Land of Oz

Something's not right here...

Am I the only person who has problems with this?

ABC News had a feature a couple nights ago about poverty in the US:
"The featured youngsters are Ivan, a kindergartner who, with his mother and younger brother, are frequently homeless and spent months sleeping together on a single chair; Moochie, a 6-year-old girl who's a bright student weighed down by her father's alcoholism and parents' incessant arguing; and Billy Joe, a high school senior living with his father and five siblings in a home that frequently has no power."

ABC News had an article about a race horse:
"Although the get-well cards and banners eventually will fade or be trashed, the biggest gift has been the $1.2 million raised since early June for the Barbaro Fund. The money is put toward needed equipment such as an operating room table, and a raft and sling for the same pool recovery Barbaro used after his surgeries.

The Jacksons spent tens of thousands of dollars hoping the best horse they ever owned would recover and be able to live a comfortable life on the farm -- whether he was able to breed or not."

CSI - Trust

CSI is one of my favorite TV shows. I've really enjoyed it for the past several seasons. I can only guess they're getting ready to end the show. The guy who plays Grissom - the leader - is supposedly on a 4 week sabatical. For show purposes he's teaching on the east coast - in real life he's supposed to be doing some theatre work. They got some new guy who's filling in for him on the show.

I think it just jumped the shark. The episode tonight consisted of the boss lying to and deceiving the longterm members of her team on the say so of a guy who's worked there about a week. The team's supervisor didn't have enough trust in her troops all of a sudden to do a job she was convinced was right. If I was on that team, like Nick at the end of the show, I wouldn't be able to let it go either.

OK - yes, I know it's a show so I shouldn't get too upset over it. I'm not that upset really; it's not like I'm going to stay awake tonight worrying about it after all. However, I do think it's reflective of the work climate today. I know I'm looking through rose-colored glasses, but at one time there seemed to be more trust around. A company took care of its workers and the workers responded and took care of the company. No more. Today a company will sell out its employees and not hesitate a millisecond. The CEOs will clean out the coffers and leave stockholders holding less than an empty bag, while they retire with millions in worker earned money. So I shouldn't be surprised when that mindset is mirrored on a television show.

American Idol

Let me add to the hype. Of course the judges are going to make insults. From what I understand that the reason many people watch this show. I don't watch it - much (see below). I doubt if I've watched more than thirty or so minutes since its debut (is debuted a word?). It seems to me like most of the publicity generated by and for American Idol is because of the crappy singers they have - and they have some really, really crappy ones. If it wasn't wondering what the acerbic judges would say next, would anyone really watch it?

OK - I'm guilty, I did watch a little bit of American Idol last night. Not for long though. Just to see if it still sucked - and it does. Some of those people sing so bad, it literally hurts to listen to them. Why on earth would anyone - contestant or audience - put up with such nonsense.

The judges have a right to be as insulting as they can. Let's face it, the show wouldn't be half as popular the hype if Cowell said, "gee - your tone is a little off and your physical appearance isn't quite appropriate for a performer" instead of "You sound like an off-key air-raid siren on a rusty factory roof, and look worse. Why are you wasting our time?"

Some of these people are practically performing a criminal act when they attempt to sing, and the judges should be let alone to tell them that. Don't cry when they tell you suck -- especially since you do. I watched less than a dozen singers last night. Some were at best noise makers, and some should have never left home. If you don't already know you can't sing, don't get upset when someone tells you so. The nun who directed my sixth-grade Christmas play, let me know my singing sucked and I've done my best not to sing since. So, how about getting Sister Mary Magdalene as one of your judges - she had a way of making her opinions stick - especially to a very impressionable sixth-grader.

Damn Dogs Again

Casper Wyoming - but could easily be anyhwere else. What this story boils down to is that an aggressive dog is hassling mail carriers. The post office has decided to stop delivering mail to the street, which includes 23 other customers. "Owner Jolene Whittle said Butch has always had a problem with mail carriers." and "Sulzen said Metro was trying to work with the post office and had offered to have an officer escort the postal carrier on the route."

The problem isn't the dog and it isn't the mail carriers and it isn't the police. The problem is the idiot owner of the dog! Lock the damn dog up or shoot it. You are inconviencing a whole street and threatening the health of any number of mail carriers simply because you are either too selfish or too stupid to control your own dog.

Every owner says their dog doesn't bite - usually just before the dog bites someone. I don't really care if the dog hasn't bitten your kids - yet. I'm not your kid and neither are the mailmen. With any luck your dog will bite someone - hopefully not too bad - and they sue your ass into bankruptcy. As much as I hate wastefull lawsuits, I'd love to be in the jury of the court that tries you.

The good

For once, I've got some good news. The other day I lost my cell phone - again. I'm not really good at keeping it in my pants, you see. And for the second time, I lost it at the post office. And for the second time some anonymous soul returned it to the post office counter. For that I thank you.

The not so good

And not too shock you too much, here's the bad. Winter finally arrived here in Michigan. Not the nasty ice-covered muck of Oklahoma or the waistdeep snow of Colorado, but "normal" winter. The temperature's about 20 and there's a few inches of snow on the ground and the idiot drivers have come back out of the woodwork.

You would think that blowing snow, freezing temperatures and early darkness would be a hint. But no, drivers go just as fast - if not faster - and "save" their lights as if it was a sunshining summer day. It seems more people than ever are not using turn signals - heaven forbid you let that person behind you (with the snow covered windows they're too lazy to clean) know that you're about to cut across three lanes to make that right turn. Likewise, why turn on your headlights just because there's snow plows moving snow and wind moving it back and the clouds adding new snow.

One new snow fall the other day - and not that bad really - had 100 car accidents the first day. I don't get it. Why are people so damn stupid when the snow falls?

How it works?

A couple of weeks ago, I was home sick and had the TV on. I ended up watching some women's talk show and the specific subject being covered was how many people knew how stuff worked. The two items I remember talked about were television and cell phones. They'd survey the audience about how many knew, and then they had some "expert" explain it.

The numbers were predictively low. But what surprised me was the level of knowledge that an explanation did - or rather didn't - contain. Which to me brought up the question just what does knowing entail? The explanation for TV was basically a camera converts the picture into pixels which are sent to a satellite which sends it down a cable to your home to the TV that turns the pixels back into an image. To me, that is dumbing down to the extreme and really isn't knowing "how a television works." Their explanation for cell phones was even worse - basically the same without the pixels and cable. It was a good explanation for a satellite phone, but not for a cell phone.

By those standards, I think I know how just about anything works - while really not knowing how anything really works. There are so many details that aren't even hinted at.

It's interesting how much most people really don't know about how stuff works today. You used to be able to fix the stuff you had. Thirty years ago I was doing pretty good tuneups on my car with a small box of tools, a dwell meter and timing light. Now, I'd need $1000 worth of electronic test gear just to tell me what is acting up. Instead of adjusting the points using a feeler gauge, I'd need to reprogram the computer.

I can remember my dad taking television tubes to the drug store to test them and replace the bad ones in our TV. Now you basically replace the TV. And is the TV honestly that much better? A little bigger and more channels, but still basically the same thing. And having 200 channels doesn't necessarily mean the programming is better.

I just realized that this rant doesn't really "go" anywhere. I don't know if I'm complaining about the lack of people's knowledge about everyday life, or the needless complexity of it. People really should know more about how things work, but the improvement in things makes that impossible. I guess we just have to hope that everything keeps working.

It doesn't get any better...

The headline reads, "Alleged carjacker gets shot in buttocks" and part of the story is:
"Jeffcoat [the carjacker] was shot Saturday night after he stuck a gun into the stomach of a man getting into his car at a Wal-Mart in suburban northeast Richland County and demanded his keys, deputies said.

A woman in the passenger seat pulled a gun from the glove compartment and fired five shots at Jeffcoat, hitting him once, investigators said."

NCIS

Here's a show I really like to watch. I like the plots and the characters along with the actors. This is one of about four shows I regularly watch. The show last night was pretty interesting. I found it to be thought provoking in more than a couple of ways. In this one, there was no all good or all bad.

It dealt with current issues in many ways, and not in the usual stereotypical ways. It treated all sides pretty fairly. There was a Marine Captain who was a bad guy and a Marine Lieutenant who was a good guy. There was a secretive Iraqi who was a good guy and two other secretive Iraqis who were bad guys. The small town law enforcement people included a slightly bigoted and not-too-bright cop, a very bigoted and criminally stupid cop, and an inexperienced who cop was certainly learning and trying.

And finally, there was a Mossad agent helping out an Iraqi when the local yokel was giving him grief. And that was the same Mossad agent who had the best line. When the Iraqi asked her if she thought they'd ever get along, she replied, "not in our lifetimes." Sad, but true.

Prices

The other day, I had the idea of picking up a Green Bay Packer jersey. I thought it'd be kinda neat since I've been a fan - not fanatic - but interested, pretty much as long as I can remember. Going back to the 60s growing up across the lake from the Chicago Bears and from the state of the Detroit Lions, it was always the Packers. Anyway with wonders of the Internet, I entered nfl.com, then clicked NFL Shop and a little bit later was looking at Holy Crap!, $194.99. Basically two hundred bucks for a fancy sweatshirt.

What the hell, is it made of gold or something? I checked out baseball, and a flannel shirt runs roughly the same cost. It's amazing that stuff like that costs so much. Just for yucks, I checked out football tickets. For the New England Patriots, you can pay $185 for parking and $260 for a ticket. I know it's a playoff game and all, but jeeze, $450 to watch a three hour game? I checked the Daytona 500 NASCAR race - $160; NHL, Detroit and Colorado - $50 parking and $105 for a ticket; Indy 500 Formula 1 is $100.

A family must have to take out a loan for something like that. Where does some young couple with a couple of kids come up with the bucks to spend an afternoon at some sporting event? Take your wife and two kids to NASCAR: $640 for tickets, I'm guessing a couple hundred for munchies and a program, and that doesn't cover getting there. You're looking at an easy grand just to let your kids watch some cars run around in a circle for a couple of hours. Oh well, I guess that's my age showing again.

Update:I just read that the LA Galaxy will be paying David Beckham $1 million a week for five years to play soccer for them? And this in a country that has more people on death row than would like to watch soccer!

Confidence building…

This is some of the wackier crap I saw on today's news - which admittedly is a little stranger than usual:

NY Mayor - we don't know what it is or where it's from, but it's not dangerous.

US Army - we're so desparate that even though you're dear, we want you back.

Austin TX - we don't know what killed the birds or why they died, but We ... do not feel that there is a threat to the public's health

Iraqi judge - Court drops Kurd charges against Saddam

UK - inquest into Princess Diana's death in a 1997 car crash in Paris resumed - let it rest already

Nuts to nuts - Rosie O'Donnell says Donald Trump is a man obsessed

Fuzzy Bears

I was at Kroger's last night buying some groceries and was noticing the types of customers there. I did see that a lot of stores like Krogers, Walmart and others have those stupid plush toy crane things in the lobby. You know the kind, you put in quarter after quarter trying to grab one of the stuffed bears inside. Have you paid attention to the type of people who are usually using them?

It's usually a very young couple with one or more kids who definitely looks like they shouldn't be wasting quarters on some game. They are usually the same ones with a forty-dollar carton of cigarettes in their cart and have a beat-up 10 or 15 year-old car in the parking lot full of Macdonalds and Wendys wrappers.

I've often noticed that those who can least afford to waste money on stuff like that are those will waste the money. I'm not saying they should live frugal lives devoid of all amusement, and save every penny, but they should be a little more discriminating.

The problem is that so many of those families are screwed into a lose-lose lifestyle. They don't have a good education, which leads to low-paying jobs and lack of general knowledge - like paying 30% on credit cards is bad and saving is good. No money keeps them from doing things like getting educated and learning that they have options in life. More options than dunking $4 worth of quarters into a machine to buy a $2 toy.

Bush & High School

The president's current strategic planning in Iraq brings to mind certain episodes of my long-past and decidedly unheralded high school career. I'm sure most of you have done something similar in high school or even college. (I lucked out by the time I finally went to college - I'd gotten older and a bit wiser and rarely did such things.)

You know you're going to have that big important class project due by mid-term. The teacher would you let you know in the first few weeks that by mid-term you'd have to turn in some fancy project. A history diorama and biology plant collection are two that come to mind in my case - anyway... You know it's coming due - there's no getting around it. It's not like the class is going away or anything. That big project is staring you in the face. So, you use all that time to work diligently on it, right? Not even. You put it off.

The months left turn into weeks to go and still the big idea sits on a shelf in your room. Finally the weeks are looking like days and still you're no closer. Finally, Sunday night before it's due, you run around like crazy throwing crap together for this big important class project. If you get really, really lucky, you might get a C for the piece of crap you threw together overnight that should have taken you all semester to finish. Probably you'll get a D or worse. The teacher ends up disappointed, your parents are pissed, and you feel like crap as well.

In this case all that's fucked up is part of class. You can probably make up a lot of the grade with some extra credit work and a little brown-nosing of the teacher. Your GPA might take a hit, but that's really worst case.

In Bush's case, he's had, what, four years now to figure out what to do with Iraq? I'll have an answer by January, er, maybe February, er sometime anyway. Unlike a crappy bug collection for biology, this is a country where hundreds of people are dying every day. No amount of extra credit is going to fix that.

The other day, there was an column in the newspaper about yet another guy who can't handle the assembly issues of Xmas morning. He complained about items with no batteries, the wrong batteries and how hard it was to install a battery. He complained about bad instructions, no instructions, and instructions that can't be understood. He complained about the tools needed that he didn't have or those that he did have weren't correct. And then he complained about the actual assembly of the junk. How it was so difficult to get stuff to work the way it was supposed to and then end up with something that looked like it was supposed to.

And then of course there was the packaging complaints. Too much packaging, too little packaging and of since there were kids involved, how those same kids would rather play with the packaging that with the actual gift. And this year's special complaint is about those plastic bubble packages that are crush resistant, tearproof, bulletproof, and protect a $5 gizmo that will be out of date next week better than an art museum protects a Picasso. (OK, I'll bitch about those packages too - but buy a set of bandage scissors from the dollar store - the kind with the bend in them - they work very well).

And then of course he tops it off with the age-old complaint of luddites everywhere, that his VCR (probably Betamax) is still blinking 12:00.

See, the problem is I enjoy putting this stuff together. I love getting a teeny-little one foot square package from Ikea and two hours later having a wall-size entertainment center in the house. I happily plop myself on the floor and immerse myself in the mounds of bubble-wrap, foam padding and a multitude of little plastic bags full of screws, bolts, and odd-shaped pieces of hardware. Actually using the end product is almost a let down. Hey, spend $50 or so and get some basic tools and read the instructions - yes, I know it's almost heretical as a guy to say that, but reading the instructions will save time in the end.

And clocks? In my house they all read the same (set to my radio-synched master clock), they aren't set 10 minutes fast, and they don't blink!

3,000

Well, it's nice to end the year on a nice round number. Unfortunately, that round number is the number of USofA military dead in Iraq since Bush started the chase after WMD, Al Queda, or whatever it was we started this over. 111 died this month - Merry Christmas.

Saddam is dead. He was hung the other day. And you know what? He showed more class at the end than the "civilized" people who put him to death. They hung him on a holy day and made sure to taunt him at the end. The "cradle of civilization" looks more and more like a dumping ground for social and moral misfits. While I know that most Muslims are supposed to be nice folks - at least that's what they always say - you sure couldn't prove it by their actions.

It's pretty bad when a blood thirsty evil dictator shows more class than the "legitimate" government does that executes him. It seems like every side over there is fucked up. It just amazes me that a people who have been in on the birth of civilization can still be so damn crude and cruel 10,000 years later. What is it about that area that keeps people at each other's throats? Let's face it, when you have a civilization where men can stone women who were raped, why should they change. Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant - and in that place - covered up.