YOLT ... I like that much better!!

It's hard to get frustrated when you are off work for 10 weeks. Slightly agitated .. yes, but never frustrated. So I'm not up in arms about the twenty cent jump in gas prices from yesterday to today due to a mere meeting of OPEC tomorrow. Oil prices are down almost 25% since March, but don't expect pump prices to mirror that drop. (sidenote: I'm a Social Studies teacher, but I do know that 25% of almost $4 is $1. Pump prices are down anywhere from twenty to forty cents since March ... that's not 25%. Who's making the money from the difference??? Hmmmm .. go read some earlier blogs .. I'm going to my happy place!) The first Presidential candidate who figures out a way to get big oil companies to abandon their subsidies and build new refineries gets my vote. Ready, set, ... yeah right!

I've never been a watcher of soap operas (No! Downton Abbey is not a soap opera! It's Masterpiece Theater for Pete's sake!! It's culture!!) mainly because characters were always disappearing or dying only to reappear later. I watched Grey's Anatomy for several years until Izzy started having sex with a ghost then I was out (Man Card intact!!). All of which leads to al-Qaida's new tactic of releasing video of their upper leadership after the U.S. successfully completes drone attacks which scatter these same people into a million tiny fragments. Abu Yahya al-Libi (say that three times fast!) is the latest al-Qaida leader to appear posthumously (or possible humously I guess?? Latin is rusty!! Not Griswold ... oxidized in my brain .. whoa .. ADHD!) after the U.S. dropped a bomb on his head this weekend. It's very sad to see such a powerful terrorist organization reduced to using tired soap opera plots to keep its membership from dwindling even more ... NOT!!! Al-Qaida has been hunted onto the endangered species list and will hopefully be extinct soon. Rootin' tootin' George W warned al-Qaida many years ago about their fate and the terroists laughed. I wonder if Abu Yahya al-Libi was laughing as his head detonated? No .. probably not. Somewhere Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup is nodding his head ...

It's good to know the tans on the cast of Jersey Shore aren't the only thing faked in New Jersey (well ... plus all the fake boobs on the guido women). Yesterday a yacht explosion was reported off the coast of the Garden State (good movie!) which turned out to be an elaborate hoax. A caller reported the Blind Date to be in serious trouble, with several people dead or injured and the rest in lifeboats. The Coast Guard and local law enforcement scrambled to rescue the survivors but after searched almost 700 square miles of ocean found nothing: no debris, no lifeboats, no oil slicks. With many people quick to label the exploded yacht a hoax I decided to look deeper into the matter after the recent zombie attack in Miami. I can come to only one conclusion: global warming is pushing the Bermuda Triangle farther north. As the seas warm due to 'climate change', the ancient aliens who have up until recently inhabited the area beneath the Bermuda Triangle have been forced to migrate north and avoid overheated their cold-blooded respiratory systems. The Blind Date was in the wrong place and the wrong time in becoming the latest victim of the Bermuda Triangle. (Can you tell I've been watching too much 'History Channel' and 'Discovery Channel' since school got out?)

Mad Men wrapped up season five Sunday night with a typical Matty Weiner finale ... which means no loose ends were wrapped up. Several ends became dead (sorry Pete ... the Gilmore Girls aren't for you!!) while another end was familiar to Don (We know what Old Don would have done - and who wouldn't have! - but what will New Don do??? We get to wait eight months for the answer ... screw cliffhangers!!). Matty Weiner set an unrealistic standard for Mad Men season finales after season one's Carousel (filmed before Matty knew AMC was picking up the show for a second season) and has taken the continuation of character arcs to new lengths in subsequent finales. Even with all the craziness crammed into this episode, everything revolved around Don - from toothache to two pick-up girls - which more or less placed Don back at the beginning of his character arc: alone and unhappy. Even the ending song choice (You Only Live Twice) has so many double meanings for Don (Dick Whitman transformation, second marriage, second suicide responsibility, second partnership), but also for Roger (who I do not need to see imitating Vitruvian Man's rear shot!), Peggy (I do not need to see a basset hound and a beagle humping either!!), Pete (I do like seeing Beth Dawes!) and Joan (I always like seeing Joan!!). I digress ... Don has a toothache but won't see a dentist. Megan's friend asks her to get her into a shoe commercial (suggesting she'd sleep with Don if that would do the trick .. who needs the Brazilian twins from the ballgame!). Roger calls for Marie Calvet (Megan's mother who is visiting again) trying to get more than his head right on another LSD trip. Pete first meets Beth Dawes for a hotel sheet romp before stalking her to the mental institution her husband is sending her to which leads to Pete getting his ass kicked again, this time twice (once by Howard Dawes and once by the train conductor). The partners meet to discuss buying more office space after SCDP's best quarter ever, although they never really discuss if the name should be changed to SCD or SCDC or SCDCH (Campbell and Holloway are never going before Draper! And Pryce needs to be removed!). Megan asks Don to be in the shoe commercial, coc... sorry PG ... cutting her friend off at the pass and the casting couch. Don initially resists Megan's stoop to commercial actor, but relents and voila! Megan's got her first acting job! The scene I most enjoyed  showed the five partners silhouetted against the windows of their expanding office space (rear view ... Joan in red in the middle ... good job Matty!!). However the end scene is rife with dangers to Don's character arc after he is propositioned by Jade from the Hangover .. okay it wasn't Jade but Don did lose a tooth too and we know how Jade likes incisor challenged guys!! Will he or won't he .. that is the question. Don's clearly back to the melancholy life he shared with Betty so will his behavior revert back to the first incarnation of Don Draper. Oh well ... eight months isn't that long?? Damn you Matty Weiner.

Reds Report: Game starts in ten minutes against the Cleveland Indians. Battle of Ohio ... get pumped!! Yawn .. hope they play better than 2-4 in the last six.

Euro2012 Report: I saw Andrei Arshavin today playing for Russia. I puked a little in my mouth.

Back at it manana!!!