There is a canned pumpkin shortage going on – MY GOD what has the world come to?

My Sister called me last evening to ask if I knew anything about a pumpkin shortage. I told her I of course had no idea what she was talking about. She continues the story, she is in Kroger and there is nary a can of pumpkin to be had. She then goes on to tell me that the manager tells her of a canned pumpkin shortage going on. Sometimes I wonder if my Sister and I were actually born in Missouri, the show me state. Although that is not an official slogan of the State of Missouri it is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates. He could have been speaking directly to my Sister and I when congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver declared, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying. To me it seems to display a certain self-deprecating stubbornness and devotion to simple common sense.

Sorry I got sidetracked there for a moment. Anyway, my Sister and I both have an undiscussed relationship with that slogan. I knew before she even said it, she had gone to Wal-Mart looking for that canned pumpkin. Not believing the story of only one store manager she was off, exactly the same thing I would have done. I would be off to the next place that might have the product I am looking for. Of course the Wal-Mart was fresh out of pumpkin as well and she got a similar explanation about the lack of canned pumpkin. She called me on her way home to tell me of this. I got on the internet and found that there is indeed a pumpkin shortage. Seems that Nestlé, whose Libby brand is far and away the nation’s most popular canned pumpkin, announced that it might not have enough pumpkin for our pies. How in the world could this happen. I thought for sure there was enough geographical redundancy in our food supply to eliminate such things. I mean, some times the Red Delicious apples I eat come from South and Central America – how could we possibly have a shortage of anything.

Seems that their calculations indicated, on November 17th, that there might not be enough inventory of canned Libby’s pumpkin, this as we were approaching the Thanksgiving. That is according to Paul Bakus, the vice president for Nestlé’s baking division. I am quite stunning that this guy still has a job. It seems that the heavy rains in the Midwestern states caused the problems. I was also unaware that most commercial pumpkins are grown in those Midwestern states. I am told that soggy fields have made it difficult for farmers to get harvesting equipment to the pumpkins. Really, really that is the answer they have – hell monster trucks have flotation tires that come from the agriculture industry. It is really hard for me to believe this. Seems that as a result, the harvest that usually begins in the Midwestern pumpkin fields in August, was late in coming. Acres of pumpkins sit still unharvested in Morton, Ill., which the company calls the “pumpkin capital of the world.” Fungus is a big problem, so it is likely many of those pumpkins will be plowed under. Plowed under, Really…. Really?

Because the supply was already dangerously low, in part due to the lousy pumpkin harvest of 2008 there is just not a lot of stock left in the warehouses. As is always the case, one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure. Seems that what is bad news for the commercial growers has been fantastic news for the organic pumpkin concerns on the West Coast. Since Nestlé controls 85% of the canned pumpkin market so when things go bad for Nestlé things go bad for consumers. The organic pumpkin market makes up only about 3 or 4 percent of the overall canned pumpkin market, a fraction of the market really. I found that in Oregon the crop was so good that organic pumpkins are able to fill at least a little of the gap left by the Libby shortage. Good for them. Some might even say, so what. I will use my family’s traditional pumpkin pie recipe and you can make your own purée. I hear it is not a fast process, but some say it will do in a pinch. Do in a pinch my ass! Like I am going to go through whatever process that takes a whole pumpkin and turn it into a pie, right. I order my pies from those who make them, if they have a supply shortage they can tell me I can not have that pie or just charge me more for it. Like I am going to make a pie, makes me laugh just thinking about it.

In a day when corporate backups of data reside in two different parts of the country and this Nestlé’s guy can’t figure out how to ensure a single event in one geographic area does not destroy the canned pumpkin part of their business. If this fellow worked for me he would be looking for a job. We Americans are due canned pumpkin anytime we want it and I am righteously indignant that in the year 2009 that I can’t have every damn thing I want! Seems that my Missouri born Sister, while I was writing this, drove to a small store in West Liberty and has found some canned pumpkin. The Thoman’s Market was the store that saved her life. While she did pay 2.49 a can, for something that is a buck at Wal-Mart Thoman’s was the store able to provide the product and she bought 16 cans. Yes that was sixteen cans of pumpkin. I can say without a doubt that I have never bought a single can of pumpkin, let alone 16. She tells me that they were in line with a couple of cans when she realized that with a shortage on she better stock up and went back and bought all 16 cans that they had on the shelves. 16 cans of pumpkin, I am not sure what is wrong with her.

Well if you need pumpkin you may have some problems getting it. Seems that 2 years of problems with the crop volume have decimated the supply. I am hopeful that the small organic growers can take advantage of the big dogs blunders.

I am quite sure that I will not hear anything else about a pumpkin shortage, unless my Village Inn tells he I can’t get one when I go in to order it.

Do these little phlegm characters gross you out?

I am convinced that we, as a society, have flushed the last modicum of our decorum with these commercials. We all get snotted up and have to blow our noses and cough up nastiness, we all get that way at some point. I was taught to get up, go to some secluded place and take care of it. If it did require medication to clear up, we looked for something called an expectorant. I do not ever remember talking about it with family, let alone others. It is just one of the myriad gross little issues that we deal with, our bodies have many of these functions we do not bring into the light of day, or at least we did not used to. So, what has happened to our society that we have allowed this nasty and sometimes gross advertising, it seems to me should still be whispered about in the comfort of our doctors office or our own homes.

The little booger man, who is the spokesperson for one brand of expectorant is but a symptom of a larger openness that I am not sure I like. I have to change the channel when those commercials come on because I find them disgusting! We are introduced to a little green man, Mr. Mucus is the name given me by the company. We find that he has a family, so it is not good enough to gross us out with just booger man, we have to be introduced to his bride and his children. GROSS! We even to a look at the furniture and the living conditions he sets up, inside our chest cavity. We can see by his attire that Mr. Mucus is a working man, not a white collar guy although no one is immune from needing an expectorant but for some reason they chose a working man. Can you imagine if he were wearing an Armani suite and tie – how would we feel about that? On their web site I even found his Bride wearing a grass skirt. Are you seeing the ridiculousness of this advertising campaign?

A bit more time on their site and I found little mucus men picketing, like striking workers, the use of the product they were advertising. I also found Mucus Maximus, I assume a take on Russell Crow’s character in the movie Gladiator. Really, really? I see that mucus man gives pep talks and has gone on a world tour as well. I see another where he is wearing a tee shirt that says Mucus Power – I think that is a take on the Black Power movement of the 60’s but I am not sure. In another the kid is wearing a shirt that says “Daddy’s favorite mucus”. And yet another has him spinning a basketball and it indicates team mucus. This ad campaign is one of the nastiest things I can recall. I think we should relegate Mr. Mucus back to the foggy and shadowy existence on little placards in doctors’ offices! I believe I would die from being congested before I would buy an expectorant from this company.

Mr. Mucus seems to be the culmination of many topics that I thought were better left for the privacy of the home or the clinical setting of the doctor’s office. Maybe I am just old fashioned, hell I am only 44 and never thought my sensibilities were that far off track with my demographic. Maybe they are not, as I still have not talked with others about any of this. Not sure if you are comfortable sitting watching an advertisement for vaginal itching or erectile dysfunction with your kids, boy or girlfriend or spouse, I am still not and do not ever want to be. Why do these ads persist then? Only thing I can come up with is the drug companies. They are driving this stuff on us and acting worse than a heroin pusher keeping a junkie hooked and supplied. They have dreamed up problems for which only they can offer assistance and then have some advertising agency dream up a campaign to make this new medication part of our lives.

I believe they have taken over the world and are on a quest to make each and every one of us beholden to them for EVERY part of our lives. Think about it, when was the last time you watched a commercial break that did not include a medication spot? Could be anything, from a birth control pill to a cure for restless leg syndrome to a depression medication that will solve all your woes. All of which have a list of side effects that are startling to hear. Even the cure for Mr. Mucus can cause, headache, dizziness, vomiting and there are reports of a rash. A rash where? Those are mild compared to some. If you read the pages of side effects of the H1N1 vaccine you would not normally wish that on someone you did not like. Seems we are somewhat masochistic when we treat ourselves for our problems. Just look at the side effects of one of the erectile dysfunction medications. You know it is bad when that description starts out with the following, very few drugs work perfectly, and “blank” is no exception. Just about every drug has side effects that arise because the drug is flowing throughout the body and may affect parts of the body unintentionally. For example, aspirin is a drug that relieves pain, but this same drug can also erode the stomach lining and thin the blood. And those are just the side effects of aspirin. Yes all of that was listed before the side effects of the erectile dysfunction medication. My favorite for this drug was it could cause color vision problems and potentially an erection lasting more than 4 hours.

Oh well, I guess I am just on a soap box for now that I should just get off of, I believe I may start a Facebook group called “Ban Mr. Mucus from all advertising”. This whole thing has given me a headache, I better go take something for that.

Losing Friends is hard……………………..

As I get older I realize that I have been to more funerals than I wanted to at age 44 and it sucks. One of the last funerals I went to was for a good friend of mine who committed suicide and if I were to grade funerals to go to, that one SUCKED bad! My friend was in his 50’s, had, what appeared to me, a good life, wife, kids in college and doing well and a good job in sales.  He lost weight during that last 6 months, at one point it was very noticeable and I was concerned. We talked about that and the challenges and struggles that come with taking psychotropic medications, it was all very new to him and he was not accustomed to the side effects. The medications had a negative affect on him and his personality and that forced me to stay in touch with him more often. The last time I spoke to him was the day before Thanksgiving 2008 and we spoke for about a half hour. Small talk really, what we were doing for the holiday, what we were having for the feast the next day and we touched briefly on the medications and how he was doing with that.

I received a call the day after Thanksgiving 2008 telling me that my friend had committed suicide in his office at work. I almost hit the floor, literally. I went over that conversation I had with him in my head a thousand times trying to find a sign that I should have caught, something that told me my friend was struggling. I could not find anything, and trust me I looked, over and over in my head that conversation went round and round to the point I have to resolve that there was nothing and it was not my fault for not catching anything. I no longer run that conversation in my head anymore, I just miss my friend. We used to go to lunch every few weeks and talk about all manner of topics from how the Gators were doing to the state of the broadcast industry. Knowing that he took his own life leaves so many questions that can never have any answers.

He is the second friend I have lost to suicide, that sucks because you have to accept that there will never be any answers to your questions. The positive that comes from it though is that it has made me more attuned to my friends, I want to know them as well as I can. Suicide of a friend is a reminder that no matter how well we think we know someone, we really just don’t. Everyone has those secret demons buried at different levels, some of them you may know about but there are always those that people never let loose. I have resolved to never hold back when talking to my friends, I do not want that dark corner that no one knows about. I want my friends to be able to spot the troubles, if I am having them. I can not imagine life wearing me down to the point of contemplating suicide but I thought the same about my friends so ya just never know.

Several years ago I lost another one of my good friends to Melanoma, skin cancer, that was especially tough for me as well. We had worked together and when he first contracted the disease, he thought it was a spider bite on his neck. He made light of it and I even jumped in on the thing, copying a story from CNN.com about spiders being launched into space and then doctoring it to include a paragraph about some of them getting away and how they lay there eggs under the skin. It was an elaborate paragraph and I then printed it out and placed it in his inbox. I remember him running around with that piece of paper confirming his diagnosis of a spider bite. It was all quite amusing, until it finally was diagnosed as melanoma. That day sucked, well it was not long before this vibrant 53 year old was reduced, reduced from the daily chemo and radiation therapy. It was very hard to watch my friend withering away and even harder to keep a smile on my face and be optimistic when I was around him. I remember we took turns taking him to his appointments, at this point he had broken his hip, or leg (I hate that I can not remember) and was in a rehab facility that he HATED so we would go on field trips after the treatments.

We would go to the beach on some days, some days we would drive to places his friends worked. In some way, I know he was acutely aware of his own mortality and wanted to do and see whatever and whoever he wanted. He was always funny and it was great to go on the trips with him, my favorite was a trip to the Krispy Kream donut shop in Mandarin. He was in a wheel chair at that point and we get there I get the chair from the trunk and we get inside and he orders I think 4 donuts. A plain cake, a glazed, a key lime pie and I do not remember the fourth. Anyway he had undergone a couple of surgeries so his mouth was only really half working, I never thought that would be funny but it turned out to be funny. He is eating the donuts and having a time with the cake one but then he gets to the key lime one and I almost pee’d myself laughing with him eating that donut. He was attempting to cram this donut in his mouth and was getting key lime filling all over his face. He looks at me and says “I know I got it all over my face but I do not care, this is a great donut” we laughed about that for the entire rest of the visit. I was blessed, I got to spend the day with him the day he died, he was not conscience but a few of his friends and family were there telling stories from his childhood all the way through the key lime donut story. I cried and laughed for the whole day and left the hospital around 8pm and by midnight my friend was gone. I miss him terribly, both personally and professionally to this day.

Unexpectedly losing my friend Evelyn was especially tough on me, we were together for most of the day before she died. Evelyn was a great woman that I met through Bride, her and bride both worked for Barnett Bank back in the day and Evelyn was one of their IT people. She had a great heart and was a kind and giving woman who loved cats. We would find little packages of cat treats by our back door, out of the blue and we knew she had been by. Evelyn was having a house built in Ibus Point on San Pablo, hers was about the 5th or 6th house in that development. I was helping her with the inspections and walk throughs as they built it, she was moving from the home she shared with her ex-husband and was excited by the newness of life after the divorce. She came to me asking about teaching her woodworking, she could learn anything and had a lot of hobbies and interests and I felt honored she trusted me enough to teach her a new skill. She was not by any means timid and our first lesson was a set of mahogany dining room chairs, ambitious I thought but I knew she could pull it off. We put together a set of plans and a materials list, I picked it all up from a hardwood supplier on the west side. We were working on the chairs on the weekends and her last Saturday we spent preparing the pieces for finishing before assembly.

Now Evelyn had huge boobs and was only about 5 feet tall, I tell you that because on this day we were using a floor mounted stationary belt sander. The table for this sander was about chest high and I remember telling her to be careful not to get her boobs to close to the belt. We laughed as light red sawdust covered her jet-black hair making her look much different. I wish it had been the age of digital cameras because I would have taken some pictures of the scene. So after 4-5 hours of work she cleaned up and bride joined us just BS’ing for a while and she jumped in her Toyota Forerunner and took off for home. We had another walk through on the house the following weekend and more work on the chairs. We found out the next day that she went home, drew a bath and died. We were to find out later that the doctors had misdiagnosed heart problems as asthma and that was the day I stopped having blind faith in doctors. Some of them squeaked through with D’s just like people in every other profession. I still have some of the mahogany lumber and every now and again I pull some out and make something out of it, something that is not chairs. The last pieces I used created a computer table for my Niece, I enjoy just looking at the lumber but am happy when I get to build something with it. The happiness is twofold, I get to remember my friend and I make something that will always remind me of her.

This is by no means a complete list of friends I have lost in my life – and I am sorry for the buzz kill at Christmas time but for whatever reason, I have been thinking about them and I miss the joy they brought to mine and so many others lives. I feel honored that we got to ride along for awhile together on this crazy ride.

What in the hell is Osteopenia and how did it become a multibillion dollar profit machine for Merck?

I am not talking about Osteoporosis, that is a disease that causes bones to become thinner, more porous and break more easily. That is actually a disease that mostly affects elderly women, who can be devastated by a fall that breaks their hip. In fact, I learned, one in five elderly women who break a hip will die within a year. The same bone density tests that are used to properly diagnose Osteoporosis are also used to diagnose the more shadowy condition called Osteopenia. This new condition, Osteopenia, is a perfect example of a made up thing and this crazy train started in 1995. As it turns out Osteopenia is a slight thinning of the bones that occurs NATURALLY, as women get older. It DOES NOT typically result in disabling bone breaks, as does Osteoporosis. The woman who was being interviewed, Katie Benghauser’s doctor recommended that she go on treatment for this condition she had never heard of. After Benghauser asked around her office she found that 4 of the seven women in her office take medication for it. Half of those 7 women are in their 20’s and 30’s, which is long before normal Osteoporosis may be expected to strike.

I was intrigued with the story and listened on, the story was on NPR. Interesting enough this was a story of how pills for Osteopenia have ended up in millions of women’s medicine chest. When I say millions just as a reference in the 90’s when Flomax was introduced sales were zero, and by 2004 sales had topped 3 BILLION, yes billion with a B. How could it be that a disease that previous to 1995 did not exist create such GIGANTIC sales numbers for the supposed cure? This is the story of how the definition of what constitutes a disease evolves, and the role that drug companies can play in that evolution and it is CRAZY. Osteopenia is a condition that only recently started to be thought of as a problem that required treatment. After all the human race is so fragile to have only made it this far in our evolutionary arc. It is after all part of the normal aging process. Osteopenia was transformed from a non problem into something that is now requiring millions of women to swallow pills for treatment. The story went back to the beginning, to a place very far away from any sane persons rational thought processes may take them.

It all started, we are told in the NPR story, in a small hotel on top of the Spanish Steps in Rome in 1992. That was when a group of osteoporosis experts gathered under the auspices of the World Health Organization. The meeting had been organized because professional opinion about how to diagnose and measure osteoporosis was all over the map. Doctors and researchers didn't even have a shared view of how osteoporosis should be defined. All well and good so far I thought, trying to forward diagnosis and treatment of a real disease. In the days before the 1990’s, all the way back to the early days of evolution, or when Eve of Adam and Eve fame got it all started the only way for doctors to properly diagnose osteoporosis was to look at the inside of the broken bone, after a woman had broken it. Through a miracle of modern medical technology in the early 90’s we were able scan bones. Anything that would allow us to potentially diagnose osteoporosis before a broken bone would be fabulous. The main question before the experts in Rome was simply, after the age of 30 all bones lose density, how much bone loss was normal? They were trying to determine a baseline. Once a baseline is established they would then needed to determine when, exactly, would the risk be high enough to be considered someone having osteoporosis.

There needed to be a line drawn that said, here is the point that we will call it osteoporosis. It Ultimately was just a matter of – the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Anna Tosteson, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and Dartmouth Medical School was in attendance in that meeting acting as an expert. And she recalled, it was very hot in the meeting room, and people were in shirt sleeves and, you know, it was time to kind of move on, if you will. She can't quite remember who it was who stood up and drew the picture and said, 'Well, let's just do this. I bet she can but has decided not to recall the name. So there in the hotel room someone literally stood up, drew a line through a graph depicting diminishing bone density and decreed: Every woman on one side of this line has a disease. Seemed pretty arbitrary to me. Especially since the original idea was to develop a baseline. Being an engineer I know a thing or two about baselines and there is a methodology in their development. I can’t imagine just arbitrarily deciding where the baseline is. It would literally invalidate everything that happened from that point on, if the baseline if wrong nothing else will work. Seems to me, just like we use a methodology to develop a baseline there is a similar path that the outcomes will follow if you bullshit the baseline. That is what happened with the arbitrary line on a graph.

How did we get from there to here? The answer to that question starts with a man named Jeremy Allen. He has a long history in the pharmaceutical industry and in 1995 the drug company Merck approached him. This is where things started down that wrong path. The pharmaceutical giant had just released a new drug called Fosamax. A drug that represented a sea change in osteoporosis treatment. It was the first nonhormonal drug that could credibly make a claim to stop the progress of osteoporosis. Fosamax could become a blockbuster drug, if only people would take it. According to Allen after its release Merck wasn't selling the drug. David Anstice, the president of Merck America, came to him with a proposition: Figure out this problem and then fix it – so says Allen. He also claims his job description read: Provide some out of the box thinking. He knew the way to get sales up was to get more women to get their bones scanned and diagnosed –with something. Not as common in 1995 as it is today. At that time ehe machines were rare and as such the procedure was expensive. Allen needed to get the number of machines up, which would reduce the cost of procedure. Allen, now armed with the firm conviction that he was about to do good in the world, and coincidentally sell a ton of drugs for Merck. His out fo the box thinking lead Allen to completely rework the way the American health care system measured bone density.

He quickly realized the first thing he needed was an institution, an entity whose mission was not just to sell drugs, but to serve the public good. Some slick sounding things that brought credibility to the project. He decided to create one and in 1995 he persuaded Merck to establish a nonprofit called the Bone Measurement Institute. On its board were six of the most respected osteoporosis researchers in the country. But the institute itself had a rather slim staff, there was no payroll, there was no building, there was no office with the name 'Bone Measurement Institute on it. A complete sham that was being backed by the drug company with the most to benefit. Makes me wonder how many other named institutions are shams as well. Now on to the cost of machines, it had to come down. How to do that? He determined it could be done with machines called peripheral machines. These machines were small, often portable units that measured bone density in the forearm, heel, wrist or finger rather than the hip and spine. At the time, few bone measurement companies manufactured the machines, because they didn't measure the hip and spine. From Allen's perspective, they were the perfect solution: They wouldn't take up much office space and they cost only a fraction of the big machines, which meant that doctors would be able to afford them.

Allen started a campaign to ensure that peripherals were both manufactured and promoted. Several of the machine manufacturers were less than enthusiastic about this seemingly nefarious activity. According to Allen, two of the big dogs in the medical equipment manufacturers were downright hostile. One company, Lunar, was not about to go ahead and tell physicians to use the new smaller and less featured diagnostic equipment simply because Merck wanted them to., Richard Mazess, founder of the Lunar Corp Mazess says because Lunar refused to cooperate and his company was threatened. He says Merck told him, You're not going to get support from Merck and we will support your competitors, and we will tell people working with Merck not to use Lunar machines. The long and short of it Merck got its way and the machines were made and proliferated. This was a Tipping Point for Osteopenia, Merck's work to restructure the market didn't stop there. Merck worked to change the very economics of measuring bone by getting bone scans reimbursed by Medicare.

So what we have is a drug company deciding baselines, creating organizations that seem independent - when they are not, manipulating manufactures, creating hysteria, and selling a TON of drugs. All that for a non-problem, for something that happens as the normal aging process in women. Because of the fear mongering we now have what appears to me a pandemic. Seems crazy to me that this insane series of events lead to millions of women being diagnosed with normal aging. It lead to BILLIONS in profit for the drug company. This is another example of how crazy the world is and how much power big pharmaceutical companies actually have. What ya bet there is no verbiage in the current health care bill that will address this kind of nonsense. This is a lot longer story than I have condensed here, you can research it for yourself. It is crazy.

Of course this is compiled information I gathered from the internet and it could all be nonsense and if you are Merck - I am harmless.

So we gave up Comcast cable yesterday, we are without cable for the first time in 20 years.

It seems like I am still in shock to tell you the truth. So, what has lead me to this lowly crossroads you might ask, and even if you didn’t I will tell you anyway. Bride and I are struggling with the crappy economy, like most everyone I know. In some ways, it has been enlightening and other ways it just plain sucks. The enlightening part is that we are now making it with less income than we have since we were first married, 20 years ago. Bride and I have always been the stereotypical DINK’s, dual income, no Kids. We never worried about money, if on Friday night we wanted to go to Daytona or Jekyll Island for the weekend, poof – we went. We have always been blessed, we have lived very a good life for the last 20+ years we have been hanging out together. What we found was that we had a bunch of crap that somehow weaseled its way into our lives and tricked us into thinking they were necessities. We looked at many of these wanton irrelevant lifestyle items as something we actually “needed” to get by. What a bunch of shit that turned out to be. You could always count on the Oatmeal’s to have everyone of the latest and greatest gadgets, from TV’s to cell phones to surround sound to the fastest cable modem that could be had. Our immersion into the materialist American attitude that we are continually bombarded with by advertisers is a big part of our countries problems right now, and we found it to be one of ours as well.

It has been enlightening to even recognize it, let alone start stripping away the “needed” gadgetry that swirls around our lives. We no longer have new cars, new cell phones, new televisions, new appliances, new this, the latest that. And you know what, I feel enlightened by the lack of it all. We would work our butts off to get all the stuff that we were told we needed. Only thing is we didn’t really need it all! Our society is geared towards consumption, our economy needs to peoples gross consumption to work correctly. Our recent economy woes are just one example. I can hardly blame us, we are indoctrinated at a very young age and from many different fronts. Happy meals with action figures for movies, new bicycles with 854 gears and shock absorbers, come on shocks on a bike we really need that? When I was a kid we got our bikes second hand from some guy in Westville, Ohio. You know what, we were happy to have a bike, it did not need shock absorbers, hell it did not even need a good paint job. When I was stationed in Annapolis I used to find old junk bikes and fix them up, and sell them to folks on the base. In the military everyone is somewhat a transient so if they left the bike, no biggie if it was used and cheap anyway. To this day I have never bought a new bike, and I have had many.

As I sit here pounding this out on my computer, I am reminded, I am one LUCKY dude. A LOT of people in this country do not have it as lucky as me, let alone when compared to other places in the world. I guess it has been harder for me to truly “get it” than I thought. Even with the problems that we face, we are still better off than many. We used to give a lot more to charity, lately there just has not been as much money so I try hard to volunteer my time to worthy causes. I am also now convinced that organizations that help folks need both the people who give money to keep programs going and the folks to actually do the helping. I like doing the actual helping more than the financially supporting my causes. It is a lot harder for me but I get more satisfaction from it then just penning a check.

The one thing that still gets in my craw is the fact the government has not even considered downsizing. While most normal folks have been forced to cut back here and there, turn off cable, wait on buying that new car, our government has been spending like a drunken sailor. At our expense by the way! I want my government to cut back, at the city, state and federal level. I have seen none of it, not anything that is significant anyway. They continue to tax us, add fees and any other manner of jackin’ our money from us to pay for all of it. BULLSHIT I say. We have all had to make hard choices, it is time for our elected officials to do the same, make the hard choices. While this program or that project might be terribly important maybe, just maybe we can’t afford to do it, we got to cut the cable off. That is part of the problem, most of the programs are gems, they offer many benefits to our elected officials. Benefits that will help them get reelected. Things like bringing jobs and money to his or her district and of course they have to scratch the back of the corporations that put them in office to begin with. Someone needs to say – BULLSHIT, we are turning the cable off. It would most likely end that political career, that is why they will not do it, with anything, no soup for you (spoken like the soup Nazi from Seinfeld) is what we need to say to our elected officials.

I suppose the whole thing is messing with my sense of fair play. Yes, I still believe that life in the United States should be fair, I may be in the minority but I still believe it can be – or at least it can be again. I know fair is what you pay to get on a bus and where you go to get a funnel cake, but I still believe. Maybe that is why I get so frustrated with all levels of government. Maybe, just maybe I need to become an activist, not a Politian because I do not want to become part of the problem. I am convinced that there is some secret room that new politicians, from the smallest city councilman to the big white house in DC, are taken into. That small little room someplace where they are indoctrinated into some secret club. I would guess the lineage could be tracked all the way back to the Templar Knights from the days of the crusades. I think, we the populace, should develop another little room for them, one that can track its lineage back to the days when folks were bled to heal them. In our little room, we would be performing a BUNCH of plexiotomies. Yes, I say we give them all plexiotomies. That is where they remove the skin around the belly button and install a small piece of plexiglass. Why you might ask? Well that will allow them to see when they walk with their heads up their asses.

Bride has, at more times than not, been the primary breadwinner in our house, and I liked being a “kept” man by the way. She is not working right now, I am not saying that is a bad thing, it is just a thing and not by our choice. I love her being able to be home more, more home cooked dinners and whatnot for me. The decision was made for her to stop working before all hell broke loose with the economy. She struggles some with feelings of inadequacy, not bringing in an income after being a breadwinner is very hard. She is a rock though, I do not think I could do it. Having to Give up a life that gave her so much satisfaction has been the hardest thing I have ever seen anyone do, but for medical reasons it had to be done. For those who know Bride you know she is not a knitter so she also struggles with finding a hobby that can keep her as interested in the life she had to give up. I have never been prouder of my Bride, I just love her so much and consider myself the luckiest man alive that she actually said yes when I asked her, 20 years ago now to marry me.

Who needs cable, there is nothing but crap on TV anyway – turn them off, it saved us 150 bucks a month! And write your elected officials and tell them to turn off cable as well!

Some of Dad’s things, the ones I kept.

When my Dad passed away back in October, we cleaned out his apartment and divvied up his belongings. I selected a small cardboard box full of my Dad’s things, nothing of any real value just some trinkets. I wanted to talk about some of these items now that I have had time to contemplate them. The most intriguing item, by far, is a book about Catherine the Great. In case you are unaware, she was the Empress of all the Russia’s from 1762 through 1796.  That was a time when we were fighting the Revolutionary War.  She was born a princess in Germany, Catherine the Great converted to Orthodoxy and was married to the heir to the Russian throne, the Grand Duke Peter of Holstein, grandson of Peter the Great. Anyway, here was a book on her life in my Dad’s possession. I have started reading it and am about half way through and still for the life of me, I can not understand why he had this book. If you know Dad you know what I mean. It is another example that I did not know my Dad at all. When I mentioned this book to my Sister, she was as shocked as I was that he had it. At first, she thought it may have been Mom’s but the printing date on this book was after their divorce so we know Mom did not give it to him. It made me wonder, had he ever read it. I consider myself an amateur history buff and am truly enjoying reading it, I have never really investigated her or that moment in time in Russia. I am finding the book fascinating, even more than that every time I pick it up I laugh, I laugh because I can not for the life of me figure out why Dad had this book and would love to know if he read it and what his thoughts were on her rein over all the Russia’s so long ago.

There are many other items that I have in my little box of goodies that I would like to talk about. One is a sharpening stone, an old one with different grits on each side. I remember it from when I was young, Dad would pull it out with a bit of three in one oil to sharpen his pocket knife. I remember watching him sharpen it, long slow strokes, back and forth on each side of the blade. When I was younger, I somehow remember it was a Case XX knife, the XX indicated the quality control on the blade hardening had been completed. The first tempering they stamped the first X and during the second treatment they stamped the second X – hence the XX. Dad told me once about what those XX’s meant and with a moment on the internet I found his explanation dead on. I have no idea what happened to that knife but in my box, I have the last knife he had, an Old Timer with three blades. When I first saw it, I remember smiling, because I have the exact same make and model of this knife. When I got back home and was able to pull it out of my box and compare it to mine, I was surprised to find that we must have picked them up around the same time because the wear on each was very close. How funny I thought. Another item that I always remember him carrying was a little metal lighter cover for his Bic lighter. It was silver and had some turquoise stone attached to the front in an American Indian motif. I remember one of my Aunt’s had picked it up for him on a trip out west a long time ago. I also found a ring that she had gotten for me, I remember the ring but can not remember how or when I gave it to Dad.

Another thing in my box was a set of 4 Audels books. Audel published books that were training manuals for many of the different trades. These were the original how to books. This set, Audel's Carpenter & Builders Guide 4 vol. set, circa 1946 were in perfect condition. They are the leatherette bound hard covered pocket sized books. I read all four volumes and found them truly fascinating. Here in simple, easy to understand terms was a guide to becoming a good Carpenter/Builder. The depth of knowledge inside these leatherette covered volumes was incredible and I am positive that Dad used these often. I can assure you he could teach a class about all the information contained here in this four volume set. Some of the information was, of course, dated and while most of the tools available have changed but most of the techniques remain the same. Some other key differences between 1946 and now are we no longer use asbestos for insulation and we no longer mix our paint from scratch using white lead, boiled linseed oil, turpentine and coloring pigments. I had to laugh reading some of the things that were common practice then. A good carpenter was good and hard to find and that is still the case today. I remember talking to dad, after I was living in Florida, about how to use a rafter square. I was building a shed and needed to construct my own rafters and wanting to do it right so I asked the only expert I knew who could explain how to use the myriad markings on a rafter square to produce perfect rafters. Of course, after a few long distance calls and many questions I was able to use a rafter square to produce the desired results. I still have that square as well.

There are a few other little things in my box from Dad’s place. My dog tags, from my years in the US Navy. No idea how he wound up with them but he had them. I also found an OLD pair of nail trimmers, not like the normal clippers that are sold today. These were more like a pair of lineman pliers and were manufactured by Revlon. Never wanted to used them but I knew he likes them. The first step was to boil them for about 15 minutes to kill anything that may have been on them. I also picked up an original invitation to my own wedding. Bride designed it and had it printed, along with matching matchbooks, of which he had one as well. Matchbooks? Bride and I can not remember what we were thinking with that addition to our wedding reception. I also found pictures of different things, some of me, some of him and some of other family members. I even found a picture of a friend, one whom I have not seen since high school. Oddly enough, I have recently reconnected with her on Facebook – weird huh? There were pictures of Dad as a young man serving in Europe while in the Army. He looked very much the same and at the same time, very much different. I found some pictures from my Boot Camp graduation, I do not even remember these pictures even being taken let alone me giving them to Dad. No one from my family made the trip to Orlando Florida to watch my graduation from Boot Camp so I am still confused as to where the pictures came from. I remember no family coming sucked so I made sure, when my brother went to Boot Camp in Great Lakes Illinois I convinced Mom and we both made the trip.

There is also the triangular draftsman scale, they are rarely used anymore but it was used to make accurate measurements when drafting – it was not to used as a straight edge for drawing lines. This one is the only one I have ever seen made of wood and not plastic. I also found a very old slide rule concrete calculator. It was used by picking how wide you want the slab to be and then slide down length in feet and the other scale would ask the thickness and it would tell you how much concrete to order. All very simple math, the answer could be provided in seconds with the simplest of pocket calculators, but this was made before there was any such thing as a pocket calculator. There is also, in this box, the lighter cover with a different American Indian motif that belonged to my Aunt. Dad’s Sister was killed in a house fire on my birthday in 2000. That was a horrible thing and a horrible time. I remember being glad that Granny was not around to witness the loss of another of her children. I got the early morning call that day, expecting Dad to be on the other end wishing me a happy birthday. It was my Sister giving me that news, that is horrible news to get at any time but on my birthday it was a particularly bitter pill to swallow. I will say that every birthday since that day I wake up thinking about my Aunt.

There are also some other odds and ends in my collection of Dad’s things, nothing of any value but important to him in some way so that makes them important to me. Seems weird that my Dad’s life has been reduced to my memories of him and a little cardboard box of goodies that make up the sum of the physical mementos I have to remember him. I have been thinking a lot about Dad lately, Mom as well and I am sure that my memories of them will live within me for the rest of my life. I loved each of them, in different ways at different times but I always loved them. I am sure that I was loved by them, in different ways at different times but I know they always loved me. I do not think the death of both my parents this year has completely sunk in yet. When Bride’s Mom passed, her Dad was killed in a car accident some time ago, she told me she almost felt like an orphan. Her family has no Aunts or Uncles or cousins and no Grandparents so her family is pretty flat starting with her generation. I have Aunts and Uncles left but no Grandparents and I have not had the feeling of being orphaned with both Mom and Dad gone. Not because there are other family members still around though, I do not think anyway. I have never been close with 99% of my family, when I joined the military I took off and never looked back. Never looked back, mainly because I was not living my life for anyone at that point, except myself. I suppose that is the ultimate tribute to my Mom, Ashley Jeane Woods and my Dad, Marlin Alden Smith. They raised me, like all parents should, to jump in with both feet and live your own life. That is what I have been doing since I left all those years ago and I have never been happier in my life – in a bizarre way, they prepared me well for the trip.

I love and miss my Mom and Dad.

I was watching the weatherman on the news tonight and it dawned on me, he is full of shit!

With all the fancy tools available these days it would seem that they should be able to tell us the temperature and weather conditions down to an accuracy of 1 inch. For example, at the stop sign on Beach blvd and Parental home road the temperature is 71.23 and the humidity is 78.34% and the barometric pressure is 900 millibars and falling. Now at the stop sign on beach blvd and Foster (one block away) the temperature is 72.18 and the humidity is 71.65% and the barometric pressure is 900.02 millibars and falling. With the gobs of fancy gadgetry they show us on the news cast there should be no reason that they can not provide that level of detail in that granular a fashion. Come on Man! The graphics that are displayed are phenomenal, they show northeast Florida in amazing detail. I can see it in real time from a satellite, it will then zoom in to see the landscape, almost a creepy 3D that they may actual be able to look at the front door on a house, like you can my house using Google earth. They have all manner of other graphics zooming in and out. Things flying in showing me that I will have scattered showers in one flying block, another tells me that we will be experiencing chilly wind on Wednesday and yet another is telling me that we will have heavy rain on Friday.

I sometimes wonder if our guy is some bizarre automaton, secretly controlled by the machine creating and displaying these graphics. He tells me that if I combine the temperature and the wind tomorrow compared to today and he thinks it is going to feel about 30 degrees colder. Yes, I had to listen to that about 10 times to get the wording down, that is what he said. Why not just say that I think it may be so hot tomorrow that your skin may melt. I think a lot of things but as a weatherman I would think we could get more than what he thinks. Why does he have to say all that to say take a jacket tomorrow it is going to be a bit cooler. With the millions of dollars of very technical gadgets he has at his disposal he “thinks” it is going to be cooler tomorrow. If that guy were working for me he damn sure better come off sounding more intelligent than that. “I think” my ass! Immediately following that he tells us that another soaking rain event “looks to be on the way come Friday”. No I have not been trained in the meteorological field but I can look on the internet in no less than 4.8 trillion places to see a satellite shot of the southeastern United States and tell those clouds that are coming this way, those damn things will be here soon. The only resources I have available to me are a piece of crap computer running Vista and IE version 8.0.6001.18865.

He showed us the visual satellite from this morning that showed all the fog that was here this morning. Now anyone who lives in Jacksonville and peeked outside today knows it was foggy, again no need for millions of dollars in gadgetry and a well dressed weatherman to tell me that. I have the two eyeballs in my head and even with the glasses I wear, I could tell it was foggy this morning, and I did not have the luxury of a view from space. CRAZY! A stalled front in the gulf of Mexico is, I am told, significant for us on Thursdays night. He never really explained why but with his high tech graphics I could clearly see the line of clouds moving this way. Is it important that some front is stalled someplace. Who cares why, tell me when I need to bring an umbrella or a coat. I sometimes think they are purposely trying to dazzle us with the equivalent of electronic bullshit. He goes on to tell us of a gulf of Mexico low pressure system and how he told us about that happening during a el Niño year, which this is he reminds us again. Again, not sure what that has to do with telling me what the weather is here in Jacksonville. I also learned that the signature of an event developing in the gulf, is that despite the fact we have the front heading our way the heavier showers and thunderstorms are out over the northwest Gulf of Mexico.

Weatherman, what are we going to do with them? I am not sure how the local stations can afford all the gadgetry and the well-dressed weatherman. I use the term weatherman but I have on numerous occasions heard this guy correct someone when they called him a weatherman. He is of course a meteorologist. I suppose he deserves to be called a meteorologist, he has a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology. He is also a member of the American Meteorological Society and carries that groups important seal of approval. How important is it that he carries that groups seal of approval? I wonder sometimes how hard it is for him to keep up with all the gadgetry. Sometimes I bet he hates having to learn some new gadget that tells him some new piece of information about the weather. I wonder if he longs for the days when in his profession he was called a weatherman and he just told us what was going on, with the weather, where we were at. That was before the days of Doppler radar systems and computerized graphic systems that produce these stellar pictures for us to look at. I bet he does. I am not picking on this guy in particular, they are all full of it and I just wonder if they realize that we all know it as well, I know they know it.

I am starting a new and ambitious project, visiting every one of the 387 Jacksonville city parks.

I have always loved parks and being outside. The germination of this project started the day before my Dad died. Since that day the project has evolved quite a bit and turned into some MUCH bigger than I had originally envisioned. The week prior to my Dad’s passing I was on vacation from work. I had reached a point at work that I really needed a break. I turned my phone off and never once even checked my work email. I explained to Bride that I needed a week to myself, to douche my brain as a good friend of mine called it. Bride was perfectly understanding, as she always is and let me just have the week without any pressure to do anything together. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE hanging out with Bride and do all the time, this was different though. I planned out the week – day one would be spent laying on my back watching the clouds. I did so for almost 6 hours in three different locations. That was a great day and I took lots of pictures of the clouds. Day 2 was spent visiting nurseries and driving neighborhoods looking at flowers and beautiful landscaping, that consumed about 9 hours and I got a lot more pictures. 5 hours of day 3 was spent in tool stores and almost 7 hours of day 4 were spent in toy stores. Day 5 had me visiting city parks, spending some time in each and writing and pondering and just thoroughly enjoying myself. It was a great week and I started every day at the beach watching the sunrise.

Day 6 started at the beach and ended with those fateful calls from my Sister leading up to my Dad's death that morning. Wow, what a shitty way to end such a fabulous week is all I kept thinking. I think I was still in shock when I got home, I do not remember much from that day. The one thing I do remember was getting on the internet to learn more about one of the parks I was in the previous day, Memorial park in Riverside. That is when I learned that Jacksonville Florida has more city parks than ANY other city in the country. On the web it indicated that there were 337 parks covering over 80,000 acres. WOW, I remember thinking that is so cool. That is when I had the idle thought, wouldn’t it be cool to visit all of them. I also found out the information about Memorial Park, quite a history in that park. Visiting all the parks was a fleeting thought at the time. I had other things on my mind, getting to Ohio for a funeral and all. I did not really think about it again until I was in Ohio. My Sister and I spent some time at Kiser Lake, a State park close to where we grew up. We went there all the time as kids, Mom drug us over there all the time. Our family was NOT moneyed and the park was free so we spent A LOT of time there. My Sister and I laughed about all the time we spent here, all the trails we knew and how much a part of our youth this park actually was.

I seem to remember mentioning to my Sister that Jacksonville had more parks than any city in the country. We did not really talk about it but it was back in my mind – should I try to visit all those parks in my adopted home town? Well by the time I got home from Ohio, I was convinced that I would visit all those parks. I remember Bride and me talking and wondering if anyone had ever been to all of them. Maybe some long in the tooth employee within parks department and then again maybe not. This is when I started looking on the City of Jacksonville web site for information about our park system. I got frustrated with the site, I could not find any information about a list of the parks. I emailed some names listed in the site with NOT ONE response. I decided to speak to my City Councilman, one email to him had me the Director of the Parks departments name, email address and telephone number. I decided that vote for my council member was well placed and that if he ran again I would vote for him a second time. Well after a few emails from her I had a link to a list of all the parks. That site sucked, I tried to reverse engineer the link she gave me and I still could not find that page by simply looking on the site for it.

That was when this crazy idea to visit all the parks took a drastic turn. I thought, why not create my own web site that is easier to navigate than this cumbersome monster the city put together. While this was the first big turn my idea had taken, sadly it would not be the last. At this point, I still remember thinking I could get this licked in a year. I was being foolish. After getting the list of parks, I realized that the list was sorted alphabetically, not geographically. How stupid was that I remember thinking, I have to know the name of the park to find information about it. I thought I should be able to search by area of town or at least zip code, nothing doing on this site. I realized my first order of business was to create a geographical map, one that showed the city and showed a pushpin where every park is located. This way I could look at an area of town and map out a course to visit the parks in that area. I than realized that task alone would be daunting, gathering the names and addressed of almost 400 parks. Once that information was gathered I still had to create a map with pushpins indicating the location of each. I was back in touch with the Director of the Parks department trying to get the list of park addressed in a spread sheet or database so I could automate some of this process. Nothing doing, she stopped responding to my requests all together.

It took me nearly 18 hours to create an interactive map that had a pushpin in the location of each park. Each pushpin, when clicked, would expand to a little cloud showing the parks name and address. During the process I was still attempting to define what it was, exactly, I was trying to do. It was also during this process that I realized there was going to be NO way I could do this in one year. My idea was to go and sit in each park, sit and ponder and then take some pictures. When done I would write what my feelings were in the park and my opinions about it. I would also list out the amenities, how many picnic tables, is there a boat ramp, and are there trails? I was thinking at least 2 hours per park would be required to properly “get the feel” of the park to be able to write about it. Well at almost 400 parks, that is more than one a day if I wanted to finish in 1 year. One a day in a county, that covers almost 900 square miles – that ain’t happening at one per day. I am now hopeful that I will be able to cover the parks in 3 years, that is about two and half parks a week and I think if I plot my course correctly, I can make it in three years. With a more realistic time line I then got back to why I am doing this, what am I trying to accomplish.

With that question still unanswered I continued to plan my approach to completing this project. One good friend of mine told me this would be a great project for an eagle scout. I believe now that it is going to be a much bigger project than an eagle scout dare take on . This same friend asked me how many hours I was estimating I would have into this project when I was done. That thought had never once occurred to me, we laughed and he said keeping track of that would probably be the easiest part of the project. I had decided to scale back my idea of a dedicated web site for this project and decided I could use a blog to accomplish the same thing. I was familiar with the format and since my blog is searchable, it would cover my needs. I could tag each post with zip code, area of town, amenities and such and that would allow the contents to be easily searched. It took me a better than a week to get the format I wanted to display the information in my blog, but I am now happy with the set up. It has a search feature that searches every word in the blog and I also designed a quick search feature that allows users to click on the tags and it would bring up all parks that were tagged with that information.

I have now decided that this project is a tribute to my parents. It may seem weird to you but here is the dysfunctional logic I used to decide that. The reason Mom took us to the park all the time is because we had no money. One of the reasons we had no money is because my Dad rarely paid child support to my Mom. So because of that action, or lack of action, on my Dad’s part I developed a love of the outdoors from Mom on those trip to Kiser Lake. I am dedicating this challenge to Mom and the Blog about it to Dad. I love and miss them both.

Here is a link to the parks site.
http://mroatmealvisitstheparks.blogspot.com/

Any Feedback on this new blog will be appreciated

Bucky Covington sings his song – A different world.

So the other day I was listening to the radio and hear a song by a guy who was on American Idol. I was not holding that against him and I liked the song. His name is Bucky Covington and the song was “A Different World”. I also know that he could not have written it, he is not old enough. After a bit of time on Google and I found that Mark Nesler, Jennifer Hanson & Tony Martin were the ones who wrote it. I suppose the real credit belongs with them but without the front man singing it I may never have heard it. This song describes the way anyone older than probably 35-40 was most likely raised. Before our social conscience was raised. Social conscience raised huh? I am not even sure what that means but I hear the words from time to time.

I love the way the song starts out, it has Bucky crooning about being born to mothers who smoked and drank. He continues the story with rhyming that our cribs were covered in lead-based paint and we had no childproof lids or seatbelts. He explains that we rode bikes with no helmets and ends the verse with the kicker, still here we are, still here we are. Of course we are still here. Are there as many of us that are still here now that we have all those safety features surrounding ourselves, probably not but. This seems to me another example that has me wondering how in the world have we, the human race, made it this far in our evolutionary arc. Is smoking and drinking bad for ya, yes of course. Will smoking and drinking cause problems for the babies of the mothers who partake, probably. But so what? We seem to have allowed our worries about our well being and safety to trump our own common sense – everything in moderation.

I know, you are asking was Mr. Oatmeal the victim of some accident that could have been prevented with the proper safety equipment. No, I have not. I am attempting to point out how far we have taken our obsession with safety. We can not even spank our kids anymore, in Bucky’s song he tells of getting Daddy’s belt when we misbehaved. I was spanked by my Mom and Dad at home, in the store, in the restaurant and even in Church. Yep, my Mom spanked me in Church, she did not bother to take me to some anteroom, she spanked me right there, in front of God and everyone. I had my butt spanked by baby sitters, bus drivers, teachers, vice-principals and principals and countless others. Ya know what, each time I bet I deserved it. Now-a-days we are indignant at the very thought that someone may discipline their children in a way that will actually prevent the behavior. Are there cases of abusiveness, I am sure there are but was that the norm when our parents were spanking us, probably not. And we wonder why we see stories of children committing horrific crimes, they may not be related but - maybe they are.

Bucky continues his song singing about the fact they had three channels on TV that we had to get up to change. I remember being the remote control for my parents, switching between those three channels. There were shows like Andy Griffith and Perry Mason. I am sure there was crap on TV then as well but I never saw it. I never saw it because my parents would not allow it and we did what they told us to do, because we were afraid of them. Kids should have a healthy fear of parents and other adults. I was 12 years old before I realized there were more than three channels, when my Mom remarried and we moved to Mansfield and had cable for the first time. 13 channels of programming to watch, we were in hog heaven. That is also when we found that there was crap on TV. The song then talks about no video games and no satellite, I suppose it was the mid 70’s when we got our first video game, pong. I am not even sure I knew what a satellite was during that time, let alone understanding that TV programming could be coming from them. That verse in the song ends with him crooning on about all we had were friends and they were outside, playing outside. When we were kids we got home from school and changed out clothes and Mom sent us outside, with our friends, to play. At least until it got dark. Now-a-day kids sit at their computer playing games and surfing the web. We thought that there was crap on TV, the web can be a cesspool of crap. There is the greatest wealth of information every assembled as well but there is still crap there. How did we ever survive without the conveniences available today.

Like the song says, school always started the same everyday, the pledge of allegiance then someone would pray. Like we could expose our children to that now. We seem to forget that we have a freedom of religion not from it. If you are not a Christian, you simply do not have to pray along with the prayer. It seems to me anyway. He continues with not every kid made the team when they tried, we got disappointed but that was all right, we turned out all right. Not everyone is the same, fuzzy grading systems and filling our kids heads with crap about it is just as important to try as it is to succeed. How in the hell does that prepare children for the real world. I struggle with that with young employees where I work, some are good, some are not, and the ones who are not good are let go. Most times completely shocked that just doing their best is just not good enough and does not meet my expectations. We are hurting our kids by doing that crap, here in the real world there are winners and there are losers. Does it suck, sure but so does much of life – it is a bitch and then you die. Not preparing them for the reality of our world is incompetence on the part of parents. I wax philosophical with righteous indignation and I do not even have children, BUT I will be one of the people hiring them and if they are unable to get it done, I will be the one firing them as well.

In the next verse Bucky sings about not having bottled water and that we’d drink from a garden hose and that every Sunday all the stores were closed. Not just a different time, it was a different world, it was a different life. Bottled water – that is one that I have NEVER understood. I know at first it was touted as being spring water or artesian well water or some other such nonsense, we now know most of it comes from the tap and it might be filtered and put in bottles and in some cases just put into bottles. Stupid! Plus when the bottles have a half life of about a billion years it seems ridiculous to me that we support that industry. Bottled water, that may very well be the reason for civilized societies fall back into being hunter gatherers, literally the cause of our worlds failure. I remember stores being closed on Sundays and Thursday afternoons as well. Now the Super Gigantic Walmart is open 24-7-365, just so you can get a tee shirt, dog food and pool toys at ANY time you may think you need them. Hell our Home Depot was, at one time, a twenty four hour store. Like if my water heater goes out at 3am I am going to jump up and go get a new one and install it - right. These stores are contributing to our own idiocy, they are catering to us, the general public and I for one am increasingly embarrassed to be a part of it.

We will never go back to the days of old, our economy would collapse. Oh wait a minute that is what happened with going like we have been lately, sorry for the confusion. When I win the lotto I will not have a cell phone, computer or television. At least that is my plan, if you have that much money why do you need any of that – we could go outside and play, with our friends, and what a fun time that would be!

Neo-Nazi in murder trial gets makeover for court – WHAT?

I found myself in the a doctors waiting room yesterday afternoon and I forgot to bring the book I am currently reading. It is a book about Catherine the Great I got from my Dad. Anyway, I searched the waiting room, the big on in the lobby, for something to read while passing the time. It would seem that as long as they make you wait they could at least get comfortable chairs and keep a few recent periodicals laying around for folks to pass the time. BUT NO, the chairs are enough to give you back problems, for which you will have to come back and see the damn doctor again. There are nothing but little brochures here, the ones the drug companies pass out along with the free sample packages of medications. Oh, da joy! So anyway, I spy this fellow reading a newspaper and keeping all the other sections very close to him. He caught me glancing his way no less than three times, I believe he could tell what I wanted. I was hopeful to have him offer a section he was not currently reading, nope. he actually pulled the pile a little closer to him when he changed sections from the Metro he was reading to the sports section. I was thinking, OK mister I will show you some sport – kicking his ass out of that chair for a glimpse of the Metro section is what I was getting ready to do. He was easily 65 years old and I was sure I could take him. Nothing – this guy was a machine so I changed seats and sat there, in silence. My new seat had me looking right at him, straight in front of me, and that was on purpose. He glanced at me more often since I was pretty much staring right at him.

After he was called back, I thought he is going to gather up the parts of the paper and carry them with him. I was not sure if he had brought it with him or whether he found it, there when he came in. Whatever the case he did leave it when he was called back to the smaller waiting room, the one in back. He did flash me a look as he walked by, I almost said thanks for the paper but decided not to. Just as I got up I noticed another person sitting there staring at the paper I was going to get. With a polite nod I asked what section he wanted, he said Metro – damn I thought. I gave him that and took the sports section. After we both had time to peruse our respective sections we traded.

Well, on the back page of the Metro section is a story titled “Neo-Nazi in murder trial gets makeover for court”. I normally could care less about such things but that title coupled with the picture of the guy was too much, it sucked me in. The subtitle read “The judge will allow a cosmetologist to cover up suspects tattoos”. What in the hell is going on in the world that while in court a guy with a 6 inch swastika tattooed on his neck gets to have a cosmetologist cover it up. Why is this story newspaper worthy I started to wonder. John Allen Ditullio is a walking bill board for the neo-nazi movement, so says Tamara Lush the writer of this article. I could tell that, just from the picture of the guy. Aside from the swastika he also has barbed wired tattooed on his face. A classy look for sure.

As I start the second paragraph I realize why this losers story has made the news, the state is being forced to pay 150 bucks a day for the cosmetologist. WHAT!!!! Judge Michael Andrews acted on a request from classy man’s lawyer. Evidently, they feel the tattoos are potentially offensive and could influence the jury’s opinion in the states death penalty case. A case, by the way, in which he is accused of breaking into his neighbors home and stabbing two people, killing one of them. It seems this joker did not have enough hate inspired tats when he committed the crime. Since he has been in custody, he has continued to get inked, in jail with even bigger and more hateful tattoos, that are more prominently displayed as well. And our tax dollars are being used to cover up his bullshit – YES OUR TAX DOLLARS! That does not seem like such a smart thing to do, especially considering you are being accused of a hate crime. Well it seems that while he does have the resources to get the tattoos applied to his worthless hide he does not have the resources to cover them up for court appearances. And our tax dollars are being used to cover up his bullshit – YES OUR TAX DOLLARS! So damn what, is all that comes to mind for me. So damn what!

His lawyer is concerned that he will not get a fair hearing and that the folks in the jury may be offended by the hate filled bullshit he has inked onto his neck and face. Although the picture does not display it evidently there is a very personal vulgarity tattooed on the other side of his neck. The writer did not allude to what that vulgarity said so one can only imagine. And our tax dollars are being used to cover up his bullshit – YES OUR TAX DOLLARS! What a dirtbag this guy appears to be. I am all for freedom of expression and his right to do whatever he wants to with his own body. BUT, BUT, BUT when I as a taxpayer am asked to pay 150 bucks a day so some cosmetologist can smear some makeup over his freedom of expression I have a problem. “Now he is asking for protection from his own decisions” Tamara writes – bullshit I write! We seem afraid to call a shitheel a shitheel anymore and anyone with those types of tattoos and is accused of a hate crime is a shitheel and I have NO problem calling it as I see it. As big an issue I have with this dirtball I really have an issue with the damn judge. Who in the hell is this guy to give away my tax money so shitheel can have makeup professionally applied? This shitheel got those tattoos of his own freewill. And our tax dollars are being used to cover up his bullshit – YES OUR TAX DOLLARS! I sure it shocked his lawyer but all the same, no one held this guy down in prison and forced these tattoos onto him. This is EXACTLY why I vote out every incumbent judge on the ballot at voting time. In my humble opinion this judge is as big a shitheel as the one he is sitting in judgment of.

This makes me sick and really pisses me off! And our tax dollars are being used to cover up his bullshit – YES OUR TAX DOLLARS!

Have you heard of World Champion Punkin Chunkin? It is proof men will compete – over anything

For those who have never heard of this sport, you are missing out. I watched this year’s event on the Science channel, in full and stunning High Definition. I had seen it once before, I believe it was on the Discovery Channel back then but I am not sure. After investigating a bit I found that it is common knowledge that John Ellsworth, Trey Melson, Bill Thompson and Donald "Doc" Pepper were the 4 men who got the who things started back in 1986. That first year was testosterone filled, just like this year’s event. The record that year was 126 foot while the winning “chunk” this year was over 3000 feet – into the wind no less. Last year’s winner also set a new world record at 4,483.51 feet and yes folks, that is about 800 feet less than a mile. That record came out of an air cannon name of Young Glory III with the runner up being Emancipator at 4084.62 feet and Chunk-n-ology brought in third at 4042.24 feet. Yes they are chunkin punkins with homemade contraptions and they are measuring the distance in 100th of a foot – is that not funny?

What started out amongst 4 friends, with beer no doubt, building little catapults throwing a punkin this year drew over 20,000 people and that brought in over $100,000 in ticket sales alone. According to the officials over $70,000 of that purse is being distributed as scholarships to a variety of local community organizations. The best I could tell the event takes place between Georgetown and Bridgeville Delaware, kind of on the eastern shore of Maryland. I know Bride and I drove close to that place in 1990 when we were on our way to Ocean City for our Honeymoon. Something I was impressed to find out was this year's event was organized by an all-volunteer committee. It was quite a spectacle to watch on television but what I found even more interesting was the companion show that followed a few of the contestants while they built or tuned up their machines. They followed builders/competitors from a couple of different categories. There are of course 15 different categories ranging from the big dog Air Cannons to the youth, under 10 trebuchet class 8 group. There really is something for every builder, anyone can put together something and “chunk a punkin”.

There are 19 general rules to punkin chunkin. Rules like “the punkin must remain intact until they impact the ground” and “no explosives are allowed”. There are obviously disclaimers that relieve the promoters from responsibility, of course some of these machines weigh over 15 tons and can shoot a 8-10 pound punkin damn near a mile. They are DANERGOUS! And of course there is a rule that tells us there are no pets aloud in the pits, like I would take my kitty to such an event. In addition to the 19 general rules there are also an additional 28 rules, not including the 8 from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Or the DNREC and those 8 are non negotiable. They talk about the air tanks meeting the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (A.S.M.E.) construction codes and that they must have the manufactures nameplate with proper (A.S.M.E.) stamping that indicates the vessel’s allowable working pressure. It is a comprehensive set of rules that must be followed and just reading them one immediately understands the dangerous nature of this sport. The champion in the centrifugal class has his machine built on the back of a very old ford farm truck and when it gets up to speed, the entire truck is vibrating so badly that the contestants can be seen bouncing around like rag dolls inside. If by chance that arm were to come , spinning that fast, I am sure people would be killed. It is dangerous!

Strictly from the engineering perspective some of these machines were truly impressive. While the air cannons were extraordinary in their size and distance capabilities I was more impressed with the other categories, mostly for their sheer ingenuousness. The six categories are the trebuchet, centrifugal, theatrical, catapult, torsion and the Air cannon. One fellow they followed was building a centrifugal and he had obviously had some engineering background because he had built the thing to chunk a punkin much farther than the reigning champion in the category. It appeared to be well built and was impressively designed, I thought so anyway. They did not perform well and ended up breaking the machine. There were others in the other categories that I found equally impressive. In the torsion category there was one that was wound up with rubber bands (BIG damn rubber bands) and it performed well. Some of the entrants used very large springs that were stretched or in some cases compressed in order to get the punkins going. As much fun as it was to watch I kept coming back to how dangerous some of these homemade machines actually were. Some I would not want to be anywhere near when they were charging up.

This is especially true of the bigger machines. Some of the air cannons have over 1000 gallons of compressed air that is being contained, at over 100 PSI, in modified propane gas tanks. Modified propane tanks? Some of these things look as if they belong in the old Mad Max movie. Huge, with long barrels, 60 foot plus on the barrel length. It is crazy! It is dangerous! It is one of those guilty pleasures for me, I enjoy watching. I am not sure I would tell just anyone that I watch but I find the mechanicalness of the machines to be truly impressive. AND they shoot a punkin thousands of feet. It is Crazy! They even grow special punkins for this competition, they are white and have a side wall that is nearly 2 times thicker than the normal orange ones we carve faces on. They showed us a new breed of punkin this year that appeared nearly solid, that will be the prominent punkin at future events of that I am sure. I have no doubt that the big air cannons will be shooting them further than a mile. They might consider involving some additional folks - the golf ball designers with the horticulturists and the aerospace engineers from NASA and DARPA coupled with the folks at Budweiser. They would sponsor the research and plaster their logo all over the place and we will have the perfect genetically engineered punkin chunkin punkin. At that point the sky is the limit and a mile will soon seem like Childs play.

Well, like I said I doubt I will ever make the trip to see it in person but I will continue to watch it. Who knows I may go just to examine the ingenuity of the machine builders. If you have never watched and see a preview, go ahead – enjoy the guilty pleasure.

The relationship between my Dad and me, it was odd by most standards but it worked for us.

The relationship I had with my Dad was dysfunctional, I knew it, he knew it, but we made it work the best we could. When I was a child my Dad was pretty much nonexistent in my life. Sounds like a harsh thing to say and maybe it is, but it is the truth. I was 10 when Mom and Dad finally got divorced but he was gone a long time prior to their divorce. Dad was not what one could categorize as a traditional father, not the normal Dad for sure. I have no memories of playing catch with Dad. I have no memories of going fishing with Dad, although I know he liked to because I remember him and his friends going and bringing back lots of fish. I remember Mom not liking that at all, not sure if it was because he was gone or because she did not like cleaning fish but, she was never happy about the fishing trips. There were no sports to play in elementary school, so he did not come out to any games to watch me play. We never went hunting together, and I was a teenager before he took me mushroom hunting. What I remember from my young childhood was learning how to duck his work boots. He took naps and when he was sleeping, us kids were to be quiet. If we made too much noise and woke him up, he would throw his steel-toed work boots with the accuracy and proficiency that a ninja might wield deadly throwing stars. I do remember him taking me with him to work sometimes, but that usually involved me working, moving bricks or cleaning up construction debris or some other menial task. It never seemed like I was learning anything, just cleaning up. The one time I remember having his full and undivided attention is when my sister and I, along with the neighbor kids, were experimenting with fire in our gigantic barn. For some reason Dad came home early and when he saw the smoke coming from the barn, he was acting like a father on that day for sure. Seems like a weird childhood from the paternal side huh?

As much as I loved him later in life, he was a nonexistent Dad in my childhood. As such, we never got to form the father son bond that is created between boys and their Dad’s during childhood. Little did I know, at that time, that that lack of father son bonding would form the basis for our dysfunctional relationship that would endure the rest of his life. After the divorce, Mom moved us away, to Mansfield, about two hours drive. All of the sudden, I had a father figure, one who was completely different from my Dad. My Step-Dad could be a harsh disciplinarian and we did not get along well at all. We did get to visit with Dad from time to time. We met in Delaware to swap parents, that really sucked. Two families, two sets of rules-two of everything. After a couple of years, Dad bought me a 22 rifle and that was the catalyst for the biggest life changing event of my childhood. That rifle had me moving back to St. Paris to live with Dad and his girlfriend. I was tickled to have a rifle, Mom was not nearly as tickled and made me choose where I wanted to live, with her and the rifle is gone or keep it and live with your father. A shitty decision to force on a 12 year old kid and hence my choice – I am going to move in with Dad. I am not sure if that was a choice I thought out or made out of spite, for being forced to make the choice. Either way, that was hand that I was dealt, so that is one I played.

When I moved back, Dad was living with his girlfriend out on Kite road in a trailer, a step down from the environment I moved from, my Step Dad had owned an electronics store and did pretty well for himself. Dad was working steady and life seemed somewhat normal, as normal as it could be anyway. By this time our window of opportunity for that bonding I spoke of earlier was past, no going back to that time. As such our relationship was always………. difficult, for the lack of a better word. He took care of me, but the relationship was more of landlord – tenant, or at least that is how I felt. I missed school from time to time, skipping really but he once wrote me a note to the principle that said I could write my own notes. Well that did not go as planned and that little God send created more problems for me than I thought it would. I was starting to learn a coping mechanism though and I was learning the hard way many of life’s lessons. Lesson’s that most Dad’s taught their son’s though direct example or through a disciplinary approach. In my young adulthood, I found that it was actually an advantage to have learned so many lessons the hard way. Most of my peers had never had the opportunity to try and fail and understand the consequences of not only the attempt, but the failures and successes as well. As a young man, I felt luckier than most of my friends. I had been there, done that and worn out that damn tee shirt and was on to more important lessons in life. It let me get a lot of the learning we do as 20 something’s in my teen years. My Bride always calls me an old man in my thinking and actions and this may have something to do with that.

Later, after I was married, our relationship remained similar. I ALWAYS got a call on my birthday from Dad, no matter how long it had been since we talked last, that call was a constant. It was the one thing about our relationship that was right, he called me and wished me a happy birthday. Over the years, Bride pressured me to change my relationship with Dad. She had a VERY different relationship with her Dad and wanted to model our relationship on that model – that did NOT work. We remained distant for a long time, until he had a stroke. While that stroke changed him, it did not, and sadly could not, change our relationship. It was not long after that when something weird happened, weird for us. Keep in mind, my family was never good at expressing our emotions, between Dad and I it was even worse. But it was not long after that stroke that I realized that he was not going to be around forever. I started telling him I loved him, that was not something I ever remember doing. It took probably about a year before he finally started telling me that he loved me too. Yep, I was nearly 40 before my Dad told me he loved me. He may have done it when I was a toddler, but that instance was the first time ever that I remember. I suppose that says more about our relationship than anything else. We both knew it was not right but we were both, for maybe the first time, really trying to make it work.

Since that time, our relationship remained odd, not quite as weird as before but we were able to hug and tell each other we loved the other. Hugs were new as well and I was much more comfortable with that then he was. He was not an overly affectionate man, not sure I understand why but it must be tied to the missing childhood bond. After the stroke and many other hospitalizations, he started to change, the ailments that he ignored his whole life were being addressed with medication and things were changing. He stopped smoking, he stopped drinking and was able to assume a somewhat normal daily schedule. The smoking thing was funny, he quit because “I ain’t paying for NO one else’s medical bills”. That was right after the first of the big lawsuits against big tobacco. He had smoked 3 packs a day since he was a teenager and he was toking a smoke in most of the pictures from him and Mom’s wedding. And he smoked them right down to the filter – nasty. In what could only be described as a herculean display of his iron will power, he put them down – cold turkey. I as happy he had quit, but I was more impressed with how he did it. I miss Dad and I loved him. I loved him the best I could and while that may not fit into a what some would call normal, it worked for the two of us.

There’s an App for that – MY ASS there’s an App for that!

As everyone not living in a cave knows, the I-phone and others are hocking these apps for their electronic gadgets, we have all heard “there’s an App for that”. I am not sure why it has been on my mind lately. I guess because I am investigating a new phone plan for the place I work and you can hardly just get a simple cell phone anymore. I have been indoctrinated, indoctrinated into the world of App’s by the various vendors as they court me for our business. Oh, you need to have the touch screen of your Storm turn into piano keys so you start taking piano lessons again. The Blackberry, of course, has an app for that. Oh you need an app to go on a breathtaking exploration of the solar system with an app where all you have to do is tap to travel through time and see astronomical events from the past or future. The I-phone, of course, has an app for that. Making a decision based on the business needs for our folks is proving challenging for me. I personally HATE the things, nothing but an electronic lease as far as I am concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I like having a cell phone and I like it that my Bride carries one but……….. There are times I do not want to be reachable. I also personally think the I-phone is the coolest piece of technology to come along since the I-pod. Apple was first in both those markets but others are fast catching up, although I feel Apple is all over the consumer electronic gadget business and can hardly wait for whatever they put out next.

So back to searching for phones at work. All these gadgets have their pro’s and con’s but the functionality of some is just incredible. Truly amazing pieces of technology. BUT, do we really need them, and I ask that both personally and professionally. How connected do we really need to be? Do we need to check email every 10 minutes all day and night? Do we need to be doing work with these little gadgets while at dinner? One phone that we will never have is one with that stupid walkie talkie feature. It was bad enough when we heard one side of a conversation, with those stupid things we get to hear both. Since there are no etiquette classes on gadget usage, some idiots will be walkie talkieing while eating dinner out, what joy it is to hear both sides of some Neanderthals argument with his boss, while you are trying to enjoy a dinner with your spouse – priceless. Cell phones have made us, as a whole, very rude and here is an example. You are standing in front of someone talking about whatever you may be talking about and their phone rings, 99 times out of 100 they will stop and look to see who is calling. Even if they do not stop, they will look to see who it is. There might be the chance that the someone interrupting the actual face to face conversation may have a higher importance, and then what? We will, more times than not, be relegated to the “not quite as important” realm. It is similar to the 9th level hell, the dreaded Cocytus – where it is purported that Satan himself resides. Usually they will just put up a finger and walk a few steps away. They might as well be throwing up their middle finger at you for all the disrespect they just showed you. Any teachers out there, PLEASE advocate a cell phone etiquette class for the youths of America.

So back to the Apps. One App I found alarming was an app, I think called, I-phone tracker. This little application would use the built in Global Positioning System to follow your whereabouts, and then produce and post on the internet a map showing what you have been doing. There is even a feature that will allow you do that in real time. The first time I saw it a friend of mine was using it, he would plot out his bicycle route. It would show his course and the distance traveled and if memory serves me it would also tell how long it took. Cool I remember thinking, that could be a useful tool for training or keeping track of your workout progress. My friend is a radio personality in the local market and one day he posted a comment about almost being hit by a car. I was glad he was OK and unharmed but the first thing that came to my mind was, maybe someone was tracking him with his seemingly harmless app. I doubt very seriously if that were the case but depending on who you are and what you do it is possible that some nefarious end could come from the use of that app. I asked my friend about that and the thought had crossed his mind as well and to my knowledge he has not posted one of those since. That feature was explained to me by the phone vendors as well, I could keep track of where people were. He looked confused when I simple asked – why? It had not dawned on him that I would not have ANY interest in knowing where someone was at any given time. Who cares is all I could think. He was undeterred and continued on his sales pitch – nice recovery I thought.

Not long ago, I read a portion of a commencement speech given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia earlier this year. He urged the students to find out what is most important to them — by living analog for a while. Living analog for a while huh? He said "Turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us” and that "Nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first steps." I agree with him whole heartedly! Many of us get all hung up on the gadgetry of it all, adopting technology just for the sake of having the latest and greatest thingamajig. We rarely ever look at the real benefits, the pro’s and con’s, of a new technology. Do we weigh the cost of that 52 inch LED flat panel television with the reality of how much TV we watch. Is the picture really that much better or do we just think we have to have it because it has 120 hertz. 120 hertz of what? I have even asked a sales guy at a consumer electronics store that question, and only one could tell me what the 120 hertz was related to and even he could not explain why 120 hertz was better than the other options available to me. That number, by the way, is referring to the refresh rate of the screen. Ask them next time if that is adjustable and to see the difference when it is switched from 60 to 120. Most folks, short of someone with a bionic eye, will never be able to see the difference. Try changing the refresh rate on your computer monitor if you do not believe me. We tend to adopt because the Jones’ are adopting, not because of an exploration and understanding of the applications of that technology and how that would be useful in our lives. That is not good or bad it just is.

So back to new phones at work, I have narrowed it down between I-phones and Blackberry’s. Both have a good list of pros and cons and I assume the decision between them will come down to a financial one, whatever is the least expensive. They will be a bit more than just a simple phone plan, the smart phones have higher charges because of the need for a data plan. That is to be expected, but that additional cost in my case can be easily justified. We have an on call engineer, and if he can use a smart phone to get into the work systems and correct an issue without having to drive in, the smart phone will quickly pay for themselves. I even project enough savings in overtime to actually come out ahead. There will be no GPS tracking in them, who cares about that. I do have a wish list of apps. I would like an app that helps me explain the benefits of a new plan to senior management. I would like an app that makes up for all the time that will be wasted while folks get used to their new gadget and suspect that will be high initially. I would like an app that somehow makes my job easier, it will take more than the app that lets me exchange contact info by bumping the gadgets together. That is cool but…….. I would like an app that shut the thing down and not let it turn on until you visited a park or went for a walk or just plain old talked to a friend or loved one without the interruptions. That is an app I would pay more than 99 cents for!

Bank of America is paying back the money. WOW – BUT……………………….

So Bank of America has unveiled a plan to repay the money that the Government gave them, opps sorry, provided to them as a loan via the TARP. As I listened to the story on NPR two key questions came to mind immediately. First is what is the government going to do with that money, pay back the debt or spend it stupidly. The second one is why are they paying it back now. I was, and am still, opposed to the TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. What that actually means is bailing our dumb asses out because we got involved in so many bad investments and we are too big to fail, or WTAMIBODAOBWGIISMBIAWATBTF as I like to call it. I realize that does not roll off the tongue so I understand why they picked TARP instead. I was not in agreement when the red party gave away the 700 billion of our money (called TARP) in relief to the corporations who contributed mightily to this crappy economic situation we all find ourselves in. I was equally disappointed and outraged when the blue party gave away another 780 billion in the stimulus package. All that money, the bits we know about, and my shitty economic outlook has not improved one freakin bit. I on the other hand have been levied with more taxes, more of what they call fees and even the higher level of law enforcement passing out tickets like a drunk might throw beads in New Orleans. Bullshit I say!

Anyway, sorry for shooting off on a tangent, let me get back to Bank of America. Just the name irritates me, Bank of America, right. Might need to be Bank of overwhelming greed but then again that name could be applied to most of the gigantic, to large to fail financial organizations. They announced that they would repay 45 billion in tax payer money. Why, and why now? I see that their shares shot up 4.4% at 16.33 premarket on the repayment news. They had gained 11% over the year but this news had a fabulous outcome, fabulous for Bank of America. Fabulous for me and you, hardly and not so much. So how had the banking giant scrounged for the dough to pay the government back. Not through loans to normal folk, like was intended by the loaner, or us – but by using the same financial tools that they used to create the bubble in the first place. Trading stocks and bonds in the market. Seems to me a breech of contract but since they jammed TARP through the hallowed halls of our government in such a short time there was little time for detailed contracts, that may have slowed the process and what we ended up with is little more than a hand shake and wink, wink and a nod, nod. For 700 billion dollars – unbelievable.

So I thought, good, they are paying us back but then I got to wondering why. A company does not come to a 45 billion dollar decision easily, no matter the size. There must be an incentive, an incentive for Bank of America, not for us. It is nice to see the banking industry getting back on its feet, it is an important milestone in the government’s yearlong effort to stabilize the nation’s financial industry. BUT many, many ordinary Americans are still struggling with our day to day lives. Not only the worry of making ends meet at home but the worry about our means of support, our jobs. And at our jobs we are under increasing pressure to produce, we hear more and more the axiom, doing more with less. Doing more with less? What a BS thing to say, just like multitasking which is actually doing a bunch of tasks poorly instead of one task well. I am glad that the top tier of the finacial industry has been helped out but I am still confused because it has not helped me or my bottom line. Anyway, sorry I digressed there. So I also learned that with the loan still outstanding to the government there were still the restrictions on salaries Bank of America is able to pay the management.

So there it is! With Bank of America’s beleaguered leader, Kenneth D. Lewis, reaching the end of his tenure, it is only weeks away as a matter of fact. He, of course, sees the turnabout as particularly sweet. Mr. Lewis was run out of his role as chairman and then from his post as chief executive after the bank’s controversial takeover of Merrill Lynch last year. Yet under his tutelage he has managed to extricate Bank of America, not long ago regarded as one of the nation’s most troubled big banks, from Washington’s grip. Once out from under the Federal oversight of executives pay it frees them to go and hire some other overpaid suit to run the business. The bad thing, in my humble opinion, about the bailout, is the oversight of these monstrous institutions will be disappearing. Don’t get me wrong I do not think the government is qualified to provide oversight on the water cycle of my yard let along something this important but in this case I think it helped. I am glad they are paying the money they got in two bailouts back, that leaves only Citigroup and GMAC standing, alone as the only giant banks that have received such extraordinary aid, although other banks big and small have yet to repay single bailouts. I suspect some shading dealings in where they got the money but at least we are getting it back, or are we?

That leads me to the other question, what is the government going to do with the money? Will it go into the general fund or will it be squandered on ridiculousness without our knowledge? I do not and have not heard any conversations about how that money will be used when it comes back in, have you? Through simple observation I have noticed that politicians can not leave any money in the check book. What would be even better is to shift it out of the checkbook, by paying the people who loaned us the money – mostly the Chinese. Not that that is a bad thing, they bailed us out with the billions in investment in our government and I say thank you for hedging a long shot gamble on that investment. BUT we must remember, as long as we are indebted to them we are also beholden to them. Just like the institutions that hold notes for our consumer loans and credit cards, we are stuck with them and in most cases at their mercy. Who hasn’t seen their credit card interest rates jump up arbitrarily over the last year or two. We need to be vigilant in demanding that our elected officials pay this debt off with the money that is coming in from the various TARP recipients. I would bet the that money will likely be spent on other “crisis’s” that will pop up along the way.

I am not sure about ya’ll but I am skeptical as hell about my Governments ability to be honest, upright and do the right thing – about ANYTHING. I suspect that money will fall through the cracks, hell 45 billion is nothing. That is another issue that I have, they have successfully ruined our sense of scale when it comes to the size of these issues. Just for fun I did a bit of math to help he get the HUGE numbers of money we are talking about. A United States 100 dollar bill is .0043” thick. Well simple math will quickly tell you that just how crazy it is. A ONE billion dollar stack on $100 bills would stretch up 67 miles – YEP SIXTY SEVEN miles. So using that math we can extrapolate to 45 Billion. That stack would be a bit over 3000 miles, three thousand miles of 100 dollar bills stacked flat sides together. That is all the way across this great country. Now you want to see something stunning. Using the numbers that they gave away, the 700 in TARP and 780 in stimulus money it comes to 99,160 miles or, OR a stack of 100 dollars bills that reaches damn near half way to the moon. To get that far last time we only spent about 25 billion for the entire space program. I fear that this loss of understanding of the scale of money we are talking about it how they are getting away with it. That amount of money is incomprehensible to me, I do not even understand it. Another example of it would be this, if you could maintain counting, continuously and each number took two seconds it would take you over 62 years to count to one billion or, OR 91,760 years to count up the 700 and 780 billion added together. That is right damn near 10 Millennia and you know what, the Pleistocene era ended 12 thousand years ago – that was the end of the last ice age. That is how crazy those numbers are!

Anyway you get the point on the scale that is being used here. I have other concerns as well, concerns about the lenders calling in the markers. That I suppose is a oratory for another day though.