Road Apples, #119

Happy Belated Birthday...to my older (by 15 months) brother Rich, who turned 49 on the 14th.  Hehehehe, he's old.

Katy Perry...who is getting divorced from horse-faced comedian Russell Brand, has a cat named "Kitty Purry".  I swear this is true, as I read it in Us magazine.

The Republican Primary Race...is getting interesting.  Never have I seen such a group of tragically flawed individuals, one of which will end up running against a President with a mediocre record.  This is George W. Bush vs John Kerry, all over again.  Let's pretend I am a traditional Republican...white, middle-aged or older, Protestant...who do I vote for?  None of the candidates look like me.  Heck, the two most conservative candidates are Catholic for God's sake! Don't they worship the Pope?

SOTUS...Just curious, since when did we start referring to the State of the Union speech as the SOTUS?  Probably about the same time we started calling the Supreme Court the "SCOTUS".  Boy, and I thought my employer was acronym happy!  Anyway, I didn't watch the speech lat night.  Actually I never watch the speech.  Well make that virtually never.  I much prefer to actually read the text, that way I can get the ideas without the bombastic theater associated with the presentation.  Besides, I loathe campaign commercials, and EVERY SOTUS in an election year is really just a campaign speech.  Unless you are Rush Limbaugh I guess, who probably just sees that in SOTUS by Democrats.

Speaking of radio's favorite Hillbilly Heroin addict...El Rushbo was quoted as saying that "Ron Paul sounds like an Islamic terrorist" the other day.  You can read a citation HERE.  Now I disagree with Ron Paul on some fronts, but this is just ridiculously silly.  I guess anyone who thinks that maybe minding our own business in the world is, in Limbaugh's eyes, a terrorist.  The near constant avocation of military force by someone who went out of his way to avoid serving in the military is laughable at best.  Yes, that's right all you "Ditto Heads" out there...Rush Limbaugh is a "patriot" (according to geniuses such as Sean Hannity) but somehow someone like John Kerry (who besides looking like Frankenstein and sounding like Thurston Howell III, served his country with honor and distinction in Vietnam) isn't.  Strange days indeed.

Travel...I've been traveling on business quite a bit lately, and I have to admit that it is getting quite tiring.  Anyone who thinks that traveling on business is....

...cool
...glamorous
...exciting

...needs to get their head examined.  Trust me, even when it is a day trip, spending 7 hours at full alert as you play "Mad Maxx" with trucks on I84 isn't fun...it's exhausting.  I'm not asking for pity here, as in some respects it is great that I have a job where I get paid to do such things, but it's also not the best part of my job.  This is all part of the package though when you work hard at your profession and have any measure of success.  By the way, this is one of the areas where I part ways with some of the left:  I do believe that anyone can succeed, but it requires hard work and determination.  It also requires some luck, but luck is often times not quite so random a thing in that it seems to come to those who, as it turns out, work hard.  So while traveling on business isn't all it's cracked up to be, it's a far cry from where I started as a kid, growing up in the Midtown Apartments.  Here's to enjoying life in about the 40 (as opposed to the 1) %.