Well it's been over a week now since my ear surgery and even though I've been outside, i'm still going stir crazy. It's not fun. Now for those of you who didn't know, yes, I had surgery last week.

I lost a lot of my hearing in my left side. They did CT Scans and couldn't even see my ear drum. So they went in there to repair everything and found out what coulda been a tumor was a bone. Fun times. They also did a skin graft, which for those of you who aren't medically knowledgeable means taking skin from an undamaged part of the body, usually under the arm of the back of the thigh and putting it where damaged skin is. They do it a lot on burn victims.

So they did that to my ear, removed the bad tissue and bone and stitched me up, yet right now it ain't pretty. I look like my ear got into a boxing match with a rat. There are are also drops I have to take that help drain the ear...which makes me leak like a BP Oil rig(Too soon?).

Either way, I now get a lot of time to watch TV and root the internets for fun things. I've been trying to avoid the news for the most part, because frankly it's depressing. I really don't want to hear about Oil leaks, firehouse closings and budget crises, but alas, I hear about them anyway.

Those of you who have known me for at least 5 minutes, know how big a part of my life the fire department is. So you can imagine when I hear that our jagoff of a "mayor" once again is going after them, i tend to get...angry. Closing firehouses is not a smart way to plug up budget holes. Especially on my forgotten rock. Staten Island doesn't even have enough fire protection now. What will happen when the now mostly empty 36 acre Stapleton Home port gets developed with 800 or so housing units? More people will someday mean more potential fires.

Same Goes for the Fresh Kills park idea, which will turn 2200 acres of former landfill into a park almost three times the size of Central Park.



The problem with that is that parks here on Staten Island tend to catch fire an awful lot, with Great Kills going up on average of 3 times a year, many of those fires reaching at least 3 alarms.

The more alarms, the more units needed. The more units needed, the more they pull in from other boroughs, in turn leaving them unprotected. A classic example of this was in April, when 4 fires broke out in one day on this island. The second of those fires had more units from Brooklyn then Staten Island! Closing houses is not the answer!

Nor is hiring people based on the color of their skin, especially in a job where other people's lives depend on it. I mean for crying out loud, do you really want someone answering the call that is only there because some judge wanted their idea of "Equality"?

Equality is everyone getting a fair shot. Everyone, not a specific group. I don't care if the person saving lives is black, white, Asian, alien or whatever the hell species Joan Rivers is, so long as they got there based on their ability, end of story.

Since the surgery I've been watching a lot of the older episodes of "Build It Bigger" on the Discovery Science Channel, and if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. As far as building shows go, it is unique in the fact that it's host, Danny Forster, seen below, is actually an architect.

Danny goes around to building sites from the Washington Nationals baseball stadium in D.C. to the Shanghai World Financial Center in China. Oh yea, and he doesn't like heights, so putting him in a crane in Singapore sees him flip out a bit, which adds a human side to the simple documentary. Not only do you learn, you feel like you're on site with him. He also does not clutter up the show with architectural jargon. He explains everything to the viewer with such ease it almost makes you feel like you can build these places. His enthusiasm for the field of design truly makes the show shine, which is why it's one of my favorites.

It is doing a far better job of entertaining me then the finale of LOST, which was a complete disappointment. Maybe "Castle" won't let me down as my new serial of choice when it returns this fall. Maybe I need to stop watching so much TV?

One thing I have realized during this time is I got some pretty damn good friends. From the Chocolate Syringe that I got from White Chocolate And Zucchini to the cards from Lasagna...from the visit by Corky and Crash to the Package from Lor and the tons of texts, emails, comments and the such, you guys sure know how to make a guy feel good when he has his ear rebuilt like the six million dollar man....which ironically I never did watch. Go figure.

Also, while I was being sliced open like a Turkey on Thanksgiving, my good friends The Neccos welcomed a new wafer into the package, Cassandra Hope, who undoubtedly is being fitted for her cape as I type this.