Where Have You Gone CJG?

If you're like crankyjewishguy (CJG), you've probably been wondering where he's been the past two weeks. Well, now that the statute of limitations has run he can tell you that he was on a privately funded mission to try and find Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. Imagine CJG's surprise when he learned bin Laden had just escaped the region ten years ago.

CJG figured that by the time he got back his inbox would be overloaded with e-mail messages from people all over the world wondering what had happened to him, asking when he was going to blog again, and begging him to return to the keyboard. Instead, yesterday he had one e-mail from his brother in Boca Raton saying, "what happened to your blog." It's so nice to be missed.

The truth is CJG was finding it difficult to keep up with the demands of a daily blog even though he generally has nothing else to do. But in recent weeks, Mr. and Mrs. CJG have been on deadline for a book they are writing together, an effort to see if a marriage can stand the strain of living and working together. Check back with CJG in a few weeks. If you see him on J-Date it didn't work out so well.

So, what's been happening in the world during CJG's absence? So little changes. Donald Trump continues to ride the GOP Crazy Train, sending his own investigators to Hawaii to try and prove the president wasn't born there. Mitt Romney formed an exploratory committee to try and find out if he has any core convictions. Half Baked Alaska continues to try and master the English language with limited success. And the Boston Red Sox continue to be the worst team in baseball despite having the second highest payroll. Go Pirates!

In other news, the Catholic Church continued to cover itself in glory when a former Bishop in Belgium made light of accusations he abused his nephews by saying it was just a little game that involved "fondling" and that he was never naked. The extent of the Church's little abuse problem seems as limitless as its efforts to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Air traffic controllers across the country are dozing off in droves and planes landing unassisted. Predictably, the controller's union says napping is necessary. Maybe, but not when you're the only guy on duty. I need to nap sometimes, too, but I make sure I'm not driving when I do. Scientists say naps make us more alert when we wake and CJG buys that, but when planes are landing with a controller asleep at the switch, that's not good.

So, dear readers, here's CJG's plan. He's not going to blog every day. He's going to blog whenever the spirit moves him, hopefully about once a week. If you want to know when a new blog post goes up, subscribe to the blog if you can figure out how. CJG can't help you there because he doesn't understand it himself. Or, just check in once in a while. As always, all CJG blog posts will be rigorously fact-checked by the staff of Congresswoman from Pluto, Michelle Bachmann, the dingbat who thought the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in New Hampshire and that the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery. CJG has to go now because the clueless guy sitting next to him at Starbucks is under the misimpression that he's in his own office and that we all like listening to him talk on the phone. Away two weeks in Tora Bora but CJG's pet peeves remain intact.

Tax Form Simplified

With just eleven days to go until the deadline for filing tax returns, crankyjewishguy (CJG) has developed an alternative Form 1040 which, he submits, would be much easier than the current one and would give taxpayers some say over how their tax dollars are used. Here it is:

1.Your Name___________________ Your Social Security No. ____________________

2. Do you want $1 to go to the Tom deLay Legal Defense Fund? Circle Yes or No.

3. Did you have a good year last year? Not financially, just in general. We at the IRS care about you!
Circle Yes or No. If you'd like to pour your heart out attach additional pages.

4. How much money did you make year? Be honest. $___________.

5. OK, to figure your tax, multiple the amount on line 4 by Derek Jeter's lifetime batting average and write the amount here: $ ___________.

6. Now, multiply the amount on line 5 by 10% and write the number in here: $_____. This is how much of your tax we are sending on your behalf to NPR. You will receive an NPR coffee mug directly from them.

7. If you would like to opt out of your share of federal spending on weapons of mass destruction, put a checkmark here: ___.

8. If you would like us to send a percentage of your tax liability to support your local schools, write the percentage here (must be less than 90% since we are sending 10% to NPR.) ___%.

9. If you are Donald Trump, please attach an original copy of your birth certificate. The bogus one you produced the other day doesn't count.

10. If the amounts on lines 6 and 8 add up to less than the amount on line 5, this is how much we are going to keep. Thank you for doing business with the United States of America.

P.S. Oh yeah, don't forget to sign here: _______________

Trumped Again!

You know, crankyjewishguy (CJG) keeps trying to move on past dumping on Michelle Bachmann, Half Baked Alaska and Donald Trump, but they're the gift that just keeps giving.

In his latest ramble about Barack Obama's birth certificate, Trump trotted out his own and wondered why, if he could produce his in an hour, Obama wasn't producing his. This is Trump's birth certificate:

But there's a slight problem, as a New York City official pointed out. It has neither the raised seal, nor the signature of the Registrar of Births that an official New York City birth certificate would have. CJG thinks this counts as a major gaffe by Richie Rich. Now, CJG doesn't doubt Trump was born in New York, with both a silver spoon and his foot in his mouth; either that or he comes from another galaxy and is using that combover to conceal antennae. But he does think maybe it's time for him to shut-up about Obama's place of birth and stick to simply bragging about himself as usual. Seriously, can anyone imagine this guy running the country?

Trump That!

Donald Trump. The Pillsbury Dough Boy of American politics is at it again, and yes, crankyjewishguy (CJG) meant "dough" as a double entendre.

What is it with this guy? He's making sounds like he's going to run for president as if what this country needs is some reality TV clown with big with hair and a bigger mouth which, come to think of it, sounds like another Republican who might be running for president. The guy is a braggart: did you you see the TV interview he did from his private jet, the one with some original 18th century art masterpiece hanging in the passenger cabin, where he told the reporter he went to the best college, was really smart and has done tons of brilliant deals? How he could solve the Somali pirate problem with a few ships and "a good admiral?" He sounds like the obnoxious kid in your junior high school with the rich daddy and all the latest toys. And he keeps wondering why no one seems to have known Obama when he was growing up in Hawaii. Do you know anyone who knew Donald Trump growing up in New York? Anyone who actually liked him?

But Trump is going to have one huge problem on the campaign trail, and that's staying out of the wind because anything more than a slight breeze and that ridiculous combover he's got on top of his head is going to make him look like a circus clown. Believe CJG, it's not going to be pretty.

Seriously, what does he think
 when he combs his hair in the morning?

Fluff Those Carpets? Get Real

Readers of crankyjewishguy (CJG) will recall that a couple of days ago he passed along some helpful household tips from Real Simple magazine, known in the psychiatric community as the Journal of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One of those tips was that you can use a fork to fluff up your carpets. (Under no circumstances should you use Marshmallow Fluff for this purpose, despite the name. They won't tell you this on the Marshmallow Fluff web site, but CJG will.)

Now, CJG will freely admit that he's a tad compulsive, which is why he uses tight little words such as "tad" instead of "really" or "extremely." So, he has spent sixteen hours over the past two days with a dinner fork trying to make his carpets look like Donald Trump's hair and so far he has managed to get three and a half square feet of his living room carpet to sit approximately .00025 inches higher than the rest of the carpet, sort of like what you see here.

Unfortunately, this is well outside CJG's tolerance for lack of uniformity (as is the Donald's hair) and now he either has to borrow an industrial strength iron to flatten out the fluffed carpet, or spend another six to ten days fluffing the remaining 92 and 1/2 square feet with a dinner fork. But since CJG, inspired by Real Simple's determination to recommend time consuming ways to use ordinary household implements for purposes other than those for which they were intended, CJG doesn't have that much free time. For example, since two feet of snow fell here last week, CJG has been using a soup spoon and a ladle to remove approximately five tons of snow from his front walk and driveway and so far he's made it to the mailbox, which is immediately outside his front door. But CJG reminds himself to be patient because people in East Berlin used to tunnel into West Berlin with the same equipment.

Even the Berlin Wall was no match for a simple soup spoon.

When he finishes removing the snow this summer, CJG is going to try filling a swimming pool with a thimble, or reading twelve back issues of Real Simple with binoculars.