Snarky Tom's Rants, Raves and Ruminations

Because the number of virus victims are beginning to rise again, plan on being quarantined again. At least in states where crowds have been gathering. Red or yellow may be the new green. Just in case you find yourself house bound again, there are some interesting programs to watch. Tubi , if you haven't heard of it, has hundreds if not thousands of programs to binge watch. Old television sitcoms and dramas as well as old movies. If you're missing that old favorite, Tubi just might have it. And it's all at a great price...FREE! I like free. Free in this case is good. Very good. Getting the Coronavirus for free, not good. I've started to re-watch 1960s (I watched some of these when they were brand new or in reruns.) black and white sitcoms and dramas: My Favorite Martian that starred Ray Walston and Bill Bixby and ran for three seasons 1963-66. Very funny, simple humor, with a touch of sexual innuendo. It's not overtly sexual like sitcoms today. Just a hint. Another ...

I would like to begin with a disclaimer. I am not now or ever been in law enforcement. I have never been trained in any form of law enforcement. The closest I have ever been in law enforcement was being employed several times as a security guard. Guard. Not officer. I consider the difference is one can carry a firearm. That's what makes you an officer. Anybody else is a wannabe cop. Yes. I was a wannabe cop not because I wanted to be a cop, but because most of the times I sat on my ass and did my college homework or years later I walked around a mall and flirted with all the lady shopkeepers. However, I have common sense. And part of being in law enforcement is not just training, stamina, strength and whatever else they teach you at the academy; it's common sense. Today's lecture is about No-knock warrants. These things are bad. Specifically, when the adrenaline-filled individuals with a battering ram all geared up for a fight are at the door. Your door. The wrong door. Som...

As skeptics, like me, have already forecasted, the numbers are beginning to rise again in many states. It's not even a case of opening too soon. It's a case that people are not obeying the mask wearing or social distancing. States that opened up before the word was given have shown rise in cases. A rise in cases does not necessarily mean a catastrophe. If these cases are weaker, maybe there won't be as many deaths. However, as far as pandemics in the past have shown, this may not be so. We may actually be coming into the worse phase of this pandemic. Trump's reaction as he stated at his Tulsa rally was "Why all the testing? If you do more testing, of course, you'll have more cases. Stop all the testing!" Is he kidding? Is he punking his legion of minions? Or is he that daft that he thinks if we stop testing the virus will be eradicated? He is the poster boy for denial. You can't deny what the hospitals are reporting. Since this thing started he has not...

With the marches and riots that occurred over the last several weeks, we find that still not much has changed. Unarmed black men continue to die. Part of it is their own fault. I know that sounds like an unsupportable and undefendable statement, but wait for the explanation.  Rayshard Brooks with family Rayshard Brooks was killed two weeks ago after police were called to a Wendy's in Atlanta, Georgia. As always these days, there was decent video taken by witnesses, Wendy's surveillance cameras and the officers' body cams. The story told was Rayshard was DUI; passed out in his car in the Wendy's drive-thru line. When he failed the breathalyzer, police attempted to take him into custody. He scuffled with them; obtained one of the officer's taser and fled. He was chased down and shot dead when he used the taser on one officer and attempted to use it on the other. Categorically, he was armed. However, a taser may hurt like hell, but it's not likely to kill you unles...

In an affluent part of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, home to the King of Prussia Mall and much of Valley Forge National Historic Park and companies like Lockheed Martin and GlaxoSmithKline, exists the Upper Merion Area school district. There's nothing special about this school district or its high school, Upper Merion Area High School, established in 1963. However, it garnered notoriety and infamy in 1979. There was a bizarre love triangle, more like a polygon or hexagon. At the center was a narcissistic, psychopathic English teacher, William S. Bradfield, Jr. He saw himself as a sort of Bohemian imitation of Ezra Pound. Both the lifestyle and the poet are overrated in my opinion. Pound lacked meter and rhyme in his poetry. That makes it just short prose and not very good, at that. How could anyone praise or even call Pound a poet. Pel-eeze!!! This alone makes me suspect of the type of character Bradfield was. I'd like to see how the students this clown taught turned out. H...

Every country, county, city and organization has one of these. The these I'm referring to is a flag. Flags date back centuries. They were used mostly to identify an army or a kingdom. Flags were used to signal via semaphore code. Nautical flags were used to communicate with allied forces as well as their own ships or in peacetime, to signal a diver down or an emergency. Social or local organizations each have their own flags to differentiate their organizations from others. I'm no fan of flags of any kind. So, when it comes to the pledge of allegiance or the national anthem, I'm very apathetic. A flag does not make a country. The people do. However, I understand the symbolism and why people get their knickers all in a twist when someone disrespects the flag. And that's good for them. It's also good for those who disrespects the flag because our country's principles were founded. The right to express yourself. To speak out. To speak your mind and to demonstrate p...

After the week we've all been through and the ongoing shitstorm of Covid-19, we need to think of something more pleasurable. Betty White. I've been binge watching Community (2009-15), a sitcom that ran five seasons on NBC and it's sixth (last) season through Yahoo's short lived video service, Yahoo! Video (Yahoo! Screen). The cast also had a Table Read of fifth season episode four via Zoom this year during the Coronavirus quarantine. What's any of that got to do with Betty White? Betty White Betty White is a television national treasure. At 98 years old, she's been in everything. Her career started in 1945. 1945! That's 75 years in the "Business." Her last few projects have been voice work, but that counts. Her first regular starring series was Life with Elizabeth (1953-55) as Elizabeth.  In the first show of the second season of Community, she played the Anthropology community college professor, June Bauer, for two episodes where in the first epis...