Change for the good and bad; and a week of madness

It’s amazing what a little change can do. Over the weekend I upgraded my computing power with a brand new, still in the box iMac. It’s all wireless with a “Magic Mouse” and new features for Microsoft Word like “autocorrect.”

Before I turn that completely off I’ll see how it messes up my writing first.

One thing with this “Magic Mouse” can be quite annoying: should I accidentally touch or move it my document — or the entire screen itself — moves or disappears. Last night, after installing the MS Office Suite I would start typing something, stop and then without knowing why, the text would just disappear! WTF!

• Yeah, I know, they don’t call it a “suite” anymore.

After about ten minutes of F-bombs and threats to Bill Gates and all those people at Microsoft, I figured out I was brushing this “Magic Mouse,” causing it to move the Word document. Turns out I was cursing the wrong corporate leviathan.

But a new computer is a welcome change even with the adjustments to everything. I’m not one of these people who buys a new computer — or a cell phone for that matter — every couple of years, although my relatively new Samsung cell phone may get replaced by an iPhone. My old Power PC tower has served me well since 2004. There are people who have had three or more new computers in that time. So the change for me is pretty dramatic — in technological terms. Emotionally too, I guess, when you consider the F-bombs.

The big trouble with this particular upgrade: transferring all the stuff from the old Mac to the new. The nice person on the other end of the phone at Apple customer service cheerfully told me it would be easy. There is actually a procedure that the new iMac walks us through that makes transferring files easy, especially if the two machines are on the same network. Unless of course the old machine is so old it looks like a museum display. Then the two Macs blink prompt questions at you, asking, “What?”

So I called my computer guru friend to have him do it because he’s a guru and knows everything about everything related to computers, networks and the Internets. He did most of it for me, showing me how to do it and once the process was well on its way (I’m still in the process) he and I went to a local casino and … ate $200 hot dogs. Actually I think the guru paid more for his hot dog — but they were quarter-pound hot dogs.

That is my explanation for why there hasn’t been any addition to Left Coast Logic on this esteemed site as of late. The change not only kept me busy, everything this iMac allows me to do that wasn’t possible with the old PowerPC tower kept me plenty distracted too — I can now watch high definition videos.

Here’s the big change: Pope Benedict XVI is Pope no mo’. He’s just retired as of Feb. 28  and even though he’s only been on the job for less than a decade, the MoFo gets a retirement package to die for … which he might, considering his age. And like all old rich guys, he’s gonna spend his golden years in the lap of luxury, cared for and pampered by a bunch of women.

Makes one wonder: do you ever think Benedict XVI think about getting the young nuns to do a Nuns Gone Wild show for him? It’s a relevant question (sort of) considering that on the Pope’s last day in his red Prada shoes Joe Francis, the man behind the Girls Gone Wild Empire, announced his company was filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Everyone and her rich uncle, in particular Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino magnate, are suing Francis and his company. Turns out Francis ran up about 10 mil in gambling debts and welched! And then he accused Wynn of being a gangsta, an old school, Vegas Mafia-style gangster. Francis was warned by music impresario Quincy Jones in some e-mails, according to Francis.

So Wynn is suing Francis for defamation of character. Why, you couldn’t be a casino magnate in Las Vegas if you were a member of the mob, Wynn says. Not in this day and age anyway. Remember the scene in Godfather III when Michael Corleone is passing out multimillion-dollar checks to his gangster brethren after selling off all their casino interests to legitimate companies? Steve Wynn could have been one of those legitimate buyers. Not really of course. The Godfather movies are mostly fiction.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever watched a Girls Gone Wild video. I hope I’m not the only one with his hand raised.

Speaking of girls gone wild: did you hear about Miss Delaware Teen USA, Melissa King? Apparently she made a porn video when she was 18. So she gave up her tiara rather than go through the humiliation of defending herself in a media that is obsessed with catering to the lowest common denominator.

They ask and ask and ask, all the questions, the same questions, over and over. And the media that gets involved in it, which is most of the media, they love asking those same questions over and over because they know their audience loves a salacious story with black bars over the breasts and genitalia.

It’s hypocritical really. They badger the woman, hound her with questions and accuse her of making a poor choice and being a bad role model, all the while knowing their reader or viewership is spiking because let’s be honest: sex sells. And if you can bring down a young beauty queen, then, “Hey, we’ve done our job!”

We do what we have to do to get ahead and in some cases survive. Vanessa Williams got royally screwed in 1983 when she was forced to give up her Miss America title over some nude photos. The laugh’s on the rest of the world though. Williams went on to become the most successful Miss America in the entertainment business. So good luck to Melissa King. You’re not a bad person for doing porn.

I rarely pay attention to beauty pageants, unless the girls get wild. Well, Hooters bikini pageants, but we can go see those, for a nominal fee.

But none of that is really news, let alone change. Do we really care about Joe Francis, Steve Wynn and Melissa King? Do we even care Argo won Best picture instead of Lincoln? Argo won because it’s a feel good story — the good guys win and the bad guys look like dopes.

In Lincoln the hero dies at the end. Never mind that he is the greatest president in U.S. history, that it was one of the best films in Steven Spielberg’s career; clearly the best film nominated for the award. None of that matters. Ben Affleck has more juice in the film industry than Spielberg right now. At least Argo is in color and has dialogue.

The big news as of Friday: we are living in the Sequester Age. Congress couldn’t come to an agreement with President Obama on the budget so the automatic cuts take effect. Eighty-five billion, which is like seven percent of the budget. Doesn’t seem like a lot, unless you’re one of the people getting furloughed or laid off. Or maybe you blew your family’s vacation money on a trip to Yellowstone National Park and oops, now you can’t get in.

Here’s change you can hardly believe took place. On Feb. 28 the president and Congress unveiled a statue of Rosa Parks in the Halls of Congress to honor the Civil Rights icon. At the exact moment Speaker Boehner and President Obama were pulling down the veil that covered the statue, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments on whether to make toothless the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Talk about irony.

States that have been trying to make voting difficult for the old, the poor, the young and other historically Democratic-leaning groups want to strike down the provision that allows the Justice Department to review any changes to the states’ voting laws. Of course the conservative justices are leaning towards overturning the Voting Rights Act. As Judge Scalia put it, voting is a “racial entitlement.”

Now there’s some change. All this time some of us, the naïve ones apparently, thought voting was one of those unalienable rights that Rand Paul said we can pursue.

Just the day before that former Senator Chuck Hagel was sworn in as the new Secretary of Defense. After all the loud words, the blustery strutting in the well of the U.S. Senate by the likes of Lindsey Graham — “strut your stuff big boy!” — after various “news” organizations took a bit of satire and passed it off as real to stoke the anti-Hagel fever that gripped the extremities of the GOP — oh wait, the GOP is entirely extreme, top to bottom, inside and out — after all of that, including a forceful demand that Hagel’s name be withdrawn … Chuck Hagel became the guy in charge at the Pentagon.

For a while there I thought Senator John McCain was the goofiest of the veteran senators, but really, Lindsey Graham is making a pretty good attempt to out goofy McCain. But neither one of them have anything on Rand Paul or Ted Cruz. Or Marco Rubio for that matter.

The Florida senator went to New York City for some campaign fund raising. Gotta think one of the first questions asked of him was, “Why should we give YOU money when you voted no to give us emergency relief after Super Storm Sandy?”

• Senator Rubio: “Hi New York Republicans! Won’t you please donate to my presidential campaign?”
• GOP Congressman Peter King: “Blow me.”
• What Congressman King actually said was, “Being from New York we’re not supposed to be suckers. It’s bad enough that these guys voted against it (Sandy relief), that’s inexcusable enough. But to have the balls to come in and say, ‘We screwed you now make us president?’ ” King added, “Rubio and these other Republican candidates are coming to New York to raise money. I don’t think any senator or congressman who voted against aid for Sandy should get one nickel from New York.”
• But you know Congressman King was thinking it. He’s a New Yorker’s New Yorker.

What else went down while I was down in the trenches updating myself in the computer world? Someone in Texas responded to an earlier blog about guns, objecting to the use of the terms “fanatic” and “nuts,” to describe the people who are virulently opposed to any gun control legislation. So just out of curiosity I decided to read what I wrote in December.

Yep, I used the terms “gun fanatics” and “gun nuts,” but I did go on to explain that my definition of a fanatic is: “…someone who gets hysterically and/or offensively defensive about the right to bear arms whenever someone with a gun commits murder.”

So, my definition doesn’t include everyone who supports the Second Amendment and owns a gun. Furthermore, I’m not against guns or gun owners as a group, most of them are pretty decent people. I was just writing about the nuts and fanatics.

That’s about it. I’m keeping this under 2,000 words for some change you wish you could believe in. Now if I can find that video of Miss Delaware … for educational purposes.