New in romance.

NY sticker.

I-80 rest stop.

Write what you know.

There is an old saying that goes: "write what you know." And since I always wanted to be a writer, which was one of the reasons I started this blog, I try to follow it when I sit down to write something.

This time I want to put in words things that have been bothering me because they have been bothering me for a long while. One such thing is my lack of a career.

As I mentioned before I always wanted to be a writer so I went to college and got an English degree. This wasn't a Teaching English degree, mind you, just a plain old English Lit one.

Since I am a non-native English speaker this was probably an odd choice of a major, not to mention the fact that it stopped being fun after a while. I think that History or Philosophy might have served me better in the long run. Alas, poor Yorick, (see how I worked that Hamlet quote in there) you don't think of these things when you are young.

So after graduation I attempted to get a career going. But since I lived, and still live, in a small town in North Eastern Pennsylvania and had no idea what I actually wanted to do, I ended up working in retail.

Eventually that got old. So I decided I wanted to get somewhere in life and went back to my Alma Matter to check out a Masters program. The subject of this program was Instructional Design and since I have heard about this program previously, not to mention the fact that a slew of people I knew in college went through it, I enrolled.

As you would expect, I eventually graduated. I had a lot of fun earning my degree and even started this blog after fellow classmate did a presentation on blogging. Also my wife and I started a family in December of my first year in the program.

When I graduated I was filled with hope and excitement because I was finally going to do something with my life and succeed. But, like another saying goes, "when man plans, god laughs."

Just as I was getting ready to graduate, the economy was getting read to take a major nose dive. And what a nose dive it was!

Suddenly companies and banks were failing left and right. And those that weren't failing, were shedding employees in a manner that reminded me of a zeppelin trying to stay in the air.

So it became harder for somebody right out of college to find a job, or so I thought. My former classmates didn't seem to have any technical difficulties finding jobs.

Maybe I just need to be patient, I thought. Maybe things will get better soon. For a while I watched GM trying to get away from the edge of the abyss thinking that if a company that size is in trouble, my inability to find a job isn't really all that big of a deal.

Eventually that got old, too. I got tired of watching everybody else pass me by while I was on the shoulder fixing a flat tire or doing something else equally tedious.

In the almost two years I have been out of school, I have had a couple of contract jobs but the highly desirable full time job keeps alluding me. Maybe it is time to reconsider my career path and go back to grad school for my PhD.

Or maybe it is time to stop looking for a job in my chosen field get a different profession. But what do I do exactly?

This is the one question that I have not been able to answer. But since I am getting older, and do not want to feel like I am failing my family anymore, I am open to suggestions.

NIN.

Ages.

One at a time.

This sign is from Lake Tobias Animal Park. It seems that many people are allowed to boat on the lake, but only one person at a time can fish here.

RIP, Les Paul.

I am a blog critic.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you read it right, I am a blog critic. Or should I say I have just become a member of Blogcritics and now need to write my first article for them. I have 24 hour in which to come up with this article but I don't see that as much of a problem.

I currently don't have a topic in mind for this piece, but with all the wonderfully exciting things happening in the world, most of which are delivered to my cell phone via Twitter, I should have no shortage of ideas.

Maybe I should write about that. Stay tuned to this space for further developments.

Miley gone wild.

Cheryl Phillips, a mild mannered single mom by day and a super blogger known as The Daily Blonde by night, recently awarded Miley Cyrus a rather coveted AssHat award.

This was due to the fact that Miley, the maven of tweeendom and a Disney darling, shed her secret superstar image and performed on the MTV Teen Choice Awards as Britney Spears Jr clad in less clothes than some people put on a poodle in Winter. Miley even brought along her very own stripper pole.

Those of you who are fans of her show, and if you read this blog I highly doubt it, might find this unbelievable. But you have to remember her most recent brush with infamy: the almost naked pictures shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. The above picture is the one I am referring to.

At first you might find it shocking that a teenage girl who is also a public figure would choose to rebel against the norm, or what is the norm for her, in such an exhibitionistic way. But if you think about it, in Hollywood reality is different from the one the rest of us occupy.

So it makes perfect sense that a 16 year-old would choose to go this route. But what horrifies me as a parent of a 2 year-old daughter, though, is the fact that Miley's show is popular with children younger than half her age. I have seen 5 year-olds wearing Hannah Montana clothes and getting excited to go see her in concert the same way that their parents used to get excited about New Kids On The Block and their grandparents used to get excited about The Beatles.

This means that the same 5 year-olds probably have seen the MTV Teen Awards and Miley's presentation on the basics of being a stripper. So now they are going to think that dressing like her and dancing like her is perfectly OK. And don't we frown on child pornography in this country?

Child pornography is exactly what Miley's MTV performance was. A prosecutor recently tried to go after some high school girls for sending naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends. So why isn't somebody trying to do the same to Miley? I think it would be a great idea and it would be a fun trial to watch.

Miley, as a role model for millions of impressionable young girls, try to keep your clothes on. But if you are going to take them off to show the world that you're not a child star anymore, wait until you have had something other than Hannah Montana on your resume or at least until you're eighteen and can buy your own cigarettes instead of sending your assistant.

Milton Hershey.

Carrousel.

Wall of trees.

Parking lot.

Senate confirmed Sotomayor.

This is a great day in American history, politics, and jurisprudence. The US Senate confirmed Sonya Sotomayor as the 111th Supreme Court Justice. However, this is just a small step on our journey to a better and brighter future.

If we do indeed "hold these truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal," we need to demonstrate this to the rest of the world with our actions. And, I believe, this was one of those actions.

The Hispanic community is going to see this confirmation as a win for them, but I think this is a win for all Americans. I felt this way after Obama was elected President because as an immigrant father of an American-born child I knew that I live in a country where my daughter can achieve anything.

Now, we all live in a country where "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" has a whole new meaning.

Take me out to the ball games.

This is Champ. He is the mascot for the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Yankees. He was greeting people at the stadium entrance when we went to see what turned out to be a double header. The Yankees have had problems with the field drainage system since the 4th of July and the home games were scattered around.

So when we arrived to see our regularly schedule game, we arrived in the middle of a previous one. The Yankees were taking on their arch rival Pawtucket Red Sox. The Yankees won both games with very little difficulty which is what I expected.