Lemme tellya, looking out the window right now and seeing frosty ice crystals all over my lawn is blowjhinski. I've had about enough of winter, and after the balmy climes of Spumoni I just ain't in the mood for this.

March goes out like a lamb, my ass.

And speaking of lamb, we cooked some fish last week. Here's a picture of Iron Chef Mostaccioli taking care of business. Those tuna steaks in the foreground got seared nicely -- even moreso when the cedar plank under the salmon burst into flames. All of which served the greater culinary good.

Back here at Berea-Rose, the chimps were watching a teen choice award show on a kids' network. I had considered kicking them off the TV so I could watch "Cops" or "World's Dumbest" but relented -- hey, at least this stuff was geared toward kids, right?

What crap -- it was all a bunch of enviro-crazed agitprop. As part of one "celebrity" introduction, they showed him posed with Algore while the announcer cooed that "he even drives an electric car!" After a few more minutes of "let's all save the planet" horseshit I made the executive decision: the TV goes off.

And it won't be turned on again until Thursday night. When we watch the next episode of "Smoking Gun Presents World's Dumbest." As a family.

Yeah, the boys will pick up bad humor from uncouth commentators -- but at least they won't be enlisted in a mindless (and increasingly annoying) cult of green.

Me? I like news for its entertainment value. So does writer James Lileks, who tweets: "Maybe I’m old-school, but 'President fires CEO' looks as wrong as 'Pope fires Missile.' Does not compute." Hey Lileks, it's a Brave New World out there!

I suppose it is for the best that Cookie and Mojo do not get school bus service. Especially if the case of this poor kid is in any way representative. So he ripped a few... Big deal! The bus driver who suspended him sounds like a real winner. Money quote from complaint form:

it is so stink that you can't breathe after he does it

Which of course takes me back to that stand-up routine Bazzukajoe used to play in a loop back at the house in Staten Island: "your feet so stink I can taste it in my mouth." Anyone else recall that performance? Anyone ever think to quote it in official incident report documentation?

Whizzinator. Heh. "If you listen closely, you can hear the little motor."

Yeah, there's a lot of fakery out there these days. Gotta stay alert.

What would Curtis Sliwa say?

Ah, a day of beautiful weather, a nice meatloaf, a glass of red wine, and now they're playing a Smiths song from Louder Than Bombs. Life is good, even when Morrissey is so depressed:

England is mine
It owes me a living

The more things change...

Gonna buy Frylock some airline tickets to Venezuela, or maybe Argentina -- let him see up close that the populist-driven statism we're getting here is really not something new under the sun.

In fact, I read somewhere that there is nothing new under the sun.

Frylock failed to mention what else he saw on the news: Kucinich. Yes, the Dennis! is back on camera, and this time he has every right to be angry. There he was in the primaries, making clear just the kind of marxist craziness he vowed to deliver -- which is just about exactly the marxist craziness we're getting now.

Cleveland just doesn't get any respect. "I explicitly promised a disastrous program of weak defense, unsustainable entitlements, and crony corporatism," the deranged elf seems to be protesting. "And still you chose the other guy, who does all the same things without calling them what they are. I'm the original, you ingrates!"

See that, America? You could-a had the real thing.

We've got beautiful weather for today's St. Pat's Day. Last night we played musical children: with Mojo sleeping at a friend's house and Cookie having one of his pals stay here. We stayed up late to watch the new Narnia movie. They still woke up ahead of me.

So earlier today I was erupting to Sfingi about the reaction of CNN and even FoxNews regarding the controversy surrounding the AIG bonuses. As always, Sfingi just laughed, I tried to explain my outrage is not only a policy objection, its the fundamental lack of logic that dictates them. Look, I objected to the AIG bailout, a business is darwinistic in that the the strongest and best manage survive...the others either fall or become absorbed by another. Regardless, AIG is GIVEN 170 billion, no strings attached to artificially survive another day. It spends .1% on its contractually obligated merit and performance based bonuses...which I might add would undoubtedly recirculate in the economy, and its an outrage. What kind of company actually honors its legal contract with its most efficient employees, the honest thing to do would be to illegally steal the bonus and spend it elsewhere in ways that also have no strings attached. AIG did the right thing. So the honorable Larry Reid and Chuck Shumer come up with a brilliant response, like a bully in a schoolyard they promise a tax to revoke the entire bonus. I hope they each get a boyle inside their asshole. So Sfingi once again giggles at my ire and naivete, reminds me I'm supposed to be a politico and none of this is a surprise.

So Sfingi was attentive and sympathetic to my issues, but earlier this morning when i first heard of the AIG rebellion, I was watching Jenny clean our cockerspaniel's ears when she accidentally broke off the cotton tip in one of his ears. As shes desperately and quietly trying to remove it I'm exploding with the above sentiments and the more I rail, the more Jenny is panicking at our failure to rescue the Qtip. Finally, she blurts out "Would you shut the fuck about this and please help me get this out his ear. Neither Barack Obama or Harry Reid is going to pay the 300 fucking dollar vet bill if we don't.!!" Sheez, Silent No More indeed.

By the time I went up to bed last night Da Chimps were still watching Smoking Gun America's Dumbest something-or-other. I know I shouldn't let them watch such stuff -- Guido reminded me of that earlier tonight when I talked to him over the phone... while watching Cops with the boys.

Anyway, I got up this morning and went downstairs to start the meatballs and Mojo was still sleeping on the living room floor. Cookie had (noisily) made his way up to his bedroom sometime between 2 and 3.

The meatballs came out good today. Simmered the sauce all day with two giant hunks of beef-bone. Yum.

What an exciting news cycle we had this week. One arm of federal authority accepted the guilty plea of Bernie Madoff and ordered him imprisoned for taking the money of unwitting private investors and placing it in a disastrous get-rich scam.

Elsewhere, another arm of federal authority signed into law a budget package that requires taking money from unwitting private taxpayers and placing it in a disastrous get re-elected scam.

It's always fun to listen to Steve talk about this stuff: he wants so much to be able to laugh at the absurdity. The WSJ has been on a tear lately -- today it headlines one section with a long article about the underground economy. Well, yeah -- when it's this expensive to do things "by the book" people find, er, alternatives.

Earlier this week the Journal took apart a central tenet of the current regime's ideology. The budget proposal actually makes explicit the pseudo-moral "logic" that makes it necessary to reverse income inequality, even if it means adopting measures that will make everyone poorer. Subject to central planners. Equal in our poverty. (Except for politicians, natch -- they get to keep their corporate jets.)

But back to why this stuff is more scary than funny: the document includes an explicit appeal to class resentment with a balls-out call for wealth redistribution. They're uniters, not a dividers! And never mind that high earners have increasingly been small-businesses filing taxes as individuals, artificially inflating the incomes registering at that end of the spectrum.

These are the same people who declare, with straight faces, that deficits have been used to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is a nonsense: one doesn't finance a tax cut, one finances spending. And for years most federal spending goes out in the form of welfare checks. Checks are payments which must be financed. To characterize tax cuts as if they were payments is about as dishonest as, well, characterizing welfare payments as tax cuts.

But who would ever have the audacity to make such an Orwellian claim? (Oh yeah, we've seen it done -- without challenge!)

Getting past the routine dishonesty of the rhetoric, you can't help but be scared by the substance: the assumption that every dollar earned by anyone is first and foremost the property of the Nanny State. Any change (ha ha) you get to keep is considered a cost to the government. A cost! To them! Retain more than half the fruits of your labor and you will be committing a crime against greater society.

That's not just an immoral argument, it's a totalitarian philosophy.

But is totalitarianism a bad thing if half the population welcomes it? Heh, go read a history book. It's unsurprising that the government class would embrace this stuff; depressing that our intellectual class would celebrate it; downright tragic that the poor would (once again in history) be seduced by it.

Steve, get in here and find the humor in all this. Perhaps Jenia can teach us the tune to some of the old slogans of that other permanent revolution:

All Forces to the Sowing Campaign!
Do Not Allow One Kulak to Interfere with the Spring Harvest!

Silent Jen is correct: the long winter of marxism has descended upon us. The gallows-humor jokes are already rolling in. And funny that I read your post after watching the clip of Ari Fleischer performing a methodical intellectual vivisection of MSNBC's other spittle-flecked barking moon-bat. I never watch that network, mind you, but the web clip came recommended from National Review so how could I resist. The host's brazen dishonesty is somewhat disturbing, but Ari totally takes him to school.

Follow the links. The video clip is total political snuff, and the jokes are depressingly funny. Ask Jenia if he's ever heard jokes like this back in Russia:

* America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
* Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
* They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
* Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
* The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
* They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

As they say, they'll turn us all into beggars because they're easier to please. And control.

Feel better yet, comrade? Don't worry, you will.

I came across this message at my desk this afternoon --it definitely put a smile on my face..Some food for thought...(This message was sent by one Conservative and delivered to another)

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
Depression is when you lose yours.
And recovery is when Obama loses his.

When I recently paraphrased Rahm Emanuel saying "never waste a crisis by not looting" I had no idea I was tapping into a matter that economists actually study. And it seems they well should -- "institutionalized looting" seems to have overtaken "wealth creation" as the engine that drives our economy.

Don't cry for me, Argentina, indeed!

And about that work-out regimen described below... It seems most odd to me that about the same time of day that Bazzukajoe goes to sleep, Frylock's getting up to spend stink-time with sweat-people. What I'm trying hardest to picture is Steve's face as he goes about his exercise circuit. How do you control your breathing if all you keep muttering is "it's not even friggin five o'clock yet... it's not even friggin five o'clock yet..."?

So lets discuss the gym. Lets face it, I've been avoiding going for years, but I have finally accepted my thirtysomething ass indeed is showing wear and tear. So I am irritable enough going at 4:30 am...especially after a spring forward time change...but there are somethings about the gym that i find mind-boggling. In particular: the bathroom/locker-room.
First off: the sounds and smells that emanate from those stalls should only be witnessed inside a Bombay gastroenterologist office.
Secondly: and I believe more importantly; the showers. Today I watched a bareass fifty year old happily shuffle with his towel over his shoulder (instead of around his exposed three piece set) carrying bottle of shampoo. The gym shower is for the rinse, not the slow exfoliating scrub and thorough hair wash. Also today was another older man hopping in the shower...while wearing his bandana, not sure that relieves the headband of its sweat-stank, in fact I would argue it would probably intensify it, but once again I've decided gym logic is a bit different from normal.
Finally: There is a trainer at the gym, who is wildly busy with clients every time I've ever been at the gym. He wears the same black 1981 shorty shorts every day...I mean these shorts stop about 1/2 inch below the balls. I'm thinking his shorts must contain some sort of mind control device because I can't stand to look at him from 300 feet away, let alone have him tecahing me how to squat. To quote Uncle V.....these people are crazy!!

So after work I'll be gong to Spumoni for me and Jenia's first annual Chili cook-off. I'll probably call Sfingi from there for some play by play. After all, I'll be at the stove, Vin will be manning the wine, and Uncle Vito will be giving the color commentary. Lots a chili, usually equals lotsa farts...I'm gonna try and hold them overnite for the gym....hell everybody else does.

It couldn't happen to a "nicer" bunch of leftists: it seems that Cleveland's insufferable daily newspaper the Plain Dealer may soon be tossed upon history's ash-heap. Where it belongs, I might add. And not just because it doesn't adequately cover local issues sufficiently (and indeed it does not).

Anyway, been in a car for the last four days -- attended a great wedding in the great weather of South Carolina. But more on that later.

Oh how I wish there were photos of the face-grinding kite-wrangling that took place amidst all that wind (gust-o). Frylock filled me in on further details. And yes, bullhorns can be useful -- not least to keep away "any pain in the ass innocent bystanders," as Fat Clemenza would say.

I hear Frylock goes to the gym these days. He's gonna pump you up. And no sooner does he tell me this than I recall that IM exchange I had with Vito years ago. All I wanted to know was if he worked out harder if there were attractive women nearby. His answer surprised me.

Just to update on Christians 1st birthday, we mentioned the reunion of the Four Balloon-Heads. Well, Broadway Joe and Steve Fatone each brought an 18 ft. two handed kite to fly at the party. It happened to be an extremely windy at the park and attached to the picnic area was an empty baseball field. So as you can imagine we all watched the wind lift and drag a well known 32 year old tv star around a field in a desperate and deranged quest for successful kite lift off. This was immediatally followed by everyone watching a 32 yr. old tv star in a desperate and deranged quest to untangle his extremely expensive kite. Awesome. As I watched Steve Fatone get dragged face first around I spoke to Dr. Sfingi on the phone and wished I could webcast what was going on around me. Jenia was riding around on a three wheeled razor scooter and clearly was listening to mental version of KC and The Sunshine Band's "Shake Your Booty". But the true star of the party was Sfingi's bull horn. It was used from everything from singing happy birthday, to singing like Michael McDonald to even announcing the 1986 Mets lineup. Hahaha. There should be some excellent pics floating around Spumoni.