As you might know, I firmly believe that the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has become as insane and irrational as the worst fundamentalist religious sect. My opinion has been: if you want to be a vegetarian, so be it; make the slaughterhouses as humane as possible, but leave my steak, chicken, and pork alone.
So, the PETA wackos are at it again. This time according to Yahoo News, the ultimate hippies have asked school officials in Spearfish, South Dakota to change the name of the local high school from Spearfish High School to “Sea Kitten High School.” According to the organization in a letter to Principal Steve Morford, the new name would “reflect the gentle nature of its current marine namesake.”
The letter is part of a new Sea Kitten campaign aimed at children according to PETA. “If children were taught to refer to fish as ‘sea kittens,’ reflecting that fish, like cats and dogs, are ‘individuals’ that ‘do have friendships,’ fewer fish might be killed for food or sport,” said Pulin Modi, a PETA spokesman. Individuals! Fish have friendships! I think that Modi and his minions have been doing too many hallucinogenic drugs and watching “Finding Nemo.”
Fortunately, there is some common sense left in South Dakota. While Principal Morford refused to share his feelings about PETA, he did say “obviously, it’s nothing we’re taking seriously.”
When PETA was protesting against fur, I went along with them. While I think it’s a bit over the top, pushing for more humane ways of disposing of animals is a good thing (unless you happen to be former NFL quarterback Michael Vick). But somewhere, these people’s train of thought left the tracks and derailed. Their more strident agenda threatens to marginalize them and the valid points they did make when the organization was younger.

I am a child of television. I am proud to be in the first generation of kids born to television. Ben Cartwright on Bonanza, Jackie Gleason, and Marshall Dillon from Gunsmoke were regular visitors to my house. My grandmother loved westerns, but I was a spy fan from way back. The Bond films were the rage, and while many of the other kids were “into” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.;” I was more into this little British spy show with the hip title music: Secret Agent.
John Drake was almost as cool as Bond, but without the gadgets and while there were plenty of beautiful women, there didn’t seen to be any hanky-panky. John Drake, of course was played by Patrick McGoohan, who died yesterday at the age of 80.
Unfortunately, Mr. McGoohan died on the same day as Ricardo Montalban, perhaps a higher profile cultural icon (“Mr. Roarke” on “Fantasy Island,” “Khan” on “Star Trek” and in “Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan;” still the best Star Trek movie).
Of course, Mr. McGoohan may be remembered most for “The Prisoner” the iconic ITV series that was as unusual as anything that aired then or since. Mr. McGoohan was “Number 6,” a spy who was trying to quit, but knew too much. He was sent to “The Village” where everyone was a number, and no one ever left unless they died.
He appeared infrequently after that, but I always enjoyed his appearances. He was great as Billy Zane’s father in the underappreciated film “The Phantom.” And he was evil personified as King Henry “Longshanks” in Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart.” I will always remember the scene when the King returns home from leading his army and finds his gay son taking the advice from his lover. Mr. McGoohan was great as he engaged the lover in conversation as he gently led him to an open window and then pushed him out. Great.
Fortunately, with the advent of home video, we have been able to revisit Mr. McGoohan’s performances. Both “The Prinsoner” and both sets of “Danger Man” (the title was changed to “Secret Agent” in America) have been available and I have them all. Just one wish: I know that AMC is doing a remake of “The Prisoner” for broadcast in November and that it resolves all of the questions from the original series. Obviously, Mr. McGoohan knew what the series was all about, but he kept the secrets to himself all these years. I hope that he wrote down the answers before he died and that somehow, we get the answers revealed from the source, even though it’s from beyond the grave.
Until then, “Be Seeing You” Pat. Thanks for everything!

The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
– Adolf Hitler

One of the first blogs on this site was a rant about WGN TV and Chicago Tribune meteorologist Tom Skilling and how I think he is the worst example of scaring people with overblown weather reports to generate ratings. It appears that he is far from alone.
The National Weather Service issued a “Blizzard Warning” for this past Tuesday night. Two-to-four inches of snow was forecast to fall, which is no big deal, but there were supposed to be high winds that would create white-out conditions, making travel difficult and hazardous. Well, guess what happened? Nothing. I had asked my neighbor David, he with the snow blower, to keep us in mind if the bad weather hit. The Indignant Wife needs to get the Indignant Oldest Daughter to day care, among other things, and I leave my house around 6:30 AM, long before anyone else gets up.
OK, the forecasters were wrong, but almost like a spoiled brat, the Weather Service issued another blizzard watch for Wednesday. I could see some meteorologist somewhere getting grief for being so wrong, but saying, “All right, I’ll issue a blizzard warning for tomorrow. I’ll show ‘em.” While it is cold and there is a fair amount of snow coming down, especially on the South Side of the city and South Suburbs, the blizzard warning has been cancelled, replaced by a winter weather advisory.” On listening to the weather forecasts on three different television stations this morning, I prepared for extreme cold (all were saying that the temperature was 7o above zero, with wild chill of -7o. So, I went out armed for bear, but while it is cold, I was able to withstand the cold quite easily, which further hurts their credibility in my mind.
I wonder about the meteorological profession as a whole. Are they the “weak sisters” of science, training to do little more than read radar screens and projections that are all-too-often wrong? I wonder if meteorologists have an inferiority complex, knowing that the top people in their profession either wear short skirts to appear before maps on television, or that the best known practitioners are buffoons like Al Roker or Willard Scott?
And when the news division is a profit center for most local television stations, at what point does the quest for ratings trump accuracy? Does it make sense to always be a few degrees higher or lower to get people to listen to you? Would you get better ratings to constantly predict slightly higher rainfall or snowfall totals? Do you have an obligation to be accurate since people are depending on your forecast? And if you are consistently higher, do you scare people needlessly, which can keep people at home needlessly, which can cost money to companies and retailers?

There has been a ton of discussion of the Bush legacy with his disastrous presidency coming to an end next Tuesday. Liberals have been pounding on all of the failures, proclaiming him the worst president ever. Conservatives have tried to find successes, including Bush himself, who has been trying to use the last days of his time in the White House to spin his failures and faults into successes. (I think of the film of the Stephen King book “Christine” about a haunted car – when the poor victim of the car lays eyes on it, he is stricken, he wants it badly, babbling about how he can fix up the dilapidated car. The owner of the car, a dilapidated old man tells his “You can’t polish a turd.”)
Anyway, with unrest in the Middle East again, and Gaza and Lebanon firing rockets at Israel and Israel firing back, it was almost certain that we would hear from one of the “straws that stir the drink” of international unrest: Osama bin Laden.
The liver patient, Al Qaeda leader apparently released a new audio message calling for a jihad, or holy war, against Israel for its Gaza campaign. The message is “an invitation” from bin Laden to take part in “jihad to stop the aggression against Gaza.”
What has Bush done to find this sick bastard, the primary plotter in the September 11th attacks? Why hasn’t someone shoved a scud missile up his ass so that he can see whether there are 70 virgins awaiting him when he dies?
Why would anyone listen to this asshole? All he does is sit in a cave somewhere, moving around frequently so that the woeful American surveillance activity doesn’t accidentally find him. He issues occasional videotapes and audio recordings imploring young Arabs to fight his war for him. Why doesn’t he come out of hiding, strap a bomb on himself, and take personal part in his jihad? Because he wants to be the leader; he can’t sacrifice himself, his family has billions of dollars in petrodollars to spend if he could ever orchestrate his jihad, survive, and at least fight to a tie with the “infidels” of the West?
With Bush leaving and having placed finding bin Laden on the back burner (if even on the stove) long ago, perhaps President Obama will work to find this desert rat and either try him or have his executed body exhibited throughout the world for all to see.

One thing that can be said about the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2009: the Writers voted in two Black men who are about as prickly as you can get. Both Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice were in the “second wave,” if you will, of Black athletes – gifted men who played the game, but under their own rules. And neither of these men are “African-American;” they are Black, in the truest sense of the work: defiant and proud.
Henderson, who has never officially retired, was one of the prime offensive forces in the history of baseball. The All Time Stolen Base King could hurt you with a single that turned into a double or triple, and the resultant chaos that all of this activity to pitchers was uncomfortable to watch, that is, unless Rickey was on your team. In addition, he had a tiny strike zone to force walks (which also turned into Henderson stealing second and/or third base), but if you hung a pitch, he would hit the ball out of the yard just as easily.
Rice was a burly man who played in Boston in a turbulent time. Boston was still the subject of racial unrest in the 1970s and 1980s on account of force school busing and segregated housing. Add to that the fact that Rice broke in the same year as Fred Lynn, but Lynn, the white guy, was openly cheered, while Rice was just respected. In this setting, Rice was aloof to the writers, standoffish; letting his bat do the talking. It ended up causing the Baseball Writers of America to vote him into the Hall of Fame only on his last time on the ballot, waiting 15 years.
Their on-the-field exploits show that both are more than deserving of being enshrined at Cooperstown. On a personal level, both men caused me to laugh while working as an usher at the old Comiskey Park. In the 1980s, I was a big fan of the Red Sox lineup: Boggs, Rice, Tony Armas, etc. On August 6-7th 1985, there was a two day players’ strike, which caused postponement of 2 of the 3 games between the Red Sox and White Sox. The Thursday night game was supposed to have a home run hitting contest between the teams’ big sluggers: Boggs (replacing the oft-injured Armas), Rice, Mike Easler (the DH), and Mike Greenwell against Carlton Fisk, Harold Baines, Oscar Gamble and Ron Kittle. Each player had 10 swings to try and reach the seats.
I was a supervisor for this impromptu double header, so instead of having tons of people on the field, we had to leave the ushers in the seats to seat people for the regularly scheduled game. So, we had one chief usher by the home dugout, and another by the visitors. I chose to be by the Red Sox. I ended up meeting a lot of the players, including Easler, second baseman Marty Barrett, and Rice. And I’ll never forget watching the contest and seeing Kittle hit ball after ball over the Comiskey roof, unfortunately for him, almost all of them were foul. Standing there watching Kittle hit, I’ll never forget Rice asking me if he was married. I didn’t know, but when I asked why, Rice replied “because that boy needs some p@##y.”
While I never met Henderson personally, I used to love when he came to town. He got bored in the outfield between pitches and especially between batters, and at the old Comiskey Park, the fans, many of them inebriated, loved to yell insults at opposing players. Most players ignored the insults, but not Henderson. He would look into the stands at the fans, which only got them yelling louder. Sometimes, he would chuckle if it was funny; most times, however, he would use his glove to cover up him flashing fans the upraised middle finger, mouthing out curses. It obviously amused him, and as long as no one threw anything at him, we let it go. It was all very dirty, but very funny, watching him stoke up the fans in either right field or left field, wherever he was playing.

Actually, it may have been my only true present, but who says that no one listens to you, or in this case reads. A friend, who happens to be a vegetarian, read my tirade here about PETA a few weeks ago and found a t-shirt, which she gave to me for Christmas:

P.E.T.A. – People Eating Tasty Animals

Thanks, Susan! Great Shirt!

In light of the new baby and especially all of the hospitalizations, The Indignant Wife and I didn’t buy each other presents for Christmas. We will be spending enough money taking the Indignant Children to Disney World, where I’m sure one or both will be frightened into tears at the sight of a six foot mouse.
Anyway, one of my major faults is buying stuff. Comic books, regular books, CDs and DVDs are regularly being routed to my home, to the chagrin of The Indignant Wife, who is concerned about where all of this “stuff” (not her term) will go. My wife loves film, but she does not share my hording/buying urges. However, every once in awhile, I see a movie she would like, or she requests a film for me to purchase and I just add it on to my regular Internet order.
That said, I thought I was being a good husband when my wife asked for the DVD of the film “Momma Mia.” I have long prided myself on being an ABBA-free zone. I hated the band when they were popular; I avoided buying anything that had their music on it; and I have been able to avoid the play; marveling in the how long a goofy play held together by ABBA songs could possible play. But, I ordered the movie, thinking I would be able to be on a different floor of our house whenever the movie was being played. The DVD came out in mid-December and I have been able to do the Muhammad Ali “stick-and-move” and avoid the movie thus far. Until yesterday.
I should have known that The Indignant Oldest Daughter would love the movie. She has loved musicals for a long time now, ever since she took ownership of my DVD copy of “Singin’ In The Rain,” and in retrospect, I should have known that she would be the catalist for me seeing this film.
The television was taken over for the film while I was still on the same floor, watching The Indignant Baby (or Indignant Second Daughter, if that’s better). So, I had to sit through a ton of ABBA songs. Worse was the singing. While I must admit that Meryl Streep did a very good job singing, Pierce Brosnan was horrible. I was appalled to see an actor I like (and actually met at the Toronto Film Festival a few years ago) Skellan Skaarsgard singing with the rest of them, and not with Ms. Streep’s success. It was painful, and since 3-soon-to-be-4-year-olds like to see things repeated ad nauseum, it probably won’t be the last time the sounds of bad singers warbling bad songs will be reverberating in my house.
It’s probably a good time to introduce myself to the regulars at the local bar….