America's Newest Source of Plentiful, Clean Energy? George Michael...

For the rest of the month, Blaiser will attempt to live his life in accordance to the wisdom of the ancients, as revealed in the lyrics of Careless Whisper by WHAM, (UK!), and as channeled by an Intehnet search engine.

For this digital tea-reading experiment, I'll identify the most psychically profound turn of phrase found in each stanza (identified in boldface, for your pleasure), punch it into the tricorder, and choose an image from the first page of results. The synergy produced by unleashing two central elements of my life into the ether (Boolean searches and 8th-grade angst...) will either lead us to cold fusion, or will cause the British Music Rights building on Berners Street in London to implode into a TARDIS, just like people thought would happen to our entire planet when they fired up the 17-mile-long Hadron Particle Motor Speedway. If it's the TARDIS, the Brits will be ethically compelled to turn it over to the Audubon Society to make up for the boneheads at BP. Either way, our energy problems are solved.

In order to join the psychically-aware array of BlaiserBlog readers, and to harness the maximum milliamps available from your feeble minds desktop PCs*, please hit Play on the accompanying audio-visual aid while you scroll through the word-defying lyrics below. I think you'll like the results.



I feel so unsure

As I take your hand and lead you to the dance floor

As the music dies, something in your eyes

Calls to mind a silver screen and all those sad goodbyes

I'm never gonna dance again

Cause guilty feet have got no rhythm

Though it's easy to pretend

I know you're not a fool

I should have known better than to cheat a friend

And waste the chance that I'd been given

So I'm never gonna dance again

The way I danced with you

Time can never mend

The careless whispers of a good friend

To the heart and mind

Ignorance is kind

And there's no comfort in the truth

Pain is all you'll find

I'm never gonna dance again

Cause guilty feet have got no rhythm

Though it's easy to pretend

I know you're not a fool

I should have known better than to cheat a friend

And waste the chance that I'd been given

So I'm never gonna dance again

The way I danced with you

Tonight the music seems so loud

I wish that we could lose the crowd

Maybe it's better this way

We'd hurt each other with the things we want to say

We could have been so good together

We could have lived this dance forever

But now who's gonna dance with me?

Please stay

I'm never gonna dance again

Cause guilty feet have got no rhythm

Though it's easy to pretend

I know you're not a fool

I should have known better than to cheat a friend

And waste the chance that I'd been given

So I'm never gonna dance again

The way I danced with you

 Now, if my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour....

Thanks for reading, and please remember that your oil executives aren't allowed near open water unless they can do 15 lengths in an oil-filled Olympic-sized pool, in business attire, but without their WaterWings. Train Accordingly....

* BlaiserBlog does not support Apple products...

Putzing on the Ritz....

A funny thing happened the other day, during an *epic* roadtrip to my uncle's house in Tolland, CT, from my parents' winter hideaway in Florida. It was a saga, a three-act play, a journey fraught with detours. It involved changing weather patterns, calculating traffic algorithims on the fly, repairs (had to get a new transmission in Clark's Summit, Pa.), but I persevered, kept my eye on the ball, tried not to be selfish whenever I was stacked up with a bunch of other citizens, all of us merging into a single lane, minding the rumblestrips, obeying local laws. It was less than perfect, believe me, but with compromise, we all got to our destination.

Almost all of us, that is.

At the very end of the trip, after having chewed up over 1,100 difficult miles, having expelled myself from I-84 with an audible "Pop!" who should be standing in the middle of my lane but U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, with his hand stretched out like the Supremes? So, like all Americans in December 2009, I Stopped in the Name of Lieberman.

I asked what he wanted, and he said that he wanted to be the King of Everything--and barring that, then the Overlord of The Free World, but if he couldn't achieve that, then definitely the Viceroy of Relevance, but if that post were already filled, then maybe just maintaining his current job as U.S. Senator, but with the expanded powers of the Under Secretary of Transportation for the Off-Ramp of Exit 67 at Connecticut State Road 31 and the Wilbur Cross Highway.

It was a logical turn of events, he explained to me. On a particularly slow day on the Hill, he was struck with this brilliant idea that only vehicles with employee stickers from the The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., ought to be allowed on secondary roads in Connecticut, and since the Dept. of Public Safety was weathering a hiring freeze, no one would be available to preserve smooth motoring for the insurance workforce of Tolland, in their immortal quest for profits--his constituency, you see--if he didn't roll up his sleeves and do it himself, because he thought it was the right thing to do, what he was elected to do, and did I have my ID card with me?

As it happens, for me that particular document was quite a few miles back, long forgotten at the corner of I'd-Never-Do-That and You're-A-Complete-Schmuck. So I nicely pled my case to the senator, telling him that, actually, secondary roads ought to be open to ALL Americans, becuase they provided excellent options when other, larger, more expensive avenues were hopelessly clogged--not unlike I-84. Nope, he smiled grimly. That's going to take my permission, and I'm just not gonna grant it. Your heroic slog of 1,100 miles was for naught, because I am exercising my power to stop you. (And the millions your allegory represents, for those playing at home...)

So what could I do in the face of One Mad Senator? Nothing to but phone in my regrets to my uncle, wheel the Studebaker around and look for a road I *could* take -- a Public Option back in the Sunshine State, that self-same place where the "Al & Joe, On Ice!"ctm  show made its last appearance, to standing-room crowds, in November, 2000, at the Miami-Dade Dinner Theatre. Florida Supreme Court, Jeb Bush, Exec. Dir.

What a waste of time, money and goodwill, I thought, as my Studebaker wheezed back onto the one-size-fits-all, might-is-right world of Interstate 84..... What a goddamned annoying citizen this man has become.

Don't get me wrong. A decade back, I was thrilled at the prospect of a Lieberman Vice-Presidency. He had Moxie; he could be the Bad Cop to Al's Good Cop. His ascension would also bring long-overdue religious diversity to the Executive Branch. And he was Al's man. How, after all, could Al lose? He was a by-god shoe-in after the Go-Go 90s....... (cue a five-minute clip of the longest traffic accident imaginable)

Let it be known that I don't blame Joe one bit for the eventual devolution of the 2000 Election. But I do blame him now, for the un-anesthetized spaying of Health Care Reform.

Seriously, Connecticut. Really? Your guy is holding peoples' lives hostage here. You need to take away this crudely-fashioned badge of "Independence," clean house, vote boyfriend out, and then take a 15-yard penalty AWAY from the polling stations and STAY THERE until you all come to some kind of concensus on a candidate who Plays Well With Others instead of a politican whose two-sheet playbook consists of One: a recent history of talking out of both cheeks of his ass, and Two: lying down in the road and becoming the Most Lifelike Pothole on the Bridge to Progress.

Allow me to be your check and balance here. Outmaneuver him now, before he invents another Party of One. (Angry Grandpa Party? Fiddler Crabs for Connecticut Party?)

Because just as sure as Bugs Bunny drew a 21 on one card, come 2012, we're all going to be a bunch of Daffy Ducks, our un-insured tailfeathers singed to the bone, our eyes bloody and red, screaming in exasperation, "I'm a Fiddler Crab... Go on and shoot me, why don't you? It's Fiddler Crab Season!!!"