Okey dokey, haven't been on my soapbox about horse hockey throwdown holidays in a while.....so what the hell......and I will save the title part with the risque stuff until the end, after most kids have gotten bored and dropped off. For my money, this holiday coming up is way up on that list(B.S. money holidays). Your basic kids holiday, like Halloween......marketed out the kazoo to grown-ups for one purpose - making money. I wish I had a dime for every dollar a lot of drooling fools are going  to go out and spend on fantasy red underwear from Victoria's Secret, J.C. Penney's, and Woolworth's, that will never grace the hiney they bought it for and fantasized about peeling or chewing it off of. Nice in theory.....and damn well marketed and touted as the thing to do, but the fact of the matter, is that love is a twenty four-seven, three sixty five and a quarter thing.........and if it ain't practiced that way by both parties, then the only one really feeling the love here, is Frederick's of Hollywood and Hallmark, and the rose ranchers up in Tyler, Texas who associate their flowers so much more with thorny than horny (somewhat like life, eh?).

Now for the spam part......hehe.......surprisingly, I am getting none here at home these days (spam, silly.......).  What is even more surprising, is that at my office, where our network is guarded by the "Firewall from Hell", I get a daily barrage of the most risque, if entertaining to the point of laughing out loud, spammage that one could imagine. I couldn't even make some of this stuff up. Funnier yet, is that if I get it, then plainly, some of the frumpy old Baptist women, and sweet, innocent (I'm assuming) young girls, are getting the same spam. Or are they? Is there gender specific spam, and an agency out there that makes sure it gets sent to the right sex? Tell me ladies....do you get the ones like I found in my inbox at work this morning? The first one, I swear to God, promised me I'd have a "large package" for Valentines day. I can't even say the name of the sender here.  The second was even more to the point, promising that if I purchased their product.....I'd get a visit from "King Dong" on Valentines Day.

Wow! That sounds more like an add geared for same sex couples. Do they exchange Valentines too? I'd get into that subject deeper, but here probably isn't the place, huh? If I did, I'd probably say how I wondered how any government or laws could even begin to try to regulate hearts and minds, and who one chooses to love and want for a companion..............but I won't do that.........what I will say, is that on that subject, if nothing else, however despicable the subject of domestic violence is.....at the very least, same sex situations should level the playing field a little in that area..........

Happy V.D. kids.

..............Edit #1...... Jesus, did I say all of this just a few hours ago? Comfortable in the knowledge that at 3:30, I would get up and have a "job" to go to, and that I would pretty much have to grab the boss's secretary....er.....admin, assistant,  on the butt, to even get scolded, let alone canned, due to a convenient shortage of techno mercenaries?  I almost feel guilty. Okay, here's a more family friendly title at least, and hopefully enough extra verbal vomit up front to push the bad word off the banner page.......Let's see how long my title stays up on this Ozzie and Harriet Myspace. I'd like to be able to write and b**** like I once could here, so beyond this point, I'll have to take a stab at good ol' fashioned gee whizzes and dagnabits, as opposed to what I'd really like to say. I allude to an article in today's Chronicle Business section, about a credit card  call center, for Alliance Data Systems Corp., suing another company, over a leveraged buyout snafu, and who plans to close a "call center" and "fire" 251 workers....... Now let me be the first to admit that I have abused "call center" workers, sometimes , for entertainment value alone, when they called me with a solicitation of some sort. I hate telemarketers in general, though not the individuals trying to scratch out a living submitting themselves to the abuse of people like me and you.

Now for wrong on another level, I would like to address the term "fired" as related to being dismissed from a place of employment. You see when I grew up, there were (3) three ways, (short of dying on the job) to get terminated. The most preferable, was to get a better gig, and tell the boss to stuff it, after he refused to match. Numero dos, was to be "laid off" or as we put on the unemployment compensation request form, "released due to R.I.F. - reduction in force..... still a shame, but a respectable, if yet worrisome end to a weekly paycheck coming in to pay the bills. Now, for last, but certainly not least, the old "FIRED!"(see sacked canned, run off) etc. As I recall, this was the worst fate possible.....reserved for one who could ****-up a free lunch, or a county fair(and had, in a documentable fashion). Or maybe one who failed to adequately coordinate the talents of multi millionaire ballplayers, and bring Jerry Jones or George Steinbrenner, a Super Bowl or World series ring.

Since when did the term "fired", start applying to a single mom (or dad) trying to make ends meet......sitting at their phone that they were paying the bill for for another eight hours in their Sonic uniform with stains from their day job, for doing nothing more than answering an add from the wrong scumbag, doomed to fail, pie in the sky insurance or credit card company, in the hopes that their kids could have a better life?  Land of the free my ***. Land of the freeloaders is more like it, and most of them are businesses, unscrupulous in nature, and contributing to nothing, save for the national debt at guess whose expense? 

And oh, the lightly touched upon fourth method for not coming back in to the office was abruptly demonstrated to me  a couple of days ago, by a coworker I had just talked to the day before.  I just don't understand that, as a wise friend once mused - seems like a coward's way out......I would rather fight.......or believe that there will come a better day.........

.......and a cloud of suspicion. I have made it no secret in the past that I don't trust big pharmaceutical companies, any farther than I can throw them. While I know that many millions of dollars (a goodly portion of it mine) are spent on research and development of life giving and life saving drugs, I fear that a lot more is spent on lobbying and advertising and there is an all to scary tendency on their part, to put profit margin above human safety in their ladder of priorities.

That said, I must warn you, that this takes a fun but "R" rated turn here. Seems that Merck is now doing tests on men to determine if the vaccine that women now take for HPV, might also be helpful in preventing some cancers in men.....namely the throat, tongue, and esophageal varieties. Second warning....see where this is headed? Now we all know what a serious thing cancer is, and I will never make light of something like that, so let's be straight on that one.

So this story was in the Chronicle this morning, and it really didn't pull any punches. Cut to the chase they did, allowing that while smoking among men is declining, apparently oral sex for their partners' is on the rise. Hence, the transmission of the virus that heretofore only caused love's little speed bumps in women, and oh, cervical cancer, has become a source of worry for the boys too. Now while that would seem to pose a double whammy for the G.O.G. arrangements, it certainly is cause for concern among us guys too, now isn't it?

Bottom line, if the threat of the disease is real to men, and the drug will save lives, I am all for it.

Line below that one(the real "get down" bottom line), is that the story leads me to unnderstand that  fewer women are saying "ick", and "eeeeewwww" these days, and a lot more girls are falling asleep(and/or waking up) with a sweet smile on their faces. And I am all for happy women..........God's gift to men, when happy,are much easier to live with.............don't you think, fellas?