Nothin’ up here but the (lack of) rent and it sure bugs me

July 27, 2010

It seems we may have been bugged.

When I say that, I don’t mean bugged as in spied on by the gov­ern­ment. I’m sure that, thanks to George W. Shrub, the gov­ern­ment has been spy­ing on us for awhile. Not  that they gather any great knowl­edge other than quotes such as those by my father like: “And a whole flock of bird dogs flew over!”

What does that mean Sean? What is he say­ing? It has to be some­thing anti-government. After all, didn’t this guy in EFD say his Dad once trav­eled to Russia?

“Yes, Sean, I know his Dad was in the Mer­chant Marine but still … ”

Well, I guess we’ll have to let Sean and his fel­low Gen-Ys, or what­ever the young crowd ruin­ing rul­ing the world, fig­ure every­thing out.

We have had some kind of virus in our site. It appears when­ever I select a book­marked ver­sion of the site. I have not yet had that prob­lem with just typ­ing in the URL. Any­way, hope­fully, my IT guru in Tokyo and I can work on this before I (hope­fully) head to North Texas for a week of train­ing on Sunday.

I say hope­fully. That explains an absence of a post­ing yes­ter­day, if you noticed. My day, while not work­ing, was filled with the attempt to rent a car. It would be less expen­sive for me to rent a car for my trip. Plus, I have a stan­dard shift and a left knee that has likely begun to pro­vide me for­ever with pain. I got a shot awhile back in my knee and my doc­tor tells me to wear a brace on it. The shot worked for awhile, the brace is not help­ing. Ram­ble. I have to use the clutch with my left foot and leg and knee. In city dri­ving such as I will be fac­ing for a week. That will not be a happy prospect.

My dif­fi­culty in rent­ing an auto­mo­bile stems from  burn­ing my credit cards 12 years ago. Nasty things, those credit cards. The debit/bank card held such promise as a replace­ment. Why Bank of Amer­ica, that “great” U.S. insti­tu­tion said: “You can use it like a credit card.” And you can use a debit card for just about every­thing. That is except for rent­ing a car.

Oh you can pay for your car rental with a debit card, you just can’t rent it. Car rental com­pa­nies want to do per­haps every­thing except a rec­tal exam­i­na­tion on you before they rent you a car with a debit card and with­out a credit card. They want to check your credit. That, of course, only makes your credit worse.

The irony in all this is that I actu­ally have a credit card, but I can’t use it except for strict, job-related expenses and that usu­ally means fly­ing to Wash­ing­ton to do so. Oh, and you have to have that credit card as a con­di­tion of work, and if you get late pay­ing on it for what­ever rea­son, and it is revoked, you face dis­ci­pli­nary action. Isn’t life just full of won­der­ful lit­tle ironies that make you want to go out and rent a bull­dozer to tear down someone’s house? I’m not speak­ing of any­one in par­tic­u­lar and, of course, I’d never be able to rent a bulldozer.

Because I don’t have a freak­ing credit card!!!

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How to heal a broken oil company? A little congressional a** kissing

July 15, 2010

Boy howdy, talk about kick­ing an oil com­pany when they’re down, or up, or down.

BP may have finally stopped their well from spew­ing oil all over the Gulf Coast after a test of a con­tain­ment cap that had pre­vi­ously leaked. At least, things look rosy for the moment. Of course, that is how BP has man­aged this envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter for the last three months after the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon drilling rig went boom, killing 11 crew members.

“BP will fix it and make it all bet­ter. I know that because I am from the Coast and I met a man named Scratch at the Cross­roads down by Clarks­dale who said he’d make me rich and play the gui­tar like Robert John­son if I made a TV com­mer­cial for BP.”

So it would truly be some good news finally if the cap con­tin­ues to hold back the old oil. We won’t men­tion just yet the clean up that will con­tinue and will hope­fully inten­sify once the oil is finally pro­nounced stop-ped (like, really stopped, man.) Let’s just keep look­ing for all the bright spots so that the mas­sive Repub­li­can con­gres­sional ass-kissing of BP doesn’t seem so out of whack with the Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment that, actu­ally, believes the BP oil leak is really a bad thing.

And there is this. Some mem­bers of Con­gress want an inquiry into whether BP helped grease the wheels to release the man con­victed of bomb­ing Pan Am Flight 103 over Locker­bie, Scot­land, in 1988. Let’s see that inci­dent killed 270, includ­ing 11 on the ground. Bod­ies every­where you go. Um, pile it on like fire wood.

I won­der which U.S. Mem­bers of Con­gress, of the con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can ilk one might assume, will bow down to their mas­ters at BP and cry out: “We’re sorry. So sorry. That I could be such a fool … ” Or “that we could be such fools.” Yeah, some­thing like that. Then, “Smack!” The next sound you hear will the col­lec­tive loud lips of the Cau­cus of House Con­ser­v­a­tives puck­er­ing up for BP. Good for what ails every suf­fer­ing oil com­pany that might just like to cut cor­ners and might just help let ter­ror­ists go free if it gives them free reign in a nation’s oil fields. That’s not say BP is a suf­fer­ing oil com­pany such as that. Oh no. Uh uh. Nope.

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Have a nice day. No really.

July 9, 2010

King James decided to head South. And I don’t care.

It is doubt­ful that I am the only per­son in the coun­try who doesn’t care that LeBron James took his act to Miami. He’s from Ohio and knows how crappy the weather is in Cleve­land, even though the game of pro bas­ket­ball is played indoors. Too bad, actu­ally. The NBA ought to have some out­door games like the NHL does with their Win­ter Clas­sic — the 2011 game is New Year’s Day at Heinz Field in Pitts­burgh. I would love to see Shaq and Kobe and some of the big men shoot it out in Lam­beau Field in January.

Of the most pop­u­lar pro sports, bas­ket­ball is my least favorite. That is part of the rea­son I didn’t care one way or the other about the super-hyped LeBron Sweep­stakes. Sure it was a lot about LeBron say­ing: “Look at me.” Although the whole deal with Dewayne Wade and Chris Bosh along with the pos­si­bil­ity of Hall of Famer Pat Riley coach­ing, if he returns to the bench from the Heat front office, could turn out to be one of the most bril­liant moves in pro­fes­sional sports. Or not. I just don’t give a fly­ing puck.

One thing I will say for pro bas­ket­ball: Sta­mina. But that is a qual­ity required in large doses in many other sports, yes, even in fut­bol. Oh, and there is one more word essen­tial to the NBA: Money. Lots and lots of money.

Those poor schmoes in Cleve­land who had their hearts bro­ken by LeBron King James, one has to believe, just didn’t have enough money. What makes a young man stray long dis­tances from the only home he has ever known? Money. Or the mil­i­tary. Or a two-timing girl­friend. Or col­lege. Or the cir­cus. Or San Fran­cisco. There is a long list after all. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the “Deal of the Cen­tury” involv­ing the Miami Heat doesn’t evolve around money. But I don’t think so.

That is because money is so, so impor­tant to so, so many peo­ple. Why this woman from the billing office of a local Catholic hos­pi­tal was just plain un-Holy this morn­ing when she called me out of my late-sleeping slum­ber and asked why I hadn’t paid my bill. The rea­son was that it was a worker’s comp claim my employ­ers owe. But you’d have thought I had taken all of the money straight out of this woman’s pock­et­book and snatched one of her babies. She ended the phone con­ver­sa­tion with one of those really snide “Have a nice days.”

I had a lady tell me “Have a nice day” at the dump other day. As a mat­ter of fact, she got really into telling me to have a nice day and then finally said she hoped God would take away my pain that made me so angry. I told her that He needn’t bother, that my pain would dis­ap­pear in about 10 sec­onds when she was no longer in my rear view mirror.

Well, I’ve strayed off the path now. My whole train of thought has just jumped the tracks and started fold­ing down a cliff like a Cajun accor­dion at a fais-do-do. Ay-yee!

It is time to put a mer­ci­ful end to this post. So keep cool and well fed. Until next time, this is your old buddy EFD say­ing “Your feet only smell when some­one can smell them.”

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Dubai, as elsewhere, the sky’s no limit

January 5, 2010

One has to won­der if watch­ing clips of the fire­works mark­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the new world’s tallest build­ing brought to many minds — at least in the U.S. — the hor­rors of 9/11.

The Burj Khal­ifa opened amid fan­fare in the city-state of Dubai, which could eas­ily be known now as “Buddy, Can You Spare Tens of Bil­lions of Dol­lars Land,” the half-mile high struc­ture ris­ing ever sky­ward in glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of excess and in a toast to some of Sig­mund Freud’s most provoca­tive theories.

Peo­ple will work and live and pray in this build­ing and who knows what else. I can­not fathom how any­one can live way up. I’m not talk­ing a few sto­ries, or even 20 or so sto­ries, but per­haps more than 160 stories?

Part of my mis­giv­ings come from hav­ing worked as a fire­man and wit­ness­ing for myself that those lad­ders and snorkles on trucks only reach so far, and not really much at that. Then, of course, there was 9/11. Peo­ple walk­ing down floor after floor amid an unspeak­able tragedy, trudg­ing down stairs, not even run­ning for their lives, in what must have seen a night­mare fea­tur­ing a liv­ing hell in which time ended only by escape or annihilation.

There is no rea­son for liv­ing way up. A pretty woman per­haps? I did stay a week in a 20th floor apart­ment over­look­ing the Mis­sis­sippi River in a cer­tain large, Mid­west­ern city. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

I was in Chicago back in 1995 when the Sears Build­ing was still the Sears Build­ing and was the World’s Tallest Build­ing. It’s now the Willis Tower. I hope it wasn’t named after that char­ac­ter in the TV show  in the late 1970s and 80s who was the brother of Arnold, a.k.a. ““What’choo talkin’ ’bout?”  That Willis got into a bunch of trou­ble when he got older. See what excess will do for you?

Nev­er­the­less, I took a ride to the top of the then-world’s tallest build­ing. I looked around to see what I could see. Then I rode that speedy ele­va­tor down to the bottom.

Even the name of the new tallest build­ing is steeped into the gross­est of finan­cial insan­ity. The back­ers of the project named the build­ing after the sheik run­ning Abu Dhabi. Sheik Daddy is the fel­low who poured in tens of bil­lions into the fis­cally chal­lenged fan­tasy land where megabucks and the right con­nec­tion could build you an island in the shake of a tail feather.

It’s all about “mine is big­ger than yours.” That is why the World’s Third Largest Fire Hydrant in my town is no longer the world’s largest. Things have got to be big­ger and, hope­fully, better.

At the end of the story last night on CBS about this new high-rise, Katie Couric did men­tion the struc­ture had these new safety fea­tures and could with­stand being struck by a plane. She didn’t say how big a plane. I do think, though, that proved at least some of us were on the same page about 9/11 and tall buildings.

Peo­ple, men mostly, will keep build­ing ‘em taller and taller. Dubai can  have it’s old World’s tallest because one will emerge from some­where even higher some days. Per­haps as the ‘scraper shoots ever taller, through the clouds to where the top of the build­ing can’t even be seen, some­day a great giant will emerge. The giant will throw a super-duty bean stalk over the side of the struc­ture and he will take per­haps but a minute before he rap­pels to the street level. What the giant does then is bet­ter left to the imagination.

Does this sound a bit far­fetched? You tell me. The sky no longer seems the limit.

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Happy Festivus to the rest of us!

December 23, 2009

Today is the day we — EFD — cel­e­brate Festivus.

Here is a very short syn­op­sis about Fes­tivus and more can be read in this pretty good Wikipedia arti­cle:

Fes­tivus is a made-up hol­i­day intro­duced to the world on Dec. 18, 1997 on the incred­i­ble late 20th cen­tury sit­com “Sein­feld.” The hol­i­day is just one more gift to soci­ety given by the genius come­dian Jerry Sein­feld and his writ­ers. A line of such cul­tural gifts from Sein­feld and cast exists, like “close talker,” “regift­ing” and “Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that.” The date on which it is cel­e­brated was por­trayed on the show as Dec. 23. The premises of Fes­tivus, as explained by char­ac­ter Frank Costanza — father of one of the main char­ac­ters George Costanza — was a reac­tion to the hyper-commercialization of Christmas.

The major sym­bol for the hol­i­day is an alu­minum pole. Tra­di­tional prac­tices include “Feats of Strengths” and the “Air­ing of Griev­ances,” in which each per­son tells the oth­ers present how they dis­ap­pointed him or her that year.

Prob­a­bly no one knows, but Fes­tivus is actu­ally cel­e­brated by peo­ple in real­ity. There are three Fes­tivus Face­book groups with more than 15,000 fans. Just what those num­bers mean, I couldn’t begin to tell you.

Since this is a hol­i­day that really lacks any rigid­ity it is a per­fect one for me to cel­e­brate. I don’t even have an alu­minum pole this Fes­tivus, but I might go out and find one. Although you can buy a Fes­tivus pole online, I think it kind of defeats the pur­pose of thumb­ing one’s nose to com­mer­cial­ism. No offense Festivuspole.com.

Festivus-Pole-from-Seinfeld

Peo­ple throw stuff away left and right, includ­ing alu­minum poles. That is espe­cially true in places where hur­ri­canes seem to strike every third week and folks are con­tin­u­ally rebuild­ing their homes when they aren’t fight­ing the insur­ance com­pa­nies in court.

And for those of you who read my blog, or even worse, know me per­son­ally, you know that I have no short­ages of griev­ances to air. No one says the griev­ances one airs must nec­es­sar­ily be pointed toward friends or fam­ily. So here are just a few of my griev­ances for this year:

Peo­ple who park their huge-a** trucks or SUVs across more than one park­ing space. Do these peo­ple think that because they have a large auto­mo­bile it enti­tles them to park how­ever they desire? Or are they just stu­pid? Espe­cially dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son when park­ing spaces at malls or other shop­ping areas are cru­cial, one should grasp the idea that park­ing spaces are there for a rea­son. A space isn’t there to make you con­form to society’s rules. It is there to ensure every­one who can grab a space has a place to park. That is so these poten­tial cus­tomers can buy things and the shop­keep­ers or large cor­po­ra­tions can get filthy rich! Oh no, this rant has just gone South Pole with my mus­ings return­ing to com­mer­cial­ism. I have just run myself into a lit­er­ary cir­cle of no return.

Well, that’s it. I have other griev­ances but instead of air­ing a few I just hit a dead end thanks to com­merce. Screw it. It’s time to enjoy the hol­i­day before the hol­i­day (before the hol­i­day if you cel­e­brate Box­ing Day on Dec. 26.)

Oh I for­got the Feats of Strength. I think I will pass on that this year.

Have a great Fes­tivus and you know what you can do with the pole.

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R-word at end — Time for Elephant people to bitch

October 29, 2009

  My friend, who works for one of those huge, huge cor­po­ra­tions which I won’t name, called last night to sing Happy Birth­day to me. It’s cer­tainly the thought that counts.

  He said the busi­ness he works for was doing very well and I think he even mum­bled some­thing like “the reces­sion is over.” I say mum­bled, I was hav­ing dif­fi­culty hear­ing because I am unfor­tu­nate enough to have a two-year T-Mobile contract.

  Lo and behold, today I see signs of the reces­sion hav­ing ended. The Asso­ci­ated Press online hed:

 “Econ­omy grows in 3Q, sig­nals end of recession”

 Though described as “slug­gish” it is heart­en­ing to see the end of some­thing some thought might be a repeat of the dreaded “Great Depres­sion,” or per­haps an ever greater Great.

 Thank good­ness that didn’t happen.

 If you remem­ber back toward the end of the (sigh) Bush admin­is­tra­tion some of the efforts that were taken to stem the tide of this fis­cal dis­as­ter began with con­sul­ta­tion between the incom­ing and out­go­ing admin­is­tra­tions. So, if this all turns South, it’s Bush’s fault — it is any­way because it started under his tenure.

 You can bet no mat­ter what part the Obama admin­is­tra­tion played in the recov­ery, shaky as it remains, no praise will come from the Repub­li­cans. That is because they say no to every­thing. They praise noth­ing Democratic. Like one of my long ago coun­try pals said as well long ago: “You’d bitch if you had a loaf of bread under each arm.”

 Well, it seems we’ve got more than a half a loaf, so let the GOP bitch­ing begin.

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Ignorance (in) the law — particularly in this case — is no excuse

October 23, 2009

Here is the kind of ver­dict that leaves me com­pletely flummoxed.

A jury today here in Beau­mont, of the Texas vari­ety, sen­tenced sus­pended state trooper Jonathan Bar­nett to six months in jail and fined him $10,000 for run­ning a fam­ily busi­ness that oper­ates ille­gal gam­ing machines. Doc­u­ments listed Bar­nett, 32, as pres­i­dent of a family-owned nov­elty machine com­pany raided by author­i­ties in 2007. The machines owned and leased by the com­pany included so-called “eight-liners.” These are essen­tially slot machines which busi­nesses award win­ning cus­tomers who play with cash.

Bar­nett, a trooper since 2001, tes­ti­fied that he began phas­ing out his over­sight of the com­pany to his mother after becom­ing a high­way patrol offi­cer. He also denied know­ing the machines had been used for gam­bling. Jurors found Bar­nett guilty of engag­ing in orga­nized crim­i­nal activ­ity. Due to the gam­bling charges involved in the alleged activ­ity, Bar­nett could have been sen­tenced to a max­i­mum of two years in prison, accord­ing to local media reports.

So why am I flum­moxed at this ver­dict, you might ask? He was found guilty. He was a state trooper he should have known bet­ter. Right and right. Thus is the rea­son for my bewil­dered state.

Was this man stu­pid, arro­gant, greedy or all the above?

Local and state law enforce­ment, includ­ing Barnett’s soon to be for­mer employer the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safety, con­tin­u­ally make local head­lines with bust of eight-liner arcades across the state. State laws in the mid-1990s pro­vided the so-called “fuzzy ani­mal” excep­tion which allows a machine to pay out a non-cash prize for a play of $5 value or 10 times the cost of play, whichever is less.  Most cash prizes awarded ille­gally are done on the sly, which often neces­si­tates under­cover police oper­a­tions to bust the eight-liner oper­a­tors and owners.

In short, a Texan can’t walk down the street with­out being hit on the head by media reports of proud local law enforcers show­ing off the gam­bling machines they busted and money seized in the raids. Since I have seen cops of all stripe gam­bling ille­gally in all man­ners per­haps short of slot machines, and have even gam­bled with cops before, I don’t believe their fer­vor for bust­ing eight-liners is rooted in reli­gion or moral repug­nance. Per­haps it has some­thing to do with the money seized in the raids that go to the var­i­ous police agen­cies. Could that be it? Surely not.

What irri­tates me the most about the Bar­nett case is the blem­ish he causes for the agency that employed him. In gen­eral terms, I have had more respect for the Texas High­way Patrol than any other law enforce­ment agency. Maybe he is just a bad apple or an igno­ra­mus. He is not the only one I have seen in the DPS nor will he be the last. But the fact is eight-liner gam­bling is a very high-profile offense, though hardly the stuff of Baby Face Nel­son, and this now con­victed and sen­tenced for­mer state trooper should have steered clear of his fam­ily ties to the “nov­elty” gam­ing busi­ness when he decided to don the gray suit and cow­boy hat of the DPS.

I also feel that some­day “real” slot machines will be tum­bling their fruit in cer­tain sec­tors of the Lone Star State. That is, if the money bagged folks who want gam­bling in Texas can out­spend and out­wit those who already oper­ate casi­nos in neigh­bor­ing states.  When that hap­pens, and I believe it will, the eight-liners will be a relic of times past. Then, peo­ple like for­mer trooper Bar­nett will be con­victed felons despite the dimin­ished nature of the crime.

Talk about your dumb crimes. This one rates way on up there.

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We got ice. We got Bluetooth. We got rich.

September 2, 2009

The Super Duper Mart (Not it’s real name) is one of the “urban” type con­ve­nience stores. Urban is just a euphemism, code word or what­ever you want to say to dress up a pig with lip­stick for ghetto, po’, prob­a­bly 40 dif­fer­ent shades of skin color includ­ing white folks who have at least one major mechan­i­cal dif­fi­culty with their car that can’t be fixed until at least the next payday.

Any­way, that’s the kind of neigh­bor­hood I live in but this store is actu­ally down the road a ways.

My guess is that the clerk is from one of those ‘stan’ coun­tries. He has a Blue­tooth stuck in his ear that he talks from every wak­ing minute of the day.

The store has an ice dis­penser where you can get a ginor­mous cup of ice for 50 cents. There is no car­bon­ated soft drink machine in the place. A lit­tle light bulb goes off in my head. They want you to buy an energy drink, or soft drink or bot­tle of water marked up about 20 cents more than at Valero or 7–11.

I stopped in to buy gas but I also needed hydra­tion, so I got the Gnor­mous Ice (GI) and filled it up with water from a sink.

The clerk looked at me like I just launched a Hell­fire from a Preda­tor at his ’04 Camry.

“You got that water from the sink?” he asked.

“That’s where I get it at home.” I said.

I thought about lec­tur­ing him about how many bot­tled water bot­tles you see say­ing: “Source: Hous­ton Munic­i­pal Water Sys­tem.” or some­thing like that. I real­ized that from where the water came and my well-being had noth­ing to do with “Stan’s” query.

Speak­ing of Blue­tooths, or money-grubbing idiots, I was think­ing of the encounter with the lady at the Radio Hut the other day. Radio Hut. Hut? Like a shack? Get it?

An attor­ney was sup­posed to call me last week for an affi­davit as a wit­ness in a labor dis­pute. I only have a cell phone and didn’t believe I had a head­phone set. I fig­ured I might need one because the lawyer said the process would prob­a­bly take an hour.

I went into Radio Hut and asked the woman behind the counter about a head­set for my phone. She imme­di­ately took me to the Blue­tooth sets. She said every man­u­fac­turer is going to Blue­tooth. She looked at my phone. She said there wasn’t even a place to plug in a head­set there.

All the Blue­tooth stuff was from $35 and above at Radio Shack Hut.

EEK EEK ALERT: DOES THIS SEEM TO BE MISSING SOMETHING? WELL, IF IT DOES IT IS? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REST OF IT?

So any­way, I go to my truck and — to make a long story short — find the head­phone set. Blue­tooth this.

It seems like some­one is always out there try­ing to scam you. That’s how you get rich, I guess. Buy ice. Buy Blue­tooth. I think maybe some cap­i­tal­is­tic pig­gie must have stolen the bot­tom of this is why it stopped at the Blue­tooths for $35-plus. But oh well.

And I swear, the rest of what I had writ­ten was pretty good too. Maybe I can buy back what’s miss­ing from my post. I’m sure it would cost me more than a GI. But prob­a­bly not much more than a Bluetooth.

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