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Either God is REALLY pissed off…or people are totally putting words in His mouth.

I mean, Pat Robertson tells Dover, Pa., residents to expect the wrath of God in Nov. 2005 after they “voted God out” of their city when school board members who favored the teaching of creationism — under the guise of “intelligent design” — in public schools were not re-elected.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city,” Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club.”

And then Robertson struck again…or rather God did…when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a major stroke Jan. 4 — just weeks after suffering a minor stroke.

“He was dividing God’s land, and I would say, ‘Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America,'” Robertson told viewers of his long-running television show, “The 700 Club.”

“God says, ‘This land belongs to me, and you’d better leave it alone,'” he said.

And then there is this from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event today…

“Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country,” Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day.

“Surely he doesn’t approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves.”

Nagin also promised that New Orleans will be a “chocolate” city again. Many of the city’s black neighborhoods were heavily damaged by Katrina.

Well, this isn’t really about “Busting up a Starbucks,” but the Mike Doughty song of the same name seems somewhat apt for this post.

I came across this story about Starbucks’ “super-secret” cappuccino and found it quite interesting. Apparently, there is an unadvertised “short cappuccino” that most Starbucks stores will sell you without hassle…albeit quietly. An excerpt from the Slate.com article…

The drink in question is the elusive “short cappuccino”—at 8 ounces, a third smaller than the smallest size on the official menu, the “tall,” and dwarfed by what Starbucks calls the “customer-preferred” size, the “Venti,” which weighs in at 20 ounces and more than 200 calories before you add the sugar.

The short cappuccino has the same amount of espresso as the 12-ounce tall, meaning a bolder coffee taste, and also a better one. The World Barista Championship rules, for example, define a traditional cappuccino as a “five- to six-ounce beverage.” This is also the size of cappuccino served by many continental cafés. Within reason, the shorter the cappuccino, the better.

I’m not a real cappuccino person, but I think I’m going to try this the next time I visit a Starbucks.

Sci-Fi Channel and the BBC announced a deal today that gives Sci-Fi the U.S. rights to broadcast the first season of the BBC’s new “Doctor Who” series. “Doctor Who” will be part of the network’s Sci-Fi Fridays and will air Fridays at 9 p.m., beginning March 17 with the inaugural episode titled “Rose.”

While this news is fantastic (a favorite word of last season’s Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston), it does come with a price for U.S. Whovians.

The 2005 season of “Doctor Who” was scheduled to be released on DVD in the United States on Feb. 14. However, within the past couple of days, many TV-related Web sites began reporting the set would be delayed. Well, the reason for the postponement was this impending deal with Sci-Fi. Now that Sci-Fi will be airing the series in the USA, the DVD set will not be released here until July 4 (and my birthday is two days later…hint, hint).

Also, Sci-Fi Channel will be a full year behind and only has an option to pick up the rights to the second season, which begins airing this spring on the BBC with David Tennant playing The Doctor. Therefore, Americans — like me — who want to stay up-to-date with “Doctor Who” will still need to download current episodes via BitTorrent.

Still, I hope the BBC and the Sci-Fi Channel can put together an effective joint promotional campaign to get people watching the new “Doctor Who” here in the States. The modern version of “Doctor Who” is light years from the grainy looking show with cheesy special effects that you may have come across on PBS stations in the 1980s and early 90s. New “Who” is sharp, crisp, intelligent, witty and even a bit edgy.

If you decide to give “Doctor Who” a try, here are two words to remember…Bad Wolf.

Forgot to mention this when I first posted this, but a big thank you to my friend Jason for being the first to tell me the good news about “Doctor Who” coming to Sci-Fi Channel.

Well, it certainly has been awhile since I actually wrote something for this blog o’ mine. I just noticed that the previous three posts were all done from my mobile phone…man, that is REALLY lazy.

However, I don’t really have a lot to say right now so I’ll just update everybody on the suspected heart disease I mentioned in this Dec. 16 post.

I have seen a cardiologist and have undergone some tests…my blood pressure is fine and the EKG was normal. I had an echogram done and they didn’t send me right to the hospital, so I take that as a positive sign. Next up is a chest X-ray and a stress test on Monday. After that, I see the cardiologist again on Jan. 20, at which time I guess he’ll tell me what’s going on based on all the information he will have collected.

The cardiologist put me at ease a bit when I first saw him when he said that he doubts I have heart disease. He didn’t rule it out…but he doubted that was the case.

Actually, I haven’t really felt the intermittent chest pain I had been experiencing for a couple of weeks. I still don’t feel my heart is beating quite like it did before all this began, but I’m not getting that pain so I guess that’s good.

OK…onto more upbeat news…I was happy to see my long-time friend Jason, who was visiting NJ from Colorado, during the holiday week. We took a ride out to Philly on Dec. 26 and went out to dinner in Center City (see the previous post for a picture I took of Philly’s illuminated City Hall with my cell phone’s camera).

The next day, we took a ridiculously overcrowded train into New York City and went to the Museum of Modern Art — or MoMA — for the Pixar: 20 years of Animation exhibit. That was really cool stuff and we went on a day the museum theater was showing the very first Pixar animated short, “The Adventures of André and Wally B.” from 1984. In fact, the company wasn’t even known as Pixar then…it was still a part of Lucasfilm Ltd., and known simply as the “Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project.”

After spending a couple of hours in the Pixar exhibit, we took a walk around the rest of MoMA. I consider myself open-minded when it comes to art and I actually like music and art many would consider avant garde. However, I must say that a lot of what I saw on display at MoMA just didn’t do anything for me (well, except for the blonde in the “furry” boots Jason and I noticed somewhere around the fifth floor).

Following MoMA, Jason and I took a walk to Rockefeller Center because I wanted to see the famous Christmas tree (or should that be Generic Winter Holiday tree?). Before we got there, though, Jason found a restaurant nearby that he enjoyed when he interviewed for a job at NBC a couple of years ago so we decided to get a bite to eat.

After dinner, we went to Rockefeller Center. I took some pictures of “the tree” and a little bit of video of the “musical snowflake” display on the side of the Saks Fifth Avenue building (check back for links to those photos and the video…I haven’t had time to get that stuff online yet).

And call me a Scrooge if you want, but I couldn’t wait to get the Hell away from all those freakin’ people at Rockefeller Center. People with strollers, here’s some advice: “Your kids are probably too young to remember what you are taking them to see. And even if your kids could remember, they’re probably sleeping anyway. So, please…stop causing pedestrian gridlock and keep the freakin’ strollers at home! Thank you.”

Other than hanging out with Jason in Philly and NYC, the highlight of my holiday break was watching “The Christmas Invasion,” the Doctor Who special aired by the BBC on Christmas Day. Of course, it took me about five days to download it via BitTorrent (I was on a slow connection that was cutting out from time to time), but it was very much worth the wait. I can’t wait for the 2006 season to start!

OK…I think this post shall suffice. Oh, one more thing…

Happy New Year!

City Hall

This post is for Katie.

A few days ago I posted a “call for help” regarding Ocean County College Prof. Karen Bosley, whose contract as student newspaper adviser and journalism instructor will not be renewed once it expires in June.

Well, the AP picked up the story today and several groups are getting involved in protesting the college’s decision. As a result, I suspect this is going to be a fairly large, ongoing issue that requires its own space. Hence, I give to you…drum roll, please…

BozWatch! — a blog dedicated to getting OCC to reverse its decision and renew Prof. Bosley’s contract. After 35 years of dedicated and wonderful service to her students, she should be the one who decides when it’s time for her to step aside…not some thin-skinned college president afraid to be challenged.

So please join the fight for freedom of the press by joining me over at BozWatch!

Thanks!

– BK

As you can see, I changed the name of this blog from the completely boring and self-promoting “BK’s Blog” to the much more creative “Tandem with the Random.”

The new moniker is a line from Peter Gabriel’s “Humdrum” and I had used it as the name of my column during my college newspaper days. I don’t know why I didn’t remember that when I first set up this site, but it finally dawned on me this morning that I should make the change.

So enjoy the new “Tandem with the Random.”

I love music and I especially love finding out about independent artists or under-the-radar label acts that exist outside the mainstream.

Well, tonight I stumbled onto a site called Pandora. Basically, you enter the name of a musical act you like and it will create a streaming radio station based on that act’s musical style, giving you the opportunity to hear similar artists that you may have never heard before.

Check it out.