Even with side effects, Ambien may be right for you

Below is the actual copy from an Ambien TV commercial (with my comments).  It’s the part of the commercial where it addresses  the drug’s warnings and interactions.  It is the longest  and most comprehensive list of drug warnings I have ever seen.  My first question is:  Are we as American’s that dumb?

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Until you know how Ambien will affect you, you shouldn’t drive or operate machinery.  (How many people do you know take a sleeping pill and then GO FOR A DRIVE?)

Plan to devote seven to eight hours to sleep before being active.  (If I could do that, I wouldn’t need a sleeping pill)

Sleep walking, or eating and driving while not fully wake, with amnesia for the event, as well as abnormal behaviors such as being more outgoing or aggressive than normal, confusion, agitation, and hallucinations have been reported.  (If I’m confused, hallucinating, and have amnesia, how will I remember to tell my doctor?)

Don’t take [Ambien] with alcohol as it may increase these behaviors. (If you can’t drink Alcohol with a sleeping pill why bother?)

In rare cases, severe allergic reactions can occur.  (Define “severe”.  If I get a good night sleep and a few hives, I’m all good)

In patients with depression, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. (So I may kill myself because I’m finally getting enough sleep?)

Side effects may include next day drowsiness, dizziness, and headache. (Hmm.  Drowsiness after taking a sleeping pill?  That’s shocking!  So I’ll be sort of groggy the next day, and a little dizzy with a splitting headache.  I guess I’ll just have to go home and take another Ambien.)  

It’s non-narcotic and can be taken for as long as your prescriber recommends. (Oh thank god)

However, like most sleep aids, it has some risk of dependency. (DAMN IT, I knew it was too good to be true).

Allergic reactions such as shortness of breath, swelling of your tongue or throat, may occur and in rare cases may be fatal. (Well, if I die at least I won’t be complaining that I didnt’ get enough sweep, AHEM!, thweep!, thrweeep! HAP, I CANG BWEEB!)

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My second question is: Do we, as a nation, need sleep so badly that we are willing to die for it?

Intermedia Exchange Hosting – a vendor review

If you are interested in a review of Intermedia, a Microsoft Exchange email hosting service (www.intermedia.net) please continue.

I originally wrote the following review in March of 2009 but waited until now to publish it because I wanted to make sure that what I wrote did not just come off like an angry, bitter person giving a review.  After careful consideration and several re-writes, I don’t believe this review is vindictive.  It is quite simply, a true story.

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After about a year of service, and innumerable “incidents”, our small business made up of 14 people had decided to dump the ridiculousness that is Intermedia and find a company who is truly reputable when it comes to Exchange Server and Blackberry Server Hosting.  In the last week (note: again I wrote this in March 2009), Intermedia has denied any culpability in getting an email server that belongs to them, blacklisted by many ISPs (Internet Service Providers).  This blacklisting prevented our outgoing emails from reaching their destinations because they were coming from a blacklisted server.  Intermedia could not prevent spoofing emails from reaching our Inboxes, and then could not figure out why our Vice President’s email was being delivered to the Junk Email folder of our President.

Of course, this situation was escalated to the highest authority and subject matter experts at Intermedia.  And in typical Intermedia fashion, each and every problem ticket that was opened was first handled by providing the wrong information, followed by just plain bad information, then an escalation to a technician of even higher authority, then the burden of fixing the problem was thrown back at the customer (us), then escalated again, and finally someone who claims to be the head of something calls me and wants to ensure that our relationship stabilizes going forward.  This modus operandi began and has continued since the first days of our conversion to Intermedia in May of 2008.

I had a conference call today with Steve Acheveria and Bill Savage (the grand poobahs of customer service operations at Intermedia- otherwise known as the two men with huge ego’s and small d…s).  They didn’t like my complaints and threatened to drop me as a customer IF I DIDN’T CHANGE MY ATTITUDE.  I thought I was on a conference call with Sonny Corleone.

I enlisted the help of a user forum for Exchange and Blackberry users.  I had to find a replacement Email Hosting provider since our relationship with Intermedia was irreparable.  What I didn’t realize (but found out in the course of my research) was that Intermedia is well known in the industry for their poor customer service.  Where were these opinions a year ago when I was researching Intermedia?  Could it be that at one time Intermedia was a top notch organization and that just in the past year they have become a  black hole of technical support.  I don’t know for sure.  What I do know is that any company representative who threatens you probably isn’t working hard to make sure you are a happy customer.

Now here’s the real kicker.  Intermedia only allows 2 people from our company to be a “contact”.  They say that based on the size of our company, only 2 contacts are “allowed”.  Have you ever heard of such a policy when dealing with tech support because I haven’t?  There are three “categories” of contacts that you can have as an Intermedia customer:  an account contact/owner, a billing contact, and a technical contact.  Three contact types exist in their business model but we’re only allowed 2 contacts based on the size of our company.  Can you see how the math isn’t working already?

Mysteriously, Intermedia sent me a form to complete regarding these contacts and this happened prior to me understanding their tech support model.  According to the form I was supposed to fill in who the different contacts were.  At the time I thought that there could be 2 Account Contacts for each contact type  (i.e. two Owner Contacts, 2 Billing Contacts, and 2 Technical contacts).  I filled it out, copied in all the people in my company who were selected to be on the list, and I forwarded the form Intermedia.  I never received a call or email from Intermedia stating that I had misunderstood the form, and that I needed to correct my contact submission.  The people in my office recall getting their copy via email, just as much as I remember sending it.  But now, nobody can find a copy.  It’s not in anybody’s inbox, sent items, junk mail, outbox, trash, nowhere.  Six people, all of whom have their email account at Intermedia, can not locate this email that I sent with the contact form attached.  This is an honest to goodness true story.  One of my co-workers was going bonkers trying to find it because she knew she received it from me (since she was on the list as a technical contact) and filed it in her email Inbox.  It has mysteriously disappeared form each person’s mail account including my own.  I don’t want to accuse Intermedia of breaking into our mailboxes but I don’t know what else to think.

Additionally, the President of our company was not receiving email from the Vice President of our company.  This strangeness began shortly after the Vice President’s email address was being spoofed and therefore email coming from the Vice President to the President looked authentic but was actually advertisements for watches, and jewelry.  After I called in a problem ticket, and after about 5 days of hearing nothing about it, this problem was mysteriously fixed - supposedly by making some Spoofing Avoidance changes to our DNS servers.  However, after the “fix” all of the Vice President’s email to the President made it to the President’s, but ended up in the JUNK mail folder – so the President never read it.  For four days Intermedia couldn’t figure out this new problem.  All of a sudden, after I brow beat them, and I admit it I was tough on them out of pure frustration, the problem was solved.  Intermedia “found” an email rule (something we don’t use here – we didn’t know what they were or how to deploy them) on the President’s email account that said, and I’m paraphrasing:  ”send all email from the Vice President to Junk Mail”.  AND Intermedia claimed  that someone at our company had to have made that change on the President’s email account.  As I said we don’t even know how to create an email rule, let alone deploy it.  And only the President and I (from our company) had access to the settings on his email account.  Intermedia, of course, has access to all of our mail accounts.

The problems I mention here are just the straws that broke the camel’s back.  Intermedia and its minions like Steve Achevaria and Bill Savage will stand behind what they have said and done, they stand behind the mistakes of their employees and never admit wrong-doing, and they do it all with a ”holier-than-thou”  attitude to boot.  This M.O repeated itself time and time and time again over the year or so that we were a client of Intermedia.

Now to “Fax by Email”.  An interesting service in Intermedia’s lineup.  Of course it cost extra but one could send or receive faxes right from the desktop.  This is not new technology but it was new to us.  We signed up for it.  It was only after we signed up for it that we were told Intermedia had no Maine area codes available (there’s only one – 207).  It’s not that they didn’t have any Maine fax numbers left; they just never planned on having a Maine customer so did not get any fax number with a Maine area code.  And they didn’t plan to add any Maine phone numbers. We had to pick a fax number in MASSACHUSETTS.  How do you think that looks on your business cards or letterhead?   We tried it for a while.  Over 50% of the faxes we tried to send never made it to their destination.  Once again, this is another example of the first class service available at Intermedia.  And after numerous inquiries from customers as to why we had a Massachusetts fax number, we pulled the plug.

So for those of you out there looking for an Exchange Hosting provider, skip Intermedia.  I have reported them to Microsoft as I thought Microsoft would want to know the truth about one of their “Certified Partners” (whatever the hell that means).   In my Internet travels I see a lot of vendors with the “Microsoft Certified Partner” emblem on their web site.  I wonder if that has any real meaning whatsoever.   

I promised myself that I would calm down for a while before writing an opinion piece about Intermedia. I had to concentrate on switching Email providers as quickly as possible instead of getting myself all worked up over Intermedia.

During the time we were an Intermedia customer, all 14 of us received tons and tons of junk mail.  I don’t know how they supposedly filtered junk mail from getting to our account but if spoofing our email accounts was pretty easy then what should I have expected concerning excessive junk mail.  I don’t remember who it was that said it, but a wise person once said “If junk email makes it into your email account and is simply put in a separate folder marked “junk mail” then it is not filtering junk mail, it is just redirecting it.  Makes perfect sense to me.  Our new provider uses a third party product called Postini that monitors incoming mail and flags it as junk BEFORE it ever reaches our email accounts.

Our new email hosting/Blackberry Hosting provider is ExchangeMyMail.com.  It’s been 4 months now and while there have been minor bumps along the road, the management team at EMM still operates under the adage that the customer is always right.  Management takes its job of retaining customers very seriously.  They are a top notch organization and very reasonable on their pricing.  In fact, we spend less now than we did while with Intermedia (who literally nickel and dimed us to death).  One quick example:  As the account owner, I have access to our account’s control panel.  If I wanted to personalize the control panel by putting our logo on it (a page that is only seen by me), they will charge your $50, a month.

In conclusion, if you don’t mind getting tons of Junk Mail, and never knowing if your mail account is working correctly, or whether or not your Blackberry device is receiving all of its email, and if you don’t care that your Fax Area Code doesn’t match your location, and if you don’t mind spending several hours on the phone over several days for a problem that should be fixed within the first 5 minutes that you call, and if you don’t mind getting threatened by the Managers for not respecting their staff, and if you don’t mind not being respected by the management and staff, and if you don’t mind the President of your company standing in your office with a scowl on his face, I say, “Go for it, Intermedia is for you”.

I’m kidding of course. Don’t waste your time or money on this company.  ExchangeMyMail (http://www.exchangemymail.com) was our choice and rated hightly by several forums of which I am a member.  In the end, EMM has worked well for us.  But this is just my opinion and you need to do your own research.   But at least I can offer some real life experience in dealing with Intermedia.  I think this type of review is exactly the kind of review I wished i had found when I was looking for an Exchange Hosting Provider instead of the cookie cutter, “everyone’s wonderful” reviews you get from many online sources.

Palin finally grants Alaskans their Independence

In the most patriotic gesture ever enacted on Independence Day weekend, Governor Sarah Palin announces that she will not seek another term as Governor of Alaska (thereby granting Alaskans their Independence from her).  Further, she is stepping down immediately as the Governor of Alaska.  Well, she’s stepping down in a few weeks but it may as well be tomorrow.

Irony was not lost on Palin’s almost incoherent, Sanford-esque press conference.  And this was a prepared statement.  On the banks of the lake in Wasilla where the Palins live, there were two ducks frolicking in the water behind her.  (Go ahead, check the video tape, I kid you not).  It almost appeared as if they were fighting, or playing, it was hard to tell, but after a little while the two ducks gave up and just sat there.  Lame ducks?  You be the judge.

Alaskans were seen parading in the streets with flags, banners, and streamers, celebrating their independence from the right-wing, uneducated, Jesus-freak, slutty-librarian governor.  Ironically, since Governor Palin doesn’t read newspapers, she’ll never see it in black and white in the local paper, or the New York Times, for that matter.  Hopefully, one of her children will cut out the article for her, and scotch tape it to the fridge.  Sarah is very good at learning from pictures.  It’s all those words that confuse her.

What greater gift could be bestowed upon the citizens of Alaska than Sarah Palin stepping down, and away, and out of the picture?  Once considered America’s most popular Governor, she recently came in dead last in a Gallup poll.

So is she going away?  Don’t bet on it.  She’s been in a bit of hot water lately, as more and more truth comes out regarding her run for the Vice Presidency, and many accusations are arising about her ethics violations.  Additionally, her husband’s loyalty to the Alaska Secession movement can’t be denied anymore because there is too much proof of it.

All of this can only lead to one conclusion.  Either there is one hell of a scandal coming down the pike for which she does not want to be in office at the time, or she thinks that if she resigns now, and pretends to go into hiding for a while, and pretends to do some book learnin’ about government, democracy, foreign policy, economics, health care, and any host of things that she can try and fake her way through later, she can run for President in 2012.  At some point she really, really wants to be able to yell out “They like me!!!   They really like me!!”   But who is going to back a candidate who quit her first term as governor because, in her words “it wasn’t fun anymore”.  If political office were supposed to be fun, everyone would be doing it.

What is sad for most of America, and a feather in the cap of right wing extremists, is that she’ll probably end up on the Fox Network hosting her own talk show.  She has to figure out some way to pay off half a million dollars in legal fees debt.  She’ll get great ratings, mostly because America can’t help but enjoy watching a good train wreck.  And there is no train wreck better to watch than Sarah Palin. You betcha!

I am the last Baby Boomer a.k.a “things I learned while blogging”

In looking back at the posts I have written over the past 2 years, the first thing that comes to mind is that I can’t believe it’s been 2 years.  When I look at the titles and subjects I see a lot of anger.  There have been a lot of people I’ve been mad at over the past 2 years.  I think that finally I’m at a place where either I’ve matured enough not to get angry, or I’m too tired to get angry.  I”m not sure which, yet.

All through the 2008 Presidential campaign I had a lot to say — mostly about right wing republicans with their head up their collective asses.  But I also wrote about family, pop culture, entertainment, baseball and just plain human interest stories.

The second thing I think about is how different my life is today from what it was when I started this blog.  I had just been fired from my job, and didn’t know why.  Finding a new job seemed impossible.  I’m not a writer by trade, as you can tell, but I do have other marketable skills; at least I thought I did.  After 18 long, no, very long months of confidence-crushing job searching with nothing to show for it, I had a lot of time to build up my anger and needed an outlet.  So I took to blogging.  I had way too much time on my hands.

I had no idea what I was doing when I started blogging, still don’t.  I receive a lot of hateful comments from people who troll the internet looking for someone to hate.  I call these people “republicans”.  I receive a lot of  “hate” comments from people who  so afraid of liberal ideas, that they would do, and say, anything based in that fear, in order to squash progessivec ideas.  And I received a lot of “support posts” from people who seek  out opinions of others with whom they can agree.

I don’t believe for one minute that my writing, or anybody else’s writing,  can actually change a readers opinion.  Let’s face it.  It takes years for us, as human beings, to change; change out minds, change our tune, change our outlook, change our opinion, change our politics, etc.  Even if we want to change it doesn’t happen overnight.  So for those of us who don’t even want to change, or don’t think we need to change, reading blog opinion pieces will only inspire the co-conspirators, or anger the detractors.  There’s just not a lot of “re-thinking” going on.

I’ve done my share of reading both mainstream blogs, and personal blogs like mine.  I don’t find there to be much difference between the two.  It’s all just personal opinion, some with agendas, some with butterflies & unicorns.  None if it really matters.

Here are just a few of the things I learned in the last two years.  Some of it I learned about myself, some of it about others:

I hate people who say “at the end of the day”.  It is the most overused, and least meaningful expression in generations.  It is verbal filler, not unlike most of what today’s talkers have to say.  Whether it be a blog or a cable news pundit, it’s all just verbal filler.  What are all these political talk shows but blogs on TV.  It’s white noise that in a week, or a few days, you won’t remember.  And that’s the real problem.  None of it is memorable.

People who don’t like what you have to say will call you every name in the book.  They will write a degrading comment on your blog telling me to stop degrading people.  I don’t get it.  And they don’t understand “hypocrisy”.

Bob’s Discount Furniture and the case of the fake leather

It sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery, but it’s not.  Recently, Bob’s Discount Furniture started running a TV spot where Bob says that his company was rated the #1 Furniture Retailer of the Year by “Furniture Today” magazine.  This is an industry (trade) publication subscribed to and read by other furniture dealers, NOT the public.  As much as I have no interest in discussing Bob’s Discount Furniture AGAIN, I have an even stronger desire to make sure the public knows the truth.

And why wouldn’t Bob’s get voted to the #1 spot by his peers.  He has great sales numbers, apparent customer loyalty. and fools the public and bilks them out of millions of dollars.  He’s a giant success.  Other furniture stores only wish they sold as much “bi-cast leather” and “bonded leather”, neither of which are real leather at all.  How proud Bob must be to have convinced the public that they are buying quality leather furniture when in fact the processes used to produce this type of “leather” make his leather furniture the ”Pringles” of the leather world.

Pringles are a potato chip-like product made from mashed up potato starches and then scraped across a mold to look like “chips”, then fried.  Bonded leather is the same process, only with leather scraps.  Bi-cast leather (also called Bicast, bycast, split, or PU leather) is cheap leather which is separated into thin sheets, sprayed with polyurethane, and then put back together to resemble a durable leather product.

However, unless the owner of such a leather piece of furniture is diligent about dusting it, cleaning it with a high quality leather cleaner, and diligent about never touching it with the natural oils from one’s own skin, statistics say it will only last about 18 months.  So if you are a neat freak and plan to never let your skin touch your leather furniture then bi-cast leather is for you.  Especially when you can buy a “bi-cast leather” chair and ottoman for $299.  You really do get what you pay for.

When Bob yells “Come on down!” he doesn’t mean to his store, he means to his level.
Happy furniture hunting.

I thought Michael Jackson died 20 years ago – so to speak

For those of us who grew up in the “Off the Wall” and “Thriller” era of the late 70’s and early 80’s, we mourned the loss of Michael Jackson 20 years ago when he became something we didn’t recognize anymore.  The “pop culture” mindset of our lives has not crossed paths with Michael Jackson for a long time.  He hasn’t been in our thoughts or in our CD players for many years.  We mourned the fact that the young black man, who broke down racial barriers through his music and his attitude, had turned into a mere shadow of himself, unrecognizable to us physically and plagued by accusations of pedophilia in horrific detail.

It is sad – sad when anybody dies as there are always friends and families who will be overcome with extreme sadness and disbelief.  And most of us know what that feels like.  But sadder, is an entire generation who wrote Michael off a long time ago.  And now it is difficult to muster up the emotions again.  I can’t say that I miss him or his music.  When I look back at clips of him singing, and I mean really singing, it blows my mind.  When he was 10 years of, Michael Jackson could belt out a ballad or a dance tune with a full voice, and a full vibrato.  He sang from his gut and from his diaphragm.  That all stopped 20 years ago when his music became sounds and grunts and squeals.  I had not heard him actually hold a note, like a real singer does, in years.  His voice was meek.  He sang like a frightened little girl.  So yes, we mourned for Michael Jackson.  We just don’t’ feel the need to do it again now.

No matter how talented  Mr. Jackson was, it is difficult to get past the fact that he was accused of child molesting; and not just once.  I believe there is some truth to this.  I just don”t believe these allegations are accidental or part of some conspiracy.  We’ve all heard the details.   Maybe he never touched a child in the grotesque way that we all know can happen.  But how close to the edge of molestation can you go before it actually IS molestation.  Do we want to cut the slice that narrow?  Do we want to say, “well he never actually penetrated a little boy with his penis or finger (sorry but it needs to be said) so he’s not guilty.   Or maybe “well, they were naked together but he only briefly rubbed up against the 12 year old boy after giving him some Jesus Juice”.   While he was acquitted, I  don’t need a legal dictionary to define a crime; or what is inappropriate.

All of that aside, my personal belief is that Michael Jackson struggled with a lot of things, mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially; all affecting how the world saw him and how he saw himself.  He was at times indignant about the way the public perceived him; as if he had no responsibility in the matter.

So Michael Jackson has now died.  He was preparing for a “come back” tour and nobody knows how that would have all turned out.  Maybe at 50 years old he mellowed a bit and understood how is actions with young children have consequences.

I mean no disrespect by anything in this posting.  This is simply my opinion of the events as I see them.  I do feel badly for his family.  I wish the media would leave them alone.  But I also wish the media would leave US alone.

The wheels on the Republican bus have officially fallen off

I didn’t think that the Republican Party could fall out of favor any further than it has.  But in true Republican fashion, they never let you down when it comes to disappointment.

I would not have believed if I didn’t see it.  Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher blamed Barack Obama for the violence and death on the streets of Iran.  He said that if Obama had spoken up and denounced the violence three days ago, the violence would have been avoided.  That woman who was shot and died on live television would be alive if it weren’t for Barack Obama.  Yes, this guy actually said it.

And what if John McCain was our President.  According to his recent remarks, we would be at war with another Islamic country; further degrading the standing of the United States around the world.  And thousands upon thousands more would be dead.  McCain couldn’t even answer this question:  Is Barack Obama on the side of Majmud Ahmadinajad or is he on the side of the factions that are protesting an unfair election.  McCain said “Well I know what side I”M on” insinuating that Barack Obama was on the side of the tyranical President.  He’s kidding right?  No he’s not.

Then, Republicans like radio host and columnist Mark Savage, and a Maryland Republican women’s group, and many others too numerous to mention, have been, just in the last few days, comparing Barack Obama to Hitler.  They are litterally trying to make direct comparisons between Obama’s actions and policies to Hitler’s reign of terror.  It is amazingly ridiculous and hateful, and so far off base that I can’t figure out who these people are trying to convince to join or support their party.  They should have stuck with the idea that Barack’s birth certificate is a fake.  At least that is a conspiracy theory the right wingers can REALLY get behind. 

And now Mark Sanford, South Carolina Governor, admits to infidelity with an Argentinean woman, which explains where he was over Father’s Day Weekend when neither his wife, his sons, nor his administration  knew where he was.  And all the while they thought he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.  He was lost in the woods, alright, metaphorically speaking.  I can’t wait to see how Sanford’s close friend, Joe Scarborough handles this tomorrow morning on “Morning Joe”.  Will he defend Sanford using tax payer money to go to Argentina for a booty call?  Just this morning (Wednesday) Joe was defending Sanford’s behavior.

This is like a bad plot in a bad daytime soap opera.  Even Luke and Laura knew when it was time to give up the Ice Princess plot line.

So Mark Sanford goes on TV today and gives a very long list of all the people he hurt; beginning with his sons.  The young people behind him in his news conference were giggling.  I don’t know who they were or why they were there.  But it was sad, demeaning, and even somewhat humorous.  If there were ever a reason to have a pre-planned speech or tele-prompters, that news conference was it.  This is a man who said President Clinton should resign for such sexually deviant behavior.  Well, Mr. Sanford, will you now resign, because you should based on your own moral compass.

Is it any wonder why the Republican Party is falling apart.   What comes next; calling Barack Obama a extra-terrestrial being while some other Republican congressman gets arrested for molesting pre-school boys. 

Barack Obama is poised to strike and get whatever he wants out of Congress; Republicans or Democrats.  Now is the time Barack.  DO IT!  Get health care passed.  Clean up the environment, Get all the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, create millions of jobs, send America over into the financial abyss; finance our asses off.  Who cares?  It can’t possibly be worse than anything that brain trust we call the GOP can come up with.

And just yesterday, the GOP had begun to lay out plans to take back Congress in 2010.  Sorry guys, I don’t think so.

And the cherry on top?  Rush Limbaugh said about Sanford – “he could have been our JFK”.

I can’t even keep up anymore with the train wreck and casualties that make up the GOP.

It’s time to Fade to Black.

Mika Brzezinski gloms onto Scarborough even more

If Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were on a media tour for the television show “Morning Joe” then I would understand.  But right now they are on a book tour for Scarborough’s book “The Last Best Hope”.  They openly talk about their tour and how Mika also signs Joe’s book.

Now I’ve heard of riding someone’s coat tails but this is ridiculous.  Even if I was a fan of Joe Scarborough’s work, why would I want someone who didn’t write his book to sign it for me.  If Mika Brzezinski wants to sign a book, let her write one.  Or she can sign one of her father’s books posthumously when the time comes.

I find this just a bit odd.  It’s one thing if they are on, or claiming to be on, a combined press tour for “Morning Joe” AND Joe’s book.  But it’s a different thing entirely when they refer to these events as “book signings” and then Mika participates in the dog and pony show followed by her signing Joe’s book right along side him.  I really, really don’t get it.  And I don’t understand why nobody has questioned this.  I keep doing Google searches and I can’t find anything about anyone questioning why Mika is signing Joe’s book.

So now, along with her making faces at everything people say on that show, and along with her feigned holier-than-thou attitude towards anything slightly off-color, and despite the fact that she acts like an idiot as she repeats everything that Joe says (and then purrs like a kitten, it’s weird), and then makes these little orgasmic sounds as she feigns embarrassment when someone call her pretty, she NOW signs someone else’s published work?

I watch “Morning Joe” most mornings, not because of Joe or Mika, but because they have guests that I respect like “Newsweek” editor Jon Meacham, one of my personal heros.  For a time I thought putting up with Mika Brzezinski was something I was willing to do for guests like that.  But I’m not so sure anymore.

Restaurant Review – Stugazzi’s – Springvale, Maine

This is my first restaurant review.  I don’t know why I haven’t done one before; I am a bit of a foodie and have some basic training from culinary school.  I like good food and I think I know what good food is.  So maybe I’ll do more, we’ll see.

When I moved to Maine in 2001 the first thing I missed was the incredibly good food and restaurant choices I had in Connecticut.  Every time a new restaurant opens here in my neck of the woods, I have high hopes, and I’m usually disappointed.

With little fanfare, a small Italian restaurant called “Stugazzi’s” opened in my neighborhood.  When I say that I mean my apartment building and Stugazzi’s share a common parking lot and dumpster.  Our dumpster sharing should have been an omen.

When I walked into Stugazzi’s out of the blue on a very rainy Friday afternoon, I was a bit confused.  I saw a few tables and a big window cut-out through which you could see the pizza oven’s and the kitchen.  The cut-out had a large flat bottom that resembled a counter and I saw a cash register there so I thought maybe it was a walk-up window to place an order.  To the right there was a door to what looked like a dining room but there was no sign that said “Please wait to be seated” or “Please seat yourself” or “Order Here”; nothing.  I later noticed that other customers walked in with the same confused look on their faces which seemed to say “Where do we go, who do we talk do, how do I order food here?”.

In any case I stood at the “window-counter” staring at the pizza ovens directly behind it.  I stood there for several minutes before a man approached me, somewhat gruff, and asked “Can I help you?”.  I wanted to say “Yes, can you tell me how I eat in this establishment, I could use some instruction because there is nothing here that is welcoming me in” – but I didn’t.

I asked how long it would take to get an order of spaghetti and meatballs.  My personal opinion is that in any Italian restaurant, you can get a good feel for the food by ordering the spaghetti and meatballs.  If that’s good, chances are the rest of the food will be good too.  I know that sounds oversimplified but I swear it’s true.  I have proved it time and time again.

The answer I received (and I should have known how this would go by this answer) was “just a few minutes”.  Without thinking I said OK.  The man wrote some stuff down on what looked like an order pad, and asked me if it was to-go.  I said yes and walked away.  During the next few minutes I sat on a chair at a table and watched the other befuddled customers walk in.   I don’t want to overstate the customer base here.  There was me, a table with what looked like a mom and dad with their child, and another couple sitting at a table trying to decide what to order and if they were going to eat it there or take it home.

So I sat and thought and it suddenly dawned on me (Friday afternoon after a long week at work is not my best “thinking” time) “A FEW MINUTES?’  Nothing good can come from that; I just had a feeling.  If he could fix me an order of spaghetti and meatballs in “a few minutes” I had a feeling the pasta wasn’t going to be cooked to order.  In fact it was probably cooked several hours earlier, if not the previous day, and was being dunked into hot water to “revive” it.

It was hot and humid in the restaurant.  So when the gruff gentlemen literally yelled out “SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS TO GO!” I walked up to the counter to pay.  I thought to myself “There are only 6 people in this room, he couldn’t have said “Sir your order is ready” or something like that?  His only option was to yell out “SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS TO GO! as if there were throngs of people there and he couldn’t remember which of the 6 of us placed this order not more than 4 minutes ago?

I paid, walked out, and went home.  When I got home and opened up the package this is what I saw.  A to-go food tin with the plastic cover, wrapped tightly in wads of Saran Wrap.  On top of this package was a few slices of “Italian” bread (the quotes mean there was nothing Italian about it) that was stale and dry and accompanied by butter “packets”; the kind where you have to peel the top off.  I poked the bread with my finger and decided immediately it belonged in the dumpster that I shared with the restaurant from which I just bought this food.

I dont’ know how they did it but the texture of the pasta wasn’t that bad.  The “sauce” however, was another story.  I don’t know how you can call what was on the pasta “sauce”.   “Sauce” indicates something that would slowly ooze across the plate if you were to tip the plate.  There was nothing saucy about it.  It was globs of tomato paste.  It was the same texture as the ketchup gunk that collects around the lip of the ketchup bottle.  And with barely a little more flavor.  It didn’t run, bleed, or coat.  It just sat there in a clump.  It was, in a word, disgusting. 

I noticed on the take out menu that there were some dishes that reference “homemade sauce”.  Spaghetti and Meatballs was not one of those dishes that made this reference.  So are there different “sauces”?  Do other dishes get a  delicious homemade sauce with a refined viscosity and the S & M get the gloppy tomato paste?  Somehow I doubt it.  I was so hungry when I brought my food home that day that I actually ate some of it.  The funny thing is that is wasn’t the pasta that filled me up, it was the sauce.  The sauce was very filling.  The meatballs were obviously bought frozen from a food distributor, or from Costco or BJ’s.  The texture was OK but they had a strange garlic flavor.  If they were made from scratch in the restaurant, they need a new recipe.  A recipe that end up with a meatball tasting like pork and beef, as opposed to garlic and THAT SAUCE.

All in all, the Spaghetti and Meatballs had the refined Italian flavor of something you would get if you ordered Italian food at Denny’s, or Applebees.

There are many interpretations of the word Stugazzi in Italian; everything from “stupid” to “idiot” to “d#%k face”.  I’m not sure which one of those apply here but I know one of them does. 

Stugazzi’s in Springvale, Maine, is an abomination of Italian cuisine.   Here’s a description (verbatim) of their world famous Buffalo Chicken Alfredo:  “Fresh  buffalo tenders serviced in alfredo sauce and poured over Fettuccine”.  Sound Good?  Yes, this restaurant has pulled off the impossible and married Italian food with buffalo chicken fingers.  Stugazzi!!!

What the HELL is going on at Morning Joe on MSNBC?

One of the many disappointments of cable news programming is what I call “screen clutter”.  Between the network logo, the show logo, the news crawler, the date and time, and the guest’s name and title, there is not much room on the screen for the show itself.

Further, this morning on Morning Joe, they were talking about the morning newspapers, like they do every morning.  So yet another portion of the screen had certain headlines from papers around the country.  All of this screen clutter is annoying.  But here’s the real issue.  What they had on the screen for headlines made absolutely no sense.

Picture it, in the lower left quadrant of the screen was the logo of a newspaper, like the Washington Post logo, and then underneath that a headline from a Page 1 story in that publication.  Here are a few examples verbatim.  Tell me if you know what the heck these “headlines” are talking about:

1) Mountaintop Mining to get more environmental scrutiny, Obama officials say” (Washington Post)

2) Rate Rise: Clouds Recover (Wall Street Journal)

3) Fed Emails Bash BOFA Chief Lewis (Wall Street Journal)

4) Russians Outfox U.S. in Latest Great Game (Wall Street Journal)

5) Chocolate-Bunny Case Reaches High Court (Wall Street Journal)

OK, I’m not necessarily a news hound but I like to think I keep up with most of what’s going on in the world.  BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL ANY OF THESE “HEADLINES” ARE TALKING ABOUT.  I checked my calendar to see if it was April Fool’s Day, but it wasn’t.  I have a DVR so I went back and watched it again.  And then again.  And then on the last time I wrote them all down because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  I shouldn’t have to go to each of these publications, or do a Google search, just to understand what the headline means or is referring to.  And the wording and subject matter is so ridiculous that I already don’t CARE what they are talking about.  I think I finally understand what phrase “East Coast Media Elite” means.

Somebody help me!