GRUMPY OLD ME

If you are one of my Facebook friends, you were treated on Monday
to an exhibition of full-on Tony grumpiness.  My less-than-perfect
day started out with my being too sick to go to the dentist to take
care of the problem that has been vexing me for weeks. 

I wrote through the nausea and pain, completing most of yesterday’s
bloggy thing before a phone call took me totally out of my game.
It was one of those “issues” call in support of fracking and other
life-destroying mining practices.  The only good thing about it was
that there was an actual person on the other end of the line and I
got to call him a “fuckwad” before hanging up on him.

With my train of thought derailed, I figured I’d watch a bit of TV.
First up was the SyFy original movie Storm Wars.  I expected it to
be awful.  That’s actually one of the reasons I watch these movies.
What I didn’t expect was that the usually spiffy Stacy Keach would
give what might be his worst performance ever.  It was painful to
watch him play a mad scientist - way too much emphasis on the “mad”
part of that - who had learned how to control the weather and was
now killing those who cut his government funding and any poor SOBs
that happened to be within a mile of them.

But what got me screaming “Take the damn shot!” out loud was when
federal agents had Keach in their sights and didn’t take the damn
shot!  Keach had broken into the airwaves to take credit for all of
the weather-related deaths.  He was holding a control device that
looked like a detonator.  And these highly-trained members of the
law-enforcement community didn’t put, oh, I dunno, twenty bullets
in his head.  I don’t blame the government on this one.  I blame an
idiot writer - Paul A. Birkett - who ran out of ideas about halfway
through the movie. 

I know what you’re wondering.  Yes, your grumpy old blogger could
have it done better.  I could have put poor Stacy Keach out of his
misery right then and there and still have had more excitement and
surprises in store for the viewers. 

Gut feeling digression.  I’m thinking all the special effects for
this movie were designed first and the script written around them.
It would have explained the choppy pacing, though not the fantastic
notion that not one, not two, but several power plants were either
unguarded or guarded by comedy relief.  End digression.

The next thing I watched was an episode of Criminal Minds recorded
last week.  Here’s the bad guy - SPOILER WARNING - he kidnapped an
eight-year-old girl and kept her a prisoner in his house for seven
years.  Somewhere during those years, he started raping her and he
got her pregnant.  Unable to stand the thought of bearing the child
of this monster, the now teenage girl killed herself.  The bad guy
then kidnaps the girl’s mother, luring her by telling her that she
can be reunited with her daughter.  Then he rapes or tries to rape
her so he can recreate the girl for whose death he is absolutely
and legally responsible.  If someone dies during the commission of
a felony, the person or persons committing that felony are legally
accountable for that death.

How bad is this bad guy?  He went to the same survivors group the
grieving mom went to - which is how he knew her habits and more -
and talked about his dead “wife.”  Who he said killed herself after
getting pregnant.  In the same group with the mother of that poor
child.  You can call him insane.  I call him a monster. 

When the FBI agents burst into the guy’s house, our monster has a
gun pointed at the mother...and not one of the several agents who
have a good shot takes that good shot.  No, they risk the mother’s
life and the lives of themselves and their fellow agents.  When the
bad guy drops his gun, the mother grabs it and apparently puts him
down like the mad dog he is.  At least they don’t toss the mother
in jail for this.

This isn’t the first time I’ve complained about police officers not
taking the shot.  I stopped watching CSI Miami after the failure of
Horatio Caine and his team to take the good shot - they didn’t want
to kill a murderous drug lord in front of his daughter - resulted
in the drug lord escaping with his hostage and later killing that
hostage. 

TV offered no respite for me on Monday.  I also watched an episode
of House Hunters International where I hated everyone on the show.
The smug Norwegian real estate agent had a smirk on his face whenever
he reminded his clients how they would have to bid on crappy little
apartments.  I hated the buyers because the Norwegian husband had
talked his American wife into moving to Norway because he wanted to
go to school in his home town.  Hey, we have pretty good schools in
the United States as well and we have houses big enough that a fart
won’t blow down the walls. I was a hater on Monday.

Here’s another bit of venom I posted:

Hey, right wing assholes, could you cool it with the lying TV ads
until after Christmas?  You’ve been trying to destroy Obama since
he was elected and haven’t done a damn thing to help our country.
Give it a rest for the holidays.

One more and we’ll call it a blog:

I got a friend request from a guy I know to be one of the biggest
crooks in comicdom.  Does he think I’ve forgotten his grand theft
in 1988?  The statute of limitations might be up on his crimes - he
openly brags about the score these days - but I have a long memory.
Friend? Not in this lifetime.

Anyway, I’m writing this on Tuesday and I am in a much better frame
of mind than I was on Monday.  I’m thinking of calling tomorrow’s
blog something like “Soft Tony, Warm Tony.” 

I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.   

© 2011 Tony Isabella