Eight Feet Deep

From today’s No S**t Sherlock Department — A study has found that daylight savings time disrupts the sleep cycle. I heard this on National Public Radio while driving back to the office this afternoon. Dr. Stanley Spiesel, who writes a medical column for Slate, said during the NPR interview that a study of Central Europeans “showed that the normal correlation between dawn and the sleep cycle becomes disrupted during the transition to daylight-saving time.”

Spiesel goes on to say that getting into the natural brightness of the day is the best way to rebound from the grogs that beset you when transitioning to daylight savings time. How to rebound completely from the other types of grogs, other than with the hair of the grog, continues to baffle medical science.

I found that the best way to make the time transitions after the clocks are set backward or forward is to do so while you are on vacation. Some 12 years ago I was on vacation, staying with my friend Sally in Massachusetts. Even though she had to get up to go to work and I had to drive with her so that I could use her car while she was at work, I found I didn’t suffer from the normal irritation of time transitioning when I returned to my job the following week. The fact that I made the transition from daylight to standard time in the Eastern Time Zone rather than in the Central Time Zone where I live may have somehow contributed to making the time change more bearable. But I think that not working and not really having much in the way of responsibility contributes the most to surviving the change from daylight to standard or from standard to daylight. I think not working helps in many ways. I think that even not thinking about working can be helpful. So I will quit thinking (and writing) about work. I am feeling better already.

Time was when the shadiest among the shady characters in commerce were used car salesmen. Quite often, perhaps only ambulance-chasing lawyers were more despised among the public. But these days the people who are most looked-down-upon are politicians (who most likely deserve it) and journalists (who sometimes deserve it).

Of course, as technology has made this day and age what it is, it would only be natural that some among the tech service sector would also find their niche within the sleaze of American business. My vote for the used car salesmen of today and the future is those young men and women of all colors and lifestyles who sell wireless products such as cell phones and wireless air cards.

I have had a data card for slightly more than a month. And as time has gone by I have found more and more little factoids that should have been told to me by the woman who sold me my air card but who failed to mention those things. Thank goodness that Sprint, at least so it appears, seems to take Better Business Bureau complaints seriously. I filed a complaint a short while after I purchased the data card plan from a local Sprint store. I found out this afternoon yet another little matter the Sprint saleslady did not tell me after I found I had no service. Upon calling the help desk I discovered that I had a spending count and that I had gone over its limit.

The Sprint corporate lady who is working to try to resolve my complaint has been helpful. Not only did she get my service turned back on in an instant, she made sure that I would not have to pay this month’s bill since I have had so many issues with her company. She is giving me until the first of December to decide whether I want to continue service using my Sprint data card. If I decide not to, I will get a refund, or so she says.

I raise a lot of hell when things don’t go well and they should. Sometimes that is the only way to get anything done or a problem solved. A lot of people out there just don’t give a damn whether you are happy, sad, satisfied or are running down the street on fire. I once heard the term “consumer judo” as the practice of using all the pushes and pulls to ensure you get satisfaction from your transaction. ‘Scuse me while I get all Johnny Cochran on you. But there are times, or so I think, that you need a little more than judo. Instead, you may need a little consumer thermonuclear whup ass.

Tomorrow I may get beaten down and left in the ditch as so much consumer carrion. But for now I have won a round against those who would try to plunder my pennies. Ah the sweet smell of victory. For now at least.

Karen Hughes at her job of frightening young Asians.

Speaking of Halloween, one of the scariest women in government that I have ever seen is leaving Prez Gee Dubya as the last Texan standing. Karen Hughes, who was Bush’s mother-protector as press secretary when Bush was Texas governor, is leaving her post as global goodwill ambassador at the State Department and is going home to most likely make someone’s life miserable back here in Texas.

Having watched Hughes in action on many occasions when she would accompany Bush on his official goober-na-torial visits, I found her to be rather intimidating. She seemed incapable of providing any feelings of warmth, instead she would seem as if she might jump up in front of Bush before anything might happen to him, knocking down state police guarding the governor if they got in her way.

Oh well, I’m sure she is a fine person and her family loves her. But if someone who looks like Hughes shows up at your door tonight hollering “trick or treat,” I think it would be wise to run like hell.

It isn’t often that I agree with Lou Dobbs. Oh I suppose I do agree with him in principle that something should be done about border security. But Dobbs seems to think that arresting all the illegals and throwing them in jail is the cure for what ails our immigration mess and that just doesn’t seem like a very good thing to do nor can I see how it might be feasible.

But something else got Lou’s knickers in a wad yesterday. CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre had reported on the highest-ranking U.S. officer being wounded in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Dorko of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and mentioned that Dorko had been protected by civilian security contractors when he was injured by a roadside bomb. Dorko was not seriously wounded, according to reports. But Lou Dobbs went ballistic, not so much so that a general was wounded but for the fact that civilian security guards were reportedly guarding Dorko. Security personnel, Dobbs pointed out, who make tons of cash more than our own soldiers over in Iraq.

This all came on the heels of a report that the U.S. State Department may have made it difficult if not impossible to prosecute Blackwater U.S.A. mercenaries who allegedly shot up a bunch of Iraqi civilians. I’m sure it was just an oversight on the State Department’s part. Yes, and if you believe that I’ve got some magic beans to sell you.

Something is rotten in Baghdad and it isn’t just the stench of war and evil. In my recent reading of presidential histories I have to say that I think our country has never had a more screwed up and more corrupt government that at the present. And that is really saying something because we have a history of some pretty Grade A scoundrels. And our fair citizens just seem to take it in stride. Maybe if we get rich enough, if we buy enough stuff, if we can drink and take enough drugs and/or watch sports or a bunch of kids trying to run a society on their own in a “reality TV show,” then maybe things will be better tomorrow. But damned if I don’t wake up each day only to find nothing has changed and if it has it hasn’t been for the better. Oh well, at least I am not Lou Dobbs and am worrying that illegal Mexicans are going to rape, plunder and pillage our fair land into chaos. No I am not worried because the rich white folks have beat the illegals to the punch.

God bless America!

What if there was a press conference and nobody came? Well, if you are a bright bulb at the Federal Emergency Management Agency then you get your own employees to play the part of reporters. Hey, the show must go on.

That is exactly what FEMA did last week after no reporters showed up for a hastily-called news conference regarding the California wildfires. In the wake of FEMA’s bad publicity over the Hurricane Katrina debacle and “Heck of a job Brownie,” the Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said that he will eat his hat or slap someone’s wrist or “get really angry.” Perhaps he won’t blow a fuse because the old chap already looks like death sucking on a Lifesaver.

John “Pat” Philbin, the FEMA public relations head, appears to be in limbo for his part in the fake news conference. He was to have become the media relations director for the Director of National Intelligence but apparently they are now giving second thought to having someone with so little intelligence being the spokesperson for the head of intelligence in this country. Also, I tried to follow a link on FEMA’s Web site where Philbin’s bio once existed but that page no longer exists. Aha, perhaps he is sleeping with the fishes one might wonder? Or maybe he is going to be part of the Bush brain trust at the White House. Lots of options for so much talent.