“I don’t think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go.”
Lillian Carter

Now, lets take some time to look at the steps that have brought the Anhedonic cat you’ve all grown to know and love (or just laugh at) to where he is in his life. While I do think things through, it’s because of experience and wisdom more than knowledge. Let’s just say having blisters all over the palm of my hand is the way I learned the iron gets hot. So now let us take a stroll through recollection and see some of the things that have shaped me into the twisted individual I am.

1 year + - When we lived in an apartment in Texas I once knocked out the screen in the window and climbed outside. Me and my trusty Dukes of Hazzard car were going for a walk. This is actually one of my first memories. So after a brisk jaunt through the complex I went home. The problem being that all those doors looked alike and I didn’t know numbers and letters. So I picked up a newspaper wrapped in plastic inserted my car into it and started banging on a door Eventually my mother picked my up from behind and whisked me home. Ahh…exploration.

2 years + - In the middle of our apartment complex there was a nice sized swimming pool. One day as I walked my mother to do the wash. I made up my mind to impress her with my swimming ability. With a quick shout of “Look Ma!” I made a beeline for the pool and jumped in the deep end. Of course I had never swam in my life. Thankfully my mother was a champion swimmer in the Airforce. This was also when I learned that your mother shouting the word “Boy” can function as cursing.

4 years - After moving to Bmore My family quickly learned that I was an unusual child. For one thing I was very literal. Telling me to do things like, “Throw this glass in the sink” resulted in alot of broken glasses and a policy change in how I was given instructions. This might be the reason my grandmother still details every step of what she is asking me to do even though I’m an adult. I also used to run with my head down until I hit the porch doors so maybe she thinks I rattled something.

5 - 6 years - Most of the fights in my life have been with people larger than myself (Bully issuess). Well one time I was saved from fighting. There was some teenager (asshole) who thought it was funny to stick his air rifle in the ground and shoot a clod of dirt in my face. I did not see the humor. I didn’t consider that this kid was almost twice my size I was just mad. So He promptly got a punch into the best place I could reach. No not the nuts, but the place I find most fun. The diaphragm. Luckily my aunt realized that it was best to pull me on in the house while dude stood there trying to get his breath.

9 - 10 years - I have mentioned this before, but…look I really used to like the movie “A Christmas Story” and during that time we had an old refrigerator with coils at the top. One morning as the movie was on before I had to leave for school, I happened to be looking in the fridge and I got to wonder…you know the pole scene and all. Well lets just say I sounded just like that kid as I called for help (except for the crying and screaming) I was saved and my mother made me go to school anyway. For the record I was not really thinking, it was an impulse…shut up.

21 years - This is a big forward, but it’s a good illustration. One fine payday I walk to this club spot that has been many things but was at this time (and still is today) called Gordon’s. Someone I know was having something and I had no plans so I went. The event was o.k. but I really wasn’t in the mood and there weren’t that many people. So I end up chilling at the bar and kickin it with the two female bartenders. So I’m ordering drinks and I realize I should have something different. So I started asking them to suggest things. Since most of the people were upstairs I was able to hold their attention and they started getting into it. They would suggest I would give a thumbs down or try the suggestion. Before anyone thinks that I was getting suckered by the cute bartender, I paid for about $30 in drinks that night, I easily drank $60 or more worth of booze. The bartenders really got into it and started thinking up drinks to see if I had tasted them before. They even made up a drink and named it after me. Don’t ask me what was in it. As I stumbled my ass home I knew it was a bad idea…but it sure was fun.

“You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.”
Jon Stewart to Tucker Carlson

You all know I think Ed Reed covers whatever portion of the earth that water doesn’t. However, cable television has it’s own version of Ed Reed and his name is Jon Stewart. Last week he did a segment on alot of the CNBC financial experts giving horrible advice leading to the amazing race to the poor house that’s going on right now. For some reason other shows (which normally try to ignore Stewart since he does a better job then them) started talking about it and they focused on Jim Cramer. For some reason that can never be justified…Cramer went ahead and responded. In doing so he has provided me entertainment for quite a while. See kids, the thing is this…Jon Stewart will respond…Jon Stewart will take things to the Nth degree while showing clips of you saying what you now deny. I’m pretty sure if he got on me for some reason I’d just have to catch him in a back alley…it’s the safer method. Is it just me or did Cramer miss what happened when Tucker Carlson went up against Stewart. That established rule #1…Jon Stewart will come on your show and make you look stupid. In fact after his appearance Crossfire got taken off the air. No. He must not have because he keeps on responding. Too bad for him that Stewart won’t just “rise above and ignore it”. Now my friends…I get the delight of Cramer actually going on The Daily Show on thursday. Normally, I might not think much of such a move…the thing is that Stewart is not an easy interviewer. This is the man that grilled Scott McClellan after he wrote a book criticising the administration he worked for. Other shows asked him about his bravery and if he and the President would still talk…Stewart basically said, “You were part of it and in regards to the press you were the face of it.” Once again I heart Jon Stewart.

You may or may not know that Micheal Steele basically said that Frederick Douglass High here in Baltimore is craptastic. Well, it would seem that in 2006 he said the same thing while he was there and promised to help them out as noted here:

Michael Steele’s broken promise to Douglass High
I wonder what recent graduates of Frederick Douglass High School think
of Michael Steele’s rise to the national Republican Party leader.

Three years ago — on Feb. 1, 2006, in the midst of the bitter Ehrlich/
O’Malley gubernatorial campaign that used city schools as a political
football — I was part of the press corps when Steele paid a three-
hour visit to Douglass. At a meeting in the school library, he
humiliated then-schools CEO Bonnie Copeland and then-Principal
Isabelle Grant by talking about what a horrible school it was in front
of the media. And he looked students in the eye and promised them he’d
make it better. “When one asked if he would put that in writing, he
said, ‘I’m asking you to check me on it. My word is my bond,’” my Feb.
2, 2006, article reported.

Douglass has improved since then, as it has parterned with Talent
Development at Johns Hopkins University. But it’s not thanks to
Steele, who said before leaving office as Maryland’s lieutenant
governor that the school system didn’t want his help.

When Steele visited Douglass, he made a point of noting that the
carpet in that library was taped together. That was something simple
he could fix. I thought of that day when I was back in the Douglass
library recently for a press conference announcing a Maryland Business
Roundtable initiative to get students into more rigorous courses. As
it happened, my seat was right next to the piece of tape in the carpet.

Well here is more info on the school and the current CEO basically ripping Steele a new asshole:

March 5, 2009

City schools chief Andrés Alonso publicly asked Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele last night to apologize for making disparaging remarks about Frederick Douglass High School on national television.

A spokesman for Steele, Maryland’s former lieutenant governor, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In February 2006, Steele visited Douglass in West Baltimore, holding it up as an example of the failures of urban education and making a personal commitment to turn the school around. Though he has not returned to Douglass since - a spokesman said shortly thereafter that school officials were not receptive to his help - he again said Douglass isn’t doing its job during an interview this week on D.L. Hughley Breaks the News on CNN.

But, as both Alonso and Gov. Martin O’Malley noted last night, Douglass has improved significantly since Steele’s visit: Its graduation rate went up 14 percentage points last year, from 43 percent to 57 percent.

“I don’t think Michael Steele has been here since he came in an election year to demagogue, kick around our children,” O’Malley said last night before his town hall meeting at Douglass on education and the economy.

The meeting, the last of five public forums the governor held around the state, was scheduled before Steele’s CNN appearance.

Steele’s 2006 visit to Douglass was widely criticized as a tactic to embarrass O’Malley, a Democrat who was then mayor and running for governor against Steele’s boss, Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Steele did not follow through on a list of specific promises.

“Whatever happened to the new computers?” Alonso asked. “Whatever happened to the carpet for the library? Whatever happened to the new textbooks? Whatever happened to the new cafeteria tables? Whatever happened to just showing up … before you go on national TV and cast aspersions on parents, teachers and students? Not acceptable.”

The controversy comes the same week Steele had to apologize to conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh after criticizing Limbaugh’s comments about President Barack Obama.

According to a transcript of the D.L. Hughley show, Steele said: “You don’t get anywhere without an education. I can take you right now to Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore City, where the educational system that’s supposedly training and teaching the future generation of black folks ain’t doing that. It’s not doing it at all. … and Republicans aren’t running the City of Baltimore. So the question then becomes, how do we as a community become self-empowered to make the system, whether it’s run by Democrats or Republicans, work for us?”

During his nearly three hours at Douglass in 2006, Steele grilled then-schools CEO Bonnie S. Copeland and then-Principal Isabelle Grant in front of the press about the dismal state of student achievement there. He endorsed an offer by Coppin State University to take over the management of the school.

Four months later, The Baltimore Sun quoted Douglass student Ebony Peacock as saying the school had not heard back from Steele: “We were really excited because he really made it seem like he was gonna help our school. We haven’t heard anything since.”

Since then, a board of the school’s alumni took over governance of the school in partnership with the Talent Development program at the Johns Hopkins University. At O’Malley’s urging, Verizon partnered with the school to fund a new computer lab.

Last summer, HBO aired the documentary Hard Times at Douglass High, which chronicled the school’s 2004-2005 academic year.

The documentary “tells us that only one student broke 1,000 on the SAT in 2004-2005, while another scored 440, far below the 850 required to get into college,” Alonso wrote in an op-ed piece in The Baltimore Sun in August. “In 2004-2005, 77 of Douglass’ 197 graduates (39 percent) applied to institutions of higher education. But three years later, in 2007-2008, 113 of Douglass’ 162 graduates (69 percent) applied and were accepted.”

Officials said the school added pre-calculus and Advanced Placement in five subjects.

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Notebook, 1935

I mean really…why do people even given any airtime to him? I keep waiting for someone to stand up and tell him to shut his damn mouth. I’m considering filing a complaint to the FCC the next time I see him on television. Conservatives in general have become the loud semi-smart kid nobody likes. They are a little smart, but some idea has stuck with them and twisted their way of thinking so instead of using their intelligence to do well in class…they use it try and subvert the teacher and cause a disturbance. The teacher is annoyed and most of the other students are annoyed. The dumb kids in class still listen because they think he’s smart. Everybody loses. Now…Micheal Steele has apologized to him??? WTF??? Isn’t he like running things now? He should just say, “Hey Rush…shut the fuck up!”. Look…for the last 8 years I had to deal with a President who was a horrible public speaker (C’mon…even horrible politicians should be able to give a good speech) and Rush Cartman blathering on and on and on. Now I demand that if you give 5 minutes of airtime to Limbaugh…you givve 20 to Jon Stewart or something. Mind you I can take someone with a plan that I hate talking….but he doesn’t even have a damn plan. Yet he keeps talking and talking. His lips are moving, but I don’t know what he’s saying. First off….the next Republican or Conservative or whatever that talks…detail a plan. Second it can’t be Limbaugh. I’m staring to think of him as the John Madden of Conservatisim. The difference being Madden once won a Superbowl…all Limbaugh ever did was talk. I find it even more funny that with all the talk of how the “liberal media” is running things that every few months a Republican of actual stature apologizes to Rush…a damn radio show host! I used to think alot of democrats and liberals were soft…but in regards to Rush, republicans need to man the hell up. Look: I’m not one of you guys, I normally disagree with you guys. Real Talk though….put dude in his place and go back about your business of doing things I disagree with, mkay?