HANNAH MONTANA
IS NO SECOND BANANA!
There is another paradigm shift happening in tweenyland!
Bye bye Celebritney Spears you’re almost 26 and the Hollywood Dream Machine is K-Fed up with your hijinx and it can’t wait for your hair to grow back in either location.

Take a Hike Heiress Piltdown we are so glad that you got some jailhouse religion but whateverrrrr you are 26 years OLD.

Toodaloo Lindsay Lohan you’re turnin’ 21 so look out world now you are ‘legal’ in all 50 States Woo Hoo!

Sayonara Simpson Sisters:
Jessica 'ditz' all over but the cryin’ sweetie you are done at 26 and

Little sister Ashlee,
Comin’ up on 23,
Did the Milli Vanilli
Your street cred is history
Find a guy with mo’ money
Hey how about Nick Lachey?

Times are rough for Hilary Duff. At 19 she is the reigning tween idol and all of the soccer Moms are nervous because all of the other tweenie role models are a disaster! As long as the insidious Disney handlers can stop Duff from doin’ stupid stuff she will have a few more years of
((BEEP BEEP BEEP))
who are we kidding the best before date has been reached.
We wish you luck, by the way have you met your replacement?

Hello Destiny!
Destiny Hope Cyrus aka Miley is Hannah Montana!
here
Disney’s next tween sensation is only 15 and Yessirree Bob she is the real life daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus who plays her Dad on the Hannah Montana Show.

On the show Miley is secretly a pop star named Hannah Montana and Billy Ray was a huge country star and is now her manager.
Shucks this thing practically writes itself don' it?

Here is the achy, breaky, kicker for me.
Miley/Hannah’s mother died. SHUT-UP!
Has anyone noticed a recurring theme at Disney?

Bambi, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Aladdin, Ariel, Dumbo, Winnie, Peter Pan, Belle, Simba, Mulan, Nemo, Pocahontas, Mowgli..does this ring any bells?

A Disney protagonist is always, always, always, either an Orphan, had a Single Dysfunctional Parent,
or was a slave to Monstrous Guardians.
Stop and think about that. Can anyone explain this to me?

Now old Walt lost my trust when they shot Old Yeller, (You Bastard!) and after I discovered that Lemmings don’t voluntarily commit suicide.

Do any of you remember watching in horror as thousands of those cute little kamikaze rodents rushed over the cliff and plunged into the icy Sea?

I saw White Wilderness, which actually won an Oscar, on TV during the weekly Sunday Evening presentation of The Wonderful World of Disney.
The mass suicide myth still endures.
http://lemmingswerepushed.blogspot.com/2005/04/why-this-blogs-title.html

Those poor over the hill starlets are goin' over the cliff along with their dysfunctional parents as the marketers steer the tweens like lemmings towards a new tween queen sensation.

Run Hannah Run!

HOWARWE FIVE-O

I am turning 50 this year so in my honor I am reading a book about the Fifties;
The Life and Times of the THUNDERBOLTKID
by Bill Bryson.

I twitter so about being a Baby Boomer because this demographical anomaly will never again be repeated for however long our species will be allowed to continue gumming up the works here on the third rock from the Sun.
The Boomers are obviously immune from the effects of Nostalgicide and they are now firmly in control of the mainstream media so don't expect the zeitgeist of the 50s, 60s, & 70s to disappear anytime soon!
http://www.boomerdeathcounter.com/

Bryson declares, “When the war ended the United States had $26 Billion worth of factories that didn’t exist before the war, $140 Billion in savings and war bonds just waiting to be spent, no bomb damage, and practically no competition.”

Fast forward to today and the USA borrows $3 Billion per DAY to stay in business.



This book contains the famous 1951 LIFE magazine photograph of the Czekalinskis and the 2.5 tons of food that the Average American Family consumed at an estimated cost of $1,300 per year.


That's right $25 per week.


For further scrutinizing read this article: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/money_01.html

President George Dubya Boomer was born in 1946 one year after WW2. His daddy, George Hard Workin' Bush, was an ex Navy Pilot studying Economics at Yale at the time and his Grandfather, Prescott, was an Investment Banker who just happened to be on the board of the Yale Corporation in '46.

You know the old saying about the Grandchildren running a company into the ground, shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve in three generations. When ‘Dubya’ was born the sky was the limit. Now, not so much. OK we can't blame him for everything but he and his crew are certainly doing their best to run the business into the ground.

This nostalgic perception that those were simpler times is partially true.
It was much simpler to ignore the rest of mankind back then and now it is impossible. Unfortunately we have Nostalgisaurs in positions of power and influence, whose heads are as far up their butts as they were in 1951!

That is why every now and then I am genuinely concerned about my future grandchildren and what their world will be like when the Oil runs out in 79 years. Somehow I need to make a difference now.

Comedian Denis Miller says not to worry about the Oil running out in 2086 because the day after we run out we’ll get conversion kits that will allow our cars to run on cat farts. That is certainly reassuring but I need a little more wiggle room.

What do you think the world will be like in 79 years and will they finally stop talking about Baby Boomers?

ENVIWRONGMENTALISM

As I discussed on March 19th, the best job in the world is being a weatherman, weathergirl, or weather person.

Unlike a surgeon, cashier, pilot, or explosives expert, a weatherperson can be wrong 50% of the time and still keep their job.

My problemo is that our precious Humanitoban Summers have historically only been 2 months long so it is nice to know what is happening outside.

We actually had F4 Tornadoes

less than one hour away from Whateverpeg (pop 750,000) this past weekend!

Thankfully nobody was killed.

GLOBE&MAILstory.

http://TORNADOES

It is the last week of school and the days have started to shorten already because June 24th is longest day of the year.
Summer holidays will be gone in a flash.

Summer Holidays?!

Apparently the French Normans imposed the idea of summer holidays after they conquered England in 1066.

I presume that during this point in history that the English still had no idea that it was not cloudy and raining in continental Europe.

I am also guessing that the Brits summered where they wintered because the weather is crappy all 365 days of the year and therefore did not vacance their winter homes ala les La-Di-Da Normans.

Mind you I did see the film about the Queen and apparently Mum and the rest of the “Germans’ head north to Scotland for the summer holidays in search of greyer, rainier, drearier, weather.

This act of masochistic duty is required in order to maintain the stiff upper lip, an air of unflappable non chalance, and to maintain the ghostly pale complexion that her predecessor Elizabeth 1st made so popular.

Here in the Colonies we of course inherited these summer holidays because they permitted schools to close so that the children could work on the farm.

My maternal Great Grandfathers were both farmers so my pessimism and morbid fascination with weather conditions is decidedly genetic.

Farmers live and die by the weather so it is a tempestuous 'love/hate' relationship as volatile and unpredictable as the weather itself.

Pictured above to the right is my Mother's Mother's Parents:

Jacob B. Fast & Caroline (Poersch)

who came to Canada from Russia in 1874

and below is my Mother's Father's Parents;

Johannes Thor Simonson & Anna Marie (Franzene)

who left Sweden in 1893 to farm in Minnesota before moving up here.

Now I realise that today forecasters have a hard time guessing what the weather is going to be like tomorrow so perhaps it is unfair to judge our governmental agency in charge of guessing what the weather will be like tomorrow http://ENVIWRONGMENTCANADA.

Obviously the planet is trying to get rid of our species by altering the climate.

What this means is that unfortunately, unprefrickindictable weather, will be here to stay for the rest of our lives.

ENVIWRONGMENT CANADA has 6,000 employees and a budget of $500 Million. According to their website 80% of their budget is wasted, I mean spent, on ‘scientificky’ stuff about the atomosphere.

My question is why?

How about spending a few hundred bucks from http://SEARSHOMEIMPROVEMENTS and installing windows at the 100 Enviwrongment Canada offices.

This would definitely help embattled prognosticators know if it is actually sunny or raining outside.

The scientificky computer wizards could actually stick their heads outside and experience Mother Nature in all of her glory.

If the weather is completely fercoct,

then why bother trying to pretend that ENVIWRONGMENT CANADA has any idea what it will be like outside ?

If 6,000 people and half a billion dollars can’t tell me whether it will be raining or sunny outside then forget it.

Let it go.

Waste the money on something more productive…

like developing that fancy schmancy NEW SCHOOL CALENDAR that has five terms;

4 equal two week holidays &

4 weeks of summer holidays.

This makes perfectly good sense now that Mother Earth has trimmed our Summers down to one lonely month, JULY.

http://WHATEVERPEGWEATHER

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF
BARELY MISSING A BEAR IN THE DARKNESS



Last night I narrowly avoided a collision with a 300 pound Black Bear on the Highway one hour North of Whateverpeg, a city of 750,000 people. It sounds so Canadian eh?

My daughters, both Dancers, had just been at the Concert Hall to see La_La_La_Human_Steps

It doesn’t get more urban than that.

Forty minutes later we are in Cottage Country near Lake Winnipeg, the 11th Largest Freshwater Lake in the World.

I am voluntarily driving them to a big Birthday Party that ‘everyone’ else has already been at for several hours.

We are bonding.
We’re blasting tunes and singin’ away.

I am driving a little slower than usual because there are so many unpredictable Deer grazing at the side of the road, a disgusting amount of kamikaze insects are splattering on the windshield, drizzling rain, and it is 10:30pm so it is dark.

We had just reached the turn off for Grand Beach

(Yeah, Yeah you know..

Playboy's List of top ten beaches in the World)

when Nic screamed at the top of her lungs

((“AAAAEEEEIIYYYEEEEEE!”))

I swerved within three feet of an ambling black Bear which of course is almost invisible under these conditions.

That Bear’s big bare butt just missed being barreled over by my 5,550 pound Van.

We barely missed him!

He would have felt the unbearable lightness of being dead.

If you happened to be in a small vehicle while driving into a full grown black bear the occupants would probably share in the unbearable lightness of being dead.

I was glad that I was drivng and that we were in the Van.

I seem to talk about Bears quite a bit, hmmm.. List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America_

As I stopped to release my daughters to their own kind I noticed that the tranquility of the Canadian Wilderness was shattered by exuberant, screaming, mirthmakers celebrating a Birthday, the advent of Summer, and the end of this year of University Studies

((“YOU MADE IT WOOOHOO!”))

Oh to be young again...the unbearable lightness of being older and wiser. In a few years Life will become more complicated than these 'kids' could have ever imagined. If only they knew what was around the corner...Ignorance is bliss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being

I turned around and drove home well under the 100 km speed limit.

Another memory made.

WEB 2.D'OH!

"The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers, exuberant monkeys with no more talent than our primate cousins, all simultaneously talking about themselves, in an endless digital forest of mediocrity."

So says Andrew Keen in his book

THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR.

Here are several reviews (that I read) by people willing to pay this smug so&so 23 bucks and actually read this mental masturbation. I have a feeling that this jackanape's jeremiad should be read out loud inside of a hyberbolic chamber to absorb the hyperbole.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/

According to the reviews, Keen does bring up some issues regarding the Web 2.D'OH! revolution that do need to be addressed. As we all know NATURE abhors a vacuum and as we discussed yesterday, so much of the Main Stream Media (MSM) has turned into infotainment whores that Bloggers started filling in the gaps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

Sure there is a lot of crap out here but atleast it's our crap!

This Keen fellow reminds me of the time when a visibly shaken Myopic Iconoclast, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was confronted by the MSM regarding the post liberation looting of government offices, museums, and shops that took place in Baghdad.

'Rummy's' theory, that inside every Iraqi is an American dying to get out, turned out to be true afterall! Sure enough Iraqi citizens began liberating retail outlets, government offices, museums, and other citizens homes of 'stuff' just like Americans do after their team wins a Championship!

“Freedom’s untidy (2.0 is a bitch),” he said.

“Free people (bloggers) are free to make mistakes (make up sh*t) and commit crimes (plagiarize) and do bad things (write the odd post that may not be 100% true).

They're (bloggers) also free to live their lives (so to speak) and do wonderful things (relatively speaking), and that's what's going to happen here (on the Interweb).”

So like it or not Mr. Keen we're here and you had better get used to it. Actually if it wasn't for us bloggers you wouldn't have had anything to kvetch about in your fancy schmancy book you big wanker.

So, you're welcome.

SHOCK & AWE SHADDUP!

I distinctly remember the last time that I was anesthetized in an operating room. I was having all 4 of my wisdom teeth yanked.

I find it quite ironic that anything labeled ‘wisdom’ would be extracted from your head.

“OK Donnie can I ‘getcha to start counting back from 100?”
“ninety nine,
ninety eight,
nineteee sevvvvvvvennnnnnnnnnnnn”

Suddenly I am falling backwards into an abysssssssssssssssssssss ((Poof))
One of my stoner buddies described the feeling so succinctly back in the 70s,

“The first thing I knew,

I didn’t know nuthin’.”

To be anesthetized means to be rendered insensible. The word Anesthesia comes from the Greek (an) “without” + (aisthesis) “perception” and has traditionally meant the condition of having the 'PERCEPTION OF PAIN BLOCKED'.

I believe that modern homo escapeons, human doings, are overwhelmed by a combination of the governmental ‘thought stopping’ propaganda of FEAR, and self inflicted cultural capitulation to psychologically calculated advertising programs from global corporations.

These oppressors are not necessarily overwhelming us in coordinated strategic alliances their individual efforts all just happens to feed off of each other and form an all encompassing net.

Our collective goose is nearly cooked thanks to the final ingredient in this equation. The majority of the news media have failed us spectacularly because so many of the professional journalists are now morphing into infotainment parrots caged in revenue producing entities for global corporate conglomerates. The pros are no longer our watchdogs and advocates.

Far too many of them are now merely messenger boys relaying government press releases and part of that vacuum is being filled by bloggers. So don't believe for one second that nobody is reading your crappy blog.

BIG BROTHER is very interested in what you are saying.

Our primate brains are frantically trying to catch up to the modern methods of anesthesia. We are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and the inability to filter, decipher and evaluate the authenticity of all of this propaganda and media cluster bombing.

Like SLAM or Midazolam, a psychoactive or psychotropic substance, this tsunami of information acts primarily upon our prehistoric central nervous system where it alters brain function, resulting in temporary changes in perception, mood, consciousness, memory, and behavior.

To make matters worse, all around the world humans are funneling into urban centres in record numbers and suckling at the teat of the giant pacifier known as the internet.

These two trends offer our would be puppet-masters an economy of scale that is unparalleled in history.

I also believe that the 'Interweb' is our greatest weapon against them.

We, the emboldened, despised, 'ordinary' people can disseminate information that can impede or curtail their brainwashing campaign.

However our adversaries can just as easily infiltrate this culture of the amateur investigators, wannabe journalists, and armchair philosophers by throwing out 'shiny' stories about Paris Hilton getting some 'religion' at the Crowbar Hotel.
Which is why the great unwashed seems to know more about celebrities and than they do about their neighbours.

Divide and conquer, shock and awe.

Let us hope that it really is a reversible lack of awareness.

RANDUMB THOUGHTS

Here are some other ideas that I really wanted to explore this week to see what YOU had to say...

A. THE INGLISH LANGWIJ

I wanted to explore the historically predictable victory of the English language (the black hole vortex, word stealing great whore of Babble-On) and discuss the inevitable future fonetic spelling chainjiz that wee can’t stop.
With 42 sounds spelled in 400 different ways it will continue to adapt, morph and survive even langwij killerz like txt msgs.

B. PANDA'WOE'NIUM

China is a country where three quarters of the population, 750 Million people, basically live in impoverished, archaic, rural, obscurity. This is not some Monolith that will steamroll over the rest of the world anytime soon and may even disintegrate if democracy ever gets a foothold.

I liken their political isolation to the lonely plight of the symbolic Panda. The mysterious Panda is basically held hostage to the restrictive limitations of it’s nutrient starved diet of bamboo which severely limits their energy levels.

China's government is screwing the people of Darfur (Sudan) in order to protect their OIL supply. A decade ago Kharthoum, Sudan, was Al Qaeda’s HQ and bin Laden (who will not shake a woman’s hand) planned on making it the centre of a modern Global Caliphate or Islamic Empire.


C.THE GREAT PRTETENDER

Tsar Nikolai Romanov’s beloved daughter Anastasia was murdered with the rest of Russia’s Royal Family but the amazing career of alleged Grand Duchess Anna Anderson captured the imagination of millions until she passed away in 1984.

D. THE MESS O POTAMIA

The War ON Iraq has sadly surpassed Vietnam as the greatest military/political blunder in American history. A FRONTLINE documentary featured on PBS outlining the first year of the invasion revealed an incredible lack of sophistication by the tall foreheads in Washington.

Grand Poobah Paul Bremmer and his decision to introduce the De-Ba’athification (Saddam’s political party) of the country and the dismantling of the 300,000 man army were unimaginably ill conceived actions that did nothing but encourage insurgency and initiate the current full blown Civil War.
They didn’t even expect looting?

E. PUNDITS PUNTIN' PUTIN'

Has anyone else noticed that Russia’s Premier Putin is suddenly getting very negative coverage from the American Press. Could it be that the impossibility of ever winning the War on Terrorism has finally been (unofficially) acknowledged by the White House.
However, in order to keep feeding the trillions of dollars into the Military Budget the Bush Administration is deciding to resurrect the Cold War.

The losing battle against ‘Islamist Arabs’ is just too messy and politically incorrect, even for old guard Republicans, and the simplicity of fighting other ‘White’ people is much more palatable. Thank God that those pasty white Ruskies are old fashioned Atheists. Anyway as the withdrawal from the Mess’o’potamia progresses the USA seems to be picking a fight with Putin to keep the money rolling in.
The US economy is a conflict driven entity.

F. OUT OF ORDER!

Judge Roy L Pearson of Washington DC, launched a $67 MILLION Lawsuit against Custom Cleaners because they temporarily lost a pair of his pants. OK begin clichés:
Take him to the cleaners & Sue the pants off him.
http://www.customcleanersdefensefund.com/

Offers from the Chung Family, who are the Korean Immigrant Proprietors, ranged from $150 to $12,000 to settle out of court. Pearson, the until recently *appointed judge??? was lamenting a divorce and financial hardship, went ahead with it anyway.

Pearson happens to be African American so the back story of ethnic tension between Asians and Blacks is now in session.

Roy is now the ligthning rod, the embodiment and the official posterboy, for the ridiculous, shameful, state of the Justice System in the USA.
You would expect that disbarment and immediate dismissal are required RFN to restore any confidence in American Justice.

You would think that this is the last straw to break the Camel’s back before the people storm the Bastille
..but then again this is a country with 194 accredited Law Schools and atleast 1 million practicing lawyers so what do you expect?

LABELS!
Yesterday morning as I sleepily perused the paper, I started reading an article on what I thought was about making labels and something about those damn VLTs, video lottery terminals. HUH?

After another sip of coffee and a synaptic burst deep within my thick cranium and I realised that it was about

remaking labia

and Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation! LVRs HELLO.

Apparently our city has one of three doctors in Canada who offers Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation. I had no idea that there even was such a thing as labia envy? The article, very tastefully reported, suggests that some ladies want to ‘tighten up’ their vaginas after childbirth to enhance their sex life, and others simply want to ‘nip their tuck’ a bit for both physical and cosmetic purposes.

Well why not eh? Men get calf implants and penis extensions. If you have a couple grand to waste on ‘trimming the turkey’ go for it.

Our friend Borat had much to say on this subject in his movie so perhaps this matter is of some consequence in places like Kazakhstan.

“When I uh, buy my wife, at the start she was uh, cook good, her vazhïn work well, and she strong on plow. But after three years, when she was fifteen, then she become weak, her voice become deep 'BORAT BORAT', eh, she receive hair on chest, and her vazhïn hang like sleeve of wizard.”

I suppose that the line between public and pubic has been blown wide open by Celebutantes like Britney and Paris flashing their hoo-hoos for the paparazzi.

Talk about overexposure.

For whatever reason, personally I blame Cosmo, here we are in the 21st Century discussing vulval cosmetic surgeries.

Who could have guessed that in only 150,000 short years that our species would have come so far? Not so long ago during the Victorian Era uncovered Piano legs was considered scandalous. Do you remember the 60s when burning bras was outrageous.

There was a song in '68 called the Tighten Up by Archie Bell of the Drells from Houston, Texas:

"We're gonna tighten up

Let's do the tighten up

You can do it now

So baby, get to it

Look to your left now

Look to your right

Everybody can do it

But don't you get too tight"

Is this simply another aspect of the sexual revolution and a

natural progression towards the equality of the sexes?

What do we make of this?

HUMANE BEINGS?!
As if Celebutante Paris Hilton getting tossed back into jail wasn't enough, the American Cult of Celebrity has lost another piece of the thin veneer that sugarcoats it. Like another tile falling off of the Space Shuttle, the underground world of Dog Fighting has been revealed and the harsh light of day is shining on a couple of professional athletes. Role models.

ANIMAL LOVER WARNING http://network.bestfriends.org/legalanimal/news/

If you need any more proof that some Professional Athletes are dumber than a bag of hammers meet Clinton 'Poortaste' Portis.

Mr. Portis was caught in the headlights of a TV interview defending fellow National Football Leaguer Michael Vick and his right to engage in the time honored Southern tradition of Dog Fighting. I kid you not.

"I don't know if he was fighting dogs or not," Portis said in the interview,

"but it's his property; it's his dogs.

If that's what he wants to do, do it."

Quarterback Michael Vick was a bona fide American Football hero who just signed a $137 Million ten year contract a few years ago. WOW are you impressed! Today if you Google Dog Fighting his picture shows up more often than the mangled faces and corpses of the godforsaken Pit Bulls bred explicitly for fighting.

Clinton 'Poortaste' Portis, rushed to Michael Vick 's rescue, and said of the public lynching in the court of public opinion.

"I think he got cheated. You take a positive role model...and put him behind bars for no reason, over a dog fight?"

"It can't be too bad of a crime. There's a lot of stuff that's crimes, you know. It's killers on the loose over here and you want to hunt down Michael Vick over fighting some dogs."

Now I don't know about you but I think that it doesn't get much lower than Dog Fighting. I would place little hope of rehabilitating the mindset of the macho f*cking idiots who enjoy and engage in the insanely cruel manipulation of these poor animals.

For those convicted of participating (in any way shape or form) in this despicable activity, my sentence would be to experience the pain and horror of being ripped and gnawed apart by the savage jaws of a large carnivore.

I sentence you to a day in the Colloseum of ancient Rome you bastard.

Let's throw these cowards into a Time Machine and drop them off in the middle of some blood soaked arena.

There isn't a running back in the NFL that could outrun a Bear, Tiger, Lion or even one of the tormented and ill treated Pit Bulls whose short brutal life is wasted on entertaing cowardly f*cking idiots anywhere on the planet and that would include Millionaire NFL Quarterbacks.

In the court of public opinion the sentencing has begun and the schandenfreude is flowing freely.

If you think that this is just a public lynching of two young, narcissistic, undereducated, Southern, black, multi-millionaire, professional, athletes...((gasp)) you're wrong.

This goes to the heart of what it means to be a "humane' being.

BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY
Do you ever get a song stuck in your head that you can't extract.
I have the song Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie, yes this Fergie, wedged in between my ears.


The damn chorus is so catchy!

OK look I admit that I really liked the retro groovy sound of the song Where is the Love by her band the Black Eyed Peas, but I don't find her other material exactly Fergalicious .
It started harmlessly enough with the Music Station on in the background and then this song came on and this chorus keeps swirling around in my brain.

"I hope you know, I hope you know
That this has nothing to do with you
It's personal, myself and I
We got some straightening out to do
And I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket
But I've gotta get a move on with my life
It's time to be a big girl now
And big girls don't cry

Don't cry, Don't cry, Don't cry"

Ok I have blasted Utah Saints, Aphrodite's Child, INXS, New York Dolls, Be Good Tanyas, Arcade Fire, Marble Index, Roxy Music, and even Barry Manilow trying to get this song out of me 'ead!

You know what? Most of the time we complain, kvetch, or rant, about matters that will never darken our doorstep. Often times I imagine that most of you are shaking your heads at my preposterous notions that are so superficial or trivial that most of you would probably say,
"If I had your problems
I'd burn mine."
Yesterday while checking in on this lovely, talented, 250 year old painter from Kansas whose nom de blog is The Labrat , I was shocked to see the current state of affairs that engulfs her family and community. I would not be nearly as collected and stoic as she appears to be.

In lieu of whinging about something superficial like a song stuck in my head all weekend I would much rather encourage a few of you compassionate souls to click your heels together and fly off to Kansas because Dorothy was right, there is no place like home.

PIRATING KEITH RICHARRRDS!

Does Johnny_Depp owe Keith_Richards one half of the millions of dollars that he earned for his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy?

Wouldn't you agree that the entire Corporate World is all about BRANDING?

These days an identifiable Brand is a globally protected commodity.

"A brand is asymbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and serves to create associations and expectations around it. A brand often includes a logo, fonts,colour schemes,symbols, and sound, which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality."

Keith_Richards has spent years and years perfecting the BRAND image of Keith Richards Rock and Roll Superstar Survivor. Keith is THE symbollic embodiment, the epitome of the sex, drugs, and ROCK N ROLL SUPERSTAR. His brand is even more valuable because

Keith won't sell out like all of the other aging Rock Stars, even his partner Mick Jagger, who are getting Knighted! Puh-leeeze!

Who amongst us does not marvel at the fact that Keif is still above ground and able walk in broad daylight without exploding into a vampiric powder?

For years many pundits have speculated that after a Nuclear War the only survivors may very well be Cockroaches, Rats, and Keif!

That being said, Keith is obviously in on the joke about his essence being pirated in Pirates since he agreed to appear as Jack's Dad. OK he doesn't need the money The_Rolling_Stones are still the number one moneymaking concert band in the world.

Keith is a good sport much like Queen Elizabeth II is for not garnishing Helen Mirren's wages.(whew!)

God Bless you Mum!

On the other hand which aging Rock Star on the where are they now list would crawl out of the woodwork to try to cash in on someone cashing in on them?

Let's face it there aren't too many originals out there anymore so it would have to be an old geezer from the 60s or 70s. How may one of a kind Rock Stars can you even identify from different decades that are truly originals?