Honest to Pete. This is the THIRD picture I've seen of Mickey Rourke doing the Al Bundy on the red carpet.

Michael, get your hand out of your pants. If you need a place to put your hands, use your pocekts. Or get an age-inappropriate girlfriend with a nice booty to manhandle.

And does anybody else find that Return of Rourke heartening? I've always said going bugfu** crazy was my biggest fear. But if Mickey can come back from the bughouse, there's a little hope for everybody. Come to think of it, Britney Spears got carted off and she's on the comeback trail too. Hell, maybe if Courtney Love would quit slugging back the crazy juice, she could even return to the land of the living.

Also, does anybody remember when Mickey was so fine he could blow your mind? Dang close to pretty back before he decided to try a career as a speed bag. Kids, don't let people hit you in the face. Yikes.

Sign o' the times

I hardly believe I'm saying this. I think I've had enough schadenfreude. I know. Gasp. Not that I've ever enjoyed just straight misfortune for other people. I just like it when it specifically involves the cocky, the entitled and the over-rated. Even, occasionally, when the cocky, the entitled and the over-rated is me. I even think it's funny when I get taken down a peg or two.

But lately, there's enought misfortune going around. I don't want to hear about the misery of others. I realized this when I saw that the Crazy Kid Lady/octuplets mom might lose her house. That just sucks. Not that I'm going to give her money to support her weirdoid lifestyle. But it still sucks.

I think this may be why TV shows like Highway to Heaven and Touched by an Angel flourish at times like these. Something nice. Where good people get help when they're in trouble. And bad people realize the error of their ways and decide to be good people. Nobody loses their house. The couple who just want honest work to support their family find it. There's a way out and we'll find it. Together. Awwww.

Poor Monkey

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090218/ap_on_re_us/chimpanzee_attack_19

I've been watching the coverage of the chimpanzee attack. Why is that human stupidity regarding primates always end up with the monkey getting shot? People should just not own primates as pets. It's a mind bogglingly bad idea. Yes, chimps are adorable. They're like hairy little people. Hairy, little, potentially volatile people with highly efficient musculature that could throw you across the room if they get pissed. And most people don't have the kind of education and training it would take to begin to understand and properly care for as complicated a creature as a primate. Even people who are trained to care for them, in the best of situations, have to have a healthy respect for the fact that a chimp can go berserk.

One thing nobody seems to mention is that this chimp appears to have had a serious weight problem. I don't think you have to be politically correct regarding big boned simians. Brudda man was carrying some pounds. And if chimpanzees are like humans, and apparently in a lot of ways they are, carrying extra weight can screw with your hormones in a big way. And it's not like if they had put him on a diet, the chimp could have called Dominoe's himself. You'd have to chalk it up to owners who, even though they appeared to love him, were either not knowledgable enough or not emotionally equipped to be strict with him. One more case of humans being kind to be cruel when it comes to the animal kingdom.

We need to save these animals' habitats, make the world safe for them, then just let them go be themselves out in the wild. And in a perfect world, anybody who was truly interested would have the opportunity to go visit them in their own world. Because it's sure as hell not safe for them in ours.

No dial-tone on the hot line

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1879016,00.html

I read this yesterday on Time.com. And I just keep thinking about it. It's about how there is a biological mechanism that becomes active when human beings are accessing their spiritual selves. No matter what your line to the infinite is, it fires up your parietal lobe. Whether you pray, chant, meditate or spin, that's the part of your brain that becomes active. And whether you think it's a biological mechanism or a divinely installed pre-paid phone that allows you to reach out and touch the Almighty, it's there.

I think I must have the world's most under-developed parietal lobe. When I was a kid, and other people would pray, and really seem to be getting into it, I'd know that they were really getting into it, because I'd be sneaking looks out the corners of my eye to see if we were done praying yet. I never had that sense of doing something or talking to someone when I was praying. Then later, I tried that whole meditation thing. Both the plain old "clearing your mind" kind of meditation. And also in conjunction with yoga, and even tai chi. Nothing. Tai chi is active enough that I just enjoy the exercise, but the sitting there or doing yoga is just excruciating for me. Bored. Bored. Bored. Because whatever that spiritual, subsumed feeling is, I never get there. I never get that sense of being outside myself, or in tune with the universe, or one with the infinite, or whatever that is that people who truly get it feel. I always know I'm me, feel a little silly, and really would just like to get up and go get a cup of coffee. Transcendence. I think that's the word for it. I've never really felt transcendence.

Which, I think, kind of sucks. There have been times in my life when that spiritual, in touch with something greater than myself feeling would have been very comforting. I've watched other people make it through hard times, and feel very exhilarated by that connection they get from prayer or meditation or whatever. But I seem to be on my own in this way. But it's kind of like being blind. I can feel a little envious of people who have this sense, because, in theory, it sounds wonderful. But I doubt I'll ever really know what it is that I'm missing.

Texas and the Riders of the Purple Haze

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/falling_debris

The FAA has announced that the fireball in the sky over Austin was definitely not a piece of one of the sattelites that collided in space last week. Or aliens that killed John Kennedy. Or anything like that. In case you were wondering. Ahem.

There may be a lot of things in my home state that don't make me happy. But one thing I love is that we have regular sightings of mysterious things in mid-air. Even if, as in this case, they turn out to be just a fairly large meteor. Or swamp gas. Or a weather balloon. Or something like that. But definitely not aliens. Ahem.