HEELS

I get it.

A lot of nightclubs, restaurants, and casinos prefer waitresses to wear high heels. Heels raise a woman's ass and hips up, giving their bodies a more provocative shape. The more sexually available a waitress appears to be; the more likely it is that men with the credit card will give her a much higher tip than women carrying drink trays wearing flats. A recent editorial in the Providence Journal argued that employers requiring women who wait on tables to wear high heels made the point that high heels, from a podiatrist’s point of view, can injure a woman's feet and I've heard that high heels can often cause back problems as well. Women working an eight hour shift in high heels are in for a lot of foot trouble.

Women I see in high heels often look odd and clumsy. The Charles Theory posits that it takes a certain body type in order to pull off a look in high heels. Women with thin, undeveloped legs can cause their fleshy stems to look like those of a preying mantis. Overweight women clomp along like brewery horses and often lean forward, looking at the floor instead of straight ahead. With their heads sagging and their weight tilted forward at an odd angle, they don't look sexy. They look like they're hiking up a hill on a golf course.

Even if a woman has the right body type to wear heels, after several hours, she begins to look uncomfortable. Checking themselves out in a full length mirror with heels on before they go out, makes a woman feel hot, attractive, and available. They like the look. It lifts their spirits. They're more engaged, socially relaxed, and attentive. A few drinks later, they feel even more so. Women wearing high heels tend to converse with a noticeable confidence, brightening their mood, adding a spark to even the most boring occasion.

After several hours however, they begin to look drawn, as if they've had a tough day. They're not as chatty. Their feet hurt or they have back pain. By the end of the evening, they can't wait to get home and get out of those heels. I've seen women at weddings walking around without their heels on because after the ceremony and halfway into the reception, they've had it.

My advice is to wear what makes you feel good, even if it takes six inch spikes to do so. Just remember, however, that several hours later, all that sexual magic is going to evolve into evident dread. I see it in your face and in the way you move. It's not the same rock and roll attitude you had after you strutted away from that full length mirror.

       ONE BAD ASS DOG

Somebody tried to steal my motorcycle. They tried to pop the ignition and unlock the bike, start it up, or maybe haul it away on a truck. The bike is brand new and now an insurance adjuster has to come out, estimate the damage, and then I'll take it down to Razees to get it repaired.

According to one of the police officers who responded to my call, an attempt to steal another motorcycle had been made the day before from the same garage where my bike was parked.  They thieves may have tried to take the bikes at the same time, since both ignition locks had been tampered with. The officer also told me someone had lifted the tires and rims off a car in the parking lot.

I filed a report but the chances that the perps will be caught are nil. What pisses me off is I have to pay another deductible because I smacked up my car two weeks ago on a cement pillar in the same garage.

The last time someone tried to rip me off was when I lived in Florida. My wife received a call at her brokerage office in the middle of the afternoon from the Fort Lauderdale P.D. saying that the alarm company had called to report an attempted house break at our home. They wanted her to meet them there so they could enter the house and look around. Nothing had been stolen. The would-be thief, however, had been taken by ambulance to a nearby emergency room to be treated for some very serious injuries.

The house had a small walled in garden in the front. The thief climbed the wall, smashed the glass on the french doors, and reached in to unlock the handle.

That's when all hell broke loose.

My vet called my dog, Mr. Kool, the most bad assed Akita he'd ever known. Kool was home, chilling on the living room floor, when he heard the sound of breaking glass. Without a bark, without a warning, he tore down the hall, into the bedroom, went airborne across a king sized bed, and grabbed onto the bare forearm sticking through the broken window. He sank his teeth into flesh and bone and nearly ripped the would-be burglars hand off at the wrist. The guy managed to pull his ruined arm free, jump back over the wall, and run down the sidewalk. All the cops had to do was follow the thick trail of blood until they spotted him down by the river, screaming in pain. They called for an ambulance and read the guy his rights. Back at the house, Mr. Kool was on his hind legs, standing up against the inside of the front door, trying to tear it apart. The police waited until my wife got there to put Kool into the back yard. Kool watched as the police entered the house. He never took his eyes off them. He lay down on the pool deck and stared at them. One of the officers just stood there shaking his head.

"That's a hell of a dog you got there lady", he said.

"You don't know the half of it", she replied.

Too bad Mr. Kool wasn't around when whomever it was tried to steal my motorcycle. They wouldn't have gotten far and they would have lost a lot of blood. Ask my vet or anyone who ever knew him.

Mr. Kool was one bad ass dog.

POLICING THE PLANET

Who determined the United States would be the police department for the rest of the world?

We're still the world's premier superpower with China right on our heels. We're also one of the youngest nations earth. We're only 216 years old if you define our age from the date of the introduction of the Constitution. For such a young country, why do we involve ourselves in conflicts that arise in other parts of the world?

Syria has been around since 2000 B.C. Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world. The modern state of Syria came into being following the First WorldWar. Since then, Syria has gone through several political incarnations. The current civil war, which has been going on since 2011, has pitted rebel forces against the repressive regime of  of Bashar al-Assad. Recently, al-Assad has used sarin gas against the opposition, killing an estimated one hundred and fifty people. The White House has declared that Syria has crossed a "red line" by using these chemical weapons.

Why does the United States feel the need to involve itself in the affairs of Syria, or aggressively draw a line in the sand? The present state of Syria is the result of thousands of years of cultural and political upheaval. Unfortunately, this legacy has now given rise to internal conflicts where rebel forces seek to take down the presidential government of Bashar al-Assad.

While Assad is a vicious dictator, we have to remember that Syria, as a result of its historical progression, has created its current predicament of violent conflict. Why then, do we feel it's our responsibility to intervene in this deadly mess? Why align ourselves with rebel forces without considering that these same forces may, if history is any indication, eventually turn on us despite our righteous motives?

Understand this. The Founding Fathers were dead set against this country involving itself in foreign conflicts or their wars. Our only constitutional obligation was to protect and secure the United States from any enemy seeking to destroy our sovereignty or do us harm. In other words, the Founders expected us to defend our borders and our way of life but not to intervene or engage in conflicts plaguing the rest of the world.

Obviously, as our history informs us, those elected to lead this nation have blatantly ignored this wise advice in order to insure that American business interests in other countries remain intact and profitable with no regard to the political fallout as a consequence of our actions.

Let some other country patrol the planet. There is no need for us to spend countless billions in taxpayer dollars screwing around in the internal affairs of the rest of the world, jeopardizing both our fiscal strength and our domestic well being as well.

SPLIT DECISION

What do I think about the current government dust-up over the government's intrusion into our phone records or private email’s?

Two things. The first is that the government has been checking all of us out since the end of World War Two. While the mission of the OSS was primarily focused on intercepting foreign intelligence, its agenda morphed into a much broader mission of gathering domestic Intel under the guise of documenting potential threats of espionage.

Eventually the OSS became the CIA. The CIA's only responsibility is informing the Office of the President of any threats against the country and their suggestions of what to do about it. The President receives these briefings on a daily basis. The CIA has prided itself in being the only direct path to the White House. Not even the Department of Defense has that kind of access.

The second thing about clandestine operations is that often times the situation is too sensitive, even dangerous, for the general public to be made aware of. Do you really want to be briefed everyday about our hide and seek missions along the Afghani border with Pakistan? Do you really need to know which terrorist cells are actively planning to attack us, either abroad or here at home?

Years ago, Senator Frank Church convened an investigation into the activities of our intelligence agencies, seeking to limit any of them from trespassing on the rights of our own citizens. For a while, CIA activities were monitored haphazardly and as with all things political, eventually emerged from underneath the watchful eye of the Senate Intelligence Committee and went back to the old ways of doing business. I should know. My sister was an operative of the CIA for several years.

Now, millions of innocent Americans have been snooped upon by these spooks in case any of them might be engaged in shenanigans deemed detrimental to the security of the nation.

I find it interesting that politically conservative zealots found nothing wrong with the provisions of the Patriot Act under the Bush administration but fume over current violations of our Fourth Amendment rights, criticizing Obama for using those same borderline unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act for his own agenda. Do you really think millions of Verizon cell phone subscribers are terrorists? Do you think Internet users are writing to their girlfriends, boyfriends, or wives suggesting imminent actions be taken to blow up the government of the United States?

Of course not. Monitoring our own citizens without probable cause is both outrageous and frightening. Yet a majority of those same citizens rallied around the Patriot Act introduced by the Bush White House the morning after the attacks of 911.

Edward Snowden leaked information to the media that cost this country untold billions of dollars spent on legitimate surveillance as well as endangering undercover agents and informants necessary to secure the safety of the nation from those who would do us harm.  At the same time he alerted us to the dangers posed by intelligence gathering operations on innocent Americans who have done nothing more than watched a little porn or exercised their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech by talking on their cell phones.

It's a split decision, one that has ironically united the disparate voices of both liberals and conservatives who view this unwarranted intrusion into our lives as both unnecessary   and an outrageous violation of the constitutional protections put in place by the Founding Fathers to prevent these activities from taking place in the first place. But then again, Facebook and other social media have left us wide open to scrutiny by anyone interested in finding out who we really are, whether we be friend or foe.