Category Archives: Freakin’ Idiots!

December 7, 2014 · 21:23

Odds & Sods For Sunday, December 7th

Item The First: I had wonderful things to say about the Amanda Palmer concert and talk in Los Angeles, but I didn’t know the name of the interviewer and couldn’t track it down to save my life at the time I was writing the story. I now have the information, thanks to my friend Joey Shoji who saw the post on FaceBook. The interviewer was Bob Lefsetz.

Joey also had this photo on his FaceBook feed from the show in San Francisco two nights before the Los Angeles show. Needless to say, I am green with envy! I know it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I’m hoping St. Peter cuts me some slack on this one.

Item The Second: There’s a Jaguar SUV? The cars that were driven by James Bond have now morphed into a mom-mobile? I’m not that much of a “car dude,” but I can tell you this is causing a great disturbance in the Force, as if a billion car dudes cried out in terror and were then silenced.

The website says it’s a concept car and won’t be available for sale until 2015, but I saw it on the 101 Freeway coming back into LA from Ventura earlier this week. No mistaking that it said “Jaguar” and at least from the outside, it’s the vehicle shown. The LA Auto Show was going on at the time, so maybe a reporter or someone was taking it for a test drive.

Thanks, I could have gone all year without knowing that. It’s just so…wrong.

Item The Third: Have you ever (maybe as a kid, maybe later in life) been running so fast that you could just barely keep your balance? Maybe you were running downhill and running much faster than you could on flat ground. But you were flying!

Then you stubbed a foot on something and pitched forward, your arms pinwheeling, trying desperately to slow down or get your feet back under you, teetering right on the edge of going over onto your face for step after step after step, never quite sure if you should go down and tuck and roll, or keep trying to get your balance hoping you didn’t break your collarbone or an arm or your face…

Yeah, some days feel like that. So do some weeks. In that same sense, I’m not sure if resolution would be good (tucking and rolling) or not (uncomfortable, but I can still save this!).

Item The Fourth: It’s an ongoing burr under my saddle, no doubt deeply embedded in my Catholic school upbringing (I’m recovering, slowly, thanks), but I hate the way Christmas lights are so disposable. I hate that one or two lights, or a fuse, or something can go wrong and all of a sudden half or a third of the lights are out and your only real recourse is to spend $10 and go get more.

I know that they have these cheap little “detectors” at the hardware store which claim to be able to tell you where the problem is. I’ve got several brands. They’re all just about as useful and reliable as all of the “guaranteed” fitness and weight loss products that will get you looking like a body builder without ever getting off the couch while eating whatever you want.

I’ve searched for solutions on the internet. I’ve googled it. I’ve looked for YouTube videos.

Nada.

There’s just something fundamentally wasteful and infuriating about that. Unjust. Unfair. It should be relatively simple to have a way to figure out where the problem is and to fix it. Which bulb is burnt out of these 75? Is there a broken wire? Did a fuse blow? I can fix any of those problems if I know where the problem is.

If anyone has an actual, practical, working answer that I’ve never been able to hunt down, please let me know. There’s a whole bunch of eternal gratitude involved.

Item The Fifth: I have bitched before about telemarketers and robocallers. In the big picture, with all that’s going on in the world these days, it’s not that big of a deal. But it’s still like nails on a blackboard to me.

Well, there’s a new turn in this war. For years and years, I’ve known that it’s illegal for telemarketers or robocalls to call a cell phone number. “FCC regulations prohibit telemarketers from using automated dialers to call cell phone numbers.” It seems pretty clear. Whether your cell phone number has been registered in the Do Not Call Registry (DNCR) or not, they can’t call your cell phone. And this was borne out by their behavior in the real world. In all the years I’ve had a cell phone, I’ve never gotten a telemarketer or robocall.

Suddenly I’ve gotten three robo-telemarketing calls on my cell phone in two days. What’s changed?

I made the mistake of calling AT&T customer service. I was told to sign up in the DNCR. I told them that I already had, and besides, it was a cell phone so see above. They knew nothing about the cell phone restriction. I gave them the web page to look at. Yeah, meh, whatever, they don’t care. They suggest that I file a complaint against the company using the Federal Trade Commission’s site. But I don’t know the company’s name – when you ask for that, they hang up. (They seem unaware that the scum sucking maggots who run robocall scams might do this. Duh!) They suggest I use the incoming phone number to file a complaint. That’s useless — the number shown is spoofed, fake, totally bogus. (They seem unaware that this is possible.) They suggest that I block the incoming phone number on my cell phone. That’s useless – the robodialer will pick a different random bogus number to spoof every call. (They seem unaware that this is done.)

Freakin’ idiots!

I had really been hoping that their technology might be better than that being used by the scammers and telemarketers. My bad – where was my head? When it gets to the point where the best idea you have for pursuing the problem is to complain to your Congressman, you’re pretty well screwed.

I would pay a lot of good money for some device or program that would prevent me from ever, ever, ever again receiving a robocall or call from a telemarketer. If the device or program would also send about 100 volts back down the line into the ear of the telemarketer or 100,000 volts back down the line into the robodialing computer, I would pay a lot more.

The ultimate follow up to that experience was a female telemarketer I got yesterday from one of the “Your credit card account is in danger, you must contact us immediately!” scams. After I asked in a “colorful” manner (i.e., blue) how I could ever get them to get me out of their system and stop calling, she wanted to start lecturing me on what Jesus thought of my attitude and how she would pray for me.

It is safe to assume that the conversation went downhill from there. She never convinced me that I should repent and mend my ways, and I never convinced her that she was a freakin’ idiot working to illegally scam people.

The difference between her and me? I’m self aware enough to wonder if maybe I might be as delusional as she is. (I’m not.) She couldn’t ever conceive that thought, because she already knew everything. (Like Jon Snow, she knew nothing.)

My final thought for tonight on telemarketers & robo-scammers – I need to make my smart be better than their stupid. They’re NEVER going to “get it,” they’re never going to stop, and god knows neither the government nor the phone company is ever going to stop them. All I’m doing right now is venting, blowing off steam, and raising my blood pressure.

Instead, let’s see this as an opportunity to have some fun, using these morons as dupes! I should be able to come up with a good script, a role play, an improv act, where the ultimate goal of the conversation is to leave myself laughing hilariously at their stupidity and leaving them pissed off for wasting so much of their time and making them look like the fools they are.

THAT‘s the thought! When answering the phone and getting one of these calls, before you pick it up, as yourself — “What would Robin Williams do?”

 

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Freakin' Idiots!, Music, Odds & Sods

November 4, 2014 · 21:17

We Voted Today

It’s all over (except maybe in Hawaii) and it will be what it will be. Not to be too much of a downer, but when Congress’ approval ratings are lower than the approval ratings for venereal diseases…

The worst thing is that they don’t care. They’ve passed laws that let billionaires and corporations make almost unlimited contributions, they can’t be voted out of office (take a look at the number of folks re-elected today who have recent felonies), and they don’t have to care. In addition, most of them give the appearance of having an IQ lower than their shoe size. Watch a hearing on one of the Science & Technology committees some day if you don’t believe me.

Which got me to thinking, as I often do on election day — when was the last time you voted for someone you REALLY LIKED?

Personally, I can’t remember an election in decades where every spot from dogcatcher to President wasn’t a choice between “really screwed up & pathetic” and “totally, completely, 100% unacceptable.” I have vague memories from the 1970’s, when I started voting, of occasionally being enthusiastic about some issue or candidate. For the last twenty or thirty years? Not so much.

The one candidate that has stood out for me was in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election. If you managed to somehow miss this circus, the tl;dr version is that they recalled Gray Davis, which opened up the field to just about anyone to run — 135 people qualified for the ballot (not a typo – One Hundred Thrity-Five candidates!), including folks such as actor Gary Coleman and porn star Mary Carey. Nothing demonstrates what a joke it was better than the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger won and was the governor for eight years. (Can’t make this crap up, no one would believe it.)

In that particular free for all, both I and The Long Suffering Wife ended up voting for Larry Flynt, the publisher of “Hustler” magazine. It wasn’t a joke or a protest vote — while we weren’t nuts about him, there were several points that we thought made him a better candidate than most of the other prominent candidates, especially Schwarzenegger.

First, Flynt’s a huge proponent of the First Amendment and protecting freedom of speech. That’s a hot button item for me and I like the way Flynt’s stood up for those rights.

Second, Flynt had for years run a large and successful company, making a lot of money over the years. He may have been the only person on the ballot who had ever actually been responsible for making payroll to keep his employees fed. Like his particular industry or publication or not, the man’s been successful.

Third, and most important, there was unlikely to be any dirt to be dredged up on Flynt. Considering his lifestyle and history, there wouldn’t be any smear campaigns against him based on skeletons in his closet. Flynt’s been bringing those skeletons out and putting them on display for everyone to see for decades. The rest of the field, however… Remember how Schwarzenegger got divorced just before he left office, and why?

So back to my original point  — when was the last time you voted for someone you REALLY LIKED? If the only time you can remember is when you voted for Larry Flynt for governor, but got Arnold Schwarzenegger instead, you might just have a bit of a structural problem in your democracy.

GOP? Democrat? Independent? Doesn’t matter. They’re all a bunch of FREAKIN’ IDIOTS!

I would absolutely love to be proven wrong by any of them. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for it to hapen.

 

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Politics

November 2, 2014 · 19:56

Daylight Saving Time Is HELL

Have I mentioned yet that I really dislike switching our clocks back and forth an hour in the spring and fall for Daylight Saving Time? A search of the website so far shows that I haven’t, so apologies if the search engine sucks and you’ve heard this story before, but I really dislike switching our clocks back and forth an hour in the spring and fall for Daylight Saving Time!

I understand the thinking. I understand what the goal is. As the days get shorter in the winter, “we” prefer to have more daylight hours in the morning, even if it means an “earlier” sunset. As the days get longer in the summer, rather than having daylight hours “wasted” in the time prior to most folks being awake, “we” shift the clock so that most of us still wake up close to sunrise, leaving more hours of daylight in the evening for the majority of the population to enjoy.

Got it.

Here’s what’s wrong in my opinion — it’s mandatory imposition of jet lag on the entire country. (Well, except for Arizona, and half of Indiana?) Furthermore, while most of us can deal psychologically with the effects of jet lag because we’re aware that we moved a significant distance around the planet, with DST it just suddenly happens. You wake up one morning and you’re still right where you were when you went to bed, but the whole freakin’ planet has shifted.

Then there’s the way pets handle it, i.e., by not even knowing that it exists. So when the sun gets to there, they want to be fed. Or walked. Or in bed. Doing those things an hour earlier in the spring is confusing. Doing them an hour later in the fall just pisses them off and makes them whine at you and wonder why you don’t get it! It’s dinner time! See, the sun’s there, same place that it was yesterday at dinner time! I don’t care what the glowing, blue marks on the cable box say! I’m color blind to begin with, and I’M A DOG! It’s dinner time!

Of course, there are reports all over the place (google it) that argue that the switch to and from DST actually has real financial and social costs in the real world. Workers are sleepier, have more trouble concentrating, and their productivity is down. In addition, with one of the normal commutes now being in darkness when it was in the light on Friday, traffic is heavier, more time and money and gas are wasted and pollution generated due to that, and the number of car accidents go up.

Face it, the sun and the Earth’s orbit really don’t give a rat’s ass about us, or our rules. We’re a fungus, an infestation on the surface of a dust mote in a back corner of a pretty ordinary galaxy. The days will be short, then they’ll get to evenly split between night and day, then they’ll get long, then back to split, back to short, back to split… The exact details depend on where you are on the planet — a pole, the equator, or somewhere in between.

Our arbitrary assignment of numbers and order to that cycle is our psychosis, not the universe’s. So why not just set the numbers and the system, accept the cycle and plan accordingly? Some times of the year it will be dark in the morning when we get up and sometimes it won’t. Some times of the year it will be light in the evening when we’re having dinner and sometimes it won’t.

Why do we have to confuse the hell out of everyone in order to “cheat” the system a bit, when we’re really not changing anything at all?

At this point, the only thing that DST is good for is reminding us when to change the batteries in our smoke alarms. Surely there can be a better way to accomplish that than DST. Right?

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Filed under Astronomy, Freakin' Idiots!

September 28, 2014 · 22:07

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Sunday, September 28th

‘Cause the baseball postseason is here and my beloved Angels have the best record in baseball, that’s why.

  • In addition to the moon in the evening sky, there are a couple of bright planets. Look for them all! Last night (Saturday, 09/27) the Moon was very close to a very bright Saturn. Tonight, the Moon was getting close to a somewhat bright but very reddish Mars. The Moon will keep heading up higher into the sky each night and getting brighter, but if you’ve got binoculars, it’s a great time to be looking. Before it starts getting cold. Like GRRM said…
  • The Long-Suffering Wife cut her finger yesterday in the kitchen. I put a bandage on it, and the one immediately at hand in the kitchen cupboard was an old SpongeBob SquarePants bandage. Not a big issue, until much later, when the lights got turned off in the bedroom and she realized that it glowed in the dark. Her reaction was quite interesting, to say the least.
  • Is it unreasonable to think that our air traffic system should be robust enough so that a single disgruntled employee can cause massive disruptions of thousands of flights, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded, a mess than continues to be a mess three days later and will continue to be a mess for days more? Did no one anywhere in the FAA or Transportation Department think that there should be some sort of backup plan if a single TRACON had to go offline?
  • Jessie went out on Wednesday morning and was stunned to find her prized squirrel carcass gone from the patio sidewalk. For two days, every time she went out in back she went straight to that spot and started sniffing around and looking for it. Then she would look at me with sad, accusing, old dog eyes. I swear, I didn’t touch it, I left it there. I’m figuring there’s a coyote or raccoon or owl or hawk or crow that found an easy, more or less freshly dead meal and took off with it.
  • Pumpkin spice Oreos? Really? I will make a bold statement here — I have never had “pumpkin spice” anything. Not lattes, not beer, not cookies, not cheesecake, not ice cream, not pickles — nothing! As such, I feel fully qualified to feel like I’m the last guy who can tell humanity about the pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” or Charlton Heston at the end of “Soylent Green.” “It’s pumpkin spice, humans! Stop eating it! It’s sent by aliens to take over your brains! Don’t eat the pumpkin spice!”
  • At least the glow in the dark SpongeBob SquarePants bandage is on her “driving” finger. At least, that’s what we call it here in Los Angeles.
  • It’s hockey preseason and I’m learning that I need to get my gimpy shoulder into mid-season form quickly. My usual reaction to a Kings goal is to instinctively and immediately throw my arms in the air. If my arm hurts when I do that, we’ve got a problem. (The Vuvuzela of Victory only sings its sweet, sweet song during the playoffs. We have to save the juju for when it’s really needed.)
  • How much does a wagon cost these days? You know — small, red, kid sized, used for hauling toys, dirt, and little sisters. I’m asking for a canine friend.
  • The reports I’ve seen said that the contract employee who sabotaged the FAA air traffic control center in Chicago was upset because they had just been informed they were being transferred to Hawaii. Further developments and information are most certainly coming, but for the moment, let’s examine that allegation. Now, mind you, I absolutely love the city of Chicago. I spent a couple of years there as a kid (junior high school years) in the suburbs, still love going back to visit. I’ve never had a bad time there. But is it so good that when “threatened” with a transfer to freakin’ HAWAII I would go berserk? Are we talking about a different Hawaii than the one I see on TV with the beaches, the jungles, the weather, the surfing, blah, blah, blah?
  • Or the squirrel RE-ANIMATED and its rotting, evil, zombie squirrel body is stalking the trees, waiting for its chance to catch Jessie unawares so that it can WREAK ITS VENGEANCE!!
  • That comma is really important in the “It’s pumpkin spice, humans!” line.
  • Los Angeles about ten days ago, lunch time, near Beverly Hills. South of Sunset, by the Pacific Design Center, between San Vicente and La Cienega. One of the million little, itty-bitty strip malls that cover LA like scabs. As usual for the breed, this one might have had 12 to 15 parking spaces, all full. I’m sitting there eating outside when a brand new, white, shiny, Maserati Quattorporte pulls into the lot. He’s in luck! There’s a full size SUV, an Urban Assault Vehicle, just pulling out of a space. The SUV departs and the person driving (the windows were blacked out, couldn’t see them) whips it around and tries to pull into the just-vacated parking spot. “Tries” is the key word here. They back up and try again, unsuccessfully. And again. And again. All of this despite the fact that a vehicle twice as big just pulled out of that spot. Just about the time I’m ready to start laughing and go offer to park it for them, they give up. They ROAR out of the parking lot, tires screaming — because they have a Maserati Quattroporte and they have to show the world how insanely cool they are. As they leave, another SUV, just as large as the previous one, pulls in and swings into that parking spot in one try. The conclusion is obvious — despite that $140K price tag, the Maserati Quattroporte has the turning radius of a battleship and is a pig to handle in tight spaces! Well, that or someone was seriously overcompensating for something, and it wasn’t the fact that they can’t drive for beans.

Remember, “Some days you win, some days you lose. Some days it rains.” That’s deep. Really. Not even being snarky. From Bull Durham, one of the finest baseball movies ever made. (It happens to be about baseball. A bit. And other things.) ((I’ll shut up now.))

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Filed under Astronomy, Dogs, Freakin' Idiots!, Health, Juicy Chunks, LA Angels, Los Angeles, Ronnie, Sports

August 29, 2014 · 12:51

Tin Foil Hats At The Ready!

Watch out today, at least in Los Angeles. I don’t know if it’s something in the air, something in the water, a change in the solar neutrino flux, or a variation in tachyons arriving from the galactic core, but it’s time to put on your tin foil hats!

I had a few errands to run this morning, no biggie. Post office. Bank. Restock the pet food larder. Maybe go pick up the new John Scalzi book and/or the new Richard Kadrey book and/or the new Brad Paisley album. No biggie.

It started at the post office. There were a few cars in line for the drive-through mail drop and something was making the line go slow. I finally saw that there was a booth set up on the sidewalk. A couple of people from the booth were trying to talk to the drivers as cars left the mailbox and waited to exit onto the street. When it was my turn, I saw that it was a fanatical group trying to rally support to impeach Obama.

While the opportunities for entertainment were clear, so were the opportunities to raise my blood pressure.

First off, I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment, even when it means that we have to give assholes and subhumans like the Westboro Baptist Church the right to picket funerals. I despise people like that with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but I understand that if I want those rights for me and people who agree with me, I also have to allow those rights to people I detest.

Secondly, I try real hard to be tolerant and give everyone a chance, maybe two. (It’s my Catholic school education, I’m sure.) However, after that point, my tolerance level drops off pretty fast. People who insist on demonstrating repeatedly that they’re delusional, anti-social, ignorant, or psychotic are fools who no longer deserve to be suffered gladly. The screaming folks with the big posters of Obama made to look like Hitler? They might have at least one strike against them to start with.

This guy wanted to shove propaganda flyers into my face before I could get the window rolled up after dropping off my mail — I declined to accept. (Strike one.) This dude looking like a poster child for a white supremacy group screamed at me, asking if I knew we were all doomed if Obama wasn’t “stopped” — I ignored him. (Strike two.) He then asked if I had ever considered the “evidence” that Obama was a fascist, socialist, Nazi dictator…

In my defense, the street was full of cars in front of me and I couldn’t go anywhere anyway.

I asked him if he knew the difference between fascists, socialists, and Nazis, since they were all different and in many respects had opposing policies and viewpoints and hated each other.

He pointed at the Hitler mustache on the poster and told me that Obama was just like Hitler! I told him that I didn’t know that Hitler’s mustache made him evil, I had always thought that it was senseless slaughter of millions of innocent people.

He told me that when I looked in the mirror I would see that mustache on myself and know that I was a Nazi too. I told him when he looked in the mirror he would see a psychotic idiot in desperate need of some serious mental help.

He started listing the conspiracies all around us regarding AIDS and 9-11 and global warming and the United Nations, saying that if we ignored the danger we would all be locked up in gulags. I pointed out that if Obama was really a dictator, nut jobs like him wouldn’t be sitting on the sidewalk ranting. He and his friends would be dead and no one would ever find the bodies, so ipso facto, Obama wasn’t a dictator.

I may have been using intellectual arguments above his weight class.

Traffic was clearing and I started to move. As I did so, I saw the poster on the front side of the fold-up table they had. It was urging people to impeach that Nazi-socialist-communist-fascist-dictator Obama and join Lyndon LaRouche in saving the country. His obvious problems with reality made so much more sense now! I told my delusional friend that he needed to find a better cult to join next time. I suggested one with lots of sex and drugs might be more to his liking. He called me a Nazi again, we flipped each other off, and I left.

You don’t see that every day in the San Fernando Valley!

Nor do you normally see folks jogging in 95° heat while wearing full, black sweat suits, including full-length sweatpants and a hoodie pulled up over their head. Yes, you see folks jogging. Yes, you even see a few of them out jogging in 95° weather. But I’ve never seen anyone dressed like it’s 35° when it’s 95° and running at a good pace to boot. It looked like a good way to either wake up in intensive care needing multiple organ transplants or to simply wake up dead. Good luck, guys, you’re going to need it. Stay hydrated!

Then, for a more common bizarre circumstance for LA, there was apparently a huge accident on the freeway. The westbound freeway was gridlocked. Grid. Locked.

I didn’t know until I got within a block or so of the onramp. Then I could see that traffic wasn’t moving at all, dead stop, so I decided to stay off the freeway and get to the book store on surface streets. Unfortunately, the freeway backup apparently had been there for a while, had multiple lanes blocked, and the gridlock went back at least six or seven miles, so a few hundred thousand of my close, personal friends had decided to use that street as an alternate route.

No one was moving. Period.

But a significant number were driving like freakin’ idiots. (Big surprise, I know, right?) People cutting into shopping center parking lots, going 100 yards, then trying to cut back out into traffic in order to pass ten or twelve cars. People doing U-turns across the center divider islands into gridlocked traffic coming the other way. People ignoring the traffic control cops who were trying to keep some semblance of order at the bigger interchanges, and getting away with it because there was no way to stop and/or cite them.

After about fifteen minutes I made it a half mile and was able to turn away from it all onto a side street and escape. (Knowing the local topography intimately is a huge help in such circumstances — I recommend running to get to know all of the side streets on a first name basis.)

As I bailed on the book store errand and got back towards home, I went by the post office and saw our favorite neighborhood whackjobs still out there harassing postal patrons. I thought briefly of letting them know about the massive gridlock a couple miles away. Down there were thousands and thousands of helpless motorists who would have no opportunity at all to get away from their delusional diatribes. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel!

The word “shooting” triggered the realization that many of those frustrated, pissed-off, short-tempered motorists might well be armed. As entertaining as it was to think of these deluded dimwits being shot at, I decided to leave well enough alone.

Instead I’m at home, making more tin foil hats and tin foil liners for my athletic supporter cups. It might be a long weekend in LA.

I think it’s the neutrinos.

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles, Politics, Running

August 26, 2014 · 23:12

Always Darkest Before Dawn

And then you go and try to look up who said that (it’s unknown, a very old proverb) and instead find some of the most idiotic comments in the world on some of the Yahoo! and Answers.com and Ask.com sites. Are folks out there really that freakin’ stupid, are they on drugs, or are they trolling to see how PO’d they can get folks like me when we’re already in a sour mood? Better than the “bro-dudes” and the outright racist and misogynistic trolling sites, but still…

So I go to try to be creative and play with PhotoShop, something I haven’t done in a while, and find that my 100% legal software that I’ve used for years now needs to be “re-activated”? What fresh hell is this, and why? How much time do I get to spend tomorrow “fixing” a problem that didn’t exist yesterday and shouldn’t exist today? At what point is it better to simply toss Adobe’s installation disks into the blender (yes, it will blend!) and downloading some freeware equivalent such as Gimp?

DSCN2534 small

Surrealistic. And unrealistic.

Astronomically, the darkest hour, as far as the sun is concerned, is always at the point where the sun is exactly opposite of your longitude. But the moon is going to be up for a few minutes at least on most nights. And these days, there’s far more light pollution just after sunset since everyone’s still awake. Some nights there is lightning. An aurora displays. And fireflies. And noctilucent clouds. And supernovae.

I understand what the phrase means. I’m also thinking the sentiment behind it might be just as much nonsense as trying to make scientific sense (or justification) of a proverb that probably pre-dates the wheel.

How ’bout I just go to sleep and see what happens when dawn actually rolls around?

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Job Hunt, Paul

August 19, 2014 · 20:26

Dear Traffic Commission

Dear esteemed members of the local traffic commission:

It has come to my attention that you have used a great deal of our hard-earned tax dollars to put up a great many of these remote, radar-gun warning signs in the area. You know, the ones which display your speed as you pass by and get progressively more excited and frantic in their displays as your speed allegedly goes more and more over the posted speed limit. For brevity, I’ll refer to them as “robo-radars.”

I have a few observations to make about some of the individual devices.

The one by the high school is pretty good. It sets the gold standard for the others. As far as I can tell it is pretty accurate, judging by the speedometers on my cars. It flashes if anyone is going over the speed limit. We get the message and we feel appropriately shamed, embarrassed, and humiliated. We promise to do better next time, every time we set it off. Really, we do.

The one down by the freeway is completely inaccurate. I’ve gotten to the point where I will very deliberately cruise by it at 35 (it’s a 40 mph zone) with no one else on the road so it can’t be giving me information based on another car. It consistently reads about 41 or 42, even when I’m doing 35. We ignore this one since it’s a lying bastard, not to be trusted. We call it “Larry the Liar.”

The one up by the reservoir is also annoying. It’s actually on the same pole as the “Speed Limit 40” sign, yet still goes bananas, flashing and warning us to slow down, while displaying a (reasonably accurate) speed of 36 or 38. If I want to get scolded and judged when I haven’t done anything wrong, I’ll start going back to church. We call this one “False Positive Fred.”

The one by the shopping center? It’s seems to be broken as well, completely unable to display a speed of over 45. (It’s also in a 40 mph zone.) I first started to suspect this one when I saw cars roaring past me like I was standing still, but no one ever got a reading of more than 48. I’ve now tested it myself and verified this. Please fix this machine — if I’m going to be out there on a residential street doing 75 to test your machine, it would be nice if you cared about it working correctly.

Finally, when I go running toward and past one of these signs, it never registers my presence. Never lights up, never flashes, never gives any reading at all. I’ll admit that I’m not running that fast (before you make any snarky comments, let’s see your butt out there doing five or six miles one of these days) but I’m not running that slow either. I thought at first that it might be because your robo-radars have a lower limit set in their design, beneath which it ignores movement. However, going out and driving by one exactly as fast as I run, the display lights up and gives me a speed. (To the guy in the BMW behind me while I conducted this test, thanks, I think you’re number one as well!)

I can only assume that this particular robo-radar is looking for a metal surface to get a return signal from, and my pasty, flabby carcass isn’t getting the job done. In order to test this theory, I intend to wrap my body in tin foil and run past it again. I’ll get back to you on the efficacy of the technique, if the cops haven’t gotten back to your first. Or the men in white coats.

In summary, you seem to have spent a lot of money on warning signs that give false positives, are highly inaccurate, and are totally useless in timing my marathon training. We can only be grateful that you didn’t hook your inaccurate robot minions to cameras and automatic ticketing systems like the freakin’ idiots in Arizona did. (No, I did not get a speeding ticket in Arizona, but only by driving in such a fashion as to make half the state indicate that they think I’m number one as well.)

If you’re looking for a reasonably-priced consultant to help you troubleshoot the problem and research potential solutions (i.e., I want to get paid to run past these thing swaddled in Alcoa’s finest), you have my number.

Love,

Paul

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles, Running

July 31, 2014 · 21:51

Nantucket Sleigh Ride (Episode 1 Of N)

A “Nantucket sleigh ride” was a 19th Century whaling term referring to the ride that sailors would be taken on just after a whale was harpooned. The injured whale, attempting to swim away, would drag the small whaling boat at high speed (up to 35 mph, which in the 1800’s was really flying) for miles and miles.

More recently the term has become slang for a period of time in which things have seemingly switched into a higher gear as events, deadlines, and daily milestones seem to flying past at an accelerated rate. (It’s also the name of a 1971 album by Mountain that I remember fondly, but I digress.)

The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a Nantucket sleigh ride for me, and I’m referring to this as “Episode 1 of N” because I’m thinking (and hoping) that it may be first of many to come.

Part of it is the fact that the Younger Daughter is here for about ten days, her first visit home from Asia in two years. Part of it is that activities at the CAF have been busy. Not bad, just busy. Part of it is a series of household plumbing issues and some car issues that have been (almost) all conquered, even though at least one of the high-adrenaline problems was solved when I stopped being a freakin’ idiot. (I hate freakin’ idiots — I really, REALLY hate it when I’m the freakin’ idiot!) Part of it is a couple of employment opportunities that have finally started to potentially be real and exciting, really good employment opportunities.

We’ll see. I understand that getting my hopes up about job interviews can lead to a crash when they don’t pan out (been there, done there, got the T-shirts) but I still get excited when something exceptionally good pops up. Getting through the process, I just got to keep “The Astronaut’s Prayer” in mind.

With some patience (I’ve gone through several 50-gallon drums of it), faith (I’m trying, I’m really, really trying), and maybe just a touch of luck (I’ll take whatever I can get) we may get to exchange this “long national nightmare” or something much more exciting and enjoyable, if not necessarily less stressful and exhausting.

Yes, I’m being a bit vague. Those of you who know me personally know what I’m talking about. The rest of you, I promise that I’ll keep you updated.

 

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Filed under CAF, Family, Freakin' Idiots!, Job Hunt

July 10, 2014 · 23:04

Flash Fiction: Board Room

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge — is a repeat, because for the life of me, I can’t see where Chuck Wendig posted a blog entry or tweet with any mention of a contest this week. Okay, so the man’s entitled to take a week off. But I’m on a writing “mission from god”, so I picked a previous Challenge (this one from late April) and rolled the hypothetical, fifty-sided dice to get a 46, which gives me the character of  “the brutal businessperson.”

It turned out a little bit preachy, which I blame on flipping by “The Devil’s Advocate” on cable earlier today. This story was an interesting, dialogue-based scene to write as an exercise. As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

BOARD ROOM

“I have to recommend against building this project,” Carson said. “The possible consequences could be catastrophic.”

There was silence in the board room as all eyes turned to the end of the table. The CEO did not appear to be bothered by the comment, but everyone knew that looks could be deceiving.

“What consequences, Carson? Every relevant department has concluded that this will be an enormously profitable venture.”

“I have no doubt that it will make money, sir. But I would bring your attention again to the report from our environmental consultant.”

The Chief Legal Officer turned his head slightly, not looking directly at Carson, turning only the minimal amount necessary to acknowledge his existence. “The EPA has already signed off on this project, Carson. You should know that.”

“Jason, I’m aware that the EPA has given the green light to this project. I’m also aware of how that approval was obtained, as is everyone else in this room.”

“Would you care to be more clear, Carson? I believe we’ve only followed our standard operating procedures.”

“I’m referring to the way the EPA was given only select parts of a highly edited report from our consultants, while both EPA personnel and our consultants were paid handsomely to ignore the discrepancies between the early versions and the final submission.”

“Is there any truth to that accusation, Jason?” asked the CEO.

“Sir, the EPA approved our final petition based on the information given to them by our consultants. The consultants were well paid by us. The information that was given to the EPA by our consultants and their testimony under oath at the EPA hearings were completely out of our control. If some of the senior EPA staff who recommended approval have careers with our consultant’s firm after they complete their careers at the EPA, that would not be unusual, nor would it be anything that we have any say in. It’s all completely legal and a normal state of affairs, as you know.”

“I understand, Jason. Christine, would you please remind Carson of the predicted financial return on this project?”

The CFO didn’t even need to look at her notes. “We estimate a minimum annual ROI of 25% beginning two years after construction, increasing to 40% or more by year ten. Our projected annual net profits over the first ten years are over one trillion dollars.”

The CEO turned back to Carson. “If we’re going to make that kind of return and nothing illegal is being done, what objections can you still have about this project?”

“Sir, the original environmental assessment, before Jason and his staff had it changed, warned that the drilling operations, refining facilities, and pipeline construction could have serious environmental side effects, particularly in terms of damage and accelerated melting of the permafrost across a region of hundreds of thousands of square miles.”

“Which is why we made engineering changes to allow for any civil engineering issues that might arise, which in turn led to changes in the final environmental report. The chances of an oil spill are infinitesimal.”

“Yes, sir, the odds of an oil spill are no more than one in fifty for any given year, and our engineering plan does allow for structural integrity of our facilities even in the event of changes in the permafrost. But that’s not the problem. There is a high probability that our facilities could cause massive melting of the permafrost, which will release trillions of tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The environmental damage of a major oil spill is nothing compared to that. Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s even more dangerous than carbon dioxide in its effect on climate change. Melting of the permafrost at an accelerated rate like this could result in an accelerated rate of global temperature increase that will be impossible to reverse.”

The CEO’s stare had gotten steadily more intense as Carson had continued to speak. “I’m disappointed by your sudden passion for this fear-mongering and nonsense from the liberal press, Carson. This company’s position of so-called ‘global warming’ is quite clear, as are the multiple studies we have funded proving it false.”

“Sir, you and this board have surrounded yourselves with sycophants and yes-men who have told you whatever you wanted to hear for decades. The truth is that proceeding with this project will likely bring catastrophic climate change, not in two hundred years or a hundred years, but in as little as fifteen or twenty years. In your lifetime, the entire world economy will collapse as a billion or more people become homeless and start to starve. There will be wars, there will be famine, there could be the end of our civilization as we know it. You will not be earning hundreds of billions a dollars a year when the world collapses into chaos.”

The ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantle in the conference room was the only sound for long seconds.

“You are dismissed,” the CEO finally said.

“Sir, the facts will not change just because you choose not to believe them.”

“Carson, you may leave voluntarily or you may be removed from this meeting. I will speak with you privately later.”

“I’ll leave, but this needs to be said now and said to all of you. This project will be the tipping point that pushes the entire planet over into a runaway greenhouse. You personally are taking actions that will destroy five thousand years of human civilization. I hope that you all live to see the day you realize what you’ve done, and remember you had the power to stop it, but chose not to. As for you, sir, I hope you will live to see how the lives of your family, of your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are destroyed by your actions.” Carson turned on his heel and left the meeting room, cold silence a wall behind him.

Everyone waited for the CEO to proceed. After a moment of staring absently down at the documents on the desk in front of him, he raised his head and looked around the room.

“I apologize for my son’s unreasonable outburst. Now, let’s proceed. When do we begin construction?”

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Filed under Disasters, Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage, Politics, Writing

July 1, 2014 · 22:51

Stupidest Movie Ever

There’s a movie coming out next weekend that has me thinking about how terribly, god-awful, STUPID movies get made. The movie in question now has ads running on television and no, it’s not “Transformers: Age Of Extinction.”

You see, there’s a subtle but important distinction here. “Transformers” is without a doubt a bad movie, but it’s not always (only occasionally) a stupid movie. It has little to no plot, what plot it does have has more holes than a ton of Swiss cheese, the acting is lame, it’s about twice as long as it needs to be, it’s about twice as loud as it needs to be, and in general it’s just two and a half hours of Michael Bey venting adolescent hormones all over the screen in the form of  crashes, chases, explosions, fights, and the best special effects $210 million can buy.

That’s bad. But is it stupid? Well, the first three “Transformers” movies cost $545 million to make and have worldwide gross revenues of $2.670 billion dollars, something like a 500% return on investment. It would be hard to argue that the people making the films are stupid, although I might question the folks handing over $12 to $20 a pop to see it.

I’m not talking about a different kind of bad movie, the movie that’s simply poorly written, or acted, or filmed, or edited. I think of recent films such as “A Dangerous Method.” Ninety-nine minutes of my life that I’ll never get back and I spent every single one of them wondering why I was watching to begin with and why I was still watching. Thank god I at least didn’t pay to watch it.

I’m not talking about movies that are “stupid” on purpose, but are in fact brilliant. “Blazing Saddles,” “Animal House,” “Monty Python & The Holy Grail,” all would qualify as “stupid” to many age groups and demographics, yet they’re truly inspired lunacy and side-splitting funny. In that respect, they’re supposed to be “stupid,” that’s how they get their point across.

No, my main definition of a STUPID movie is one where the basic, core tenet of the plot, the linchpin, is so ludicrous that you can’t even conceive of anyone ever in a million years getting the go-ahead to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to make the film. How did a movie this flawed, illogical, and insane ever get through the entire process without someone pointing out “the Emperor had no clothes,” i.e., no one over the age of about six months would look at the plot without screwing up their face and wondering “WTF!!”

For decades, my hands-down winner for this category was a 1981 film starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, and Adrienne Barbeau. I speak of course, of “Escape From New York.”

Let’s run down some of the key plot points:

  1. Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison with all of the criminals in the country thrown in and left to rot. (Wait, where do we build prisons? Out in the middle of the deserts and boonies. Why? Because the land there is dirt cheap. Manhattan is dirt cheap? Nope, Manhattan is one of the two or three most expensive pieces of real estate on the freakin’ planet. Yeah, let’s build a prison there.)
  2. When Manhattan was evacuated, all of the furniture, cars, business files, books, and so on was left behind for the prisoners to loot. (Wait, the government comes in and grabs the most expensive piece of real estate on the freakin’ planet, kicks out every millionaire, billionaire, trillionaire, and Fortune 5000 company on the planet, and not only do they go, but they leave all of their stuff behind, as do all of the ordinary citizens who live there. Yeah, that makes sense!)
  3. The President of the United States just had a top secret conference with the Premier of the Soviet Union and they single-handedly worked together to forge a plan for world peace. (Wait, you mean this might be the plot point in this list that makes the most sense?)
  4. Their top secret agreement is recorded on a tape cassette. A single cassette. No copies. No notes. No way to recreate it if that one audio tape cassette is lost or destroyed. (Wait, I’ll be the first to go off on how stupid and incompetent government bureaucrats and politicians are, but this is so incredibly far beyond that level of stupid that you couldn’t reach it in our lifetimes with Warp Drive.)
  5. The President, carrying that one single copy of the magical agreement on that magical audio cassette, has crashed onboard Air Force One into Manhattan, which as we recall, is now the single, immense prison holding every criminal in America. (Wait — okay having the President in a huge freakin’ prison makes sense on so many other levels, but for the sake of this movie, what are the odds that with the entire freakin’ planet to crash onto, he went down in that particular spot?)

 

 

 

 

Do we have the setup for the plot clear now? As I remember (it’s been decades since I’ve been forced to watch) all of these plot points are established in the first ten or fifteen minutes, before the real action starts. From here on the movie makes even less sense.

I don’t despise “Escape From New York” because it’s got bad acting, moronic subplots, and stereotyped cinematic memes. (The big countdown to certain death! The tough gun moll who’s actually got a heart of gold! The bad guy antihero who really is saving the world because the world needs saving (damn it!) and not because he’s been promised a pardon.) I despise “Escape From New York” because from the very first frame it sounds like it was written, produced, and directed by a bunch of insane monkeys on LSD!

With this cinematic gem as the gold standard for “STUPID!!!”, what new movie could come along that could rival it, perhaps even surpass it?

Have you heard of “The Purge” and the sequel that opens next week, “The Purge: Anarchy”?

Here’s how it starts — in 2022, the US government thinks that it can lower the skyrocketing crime rate by having a twelve-hour holiday once a year when nothing is illegal, and actions such as murder, rape, assault, looting, and terrorism are not only allowed, but they’re encouraged. It sort of “gets it all out of our system” in one fell swoop, which in turn lets us be angels for the other 364 1/2 days of the year.

(Wait…)

Ladies and gentlemen, now we have a horse race on our hands! Which of these two wretched stinkers can prove to be so STUPID that brain cells start dying every time you see one of their billboards or television ads? Which waste of resources can prove to be so senseless that there are Pet Rocks saying, “Shit, I can do better than that!”

Answering those questions is left as an exercise for someone else, someone I pity. My vision of hell involves seeing these movies in an endless loop for all of eternity.

Finally, for the record, the first “Purge” movie last year cost $3 million to make and took in a worldwide gross of just under $90 million, a 3000% return on investment.

I weep for our society.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Movies