I’ve drifted in 2 the oncoming lane and there’s a semi heading towards me (LOL) but I’m pretty sure I can get out of the way in time. All I have 2 do is just…..OMG!….........."

Stupid should hurt, and in the cases where the one texting was one of the fatalities, it did. Unfortunately, their stupidity took the lives of others, thereby inflicting wounds that will never heal for the families of their lost loved ones.

Cigarette packages have to acknowledge the health risks of smoking, pharmaceutical companies have to disclose the side affects of their drugs on TV commercials, beer and booze commercials have to tell us to drink responsibly, TV automobile ads have to notify viewers that the wild stunts they’re viewing were filmed on closed courses by professional drivers and not to attempt to duplicate the stunts at home. So why don’t the mobile phone companies have to do something similar?

I don’t suppose such a formal warning would do any good. People still smoke, women still risk serious eye disease by applying that stuff to their eyelashes that will make them grow longer, people still drink and drive and the annual Darwin Awards which honor those who cleansed our gene pool by dying in utterly stupid fashion, still acknowledge those who ignored those “do not attempt at home” caveats and ended their lives in a blaze of brazen stupidity.

Remember the good old days before mobile phones when we drove from point A to point B and survived the journey? There was a reason for that good fortune: WE COULDN’T TEXT!

LISTEN, YOU MORON! YOU DO NOT HAVE THE REFLEXES OF A CHEETAH AND YOU’RE DAMNED SURE NOT BULLETPROOF SO KNOCK IT OFF!

To those who choose to ignore the above admonition, I’ll look for you on the slate of nominees for the 2010 Darwin Awards. Hope you make the list.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-THE DOGS OF WAR

2010-01-22T21:32:00.000-08:00

“Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!” -Wm. Shakespeare

According to George Kohn’s, Dictionary of Wars, the timeline of military history indicates that between 2925 BC and today an unbroken period of hostility between one group of people and another has existed. If that statistic is true, that’s 4,935 consecutive years of bloodshed and leads one to believe that perhaps we don’t like each other very much.

Civility, if you look far enough down the list of definitions in the dictionary, apparently was once used to mean civilization, but they are obviously mutually exclusive terms. We are not, nor ever have been, a civil civilization.

So does that mean that we idealists should stop fighting for and dreaming of world peace? Well, yeah. That’s kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it? If we haven’t learned a damn thing from 5,000 consecutive years of bloodied history, what makes you think we’re about to start? If the two international organizations (the League of Nations and the U.N.) founded for the specific purpose of creating global harmony have been failures in that regard, as my mother used to say, “What ya gonna do?” ‘Throw in the towel’ comes to mind as a possible answer.

I am, by nature, a romantic and idealist, but I’m not naïve and I’m not stupid. I know now that the world will never scrap its weaponry and we're never going to embrace each other with the resolve needed to coexist in peace. It’s just that, ever since I was a kid, all I wanted was a single weekend of world peace. Was that too much to ask for? Two stinking days out of 5,000 years! You couldn’t stop shooting each other for two days? How about one day? Can you all take just one lousy day off and go fishing or something? Never mind. I already know the answer.

Shakespeare, as usual, was right on target. Life is a tale told by an idiot!

Now I know why the earth travels at 168,000 mph as it orbits the sun. It’s God’s way of saying, "Nobody's jumping off this train, Jack! Life's a bitch. Deal with it!"

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-AH, BUT AIN’T THAT AMERICA

2010-01-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

“OK, quiet everyone. Attention, please. As you know, we’re here to select the poem that best describes American life. When it’s your turn, walk to the microphone, state your name and recite your poem. OK, Number 1, start us off.”

“Hello. My name ith Ruthell Thmith, I lithp a bit but here’th my poem I call, ‘Thweet, Thweet, Thweet America‘:

The other day I thaw a flag
With many thtripes and thtars
And then I thaw a bunch of kidth
All eating candy barth.

O, thweet, thweet, thweet America. O, thweet, thweet….”

“Thank you, Ruthell…er, Russell. That'll do. NEXT!”

“Hi, to all of you wonderful judges. My name is Sal, a lounge singer by trade but a poet in my heart. To be honest, I wish I had my piano here now so I could add some appropriate music to my poem. But I don’t, darn the luck. Y’know, we all live in and share a piece of this crazy, zany, wacky and, yes, I’ll say it…helluva place that I like to call America. As I was saying just the other day, I…”

“Just read your poem, Sal.”

“Right! My poem deals with this incredible melting pot of so many diverse and wonderful ethnicities, that one can’t help but be inspired by….”

“Sal! The poem!”

“Right! I wrote my poem one morning when the sun was pouring its golden rays through my bedroom window and bathing me with warmth. Upon waking, I was so darn…”

“READ YOUR GODDAM POEM!!!”

“Right. The poem. I call it: What A Crazy, Zany, Helluva Place I Like To Call….”

“NEXT!”

“Howdy. My name’s Bobby Joe Roberts but my friends just call me Bobby Joe…or sometimes just Bobby J or sometimes just B.J. Course, then there's my uncle Ned. He just calls me Cooter. Damned if I know why. Sorry about the smelly overalls. I just got off work and didn‘t…ah, shoot, what the heck do you guys care about that? Anyway, here’s the poem. It‘s kind of wrinkly and hard to read ‘cause I wrote it down in the sewer and there ain‘t much light down there.”

“What’s the title of your poem, Bobby?”

“Sir, the name’d be Bobby Joe or Bobby J or just B.J. No-one ever calls me just plain Bobby. Course, there's my uncle Ned who just...”

“The title of your poem, B.J.”

“Shoot. I dunno. I’ll just call it, ‘America‘, I guess. Here goes:

Workin’ in the sewer makes ya sweat out blood and tears,
But it’s better than a job where you’re working next to queers!”

“WHAT??”

“Those homos think they own the world and…”

“GET THAT IDIOT REDNECK OFF THE STAGE! LISTEN, PEOPLE! IF NUMBER 4 IS AS BAD AS THE FIRST THREE, THIS COMPETITION IS CANCELED! NUMBER 4!”

“Yo, bro, you can call me LaSquisha, mmm hmm, and I’m proud to represent both the black community and the sisterhood of…the sisterhood of...well, you know, sisters! Womanhood! That’s right! That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! It’s my time; it’s my dime and here’s my rhyme:

“Ain’t no honky white guy gonna hold us sisters down.
Ain’t no honky white guy gonna…..”

“THAT’S IT! CUT THE MIKE! CUT THE LIGHTS! WE’RE OUTTA HERE! AND I WANT THE NAME OF THE LAME-BRAIN WHO CAME UP WITH THIS FREAKING IDEA!"

Copyright - January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-POET IN A GRACELESS AGE

2010-01-21T05:27:00.000-08:00

I have been taken to task for often referring to this age in which we’re plodding through as “graceless”.

Here’s the dictionary's definition of ‘grace’:
Seemingly effortless beauty of charm or movement, form or proportion, elegance and dignity.

So how do I find thee graceless? Let me count thy ways:

-When current musical groups like MSI (Mindless Self Indulgence) turn the volume of their guitar amps up to 10, pound the living daylights out of their drum and literally scream the lyrics from songs with elegant titles like ‘Pussy All Night’ that include words and phrases like: “Bitches love me ‘cause they know I can fuck, eat shit, suck cock, motherfucker”, our First Amendment might make it legal for them to do so but that doesn’t make it right. Today’s youth might find lyrics such as these to be their generations’ symbol of rebellion; their generations' version of the rite of passage which allows them to shed the yoke of parental control and I get that. But, by definition, it is graceless nonetheless.

-When teenage girls getting down on their knees in high school hallways to perform oral sex on teen age boys becomes the norm rather than the exception, that may be the current ethos of today’s youth but it is the quintessence of gracelessness.

-When TV programs like South Park mock celebrities (alive or recently dead) and social mores in general in order to shed light on our society‘s foibles, the fact that I find a lot of their episodes hilarious and in some cases brilliant, doesn’t detract from the fact that it is an incredibly tasteless program. Yes, it‘s very funny and I pass no judgment on its content but it is the embodiment of gracelessness just the same.

-On an individual level, chivalry has become passé - as obsolete as the 8-track tape. This is as much the fault of women as it is their male counterparts. Burning their bras and demanding equal rights was a successful effort but it came with a cost and today’s male doesn’t feel the need to employ the chivalrous mannerisms of years past. That’s just the way it is and it’s hardly the end of civilization as we know it but it is evidence of a type of grace long forgotten by a world where 'me' is more important than 'we'.

Grace, I suppose, even though the meaning is clearly defined, boils down to a matter of perception - something in the eye of the beholder. But on those rare occasions when I find myself in the company of someone with that atypical attribute it is a very palpable and refreshing moment in time.

Real or perceived, grace once played a prominent role in the fabric of our culture. It doesn't anymore.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-ECHOES FROM DELPHI

2010-01-19T16:02:00.000-08:00

At that place where magic mushrooms grew and the clouds were perfect; where the grass was green and the wind was still - where I found I could taste the sky again and see the world I always knew existed, I smiled and said hello. It answered with goodbye. -Ashley Towers

Twenty years ago, she came as I knew she would and from the time she was old enough to grasp the meanings of words, I tried to plant the seeds that would one day blossom into thoughts that would resonate with a calloused world that had forgotten how to dream.

She began around the age of seven or so, scrawling uneven block letters into misspelled words that formed uneven stories of knights and dragons and damsels in distress.

Then I closed my eyes for just a moment and when I opened them, she had somehow turned eighteen, an oracle whose written words had evolved into pearls of beauty, wisdom, and the stuff of dreams.

Her words reflect her thoughts that there are as many worlds as there are observers and that in the world that she observes, words can alter the course of history; can heal centuries of wounds and make the earth a better place; a place where dreams can evolve into reality.

Remember the name of Ashley Towers. She is the oracle you will come to know. If you heed her words, the world will follow and when you greet it with 'hello', it will not answer with 'goodbye'.

copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-SNIPPETS FROM A PISSED OFF MIND

2010-01-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

FOR THE BENEFIT OF NEW READERS WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THIS SITE:

YOU ARE HERE

FOLLOW THE ARROW TO DOWN THERE

-Why, when you’ve finally located something like your misplaced car keys, do you usually mutter, “Why are they always in the last place I look?” Well, unless your brain-dead, you don't continue to search other locations after you’ve already found them. I suppose you could keep looking and then you'd ask, "Why are they always in the next to the last place I look?"

-The Clapper, which turns your lights off and on by repeatedly smashing your palms together, was invented in 1986. Why?

-I understand Twitter is a web site where you can tell all of your friends what’s on your mind thereby filling a vast communication void that…oh, wait. I forgot about letters, email, cell phone texting, personal blogs and the telephone. Never mind.

-Why do real estate ads proudly state that the home is “within walking distance” of whatever? Exactly how many feet or how many blocks constitute “walking distance” and is anything that‘s a mere inch or two beyond that arbitrary limit “not within walking distance“? I prefer Steven Wright’s definition: Everything is within walking distance if you have enough time.

-If you really believe the Mayan’s prediction of the world ending in 2012:
   -why are you keeping up the premiums on your homeowner’s insurance?
   -why do you still care who wins the Super Bowl?
   -why are you still putting money aside for your kid’s college education?
   -why aren’t you taking advantage of those ‘no money down; no payments until 2012’ ads?

-Why do people say, "No offense, but..." right before they offend you?

-One of my neighbors has been looking for a job for over a year but can't find any openings. He's a shepherd.

-If I could have been anybody in history, I would have been Marylyn Monroe so I could finally get to screw politicians instead of the other way around.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-THEN I TOUCHED THE ROBES OF SATAN

2010-01-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

I scaled the stairs to heaven and lingered close to God, so close that I could hear Him while He breathed; Then I touched the robes of Satan, felt the evil while he stood, so close that I could hear him as he seethed. -Phil Cerasoli

Paths that lead into the desert may not lead out again. - Bob Cerasoli

He felt the calling at an early age and in 1962 -on the day he was ordained, he felt the hand of God upon his shoulder and His breath upon his cheek.

He was, by all accounts, a capable, well-liked and respected priest and on the surface, conducted his life in a reverent manner. Somewhere along his spiritual journey, however, he chose the wrong fork in the road - one that led him down a dark path and through a portal to the desert that, once entered, allowed no return.

Over a thirty year span, John Geoghan, ignoring the narrow white collar around his neck that symbolized his unity with God, donned the robes of Satan and sexually molested 130 children, most of them altar boys.

His Archbishop, Bernard Law, responded to the initial and escalating accusations of enraged parents by moving John from parish to parish and answered the critics who were demanding justice with the statement, “Our faith doesn’t rest in the shifting winds of popular opinion.” Eventually, Cardinal Law would be forced by the church to evacuate his position and attempt to find a way to reconcile his irreconcilable actions.

In early 2000, John Geoghan was forced to confront the judicial system, was tried and found guilty of sexual molestation; then sentenced to a term in Massachusetts’ Concord prison. Child molesters are at the very bottom of the prison hierarchy and Concord’s inmates wasted little time in venting their rage at Geoghan while the prison guards either looked the other way or joined in the harassment of the defrocked priest.

After several months of doing time at Concord, he was transferred to another prison in Shirley, Massachusetts where, on August 23, 2003, as he was being bound, gagged and strangled to death by a fellow prisoner, he surely felt the presence of Satan…so close that he could hear him as he seethed.

There is no moral to this tale. How could there be? Subsequent and similar claims leveled at other priests by enraged parents revealed to the public that John Geoghan wasn’t the only priest involved in the deviant practice of priest pedophilia. He was just its poster boy.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-GOD'S WILL OR NATURE'S WRATH?

2010-01-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

I just watched the CNN video of a team of Haitians attempting to rescue a young girl from the rubble that used to be Port-au-Prince. Her body was pinned under a pile of stone and bricks. Only her head was visible and, while others were frantically trying to remove the rubble that was crushing the rest of her body, one of her rescuers was tipping a small bottle of water and she was straining to allow the liquid to reach her mouth.

I later read that she had subsequently died. That would have been about the time that I was sitting at my computer trying to think of clever ways to put a humorous spin on something I was writing. And, in a moment mixed with sadness and anger, and with the vision of that young girl’s lips parting to allow the water to slake her thirst demolishing my ego's need to be inflated by completing a pointless essay , I asked myself what in the hell am I doing here; why in the hell do I place any importance at all in this trivial pastime?

I remember asking myself the same questions on December 26, 2004 - one day after the celebration of the birth of the Lord, when the ocean inhaled for several eerie minutes, then violently exhaled, unleashing a tsunami along the coastlines of Indonesia and, in less time that it takes to write about it, sweeping away the lives of several hundred thousand people.

I have no ties to Port-au-Prince but I’m familiar with Cap-Haitien, a small poverty stricken town resting on the tranquil north shore of the island nation. It is populated by people whose warmth echoes that of all the people that call one of the many Caribbean islands home. Haiti, by anybody’s standards, is one of the most impoverished nations on earth yet, despite their oppressive poverty, my memory recalls its people having a joy of life few of us Americans are capable of maintaining for more than a weekend. So, God, with all of this in mind, I'm thinking You must have had one hell of a reason for devastating their island.

Major catastrophic tragedies like the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Haiti tend to make the religious community brace for the inevitable onslaught of inevitable questions that will be hurled their way by their flocks, all of them condensable into a single query:

“How could a loving God allow this to happen?”

They will either be unable to answer or they’ll offer up some biblical quote they feel will suffice to satisfy those who are having a rough time correlating the tragic events with their religious beliefs.

Maybe one day, before God sends me packing off to Hell for having doubted His geographical choices of wanton destruction, He’ll explain His rationale to me. I might not be worthy of His time, however. Remember, I was the one sitting at my computer composing cute little witticisms while 3000 miles away a young girl lay dying beneath the tons of dislodged stone in a city that, only a few days earlier, used to be Port-au-Prince.

-THE WISDOM, OR LACK THEREOF, OF BUMPER STICKERS

2010-01-15T10:53:00.000-08:00

Inside every old person is a youngster wondering what the hell happened.
-Bumper sticker

Since the automobile bumper itself wasn’t introduced until 1927, anyone who attached a sign to their pre-1927 car stating that “Herbert Hoover Sucks” would have had to have called it, well… I guess, just a sticker.

According to a web site I found, the first person to actually make stickers that could be attached to a bumper is thought to be Forest Gill, a silk screen printer who began making the bumper sticker in the 1930s. Since then, bumper sticker philosophy has become an annoying part of our culture. Personally, I think there are deep-rooted psychological problems with those people who find it acceptable to deface a $40,000 car by sticking a decal on it proclaiming their child to be an honor student at Murdoch Elementary School. Too, I really could do without having my focus diverted by those stickers devoted to religion, politics, and those sophomoric, syrupy “inspirational” quotes like, “Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life.” You know, being the logical thinker I am, I probably could have figured that one out on my own without the written reminder.

I wonder how travelers expressed themselves before the automobile was invented. Did they tie a sign to the back of their donkey stating things like, “If you don’t like the way I’m riding, you can kiss my ass!” or "Shout if you've heard about Jesus"?

All that being said, there are some bumper stickers that evoke a smile or a chuckle from me and make my drive a little more enjoyable. Like:

-If at first you don’t succeed, don’t take up skydiving.

-Out of 100,000 sperm, you were the fastest?

-A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

-There are three types of people. Those who can count and those that can’t.

-Dyslexics of the World: Untie!

-Illiterate? Write For Free Help

-To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing

According to a recent study conducted by the University of Colorado, the more bumper stickers that adorn a car, the more aggressive and territorial the driver is likely to be; the more likely he or she is to express rage when provoked. So be careful out there.

Anyway, as I’ve nothing more to add to the subject, I’ll just end it with a bumper sticker I saw the other day:

-My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.

-ROOM AT THE TOP

2010-01-14T18:35:00.000-08:00

With the investigation and subsequent upheaval at AIG brought about by revelations pertaining to their financial practices, there are currently openings for several top management positions. Here’s a written transcript between the head of Human Resources (HR) and one of the applicants (AP):

HR: Just a few questions to assess your ability to lead us. Here’s the first: What is the capitol of Montana?

AP: Duh! The letter ‘M’. I hope these questions get a little tougher. I've a degree from San Diego Community College, you know.

HR: Of all the mammals, which has the biggest snout?

AP: Pinocchio.

HP: Pinocchio? Pinocchio? Are you sure you want to stick with that answer?

AP: Yes, I'm sure! I've seen the movie five or six times, for God's sake! Take my word for it, that's one long nose! What’s the next one?

HR: Where did Abraham Lincoln take up residence after his election?

AP: Hmmm. I don’t know the exact house number but I’m positive it was at his Gettysburg address.

HR: Just a few more. According to the Christian faith, who was Adam?

AP: Adam...Adam...Isn’t he that gay guy who finished second on American Idol?

HR: And was it Aristotle or Socrates who tutored Plato?

AP: That’s a trick question, isn’t it?

HR: What do you mean?

AP: Do you think I'm stupid? Pluto is Mickey Mouse’s dog! He probably doesn't even know those two guys you mentioned.

HR: Moving along, who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?

AP: That one you’ve got me on. I’ve been out of the country for a few weeks and haven’t been keeping up with current events.

HR: Well, that about wraps it up. I must say that you scored a lot higher than the person who just vacated the position. Based on that, we’d like to offer you the job. It only starts out at $2,500,000-per-year but there are incentives and bonuses that could double that amount and, if you decide to leave, we have a golden parachute clause that guarantees you a figure that’s equal to three times your annual salary.

AP: Hmmm. Actually, I was hoping for a bit more than that. You know, something that’s commensurate with my capabilities.

HR: Really. Do you even know what ‘commensurate’ means?

AP: Well, not really. My wife told me to fit it into the negotiations if I had the chance.

HR: Well, she was right. It makes a big difference when someone uses a big word like that. OK, what if we threw in unlimited use of our Lear jet, a chauffer-driven limousine, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree?

AP: Now you’re talking! Count me in!

HR: Fantastic! Welcome to the AIG team! You’re exactly the type of visionary leader we’re used to having at the helm. If you can start tomorrow you can be included in our bi-monthly off-site meeting. This week it’s in Tahiti.

AP: Tahiti? Any chance you can make that Paris?

HR: Actually, Paris is scheduled two weeks after the Tahiti trip.

AP: Well, then, if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon wait to start at that time. Too muggy in Tahiti for my taste.

HR: I think we can arrange that. We’ll see you in a few weeks, then.

AP: Do I get paid for that time I’m waiting?

HR: Boy, you are one tough negotiator. OK. We’ll put you on the payroll as of today and we’ll see you in two weeks.

AP: Is there a chance I could get an advance to tide me over?

HR: Sir, you’re really starting to push the envelope.

AP: I could really use a small advance…say, 50 or 60K.

HR: (Sigh). Let me call up Shirley in Accounting and I’ll have her cut you a check.

AP: Would it be a lot of trouble if you made that in cash?

HR: (SIGH) Not at all. Anything else?

AP: No, I think that about does it. I’ll let you know after a few months whether I’m happy with the position or not. Just to give you a heads up, if I’m not happy, I’m out of here! There’s a lot of Wall Street companies out there.

HR: I’m well aware of that. We’ll keep you happy. After all, it’s not really our money, is it?

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-DAYS OF OUR YOUNG & RESTLESS LIVES

2010-01-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."
-opening line for the daytime soap, "Days Of Our Lives"

One of the downsides of retirement is, from time to time, being subjected to viewing the afternoon soap operas my daughter feels compelled to follow. Specifically, she watches “The Young & The Restless“; then follows that invigorating, mind-expanding experience by viewing, “Days Of our Lives“. From my intermittent and unwilling participation in observing these two abominations, I am able to adequately describe their premise with several appropriate adjectives. Like ‘absurd’, ‘outlandish’, ‘laughable’, and ‘pathetic’.

As far as I can tell, both story lines have intricate and unbelievably bizarre plots that, sooner or later, involve everyone in the cast sleeping with every other cast member. Too, for whatever reasons, actors suddenly leave the cast only to have their characters replaced the next day by another actor with little or no explanation and the viewer is somehow expected to accept this transition as though it never happened.

Soap operas have been around since the days of radio and when they transitioned to television in the Fifties, people who have nothing better to do have been keeping viewer ratings on the ten to fifteen soaps that exist at any given point in time. These ratings indicate that there are up to five million people who devoutly follow the twists and turns presented on these serials on a daily basis; 77% of them women and 23% men - men who should be out doing something more constructive, like bowling, maybe.

Anyway, at first glance, I regarded all of these soap operas as having absolutely no socially redeeming qualities whatsoever. But then I got to thinking. With all things being equal in terms of cast and crew size, all of the current U.S. soaps combined hire between 800 - 900 people. Add the people involved in publishing those soap opera guides one sees in the super market checkout lines and you are suddenly looking at a few thousand people who are keeping the country’s unemployment rate from growing even higher than it is at the present time.

Even more important, if up to five million people are viewing them, not only does that mean five million fewer cars on the street that might run into me; it means there are five million fewer cars polluting the atmosphere with their emissions, ergo, if we can get everybody in America to stay at home and watch these soaps we will have solved the greenhouse effect and put an end to global warming. Think green, America. Your country needs you! Make the ultimate sacrifice, stay home and watch a soap!

-A SEASON IN HELL

2010-01-13T21:44:00.000-08:00

“The atmosphere of Hell does not permit hymns”

-Arthur Rimbaud: A Season In Hell

Drive a cab at midnight, navigate it slowly through the dimly lit, fog-shrouded, mean streets of the city and it will give you a sense of being deserted by the guardian spirit you had always thought was by your side.

Pull into the Yellow Cab garage at shift’s end, turn in your meager earnings, count your meager tips and make your way through the fog to where your car is parked on a side street void of light. Open the door and grope in the darkness for the full plastic container of motor oil you need to add to your car’s leaking engine, being careful not to grab the empty one that you had used to fill that same engine before you had set out for work earlier in the day. Remind yourself to buy two more containers for tomorrow’s journey. Try not to curse as you realize that, in the darkness and without a funnel, it is virtually impossible to perform the simple process of adding oil without an abundance of spillage. Repeat this process for weeks and it will give you an understanding of why some people find relief by placing a revolver to their temple and pull the trigger.

As you nurse and coax your car homeward while keeping a wary eye on the oil gauge, recall the events of the night: the 250 pound Latina hooker, looking like a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts, who had reached into her bag, pulled out two cold beers, handed you one and tried to talk you into a hand-job for twenty dollars; the nice-looking African-American who had directed you to take him from downtown to the suburbs some twenty miles away and then, almost before the cab came to a stop, burst from the vehicle and disappeared into the night without paying; taking a fare to a gang-infested neighborhood and as you began the return trip, having your cab pelted with bricks accompanied by curses and threats; sitting at the front of the line in a designated zone to wait for the radio dispatcher to call in the next fare…having to urinate so bad you felt your bladder would burst but unwilling to give up your spot in line; parked on a side street and hearing six or seven gunshots ring out about a block from where you were located. Compile enough of these memories and it will eventually begin to erode the faith you always had in your ability to adapt to any environment.

Call your landlord from the phone in the bedroom and give him your thirty day notice because you won’t have the rent money come the first of the month. Bury your face in the pillow and scream in frustration, hoping that your wife, daughter and two granddaughters who are depending on you to provide for them can’t hear the muffled shouting. Wrap yourself in the blanket of self pity and curse the heavens. Ignore the ringing phone and let your wife answer it. When she calls you from the other room to let you know that the call is for you, pick up the receiver and accept the call from an old colleague who wants to know if you’re interested in a good paying job that has just opened up at the company where he works. Accept the position and retire eleven years later with $200,000 in the bank and a monthly Social Security check of $1789.

That was my season in Hell. I survived. I feel for those who didn't survive theirs.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-BLOODTHIRST OF THE MEEK

2010-01-13T19:22:00.000-08:00

If you’ve kept up with my writing on this blog, you have an idea about my views related to the Catholic religion. To clarify, I have no problem with respecting the Christian belief in God or, for that matter, Jesus being His son. What the hell do I know? They well may be correct. My problem lies with the odd way in which the people of that early time chose to chronicle the chain of events of that period. You know: the Adam’s rib thing, the lack of information detailing the cave men and dinosaurs, the whole Jonah and the whale saga, the Lot’s-wife-turning-into-a-pillar-of-salt episode, etc. Now if the Bible would have begun with, “Once upon a time…”, I’d have never questioned the validity of their written account.

My latest difficulty with the book deals with the words written in the beatitudes of Mathew 5:5 where it states that Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.” Well, not to rain on anybody’s parade, but it’s been well over 2000 years since that promise was made and I was just a little curious as to the proposed timeline of this change of ownership.

Further, I’m not exactly sure how we meek are supposed to accomplish this feat. By definition, meek people are, well, meek and, as such, aren’t likely to have the balls to stand up to the dictators and despots who control a large hunk of the earth’s geography and demand the keys to the kingdom. Who among us would have stood up to the two vermin with whom I’m the most familiar (Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin) and given them thirty minutes to clear out their office. Stalin is reported to have killed over 20,000,000 of his countrymen in purges that allowed him to stay in power; Hitler, about the same number, including the 6,000,000 Jews who were horrifically exterminated as part of his Final Solution. Those two were evil incarnate, maniacal handmaidens of Satan. For those of you who weren’t yet born during their demonic reign, here’s just one of their quotes that shed some light on their lack of respect and compassion for human life:

Stalin: -“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”

Hitler: -“Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.”

I think both of them would have given our ultimatum about three seconds of serious thought, then had us shot.

Anyway, God, if You’re listening, given the fact that the Mayan calendar has predicted the end of the world in just a few years, we meek are getting a little restless and some, according to the English playwright, Joe Orton, are getting downright nasty. At least, that’s the impression I get when I read his quote stating, “The humble and meek are thirsting for blood”. Amen.

Copyright January 2010- phil cerasoli

-TODAYS ANSWERS TO TOMORROWS QUESTIONS

2010-01-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

-Michelangelo

If America is to regain some of its lost economic supremacy, hundreds of Michelangelos are going to have to let their dreams soar above and beyond the boundaries of conventional thought and see the angel in the marble. “Dreams,” said Edgar Cayce, “are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”

The sculpture that once sat on the wall depicting America’s agricultural and industrial prowess has had a great fall. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put America back together again. It’s going to take a new breed of entrepreneur with new ideas to stop being one of the king's men and begin, on their own, to create a new sculpture of America. It’s going to take risk takers who will not be intimidated by the thought of failure for, unlike the famous line from the movie, 'Apollo 18', where the NASA honcho growled, “Failure is not an option”, in this case, failure is a very real option. So what? “I’ve failed,” said Michael Jordon, “over and over and over again and that is why I succeeded.”

Yesterday, in my daily scanning of CNN’s website, I was encouraged to read the in-depth article dealing with a growing number of people who have left cushy jobs to start up their own businesses despite the perils introduced by the shaky economy. (See link at the end of this article). Kudos to those risk takers and, in the vernacular of Broadway, “Break a leg.” Literally. You’re going to fall flat on your face several times and struggle to regain your composure, your focus and your will to continue. Again, so what? Just do it!

Is this just an oversimplification of the solution to the problem? Hell, no! All you have to do is recall how the Germans and Japanese rose from the utter devastation that surrounded them in the post-WWll years. From countries consisting of virtually rubble, they began the process of recovery and innovation. Now, some sixty years later, they’re kicking our collective ass all over the arena of international economics. For God's sake, if memory serves, Honda started out by making lawnmowers! Look at them now. If Germany and Japan did it, do you really think we can’t duplicate their success? If that global concept seems too grandiose for you to relate to, re-read Michael Jordan’s quote.

You and your colleague, yeah, you two sitting around the conference table listening to your boss use today’s buzz phrases to explain why layoffs are imminent and unavoidable; you two who have been kicking around an innovative idea for years that you’ve dreamed of developing and marketing. Stand up, give him your two week notice and get the hell out of that oppressive conference room! Then find yourself a piece of marble and start carving.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/12/28/jumping.ship/?hpt=Sbin

-ENTERTAIN ME, AMUSE ME, OR LEAVE ME ALONE

2010-01-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

"Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job."
-Andy Warhol

Aroldis Chapman is 22 years old. Aroldis Chapman is very good at throwing a baseball fast. Aroldis can hurl the sphere from the pitcher’s mound to home plate, a distance of 46’, at 102 mph. This solitary skill has resulted in the Cincinnati Reds signing the young Cuban defector to a five year contract worth $30,000,000.

Cincinnati. This is a city with an unemployment rate of almost 11%, much higher than the national average. If you’re a cop in Cincinnati, you make around $40,000/year. If you’re a fireman in that city, you earn about $25,000/year - only slightly higher than my retirement income. If you teach in Cincinnati, you’re really raking in the money, earning around $45,000/yr.

On the other hand, if you play baseball for the Cincinnati Reds or football for the that city’s Bengals, you earn anywhere from their “minimum wage” of $240,000/yr to $14,000,000/yr.

These outlandish salaries aren’t restricted to the arenas of professional sports. Movie and television celebrities also get their share of the spoils. Charlie Sheen, for example, earns $850,000 an episode for his role on “Two And A Half Men”. Oprah has become one of the richest people on the planet. Rock bands, even the ones with questionable talent, rake in millions during a single tour.

America’s priorities are clearly and blatantly evident:

1. Entertain us no matter what the cost; then
2. Amuse us no matter what the cost; then
3. Teach our children as best you can; then
4. Put your life on the line daily and protect us from the bad guys if you can, then finally
5. Put your life on the line daily by rushing into burning buildings to save us from certain death.

I’m far from the first to sadly shake my head over this convoluted list. Regardless, can you visualize the impact if the top two on the list were relegated to its bottom and the salaries adjusted accordingly? There would be more teachers properly educating our children and young adults. There would be more financial incentive for those students to seek higher education. Policemen and firemen would get a much deserved salary increase, and ‘TA DA!“: here’s a news flash for you:

In spite of the rearranged salary level resulting in a staggering drop in potential earnings, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro would still be in the acting profession; Oprah would still have had her talk show, Peyton Manning and LaDainien Tomlinson would still be playing football, Lennon and McCartney would have still written all of those memorable songs, Bruce Springsteen and Bono would still be singing and playing music, and Stephen King would still be cranking out novels. Why? Because, at a young age, that’s what they dreamed of doing! In the arenas of creative arts and professional athletics it has never been, at least in the embryonic stage of one‘s dreams, about money. That thirst is acquired somewhere along the way for the simple and understandable reason that someone who stands to gain from the artist's success is there to happily slake that thirst.

The way it’s all structured now is wrong on so many levels, but it is what it is. America has spoken and, as one of those Americans, I insist on being entertained and amused. To me, watching a young Cuban throw a baseball 46’ at 102 mph is worth the risk of burning to death because the fire department down the street was shut down six months ago due to budget cuts.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-IF YOU NEED ME, I'M THERE

2010-01-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

“Don’t walk in front of me. I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me. I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
-Albert Camus

A best friend is the brother destiny forgot to give you.
-Anonymous

We have, in the petting zoo that is our apartment, a muscular 97-pound Golden Lab. This morning as he was rapidly towing me face down around the perimeter of the complex for my morning drag, the subject of friendship crossed my mind.

My definition of friendship might be different than yours. The thousands of people I have met over the course of my life - those people with whom I enjoyed being with, working with, dining with, talking with, partying with, do not really meet my definition of “friend”. To me they are all pleasant acquaintances, each of whom have played an important and enjoyable part of my life and I would have been the worse for never having met them. Friendship, however, is altogether different to me. Friendship, among other things, means a total absence of posturing; the freedom to disagree or criticize with the knowledge that it will be taken with the loving spirit in which it was intended; the joy of being able to be silent without feeling the compulsion to converse; the sharing of similar likes, dislikes and philosophies; the feeling of complete comfort while in their company.

Excluding my extended family, there haven’t been that many people over the years to whom I’ve allowed entrance to my inner circle of friends. Pompous and arrogant of me, isn’t it? But that’s just the way it is. Anyway, beyond this inner circle there’s a category that defies definition; one that transcends friendship and becomes something almost sacred. For these few in that small group of kindred spirits I would put my life on the line without hesitation (which isn’t much of a sacrifice, I suppose, given my current age).

Anyway, here’s the thing - the rather astonishing enigma for which I have no logical answer: Even though I was born and raised in America, the people in my group of friends, along with those few in that transcendental category, with very rare exceptions, were not born in this country, having been given birth in India, Greece, Vietnam, Mexico, South Korea, Nigeria, and Rotterdam. The large percentage of them have found success in this country, a few of them rising to the elevated status of ‘millionaire’. Yet, and perhaps this is the connection, each of them have retained an earthiness about them - a complete lack of pretense that allows their soul the freedom to reach out and touch the souls of others; each of them retaining a deep appreciation of life's journey instead of an intense focus on the destination.

We Americans were and are still raised in a materialistic culture where so much emphasis is placed on instant gratification and getting to the top and keeping up with the Jones’s that I think that myopic focus virtually prevents us from taking the time to savor the values of true friendship. Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe not. I’d love to hear your take on the subject. Drop me a line.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-PAYBACK’S INEVITABLE; KARMA’S A BITCH

2010-01-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

Given the number of countries that now have nuclear missile capability, I am certainly not the only one concerned over the possibility of a nuclear bomb being detonated on our soil. At the current time, here are the countries that have nuclear weapons at their disposal: Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, United States, and North Korea, with Iran very close to being included in that category and Israel at least rumored to be included on the list. I don’t believe that any of these countries, even the ones with whom our relations have been anything but cordial, are foolish enough to risk an all out conflagration.

My concern is with the small armies whose members wear no uniforms, those currently in residence at safe houses somewhere in America waiting for the day that one or more ‘dirty’ bombs can be detonated at strategic location(s). If they don’t yet have the bombs or the materials to construct them, it is inevitable that at some point in time, they will. For example, the downfall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the newly independent states raises serious concerns about the control of the large arsenal of Soviet nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them. Despite statements emanating from the Russian higher-ups that assure us that controls are in place and security is tight, there are those who fear that possible security breaches could easily compromise those controls at Russian storage facilities.

Whether it be from Russian facilities or from black-market sources I think that the acquisition and subsequent use of these weapons by terrorists is, as I previously stated, inevitable. In my mind, the only questions are where? and when? The where is unclear. The when, I believe, will be within a decade…two at the most.

If you’re one of the more complacent Americans, you probably disagree with that prediction. But after witnessing the horrific events of 9-11 and after reading about the incredible number of fanatical people who have strapped bombs to their chest and, in the name of the faith they reverently and zealously follow, self-destructed in the center of Iraqi business hubs, I‘m not sure that you have much material to debate the issue.

Look. They already have the means to purchase the weapons or supplies and they already have people in place to willingly die by walking or driving the weapon to its destination. The only link that might still be missing is finding the rogue government or greedy individuals who would be willing to put the weapons into the hands of the terrorists. Getting the weapons onto American soil will be the easy part. This last December, a man named Abdul Mutallab walked through the security gate of an airport in Detroit with a bomb on him, boarded a plane; then set it off, so don’t tell me someone can’t figure out a way to sneak a bomb or appropriate materials across a vast and largely unguarded border.

English 101:
Inevitable: adjective
Something that cannot be prevented or avoided
Karma: noun
The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence

Because I believe that what goes around comes around, my thoughts go back to 1945 and I wonder if karma was a consideration during the thought process of Harry S. Truman before he made the decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Japan which sealed the Allied victory of WWll. If not, perhaps it should have been.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-SKY GUY

2010-01-09T07:11:00.000-08:00

I’m not superstitious. Well, OK, I do have one strange custom. Not really a superstition…more of a habit that has now become a ritual:

More often that not, I’ll wake up between three and four in the morning, let the dogs out to relieve themselves, fix myself a cup of coffee, go outside in the predawn darkness, light a cigarette, sit down and look skyward at the impressive constellation of Orion which, at certain times of late autumn and early winter, poses directly above me in regal fashion dominating the heavens with his presence. Orion, to me, has become the personification of the entire universe; my conduit to whomever is in charge of its vast maintenance. He is the Hunter; the Sky Guy who silently guards the night sky and listens to me tell him about anything and everything and, as strange as that might sound, I find it to be a rather cathartic experience.

If someone were to be within earshot of me they would probably think me a bit mad and perhaps call someone in authority and have me carted away to a place where a psychiatrist would bombard me with a series of questions designed to assess my level of sanity. Like, “If you were a tree, what would you be?” and I’d mess with him by answering, “Probably one of those imitation Christmas trees at Wal Mart.” And he‘d ask, “Do you think you’re crazy talking to Orion?” And I’d reply, “No. I’d be crazy if I talked to Cancer, the Crab. I mean. who in their right mind talks to a crab?”

I suppose sooner or later they’d decide I was harmless and release me along with a prescription for half a dozen different types of pills. That seems to be psychiatry’s panacea for all things mental.

Here’s my advice. Dump your superstitions about black cats, walking under ladders and throwing spilt salt over your shoulder. Find yourself a constellation on which to dump your problems. Just don’t attempt to start a relationship with Orion. He’s my Sky Guy.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-AH, THOSE RARE MORNINGS

2010-01-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

For the most part, I view every moment of my life as a miraculous adventure. But I grudgingly admit that there are rare mornings when the air is heavy and oppressive; where the places I walk become hurting grounds; killing fields that destroy my will to put one foot in front of the other and keep on going.

On previous rare mornings I’d wallow in frustration as I recalled how I started my mission with full wallet and good intentions and how, on those rare mornings, I found both had been drained.

I did not nor could not curse the heavens for my lot for it had evolved from my own decisions, my lack of financial restraint, my tunnel-visioned focus on giving my girls everything I could possibly give before I was dealt my final hand.

At any rate, on those mornings where despair reigned and all seemed lost, something always -without fail- miraculously turned up to get our life back on track and then months would pass with relative financial stability and a warm sense of serenity.

Then would come another of those rare mornings when the air was heavy and oppressive; where the places I walked became hurting grounds; killing fields that destroyed my will to put one foot in front of the other and keep on going.

This has been a recurring theme over the last several years; a cyclical phenomenon that has become as predictable as the ebb and flow of the tide. It stands to reason that at some point in time the cycle will be broken. I have told myself that on seemingly countless occasions yet the cycle has continued as though ordained, spitting in the face of logic and throwing a lifeline to me and my girls right before we submerged into the sea.

So today was one of those rare mornings………Stay tuned.

Copyright January 2009 - phil cerasoli

-HEART AND SOUL

2010-01-08T17:44:00.000-08:00

I really don’t care what religion preaches or what society dictates in terms of affairs of the heart. I believe that the physiology of the human body and/or the intricate machinery of the human brain is not conducive to a monogamous relationship. For that matter, I don’t think that any mammal’s natural instinct is to hook up with another of the species for an extended period of time. People who study such things tell us that wolves, for example, do in fact mate for life and while I have no reason to doubt their research, how do these people know that when they’re not watching, one of the wolves isn’t sneaking off to experience a romantic experience on the side?

The wide-open, anything-goes sexual mores of the 60’s and early 70’s is not the fodder which feeds this article or my thoughts concerning the subject. Those times were all about open marriages, free love, wife-swapping, etc., and were conducted by consenting adults in search of some excitement that had disappeared from their current and probably sexually mundane lives. Nor does the bizarre Mormon practice of one husband taking multiple wives enter into my equation. Finally, I'm not talking about a situation where one partner has tired of the relationship and is silently wishing there was a painless way out.

I’m talking about those intermittent times in your life when your eyes and the eyes of a stranger meet and in that one moment your souls connect and, regardless of how happy you are with your present mate; no matter how much in love you still are with your present mate, you somehow know that you could be happy spending the rest of your life with that stranger. Then reality sets in, the moment passes and the two of you become the two proverbial ships that pass in the night, never again to meet. But the memory of that moment becomes an indelible part of your memory bank to be recalled in later years along with an accompanying sigh.

Maybe I’m wrong. If you can be honest with yourself, look me in the eye and tell me that, while involved in a serious romantic relationship, your eyes have not locked onto the gaze of a stranger and viewed those eyes as portals to a world you would love to explore, then I’ll believe you and consider myself an anomaly. It’s no big deal. It’s a role I’ve become accustomed to during my journey through life.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-WHAT’S IN A WORD?

2010-01-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

For no apparent reason, I posed the following question to Google:

When do you use the word “who” and when do you use the word ‘whom”?

Google, as it always does, immediately came back with a choice of 29,100,000 sites I could visit to obtain the answer. Picking one at random, I got the following explanation:

"Who is used for a grammatical subject, where a nominative pronoun such as I or he would be appropriate, and whom is used as the object of a verb or preposition."

And I’m thinking, what in the hell does that even mean? That makes as much sense to me as 我爱你！(which, according to Google, means ‘I love you’ in Chinese).

Back in the day, as my fatigued English teacher was drawing those complex sentence breakdowns on the blackboard and droning on about such yawn-inducing things as predicates, split infinitives, and dangling participles, I was too busy playing footsie with the cute girl sitting in the desk in front of me to pay any attention to him. And as a result of my lack of interest in his parsing of sentence structure, I still don’t have the foggiest idea as to what a dangling participle is. I would imagine that if that teacher, or any grammarphobian for that matter, were to review the hundreds of things I’ve written since then, they would find dozens of cases where I used ‘who’ instead of ‘whom’, ‘bring’ instead of ‘take’, and ended countless sentences with prepositions. But I’m wondering why that even matters? If the purpose of language is to communicate and if you make your point, what difference does proper sentence structure make?

I used to smugly snicker whenever I’d hear someone use the redundant word ‘irregardless’ instead of ‘regardless’ but as it turns out, due to the constant use (or misuse) of the word, it is now in the dictionary and officially recognized as acceptable speech.

Malaprops, or the incorrect substitution of one word for another, is a bit different and, at times, hilarious. I used to work with a guy who was constantly doing that and it was hard for me to keep a straight face as we talked. He’d refer to the statue of limitations (instead of statute) and talk about losing personnel due to nutrition (instead of attrition). As a very young girl, my youngest granddaughter would constantly crack us up with statements like, ‘Rome wasn’t built in an egg’ or “With Bob as my witless…” instead of “With God as my witness…”

Speaking of ancient Rome and getting off-topic for a moment, do you know what Julius Ceaser said when he hit an errant golf ball toward the group in front of him? He yelled. “IV!”

Anyway, I’ve learned to lighten up when I hear someone butcher the language. If I get their point, that’s good enough for me. In addition, I don’t worry too much about sentence structure as I put my thoughts into words. Irregardless, whom wants to argue about it, them have every right to.

-THE DEVIL, YOU SAY

2010-01-07T18:01:00.000-08:00

So I guess Someone decided I didn’t belong in Heaven because, a few hours after I died, I’m sitting across the desk from this nerdy-looking twit who’s the head of Hell’s Inhuman Resources Department and he’s reviewing my file. Then he puts it down, fumbles through a drawer until he finds the appropriate stamp and, with a grand flourish, slams it onto the form which he hands to me and he says, “Take this to the second door on the left. Give it to the demon and he’ll toss you into the fire pit.”

“No.” I tell him.

My answer startles him. “No? What do you mean ‘No’? You have to take it. That‘s the rule!”

“Screw your rules. Tell me what possible reason would motivate me to let someone toss me into a fire pit?”

“Just take the paper and do what you’re told. There’s a long line of people that I have to get to. Take it now!“

“No.”

His face is starting to turn red. “Am I going to have to call Demon Security?”

“Look at me,” I answer. “I’m all vapor. What could they possibly do to me?”

Again, he looks baffled. “What can they do to you? They can…they can,,,they can SCREAM at you! They….they can TERRIFY you! That’s what!”

“Go ahead and call them then. I’m not going into any damn fire pit.”

He stands up and in a quivering voice, he threatens me with, “Either you get up and go this minute or this incident is going into your permanent record!”

“What?”

“I’m not joking, God damn…I mean, Satan damn it. I’ve got your file right here. Don’t think for a moment that I won’t do it!”

“I’m not going into any fire pit.”

He angrily plops down in his chair and gets on the phone. As it’s ringing, he faces me and tells me in a menacing voice, “Now you’re going to get it. I warned you but would you listen? Oh, no. Not Mr. Wise Ass. Well now you’re really in big trouble!”

Seconds later, someone obviously is on the other end of the line and the twit says, “Just a minute, your Evilness, I’m putting you on speaker.”

Then I hear the voice say, “On speaker? You’re putting me on the speaker? What in the hell are you talking about? How many times have I told you not to call me at this number?”

The clerk stammers back, “I’m sorry, Satan. It’s just that I’ve got this jerk who refuses to take his ticket.”

“You bothered me for that? Tell him about his permanent record!”

“I’ve tried that, sir. He doesn’t care.”

“What? Who is this yo-yo?”

The underling scans my record and tells Satan, “His name is Phil Cerasoli.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place. Put him on the line. Oh, wait. I‘m on speaker. Cerasoli, can you here me?”

“Yes,” I respond.

“I’m sorry for all this commotion. It’s just that we didn’t expect you this soon. Give us about twenty minutes and we‘ll have an eternal suite set up for you. You’ll find it to be a few hundred degrees cooler than the fire pit. Still pretty damned hot, mind you, but you‘ll get acclimated in no time.”

“A suite?”

“Of course. Why would we not go all out to welcome the biggest Mafia hit man in the history of Italy?”

“Hit man? Are you sure you’re not confusing me with someone else?”

“No. You’re Filipo Cerasoli from Milano, right?”

“No, I’m Phil Cerasoli from San Diego.”

“SATAN DAMN IT! Who in the Hell do you think you are? Did you really think you could fool us into believing you were Filipo Cerasoli?”

“I’m not trying to fool….”

“Boy, you must think because we’re the epitome of evil, that we’re all stupid! Is that it?”

“I don’t know if you’re stupid or not. All I know is that I’m not going into any fire pit.”

There’s this long pause and then I hear the sound of another phone ringing and Satan tells me, “Hang on.” Then I hear him talking, “Hey, God, it’s me. I’ve got a problem that You might be able to help me with. What? His name? Phil Cerasoli from San Diego. He refuses to go into the fire pit. What? Yeah, we told him about his permanent record. Didn’t work.” Then, an extremely long pause followed by, “OK. Thanks, God. I owe You one.”

I hear Satan clear his throat. Then, “All right, Cerasoli, here’s the deal. We’re going to let you off the hook this time. No fire pit. Apparently there are a few openings so God has arranged for you to be reincarnated either as a Jewish tailor in Jersey named Murray or a Shetland pony in Scotland named Blaze.”

And because I never cared that much for New Jersey, that was how I came to be a cherished member of the McClary clan in Glasgow. The weather sucks but the grazing is great!

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-THE ROCKETS RED GLARE; BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR

2010-01-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

We cannot be both the world’s champion for peace and the world’s leading supplier in the weapons of war.
-President Jimmy Carter

Uh, Jimmy, apparently we can. Or at least we’re giving our best effort to achieve that paradoxical goal. Since 1992, the U.S. has exported $142,000,000,000 of weaponry. How many of the weapons have been used to kill American soldiers is anybody’s guess.

Setting aside the commerce of war for a moment, let’s take a brief look at all of the neat
ways we’ve found to do each other in. There are the atomic and nuclear bombs, of course. Germ warfare is pretty cool if you’re into genocide. We also have disposable missile launchers like the Javelin that can lock onto a target, dispense its payload, then be discarded as the men firing it flee to other locations before the enemy can zero in on them. Drone aircraft made from light weight composites and carrying both camera and rocket can be remotely controlled from a darkened room miles away and with a casual push of a button, the missile can be sent to do its thing. We even have invented guns that shoot around corners (see the photo above).

The bottom line is that there is enough of a stockpile of every conceivable type of weapon to kill every one on the planet several times over. Yet, the oxymoron of “military intelligence” continues to amaze me with the ongoing research and development of even more weaponry. Sometimes their research doesn’t go as planned. According to the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), researchers at Los Alamos accidentally blew up an entire building while testing a gun that acts as a Civil War cannon causing over $3,000,000 worth of damage. Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Nuclear weapons aren‘t sufficient enough? We actually need to develop a Civil War cannon to add to our arsenal? POGO's Senior Investigator, Peter Stockton, apparently is asking the same question. He stated, "I have no idea in the world why they have a gun like this, let alone test it."

All of this madness makes my mind reverberate with the statement made by Winston Churchill after reflecting on the aftermath of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He solemnly stated, “I fear that we are being flown back to the dark ages on the silver wings of Science.” His premonition isn’t that far off base because today we are passengers on that silver-winged flight piloted by military-minded people whose mission statement seems to be “Kill Or Be Killed." One can only hope that there’s a round trip ticket included as part of the package.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-LETTERS TO MISTER PHIL

2010-01-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Mister Phil:
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and I have to tell you that I have never seen such a compilation of crap in my life. Not only are you a lousy writer, in my mind you are a vile and disgusting stigma on society.
Very sincerely yours,
Your daughter, Tamara

P.S. What do you want for dinner tonight?

Tamara:
Thanks for the feedback. I’m in the mood for some juevos rancheros.

Dear Mr. Phil,
I have to admit I have a crush on you. When I watch you walking around the complex with the lithe gracefulness of a jungle cat, my heart beats like crazy. You are so cool. No wonder everyone calls you The Cat. Could I fix you dinner sometime and then maybe you could spend the night?
Signed,
~~Phil Ce~~…I mean, Mary Jones

Mary:
I appreciate the kind offer but I’m a loner and don’t want to get involved.

Dear Mr. Phil:
I thought I’d write you and tell you about my real wacky morning. When I got up from bed, I wanted to fix some toast so I went to the breadbox and, guess what? That’s right. You guessed it. I was out of bread. So I got dressed, walked the seven blocks to Vons, got a loaf of bread; then stood in the checkout line. When it was my turn, guess what happened? That’s right. You guessed it! I had forgotten my money! Oh, brother! So I put the loaf back on the shelf, walked all the way back home, got my money, walked all the way back to Vons, got the bread and stood in the checkout line. Then, guess what? That’s right. You guessed it. I had forgotten my Vons card which would have given me a discount on the bread.. So I left the bread, walked all the way back home, got the card and walked all the way back to the store, bought the bread and walked home. Then, guess what? That’s right. You guessed it. I had picked out a loaf of raisin bread. I hate raisin bread! So, I walked all the way back to Vons and made sure I picked out a loaf of whole wheat bread. By this time, the sun was pretty hot and when I was walking all the way back home, I started sweating like crazy. Pretty soon, my armpits were soaked with perspiration. When I finally got home I put two slices in the toaster and , guess what? That’s right. You guessed it! I was out of margarine to spread on my toast. Needless to say, I ended up throwing out the two slices of toast because who eats toast without margarine? So I just decided to have a glass of Ovaltine for breakfast. Luckily, there was enough Ovaltine and I had enough milk so I didn’t have to walk all the way back to Vons again. Boy! Wasn’t that the wackiest morning you could ever imagine?

Signed,
Orville

Dear Orville,
Don’t you ever, under any circumstances, write to Mister Phil again.

Dear Mr. Phil,
I have to admit I am so jealous of you. When I see you walking around the complex with the lithe gracefulness of a jungle cat and see all the girls swoon, I have to admit I would give anything to be like you.. You are so cool. No wonder everyone calls you The Cat. Could I fix you dinner sometime and then maybe you and I could become good buddies?
Signed,
~~Phil Cera~~…DAMMIT!…I mean, Joe Jones

Joe:
I appreciate the kind offer but I’m a loner and don’t want to get involved.

-TO MAKE AN APPLE PIE....

2010-01-06T08:13:00.000-08:00

To make an apple pie, you first have to make a universe.
- Carl Sagan

Destiny charts its own course. Its journey consists of a series of thousands of seemingly random and coincidental twists and turns, each of which can be measured in mere seconds; each of which can send a person down a path one never intended to follow.

For example, if 16 year old Klara Polzi had been looking the other way and had failed to notice the small ad that was advertising for a housekeeper, she never would have applied for (and received) the position in the home of a man named Alois who had lost his wife to breast cancer; never would have eventually married him, would never of had the opportunity to consummate the sexual act with him on that July evening of 1884, would never have released the egg from her ovary that would mate with the single sperm cell that had made its journey through her cervix, uterus and Fallopian tube and on April 20, 1889, would never have given birth to the bouncing baby boy pictured at the beginning of this article. That baby was Adolf Hitler and the rest, of course, is history.

If you take a few moments to imagine the thousands, perhaps millions, of events that, over the course of hundreds of years, had to occur at a precise moment in order for you to be sitting at your computer reading this article, you have to be somewhat amazed that you even exist at all.

I guess this reflection is important to me because there is so much chaos and discontent in the world and, quite frankly, in my personal life as well, that I find myself spending a lot of time bitching and moaning about it instead of reveling over the fact that thousands of random and serendipitous events converged over the course of generations which ultimately resulted in my birth allowing me the opportunity to experience the sensate miracle of spending a lifetime on our planet.

Destiny charts its own course. I’m grateful that it decided to include me as its traveling companion.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-REMEMBER THE SPARTANS

2010-01-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Here’s a sobering statistic I bet you weren’t aware of: The average life span of a football lineman who has played five or more years in the NFL is 52 years. It’s only a little bit better for those players who play the more glamorous and heroic roles like quarterback, running back and wide receiver. Their average life expectancy is 55. That’s compared to the average life expectancy of 77.6 for you, me and the other guys who spend our autumn and winter Sundays watching these Spartans do battle.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a major contributor to the problem, especially with linemen, is their massive weight. It’s not uncommon for a lineman to weigh up to (and, in many cases, exceed) 300 pounds. According to Joanne Korth, in her article in the St. Peterserg Times: “Among the long-term health problems associated with being overweight are diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and joint damage. Of immediate concern is sleep apnea, increasingly common among the league's biggest players, which can cause breathing to stop during sleep.” Of course, performance enhancing drugs (steroids) also play their role in this life-shortening scenario but, at the moment, no-one can really attach any firm numbers to the athletes who died as a direct result of their use and/or abuse.

The NFL owners and the leagues’ commissioner are aware of these statistics. So are the players themselves but all concerned seem to take it in stride and accept it as just being part of the territory.

So are the rewards of fame, fortune, glory and, most importantly, doing what you love to do worth over twenty years of your life? If I, for example, could go back to when I was in my twenties, and assuming I had the talent to do so, would I swap my life after 50 for ten to fifteen years in my prime, fiercely doing battle with people who shared my passion for athletic competition? It only takes a single heartbeat for me to answer: Damn right, I would. And the fame; the fortune; the glory? They’d be nice perks, of course, but the chance to spend the prime of my life doing what I loved doing makes the decision a no-brainer.

A long time ago, I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to hang out with a few superstars of the time, playing racquetball with them, interviewing them, spending time with them in their homes and, best of all, getting to know what makes them tick. They were, and are, a special breed and I’m not ashamed to admit that, on any given Sunday, I enjoy living vicariously through their athletic prowess. Here’s a poem I wrote during that era which sums it all up:

Who but the athletes who don numbered jerseys
And battle beneath a hot sun,
Can tell of the magic of bat meeting ball
Or the thrill of a broken field run?
Or the bittersweet taste of a goal-line's white dust
Or the score that will prove one team best.
Or the pressureless touch of a tape as it meets
An on-rushing, fast moving chest.
How can they explain to those who don't know
Of the powerful feeling they get
When the ball that they've shot in a high, graceful arc
Finds its way into the net?
And of the perfume that the locker room holds
When the dust of the battle has cleared,
And all of the mem'ries of moments just passed
When the crowd rose as one voice and cheered.
No, none of the athletes can really explain
These things to those wanting to know.
But perhaps it is best that the athlete alone
Knows the rapture of sport's golden glow.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-MEDIEVAL TIMES; MEDIEVAL METHODS

2010-01-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Once in the long ago time, there was an institution called the Pennhurst State School and Hospital. It was located in Pennsylvania. At its peak, the hospital housed thousands of mentally disturbed patients, a significant percentage of them children. At it’s peak, the hospital devoted, on average, three minutes a year to psychiatric therapy for these unfortunate people. That's right. Three minutes. At its peak, the hospital spent only a few dollars a day on the needs of the patients. At its peak, the hospital used punitive methods on the patients that can only be described as barbaric. For example, if a patient bit another patient more than once, the biter would have all of his teeth pulled. No teeth, no biting problem. I don’t even want to go into some of the other reported abusive methods.

From day one, complaints were raised about the deplorable conditions at Pennhurst. No-one listened.

From day one, the treatment of the patients seemed to be a regimen of neglect, indifference and abuse. No-one cared. Once admitted, they were forgotten by the outside world.

What a sad reflection on the society of that long ago time. Things are different nowadays. We live in more enlightened times and, as a civilized, sympathetic, and aware society we would never stand for the outrageous behavior exhibited by Pennhurst in the long ago time. Thank God, due to a law suit claiming cruel and inhumane practices and the resultant stigma attached to Pennhurst, it closed its doors forever. That was in the long ago time of 1986.

-RESIDUE FROM A DERANGED MIND IN FLIGHT

2010-01-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

I read an article in a medical journal that stated if a person was taken off the street at random and given a complete physical exam, doctors would, on average, find six different diagnosable diseases. Knowing a little something about how averages are compiled and listening to my body continually object to the way in which I treat it, I think if I took four friends with me for a physical, they’d all come away clean and the doctors would find thirty things wrong with me. I guess that’s the price of aging and I hate it. I wonder what nefarious method they use to get those senior citizens to smile during those AARP commercials? What the hell can they find to be so happy about? I absolutely hate the aging process and apparently I’m not alone. A recent nationwide survey of senior citizens revealed that 86% of them hated growing old and the remaining 14% were liars.

-Speaking of aging, my current favorite joke:
An old guy is awaiting the results of his physical exam. The doctor enters the room with the test results and tells the guy that he has terminal cancer and an advanced case of Alzheimer’s disease. The old guy breaks down in tears, then a few moments later, looks at the doctor and sighs, “Well, at least I don’t have cancer.”

-If you were given a traffic ticket for going 53 mph in a 35 mph zone, could you claim dyslexia?

-I don’t understand this younger generations’ cavalier attitude towards sex. A local high school had to cancel its annual Parade Of The Teenage Virgins. One had the flu and the other refused to march alone.
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Dear Reader:
As a courtesy to you, I am providing this open space between the dotted lines for you to keep important notes. Your welcome.

Remember. Important notes only!

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-Science fact: If you dropped a bowling ball and a ping pong ball from the top of a twenty story building at the same time, you’d be arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and littering.

-How does Google Earth get those mind-boggling street level pictures? Who cares. It’s an amazing accomplishment. Apparently, there’s an uproar in certain segments of the population about ‘invasion of privacy’ and ‘Big Brother is watching!”. For God’s sake, can’t you just chill out and marvel over that incredible technical achievement?

-Why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway? Shouldn't it be the other way around? And why does canned lemonade use artificial flavors and furniture oil contain real lemon juice?

-A priest and a rabbi walk into the bar. The priest turns to the rabbi and says, “Have you heard the one about us?”

-My readership on this blog has increased dramatically as a result of some dude in Santa Barbara accessing it under the misconception that ‘From Sea To Shining Sea’ had something to do with surfing. He probably won’t be back. Anyway, to my other two readers, thanks for your support.

-YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN

2010-01-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

We had a home on Palatine. Around it were trees bearing cherries, apples, plums and peaches, the taste of which can never be replicated by the insipid fruit on today’s supermarket shelves. Walking two blocks in any direction, we were greeted by heavily wooded areas where we could lose our self from the civilized world and play war, cowboys and Indians, or good guys vs. bad guys. There, we could gobble up the wild blackberries that grew in abundance, catch the lizards and snakes that were always present and keep them as pets until we'd decide to give them back their freedom, or we could do absolutely nothing, just lay on our backs and stare at the sky.

We had a home on Palatine. Reigning on the inside was a maniacal father and dutiful mother but outside its walls was a sunup-to-sundown freedom that was both exhilarating and stimulating to a young boy’s fanciful dreams. Cycling to the rim of a vast canyon; then maneuvering down to the bottom, one could follow the stream that snaked its way through the fir trees and musty smelling ferns until it reached the shores of Puget Sound where a small bonfire could be made and provide the heat to bake the raw potato that was brought along for afternoon nourishment.

We had a home on Palatine. During the winter, one could shovel the snow from neighbors’ walkways and receive fifty cents for accomplishing the chore. During the spring and early summer, one could steal the fruit from neighbors’ trees, then sell that fruit to the same neighbors for fifty cents a basket. Regardless of the season, each night one could lay on the carpet in front of the radio and, while listening to the nightly menu of comedy, drama, music and news, dream about the new adventures that the morning would bring.

We had a home on Palatine. On the street outside we’d play baseball, football and, using tin garbage can lids as shields, have rock fights with rival neighborhood kids. We all carried pocket knives and carved and whittled bows, arrows and slingshots from tree limbs; made skateboards by nailing roller skate wheels to a short piece of 2x4, made our own kites using newspaper, balsa strips, twine, and torn cloth for its tail. Wearing baseball mitts, we’d lob a tennis ball to the top of our roof, then as it rolled down until it hit the rain gutter and bounced high in the air, we’d make a sensational one-hand catch that robbed Joe DiMaggio of the home run that would have given the Yankees the win. We collected bottle caps of every variety; scavenged them in every possible location and they became the currency of the neighborhood. The daily trading of comic books was a solemn ritual conducted with shrewdness with witnesses needed to prove that a legitimate trade had taken place.

We had a home on Palatine. It’s not there anymore. I Google-Earthed the street address and the house was gone, replaced at some point in time with one of newer vintage architecture. The same was true of all the other houses on the block, including the homes of all my childhood friends...all razed and replaced. The candy store that was located across the back alley where Mr. and Mrs. Fehr made every piece of candy from scratch was gone; Mac's Tavern, which was reputed to be a brothel, was gone. All of the neighboring wooded areas had also vanished and, as far as I could tell, so had most of the trees that we had once climbed to purloin their fruit. And it dawned on me then that my brother, my sister and I are the only people in the entire world who have memories of that home on Palatine and, when we are gone, it will be as though that house; that home; our home never existed. It will, like most other residences of yesteryear, become a forgotten part of unwritten history. I can’t allow that to happen so I post this brief memoir on the Web where it will forever remain, more than likely unseen by anyone, but it will be there nonetheless, an ageless bookmark to serve as a reminder that once... long, long ago...we had a home on Palatine.

Copyright January 2010 - phil cerasoli

-I HAD A DREAM

2009-12-31T15:36:00.000-08:00

For the first time in several months, I revisited the You Tube video of Susan Boyle singing ‘I Had A Dream’ from Les Miserables. I’ve seen Les Mis five times - once in London; twice in Los Angeles; twice in San Diego but none of those productions caused the emotional feeling I get when I watch her captivate the audience and the subsequent 83,000,000 You Tube viewers with her beautiful rendition

In today’s cynical world, it’s nice to see someone like Susan beat the odds; nice to see a major dream come true; nice to see a minor miracle unfold. So to you, Susan, and to all the Susan Boyles of the world still waiting for their dream; their miracle, I salute you.

I think Susan's song choice had a lot to do with her winning over the world. Michael Ball’s poignant lyrics paint an incredible biographical landscape of the character that is Fantine. Here's one segment of the lyrics that kind of says it all for those of us on the sundown side of life:

I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high and life, worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid,
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,
No song unsung, no wine, untasted.

So now as the calendar turns the page and we enter another year, I borrow these sentiments and send these wishes to all of our planet's youthful souls that hold our world's future in their hands: keep your hopes high and pay no ransom; make your life worth living. Dream that love will never die, pray that God will be forgiving. And above all else, leave no song unsung; no wine untasted. May your dreams be an integral and everyday part of your life in 2010 and beyond. Happy New Year!

-HAS ANYONE EVEN TOLD THEM THAT THEY'RE PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE?

2009-12-31T08:26:00.000-08:00

Do you pay attention to the frightening disclaimers at the end of TV commercials pushing the latest pills offered by the pharmaceutical companies? You know the ones: “reported side effects include kidney failure, projectile vomiting, suicidal thoughts, blindness, agonizing death“. Ever wonder how the drug companies become aware of these side effects? The answer’s easy. They are the result of actual patients suffering through them during the clinical testing of the drug. And do you ever wonder who the drug companies get to take part in these tests? It used to be you, me and our fellow Americans but I guess we eventually wised up because less than one in twenty is now willing to take part in these trials that separate the dangerous drugs from the beneficial ones. And that is a huge problem for the drug companies because before they can release a single drug to the public, the FDA requires them to convince more than 4,000 patients to undergo 141 medical procedures each in more than 65 separate trials. So you can imagine the staggering cost involved in these trials and, because about 90% of these new drugs never manage to gain FDA approval, all of the costs of the failed clinical trials represent a ton of money down the drain.

It’s not hard to figure out the drug companies’ solution to the problem. Taking a page from the American manufacturing industry, the drug companies started out-sourcing the clinical trials to third world countries where medical care is sparse or even nonexistent. The aftermath of this decision can be found within the pages of a book by Sonia Shah: The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs On The World’s Poorest Patients. In the book, she attempts to determine who will hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for the outsourcing of drug trials. Further insight into this practice can be found in the story line of the award-winning film, The Constant Gardener, taken from John Le Carre’s novel of the same name.

The pharmaceutical companies’ arguments include the obvious cost savings and statements to the affect that the participants in the clinical trials are far better off trying the drugs than they are by suffering or dying because of the lack of medical facilities in their area. And the biggest reason is that, despite any dangers involved in the testing, if the drug works and obtains FDA approval, then the entire world benefits. From a purely objective point of view, I can’t find anything blatantly evil in their logic. All of their reasoning makes perfect sense. So, acknowledging that, why then do I have this lingering feeling inside of me that borders upon disgust? I don’t know. I suppose it’s because I figure it’s one thing to perform the testing on people who are aware of the risks and volunteer just the same, as opposed to conning an African villager into unknowingly becoming a human guinea pig.

Progress has its price. For every positive action that thrusts a segment of mankind one step forward, there seems to be an equally negative reaction that pushes another segment one step back. I guess that its just another harsh reality we all have to accept as we struggle through this dazzlingly brilliant, increasingly graceless age.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-A LEAN, MEAN SEX MACHINE

2009-12-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

I first met Joey when I was assigned to oversee a work crew installing some of my company’s electronics on tendons that would be eventually moved by tugboats to the North Sea to hold down an offshore oil rig. My portion of that process would last five weeks and was accomplished on the grainy wind-swept sands of the small Texas town of Aransas Pass.

The work crew in my charge had been shipped in from Louisiana and, with all due respect to that state, they were the crudest and most motley group of rednecks I have ever come across. That is, all except Joey. Joey was Cajun and blessed with uncommonly handsome features, a trait he used to his advantage as he daily and diligently worked on his lifelong goal of seducing each and every female on the planet. It made absolutely no difference to Joey whether they were black, brown or white; married or single; fat or thin; short or tall; young or old; plain, pretty or downright ugly. If they breathed and wore a skirt, they entered Joey’s cross-hairs.

I got to spend a lot of time with Joey. Sometimes we’d grab dinner at a local steakhouse, sometimes have a drink or two at a nearby bar, and once we drove the fifty-odd miles down the Gulf Coast to Corpus Christi where we spent a few hours in a strip club so I had plenty of chances to view his modus operandi. He would usually pick a remote table in a bar, simply sip his drink in the half-light while wearing this look of total indifference. Like clockwork, a female would eventually notice him, drift towards his table and, the next thing I knew, the two of them had disappeared and I wouldn’t see Joey until the next morning at the job site where he would show up totally depleted.

I got to meet Joey’s fiancé. She drove to Aransas Pass from Lake Charles to spend a few days with him and I was stunned to see how gorgeous she was and I remember wondering why Joey would chance losing this beautiful goddess by humping everything in sight.

Anyway, the installation project ended and I returned to San Diego, never to hear from Joey again. I would imagine by now his feverish goal has probably taken him north to Alaska where he’s probably hitting on a squat Eskimo woman.

So months after my return from Texas, I was playing racquetball with my doctor and, recalling Joey, I asked him as we rested between games what the male version of a nymphomaniac was called. He replied, “Normal”. Funny guy, my doctor.

Then the Internet came along and I posed the same question to Google, fully expecting a picture of Joey to show up high on the list. I couldn’t find his picture but, in fact, it turns out that there is actually a name for this disease: Satyriasis.

Now that I know this, I’m not the least bit interested in how it’s treated. The only thing I want to know is what I have to do to catch it.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-TO MARKET, TO MARKET

2009-12-29T14:57:00.000-08:00

Because my younger brother is an advertising guru of the first rank, many people assume the same creative blood runs through my veins and, as a result, I’m often asked the difference between good marketing and bad marketing. I usually tell them that an example of good marketing would be naming a store featuring clothing for expectant mothers as, “Eagerly Expectant Attire”. An example of bad marketing would be naming it “Mother Frockers.”

There’s an awful lot of bad marketing being crammed down our throats right now. Is there anybody out there who doesn’t think that the “Jimmy Football” character portrayed in those silly ‘Tailgate Tested’ commercials is the most annoying and obnoxious person in the country - perhaps in the world? Or how about those inane Coors commercials where actual footage from NFL coaches’ interviews are spliced with scripted ‘conversations’ with a group of people with a can of beer in their hands. Isn’t that a side-splittingly funny idea? Uh, no!

There’s also some good stuff out there. The ‘Most Interesting Man In The World’ is, in my opinion, a brilliant piece of marketing and has brought Dos Equis beer back to the forefront of our consciousness, reminding us (or at least me) that it is one hell of a lot better tasting than the bland ales of American origin. A while back, the beautifully crafted ads for Target were so good that the discount chain’s image was upgraded immensely. According to my brother, Target has changed ad agencies and the current ads no longer carry the flair of the previous ones. Too bad.

Sometimes ads can be so great in their presentation that they take the focus away from the product they’re supposed to be promoting. That baby in his high chair with a perfectly lip-synced adult voice mouthing hilarious lines is so funny I can’t for the life of me, even after multiple viewings, remember the name of the company presenting the commercial.

I suppose another example of good marketing is this article. The fact that you’re still reading it and the fact that, even though I was bored with it several minutes ago, I’m still writing must count for something.

Anyway, I’ve got to sign off. A friend of mine is opening a butcher shop and he wants some ideas on what he should name it. At the moment, I’m torn between ‘Andre’s Gourmet Cuts’ and ‘Slaughtered Animal Meat‘.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-WAS JESUS WEALTHY? HOW ABOUT ADAM AND EVE?

2009-12-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

First of all, I’m not sure anybody’s financial status is any of our business and personally, I don’t see why, after 2,010 years, we should even care whether or not Jesus had some coin. But CNN thought the issue important enough to print an extensive report that reveals a fierce debate is raging among Christians as to the financial status of their savior. To quote from the article:

“…the Rev. C. Thomas Anderson, senior pastor of the Living Word Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona, preaches a version of the Christmas story that says baby Jesus wasn't so poor after all. Anderson says Jesus couldn't have been poor because he received lucrative gifts -- gold, frankincense and myrrh -- at birth. Jesus had to be wealthy because the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for his expensive undergarments. Even Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, lived and traveled in style, he says. "Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the finest transportation of their day was a donkey," says Anderson. "Poor people ate their donkey. Only the wealthy used it as transportation."

According to the article, the good reverend isn’t the only one in the Christian world who supports this rather odd controversy and they all are vehemently attacking the portrayal of Jesus as a poor man.

I guess that it’s a good thing that the issue is being fiercely argued because in these boring times where nothing of interest or importance is taking place in the world, we don’t have enough issues to debate.

At any rate, the story got me to wondering if Adam was bestowed any wealth upon his conception. Getting on my computer and responding to one of the pop-up ads telling me I could get my credit rating for free, I accessed it and fraudulently entered the name of Adam. When asked for my social security number, I entered 000-00-0001. The report that appeared indicated that he and Eve apparently never paid for any of the fruit they ate from the Garden of Eden. That’s probably why they were kicked out. Landlords, even the godly ones, are notorious for demanding payment. Funny that they didn’t pay their bills. They must have had a lot of money because the report didn’t mention anything about them eating a donkey.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

- A BRAVE NEW WORLD

2009-12-26T15:19:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our planet. It’s a pretty neat place. If you decide to stay, we'd love to have you. There are only a few things you need to know:

1. There are no borders here, ergo, there are no countries here; ergo, there are no armies here. We are one planet; one multi-racial population under the jurisdiction of the United Council. Feel free to locate and relocate anywhere on the planet you choose. There are no passports or visas or immigration laws. If you can‘t live with that, then find yourself another planet!

2. No weapons are allowed here. If you own any weapons, get rid of them prior to landing on our planet. If you have a problem with that, keep moving!

3. Besides the ban on weaponry, there are only two other laws on our planet: 1) Do no harm, and 2) Treat all others as you would want to be treated. Break either one of them and you will immediately be returned to your previous planet. We do not have an appeals process in place. Break the law, you’re out! It’s that simple. If that doesn’t set well with you, screw you! Our planet, our rules!

4. There are no churches, no organized religions on our planet. You are free to worship the God of your choice with our blessing and without outside interference but, regardless of who or what you perceive Him to be, there will be no-one here on our planet to outline a dogma that you must zealously follow. The relationship between you and your God will be one-on-one. If you are outraged by this and consider it to be blasphemous, then God bless you and adios.

5. If you don’t have a trade or profession, don’t worry about it. Our planet has enough natural resources to provide you food, shelter, and other necessities until you can find work. We consider this to be a humanitarian gesture and nothing more. If you think that totally sucks because you consider it to be Socialism, then get lost! We don’t like labels on our planet.

6. When you are employed, based upon how much you earn, the United Council will assess a small percentage of your salary which will be used as needed to ensure the entire planet remains in balance and in harmony. If the thought of having to earn an honest living irritates you, too bad. Don’t care how old you are, we can find something productive for you to do. Object to that? Then bon voyage and get the hell out! Don’t want or need you here.

If you have read and can abide by the above set of rules, then welcome to our planet. It’s a pretty neat place.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-A TRIBUTE FROM ASHLEY

2009-12-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

If you read, “LEFTI AND ME” from my December Table Of Contents, the following, written and given to me this Christmas Eve by my granddaughter, Ashley, will show you how my life’s mission has been fulfilled. Here, then, are her words:

A PROPHET

I’ll tell you a story. It was before my time, a story told to me by my grandfather when I was very young. It was about a prophet who existed in an undated year, a story almost buried; erased from time’s fabric like so many mysterious legends people refuse to believe in but still tell to their children before they drift into sleep. My grandfather always told me that words are more powerful than you can imagine and within every story lies a powerful truth. So I searched for every truth buried in the pile of every fictitious event in order to beautify each plot. But for the longest time I could never find the truth in this fable he told me:

A boy was born and suffered much due to the poor timing of his birth. Orphaned by God and shown the dark shadows of our world, he still grew and dreamed. From a young age many people noticed an aura about this boy and as he grew it became stronger. Life, an unseen force, presented him with many obstacles but he overcame them all. His light, which was his life and his wisdom, protected him and those he chose to share it with. To the people he came to, some viewed him as a protector; others saw him as an angel. He shared his dreams with everyone he came across, asking no questions, passing no judgment. He simply wished this light, this universal wisdom, on everyone else, and that raised him above life itself, creating a prophet for our world, the one who can see past status and logic, the one who travels through dreams, the prophet born in the wrong world who still insisted on giving to a world not keen on magic, a world that forgot how to believe a long time ago. Because he knew that words convey magic, he asked everyone to listen to not only his words, but to the language of the earth, to the language of the elements surrounding us, and to the thoughts that stream through our minds. Then he asked that they pass these words onto others and they would ignite a light that lingered with the ones they told.

That was the abrupt end of the story and at its conclusion he would emit a deep sigh and stare at what seemed to be nothing.

After listening to his story and after having the time to search for the truth related to the tale, I think I have found the answer, the buried truth he spoke about. My grandfather has spent his whole life helping others and bestowing another chance for those who had given up. I see my grandfather as the prophet. He is an elderly man now, with not too much left to give except his words which dispense a light that I realize has also illuminated me and pointed me down the right path. The magic of his story is in the words he gives to us and how some of us will pass them along to others as he once did to us.

There is magic in my grandfather, the prophet that was born in the wrong world, dispensing words that are so powerful if you believe.

Pretty cool, huh? Now, you'll have to excuse me while a dry the few tears from my eyes - phil cerasoli

Copyrighted December 209 - Ashley Towers

-WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

2009-12-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

You have had to have noticed the incredible spate of TV shows, mostly on cable, now devoted to the investigation of the paranormal: Paranormal State, Ghost Hunters, Celebrity Ghost Stories, and Physic Kids being just a few of them. If you ignore the ones that are laughable and, whether credible or not, eliminate the ones wherein someone is just giving a verbal account of some paranormal experience, you’re left with some rather dramatic and compelling visual and audio evidence that suggests there just might be substance to the claims of ongoing life after death. One of the most bizarre cases is the one where a “spirit” communicated with the owner of a small house by imposing his words on Polaroid film. A question would be asked, the house owner would take a Polaroid and the film would be ejected with an answer scribbled on the finished film. The phenomenon drew enough media attention to where representatives from Polaroid, along with a local TV news crew, gathered at the man’s house to debunk the claim. Funny thing is, they couldn’t. Question after question was asked, and the answer to each appeared on the ejected picture - pictures taken with film that Polaroid had brought along with them to make sure that no tampering was involved. All of the events of that afternoon were captured on the video taken by the news crew and can probably be accessed and viewed on Google if you input the proper key words.

Not that this event, or any other, will cause the skeptics to change their stance. However, for those who can view occurrences like this with open minds, it might enlighten you a bit.

Research shows that there have been literally tens of millions of reported audio and visual encounters with the “spirit world”. Of course, many were contrived hoaxes and, yes, a great many were the result of overactive imaginations. But so many of these events have been reported by credible people that it’s hard not to give at least a significant percentage of them some credence.

So… if you can allow yourself to give some credibility to a major number of these accounts and then consider the Omega Point theory originated by the exiled Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and further expanded upon by Frank Tipler, that describes a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which the universe appears to be evolving, it leads one to an interesting scenario that might possibly exist in the future.

Given all of the above, I predict that we will reach the point in time when worlds collide - where our world merges with the spirit world and we will coexist in full view of each other. No more grieving at the loss of loved ones for they will be with us, for better or worse, sharing a planet that is now, and always has been, shared by beings of substance and spirits of vapor-like form.

Crazy? Probably. But if it becomes a reality, then decades from now someone, while surfing the web, will accidentally stumble across this article and I will replace Nostradamus as the greatest visionary of all time

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-TWO SNOWFLAKES

2009-12-23T08:26:00.000-08:00

I knew it! I KNEW IT!
Since I was in elementary school, I have been told that no two snow flakes are alike. I have to admit that tidbit of information has never had an impact on my life but it bothered me just the same. It seemed that this was just another case of the scientific community expecting us to accept their statements at face value. Like the earth is flat, like the sun orbits around the earth, like eggs contain cholesterol so nobody should eat them, etc. These once-accepted truths were eventually debunked, discarded and replaced with updated findings like ‘the world is round’, ‘the earth orbits the sun’, and, ‘yes, while eggs contain cholesterol, it’s the good type of cholesterol so we can start eating them again.’

I never really bought into the formulas and equations that resulted in the theory of no two snowflakes matching. Calculated mathematical probabilities aside, how in the name of heaven could anybody possibly know that? Does anybody even know how many trillions of snowflakes have fallen since the advent of recorded history? Is there a secret and intricate global matrix of sensors that somehow is able to scan each flake as it falls and then inputs that data into a mega computer which constantly looks for matches?

Now, apparently a publication of the American Meteorological Society states that two matching snow flakes were recently discovered by Nancy Knight of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. So to all those educators and men of letters who tried to impress me with their superior knowledge, hah, IN YOUR FACE!

Just as an afterthought, and as grateful as I am to Nancy for dispelling this myth, they actually pay her good money to sit there and compare snowflakes? What does she do in the summer? At any rate, with her revelation now public knowledge, I’m starting to seriously question their smug observation that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. We’ll see.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-THE POWER OF PRAYER

2009-12-22T09:35:00.000-08:00

I don’t get why cynics insist that prayers are never answered. In actuality, every single prayer that has ever been airmailed to the heavens has been answered and done so in a timely fashion. It’s just that, in 99.9% of the cases, the answer has been, “No!” Yet, unmindful of the odds against us, we continue to bombard God with our personal requests.

Some prayers, of course, aren’t selfish in nature at all. Some are sent for the good of Man. Every now and then, I’ll see the Pope on TV addressing his minions gathered at the Vatican as he prays for world peace. If ever I have the privilege of being granted an audience with him, I’ll have to ask him how that’s working out.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have fallen into that .1% category a few times in my life but I can’t determine if it was due to divine intervention, serendipity, coincidence or just dumb luck. Still, with the odds 99.9% against us, why do we even bother? I guess it’s because the time it takes to issue a heaven-sent plea is so minimal, we figure there’s nothing to lose. Too, in dire situations when all else has failed, praying, despite the dismal odds, becomes our last resort.

What would happen, do you suppose, if God got so tired of saying no that, out of frustration, He decided to start granting everybody’s prayers? Well, first off, everybody would win the lottery but the elation over having done so would quickly fade when we discovered, because everybody shared in the victory and after the state took it's 30% cut, we'd only get a buck forty of our $2.00 investment back. Second, because all of the terminally ill would be granted good health, no-one would ever die and the planet would soon become so overpopulated we’d be living face-to-face-to-face-to face. Maybe that eventuality would be offset a bit by the number of people who would inexplicably keel over just because someone had prayed for their demise.

One could spend an inordinate amount of time speculating, extrapolating and pontificating over the consequences of all prayers being answered but it would be pointless to do so. Nothing is going to change our reality and I think it might be because God would really appreciate it if we worked it out on our own; that He would be really grateful if we faced our mortality with a little grace instead of pleading with Him to somehow extend our lives to the point of immortality.

Those are my thoughts.Thanks for taking the time to absorb them. Vaya con Dios. My prayers are with you.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-AND I GUESS THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT THE BLUES

2009-12-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

While in London, I came across two street musicians, both playing a mean guitar. The open guitar cases at their feet had a few coins tossed there by passing pedestrians but they couldn’t have totaled more than a few dollars. Too bad. They were very, very good.

While in Puerto Vallarta, I came across three street musicians - a father playing a vibraphone, one son playing a guitar; the other son softly beating on a set of bongo drums. The jar that they had at their feet contained only a few pesos and a dollar bill or two placed there by passing tourists. Too bad. They were very, very good.

While in Montego Bay, I came across a Jamaican who told me his name was Old George. He was sitting on a street curb playing a battered guitar. I sat talking to him and listening to him play for awhile and when I left I gave him a few dollars. During the time I was sitting with him, no-one else bothered to stop and listen to his music or give him some monetary token of appreciation. Too bad. He was very, very good.

Here in the States, I have a Vietnamese friend who played an electric lead guitar in such a way that it rivaled anything that Eric Clapton ever produced. At one point in time, he wanted to be an integral part of the American music world but he never achieved that goal, instead settling for a successful career in engineering. Too bad. He was very, very good.

The world’s creative and artistic population is a frenetic calliope ridden by throngs of very, very good musicians, singers, artists, writers, poets and actors who comprise an infinite multitude in a finite world in which there are only a few brass rings that may be caught.

If they all resided in Utopia, all of them would be allowed to earn a decent living by doing what they love to do instead of doing what they need to do to acquire the money, rudiments, and trinkets needed for societal survival. But, reality being what it is, that will never happen. And most of those who didn’t make it to the big show probably don’t spend a lot of time moaning about it. Their creative flair remains at the forefront of their passions and, through venues like You Tube, they give the world a glimpse of their unrewarded talent. Even so, I know from personal experience that there are times when they close their eyes and daydream for a moment or two of the way things might have been. And I guess that’s why they call it the blues.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-HOLLYWOOD'S DESTRUCTION DERBY

2009-12-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

After watching several movies and their sequels in which each new release tries to outdo the previous by creating more innovative ways to kill people, i.e. Final Destination, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, SAW, etc., I began to wonder as to when this cinematic mayhem had its genesis. I think it was probably in 1973 or thereabouts when the film, “The Mechanic” starring Charles Bronson as a stoic hit man for “The Organization” was released.

In the film, Bronson lives alone in an incredibly posh mansion and it is there that he lounges in silk robes, drinks vintage cognac, admires his expensive baubles and meticulously reviews the dossiers on the people he is about to assassinate.

Bronson’s character is extremely inventive in the way in which he disposes of his victims. The first assignment, insofar as the movie was concerned, is to eliminate this guy that lives in a second floor apartment in the city. Bronson rents a second floor apartment that is conveniently vacant in the building across the street from the victim so he can have a clear view of this guy’s room. Then, when the poor schnook leaves to run some errands, Bronson breaks into his room, sets up a time-released bottle of acid over the kitchen’s gas lines, replaces the guy’s tea bags with ones that consists of a strong sleeping powder, then, if I remember correctly, places a plastic explosive inside a book on the bookshelf. So later, this guy returns, makes himself some ‘tea’, falls asleep, the acid eats away at the gas line, the gas fills the room, Bronson (from his room across the street) fires his rifle into the book that contains the explosive and the guy, along with the apartment, is blown to smithereens. Isn’t that unbelievably creative? Dumb me, I would have just shot the guy.

Bronson’s second victim is a mob honcho who is giving “The Organization” trouble. During his painstaking research, Bronson finds out that the man has a heart problem. So one night he lures the man from his home, then begins shooting at his feet. The guy instinctively tries to escape by running up a steep hill while Bronson keeps spraying bullets at the fleeing guy’s feet until he has a coronary. Man! Who would have ever come up with something that intricate? Dumb me, I would have just shot the guy.

Then the movie, for some inane reason I can’t recall, switches location from the U.S. to Europe where Bronson blows up cars, yachts and half of Italy. Then in the end he is killed by his young protégé who, in turn, is poisoned by a bottle of wine Bronson had left for him. Wow.

It’s been over thirty years since I saw the movie but I think I've captured the gist of it. At any rate, the film’s producers probably took the guy who wrote the script out on the town; wined him; dined him and gave him lots of money. Dumb me, I would have just shot the guy.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-ONCE UPON A PLANET, ONCE UPON A TIME

2009-12-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

Once upon a planet, once upon a time, there existed a society ruled by a kind empress named Naiveté, whose main decree was that her subjects treat sexual intimacy as a mysterious, exotic and very private thing. And it was in the underbelly of this society that a young teenage boy, born of not so noble birth, crudely began his exploration into the realm of sexual knowledge, learning not from the wizards of the land but rather from trial and error. He eventually learned the countless ways to pleasure a woman; the countless ways to be pleasured by them in return. And, in the ethos of that time, all of it remained as earlier noted: a mysterious, exotic and very private thing.

Then without warning, on a bleak November morning with the wind blowing cold down the eastern slopes, an army led by the king named Kinsey from the land of Sophistication invaded the kingdom and overthrew the empress. Within days of his taking control of the land, King Kinsey’s mandates drastically changed the ethos that had been in place for decades. The ruler decreed that sexual matters should no longer be a private thing, that the proper approach was to be truthfully blunt and that this would be beneficial to all, elevating the knowledge of the Naivetés to the level of the Sophisticates.

And so the implementation of the king’s decrees began. Once pristine, movies began to be more and more sexually explicit. Once free of blatant and exploitive sex, television now became immersed in both the blatant and the exploitive. And, in time, the king’s prophesy became reality. The Naivetés indeed rose to the level of the Sophisticates and, once attaining this level, everyone agreed that it was good. Everyone, that is, except for the young man who had by now reached the midpoint of his life. While wise enough to acknowledge the benefits of the king’s mandates, his heart remained heavy for he greatly missed the days when sex was a mysterious, exotic, and very private thing.

The years passed quickly; the sexual revelations continued to escalate and, one autumn morning, the middle-aged romantic who, in his mind had continued to retain the mental picture of himself as a youth, looked at himself in the mirror and realized, for the first time , that he had grown old.

And now, in the winter of his life, he sits next to his teen-aged granddaughters watching television and feelings of embarrassment, awkwardness, and sadness sweep over him when the announcer who is hawking Viagra informs them that, if an erection lasts more than four hours, they should immediately contact their physician. Or when a commercial matter-of-factly shows a sexually depleted couple in bed extolling the pleasures of His and Hers flavored personal lubricant. Or when a company unveils their newly designed condom made for both his pleasure as well as hers and the accompanying video shows a couple demanding that the pharmacist sell them some immediately then, with condoms in hand, rush from the store to consummate the sexual act. Or when a Dr. Phil show is entitled: 'Oral Sex Is The New Goodnight Kiss'. And the old man sighs, recalling the days of his youth when sexual intimacy was treated as a mysterious, exotic and very private thing. But he accepts the present reality and realizes that the events that still exist in the sea of his memories happened long, long ago, once upon a planet, once upon a time.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

- THE UNITED STATES OF PACIFICA

2009-12-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

There’s no easy way to tell you this so I’ll just blurt it out. I recently met with representatives of the 48 contiguous states, took a vote and we unanimously agreed to secede from America and form our own country, the United States of Pacifica. Hawaii, Alaska and the District of Columbia are going to have to fend for themselves. The decision admittedly has a few down sides but the advantages far outweigh them. Our national debt is now zero; our trade deficit is now zero, the amount of federal taxes we owe is zero, the number of arrogant and do-nothing congressmen and senators we have to put up with is zero. The number of special interest groups we have to deal with is zero. The number of countries we are at war with is zero.While we figure out how best to structure our new country, I’ll share this recorded phone call from a man claiming to be Vice President Joe Biden:

“Hi, Mr. Biden, (if that really is your name). What’s up?”

“What’s up? What’s up? Listen, you idiot, a country just can’t secede from itself!”

“Of course we can, Joe. We just did.”

“Are you f*****g crazy? It’s against the law!”

“Your law, Joe, not ours. At the moment we don’t have any laws but we’re working on it.”

“Don’t you understand, you brainless jerk? The U.N. won’t accept you! No other country in the world will accept you! NOBODY will recognize you!”

“So?”

“So? So?”

“Yeah. Who cares? We don’t need anybody’s approval. We’re going to set up each state as a stand-alone government. I guess you could call it a form of isolationism. We’ll go one day at a time from there.”

“Don’t you understand? You can’t do this! It‘ll never work!”

“This call is going nowhere, Joe. But, listen. If you really are Joe Biden, then we have an opening for Dictator of Rhode Island if you’re interested.”

“…………………………….”

“Joe, are you there?”

“How much does it pay?”

“That’s negotiable, Joe. Interested or not?”

“Dictator? Really? I’d be a dictator?”

“Yes.”

“………………………..”

“Joe, are you still there?”

“Uh, yeah. Listen, let me get back to you on my cell phone, O.K.?”

“No problem, Joe. Talk to you later.”

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-AN EMAIL FROM GOD

2009-12-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

After my first face-to-face encounter with God (See “Playing Poker With God” in the December Table of Contents), I received an e-mail from Him. He addressed me as Phillip. I hate it when people call me Phillip. Further, for years people called me Junior which I really hated. I mean, I wasn’t even technically a Junior. My dad, whose name was Felix, decided he liked the name Phillip better so he borrowed it and added a Junior after my name. That really pissed….Wait….where was I? Oh, yeah, the God thing. Anyway, here’s the e-mail:

Dear Phillip,

I hope this e-mail finds you well. (Oh, wait. What a silly thing to say. I know exactly how things are going for you, being God and all).

After our conversation during the World Series Of Poker, which, as you‘ve probably guessed, I won and then donated the eight million dollar purse to My favorite game preserve in Kenya (as you’ll recall, the animal kingdom is very special to Me), I realized that I was a little snippy with you and decided to send My apologies.

In pulling up your file, I see that you’ve done your fair share of sinning but I also see that, during your later years, you’ve also done a lot of good. Good for you! Keep it up! Of course, no matter how hard you try, you’ll never gain the esteem in which I hold the Bengal Tiger, for example, but don’t let that stop you from trying to change the world of humans for the better. Remember, everything counts!

When we last spoke, you broached the subject of heaven and hell and I was a bit evasive in my response. Let Me enlighten you. Your next destination will neither be heaven or hell or purgatory. It will simply be the place in which you continue your existence. (I’m not going to tell you what form your body will take because that would ruin the surprise. I will say, whoa, are you going to be blown away!). At any rate, during the course of that secondary existence, you’ll find that the arguments regarding My existence, how you should pay Me homage, and the existence of heaven and hell will still be fiercely debated ad nauseum. I know, silly, isn’t it? You humans are so…what’s the word I’m looking for….oh, yeah, stupid!

Anyway, Phillip, I’ve got to run. I’m sorry you had the misfortune of drawing the same table as Me during the poker tournament. You play poker well enough that you might have at least been able to make the money list had we not met so early in the tourney.

Do not reply to this e-mail as it will end up in My kingdom’s version of your landfills along with the billions of other e-mails, questions, pleas and prayers I receive on a daily basis.

Have a nice existence. Your pal,

God

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-HOW SEA MONKEYS RUINED MY LIFE

2009-12-18T19:33:00.000-08:00

I thought that they had become extinct years ago but, Migod, they’re still around and they even have their own web site where you can order them on-line and purchase all of the state-of-the-art accessories a sea monkey could possibly need or want in order to lead a healthy, fun-filled and meaningful life.

Back in the Seventies I was looking for a special gift for my wife’s birthday and I came across a magazine ad extolling the thrill of owning and training these captivating creatures. The ad’s picture featured a man wearing an ear-to-ear grin and waving a slender black wand while dozens of Dr. Seuss-like monkeys, also wearing ear-to-ear grins, responded to their master’s commands by turning back flips, tightrope walking and, in general, having a blast. Since my wife had previously expressed a passionate interest in having a monkey as a pet I figured that this would be the perfect gift.

I sent off my check and a few weeks later, a plain brown package appeared in our mailbox. I stealthily went to our guest bedroom and quietly opened it lest my wife hear the noise and discover my gift before the special day. When the package was opened I was a little bit confused because the contents of the box contained material that looked like…I don’t know…stuff resembling microscopic pieces of Top Ramen. Assuming the process consisted of some kind of caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis, I followed the directions by emptying the contents into a fish bowl filled with tap water. Then, after hiding the bowl in the closet, I turned in for the night.

The next morning, I stealthily returned to the guest room, opened the closet door, and retrieved the fishbowl. Amazingly, the ‘stuff’ had been transformed from lifeless forms into a churning sea of zillions of tiny Top Ramens. But no matter how closely I peered at them; no matter how much I squinted my eyes, none of them even remotely resembled a monkey.

Disappointment began to set in but, because my wife’s dream was to own a pet monkey, I was determined to make the best of a tenuous situation. The first problem I encountered was in the feeding process. None of these things showed the slightest inclination that they were about to eat the food that was included in the shipment. I tried without success to feed them bananas, bits of lettuce, carrots, bologna, Jello, and peanut butter cups. I even dropped a pork chop bone into the bowl which, when combined with the other remnants of food, started turning the water into a rather dismal, bleak looking shade of brown. The creatures, apparently with an aversion to pork, ignored this offering as well.

Abandoning my efforts to provide them nourishment, I got the slender black wand I had purchased earlier and began their training regimen. Trying to emulate the guy in the ad, I’d grin ear-to-ear and wave the wand while barking out orders into the bowl for them to turn back flips and somersaults. The overwhelming mass of them responded to my commands by immediately swimming to the bottom of the bowl where they remained: sullen, brooding and completely deaf to my pleas to return to the center.

But six of them remained at the center of the bowl and at least gave the impression that they were trying. This rekindled my initial enthusiasm and I continued the training with the six, whom I named Fang, Thunder, Lightning, Wildfire, Cyclone, and Fred. The six of them trained with notable effort but, in the end, they were a long way from resembling the happy monkeys depicted in the ad that had enticed me.

On my wife’s birthday, I had her close her eyes while I brought the fish bowl, which by now was emanating a peculiar stench, into the living room. Instructing her to open her eyes, I handed her the bowl and wished her a happy birthday. Taking the bowl, she frowned in silence at its contents for a full three or four minutes.

“They’re sea monkeys,” I told her.

“No, they’re brine shrimp," she hissed.

"What? "

“They’re brine shrimp, you moron. You got me a bowl of brine shrimp for my birthday?”

“Brine shrimp?” I asked in disbelief. “The ad said they were sea monkeys!”

My wife glared at me with the iciest stare I have ever seen, then walked to the kitchen, emptied the fishbowl into the sink, and turned on the garbage disposal sending a zillion sea monkeys to their grisly death. Then, without packing a bag, she left the house and was gone for two weeks without contacting me.

I guess she was all talk. In retrospect, I don’t think she ever really wanted a monkey after all.

copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-THE POWER OF THE LYRICS

2009-12-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

I believe where popular music draws its power, at least insofar as the compositions spanning the last fifty years is concerned, is from the poetry of the lyrics and not the music itself. For example, while Elton John’s songs all have a nice musical flow; an infectious beat, it’s the lyrics written by his partner, Bernie Taupin, that make the most impact. Like the chorus from ‘Candle In The Wind”:

“And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind,
Never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in.
And I would have liked to have known you but I was just a kid.
Your candle burned out long before… your legend ever did.”

I suppose if you had to pick the best lyricist of the last 60 years, it would be hard to argue with those who put the team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney at the top of their list. So many beautiful words. “Across The Universe” contains so many poetically beautiful phrases it’s hard to pick a favorite. The song is abundantly laced with incredible metaphors, like:

“Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box….”

And few songwriters have managed to capture the essence of the down-and-outs like Kris Kristofferson:

“Busted flat in Baton Rouge; headin’ for the trains;feelin’ nearly faded as my jeans…” (Me And Bobby McGee)

Or:

“Well, I woke up Sunday mornin’ with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. And the beer I had for breakfast was so good that I had one more for dessert.” (Sunday Morning Coming Down)

Too many others to mention, including Paul Simon’s countless poems set to music. Like the phrases from “The Boxer”:

“Seeking only workman’s wages I come looking for a job but I get no offers.Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue. I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.”

I used to abhor Rap music. Hated it even more when it evolved into Hip Hop. I still can’t get into the monotone styles utilized by the rappers. But when I ignored the noise and took the time to read the lyrics, I found an awful lot of powerful poetry there.

So what’s my point? I don’t have a point! I’m just grateful that, in this world filled with so many obstacles strewn along our path, I can always find a lyricist whose words can relate to where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m going and, somehow, that makes the journey a little bit easier.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-WHEN THE IMPOSSIBLE BECOMES POSSIBLE

2009-12-17T18:45:00.000-08:00

" Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right." - Henry Ford

I believed them when they said that it was impossible to scale Mount Everest. At an elevation of over 29,000 feet and adding the frigid conditions and lack of oxygen to the equation, they said the human body could never achieve that goal. Failed expedition after failed expedition, some of which turned fatal, gave that statement almost omnipotent credence. Then in 1953 a team led by Edmund Hillary and Terzing Norgay destroyed that myth by reaching Everest’s peak. It’s interesting to note that once that negative mindset of “impossible” was removed, a large number of adventurers, somewhere around 2000 of them, have been able to conquer the mountain and its elements.

I believed them when they said that it was impossible for anyone to run a mile in under four minutes. They said the human body was incapable of ever achieving that goal. Race after race that ended in over four minutes gave that statement almost omnipotent credence. Then in 1954, the English miler, Roger Bannister, went out and ran the mile in 3:59.4. It’s interesting to note that once that negative mindset of “impossible” was removed, a large number of runners have since been able to run a sub-four minute mile.

A negative mindset can be a dangerous thing; a formidable opponent. If you have heard all of your life from people who are pillars in their field that something is impossible and if you take their word at face value, what are the odds that you’d even attempt to prove them wrong?

In a classic example of creating a negative mindset, Charles Duell, the U.S. Patent Office Commissioner in 1889, is reported to have said, “Everything that can be invented, has been invented.” I wonder how many potential inventors he scared off with that statement?

I think ‘They’ should issue a formal statement that states everything is possible; that if you can imagine it, you can do it. There would be caveats, of course. For example, I can’t ever foresee the day when my body, at least in mortal form, will be able to pass through brick walls. But surely there must be psychological studies in existence that prove people who have the mindset of Possibility achieve a hell of a lot more than those who retain the mindset of Impossibility.

I used to believe them when they said something was impossible. I don’t anymore.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-AN EPIPHANY OF GRAND PROPORTION

2009-12-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

In the early Eighties I was still on top of my game, still cocky, still arrogant, still a little too full of myself. At the time I was Vice President of Manufacturing of Action Instruments, a San Diego based electronics company, and I had around 200 people reporting to me. One of those people was a stockroom clerk named Ed, a gentle, nondescript hulk of a man doing a necessary but mundane job. Each day during the exercising of my management style of MBWA (Management By Walking Around), I’d see him and ask the same questions whose answers I really wasn‘t that interested in hearing: “How‘s it going, Ed?”; “How’s the family, Ed?”. etc.

Memory dims, so I’m not sure of exactly how the odd sequence of events transpired but Ed and I eventually wound up playing golf every Saturday. And, because we were both early birds, we’d drive to the golf course in the early morning darkness, park outside the pro shop and share a thermos of coffee while we waited for first light. And it was during one of these early morning sessions that Ed told me his story:

As a very young man, Ed was in the army during World War ll and was involved in extensive combat. He described one particularly fierce battle in an open and blood-soaked field in Germany with constant gunfire, grenades going off and, every now and then, the light cast by flares silhouetting the advancing German troops.

As he was telling me this I could almost feel what it must have been like for him during the savage conflict, not knowing if, in the next moment or two, a bullet with his name on it would find him. And it was then that I realized, even before Ed had completed his account of the battle, that this man who I had regarded as a menial stockroom clerk had been to hell and back. And, as Ed’s soft voice continued it became muted in my mind as I had the epiphany that changed the way in which I viewed the world’s population. I had always lumped the peoples of the world into basic geographical divisions: the Chinese, the Japanese, the Americans, the Canadians, et al., whose grand total consisted of about six billion faceless inhabitants. Now, in the blink of an eye, Ed’s story made me now consider them as six billion on-going biographies, six billion stories, each laden with highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, heartbreak and joy. And I knew that the more stories I listened to would not only allow me to gain insight, knowledge and, in some cases, wisdom, but would also allow my near-empty reservoir of empathy to become full.

I don’t remember how I did at golf that day. But I do remember that that was the day I became a little less cocky, a little less arrogant, and a little less full of myself. I stopped regarding myself as a Vice President, stopped regarding the people who reported to me as mere cogs of our manufacturing process, and began to consider myself as just another one of the six billion human beings with a story to tell. If you like, one day I’ll tell it to you.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-TIME’S 'MAN OF THE YEAR' IS WHO?

2009-12-16T20:02:00.000-08:00

So when Time magazine named Ben Bernanke as their 'Man Of The Year', my initial response was, “Who in the hell is Ben Bernanke?” (Which ought to give you a clue as to how much I have tuned out the current political scene from my daily life). When I learned that Bernanke is the Federal Reserve Chairman I was absolutely dumbfounded. How can arguably the most influential man in terms of controlling our economy; an economy that is not only out of control but is in total freefall, be considered for anything other than a public flogging? Man Of The Year? Wouldn‘t that be the same as the Toastmasters naming George W. Bush as their Public Speaker of the Year?

Part of Time magazine’s justification in naming Bernanke stated that if he hadn’t been on the job, “the economy could have been in worse shape“. Oh, really? How?

A CNN Poll revealed that 71% of the people polled disagreed with Time’s choice. One of them undoubtedly was Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, who, in a released statement, said "I find it ironic that a man who has spent the last year rewarding others for failure is now being named 'Person of the Year. But if Time magazine is in the business of rewarding failure, Ben Bernanke is their man -- he has certainly excelled at that."

In adding to their rationale, a Time article stated: "He (Bernanke) doesn't have a commanding presence. He isn't a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices.“ Well, O.K. I’m not a mesmerizing speaker; I don’t have a commanding presence, I don’t swagger and I don’t have an oversize office either. So why in the hell wasn’t I nominated for Man Of The Year? I’m doing a better job with my budget that Bernanke is with his!

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION: 12-23-44

2009-12-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

So I’m thinking, what if the Mayans had predicted the end of the world, not on December 23 of 2012, but in 1944. And what if, weeks prior to that date, science had confirmed that the world, indeed, was going to be destroyed. I would have been a nine year old boy being raised by a set of no nonsense, Old World Italian parents and I can imagine how the conversation would have ensued during that Last Supper on the eve of destruction. I post this with the full knowledge that only my brother and sister will be able to relate to it:

ME: “But, Mom, I don’t wanna die! I DON“T WANNA DIE! I‘m just a kid! It‘s not fair!”

MOM: “How many times I gotta tell you, don’t talk with your mouth full!”

ME: “But, Mom…”

DAD: “Stop whining before I smack you! And eat your tripe! I see you trying to hide it under your mashed potatoes. Manga before I smack you!””

ME: “But I hate tripe, I don’t even know what it is. It’s like chewing on a wide rubber band with tomato sauce.”

DAD: “Do you want me to smack you?”

ME: “Mom, why is God doing this to us?

MOM: It’s His will. Whadda you gonna do?”

DAD: “Whadda you gonna do?”

ME: “Mom, if we’re all gonna die, will we be able to be with Jesus?”

MOM: “Not your dad. He’s going to Hell.”

DAD: “What the hell you talking about? You think I’m gonna go to Hell just because I keep threatening to kill all the sons-a-bitches who’ve screwed me over?”

ME: “Then it’s just you and me, Mom? It’s just you and me that are going to heaven?”

MOM: “No, son. I’m the only one going to heaven.”

ME: What? WHAT? What’s gonna happen to me?”

MOM: “Stop waving that fork around. You’re gonna poke your eye out.”

ME: “Why can’t I go to heaven? What did I ever do?”

MOM: “You never received communion. You can’t get into heaven unless you’ve received communion. Whadda you gonna do?”

ME: “Then what’s going to happen to me?”

MOM: “You’re gonna go to Purgatory.”

ME: “WHAT?”

MOM: “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably a nice place. You’ll make a lot of new friends.”

ME: “I don’t want to go to Purgatory!”

DAD: “GOD DAMN IT! STOP YOUR SNIFFLING AND EAT YOU’RE GODDAMN TRIPE!”

ME: “If I eat my tripe, can we go to St. Mary’s and get me my communion before it’s too late?”

DAD: “Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how heavy the traffic is and how crowded the church will be? Besides, it’s almost time for Jack Benny on the radio! Now, quit whining before I smack you.“”

MOM: “Jack Benny’s not on tonight. Nothing’s on the radio. Tomorrow’s the end of the world, remember? Why would anybody want to listen to Jack Benny now?”

ME: “Mom…….”

MOM: “Eat your food. Don’t help the Japs.”

ME: “What?”

MOM: “Your Uncle Johnny is in the army fighting the Japs.”

ME: “I know, but how is my not eating tripe going to help the Japs?”

DAD: “ARE YOU GONNA DO WHAT YOUR MOTHER SAYS OR AM I GONNA HAVE TO SMACK YOU?”

MOM: “Here. Drink your Cod Liver Oil.”

ME “I don’t want to. It tastes like rotten fish.”

MOM: “Look. I mixed it with orange juice. Drink it. It’s good for you.”

ME: “We’re all going to be dead tomorrow. What difference does it make if I drink it?”

DAD: “If you don’t drink it, I’m gonna….”

MOM: “See, was that so bad. How did it taste?”

ME: “It tasted like someone dropped a rotten fish in my orange juice. Dad, if I eat my tripe, can I at least open my Christmas presents?”

DAD: “No. It ain’t Christmas yet.”

ME: “There’s not gonna be a Christmas. We’re gonna be dead tomorrow!”

DAD: “Whadda you gonna do?”

ME: “I have to go to the bathroom.”

DAD: “No you don’t! You’ve stuffed your mouth with tripe and you’re gonna flush it down the toilet. That’s the last straw.” SMACK! “Now, go to your room. You’re grounded for two weeks!”

ME: “But tomorrow’s gonna be the end….”

SMACK!

MOM: “Hey! You didn’t have to smack him so hard. Son, go to the Christmas tree and open that small green package. It’s that pair of socks you wanted.”

ME: (sniffle) “Socks? I never wanted a pair of socks.”

MOM: “What! Now you’re gonna start whining about what Santa brought you? I ought to tell your dad to give you another smack. Hey, where do you think you‘re going?”

ME: “To my room. I’m too scared to watch the end of the world. I’m going to slit my wrists and get it over with.”

DAD: “NOT UNTIL YOU FINISH YOUR TRIPE!”

copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-DEATH OF A PIONEER

2009-12-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

Sol Price died yesterday. He was 93.

The younger generations may accept this news with an indifferent shrug but for those who knew him or knew of him, Sol Price will be remembered as either the man responsible for running their small businesses into the ground or the man who single-handedly altered the course of the American retail industry.

In the Fifties, Sol founded Fed Mart, the world’s first warehouse discount store and, years later, added a second: a membership-only facility appropriately called The Price Club. At the time, owning a Price Club membership card was something of a status symbol. If a friend asked you if you’d like to grab a beer after work, you could pull your card from your wallet and smugly tell him that you couldn’t…that you were going to the Price Club.

There were major savings to be enjoyed by the club’s membership but they came with a significant caveat: you had to buy the items in bulk. If, for example, your dog was out of food and you went to the Price Club to replenish it you were forced to buy the prepackaged carton that was heavy enough to require a fork lift to transport it to your car and large enough to where it contained enough dog food to feed an entire kennel for a month.

The Price Club eventually merged with Costco to become the model for other entrepreneurs who started their own warehouse discount stores and the rest is pretty much history, a history very much in evidence as you note the number of Wal-Mart stores now blanketing the country.

The long and winding path that started at Fed Mart and ended up at Wal-Mart’s door is strewn with casualties. Besides the small businesses that couldn’t compete with warehouse discount pricing, thousands of American jobs were sacrificed when the discounters found that countries like China were more than willing to manufacture the needed product at a much lower cost than American firms.

It’s hard for me to blame Sol for the bittersweet harvest of his entrepreneurial seeds. From all accounts, he was a decent and philanthropic human being who gave back an awful lot to his community. Further, he was a visionary who proved that one man can change the world. And perhaps it’s this man’s vision that holds the vial that contains the cure for America’s comatose economy. If America is to recover from this economic depression, I don’t think it will be because of any legislation. I believe it will be due to a new wave of entrepreneurs blessed with the innovative mind of Sol Price, people who can think outside the box and find new ways to lift our country back on its feet.

So, now that he’s passed, you can remember him as either the sickness, the possible cure, or both. Either way, we need more like him. Rest in peace, Sol.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-WHAT THE BLEEP?

2009-12-14T14:49:00.000-08:00

I don’t recall the name of the comedian who said it, but the statement resonates with my own feelings on organized religion:

“I was raised as Catholic until I reached the age of reason.”

Reason tells me that it’s difficult to believe that God created woman from Adam’s rib; difficult to believe that Jonah got swallowed by a whale and set up housekeeping there for days. Further, it’s hard for me to have faith in a religion whose opulent headquarters in the Vatican City holds treasures gathering dust instead of being distributed to the people who need them; hard to have faith when so many priests scandalized their church and their God for their sexual offenses against young altar boys. Too, how can I possibly believe that Catholics, who are a religious minority among all of the other religions of the world, are the only ones who will be allowed entrance to Heaven while the other billions of poor souls will be destined to dwell in eternal Purgatory or Hell?

It’s not just the Catholic faith I have trouble with. All of the religions of the world seem laced with strict and stifling dogmas that virtually ban the sweet tasting pleasures of the life with which we’ve all been blessed. I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and demanded I pick one, it would probably be one of the Eastern sects. In my mind, they seem more in tune with God, Nature, and Self than the rigid dogmas of the West.

On the other side of the coin sit the Science guys and I’m not all that enamored with their views on life either. I’m in awe of the technological progress that they’re responsible for but the scientific landscape is populated with too many cynics, those people who, in the words of Marylyn Ferguson, know all the answers without having taken the time to probe the questions. Their’s is a tunnel-visioned world where the only thing that exists is that which can be seen under a microscope.

A long time ago I found a different road, one that’s traveled by more people than I think either Science or Religion will acknowledge. It’s the road of Spirituality and, yes, I know that the phrase, “I’m more spiritual than religious” has become a trite saying, catalogued with others that are now passe, like, “Hey, there, what’s your sign?” But, at least in my case, it’s true.

Spirituality is a road that bisects the worlds of Science and Religion, a highway free of billboards extolling the virtues of the lands that lay to the left and right of the path I am traveling. There are no dogmas that need be followed as you make your way along this boulevard at your own pace. It is a journey where one is at peace with the past, at peace with the present, and excited with the anticipation of what might await just beyond the horizon.

So this is my road. I travel it and do not try to convince others that it‘s the road they should be taking as well. Their road may well be the right one, the wrong one, or perhaps all the roads will converge at the same destination. What the BLEEP do I know?

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-WHERE'S BILLY MAYS WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

2009-12-14T13:04:00.000-08:00

I received an email this morning that tugged at my heartstrings. It was from a lady in Nigeria stating that her $43,000,000 was about to be confiscated and she desperately needed my help in getting those funds transferred to an American bank. For my efforts in assisting her, she was willing to give me 50% of those funds once the transfer was completed. All I had to do was to send her $1200 to grease the palms of some nefarious Nigerian individuals whose help she had solicited.

Unfortunately I don’t have the $1200 to spare so I’m just adding her email to the stack of 287 other emails I have received over the last year or two, mostly from Nigeria, each with similar pleas and each offering me millions if I would assist them in the transfer of money from their country to the U.S. It’s funny, but I was under the misconception that Nigeria was kind of a poverty-stricken country but their financial institutions are obviously loaded to the brim with billions of dollars, all of which are about to be confiscated. Anyway, in the past I’ve responded to their requests via email and asked them if they could just send me the money and deduct their expenses from that amount. To date, I’ve received no replies.

I’m not sure how these people got my name or why, out of the billions of people in the world, they chose me to share their wealth. It’s just my bad luck that I don’t have the paltry sums each of them need to set the wheels in motion. I say bad luck because, after adding up all the dollars I stand to gain, and including those emails that stated I have won the Irish Sweepstakes and the national lottery of England, my net worth would jump from $344.32 to $14,000,000,000 propelling me to or beyond the stratum of Bill Gates.

I’d really like to help these distressed people out. I wish they’d answer my emails so I could give them my idea of how to solicit the help they need. I’d tell them to pool their resources, hire a pitch-man like the late, great, and very vocal Billy Mays, and bombard American TV’s:

“HI, THERE. BILLY MAYS HERE WITH THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME! TIRED OF NOT BEING WEALTHY? TIRED OF NOT HAVING YOUR OWN MANSION, YOUR OWN YACHT? THEN HERE’S THE ANSWER! FOR JUST $1200 WE’LL SEND YOU THE NAME OF A NIGERIAN MILLIONAIRE IN DISTRESS WHO IS WILLING TO SPLIT THEIR WEALTH WITH YOU RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE! BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE! ORDER WITHIN THE NEXT 30 MINUTES AND WE’LL SEND YOU AN ADDITIONAL NAME OF A NIGERIAN MILLIONAIRE IN DISTRESS AT NO EXTRA COST! THAT’S A $43,000,000 VALUE FOR ONLY $1200! ORDER TODAY!" Offer not available in stores.

I think that would probably do it.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-STORM WATCH

2009-12-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

It rains a lot in Seattle. You’re probable familiar with the quip, ‘There are two seasons in Seattle: July and winter.' The city’s citizenry have long been used to it and nonchalantly take it in stride. On any given segment of the TV news, their meteorologist usually states matter-of-factly: "It’s raining now. It‘s going to rain tomorrow. The seven day outlook calls for more rain. Back to you, Murray".

It doesn’t rain that much in San Diego. When it does, at the first sign of precipitation, all of our TV stations , with variations on the same theme, react thusly:

“Good evening, San Diego, I’m John Carroll and this is what’s happening in San Diego. Its raining! The storm could bring as much as an inch of rain before it moves eastward. We begin our coverage with our “Storm Watch 2009" team covering the storm from all angles . First to Ed Thomas in the east county:”

“John, as you can see, it’s raining. (Tom, get that picture of those two cows in the pasture behind me). John, as you can see, those two helpless animals are standing there unattended and , there’s no easy way to say this, they are getting wet! A few moments ago, a horse was also in the field with the cows. I’m no sure where he went but you can take my word for it, that animal was wet as well. My cameraman and I are also getting wet but we’re going to stick it out. Back to you in the studio.”

“Thanks, Ed. Be careful out there. Now to Susan Bledsoe covering the storm from a protected vantage point in Mission Valley:”

“John, that raging current you see behind me isn’t a river, it’s a street with water up to two inches in depth. The police are on their way to cordon off the area but in the meantime, foolhardy motorists are actually driving their cars through it. Omigod! Look, there’s a Jeep Cherokee attempting to get across! Thank God, he made it to the other side, That was close! Back to you, John.”

“Thanks, Susan. In other news, the most horrific case of genocide since the Holocaust….”

Off-camera voice: Excuse me, John, we have a live update from our Storm Watch 2009 team. Let’s go to Terry Anderson somewhere along Highway 8 where traffic is backed up for miles in both directions:

“John, as you can see, a policeman is issuing a ticket to a car pulled off on the shoulder of the road. We first thought that this was a storm-related issue but it turns out that the cop pulled the other car over for having expired registration. Regardless, the situation has created a massive traffic jam. And, most important, the officer, in a sterling example of following his duty regardless of the danger, is getting wet! Back to you, John.”

“Thank you, Terry. In other news, North Korea has launched a nuclear missile and, judging from its direction, President Obama has ordered a state of emergency to all residents living in the state of….”

Off-camera voice: John, we have to interrupt you for an update from Ed in East County.

“Ed Thomas here with an update, John. The rain’s has eased a bit but as you can see behind me, nobody has arrived to get those two cows out of the rain. Back to you.”

“Thanks, Ed. Now to our in-studio meteorologist, Fred Farmer, to give us his educated analysis of the storm.”

“Thanks, John, Here you can see the rain on the Doppler screen depicted by a green blob. You probably don’t understand the term ‘Doppler’ nor do you understand why rain is depicted as a green blob but if you had a degree in meteorology like I do, it would make perfect sense to you. You can also see that the green blob is slowly moving in an easterly direction. Because I have a degree in meteorology, I could probably explain why the blob is moving but, because you don’t have a degree in meteorology like I do, you probably couldn’t grasp the concept. Back to you, John.”

“Thanks for that update, Frank. Now to Samuel Sothern in our mountain area where the possibility of snow exists. Sam, is it snowing there? “

“No.”

“How about rain. Is it raining there?”

“No.”

“Are there any cows in the area?”

“What?”

“Cows! Do you see any cows?”

“Well, it’s awfully dark out here but I think I see an animal off to my left. I guess it could be a cow.”

“Is it wet?”

“What?”

“For God’s sake, man, is it wet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Alright. Thanks, Sam. We’re out of time, San Diego, but we’ll interrupt our regular programing with updates as they occur."

Off -camera voice: We now join the rerun of 'Seinfeld' already in progress.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-CHAINED TO TRADITION

2009-12-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

Tradition is a spoiled, demanding, and oftentimes graceless mistress; a materialistic succubus who compels me to be her loyal subject; requires me to constantly spend my dwindling supply of money on certain days of the year in a futile effort to quench her insatiable appetite for Stuff. Even though she has more Stuff that she can reasonably use, she firmly insists that on every Valentines Day, birthday, Christmas, anniversary, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, or any other Day she deems special, I go out and buy her even more Stuff.

I must admit that there are times when she is a wonderful lover. Those priceless moments associated with Tradition when I escort her to mingle with family, friends or loved ones to share some warm and memorable days are times when I am truly grateful that she is a part of my life. But before each of those times come to a close, her true colors emerge and, sooner or later, the warmness of the moment is cooled when she looks at me and asks, “So where’s my Stuff?”

Besides her appetite for worldly goods, Tradition is a heartless, blatant liar. Like the time when she compelled me to pass along the myth of Santa Claus to my grandchildren, telling them that if they were good, Santa would unload all kinds of Stuff on them. Of course, they were heartbroken when they eventually learned that Santa is just a myth and it was really their grandfather, along with their mother, who went out and got them all of their Christmas Stuff. And now, either consciously or subconsciously, they will harbor resentment over the fact that they were lied to and betrayed until that point in time arrives when Tradition compels them to pass along the same set of lies to their children.

Out of financial necessity, I’m seriously thinking of breaking off my relationship with Tradition, at least from the standpoint of buying her more Stuff. If I see some Stuff I think a friend or loved one would really enjoy, then, if I can afford to, I’ll buy it on the spot and give it to them, rather than hold on to the item until that special day when Tradition yells at me for not giving the Stuff to her.

I found out years ago that Tradition has been anything but a faithful mistress; found out that she had (and is still having) ongoing affairs with the entire country. So many of her lovers now buy her so much Stuff on a regular basis that, if they were to suddenly stop buying her Stuff on those special days, hundreds of businesses who manufacture and sell Stuff For Special Days would go out of business.

All of my family and friends realize that times are tough and don’t seem to mind when I show up on one of those Special Days without Stuff. But Tradition is standing next to me sulking and, later that night in bed when I try to make amends, she turns her back on me and tells me she has a headache, leaving me to feel like an idiot for having wasted a Viagra.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-FIND THE PIGEON; FIND THE WORLD

2009-12-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I realized that despite my extensive travels; despite the countless scenes I have watched on television or at the movies; and despite the changing panorama that unfolds before me daily, in my 70-plus years, while I have seen just about every bird on the planet, I have never, never, never seen a baby pigeon. Last night, out of boredom, I did a web search for “pictures of baby pigeons” and, within nanoseconds, was provided links to 2,070,000 sites of baby pigeon pictures, thus enabling me to finally cross “find a baby pigeon” off of my To-Do list.

The Internet, and more specifically, the search engine, if not the most incredible invention of all time, is pretty high on the list. About a year ago, I read a report by some professor with a lot of initials after his name that stated the entire sum of man’s knowledge is now accessible on the Web. Think about that. Everything that we have ever learned over the centuries; all of the works of the Renaissance painters; the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle; the history of the rise and fall of empires; the biographies of everyone of note; everything; everything; EVERYTHING is now available to us with just the touch of a few keystrokes. The educational potential is immeasurable, the potential for individual enlightenment is staggering.

So how are we utilizing this educational and enlightening fountain of knowledge? According to Bing.com, the top ten Web searches for 2009 were, in descending order, as follows:

10.Jaycee Dugard (kidnapped in 1991 and found in August of this year).
9. Billy Mays (famous pitchman who passed away in June)
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin (former stars of Jon and Kate Plus 8, the public destruction of their marriage was a big topic of interest)
7. Cash For Clunkers (a U.S. government program to replace less fuel efficient vehicles with newer, more fuel-economic cars)
6. Patrick Swayze (famous actor who passed away in September)
5. Farrah Fawcett (famous actress and pop culture icon who passed away in June)
4. Stock Market
3. Swine Flu
2. Twitter

And the number one, most requested search in 2009:

1. Michael Jackson

(Sigh).

Just as an abstract footnote, there are 28,000,000 porn sites on the Web which will be watched by over 48,000,000 adult Americans.

I’m not exactly sure what that says about us as a society. It just seems like the majority of us are wasting a truly miraculous resource.

Unlike television, where we are forced to order from its bill of fare consisting of, with a few notable exceptions, junk food, the Internet allows us to create our own menu.

Given that, and reviewing that Top 10 list, I guess I’m a little surprised and disappointed to find that there aren’t that many gourmets out there.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-PLAYING POKER WITH GOD

2009-12-09T17:59:00.000-08:00

"You always won every time you placed a bet,

You’re still damn good; no-one’s gotten to you yet."
-’You’re Still The Same’ - Bob Seger

So it’s halfway through day one at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and I find myself almost out of chips. This is because the one that’s seated directly across from me, winning every hand that‘s dealt, is God. It’s hard not to recognize Him. First, He’s larger than life and attired in a shimmering white robe that seems to emanate light, and His massive mane of white hair cascades down His head to perfectly blend with the flowing white beard that adorns His face. Second, there’s that huge name tag pinned to His robe:

Anyway, when a fifteen minute break is announced and the other seven players have left the table to relieve their bloated bladders, it’s just God and I sitting at the felt-covered table. He’s hunched over His chips, slowly stacking them in neat columns while I’m simmering over the unfair advantage He has brought to the tournament. I look at Him and, with a voice dripping with sarcasm, I growl, “You know, gambling is considered a sin in some religions!”

He doesn’t look up from His chips but He answers in a soft, bass voice, “Of course. It’s the 14th Commandment.”

His response confuses me. “Fourteenth? I thought there were only ten.”

“Well, I guess you‘re wrong, aren‘t you?” he snaps. “There are fifteen. Five on each of the three slabs Moses chiseled. But, being the klutz he was, he dropped the third slab into a 250 foot ravine. Shattered to bits, it did.”

We were getting off-topic. “Listen, God. Meaning no disrespect, but You being in this tournament is totally unfair and unjust! You know what everybody’s cards are going to be before they’re even dealt. In fact, You’re probably willing the dealer to deal you any cards You want. Nobody else has a chance in hell of winning! With over 1,000 people paying a $10,000 entry fee for a tournament You knowing beforehand that You‘re going to win is an outrageous, egregious crime!”

He kept His head pointing at his chips but He raised His steely eyes towards me and gave me His response. “So?”

I was getting angry. “So? Why? Why are You doing this?”

“Because I can! You know….,” He said, jerking his thumb towards His name tag.

The fifteen minute break was almost over and I felt I had to give up the argument so I could ask Him a question that had been on my mind for decades. Before I could utter a word, He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I know. I know. You want to me to tell you why I allow so many bad things happen to so many good people, why I allow Nature to devastate the lives of countless people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

“As a matter of fact, yes!”

God leaned towards me and I was getting concerned for my safety because I could see He was angry. “I’ll tell you why! I allow these things to happen because you all piss me off!”

When He saw that I was speechless, He continued:

“First, I created the universe and saw that it was good. Then I created your planet, then the oceans and lakes, then the fish; then the animals and it was all good!. Then I created Man and, right away, it starts going down the toilet. That hooligan, Cain, slays his brother and then, in the space of a few cosmic seconds, entire nations begin warring against each other. It was a perfect world before I created you! Then war after war after endless war! And what really pisses Me off is that a lot of them are fought in My name! You people are crazy! You think my playing cards here is egregious? I’ll tell you egregious. Your Civil War was egregious! When was the last time you saw an army of zebras declaring war on the elephants for control of Africa? When did the dingoes battle the kangaroos for Australia?”

When He had finished venting, I sheepishly asked Him, “So that means we’re all going to go to Hell?”

He gave me a disgusted look. “Did I say that? Did I say that? No. I’m saying you’re all so out of control that I choose to ignore your follies until you each appear before Me to try to justify your actions.”

The rest period was over and as the table’s other players were returning, I asked him, “What about me? Can You tell me if I’m going to be allowed into heaven?”

God sniffed. “I don’t know. Right now, you’re kind of on the bubble...breaking the 14th Commandment and all.”

“What? But I didn’t know about…”

My protest was halted by the other players seating themselves, glaring with envy at God’s columns of chips. So on the first deal, I get pocket Kings and I sigh, knowing that God has two Aces but I figure, what’s the point? I toss my remaining chips to the middle of the table and, of course, God calls my bet, giving me a wink in the process. And, when the last card is dealt and His four Aces beat my four Kings, I stand, don my windbreaker and head for the door, wondering as I leave the casino how many of the remaining four lost commandments I’ve unknowingly broken.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MURDOCH

2009-12-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

Two of radio and television’s most noted talking heads are Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. The two of them bombard the public on a daily basis with their controversial opinions and, to be frank, I don’t know whether I agree with their views or not because I find that I am simply unable to listen to either one of them for more than thirty seconds. As far as I know they could be giving us their insights on any number of subjects, all the way from ten can’t-miss tips on how to overthrow the current political regime to the five best sushi bars in the metropolitan area of Washington. The reason I can’t listen to them is that there is something about each one’s persona that annoys me to the point where it prevents me from paying attention to them as they pontificate. Maybe if gritted my teeth and forced myself to listen to what they were saying I’d be one of their advocates but because I find them both to be a bit too obtuse, a bit too smug, and a bit too self-righteous, I choose to ignore them altogether.

Regardless of how I feel about them personally, however, I sincerely applaud them both for having the balls to boldly exercise their First Amendment right of free speech. Their forum falls within the arena of public opinion where each of us is allowed to either verbally attack or defend the status quo. So Rush and Tom, keep carrying the banner of the cause you’re advocating... whatever that is.

My point is that editorial opinion is an integral part of the American way of life; a healthy thing when we are knowledgeable of the fact that it is just that: an opinion. It is when opinions are nefariously presented to the public under the pretext of news reporting that concerns and, to a certain extent, frightens me.

When Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox Television issues memos to his staff of anchormen, reporters and correspondents instructing them to slant and verbally manipulate the reporting of events to suit his own personal or political agenda, and when those anchormen, reporters and correspondents eagerly, meekly or grudgingly comply with that arrogant mandate, then echoes of George Orwell’s 1984 reverberate in my mind, dredging up troublesome thoughts of Big Brother fabricating ‘news’ that misleads, controls, and even inflames the masses. That scenario doesn’t concern you? It concerns and bothers a lot of prominent people who have complained often, loudly, and apparently to no avail, about this egotistical practice.

Murdoch pompously denies any such practice and, ignoring those internal damaging memos that were leaked to the public some time ago, he tells us that Fox News is dedicated to 'fair and balanced reporting', the phrase that has since become the slogan of Fox News.

If Murdoch wants to promote his agenda, fine. He should eliminate the news slots and saturate his network programming with talk-shows wherein the hosts and their guest can be paid or persuaded to parrot his agenda. Leave the reporters out of it. They are paid to absorb, then factually report events as they unfold. They are not paid, or expected to be, a part of a self-serving propaganda machine.

I’m not sure that the FCC has laws dealing with the integrity of news reporting but if there’s not, there should be. There is no way I want Rudolph Murdoch’s views reflected on the teleprompter of the 11:00 news. He is not now, nor will ever be, my Big Brother.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-THE ETHNIC JOKE vs. TIGHT-ASSED AMERICANS

2009-12-05T21:51:00.000-08:00

The blood coursing through my veins is 100% Italian. And as proud as I am of my heritage, it doesn’t bother me at all when I hear jokes caricaturing me or my people. Like:

    Q. What do they call an Italian with an IQ of 180?
    A. Sicily
Or:
    Q. How can an Italian get into an honest business?
    A. Usually through the skylight.

Or when I’m hanging out with my Polish buddy and my neighbor asks us:

    Q. What do you get when you cross an Italian with a Pollack?
    A. A guy who makes you an offer he can’t understand.

We Italians, Jews, Mexicans, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Indians, et al, are proud people and most take umbrage with the jokes aimed directly at their heritage but, in point of fact, most of the people who tell these jokes probably aren’t doing so with the intention of slurring a race, they’re doing so because they’re funny!

I drew loud laughs from two of my young African-American friends with:

    Q. How do you define ‘confusion’?
    A. Father’s Day in Harlem
And:
    Q. How do we know God made Adam white?
    A. Have you ever tried taking a rib from a black guy?

I especially love people who can tell an ethnic joke when it involves their own race. One of the Mexicans in my apartment complex’s landscaping crew passed along this one to me:

    Q: What do you get when you cross a Mexican with an octopus?
    A: No idea; but it can sure pick lettuce.

And a Jewish store clerk I know made my day with this one

    Q: What happens when a Jew with a full erection walks into a wall?
    A: He breaks his nose.

And years ago, I heard this one from a Chinese golfing buddy of mine:

    Q: What's yellow and goes "cheep, cheep"?
    A: A Chinese prostitute.

Do insecure bigots use ethnic jokes in an absurd effort to raise their own perceived level of importance? Of course they do, but screw them! Laughter is golden. It is a natural resource that is free for the taking, a precious commodity that never need run dry. And, if we can utilize this resource to the point where we can learn to laugh at ourselves, that might allow us to realize that, in this enormous piece of wondrous machinery that is our universe, we are the smallest cogs of all. And that would go a long way in reducing the importance we seem to place in the jockeying for position in the trivial pursuit of racial superiority.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-AH, TIGER, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

2009-12-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

He single-handedly elevated his sport to previously unseen heights and, in the process, became a legend, role model, and hero to the world. You didn’t have to be a golf aficionado to stand in awe of his prowess on the green manicured fairways of the world. You only had to scan his ever-growing list of triumphs and accomplishments to realize that perhaps we all were witnessing the exploits of arguably the best athlete on the planet. When he was on his 'A' game, he stood apart from the rest of the field, making it appear that his competition was hacking their way around the course with croquet mallets.

Tiger Woods had (and, for the moment, still retains) it all: fame, adoration, a beautiful wife and children, and enough money to live the good life with enough left over to graciously and generously donate a significant portion of it to others less fortunate. On the surface, it seemed a storybook existence. But now, in the space of days, we have read about an intoxicated man who was supposedly seen passed out and snoring on his front lawn; a man who, in the throes of a drunken stupor, smashed his out-of-control car into a tree trunk. and a man who was heatedly arguing with his wife about allegations made by several women who have claimed that they had been involved in ongoing extra-marital affairs with him.

I have done my fair share of sinning, therefore I am not qualified to pick up the pebble and cast the first stone in his direction. There will be plenty of others to pelt him. The pagan spectacle is about to unfold the way it has transpired for other sports stars, politicians, and celebrities. The tabloids will have their field day with the story, the paparazzi will hound him relentlessly; he could conceivably lose the millions of dollars presently being doled out to him by corporations in exchange for his endorsements, his marriage may well be over, and his golfing peers will now view him in a totally different light. And the American public will stay riveted to the bizarre tableau until the day arrives where we all realize that he, like the rest of us, is merely human and it will be at that point where we graciously and self-righteously forgive him in the same manner we forgave Bill Clinton, the Kennedy brothers, Michael Vick, and others too many to mention. Then his life and hopefully his career will continue.

I hold no grudge against Tiger Woods. Nor do I feel particularly sorry for him. He is just another famous person who spread his wings like so many others before him and myopically soared higher and higher until the day he flew too close to the sun.

What does sadden me is the potential impact this unfolding scenario will undoubtedly have on the game of golf. Obviously, golf isn’t like the other professional sports. Professional football, for example, is played by alpha males, gladiators with chiseled bodies who dazzle us with a spell-binding combination of savagery and grace; violence and poetry in motion. An NFL game is like The Godfather performed by the Bolshoi ballet and I am mesmerized by the sport. The one problem I have with the NFL and the other professional sports is the large number of major scandals, incidents involving brushes with law enforcement, gunfights and, in one case, murder for hire. The frequency of these occurrences has reached the point where I’m desensitized by them and have come to view them as an everyday part of the American sports scene.

But professional golf, certainly fueled by the same competitive juices of other sports, forgoes the physical contact and, virtually scandal-free, is played with class, grace, poise and honor. This unblemished status, whether born out of perception or reality, has now changed. The individual who was the key ingredient in dramatically raising the popularity of the sport now may have to bear the onus of being the one who brings it back down. Sad.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-THE CHIA PET MENACE

2009-12-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s coming up on Christmas and they’re back, as predictable and reliable as the calendar itself. Each year for over a quarter of a century the Chia Pets mysteriously appear around this time and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they get here, where they return to in the spring, or why they keep coming back the following year. Is it a migratory thing?

And exactly what kind of animal are these pudgy little things with their obscure, indefinable features? I’ve been trying without success to identify the species they’re supposed to represent. And, as far as that ominous-looking green stuff that begins to sprout from their bodies is concerned, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one who touches it to see if its dangerous.

In the early days, the Chia Pets were harmless enough, I suppose. There were only a few breeds and we were able to harmoniously co-exist with them but now they’re not only growing in number, they’re crossbreeding to the point where I’m beginning to get seriously concerned. There are now Chia Pets in the likenesses of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Garfield the cat, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, Shrek, Sponge Bob, Homer and Bart Simpson, and others. But perhaps the most frightening one of all is the hybrid that has just appeared among their herds. This year there is a Barack Obama Chia Pet and if you don’t think an Obama likeness sporting a bright green Afro isn’t an ominous harbinger of things to come then there’s something seriously wrong with you!

There was an old movie entitled, “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” in which giant pods were brought to earth from outer space. Each pod contained a clone of a human and, before the movie had ended, all human life had been replaced by these alien life forms. Is the Chia Pet a case of life imitating art? Is the Chia Pet what Nostradamus saw when he prophesied the 2012 Apocalypse? I think the answer to both questions is, “Damn right!”

This afternoon I ran into one of my neighbors out walking with her children and, during the course of a brief conversation with her, I swear I could see all of their hair slowly turning green before my very eyes.

To no-one’s surprise, politicians are ignoring this threat. For example, before she resigned as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin had no qualms whatsoever about authorizing the indiscriminant hunting and killing of wolves in her state. What. She couldn’t have included the Chia Pet in that mandate?

Well, I can’t save the whole country. All I can worry about is my family. I went to Home Depot yesterday and bought several heavy mallets. When the Chia Pets come for us we’ll be ready for them.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-TICK…TICK…TICK

2009-12-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand uncaring ways. - Stephen Vincent Benet

As my daughter and I are sitting outside our apartment, the diminutive Asian lady who lives off to our right is on her small terrace, yelling in her native tongue, Vietnamese, I think, berating her argumentative husband who is angrily trying to insert a word or two into the dialogue. To our left, the sounds of raised voices spew through the open door as the unmarried couple loudly bicker about some inane topic. In the apartment above us, the resident is stomping noisily, fuming over being verbally threatened by the guy who lives across from us as a result of a heated argument involving a parking space. From one of the apartments in back of us, a frustrated mother screams at her small children to quiet down or she’ll take appropriate punitive action. Seconds later, we hear the sound of a hand hitting flesh followed by the wails of the children and my daughter is debating whether or not to call Child Protective Services.

Perhaps all of this daily sparring and in-fighting is localized to our particular complex because the economic strain has put the transient residents in a position where they are continually being confronted with a negative cash flow problem. Or perhaps we’re a microcosm of the country in general. Either way, and for whatever reason, I just don’t see many people having that much fun any more. Ignoring the ‘dead time’ spent sleeping, working, going to school, time spent on personal hygiene, shopping, commuting to and from the job, etc., they seem to spend an awful lot of time involved in various ‘recreational’ activities like watching reality shows on TV or playing video games. But, while conceding the fact that it’s sometimes enjoyable to just relax and enjoy these mundane pastimes, at what point do activities like these cease being fun and become boring habits, compulsions, or even addictions? The Latin term carpe diem means ‘seize the day’ but with so many people obviously ignorant of its message, if they were asked to give their definition of the term, it wouldn’t surprise me if they said it probably referred to the carpet-of-the day that’s on sale at Sid’s Floor Covering Emporium.

And, referring back to the aforementioned arguments that cascade daily from the nearby apartments to invade our ears, I’m left to wonder how much the institution of marriage is contributing to our apparent aversion to ‘having fun’; to our living life to the fullest? With the country’s divorce rate at about 52% and a certain percentage of the 48% staying together “because of the kids”, and a certain percentage of that remainder staying together because they can’t afford to get by on a single income, and a certain percentage of that remainder who are having an extra-marital affair on the side so why bother getting divorced, and a certain percentage of that remainder together because they’ve simply grown used to their pleasant but unexciting lives, what percentage of that remainder is left to have a meaningful, exciting, passionate (and fun) relationship?

So, then, with so many people intensely focused on financial problems, marital problems, TV reality shows, video games, and the like, they are losing sight of the fact that the clock is ticking; the pages of the calendar are turning, and they are getting older.

To extend George Bernard Shaw’s observation that youth is wasted on the young, it now appears that middle-age is being wasted on the middle-aged as well.

I think…no, I’m sure (at least in my mind)…that I did it the right way. I had a long and successful career in top management, a career where I made about $1.7 million, give or take; a career where each of the six CEO’s I worked for would continually praise my managerial qualities; a career that was filled with exciting challenges and personal triumphs. The funny thing about that, though, was that I basically skated through each of those positions, devoting maybe twenty or thirty percent of my focus on the job. To me, each position, although a challenge and an adventure, was just a means to an end; time and necessary effort spent in exchange for the money that would allow me to follow my avocations; my passions: writing novels and poetry, composing and playing music, recording sessions both in the studio and at home, driving muscle cars, being a movie-and-drama critic, traveling the country and the world, playing professional poker, avidly competing in racquetball, tennis, golf, etc., etc., etc. That philosophy was not without pitfalls, some extremely painful but, after all was said and done, my life evolved into an adventurous, glorious and choreographed-on-the-fly rhapsody.

And now, on the sundown side of life, it doesn’t bother me a bit that I have gone from that buff, athletic, nice looking guy to the unrecognizable face and form that greets me each time I view myself in a mirror. I carpe-d the diem and have no regrets with having done so. Nor do I moan about the tough times that now confront me on a daily basis. My present fate is being swept along by the cold currents of Financial Need; being borne by the frigid winds of Time, but my memories, loyal only to me, are there to provide warmth.

Make some nice memories, my friend. If you are foolish enough to believe you already have enough, take the time to make more. tick. tick, tick... The clock keeps moving; the calendar keeps turning and you are getting older.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-LEFTI AND ME

2009-12-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

So at what point does coincidence become destiny; serendipity become Kismet? If our genetic makeup, our DNA, is programmed to determine our traits, why can’t it also be programmed to determine our fate?

My life has been saturated with events, some of them mundane, some peculiar, some bizarre, none of them asked for, all of them opportunistic , some rescuing me from one disaster or another and all of them, in one way or another, leading me down a path I never intended to follow.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll cite just one of the hundreds of examples of these trivial, serendipitous occurrences; then relate to you the life-altering series of events that apparently revealed the purpose of my very existence.

The Trivial:
So it’s 1955 and it’s about 10:00 PM and I’m on a Kansas City, Missouri city bus that is taking me to the Greyhound bus depot where I’ll catch the last bus to Olathe, Kansas. This God-forsaken little town is where the higher echelon of the Air Force hierarchy has decided that this is where I can best serve my country, protecting the flatlands of Kansas from an enemy air attack. I’ve got to be sitting behind the radar screen by midnight or I’ll be regarded as AWOL. Certainly, given the rather petty offense, nothing that will land me in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth but, given my previous rebellious history with my superiors, enough of an offense that will give them the opportunity to give this long-haired misfit from San Diego a fair amount of grief. The Greyhound will arrive at the base at about 11:30 so it’s not a question of timing, it’s a question of money. I have none. I’ve paid for the city bus fare with the last of my pocket change and, as the bus draws nearer to the depot, I figure I’m going to have to ask strangers if they can spare the $1.75 it will take to purchase the ticket to Olathe and, if they all refuse, then I’m screwed. So two stops before the depot, this guy leaves the bus. I pay him no attention but, as the bus begins to pull out, I hear the sound of coins hitting pavement followed by a curse from the guy who had just exited the bus. I stand up, pull the cord that lets the driver know I want off and he obliges. I walk back to the intersection which is dimly illuminated by a lone street lamp and there, in the middle of the street, I see the coins: two fifty-cent pieces and three quarters: a buck-seventy five. Serendipity.

From The Ridiculous To The Sublime:
Jamaica. 1980: I have just gone to bed in my rented cottage and as soon as I close my eyes a vision, no, more of a colored postcard of a pristine town or village appears: stone houses topped with red tiled roofs, narrow streets, no signs of life. I open my eyes, shut them again, and the vision is still there but disappears a few moments later. Interesting? Yes. Mind-blowing? No.

Nine years later. San Diego. 1989. I’ve just gone to bed and as soon as I close my eyes, two stark white rectangular placards appear to me, one above the other. The top placard, in bold black print, reads: DELPHI; the lower one reads: LEFTI. I open and close my eyes several times and the placards remain for about five minutes before they no longer appear. I’m somewhat familiar with Delphi, the Grecian city where oracles once gathered to predict the future, but I can attach no meaning to the term ‘Lefti’. The next morning, because the experience has impacted me greatly, I begin what would be a year long fruitless search in libraries and the Internet for some meaning to the term. During that time, and without going into details, I begin to get intuitive signs that Lefti (please don't laugh) is an entity of sorts and events and/or signs appear that give me the distinct perception that Lefti is telling me that I will soon be responsible for guiding a baby girl to adulthood. Because I have an aversion to being hauled away in a straight jacket, I keep all of this to myself. That is until, a few months later, my unwed daughter tells me she is pregnant and is planning on keeping the child. I tell her of my visions and we both are sure that her child will be a girl. It is precisely at this point when all my visions and communication with Lefti (real or perceived) cease, never again to return. About nine months later, my daughter gives birth to my granddaughter, Ashley. End of story? Hardly:

Five years later.1994. San Diego. I am driving east on a rural two lane blacktop. With me is my daughter and four year old Ashley seated on her lap. It is late afternoon, traffic is non-existent, the sky is turquoise and cloudless, the sun is behind us and enveloping the landscape with an oddly warm aura. The three of us are quiet, enjoying the pleasant sound of silence. Then Ashley leans forward and fixes her gaze skyward. Her gaze remains steadfast and I scan the sky to see what’s captured her attention. I see nothing. No planes or their contrails, no birds, nothing. The sky is a solid turquoise, blemish-free canvas. I ask her what she’s looking at and she softly replies, with her face still pointed skyward, “Lefti’s looking through the glass.”

Because Ashley has never been told a thing about my strange ‘encounters’ with Lefti, I am in a total state of shock and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck are all standing rigid. I eagerly ask her to give me more details but she either wouldn’t or couldn’t. End of story? Hardly:

Fifteen years later. 2009. San Diego. I’m having lunch with a friend who has just returned from a trip to Greece. We’re viewing the tons of photos he had taken and one in particular catches my eye. I ask him where it was taken and he tells me somewhere around Delphi. It is a picture of a small town, complete with every detail, including the same viewing angle, of the vision I had that night in Jamaica 29 years earlier! That’s the end of the story, the punctuation mark at the end of a three decade saga that I can’t even begin to explain or understand.

Ashley is almost 20 now. I have long ago told her the whole story about Lefti and, whether she is imagining it or not, every now and then she tells me that she feels his presence; sometimes sees him in a dream but, imagination being what it is, who knows? For the most part, Lefti has become but a distant memory that is only rarely discussed. Still, there are those times when I relive the entire experience and try, without success, to apply a logical and rational explanation to it. Perhaps one day, after my spirit has moved on, Lefti will be there so he can finally explain to me at precisely what point coincidence becomes destiny; serendipity becomes Kismet.

Copyright December 2009 - phil cerasoli

-ALONE IN DARK WATER

2009-11-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

Since 1930, the United States has, in macabre-like, arcane and ritualistic tradition, escorted close to 5000 felons down the narrow prison corridors that led to their final destination: their place of execution.

I am unable to debate the worth or lack thereof of the death penalty because over the years I have oscillated back and forth on the issue dependent upon the details of the particular case or simply my mood at the time.

What bothers me greatly, however, is the fact that there have been 111 people sentenced to Death Row who were later found to be innocent and, thankfully, given back their freedom. Their innocence was proven by DNA testing that was not in existence at the time of their trial.

The DNA testing that proved these people innocent was, in large part, due to the efforts of the Innocence Project, a group passionately dedicated to salvaging as many wrongfully convicted people as possible. Its Board of Directors…40 strong…includes Janet Reno, the former Attorney General of the United States, and the noted author, John Grisham. Its staff of around 50 people is headed by Barry Scheck, the attorney who gained national notoriety as part of the Dream Team who defended O.J. Simpson during the headline-grabbing murder trial that gripped the country for such a long period of time.

Unfortunately, the Innocence Project wasn’t able to save the 23 people who were executed and later found to be innocent.

And, for some reason, I feel it important to put myself in the shoes of the 111 innocents who dodged the swinging scythe of the Grim Reaper and of the 23 who didn’t. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination on my part to feel the anger and frustration they surely felt on a daily basis, their repeated declarations of innocence blending in with identical proclamations uttered by those who, in fact, committed the crimes: a never-ending cacophony that fell upon the deaf ears of the corrections officers, the wardens, and the justice system in general. Unable to pluck the innocent minority from the guilty majority, their firm stance, somewhat understandable, seemed to be: ‘Kill them all and let God sort it out’.

How many more innocent prisoners are currently in transient residence on Death Row, helplessly watching as their mortal enemy, the calendar, inexorably counts down the days of their existence? Who knows. Does the possibility of saving a very low percentage of innocent people outweigh the benefits of ridding the planet of beasts who should never have been born in the first place? Who knows.

Regardless of your particular stance on the merits of the death penalty, take a few moments to mourn the 23 who died in error. Also send a prayer to the unknown number who will possibly suffer the same fate. They are drifting in the nighttime sea of despair, helpless, hopeless and alone in dark water.

Copyright November 2009 - phil cerasoli