Good lord and butter, sometimes i get myself in deep. Seems that my family Christmas party, an institution in my family, is in serious trouble. The hall where the party normally is held has raised their rates, making it impossible for the member chosen this year to run the party to pay for it. It was announced to family members on facebook, and all hell has broken loose. Aunts and relatives were saying it is a sad day, that the family 
party is being abandoned, why the hell are people being so damned cheap…
HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY….or something. I wasn’t necessarily picked to do the job of running the party in lieu of the original family member who cannot afford to do this, it was suggested by one cousin that I do it, and I was already looking into it, so it just fell in my lap, more or less.
Kewl.
I am in the process of, at this late date with the party’s original date around a month away, trying to secure a venue. I am working on finding the best deal, getting something worked out as far as food for it, either catered or lots of cooking by family. I have contacted one venue in particular, and I am using an online service to help me find a spot just in case the first venue falls through. I have not asked that the online search use catering as a criterion, but the first place I contacted I did ask about catering.
We’ll see how this works out. This should be fun. There is one problem though.
Money. I am unemployed, the wife and I have been contemplating filing for bankruptcy and here I am with this in my lap. Hmm… I can handle it, if anyone was built to handle this kind of thing it was me. I am Christmas man after all. I am the first to put up the tree and decorate, and the last to pull all the Christmas stuff down. I sing Christmas carols all f****** year. I love Christmas with all the reckless abandon of a 4 year old on a sugar rush in a toy store. It is an outward vestment of the simple concept put forth by Charles Dickens “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year”, and has much to do with love of the comfortable, warm cozy feeling the season brings, i guess.
But back to the money issue. If the person who was tagged with the task of doing the party had little in the way of funds, I have next to nothing. I have no idea how in G-d’s name i am going to do it. Maybe sell my rookie Jerry Rice cards and my old baseball cards, and other valuable stuff on E-Bay. Maybe just rip open the bank account and say F*** it, spend it all, let the bankruptcy court sort it out.
But i have to tell you that I don’t think that really matters. Family, first, last and always. And if I must lead, then so be it, I don’t mind. Being unemployed, I have time to plan, even if I don’t have the money to spend to pull it off.
And the person who was trying to pull this off? A real saint to my mind, hard working woman who has done nothing but try and try to get this done while fighting just to make ends meet while watching all her money go down the damn drain. It wasn’t due to lack of trying that she wasn’t able to pull this off. Circumstances simply overwhelmed her and made it too difficult for her to do this. So from her hands will I take this burden, and do all I can. It’s the least I could do.
That said, any ideas and help from anyone out there would be greatly appreciated.
That’s it from here, Later.
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Today’s nuggets, by Charles Dickens, via wikiquote: “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
I’ve been watching C-Span for the last few minutes and I am ever so slightly surprised to see the Stupak anti-abortion amendment pass. 
From what I had heard, there weren’t enough votes to pass the stupak amendment. I don’t off hand mind, not because I think there should be no abortion coverage per se, but because I think that until something better than the hyde amendment comes along, it is the law of the land and that is that. The amendment passed 240-194
The House has rejected the Republican alternative health care plan, 176-258. This vote went almost along party lines, with a single republican vote against the republican alternative. That vote was from Tim Johnson, the representative from Urbana, Illinois.
At this point the motion to recommit is being debated, with 5 minutes of speeches by the Republicans before the vote to pass or not pass the Health care bill. I, and I am sure that a great deal of other people, expect this bill to pass, albeit by a thin margin. For those who do not know what “motion to recommit” means, it is simply a way to send the bill back to committee, to be reworked from the ground up.
But before the final vote, there is going to be a whole lot of yelling cajoling and wrangling. That is what is going on now. Rep. Braley from Iowa is speaking now, and they have had to stop the proceedings in order to bring the house to order. There has been a great many instances of yelling from both sides of the house, both sides are really giving each other the business.
In truth this is fun. If you want to watch it live, click here.
6 democrats have voted for the motion to recommit, one republican against, but the motion will not pass., with 8 minutes left in the vote, 229 dems and 1 repub have voted against the motion to recommit.
The vote on the health care bill itself is happening as we speak. The votes tallied quickly early, and after only a few minutes most votes have been tallied. The early vote has gone almost entirely along party lines. But that is changing as votes come in, with some democrats voting against.
22 votes left, the bill sits at 208-205. Passage may well happen in the next minute or two.
17 votes left… 212-206, ten of those 17 votes are democrats and 7 are republican.
10 votes left… 216-209, and the breakdown is now 7 dems and 3 gop.
THE BILL IS PASSED. 11:07 pm The final vote numbers: 220 – 215. 219 Democrats and 1 Republican for, 175 Republicans and 39 Democrats against. The one republican to vote for the bill is Rep. Joseph Cao from Louisiana.
And my representative, Rep. Mike McMahon (D) voted against. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I will wait until I hear why he voted against. If I find out he’s a blue dog, he will NOT get my vote come next election cycle. BLUE DOGS SUCK. I don’t want to find out that I actually voted for some half assed republican wannabe when I thought I was voting for a Democrat. THAT would piss me off. We’ll see. I’ll be contacting his office to find out what the hell is up with this vote, and will let you know what happens.
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That’s it for me. Later!
Today’s nuggets, via wikiquote: Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. Adam Smith
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Frederick Douglass
Today was a good day. My wife and I went to the Canyon of Heroes today and saw the Yankees championship parade. It was… fun is the wrong word, but it was enjoyable, mostly. Good stuff first. And there is a first today, all the pics and viddys (with one exception, and you’ll be able to tell which one that is) were shot…. by me. 
First Viddy is of the float that had Mariano Rivera on it. All viddy’s shot just before the very end of the parade, just before the Tweed building on Chambers Street.
It was chilly, not cold, but chilly. It was windy. It was crowded.(duh) There were no spots up front to be had for any of the late comers, like
The rhino shows some pinstripe pride
my wife and I, but we got as close as possible, I got a lot of these shots after fighting for that spot for a good long time, had to be 45 minutes, maybe longer. People moved over, we moved up. You can see we were still several rows off of the front after even that time from the next viddy.
There were a lot of people there, as many as 1,000,000, hence the blog title. That million is a number that I have heard bandied about on nj.com, among other sites. I dunno about that, I never got a glimpse of the entire crowd, being in it at the time. Michael Kay said he thought the crowd didn’t look as large this year as some of the 90’s parades. I can’t speak to that, I never went to those parades, but it was an absolutely a huge amount of people. And there may not have been as many people as at some of those 90’s parades, but we more than made up for in heart and love for our favorite team, the New York Yankees.
And yes, that ugly goofy looking monkey holding the pennant there is me, your beerless leader, Das Rhino. Pic taken by my wife.
Aside from the story at the end of this paragraph, there was a lot of fun had. Pictures taken, over 100 of them, some very bad ones, a few good ones which my wife cropped on her laptop, Like the one at the very top of this blog. Had to splice out the legs that were on either side of that shot. And don’t worry about hiding the kids, Carrie PreJean was nowhere around, they belonged to two separate people on either side of me.
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Now to the bad stuff, which happened early on, before and just as the parade was beginning.
The spot where the crush happened
It would be better if next time there are signs up telling people where to go. Despite everyone knowing where the canyon of heroes is, there were thousands of people who were simply in the wrong place when the parade went off, and there were a thousands of people who were a few blocks north of the turnoff at Chambers and Broadway. I got caught there because of all the streets being cut off and having no way to get there but going north of the parade route and coming back. Cops were only minimally helpful.
My wife and I got caught in a crush just above the corner of Broadway and Chambers street at around 11:20. It was all of 30 feet off of that corner where the serious part of the crush happened. It scared the hell out of my wife, and rightfully so. She had someones elbow in one ear and another in her neck. She was being pushed from in front and behind and one side. I was on the other and fought to get her some room. I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough to keep my wife, who has asthma, and was having some trouble breathing as it was, from panicking.
She is fine, but she got squished like a bug there for a few minutes, and there was real danger there, and she is as sore as hell now from the crush. That danger was due to scaffolding which cut down the size of the sidewalk, and the crush of people in that confined space made a hard push to get to actually see the parade more difficult.
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That’s about it, except a final viddy, again from today’s festivities, this shot at Foley Square, where there was a screen showing the ceremonies a few blocks from city hall, Couldn’t get close enough to see it in person. The crowd there was pretty large, but the sound system wasn’t loud enough. I could barely hear it, though the sound does kinda come through here. And the high pitched monkey scream that you hear in all the Viddys? Ya…that’s me. I sound like a f***** monkey. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Mike The Monkey. LOL.
Today’s Nuggets, Via Wikiquote: There are surprisingly few real students of the game in baseball; partly because everybody, my eighty-three year old grandmother included, thinks they learned all there was to know about it at puberty. Baseball is very beguiling that way. Alvin Dark
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time. George Bernard Shaw
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. Stephen King
This space was initially going to be about the Yankees, and about how wonderful the year was, and how great it’s going to be to actually be able to go to the canyon of heroes this year, after missing every single other sports parade down there, ever, but the less than joyful events in Fort Hood pull me away from my sports joy to think and talk about slightly darker subject matter. A viddy from a few hours ago on MSNBC.
By now I am sure we are all caught up on the twisted events of this afternoon at Fort Hood in Texas. A clearly disturbed man, an army psychologist who decided to kill his fellow soldiers in a homicidal frenzy which reminds one of the old method of suicide known in New York at least as “Death by cop”, apparently walked into a medical processing center and opened fire on the soldiers there, then did the same at a theatre. Early reports said he had been killed, but now it is reported that the shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist in the Army Medical Corps, has actually survived the shooting, and the commanding officer at the Base says that Maj. Hasan is in custody and in no danger of dying.
Say a prayer for the wounded, the dead and their families.
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One wonders why people act the way they act, and do the things they do. This man was apparently unhappy about the thought of being 
deployed overseas to Afghanistan. So why take it out on your fellow soldiers? Why take it out on anyone? I read a report that said there was at least one blogpost this man wrote which equated suicide bombers with men falling on grenades to save their comrades, here’s the direct quote:
“To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause…Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.”
Tis sad and kinda pathetic that someone, an American someone, could make the incredibly long distance leap between someone dying to save his buddies in armed conflict by diving on a grenade, and the premeditated murder/suicide that he seemed to espouse here. But in this world sickness happens, and sometimes it’s difficult to see and impossible to do anything about beforehand, as was the case here.
This wasn’t terrorism. This was the act of a sick conflicted man who was smart enough to help others who had seen the horrors of war, and yet dumb enough, or more accurately stated, emotionally unstable enough to not see that using violence to end his problems would simply create more problems for both him and every one he hurt or killed.
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A break from the disheartening story to write about me for a minute. I’ve attached a second page to this blog, called “Running Commentary” which is going to be my regular running log, just so I can have a regular bit in here about my running and my progress in that department, which is something I haven’t had on a regular basis in a LOOOOOOOOONG time. I am also thinking of maybe, maybe, adding another page or two besides that. One page I was thinking of adding would be on music, either reading, writing, playing guitar, musical exercises, stuff like that. The other page would be more of an idea page. I get a lot of ideas about what I want to write when I am out and about but I don’t use them all, not by a long shot, and maybe for short blistering rants where I can instantly react to the world around me.
I am thinking the name “Eighth Note” might work for the Musical section, as for the other, I am really not sure. “Rhino Nuggets” “RabbleBabble” and “Just a Thought” came to mind for titles for the other page.
I’m thinking of changing up my theme as well, we’ll see what happens.
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That’s it for me. I’m heading to bed early, so I can wake up early so the wife an I can get to the Yankee Parade at the Canyon of Heroes. Later!
Today’s Nuggets, by Robert A. Heinlein from the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”, Via Wikiquote: Each sunrise is a precious jewel…for it may never be followed by its sunset.
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.
It would be a waste of breath to tell a man who believes in guns that you’ve got something better.
There is no safety this side of the grave.
I give you the water of life. May you always drink deep.
Game over, World Series Over, Yankees Win ThEeEEeEeEeeEeEeEeEeEEeEe Yankees Win! On the arm of Andy Pettitte and the Bat of MVP Hideki Matsui did the Yankees defeat the Philadelhia Phillies here in game six in convincing fashion 7-3. It was never in doubt. Ever.
I’m hanging out watching the post game on Fox, I suggest you do the Same. I’ll drop a real blog on you later. I’m busy enjoying the moment!
