Dash It All!

DISSING THE DEAD MENTALLY ILL

2014-12-11T17:46:00.002-06:00

Ran across THIS ridiculous post on 'Topix.com' today:
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/hopkinsville-ky/TG9IJ9QQ0Q5R3ENA7

Had THIS gut-reaction (still fuming):

What a bunch of maroons you 'paranormalists' are.

I personally reserve the term 'paranormal investigator' to my questions of what is going on in the heads of people who believe in ghosts in the first place...in reference to WSH, I'd also apply it to anyone who'd call themselves a human being who had the power to stop what really goes on there, yet has always looked the other way (State Reps, etc.)...I'd also question the humanity of anyone who has ever signed off to have a friend or relative put there.

Let me assure you narcissistic lunatic 'ghost researchers'...
I MYSELF resided on that third floor for many months (before a set of competent, knowledgeable, and respected doctors ended my career as a crazy person by clarifying it my case as Munchausen by proxy abuse), there are no 'ghosties' ANYWHERE other than INSIDE the raggedy, cobweb infested minds of all those interested parties with no lines who sit back on their haunches and speculate about such things.

I'm going to outline for you hedonistic, self-involved, 'eccentrics' the ONLY things that terrified ME--and most ALL other long-term patients I met--during my extended stays there. I assure you idiots...if you're a 'patient' there, you sleep with one eye open for ANY OTHER REASON--all involving personal protection from other patients and 'staff'...so you'd ALL notice if you ever HONESTLY awoke with some dead 18th-century child holding your hand, or whatever-the-fuck.

YOUR WORST ENEMIES/FEARS AT WESTERN STATE ARE NEVER THE OTHER PATIENTS

I was never as afraid of the worst, most allegedly 'psychotically violent' patient there, as I was the greedy, overpaid, sneakily-cruel orderlies, NURSES, doctors, and other real, live, in-the-flesh creepy-crawlies that manifested themselves seemingly permanently in that place for decades, and so likely still do.

If you're stuck there awhile, you're NEVER as afraid of the worst, most allegedly 'psychotically violent' patient there, as you quickly learn to be of the greedy, overpaid, sneakily-cruel orderlies, NURSES, doctors, and other real, live, in-the-flesh creepy-crawlies that manifested themselves seemingly permanently in that place for decades, and so likely still do.

The miserably-tortured, lost souls that carry on their bleak, hollow existence, stagger, ramble, and at times even drag themselves across the floors and halls of the various wards, and even the common areas. looking into the eyes of any one of them is one of the scariest things you will ever do, as you all realize your sad collective fate as the unwanted and forgotten. the Chi re-used turn out to be not much more then unstable kleptomaniacs, who, at the nearest opportunity, will sneak into your room, sometimes after setting up a distraction, and either rob you blind of the meekest possessions you are allowed, or even plant contraband to get you into deep trouble and put on the locked ward.

Others may present anywhere from a more sociable or friendly person to a bright and energetic, even affable or friendly character, yet turn out to be nothing more then mousey, stoic, self-interested zombies when presented with the opportunity to witness another patient be beaten to death (in what always amounts to nonsensical, self-aggrandized, almost surreally-mean-spirited and sadistic gang-style acts of extended cruel violence perpetrated in any environment, much less a state-run hospital purporting to care for 'such poor lost souls').

YOU'RE ALWAYS WORSE ONCE YOU'VE BEEN INSTITUTIONALIZED

Ahhh, the complete and total, abject, bleak, and despondence that comes from realizing you've lost all faith, hope and trust in humanity...forever.

There's nothing like watching one 'loving' family after another neglect a family member they've institutionalized in holiday after holiday, birthday after birthday...sitting on the floor with massive amounts of Haldol coursing through your system, disabling you from even the most base emotional reaction while you watch one act of violent senior citizen abuse after another, while day follows day and you finally lose of the will to live, and finally all hope for any type of freedom, over what could very well be a clerical error, an interoffice typographical error, or, most commonly in these places, just the pure, wanton apathy that has encompassed our society, all while people tap away on their smartphones and other digital devices in the outside world, bleeding to themselves that they are the most socially advanced civilization since the dawn of time?

[deep, sardonic breath being drawn]

So, see, those two ideals die together, hand-in-hand, at once...again, FOREVER--making the very REAL, SOBERING, MATURE final realization set in that you no longer fear anything, much less death, so you pretty much joke about the supernatural, praeternatural, and many worse things than you'll ever be aware of, for the rest of your life, even after your body leaves the place. In essence, the question of 'ghosties' in an institution like WSH is HILARIOUS, once you realize that you--yourself--while still LIVING, OUTSIDE THE DAMN PLACE, might very well be still there, in essence, haunting, depressing, and even terrorizing those who put you there, lied about you to keep you there, and never cared where you survived it or not.

Fuck those who work there--they're truly lost, making their retirements--worse, the many staffers there using the job for their 'additional' retirement (to buy those electronics toys...expendable income, yay!) off those hopeless souls caught within. The worst ones are the ones who can honestly believe their own lie that they're 'doing it because they care' (I really do almost cough up blood at this...seriously).

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE DEAD...WHEN YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD?

Moving on, let's enjoin the notion of those who have really died in this place.

No--seriously...not that spoiled goth kid over there whose folks put him in over the weekend...the same 'goth kid' who's eventually left there long enough to give up all hope for anyone he's ever met...or ever will; the same people who were left there to die, like a bunch of grown, sentient, adult, zombified dumpster babies.

Those 'living dead'. Get it?

I mean...once you're caught 'inside', you have to come to the realization at some point that you could easily die there, so...why ignore the obvious questions? Ya blind?

So, you begin wondering who these people around you are--not just the patients, but the ridiculously apathetic, greedy, and sadistic and violently cruel staff--especially the doctors.

What about the conscienceless cops (all types) who've dropped the most pathetic people in the world off at WSH, only to keep hearing over and over they ended up dying there? And--if people really die there all the time, then...just where the hell are they all buried?

Who put them here in the first place? What uncaring, soulless, judge...what worthless shambles of a family...or--my God--what [self-prescribed, yet out-of-touch, unfeeling] parents? What the hell kind of parents don't kill themselves once they've put their kid here...or even let some idiot lunatic judge put them there without a real fight (yes, I am talking fisticuffs here--jeez, more people fight over their toddler getting tackled too hard in pee-wee football than when someone institutionalizes someone they supposedly 'love').

It's unforgivable. Yeah, yeah, Jesus said...but we're human--HE told scribes and pharisees they'd go to hell for comparing HIM to the devil, so...any takers on Christ's AUTOMATIC absolution of those maligned by such indignity, who bore the overwhelming anguish of holding on to the crush of feelings when they were betrayed by a family member? Surely Jesus understands, and that's all we need...frankly, I have no problem issuing such statements as such a thing being unforgivable, since the person saying it is forgiven already, and it's really more an emotional expression decrying the profundity of what it feels like to be betrayed over nothing more than pure selfishness (for my case, just look up Munchausens by Proxy).

As for the other cast of characters in the place...did their families EVER even VISIT; did they fucking care? Did ANYONE on the outside ever even KNOW who died here, during their slow, woefully-extended, bleak disappearance into the void and oblivion?

Faith or no, if you still have an inkling of hope that you could do something to help yourself out, would it even be worth the try, seeing the daily trials and failures that everyone else here goes through, no matter where they came from? If you didn't try, would you be damning yourself--to hell, or even as a human being?

For those who come in with any kind of faith, believe me, you will be questioning it as the weeks drag by, and you realize that--one by one--every friend you had in life has stopped believing in you for what you were, and moved on to their lives without some crazy person in their past. WHEN they do this, you'll encounter the inevitable SCARLET conclusion that your life has now become the joking horror, if not for the least of reasons that you can no longer stomach words coming out of other peoples' mouths without adding them to that joke about lawyers and addicts:

"How do you know a [your human pariah here] is lying?"
"Their LIPS ARE MOVING...BWAAAAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaaaaa...aha.)."
[razz sound]

And so, you realize you've lost faith in humanity. Isn't that the greater loss, than, say, anyone 'coming back from the [cue spooky ethereal 'ghostie' sound effects]...OTHER SIDE'?

BOO! Grow [the fuck] up, WAKE [the fuck] up, and quit being such a bundle of just plain stoo-too-toopid, because when you multiply your 'new outlook' on other lives by the sheer number of [what used to be] people who've also somehow been 'released' (by some monkey with less of an IQ than the dumbest nit-wit you ever met there yourself) you'll also then realize how bleak the outside has now become.

Really.

Yayyyyyyyyyyyy clap-clapclapclapclap. Winning!

Those with a higher intelligence quickly lose that silly 'faith in humanity' after the first few times your toiletries are defiled by another patient or staff member sneaking into your room...or even one of the great SLATE of insecure, wholly immoral, spineless PHDs roaming the place trying to avoid responsibility, trying to track down the most recent 'barely-legal' hire with long legs, blonde hair, a taste for wealth, and a shining lack of conscience.

Actually, either the 'women' OR 'men' staffers at Western State would make great reality television, because...well, if you think Charles Manson's women were a bunch of Stockholm-laden, sadists...well, then, again. In the interest of fairness, if you ever thought Hogan's Heros was even remotely funny, and you can also imagine those guys ending up tricking their fellow prisoners--and, in the end, each other--into being gassed by the Nazis...there you also have the men staffers at WSH (or just a taste, to be honest).

I'd put the following verbal exchange in the series, if I wrote it...because it smacks more of hard truth than Alexis Texas ever deserved those smacks on her nasty little whorish rear.

[Looking at a patient] NURSE: "Hey, doc--this one doesn't look so good".
[Looking down NURSE'S blouse] DOCTOR: "Well, my friend does great boob-jobs...wait...pull out the other one...Ohhh, yeahhh...if you have sex with me, maybe I can set you up do have them done...one at a time."

'Cross their hearts'--they HOPE YOU DIE!

THE STAFF THERE DREADS THE AFTERLIFE FROM SHEER GUILT

The first time a 'staffer' begins denying you the simplest act of human kindness-- even a 'legit-owed' candy bar from your own canteen fund--you realize what a helpless CHILD they're going to be allowed--actually, ENABLED--to treat you like...even though most of them are either younger than you, and ALL of them are mental toddlers (drawing their 3rd retirement at age 19, coached by the other greedy, 'lifer' staff-members).

It's almost as if they are attempting to ferberize you...now that you are no longer an individual, much less an adult, it's quite possible, that they'll be enabled to treat you with the ridiculous, silent disdain of an adult with 'something better to do' than help YOU, no matter the time or need. Rest ASSURED they're getting [fucking] PAID TO...but...who gives a shit after hours? Somebody sneak a camera in? HAHA, they'd find it by the time they really begin their 'extra-special', 'double-secret', 'after-hours' treatment they're ALL 'entitled to' after their FIRST HOUR OF WORK THERE. After all...they're treating people they've been misogynistically been led to believe might not even HAVE SOULS, much less GOOD, STABLE, PEACEFUL, God-Fearing, yada-yada-yada souls (kapish?!).

Hop-town is ALSO 'uber-special' because of the ridiculously-retarded environment of every other resident living around the entire county...they're nuts. Genuinely, devotedly so...they'll believe IN Edgar Cayce as a fucking PROPHET (don't question the guy who got 10 'prophecies' correct, now, even IF he spit out so fucking MANY such drug-crazed mumblings that the idiot-secretary he duped into marrying him had to sit idly by him 24/7 UNTIL he woke from his stupor and began yet another rant...to the tune of WELL OVER 10 THOUSAND such idiocracies). Hop-town also spawned one of the most ridiculously-UNBELIEVABLE (to the point every citizen should be made to MEDITATE on the word 'unbelievable' alone for at LEAST 15 minutes every day, by local decree...or to eat) tales of 'alien bullshit' ever pooped out of a meth-heads crazy 'mind-hole', in the "Kelly Hopkinsville 'Encounter'" (yes, I did double-quote that, one being 'fakey', and you should mentally cue up those same spooky 'ghostie' sound effect along with the theme from 'The Twilight Zone', just to get you through reading this bullshit on wiki alone, much less if you're dumb enough to see the History Channel version more than once, by mistake...or just to laugh at Hop-town...again.).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%E2%80%93Hopkinsville_encounter

You begin to wonder how long your own humanity will rule out your own baser notions of survival, especially after hospital staff seems to preclude acts of violence as completely acceptable because 'the patient is relearning how to take care of itself'.

I'll CLOSE thus, 'in remembrance' of some of the more morose, vile, champions-of-evil, that worked at WSH when I was wrongly incarcerated there (the actual wrongly incarcerated will never be heard in Kentucky, because people here are so fully stupid they'll stubbornly believe anything ELSE besides what sounds sensible).

I can recall every first name of all staffers from over 20 years ago, when I was there, but only one last name because:

#1--IF a 'patient' got suspicious enough to even 'try' to report a wrong done by orderlies (night staff)...well, you were left there that same night, and REPORTS WERE NOT AT ALL ANONYMOUS, so...you were due to die. So, you were kept out of the loop as far as the names of anyone/everyone entrusted with your 'care'.
#2--IF you yourself started 'acting funny' (as in, asking ANY night staffer their LAST NAME)...you were slated for destruction in minutes, that night's log 'adjusted' accordingly.
#3--you were fucking SEDATED...you were lucky if you could REMEMBER your OWN FIRST NAME, much less SPEAK IT.

Thus...I can only recall one, single last name, but I can surprisingly recall almost EVERY SINGLE OTHER ONE, MORE THAN 20 FRIGGING YEARS LATER.

I know where 'some' of these 'actors' are today...others, well, I'll be forever looking over MY shoulder, as you would be...nothing like living someone else's lie.

These few [real, actual] characters...I guess you could say 'The character of these men', I'll forever question...no, more like 'hold up as prime examples of the worst lack thereof of any human beings I've ever encountered'.

Some words? Lying, openly deceitful, immoral, sneaky, sly, dastardly (I know, it was hilarious, but sometimes you were almost laughing while being nearly beaten to death!), vile, and 'devoid of human kindness, empathy'--oh, so 'intentionally apathetic'. Destructive, violent, seedy, cheating, scandalous, hedonistic...I said immoral already...

And the BEST doctors there trusted them IMPLICITLY, because they were there for one purpose--to KEEP DOWN THE THREATS...these were among the sneakiest-smartest people I've ever met, too, so...there's that. These 'men' [ha] were there to keep down those zombified 'threats' even if they killed them...and patients did--and I'm sure, still do--disappear under such circumstances quite often (lifers, here one day, never seen again, 'better place' and all that threatened at 'medicine time').

SO--I've meandered here, but any takers on my message?

Quitcher bitchin about 'ghosties'; that is reprehensible, and those who INSIST UPON doing so should be forced into WSH for awhile until they learn the ropes of mortality in the presence of real, life-threatening danger to one's person, so they STFU.

I'll stop here...Halloween is over a month ago, and just because people who enjoy fantasies like ghosties and horror, doesn't expressly mean I have to ruin MY my day any further.

Suffice it to say that we should HOPE Western State Hospital is haunted...it would be perhaps the only justice ever meted out to those countless souls who were thoughtlessly shut behind those fortress walls over the last century and more and never 'made it out'.

Saying one 'died' there at all is a misnomer for many reasons...mostly because no one 'lives' once placed there. Those ensnared there die the moment they enter the place, whether their snare be life, the law, or their own selfishness, cruelty, lies, and greed.

As more and more such places are discovered to have long-harbored mass, unmarked graves...

http://www.today.com/id/31127332/ns/today-today_news/t/he-adds-names-lost-graves-mentally-ill/

...one can either assume they SHOULD be haunted, as I've said here--yet over protest to those who barely survived their own living atrocities, themselves.

To someone like myself who knows more, and better--God granted any soul tricked, deceived, lied-about, slandered, and abandoned, and whisked them away to a direct and speedy entrance into the gates of Heaven for their trials and torture here on Earth, and they never looked back.

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course--The Concept of a 'Local Vendor Cartel'

2013-11-14T08:54:00.002-06:00

We've all heard the variations on the old phrase, "If it looks like a [often expletive noun], smells like [same identifier], and sounds like [again], then it's probably [one more time, with gusto!]."

Well, here in Bowling Green, KY--my hometown, where I've lived my entire life--I've finally come to the 'scarlet conclusion' [scarlet to denote it's importance] that our gas prices deserve their very own euphemism--or, more aptly, their own term.

The term? I'm calling this local 'price fixing phenomenon' the vendor cartel.

For years, our gas prices in Bowling Green have been substantially and consistently higher than the surrounding region's rates; often greater than the national average, and very commonly higher than large urban areas in the United States. Sometimes they even overtake areas routinely known as tourist traps.

Local citizens of Bowling Green have been writing their opinions to the local paper for years--dozens have been printed (usually more than 30 per year), and I'm sure hundreds have been received by the newspaper.

I'm no expert in the method of problem solving, per se, but I've finally come to realize that, in order to solve our problem, we first have to properly identify it.

It's really so very simple--what we have here is a 'vendor cartel'.

Of course, anyone my age or older would know I've stolen part of my little 'term' from the phrase 'oil cartel', which we were forcibly familiarized with in the 1970s to identify why gas prices began soaring way back then, and why they were also probably not coming back down.

Here's the wikipedia entry, for noobs. Basically, it really was a bunch of rich, greedy Arabs who got tired of the U.S. helping out their avowed enemy (but also their neighbor), Israel. These wealthy punks banded together and successfully conspired to create a shortage of their product everywhere we [the United States] had friends. When pressured, the major oil cartels (primarily one called OPEC) will throw out some fake explanation for their greedy deceit--everything from 'war is hell (and expensive, isn't it) to outright defiance toward us. Everyone growing up more recently knows that they just don't feel the need to give reasons any more--they've grown far too wealthy off our fat, made powerful, dangerous terrorist alliances, and don't give a fat burp about being accountable for their greedy ways.

Which leads me to my comparison of how this applies locally. In reading dozens of complaints from our local citizens in the local Daily News, I noticed a distinctly repeated pattern of a small group of local online users (i.e. trolls) who routinely take point against anyone daring to voice their 1st-amendment-protected rights to complain about local gas prices. These trolls are always the same people, always use aliases, and are 'out there' apparently to 'take down' anyone daring enough to say anything against the obscenely-high gas prices around here. Like mercenaries, I've seen them make online comments that go far beyond the pale--actually tantamount to hate crimes--about little old ladies, even, who are basically saying they're quickly becoming shut-ins in Bowling Green because they simply cannot afford the extremes in gas prices here anymore. When I rushed in to defend these people being attacked, online, I've been called everything from crazy, to outright psychotic, and in one case, even a pedophile (of course, you can look me up--I'm NOT!!!).

These local trolls seem really desperate to squelch any complainers locally, and they're more prolific (and often, obscene) than Stephen King about it. They live up to their troll status by making their hate-filled, false, comments, in every single story online; the Daily News, WBKO TV station, even social media sites (Topix). The things they say get uglier than most Black Friday scenes--heck, even where wedding dresses are involved (obvious snark--'sorry').

I've often jumped in and called these trolls what they're begging to be called ['trolls']; sometimes I've even speculated openly in my online responses to them, that I wonder if they're being paid by local gas vendors to make their hate-filled rants.

Whatever their pay-offs may be, they obviously get something from attempting to slander, defame, and demoralize innocent locals who just want some final, real, official responses from the KY Attorney General, or some other public officials (many of the opinion letters have been open letters to these public figures).

Many letter-writers (and most online commenters) have been openly speculating for more than a decade that 'the government' (whether local, regional, state, or even federal) was directly--or indirectly--involved in some kind of price-fixing scheme, but a)no one's been caught, b)it sounds a little bit more than paranoid, assuredly, and c)frankly, we don't have the local investigative media resources to do any more than just that--speculate.

So, I thought, this morning, if I'm going to speculate...which I will...if we're all given to speculate.

Hmm...let me just put it this way: While we're speculating, why not at least try and correctly identify the real problem, by giving it a name that might even correlate with what's been said to be going on in Bowling Green in so many of those letters through the years?

That's when I came up with it--our very own 'vendor cartel', a local group that will do basically anything to support its own greedy ends. A 'group' like a cartel might even be a number of organizations that--by sheer number alone, much less the inherent resources of each sub-group in the larger one--could even hire their very own 'Pavlov dogs', trained to attack anyone questioning what is going on here, especially if they're getting close to the scent of the real answers, themselves.

In the 1970s, the Arab oil cartel successfully created such a shortage of actual gas here in the U.S. that we were basically shut down economically. Anyone who lived through it should also see a very direct effect the embargo then had on the economy. The very same year OPEC 'cancelled' our gas shipments, this tactic also led to one of the biggest stock market crashes in the history of the market itself.

So, I don't take my little 'term' lightly--it's what we have in Bowling Green--a 'vendor cartel', and I'm just happy to give it a name.

One of the most intelligent characters in the Frank Herbert book/movie series Dune was Thufir Hawat; he was identified in the series as a 'master assassin' hired by the royal family depicted in the series as the personal private instructor to Paul Atreides (heir to the Duke's throne); in this office, he made some very apt, intelligent, and remarkable statements, often directly to Paul himself. One of my favorites--and certainly one of the more memorable--quotes in the movie adaptation of Dune, came from Thufir, shortly after he accompanied 'House Atreides' to the planet Arrakis (a.k.a. 'Dune') as part of their attempt to escape the evil schemes of the 'Emperor of the Known Universe' (I know, he sounds like a guy you'd want to escape from, right?)

The quote comes from when Thufir was putting in overtime for the Atriedes', looking around to see the 'Emperor' had 'installed' any type of 'welcoming party' to kill them off.

"The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its existence".

How this applies to our local problem? We can speculate endlessly about why our gas prices here are so 'inexplicably high', but a better start might be finding out if looking at the concept of a local 'vendor cartel' might help explain things more exactly, more correctly, and even lend some insight into rooting out those responsible, by looking at the behaviors associated with cartels.

TWC? OMG...

2013-07-06T09:02:00.002-05:00

After battling against the unfair monopolization of our local ISP market by Insight Communications for nearly two decades (they changed their name--but not ownership--once during that time), now our local, regional, and state government has again left us unprotected, and essentially allowed us to be given over, to a much more massive, corporate communications conglomerate (impressive double-alliteration, right!?).

Time Warner Communications (aka 'Road Runner', regionally, as far as their ISP is concerned), is frikking HUGE.

(read their wikipedia citation here)

Perhaps they really do fully intend to bulk out the Insight market with all their streaming offerings (apps, online services--read this part of that same wikipedia link).

However, as consumers, we stand to at their multinational conglomerate corporate 'mercy' (ha!--good luck!) because we've never had any hi-speed broadband (over the fastest connection--coax/fiber) for Insight before.

It already concerns me that the pre-existing monopoly situation wasn't ever even addressed--much less resolved--by any government oversight--before Insight was acquired by TWC.

This is mostly due to the structure of the way the laws regarding this particular industry--the FCC and FTC both can't really do anything about monopolies, and honestly, neither could do so much as force Insight to even respond to concerns over their longstanding monopoly...so, TWC could run amok here, financially, and just exploit us, rather than do what's right, and be an even better ISP for the region.

I'm hoping they don't, but there are signs they're going to be worse than an absentee, corporate landlord.

Assuming TWC knows they've bought a monopoly (HA! you bet--they're not the world's biggest com-company by being oppresively ignorant), we could be in for quite a ride, here...actually, I'm sure that term will do nicely for what we're in for--it'll be almost the same experience (services, billing, customer support) as Insight, with a few more digital online services.

Actually, I won't be surprised the first time I see TW making Kentuckians pay for services they offer for free in other regions, because we'll have to...because they're our only choice.

Because...well...'Monopoly'!

FRESH TENDRILS

The fact that TWC is forcing Insight customers out of their email addresses is a BIG, negative indicator that this means we'll NOW be at the mercy [pure snark: there will be NONE] of not only a local monopoly, but a huge, indestructable CORPORATE one...the 'transition process' is a joke already--even the site pages 'shepherding' customers through the process are written so poorly, with almost NO vital info on what new email address you're getting, AND all 'registration confirmation' emails to old Insight addresses GOING STRAIGHT INTO JUNK MAIL BOXES (unbelievable--doing this for a local PC repair client, I had to do it again using his gmail account in order to even SEE the damn thing--AT ALL!)...all this amounts to one HUGE mess, and I'M ABSOLUTELY SURE price gouging GOING HAYWIRE by TWC...

Just WAIT 'til it finally 'hits home' to this corporate Tyrannosaur the unchecked hoards of unprotected, helpless vassals they have here in KY--they'll be exploiting it mercilessly in a matter of weeks--as soon as the interoffice memos will allow.

TOSSED INTO THE DOGPIT

They're already throwing us into their corporate, national, dogfighting pits with promotions and marketing, as well--Wednesday afternoon I received a phone call from a '513' area code, and idiotically answered--it was a COLD call from TWC's promotional center in CA, but as she ID'd herself as a TWC rep, I thought they were calling people to help them 'transition'...no such luck--QUITE THE OPPOSITE--this TWC rep hung me on the phone for 30 minutes trying to get all my info, asking questions like "Are you satisfied with the current internet speed you've been having?", and most deceitfully, this one: "We're just checking to make sure things are going well during this transitional phase you've been going through in your area".

When I heard THAT, I was fooled into thinking that TWC really WAS helping people already, and that maybe--just mayyyy-be--there was the slightest chance that their sheer size would allow them to allocate more CS (and--'gasp'--tech support!) resources to our 'newly-acquired region'.

No, this was a damn promotional cold call; she put me on hold at least THREE times, checking, 'double-checking', seemingly SO conscientious about the whole process, then mid-way through, she started trying to sell me more packages...

Ahhh, but that's not the worst part...next came that frikkin' RUB.

At the 30 min. 'mark', I had indeed committed to one of the smaller TV / NET packages she was pushing...and was really disappointed when she abruptly told me she was 'going to have to put you on hold one more time'...I sighed 'yes'...FOUR minutes later, she gets back on to tell me this:

"Sir, I'm sorry, but I checked with my supervisor here, and you will have to call Insight local technical support to get the combination of packages you want--I'm sorry--I thought you could get that, but apparently, right now, it's a case of 'two sides of the same coin' [whut?]', and more cheesy, contrived, on-the-spot, embarrassing and hurried misnomers that meant this, PURELY:

TWC is now sending out mass Insight customer phone number lists to its corporate sales centers out in CA, pushing them to cold-call Insight customers, who they cannot even provide ANY packages to at this time.

Their promotional team has not been prepped to offer us the CHOICES even INSIGHT was 'allowing' us--so I'm already as disjointed and disillusioned as I could be about this, and, 'God help me', I'm forced to think about our hapless, ridiculous, crappy satellite alternatives here, as well.

And--believe me--in this region (Central, Western, SC KY), the satellite 'net market SUCKs beyond compare, and I shudder at the notion. It's a death-sentence for any type of web use--weather-dependent, highly-restrictive, undependable, etcetera, etcetera...they suck. More than 80% of my local HUMAN customers who've 'tried' satellite internet here, have PAID OVER $200 TO BUY OUT OF THEIR CONTRACTS...especially HughesNET--my God they're awful.

Oh well--we're probably just royally, officially, screwed--BG has the worst selection of ISP's already--now, it's going to get worse, and also, I can hear one massive toilet flushing sound, from the legal team TWC already has together once they figure out how well they can maintain their monopoly if they can just keep owning the actual coax and fiber lines that keep us in 'subjecture'.

Justice is as Justice Does

2013-05-26T12:20:00.001-05:00

An 18-year-old Florida woman is currently going to trial for raping her 14-year-old 'girlfriend'--for having sex with a 14-year-old girl, and the media is on this story like hot glue.

CNN Reports her attorney as having this to say:

In a statement saying that Hunt was rejecting the plea deal, her attorney, Julia Graves, wrote:

"This is a situation of two teenagers who happen to be of the same sex involved in a relationship. If this case involved a boy and girl, there would be no media attention to this case.

"Our client is a model citizen. She has been placed in an environment of school with her classmates where they go to school together, have lunch together, and play on the same team and are allowed to have communication and contact without barriers. Then when something develops between the two as a result of this environment created by the state, it leads to criminal prosecution."

"If this incident occurred 108 days earlier when she was 17, we wouldn't even be here," the attorney wrote.

How ironic that must sound to all the males currently being housed for raping their teenage 'girlfriends', in our penal system.

Listen--two wrongs don't make a right. Nor do a million--and you can't split hairs on this matter.

What a 'liberal', 'progressive', comment by her [female] attorney, indicating no one would even pay attention to this if it were 'between a male and female'.

That's quite true--on the other hand, a male defendant's chance at any kind of trial, much less a 'fair' one, would be minimal, at best...'court-appointed' attorney, a speedy trial, a decade's sentence in the state penitentiary...you know--'all that hub-bub'.

This is simple pandering to the liberal media, and I hope it backfires on her (the attorney, not to mention the self-serving little 'pre-vert' who got caught).

Yes, I'd make no judge over this case; this much is true--I'd have to recuse myself over her cutesy-little 'rich-girl' name alone...

Kaitlin the child rapist...yah, I'd be tossed from the seat on this one.

If justice is served, this'll be one case. If it isn't, then this will be one case that should shine light on some profoundly inherent prejudices that still taint our entire legal and justice system.

Worst of all, it sounds like the 18-year-old's family actually makes it quite clear they're on her side in denying their daughter was wrong to have sex with a 14-year-old.

Typical modern stuff; would like to see the Southern Poverty Legal group, the NAACP, and [might as well] Al Sharpton weigh in on the injustice on this one.

Remember the 3 18-year-old black men in Georgia who were tried as adults by an openly racist, good-ole-boy, white judge, for merely getting consensual fellatio from their 15-year-old white girlfriends in a motel? National media attention to that case was immediately swept right under the rug just in time for these lads to be neglected by the media due to the 'tragic death' of Anna Nicole Smith, and lest we forget, 'Judge' Larry Seidlin's crocodile tears. Seidlin even made news headlines for recusing himself from the Smith case, and even more, for trying to parlay his moment of fame into his own TV series (within weeks).

Furthermore, those 18-year-olds were openly railroaded, when a 'media-hog' attorney named 'BJ Bernstein' made herself 'available' to them. How whorish--and this, in their most dire moment, facing the most ridiculous, backwater, white, monster-of-a-judge in GA, who openly admitted his racism, even during their trial.

Hope some 'real winners' rush to 'help' our young friend, here--guys [males] with names like 'Chester M. Olester', sounds about as suitable and appropriate as 'BJ' was for those Georgia kids. Or maybe something more indicative of what happened (I can't--I'm already sick at typing this rant).

Now, maybe it's time for some real honesty--our little 'darling', and likely mommy's li'l angel, Kaitlin, deserves no more or less a justice system--trial, jury, judge, attorney, and all the media she gets--than those 3 Georgia boys who went a little too far just once, and were sold into a hell worse than slavery.

I know I'll be watching...I'll try not to leer, but it doesn't mean she's not guilty.

Insight Communications Basically Sucks

2013-04-06T13:24:00.001-05:00

INSIGHT SCREWS US YET AGAIN!

NO MORE ESPN FOR XBOX LIVE APP AFTER TIME-WARNER BUYOUT

Here in Bowling Green, KY, our local ISP 'provider' (term used loosely--worst CS in any I've dealt with, anywhere), was just bought out by TW, and as a result, we're now officially screwed out of using our 360 ESPN app.

I called TW 'CS', which PUT ME DIRECTLY THROUGH TO Insight as soon as I gave their automated system my tel. # (associated with Insight), and a CS 'rep' there interrupted me rudely 4 times (loudly) in under a minute to tell me this (basically, a direct quote):

"You're still an Insight customer, even though TW owns Insight, so, the way to get that content on the internet is [sales pitch coming] to go to our website, click on ESPN3 [knew it], and go from there. I don't know about the XBox, but as far as phones, and the internet, you're going to have to do it that way".

Fantastic!

As Adam Sandler said in 'The Waterboy', "It's time to open a can of whoop-ass!"

Today's 'discovery' is yet another in a long string of disappointments I've had as an Insight customer, but there are no choices otherwise in the entire region for this type of ISP.

Every time they can, Insight has screwed their customers out of content, raised prices, and contracted their internal customer service to people often doing it right out of their own homes.

These have been the rudest people in the world, and Insight has even shut down local accounts that have been attacked and temporarily accessed (in my GF's case, with no evidence at all), by online scammers.

Case in point--my girlfriend, who's always paid her bills EARLY, and never done anything wrong (esp. on 'net), when we got home from vacation a few years back to find that Insight had suspended her account without contacting her as to 'why' leaving her with no 'net access except big, rude, home pages like the one below (except the older version had a 1-800 to call).

To me, these looked like hacked pages themselves, and I thought some hackers were targeting Insight to 'bring it down', while we were still paying!

I called the number, and got a CS rep who seemed to be working from a script, to the point speaking to a human being was actually not even necessary (as he wasn't supposed to be listening).

This kid was apparently also 'too young' to have good phone presence OR manners, and kept interrupting us (I informed him I was putting him on speakerphone because I had some questions, but my girlfriend, the account holder, was listening in to try and understand why her account had been closed).

He was very curt, and rude, saying 'you must have done something', then 'we have the info here', and it took a few minutes of prodding on my part to get him to even 'divulge' what the hell he was talking about...when he finally spit it out, it was something we never even knew about--somebody had 'supposedly' (INSIGHT's servers showed it--not our email accounts) used her ACTUAL account (not her wifi--her email account) to send out a lot of online pharmaceutical spam, and we'd never been aware.

Didn't matter, as far as these idiots were concerned--we'd 'used up' one of our 'four strikes' (forever, even--how American is it to not even know how many there are in the sport?) and Insight would 'graciously' re-open her access, but only because they were so very, incredibly, generous.

Make you sick? Did me.

I work on PCs, and don't have time to support any other illegal activities, online or not, so I lectured the little turd for a couple of minutes, telling him that currently even CNN had all sorts of reports going around saying how people were hacking others' accounts, and it certainly had been done here, and 'how can we not even see these supposed emails in any of our 'sent' folders (made him sit and listen while I accessed over four of them right then).

The kid had nothing to say, so he gave me some rude, idiotic platitude about 'well, that's the situation', and I left him with a hint that perhaps Insight should start looking at someone in their very own tech hierarchy abusing their skill/access/'power' to do stuff like this (hacking, using their access to random customer accounts), and even if this wasn't happening, they should quit falsely accusing their very best customers (no exaggeration here--my GF is likely in their 'top 5%' as far as bill-payers, actual 'rule-oriented' account holders, etc.) and start hiring some techs who, a)knew what the hell they were talking about, and b)would find the real culprits and quit accusing/abusing their best clients, especially while all the Insight ads (back in 2009) were depicting their 'then-CEO' Michael Willner going from home-to-home (Insight customers, of course) 'getting foppishly roped' into doing the customer's random housework (from walking the dog to cooking supper), with his severely-dopey, and calculatingly off-putting personality leading him into all sorts of [TOTAL and COMPLETE BULLSHIT] like this:

When Irony is Sweet

Ironically, Willner's very own 'blog' (actually, if he ever left content on this blog, it was basically what you'd see if you Googled something like 'ISP-sponsored hype', I'll bet) currently has only two comments on it--both unreadable, but one, looking exactly like what they were shutting down accounts over (in our case, described above).

What a jerk!

And--and in the case of his [then] company--'idiots'. Pretty ruthless ones, at that.

See Michael Willner's 'still-open', mile-long, hype-filled drivel-of-a-blog, here.

The REAL issue here is that we are still being monopolized here in Bowling Green.

Our only choice for cable broadband internet was originally owned by Rick Williams--now one of our city commissioners--who may have even used his sellout money to help him afford his local campaign money. Pure speculation here...how much does a local commissioner campaign cost, anyway? I really don't know, and I'm sure it 'depends' on all sorts of factors, including how 'much you want to win'.

Rick Williams
Former Storer Cable Manager

Williams denied any such thing to me in person when I asked him about it during his 'first' run for that office, in 2010, when he showed up on my girlfriend's front porch hanging his campaign door-signs.

I shook his hand, smiled, said I remembered him as being a previous owner of our local cable company, and then said I had a few questions for him with regards to local internet providers in Bowling Green.

First I asked him if he still had any 'private' holdings from that sale--any stock in the company that currently owned it (Insight), which he readily denied.

Then I asked him if he was aware that some local residents didn't like 'the new owners', and letters to the local newspaper indicated that many felt we were 'forced' to subscribe to them, and people often expressed worries, concerns, and were 'wondering' if we'd ever see any competition for Insight in our area. If the sweat beads didn't form, he was visibly shaken that somebody was 'holding him up' with such intense questions on a front porch where he wasn't ready for this stuff.

At first, he didn't really have an answer, but basically acted like he 'empathized', since, like I'd said, 'we're all in the same basket in town'.

I really did want an answer to that one, though, especially since he was literally campaigning for a local public office that could effect a rule on this locally, and promote some competition to come in for Insight. So I did a little filibustering, meandering around how 'American' the free market is, and how good it was for local prices, and would benefit everybody...'heck, even him' (since he'd said he hadn't retained any of his personal stock in the company he'd sold, which he managed for many years, and had, at least partially owned, for quite awhile)...

That was enough for him to start looking nervously around for his 'ride'--who turned out to be his wife, rolling around the corner in the mini-van to 'save him'.

As he busily said his 'goodbye', I asked him if he had any intention of doing anything about it 'if he was elected'.

He made sure to avoid that topic entirely, claiming 'that's not really the kind of thing we can do locally'.

Really. Then why do we bother voting for any elected officials hired to oversee the local city economy, then?

As he left, I reminded him how close our local situation is like a 'local' version of the situation that led to the infamous 'AT&T Breakup'; when Congress declared them a monopoly, and forced them to lease their (literal) existing phone cables (already installed in every home in the U.S.) to open up trade for competition, freeing that market up substantially.

I'll say this--if that hadn't happened, we'd all be paying AT&T over $100 a month for basic land-line phone service, and we certainly wouldn't have seen many of the biggest innovations in smartphones driven by that market, once genuine competition was introduced there. It stands as one of the most important decisions made by our Supreme Court since it's beginning, especially those that affected the American economy. Now, THAT's American.

Not what we see here, with our local ISP 'situation'--this is just open corruption, here--it's advanced to that point, after years of seeing the idea come up on the local newspaper by citizens from every walk of life, not just those who even know much about the economy, or the internet. We have a monopoly here that may be getting 'covered up' by any local politician(s) with investments in the Insight company (and wouldn't they have invested in Time Warner before the recent buyout, since this would make their stock portfolios quite healthy-looking to other companies they were interested in investing in?).

Back in 2009, after talking with Williams, I reported back to my girlfriend I wouldn't be voting for him, and I recommended she not, either, and told her why. I felt I didn't want to see him sitting on what is basically our city's 'Board of Directors', knowing he could use that position to become even less accessible in the future. I felt his answers expressed his general apathy toward his constituents, and that he would miss every opportunity to serve in that way. Sadly, I just felt this about his character--his dismissive attitude in his every answer had said a lot to me.

Despite my own growing apathy toward my city's economic situation, and my feeling that some corruption exists here, I still think we need to make these issues consistently heard by our officials.

This blog won't do it. I certainly can't 'do' anything by myself.

I'm just one person, just like everybody else living here.

Media corporations are so big that they see their customers more as 'stats' every day.

Their attitude toward their subscribers can be anything they want, because they're setting their prices based on having no other competition to keep their prices reasonable.

Our local internet prices have climbed astronomically over the past few years because these companies lack any 'real' and 'true' competitors. Most 'letter-writers' to the local newspaper (and many online comments) indicate what I also feel--that our treatment by these companies also suffers at the hand of this situation.

We need to take these issues to our state elected officials before prices get even further out of hand.

Gun Control for Pinheads...from Pinheads

2013-02-14T13:32:00.002-06:00

The latest series of overtly-political, high-profile, public appearances by ex-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her sheepish hubby Mark Kelly, throw new light on the inherent dangers involved when politicians try and hurry up to pass any new legislation to avoid a larger issue.

We should all step back and gain some perspective right now on what is being said, starting with how darkly sinister it all sounds, from a historical perspective, in the very least.

Grouping the 'mentally ill' in with felons, in current language being tossed madly about, is just one of the main problems with their faulty, hasty, public reasoning. Honestly, it's starting to sound like an ad campaign for Nazi-era eugenics.

Felons are far more likely to try and get around any of the current waiting periods to get guns anyway--they've NOT been declared insane, and so should be the target of any new, tougher laws involved in the background check process.

There's a strong argument that anybody 'insane' enough to be considered too dangerous to own a gun, should already be in a mental institutions, where they'd hopefully be separated from guns in the first place.

Which type of 'crazy' will render you unable to protect yourself as provided for in the 2nd Amendment?

Psycho? Schizo? What about 'clinically depressed'? This makes any psychiatrist's diagnosis so very much more weighty and potentially dangerous than ever before. What happens if a shrink decides some clinically depressed soul is too 'dangerous to themselves' to own a weapon, then that person gets their head blown off, and their family murdered (and worse), the next time some 'normal' person (who may have fooled the avg. psychiatrist) kicks down their front door in a home invasion to fund their drug habit?

Too many questions are raised by the Gifford/Kelly 'team's multiplicity of recent public appearances, replete with every kind of gun-crime victim, to be normal, much less base any new law on.

Many of the gun-crime victims are also deceased, making using their stories at least questionable, not to mention that half of them would probably be against any laws resulting from use of their images to curry favor and momentum towards any new bill.

Politicians rushing to guarantee re-election are making this push by creating a rally based on some of the faultiest reasoning ever laid out in public, much of it overwhelmingly biased, bigoted, and prejudiced.

Gifford and her annoying husband Mark Kelly are openly acting as foils for the NRA and major gun lobbies, hitting the media with so many public appearances that it's likely devastating for her health, and stands only as a future platform for his political ambitions.

The language he has clearly been using in his many, many late-night talk show and other public appearances indicates they are preparing to void the rights of millions of Americans who will now face harsh federal prison sentences for trying to go out and buy a gun.

I'm not saying we should prep all psychos for the X-revolution, here.

I'm saying that there are millions of people affected by mental illness who deserve their right to own and carry a gun for self-protection, hunting, and sport protected, as any other striation of society.

As for felons...'No'. They have sincerely voided their right to own a gun long after knowing the consequences of the actions that made them convicted felons. However, I do want to add that there are probably more 'genuine' different classes of felons than even recognized in all the lexicon of psychiatric diagnoses; so, far from being 'another topic' for 'another day', let me address that here, too (while I'm neither mentally ill nor a felon).

It's pretty easy, generally--felons convicted of violent gun crimes should certainly not be allowed permits, and many classes of felon activity normally classed differently should be grouped according to their affiliation or similarity to gun crimes, for the purpose of preventing violent criminals from accessing a gun that will enable them to either commit a crime themselves, or facilitate one.

For example, any gang-related crimes should just quickly get you a ticket into the penal system, and permanently bar you from legally owning a handgun, with the strictest consequences, should you try. And by this, I do mean walking into the hunting section of your local Walmart and trying to buy one. In fact, if a convict is tricky enough to do this, with all the current hub-bub, he's almost definitely going to commit a violent crime if he gets a gun, so actually, an immediate background check should be available to all stores carrying guns, so he can get picked up by police in the parking lot before he tries another store.

Now let's revisit the poor sap who got so depressed on Valentine's Day in 1978 that he tried to pull the trigger on a gun in his mouth, yet by divine intervention it jammed.

Now, definitely any psychiatrist he visited would have practiced some sort of psychotropic compassion on him, likely for years. The resulting treatment might just be prescribed until his natural death, especially if his doctor did his job 'right'. This guy's 'treatment' is also obviously not in my scope--it's his doctor's, with an eye toward the 'poor sap's' lasting well-being, socialization, etc.

I'm not questioning anyone's psychiatric diagnosis here either, but for the sake of this argument, it would be an oversight (in the classic sense of the word) to overlook the simple fact that treating them for mental illness should not deem them unfit to protect themselves. Many people are diagnosed with severe chronic depression as young adults, and live for decades after having to begin taking anti-depressants. In fact, we are a nation heading down the road of having millions of citizens doing so, for 50 years apiece or more.

Would this early diagnosis deprive them of the right to 'bear arms'?

Again, I'm certainly not leaping into any debate on the overall validity of their psychiatric diagnosis, especially since it may have actually saved their lives, enabling them to be happy, care-free, yet responsible, productive people for their remaining years on the earth.

I am questioning whether many of them would be able to enjoy the same freedoms as other, undiagnosed, Americans, including the rights guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Many people diagnosed with mental illness are misdiagnosed anyway (just ask their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th psychiatrists--rimshot!). I'm not even going to tread into that mess--almost every aspect of a person's individual psychiatric diagnosis carries so much weight that there may not even be a group of psychiatrists or psychologists who could hope to quality any statements regarding their patients' obligatory right to own a firearm. There may be some doctors who delve into the area themselves--some who may have their own diagnoses, and who also happen to be as gun-proud (and protective) as any NRA President could ever hope to be.

Many underlying issues make this whole subject difficult to even 'hit on the head': the type of diagnosis, the length of its effectiveness, the severity, and multiple issues right down to the appropriateness of the individuals physician's stance on gun control, would have to be addressed, making this whole issue one big proverbial hot mess, as the tabloids say.

This is my blog, so I'll just put it out there: we should not 'throw' the issue of the mentally ill owning guns in with the issue of felons owning guns. Instead of laying the ceremoniously scapegoating hand on the 'mentally ill', we should just focus on the problem, which is not necessarily the mentally ill, or felons in general. Many people living under both these classifications are in places already that keep them away from guns. The NRA is right when they say it's not necessarily guns, either. It's a problematically difficult, complicated mess of problems; a whole complex mess of issues that need to be understood by every single one of us in the United States before we let a decision of any kind be made, make the decision, or even ignore it and blindly hope it goes away.

Current trends in increasing, often random, gun violence shows it is not going away, but here are some of my stronger points in naming scapegoating the mentally ill as an issue and a contingency in considering any changes in the current gun laws as we have them now:

Throwing the Baby into the Bathwater

The baby, here, should be considered a euphemism--until babies begin wreaking havoc in shopping malls for anything less than severe cuteness and temporal gas-related crabbiness (even then, they're still cute!)

The baby, here, is the 'mentally ill'. 'Throwing them into the bathwater' is doing what I just did in that last sentence--calling a group living, breathing human beings a potentially denigrating, socially-restrictive, vague, chronically misunderstood, and often politically charged term that has made its way into common language as a benign way to classify misunderstood and often inexplicable behavior, placing them all literally, or euphemistically, in the same basket, for lack of an even worse term.

Most often this is done by everyone except the type of persons whose profession coined the term in the first place. It used to be called 'pop psychology' (see also 'armchair quarterback', 'back-seat driver', and, for those with a religious bent, 'hypocrite').

If your doctor speaks to your blob, you may want a 2nd opinion.

Throwing those who've experienced living under the grouping 'mentally ill' may not be very appropriate, as we can all guess by the terribly overt means undertaken by psychotropic medicine companies to 'clear up' any 'misapprehensions' in their often cartoony, subtly surreal ads.

Throwing them in with felons by naming them as part of any new law that would imprison them for trying to buy a gun for protection, might not be exactly what the doctor ordered, and I think we need to start hearing about this in Congress before we even continue allowing such political gerrymandering to continue on such a serious issue.

A felon would be far more likely to abuse any background check system than anyone previously diagnosed with anything less than a psychotic diagnosis who had already committed a violent crime.

Eugenics--the Faster, Easier, Cheaper Way...

Than thinking of a real solution, anyway. It's worked for far too many civilizations to dismiss it, throw it into the scrap-heap, right? I'm thinking of the wonderfully modern, autocratically utopian society built by the Nazis, mostly, but also entertained by by Soviet Russia under some 'Stalin' guy, and well..there's just a whole big list of guys mostly who enjoyed powerful political careers and what we now call 'dictatorships' by splitting their own countries based on their inhabitants' mental characteristics.

What's a dictatorship without a dictator? Worthless, that's all!

All these guys learned that nobody would listen to them (the crazies!) unless they were deemed 'unfit' to own a weapon. As a matter of fact, they all began their terroristic regimes by calling people crazy, then yes, taking away their means to protect themselves.

The potential brings whole new (and markedly darker) meaning to Neil Young's line 'We got a kindler, gentler, machine gun hand', in "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=411cTWwxFu8

So, there's that. Get out the craniometer...Dr. Drew says your head's far too small to contain a normal brain.

Too bad Dr. Oz is already taking point that your head's too big, and likely needs some sort of brain-drain to get out all the psycho thoughts. I'm sure they'll all just learn to get along, just like they did about apple juice.

Ass-tronaut Politics

Sadly, but fixing the space station potty may not make you the world's greatest sitting authority on any political issue, even if your wife miraculously survived the craziest public political shooting rampage in history.

God Bless 'em Both, they really try...

BUT 'Gabby Giffords' and her annoying, sheepish, suddenly-overqualified hubby Mark Kelly are not suddenly and magically capable of making any real rational, lastingly-effective, or (especially) fair comments that will make me accept them as anything more than a very interesting, and possibly even inspirational, couple...or whatever they are, since they are about as culpable a couple as Kermit and Piggy, and far less like-minded (and I am talking about her politics before the shooting incident, so you can lose the indignant attitude you just copped!)

I can't help but wonder that the bullets that tragically injured Gabrielle Gifford, rendered her incapable of expressing a coherent, capable, and objective view on this subject, on two different levels--both physically, and politically (and, in watching several of her public speeches prior to the shooting, I agree with her otherwise, politically, on at least a dozen different specific issues).

Personally, a White Supremacist could make an insanely, openly, convincing argument that Giffords herself didn't even settle in to politics until she picked her theology to be Judaism from one of her parents. I wouldn't doubt many a good, honest, Jew has made similar comments around the Canasta table (or whatever table they prefer). No matter who says it, and how they were 'received' in making their little 'observation', it makes a personally convincing argument (however privately) that her politics could be as goache as her principles, if she ever allowed them to be curried like she did her own religion. In fact, she only began identifying herself as Jewish in 2001, the very same year she won her first office in Arizona.[wiki link]

I'll bet her parent was so proud.

The Doofy Timeline:
from "I'll have what SHE'S having...okay?"
...

...to: "I had her instead...seeya!"
in 'no-time'

Kelly is, at once, the best example of a supportive (yet far-too accepting) husband, and the worst example of a tag-along, droning, squib; regardless, his public comments indicate he has no business offering insights on the Constitution (or relationships). He's pretty doofy-acting, which is pretty disconcerting considering how 'Doofy' himself turned out.

Back to the space-plumber thing, though...Kelly is doing better than Joe the Plumber has since becoming political.

Plus, Kelly really did fix the toilet in the universal Space Station, so maybe he's good at preventing a lot of crap from flying around, which could come in handy with any number of things, including political mud-slinging, when-the-shit-hits-the-fan, actual monkey-doo fights, or--who knows--maybe even a real fight?

All I know, is that when I see actual, non-CGI footage of a monkey bringing a gun to a poo fight, I'll start listening to what Mark Kelly has to say about anything, much less gun control, especially while he's okay with being 'Mr. Gabby Giffords'.

Together, Giffords and Kelly are merely a topically-current lobbying team with highly questionable authority and objectivity, if you're considering changing the document that states clearly the founding principles that have worked to make the United States the best country in the world...heck, anybody who wants to change the Constitution will have eons of weighty judgement-based criteria to weigh in on before I'd consider letting them change the Constitution.

Thank you for helping me go #2, Pretty Lady!

Spill.com 'Community Members'

2013-01-15T00:42:00.003-06:00

Wow--my very first Spill.com discussion, and already I made enough enemies there to feel like just closing down my frikking account...

My God, what a bunch of jackasses!

User-names aside, for the sake of my point, I'll would like to preface this...'Piece', 'Rant', or 'Whatever', by stating first how much I love the reviews--and so, the actual 'Spill.com' crew (the guys who make this site).

MOVING ON, though--the Community there has got to be worse than the worst of Youtube commenters.

If you have a heart, and/or soul, just enjoy the reviews, and keep away from the 'members'--it's worse than if the staff of the 1970s New Yorker magazine got cybernetically-crossed with the Kardashians, Paris Hilton (and Perez, for that matter), and throw in some 'reality' TV while you're at it--and, and the trolls--the ever-encroaching, far-reaching, ever-knowing, online, internet trolls. The 'Troll Community', so to speak.

My adulation for the guys who make this site won't be hampered any at all by the trolls who constantly circle like a massive school of Great Whites, to jump on some 'poor, idiotic noob' swimming through, who upsets anyone's group sensibility enough to make 'em all go absolutely, freaking, rabid.

As quickly as if I'd stumbled across a pack of rabid, wild dogs, my throat was torn out in a mere hour's time, after a group of guys decided I 'didn't even know' what I was posting about (even though I they'd all jumped right in, because my post was the first about a new movie that simply looked good to me. I mean, I might go see it; I never indicated at all that I was any kind of 'personal devotee' of the producer, or the director, or knew the history of remakes of the film...I just started by saying 'it looked good'.

Within an hour...I was reeling from the bloodbath that had become my naive little post.

Was it worth tearing my throat out over your sensibilities? Hope not.

Maybe some 'missed thread observations'? Some 'misunderstood' social observations? At best, some freakin' well-made movie comments made by me, that were jumped on by said 'hounds' the nanosecond one of them decided you just didn't feel like Googling to understand my references...for a bunch of erudite little professionals, I'd already spent half that first hour unraveling around five negative, carping, all-too-personal comments directed at me, fending you off by even-more-naively by posting even more in-depth references, more comparisons, etc.

At around the 45-minute mark, things had gotten really ugly--not one personal comment at all, made by me, yet every single resulting comment--around 15 of a total of 20--were directly aimed at me personally...again, by random strangers, all who shared one randomly-picked, agreed-upon, goal--to tear me asunder.

If I'd have known I'd be that lucky, I'd have bought a lottery ticket.

Again, what a bunch of rabid dogs, feeding off people who've barely started using the site.

No 'friendlies' here--just a small group of sociopathic mad-men, all slaking their own thirsty egos on my open throat. Just a quickie--I was done in an hour, luckily able to close the discussion-turned-open wound, before things got any worse.

In 60 minutes, my inbox had been peppered with some of the most personal, taunting, hate mail I'd ever received--from any source on the internet, ever (even--shudder--Youtube).

The closest thing I'm familiar with, to what I experienced tonight, is watching TV shows depicting gang initiations. One misspoken movie reference...ONE, single, solitary missed historical reference, or just maybe that I didn't know your 'fave' genre as well as you think you did, and they hijacked my post and turned it into my own personal blood-bath, as relentless as a bunch of sitting-at-home, living-off-mom-and-dad, hopelessly, terminally, unemployed, egotistical, megalomaniacal, socipathic droogies, all bent on trying to get 'this guy, whoever he is' to take what we say personally enough that maybe we can get him to commit suicide.

I've seen what guys routinely do in their constant critiques of the Spill.com crew themselves, and I gotta hand it to 'em for putting up with this shit as much as they do, without just cutting heads in the manner I would.

I routinely check in for the reviews, here, because they're done in the most professional, well-produced, humorous, 'buddy-style', stylistically-and-artfully-rendered manner I've ever seen...I do NOT, however, 'check in' for a bunch of stark-raving lunatics to jump down my throat and take turns beating me down verbally because--again--they couldn't figure out 'what the hell I was talking about'.

I'm using my blog page on Spill.com to post this now, so I can personally ensure nothing more is said of my character by 'some random, inane, self-important, jerk-off' with the internet skills to...well, click, point, and piss some random stranger off to no end.

Ever thought--maybe it's me? I can say that, because I do...lots of times...the difference between me, and 'who happened upon me tonight' being, I use that thought to make sure I don't do what was done tonight--as in, verbally assaulting some person online who I have no idea who they even are, or what they do, or know, or anything.

Sign of the Times

It's sad, but the internet has become such a haven for such behavior because of many things I'm not being paid to go into here, but among them are some things with some pretty negative connotations, like the group mentality (and so, group-think), the gang mentality (or, a bullying mentality), narcissism, sociopathic behavior, and so on.

I'd like to make a larger observation here about the nagging criticism that's out there--with some basic, ironic, constants:

people who criticize others on the 'net do so over the most baseless, worthless things
they act this way most often because they have can do so with anonymity
they will likely never even meet personally--and look the person in the eye, who they've treated so malignantly online
apathy--public apathy about anti-social behavior is at an all-time high, with no remorse about it whatsoever
after all is said and done, nothing is ever done about it
many times, it's a 'pearls before swine' thing--the offenders take the info they want, then begin mistreating the very person who brought it to them
nobody learns anything--the unprincipled, undisciplined, anarchic tendencies of these people allow this to go on, and most often, they're right back at it within minutes--or even seconds
they could be anybody--often, some of the worst offenders are local, even regional, or national--public, 'respected' figures, with jobs that involve some degree of trust and respect from their constituents, or even communities--they're doing this as a 'release'; venting hatred on randomly-chosen 'others' feeds their egos, even allowing them some respite from the day's worries; making this problem highly cyclical and repetitive

I learned a oodles from my very first post on Spill.com tonight--some pretty negative things, actually. Foremost, that the 'community' is populated by some ridiculously hateful people...and even more of the kind who just say benignly 'unhelpful', uncaring things in passing (ridiculously, because they go out of their way to type these things). Frankly, the nature of this type of person is potentially harmful enough that they should wear signs saying stuff like 'I'm hateful', or 'I'm narcissistic', or 'I'm a basically shallow, resentful person'--each sign with the subtitle "And I'm Here to Make Sure You See That, Too". Just really, really unnecessary stuff, all said.

I'm probably not going to post on Spill.com again--like any ranting manifesto, the more I think about it, the angrier I get, because it was just so unnecessarily rude, obnoxious, and hateful.

'Unfortunately', I practice enough self-restraint, and am considerate enough of others, that I won't be able to repay these jerks for acting the way they did--so, I'm left with the mere technical constraints the site itself offers to every community member, to keep this from ever happening again.

I'm starting by using my 'Spill.com' blog to post my 'little rant'. The blog page seems to have the only settings that will keep idiots from 'starting on me', and 'not jumping off'...ever.

So, I really hope this won't happen to me, ever again.

The world really may be going straight to hell, guys, but there really isn't any reason to make it any worse.

If you can't say anything nice, just don't say anything at all, means about 1000% more when taken in the context of the availability of digital, and now, social, media, and our 'access' to each other. We're sure as hell not acting really 'nice' these days.

It would be wonderful if my experience tonight was just an unnaturally, unfortunate, and outrageous one, where I just happened to meet 'the worst of the worst' members of the 'Spill.com community', in my very first post...but I'm amazed at how quickly my topic was turned into something so extremely ugly and personal against me...it really was stunning...so, I don't know what to think, yet.

The 'members' who ran me up the flagpole so disrespectfully tonight, did so as a group, progressively. First, came one negative comment; then, within a minute, another, then another, and so on, until I'd received over 20 of them, all forwarded to my actual regular email inbox, too.

When I posted back nearly apologizing for 'wronging this guy', I made a big mistake--I took way too submissive an attitude toward a group of mindless, rude, jerks, who were already chomping at the bit. The others jumped in, and within a quick hour, things had 'transgressed' to the point I was feeling like a kid who makes CNN for getting beat-down by an older school kid.

What Good is Your 'Film Knowledge' When You're a Jerk?

So you may know more about film than the next guy--so what? Is this site run by a 'film society' that will hunt 'all noobs' down who make comments you deem dumb? If this is the case, maybe those 'members' who believe this need to remind their infinitely-busy-brains to re-view 'The Lord of the Flies' for the ninetieth time...this week.

Sadly, it might not even help this bunch.

You may not like the way somebody talks, or how you perceive their demeanor, or even their character--but then again, you may be so wrong that you have absolutely no idea, and regardless, you have no right to disassemble another human being's personal character publicly because you're so small you feel the need to build yourself off their ruin.

To say unkind things about someone, with absolutely no cause, for no reason, and to no end--especially over the medium of the internet--just goes beyond the pale. Beyond that, since you've likely not only not walked a mile in that other guy's shoes, but as in so many cases these days, would not even be willing to do so, or even learn what those miles involved, you just have no right to say what you're saying, ever.

So, if you're a film giant (mentally), good...enjoy that. But there's no really no place for a naive opener that quickly turns into a carping, group, gang-style beat-down of someone who might even have enough heart and soul to have potentially become a friend, had conditions been more suitable (and you not behaved like you did), with such a level of immediacy!

If this sounds bad...it is. It felt really bad, too.

I don't expect any more from other members from now on--I'm a real, live, human being, and I've never said anything intentionally, or carelessly, mean or disrespectful toward anyone else using Spill.com, so I hope to keep my account open to do what I enjoy doing here--watching their awesomely fun animated video film reviews.

We basically need to quit carping, trolling, angering--basically, hating--each other, online, regardless of where it starts happening, because it's too easy to let this stuff get out of control due to the ease, availability, and immediacy of the new digital medium that's enabling this type of thing to happen.

As for me, I tried defusing the stuff in my post, but when three of you had heaped on me, I had enough, and closed, then later, deleted it.

I don't have a fraction of the commitment, the talent, the resources, or even the resilience it takes to keep doing the reviews the 'Spill.com Crew' keeps putting out, with all the negative feedback I see their own members giving them. It's just relentless!

Anyone who fails to recognize the value of Spill.com for the vanguard internet media resource it's becoming--truly groundbreaking fun, insightful, entertaining, and valuable stuff, just doesn't even need to be here, anyway.

I don't visit the site enough even if I'm here an hour each day, but I keep seeing all these people making such pointedly-negative comments about each video movie review! It gets worse all the time!

I wonder how many of these 'self-appointed' world-wide critics have ever even tried making a simple flip-book, much less a masterfully-scripted, story-boarded, fully-animated, [smoothly-and-professionally]-produced, edited, published, censored [just seeing who's reading this], and syndicated production of any type, of the caliber these little gems are made.

Probably 'nobody'.

Yet they're lining up, flooding every review page with snarky, snide, 'pseudo-professional' critiques, of these guys' work, using the very same, FREE, Spill.com accounts, to say the most negative, petty stuff I've ever seen on any site--as if they're 'friends' of the Spill.com team. Wow--with 'friends like these', you know...

Ridiculous criticisms like, 'you guys coulda done this', or 'I could've done that better', to 'that's just not funny, I woulda done this', and my personal fave 'you guys are slipping...this isn't your best work'', and 'I thought that last guy's comment on this review was better than the actual review'. Yeah, right.

I read those, and snicker at the pure hubris, but never saw it coming to me, until my single, first post, tonight.

Of course, this post isn't to the Spill.com crew themselves. No...this is to the jerks who went after me so relentlessly and ardently tonight, over nothing.

Hope you didn't hurt your fingers while personally degrading me--my carpal didn't flare up, so I typed you this little 'critique' of my very own.

Please start showing more respect to anyone you meet--online, or not (there's an outside, too, complete with real-live little old ladies who you could start this 'new mindset' by how you treat them, then work your way down to people maybe one second older than you, who might just be so damn tired we're fighting just to care anymore.

Like I said, I'll try and make sure I use the website's settings to avoid the living hell out of the guys who piled on me toinght--but inevitably, as Yoda himself said...

"There is another".

Yup, or there will be, anyway--I'm sure Spill.com has dozens (likely, hundreds or even thousands) of new members, every week, who eventually start logging on as a way to find out what movies they might be able to justify plunking down anything from full-price, to the .99 video rental, to see.

After a month, they'll begin commenting on other peoples' comments on the site, and then, eventually, one will trickle into the turnstile of those who might even make 'Baby's 1st Post' [A-HEM!].

Try not to take their heads off when they make that first typo, or asinine comment, or dumb, or unintelligent, or sappy, or infantile, or murky, or unintelligible, overtly religious, or socially-unconscionable, or politically-incorrect statement, or whatever it is that gets you mad enough to just start railing on them, humiliating them, even infuriating them, pummeling this total stranger with one personal, reckless, insult after another, because you're so cool, and so, everybody else surely must deserve such treatment, since they don't match your impeccably-high, personal standards of 'net-etiquette (and standards of personal & professional conduct, I'm sure).

Because...why? Because somebody else did it to you? Forgive me, I just don't understand.

I'm writing this, so when 'we' see 'this guy' doing the same admittedly idiotic stuff I did tonight (under some personal stress you have no idea of knowing, BTW), maybe somebody else will jump in and stop the b.s. before it gets as bad--or, God-forbid, as personally-degrading--as it did tonight. (BTW, it takes a lot more character to be 'this guy', rather than the 'group-mentalitied', mean-spirited type I endured tonight).

Whenever you want to be that guy, hope and pray there's not 'another you' (what you were tonight, anyway) who will take the bait, and jump right into a fray where the hapless prey didn't even know what hit him, basically making big growling noises and ripping somebody apart for reasons unknown, or maybe just to prove yourself to be something more than you were/are, or maybe, could ever be.

Just keep it fun, friendly, and interesting--I'll be watching myself much more carefully in the future, to keep my offenses down--I hated the hell out of this, tonight--it ruined my entire night, and certainly my first experience posting anything for discussion on Spill.com.

Topix.com 'Unabridged'

2012-12-08T09:04:00.001-06:00

I'm going to start blogging about local 'events' I find on Topix.com, that, once you 'delve' into them a little, expand enough of the 'topic' that shows something more interesting. I'll skip the dumbest Topix topics like "whose the biggest whore in town" (yes, it's there, all the time--complete with misspellings, and lack of punctuation.

Hopefully, by now WE'VE ALL HEARD the saying about 'opinions', what they're 'like', and that author's erudite conclusion with regards to both, by comparison.

My first topic will be the one that inspired the subject of this series of blogs.

The Topix.com heading read:

"about doctor who closed there DOORS TODAY"

Only one spelling error? Grammatically cogent? Plus, the entire sentence NOT ALL CAPS?

Turns out, it was a good, juicy story where somebody locally went to see their 'pain doc' on appointment, and arrived on time only to see a note posted on this doctor's door saying 'the doctor is OUT', only permanently, or at least indefinitely, and no real explanation. As in, there wasn't even time to notify current patients.

As with everything 'Topixable', people were throwing around statements, and someone loosely thew in one about a 'psycho ex-boyfriend' trying to 'ruin her'. Well, that was interesting, because psycho-ex's just don't have any real bearing on anything REAL, much less anything that would end a practicing local physician's career.

Unless there was a nasty relationship-ending fight involved, and things got messy and nasty.

They did.

We were all holding our collective breaths about the Answer to this one, until someone posted the link to the actual court document depicting pretty plainly the whole mess, and how the whole thing was thrown out of court, not due to anything 'he' said, or did, but because of what she tried to do, and actually did use, to destroy his life. The court decided that, 'crazy-or-no', his life trumped her career, and she cheated all the way to ruin him, too.

I read the document with the business acumen of a businessman investing a quarter of his entire holdings in a startup venture, and I totally agreed (yes, right on Topix!) with another commenter, about what actually happened, and it had nothing to do with defending the 'good doc's name, like the link-submitter had intended (most definitely because he hadn't read any of it). Instead, it not only 'cleared' the 'boyfriend' of things she'd been saying about him (by the way, these are adults we're talking about here--the usual).

The court doc was not only coherent, but actually well-written enough that anyone could follow it, in it's entirety. Sweet! That includes me! A real, actual, 'not-about-ME' court document to munch on before breakfast!

Gawmpch! In five minutes, I'd digested about 90% of it, and drew my conclusions based on what the judge had to say about it.

I totally agreed with that judge, one 'other commenter' on Topix, and left this on that article, for my trouble:

I totally agree; had something similar happen to me years ago, where my soon-to-be-ex was sleeping with everybody I knew at the time, then hastily concocted some scheme to DVO and EPO me into court to force a divorce; at the same time she was actively engaged in contacting her old doctor while she was 5 mos. pregnant with what was likely our child, in order to get back on HER head-meds, which almost certainly WOULD, and actually did, cause her pregnancy to terminate.
This 'bitch-doctor' (get it? instead of 'witch') was as bad on several levels: first, the court did decide to cancel out her falsely-ordered DVO, which she had gotten by LYING:
she lied about him hitting her, because she completely withdrew this statement later, along with an eye-witness, and also admitted to coaxing him into 'spending the night' with her (make-up sex gone bad) the very same night she alleged he 'hit her'.
One of her 4 allegations involved him 'throwing a candy bar' at her, which she tried to make into...well, a civil court case, anyway. I mean--was it a 'mounds', or 'almond joy'--the difference could kill you. Even GW knew how to dodge a well-aimed pair of shoes, apparently.
He had to fight her all the way legally, and did pretty well for himself, I might say, because it's pretty plain he was her 'butt-munch' while she slept around on him (trip to Florida--it's in that link)...and once he complained, he was 'done', in many different ways...she tried very hard to use the means at her disposal as a physician to RUIN HIS LIFE. For one thing, she used her doctor's 'KASPAR' account online to provide his entire medicinal history to the local court, in an attempt to slander the poor guy. (So much for HIPAA). "Selah".
I don't know either party, but I've been there, so God help him.
Apparently, God 'did' help him, because the poor sap won...his freedom maybe...but, we see again, not exactly free from Topix.com users.
Just glad you gave the link--sorry to you that it totally proved to anyone at a reading level past that '5th grade plateau' we have around here, that this guy barely escaped with his freedom, and she really, really did try and ruin him--since his brother lived next door to her, he couldn't even stay there while she used everything--and likely, this being BG, everyONE--she could to destroy his life. I'm sure now she's trying to get him to commit suicide--it's a common thing around BG anymore.
People around here have very few workable ethics--I've dealt personally with several aspects of this 'case', a few over the past year alone.
BG is a great example of a mid-sized city with the small-town characteristics that make it like treading through quicksand every time someone craps on you here...you just make it worse the harder you fight; I'll add though, this--at least dying in quicksand (I assume somewhere remote) you don't have a gaggle of TMZ-inspired locals gathered around you wishing they could also set you afire.

2012-11-21T08:07:00.003-06:00

IT HAPPENED AGAIN

Well, it happened again--2nd time in 14 mos., I had to call the septic tank cleaning specialist to come over, clean the tank, and try to get some advice on how to keep it from backing up annually.

Rick (Rick's Septic Tank Cleaning) finally got his head around the problem (it was apparently a rare, weird, doozy) enough to pinpoint the problem at the rear drain pipe--specifically, its diameter and height. It is only 2" in diameter (even I could see this, standing above it), while the front 'line' (coming from the house to the front of this tank) is 4".

The rear line takes 'liquid' (more like diarrhea) refuse down to the 'wet field' (to dry), but needs to be a little lower than the 'front line' (and so, the overall level of the 'stuff'), to keep leaving room for more coming in the front.

That's as basic as I can make this situation--Rick even voiced his opinion that he suspects the tank was installed backwards, a mistake I guess anyone could make, unless they were using qualified pro's to install one of the most important systems in their entire house.

A septic tank can literally 'make-or-break' your house's value; it either works, or doesn't. If it doesn't, you're going to get sick, and there's a big possibility that your house will begin having black mold problems, too, when backups aren't dried ASAP (and 'backups' are never small amts, or anything close to hygienic--they're filthy).

I might have been financially prepared for this, if it hadn't happened so soon. Rick even mentioned the first time that it would need the standard cleaning every three years or so, along with his other advice (he's been pretty helpful throughout my ordeal here).

But--14 months--I wasn't ready, and my girlfriend helped me by paying the entire amount.

I owe her big--this time around, it was worse--I couldn't even use the toilet, or any spigot, up or downstairs, without stuff coming up the drain of the downstairs tub, and from around the base of that toilet, too. I went through 10-15 towels trying to dry it up...and when you do this, there's no way to wash the towels, so you either have to find a place to wash the nasty stuff, or lose it.

Here's the 2nd receipt:

Rick has written the problems on the bill, so I don't keep getting blamed for the pre-existing problem with this septic system.

LAST TIME, although threatened with eviction, I kept back the repair fee from my monthly rent, and sweated it out while I waited to be evicted.

This time, I emailed the same corporate owners, saying:

Susan,

Wanna make it clear I am paying the full amt for my December rent, but have had to get the septic tank cleaned once more.

The repairman made it clear this system was not installed correctly, leaving the 'rear line' too small (and high) to clear off liquid waste down into the nearby 'wet field'.

Again, this is just a note: there won't be any surprises from me next month--I plan on paying my full $450 monthly rent then.

Thanks,

Mike Denney

1671 Morgantown Road

So, once again, I'm left holding somebody else's shit-bag. The guy who 'shepherded' me into renting this place acted like he's doing me such a big favor, then backed out of every opportunity to be honest and tell the current owners that I was right when this, and multiple other, issues came up.

Over my 2-year stay here, I have been personally responsible for repairing:

the HVAC system (both fan motors--I paid $270 for both fans, installed them myself)
the A/C system (it's leaking--twice filled at a cost to me personally of over $300)
this septic system (the first time, I withheld $250 from my rent payment...this time...?)
much, much more (too many for even a frikking BLOG!)

One last note: the guy who told me about the place fast-talked me into renting here; he was full of assurances that I'd 'like it', about how the 'current owners' were 'nice people', and he was sure 'they'd help me out anytime I needed help'.

Bullshit.

When an Infield Fly Rule Ruins a Baseball Game

2012-10-06T01:20:00.001-05:00

It was the middle of the 8th inning...the St. Louis Cardinal team had played well enough to have a well-deserved 3-run lead against the haplessly-error-ridden Atlanta Braves. Yet, the Braves were at bat, they had men on 1st and 2nd, and only one out.

Braves batter Andrelton Simmons hit a fly ball into left field, but hung there long enough to give three men time to converge on it--Cardinals left-fielder Matt Holiday, their shortstop Pete Kozma (who'd just made an error throwing to first), and the man who turned out to be more important to both Cardinals players, and every player, team, and rule, as it turned out--left-field umpire Sam Holbrook.

Kozma had made an exceptional effort look fluid and easy by running more than mid-way into deep left field quickly, reaching the ball's target area with 2 or 3 seconds to spare, so it was apparent that Matt Holiday was preparing to let the SS redeem himself from his earlier error (a bad throw to first) by letting him take the ball.

Then--literally at the last second, with the fly ball just 30 feet over Kozma's head--ump Holbrook decided to call the fly ball an out by invoking the infield fly ball rule.

I saw the play live, and it was not just 'protestable'...it was detestable--a poorly-made, mistaken, blown, call, from the split second the ump's hand haplessly went up to make it.

Sadly, it ruined the outcome of this game, the historic first MLB wildcard game, forever.

It was monumentally bad, and I'm very sure the actual umpire's poor call--so wildly inappropriately MADE and TIMED--was the full cause for the SS letting the ball drop in the first place, leading Kozma--who obviously knew he'd never expect any ump to be hollering out the infield fly rule--to mistake umpire Holbrook's voice for his own teammate Holiday's, calling him off to make the catch himself, as it was well within his range and the common territory of any major league left fielder.

My measly, brief experience as a LITTLE LEAGUE scorer/announcer (alongside all I learned about baseball rules from my dad, who himself was a local ump in my hometown) was more than enough to help me realize immediately (within 2 minutes of seeing Braves Manager Fredi Gonzalez nearly get thrown out of the game over this 'travesty') that I needed to 'tweet' something vital, which happily 'went down' in real-life, within 5 mins of my tweet--that this game needed to go on 'under official protest', for two reasons:

to make sure the wrong call by the ump went on the record as one that should indeed cause this game to be replayed from this vital moment onward, and
to help keep order on the field and not lose the rest of the game to 'fan outrage'.

What price disco? Around 98¢ (and one forfeited playoff game)

The call was so bad that I quickly became sick of the TV announcers RIGHTLY shaming the fans for the scene that followed--the worst scene in the MLB since the famous 'Disco Demolition Night' at Comiskey in Chicago in '79.

Tonight's fans were MUCH more orderly than that--they were [rightly] really...erm, peeved, you might say, and merely kept waiting 'til the ground crew cleaned the whole play area up, to begin throwing more bottles, cans (and I think I even saw some kittens and newborn babies, too)...it was a scene, and only the official protest even ALLOWED Braves fans the courtesy to carry on the delusion they hadn't been absolutely robbed...because they were.

No, nobody threw their babies and pets...just almost everything else they had on 'em.

I couldn't believe it when I heard who would be 'the deciders' on the protest (Joe Garagiola, Jr, and Joe Torre, both of whom have direct ties with the St. Louis Cardinal organization, and so both of whom are totally improper choices to make this important decision. I mean, it wasn't like this game wasn't scheduled.

The debacle paralyzed game play for nearly 30 minutes while field crew members had to keep returning to the field (especially the left field, for some reason) to clean off more debris thrown by angry fans.

The Braves had definitely been threatening to score, and if the play had been left alone, ironically, the Braves might have failed to score a single run anyway. But it really killed the hopes of them winning; it was on their faces, especially Chipper Jones, for whom this was to be his last game.

Honestly, I was 'torn' between wanting to judge the fans for their impudent and somewhat immature trashing of their own field, and realizing how they must be feeling, seeing how this all went down, dashing their hopes during their biggest rally of this game.

Sure, those who threw stuff exhibited poor conduct, poor sportsmanship, and likely even broke some litter ordinances in Atlanta, but still--this was such a poor call, and even the protest decision poorly handled, as well.

I only 'dissertate' here because I know that rule SO WELL, and it does NOT just involve whether the ball could be intentionally DROPPED, but also whether the player who intentionally let it drop could also in 'real time' turn this into a double play, cheating a single out into a 'manufactured DP'--hence, the rule in the first place.

In this case, that would have been veritably and nearly undeniably impossible--TWO Aroldis Chapmans couldn't have hurled the ball around the field fast enough for that to have happened.

If the ball had been caught, with the rule unapplied, any conscientious, responsible, rational, 'team-player'-runners would have been left standing at their bases, as it was an easy judgment call by either runner due to the height of the ball, and the overwhelming likelihood that the ball would be caught (99% of the time, in any sensible outcome, by the advancing left fielder, who'd use his forward momentum to hurl the ball infield for any further potential plays).

The breathless disbelief of the TV announcers when the ball went uncaught is enough to tell you this (along with the scary vacuous noise of 40,000+ Braves home fans gasping right along for the same reason).

In fact, in the first minute after the call was made, TBS TV announcer Ron Darling was clearly
heard to say "You cannot call that an infield fly. It's too deep. He wasn't camped". He went on, saying "You know, this is what happens occasionally when you add extra umpires down the right-field and left-field lines. You have extra umpires, and sometimes you have extra calls".

Ron Darling is no stranger to fielding the ball himself. His wikipedia page says this:

[Darling] was considered one of the better fielding pitchers of the time, and won a Gold Glove Award in 1989. Darling had one of the best pickoff moves among right-handers. An above-average athlete, he was sometimes used as a pinch runner. In 1989, he hit home runs in two consecutive starts.

What makes this call most ridiculous is that the fly ball would have been caught by somebody without the umpire's intervention in the first place.

The 'infield fly rule' is worded specifically so that these things cannot happen (cannot be automatically interfered with by the umpire himself, as well). Here it is:

The rule applies only when there are fewer than two outs, and there is a force play at third base (i.e., when there are runners at first and second base, or the bases are loaded).^[1] In these situations, if a fair fly ball is in play, and in the umpire's judgment it is catchable by an infielder with ordinary effort, the umpire shall call "infield fly" (or more often, "infield fly, batter's out"); the batter will be out^[2]regardless of whether the ball is actually caught in flight. Umpires typically raise the right arm straight up, index finger pointing up, to signal the rule is in effect.

The best lesson as to why this call was so bad, would be if--in ANY game in the future, ANY infielder who possessed extraordinary speed and a particularly high level of poise--decided to run down ANY well-hit fly ball in the deepest part of the outfield, while the outfielder there also took part in the 'lesson' and stood motionless, except to avoid the infielder's attempt to catch the ball.

In any such scenario, the infielder could potentially cause a similar 'missed call' if any umpire seeing him make the play decided he made the play look easy. Over...and over...and over, into the millions.

So soon after the NFL ref issues, this was just so poorly handled (Torre's denial of the official protest was so immediate and flatly dismissive that it reeks of cronyism and team-based bias on his part) that it will now leave an indelible mark on the otherwise wonderfully-implemented wildcard idea.

The saddest part is that the call actually disrupted an actual play that would have almost certainly been made by the Cards SS had he not genuinely mistaken the ump's voice for his very own left-fielder, because he'd been looking straight up, the ump was yelling over the crowd, and the SS then stepped back to let his LF take the ball, and in one painful moment only then realized the ump had been the voice he heard.

So it was one of those things--'wrong on so many levels': the call was 'moot', the call WAS wrong, it was MADE wrong, and then, after all, inexorably made no sense for any reason, other than it was made by an inexperienced 'additional' umpire, DIRECTLY affected the outcome of a 'first-time' type of event, caused such an uproar, and will go on the books with a huge question mark directed at the POTENTIAL for bias in the final decision to deny the protest, which, if not THE most appropriate protest in MLB history, then certainly one of the biggest and important ones.

Baseball needs more work on officiating, 'camera'-involved protests, questioning some major components of the 'judgement call', while still keeping the pace of the game on a reasonable clip.

So many 'non-fans' already hate the pace of this game, and so many 'true fans' gave up on the innocence of the sport after the 1994 strike; and the controversial influence of steroids hasn't helped any (and likely won't).

I wonder how long the game will be able to teach any kind of lessons on any level, to anyone watching it, besides the nonsensical exposition of low-grade flim-flam we saw tonight.

2012-08-18T10:46:00.001-05:00

It's MORE than 'about time', here--I was held there for more than TWO WEEKS nearly TWO DECADES ago with NO FORMAL CHARGES FILED (believe me--I ASKED)...then, with no former history, they found they could hold me inevitably until I SIGNED MYSELF IN FOR PSYCHIATRIC evaluation, which turned into a decade-long nightmare for me. FOR BEING A FIRST-TIME NON-VIOLENT RUNAWAY.
They had an 'in-house' wacko psychiatrist who kept them in state and federal funds for years doing things like extorting people like me out of their entire lives.

Guess it was easy to get lost in their little system when they were doing so many more horrible things. Bowling Green now 'hosts' several 'graduates' from that system, BTW, in our local police force, AND WKU's 'squad', and they are very strange in the way they go about enforcing their own codes on 'people they just don't like'.

I have blogged about this, and am hoping for more attention to my own story, as time allows for more truly objective, honest, investigative reporting and analysis to come to BG.

So--for ruining my young life (I was 18, barely able to know anything that signing their self-admission forms would DESTROY ME, and THEY KNEW, AND CONTINUE TO KNOW, THAT)--I hope they are investigated by MANY and MUCH higher authorities who are not only COMPETENT and OBJECTIVE, but also UNTAINTED by local politics and bureaucracies that keep entire systems like this full of hapless, helpless, innocent victims like myself, and even eventually tried and found guilty of some of the severely corrupt things they did.

Laws protecting people against this type of corruption ALWAYS come to late, much less the implementation of such laws, complete with objective citizens' groups that aren't tainted by any other 'system' (like, in mine and many local cases, the 'psychiatric'). Kentucky has plenty enough problems to be going about destroying young lives with or without discrimination, especially the way it's been (being) doled out, going way beyond color, creed, ethnicity, gender, and age, but actually just 'whether elected officials LIKE you', or your 'attitude'.
Glad I saw this, glad I got this 'off my chest', and sorry I felt obligated for myself to do it in this venue. It's so patently unAmerican, it makes me physically ill.

I will be keeping my little 'rant' and blogging it, posting it on my Facebook page as well, in case it gets 'blocked' from being posted here.

Somebody has to start telling the truth about 'goings on' in this region.
Judge Rules Report on Barren County Jail Must be Released

The paper reported Judge Phil Patton ruled Thursday, the county has 30 days to appeal the decision, but must release the reportGLASGOW, Ky. (AP) -- A judge in Barren County has ordered the county to release an investigative report on the local jail to The Glasgow Daily Times, but information may be edited out as allowed by law.

The county hired private investigator Michael J. Ober, and paid him $3,500 with tax dollars, to investigate allegations of sexual and criminal misconduct at the jail. Ober later told the fiscal court he preferred to give it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Ober's documents include jail policy manuals, a document titled "Barren Questions," 18 audio recorded interviews, 14 typed interview notes and a document titled "Barren County Jail Investigation."

WKU Auction Blockade

2012-07-25T16:57:00.001-05:00

For a tiny, one-man, struggling PC Repair operation, auctions are a necessity and a privilege, not a 'perk'...so it's pretty hard to have to give up going to a LOCAL auction full of perfect stuff to bring my costs down, all due to one local 'apprentice' auctioneer being chosen by WKU, who seems to have singled me out as some kind of troublemaker.

I buy from local auctions, online and live, so I can keep parts available to drive down costs to my customers. Sadly, it's only secondarily that my doing this keeps illegal PCBs out of local landfills, but in that, I'm keenly aware that 'scavenging' parts (which I test) also keeps those parts from just being wasted. In my view, we need less waste, and more concerned, conscientious people doing what I'm doing...who knows--maybe our government will start learning from us someday, and start wasting less themselves?

A local man named Ron Slavic used to be in charge of WKU's Supply & Services department. Ron was good at what he did--he was both fair and honest, yet kept WKU itself from wasting it's own resources, by selling off their used furniture and equipment. His skills as an asset manager were uncompromising and particularly intelligent, and I'm sure he's missed, both personally and financially, by his dept., and Western Kentucky University.

Ron died about two years ago, and he was one of those people who, if you knew him professionally (as I'd like to call our 'relationship' between buyer/seller), was hard to appreciate until too late.

Especially now. After his passing, WKU hired a bunch of inexperienced students to be in charge. They were basically supervised by a young woman who I believe was actually allowing many of their items to go out the door, as favors to her friends, possibly distant relatives. I say this, not only because I can, but because I kept getting calls to various 'new customers' around town, who were in possession of older Dell computers that still had the red WKU inventory control stickers on them.

As a frequent bidder/buyer over the years, I had always been keenly aware of just how careful --even obsessive--WKU was about removing those stickers, for obvious reasons (as in, inventory controls).

Also, when I'd go there to pick up my items, I kept noticing how short-handed they seemed at pickup-time. They never removed their inventory control stickers until I showed up to pick up my won items, even though they were all grouped by winning bidder. They hired a man who I knew personally from having worked for the local newspaper at the same time, doing driving routes. This guy had actually stolen the papers stacked and labelled for me several times, in order to 'get his' routes done quicker, and had lied when confronted about it. He'd probably been fired there, so I wondered who had trusted him at WKU, to work around their retired inventory every day (perhaps the newspaper had done him a 'favor' for his service there, considering his dishonesty 'tolerable' to them, and didn't know or care where he worked after they let him go).

Within a year after 'Ron's Era', I began noticing some other major flaws begin creeping into the WKU Supply & Services department (hereafter referred to as WKU S&S) system of handling online sales.

Their eBay auction listings were suddenly completely devoid of vital item info--everything from the sizes of items like televisions, to other important information, from simple things like model #'s of items, even to their functionality and condition. Although later, they would actually make some progress by including a very nice information system regarding their automotive sales (complete with VIN #s and free repair info about each auto), obvious gaps just seemed to dominate each of their listings. One of the largest was to notice that WKU kept all service records from potential buyers, even to the winners of each car or van vehicle sold.

The obvious, ridiculous neglect of providing service records for their retired vehicles showed that WKU had just begun using the VIN# system (maybe even provided for by eBay for a miniscule fee?) as an excuse to avoid having to look up any info they could have been providing their winning bidders.

To me, this reeked of a situation where lost manpower (even one guy) had begun costing them some potential value in their own recovery efforts.

My perspective on this was from a 'buyers' standpoint, so I said nothing at all. To me, the privilege of continuing buying computer hardware, furniture, and other used equipment from them was wonderful, and since I was not in the resale market for vehicles, their apparent lassitude did not concern me as much as my own skill, honesty, business ethics, and the overall quality of the items that I sold and repaired. I will never forget my place as a small, one-man proprietorship, and their in-house dealings were acceptable to most, if not all, of their eBay buyers, anyway, to the point that they still had (not now) a 100% perfect Feedback record on eBay.

View WKU's current eBay seller profile by clicking here.

Part of the info WKU had recently begun collecting from their eBay buyers for their own online auction site was our email addresses, of course, so I was happy to be invited to their 1st actual 'live, onsite' auction, to be held last year at their S&S building, across from WKU's baseball field.

Hundreds of people showed up, as it was generally understood that this auction was a kind of 'close-out' to clean up their 2nd floor inventory holding facility for some other use. The auction was handled by local auctioneer Ron Kirby, Jr., along with his staff, including his 'apprentice auctioneer', Kim Bouchey (sometimes spelled 'Boucher' locally).

I went, won some LCDs flatscreens, and some computer-related furniture (desks), televisions, and other stuff (over $300 worth, a big deal to me). Although I'm a hard-bargainer, I'm always nice at these auctions, and if I see an opportunity to avoid being greedy and rude, I'll always give place...I even chat between sales with other local techs, as it never hurts to 'know your competition'! How they take my polite attitude has no bearing on me myself--as I have a friendly, conversive, most-often polite manner. In fact, this plays out most frequently in my favor eventually anyway, because you can easily tell peoples' characters and personalities by their responsiveness, attitudes, even their ability to carry on a conversation about anything!

One bidder at that auction was not any greedier than anybody else, but his attitude quickly showed itself in his dogged pursuits of all the LCD flatscreens he could afford, and just his facial expressions of outward disgust toward any other bidders who 'took his auctions'. I didn't need ANY of the LCDs I was bidding on, so, of the 100+ (more like 200+ quite possibly), I pressed and won just four. I don't recall his 'take', but it was plenty, for his own one-man operation in his local small town of Scottsville.

True to form, this little dude was as openly rude and hateful toward me after my 'win' as he could manage and still concentrate on the remainder of the other items in the auction. Toward the end, he even tried to take all three book-cases full of computer keyboards, after winning the first (very cheap bunch).

I'd asked the auctioneer whether he was going to sell them separately, though, before he began that section, because a)I spied the other bidder eyeing them all intently, even mentioning to another bidder that he'd be 'taking them all', b)I recognized prior to the entire auction start, that the 2nd and 3rd bins should go as separate lots, without the option to buy them at the same price as the 1st, because they were an entirely different type of multimedia keyboards (some even having rare volume control knobs), and were worth as much as 2X more apiece, and c)I did go there with the intent to buy keyboards for my own clients, but not ALL the keyboards they had (the difference being dozens).

My request did appeal to the auctioneer, he did auction them off separately, and I did manage to win my fair share over the other bidder, who by this time was getting pretty nasty, even making some comments at me to try and provoke me (it happens--you lose twice if you give in to these, I've learned, though, so I just quit interacting with the guy completely, and he 'locked off').

My only problems during that auction were initially that one of the auctioneer's assistants tried to charge me (understandably) for a bunch of 'junker items' that he'd personally [begged, for lack of better word] me to buy as an entire lot for $2.50, since not a single person of the hundreds gathered around these items (old dot-matrix-printer housings) would even bid a single dollar for one of them, and it was holding up the entire auction to stand around them. When I'd gone downstairs to pay for all items, they'd charged me individually for them, and then auction clerks stonewalled me in an attempt to pay 'their price' until I literally chased down the actual auctioneer to 'right their wrong' (he remembered he'd done this personally, but wasn't particularly nice about having to fix their mess).

After he had to clean up another mess about a teenaged-kid who thought he was buying ONE LCD flatscreen (at $75, everybody else then understood his high bid), they were off to their 2nd site, to sell of some other desks and furniture, which I wasn't interested in (too big for me to store). So, I went over there to pay for some other stuff I'd won at the 1st site and was delivering to my house.

WATCH YOUR STUFF (REGARDLESS WHAT ELSE HAPPENS)!

At this point, a sideline--a warning to all who win items at auctions--BRING A FRIEND. If you plan on winning a single item, paying for it immediately, and taking it home, you don't have to worry about thieves, of course. However, if you see even one more thing and get held up in payment processes, weather, or other distractions, you could easily lose your money.

Anyone planning on stealing other people's items will be experienced enough to be somewhat organized--primarily in seeing that you've paid for your items, and if you look away, even for a 'second', you could easily, quickly go home with 'magic beans' and a significantly lighter wallet.

I'd lost some old chairs I won at the local police auction a year before. There was terrible weather (pretty bad thunderstorm), people were running around trying to put tarps over their stuff, and the uniformed police being paid to attend the event weren't doing anyone any favors (unless they knew them) by even watching anyone's stuff, even to the end, when most had left due to the weather.

The saddest part (on them all) was that a)their own city clerks being paid to take payments were rude beyond belief, wasting everyone's time by chatting with their boyfriends (on phone and in person), taking multiple smoke breaks per hour, and basically acting as if you could just leave if you didn't like it--all while lines were full of people desperate to get out of there without losing the items they'd won, which were in one of many buildings used at the event--always completely out-of-sight, most times, hundreds of feet away.

The chairs (and some other stuff) that I'd lost at that auction were of negligible value, but the worst part was that people literally shopped them right off the bed of my truck while it was parked at the edge of the city maintenance garage door, completely covered with my tarp, many of my items secured by nylon rope, and in full view of two cops who'd just denied me my simple request to 'keep an eye' on my stuff, for a mere 5 minutes (which it was)...and they'd not moved a muscle from their spot when I returned from payoff off my last items won that day. Their response was hilariously negligent, and I quote within a word "see, that's really not in our job description today, because we're here as cops for security today".

To their detriment (and I'm sure mine, as well) they looked more like they were planning on going out with each other on a date (and yes, they were males)--in their attitudes, their locked-in conversation with each other, and especially their open-disdain for myself (and about two other people who asked them the same question--one even asked if they could move an inch or two so he could see a table better). Just openly, bitterly, ridiculous.

I never knew if they were aware, but one of their own had even had his own auction item stolen less than an hour before--and of course, only after he paid (it was a bike for his kid, he'd paid $140 for it, and the look on his face was pretty harried when he was discussing 'what to do about this' with the auction manager that day).

So, I guess the lesson may be the ever-popular 'what goes around, comes around'...especially when you're a bunch of local cops grousing over not getting double pay for a volunteer auction 'security presence'.

'PEOPLE STEAL MY STUFF', I GET RUN UP THE FLAGPOLE FOR IT?

During the last WKU live auction, I'd paid, dropped off the bigger items (partly out of consideration to WKU--I was trying to avoid leaving all 'my junk items' there for them to have to work around), and went back the next day to pick up all the 'tech-hardware' I'd won (my LCD flatscreens, some old TVs, and the keyboards). I also had to pick up some furniture, since WKU S&S had closed up about 10 minutes prior to their posted end-of-day, making things unnecessarily more difficult on me.

I entered the building, and immediately asked by the young woman who'd taken over Ron Slavic's bottom floor desk responsibilities to come into her office, and give her my receipts. By the end of that day, I'd really regret trusting her, and most of the other office 'help' there that day. 'She' was going to be 'in charge' of doling out my things to me, and went on to immediately assuring me that this was their standard practice (even though I was pretty suspicious about handing over my only payment receipts to her).

By the end of the day, the following had happened:

'Somebody' (I rightly suspected the 'other bidder') had stolen my LCD flatscreens
2 WKU Student workers initially said they were 'eye-witnesses', and suspected him themselves
The office worker downstairs 'lost' those very receipts (the only copies)...after 'failing to note I'd brought them in, was there to pick up the items on-time, they were missing, and then proceeded to ignore the two student workers who kept trying to tell her they'd witnessed somebody leaving with my items
She even began attempting to 'control' the situation herself, quickly telling both student workers not to 'back up my story', even though they'd shared it as their own witness as well.
She lied to her boss several times in two hours in an attempt to make me out as a liar, because once she'd lost my receipts, there was no record of my payment--to 'cover her ass'
Instead of handling this problem in any kind of timely manner (especially not with any kind of attention to it), she began giving all her attention to every other buyer who came in that day--for over an hour. She even took several calls for pickup scheduling, telling them all to just 'come on in whenever'...
She even began directing any staff she came into contact with, to handle 'all other pickups', instead of my [small and unimportant--'bitchy'] one...even monopolizing that elevator herself more than three trips up while all this obfuscation was going on (each trip taking more than 5 minutes, with her personally standing in it to hold it upstairs), while I still had more than 10 items weighing more than 100 lbs. to take down before they closed that day (a Friday), while initiating even more conflict by promising me that I'd be defaulting on any items not picked up that day, 'as listed in the auction' from the start.
Within the first hour, both the student eye-witnesses, very reassuring at first, had openly recanted their stories--one even asking me (another quote): "what do you do with all this stuff, anyway" (as if to say I was pretty much an addled, idle-minded crazy going about lying about 'winning stuff'). NOTE: At this point, it began to bug me that WKU staff were actually trying to pry something out of me that I'd paid for, with the intent to even sell it themselves--especially if they pushed me far enough to cause me to 'break', get arrested, and give up my items by default, as per 'auction rules'!
I asked for the young woman's supervisor, and luckily for me, he actually came down from his office. By this time, I was addled, as it had been more than 30 minutes, with no progress made on my complaint, and things were actually going the other way (the wagons were circling amongst a bunch of WKU supply workers?--flatly identifiable as such, and I was surprised at how quickly, how pervasively, and who had eventually 'come over' to the 'other side', in such short time).
Only after I was able to 'interrupt' the young woman's 'version' of my own story (and had to more than 3 times, almost shouting her down), was I able to get my problem to be understood by her supervisor...who then politely stood there listening to his workers begin denying all sorts of things, almost to cover all their jobs at once.
Realizing I couldn't get the thief's bidder info (name, location, phone #, place of business), myself, and then couldn't do anything with that info, I waited more than an hour for Western employees, even to the supervisor, to make some kind of decision about what they would offer to do to repay me. They began using the absence of my receipts (taken by their worker), esp. the missing ones, to deny any culpability or responsibility. It's like I ceased to exist to them, and they had all started to jokingly stand around waiting for me to explode...
I went over the place twice, until I actually found my own receipts, the ones they'd lost, lying on the floor in the main garage. They had made no attempt to help me in any way--just stood around in a group watching me as if waiting to react and restrain me if and when I exploded into violence. That having failed, I thought the proper direction was to call the cops, call the auctioneer (again, myself, since--still--WKU staff were all standing around gawking at me, failing to offer to do anything to resolve the situation they'd caused by letting someone remove my items)--and ask the auctioneer if their group would speak to the WKU police about the bidder, to give me some recourse in recovering my items. The total for items stolen was just under $100, so I'd been trying all along to hasten things to avoid dragging such a minor amount (to them) out all day long.
I called the police, and the very same WKU cop who was present when I'd paid the day before barely said a word, very nearly appearing to hold his breath while I reminded him of my payment time the day before, intentionally failing to so much as acknowledge he'd ever seen me (this happens in this town every day...when people want to snub somebody--they're deadly at it, especially when it's very important to that person's reputation). His attitude was at best slack, or overly-relaxed, especially when it came to listening, taking my story in, and attempting to resolve the situation. It's as if he was told before arriving to just stand there and stare at me--and do nothing more.
When I called the auctioneer, things really broke down. I dialed the only number anyone there had for them, from the auction ad (bill) itself, and Kim Bouchey answered. After listening to me for just under 5 seconds, she began yelling at me, her tone steadily increasing as she shouted violently at me over the phone. She had not listened, or just was bull-headed, ignorant, and violent-tempered enough to 'light into me' in a full-on, defiant, ill-mannered rage, screaming contemptuously. I got earful after earful--everything from "How dare you call me about this" and "I had nothing to do with this", to "I don't know why you're bothering me with this after the auction--we don't have anything to do with this". Then she proceeded to begin belittling me personally, shouting nonsense about my personal character, how many years she had worked as an auctioneer (20+, and she's still only listed as an apprentice, so maybe she's been kicking her own feet out from under her with reactionary stuff like this)...even when I told her that the WKU police were standing right next to me, and began literally begging her (as in, "I'm begging you to talk with them and help them with the info about the guy the WKU staff saw walking out with my stuff"), she grew more and more angry. After a couple of minutes of this rage-fueled tyrant, I realized she's made her money, and she couldn't care less...so only then, did I hang up, turn to the police, and sadly begin to say I would have to 'take the loss', and that I was sorry to have bothered the police, esp. since I was getting no help from this auctioneer.
Only then did the WKU S&S super come up and quietly offer to 'make things right'--It had gone on for much too long--over an hour--I had missed the opportunity to take my larger items away, so was risking defaulting on and having to leave them, losing more money. I had been forced to deal with this petty, insulting garbage for so long that they were getting ready to close for the day (much earlier than any government offices around town--something like 2pm).
We went upstairs, they went into the 'cage' where there they store leftover items, and got four Dell LCD flatscreens close enough to the specs of the ones I'd one (I'd have to take one of these back because it wasn't tested, and wasn't working, whereas all the ones in the auction were), and I told them 'thanks', that I wished it hadn't progressed to the point, but I still had some complaints regarding how the whole issue was handled, that I'd like to make sure did not happen again (to anyone or me). The super listened, politely told me I had 'special permission' to leave my bigger items there until after the weekend, so I wouldn't lose them after all, and I left.
I was done with it, and went home, seriously questioning whether I wanted to go there again for anything else--truly, I felt this had gotten way out of hand, the only resolution being a lot of mistrust and a feeling like I'd been gifted the LCDs I took home as some kind of pacifier, if not an outright payoff.
Kim Bouchey, however, was not done with me. I checked my voicemails later that day, and got another earful of this--Kim Bouchey's actual Voicemail. She had toned herself down a bit, but she made sure her general message was there: that being, I had better not accuse her of stealing anything ever again, I'd better watch it, that I'm quite stupid for throwing loose accusations around

BACK TO THE REASON I WON'T BE BIDDING AT WKU AUCTIONS ANYMORE

It's pretty simple--Kim Bouchey ('Boucher'--aka the 'Blonde Bulldog' in my book).

I won what I won, and my usual routine of 'getting out of bidders' ways', actually being 'nice' to the 'potential competition', taking my losses, and wishing I could afford more of what I needed, went fine.

She'd noticed me from the time I entered the 4th floor (I'm very observant, only needed a split-second to see her heard turn toward me and 'lock on' before she went back to doing whatever it was she was doing)...in fact, I had dreaded she was going to have even more

I left WKU's auction disgusted at the way she handled herself...again.

She fooled me again--this time, by answering my question--TWICE--about whether I was bidding on he 'pretty deliberately' fooled me into buying ONE unnecessary gadget for myself when I thought I was bidding on FOUR (one tenured professor I used to work for at the College Heights Herald overheard her, made comments regarding how illiterate she was, yet never has formed a backbone to help me out on this--typical to what I'm used to experiencing from 'the Hill').

MORE UPDATES ON THIS COMING SOON!

Here are those 'updates' (actually, in effect when I wrote this blog, but now collected, in MP3-as-Video evidence). Primarily, the call made by local WKU 'police officer' Anthony R. Honeycutt, who--although standing next to this crazy woman at the latest auction (after which I was banned), and 'witnessing' her non-stop, false, verbal assault on me over a $25 item she split up into fours AFTER I WON IT, bore false witness, based on his familiarity with her, and a WKU employee named (believe it) Sarah Ferguson.

Honeycutt phoned me while I was literally in the Medical Center waiting area prepping to go in for carpal tunnel surgery, and informed me I'd been banned--for LIFE--from all future upcoming WKU auctions, based on what 'Ms. Ferguson' said about me to him after the last one. As I just said, he'd been standing closest to me than either of the women, while these events were actually happening, so his witness should have been better, and if he was honest, he should have tried to work things out. Instead, he was more interested in standing idly by while Bouchey presented me with enough angry, personally-assaulting, and false language to make anybody 'go off' on her, which I didn't. I left on my own accord, even calmly announcing it, while dozens of bystanders eye-witnessed the whole thing go down, and did nothing. Many of those people even knew what was happening was wrong, yet did nothing--one still doesn't (I'll get to him later--he's a WKU Journalism professor, now retiring).

It really was pretty relentless--she never gave me a chance to speak, nor listened, even though I was saying I already had mp3 evidence of what was she denying she did--she kept denying she'd made the call I posted in the above 'video' link (with her photo, since it was just an incoming VM she'd left for me before).

Anyway, Honeycutt called me to let me know I'd been banned, cut-and-dried, no interest on his part in hearing my side, much less the 'evidence' I had of what Bouchey had done before--just didn't care. He played it off as him 'just doing his job', and kept interrupting me to remind me it was not Bouchey that had lied, but Sarah Ferguson who was doing the banning, even though Bouchey had caused the disruption (like I said, stopping the entire auction to confront me on something she'd messed up, one of the smaller items on the auction--not worth her trouble).

I told Honeycutt on his first call that Bouchey had caused me some real problems during the last auction before this one, and that her denials and angry verbal assaults were false during this one, and I would like to email him the mp3 above. He did not want to give me any of his personal contact info.

At this point, I realized these people all knew each other, and that this was just another clubby attempt by some wrong individuals to lie on someone else to make themselves all happier, and more comfortable. Bouchey could get by with her slop-auction routine in ANY future venue knowing she'd thrown her weight around, hoping she could get me to shut up in any OTHER future auctions she screwed up. Ferguson could keep her new position at WKU intact by also laying down the law, and I was the perfect stooge. Anthony Honeycutt was the one they both needed to make these things happen, and he knowingly complied, having eye-witnessed the 'confrontation' (I'd never even looked at Bouchey before she'd charged me from behind, and he was already there when she did).

So, having said this, I believe Honeycutt was in cahoots with the women, and they all went home happy.

But don't forget, this is MY hometown--I grew up here, and have lived here for 43 years. I'm not ignorant, and I will use any resources I can to clean up any mud thrown at my character by people so petty they would do this to me--somebody who has has endured lies before, but maybe didn't know how right he was, and didn't have the determination, resilience, experience, and knowledge to help himself out.

Now, I do.

After Honeycutt shit on me, passing it off as his 'job' or 'duty', he hung up, already expecting me to lay down for him. But I called him back immediately, promising I'd be calling him later as well, to discuss what was going on, since I WAS BEING PREPPED FOR SURGERY!

So, I did that, too.

The following 'video' (again, my conversation with him), contains my last call to him, in which I offered to meet him 'at any time, anyplace', under calm circumstances, to play the mp3 of Bouchey, which was all her fault anyway, as she'd been the only one who raised her voice at the later auction that caused my 'permanent ban'. Again, I had to convert this to mp3, since it was only audio, and he'd been lying to cover up what they were doing to me, and I knew he'd never commit to meeting me once in public, much less agree that any such meeting be recorded. This is a younger officer who is building his career, and he would never sacrifice it for anyone like myself, even if I was right, all alone in my defense, and so, basically, helpless, in the face of such 'skullduggery', 'shenanigans', and--again--outright complicit lying, which was a concerted effort to ruin my computer business in my hometown here.

I was made to wait over 3 mins. just to speak to 'officer' Hunnycunt, so any listeners need to push forward 'til around the 3 min mark in the above audio recording to hear him speak his lies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#One-party_notification_states

MY NEXT UPDATE WILL INCLUDE MORE INFO ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ASSHOLE WHO IS PAID TO HELP, BUT INSTEAD CHOSE TO COLLUDE WITH BOUCHEY, DEFENDING HER REP WITHOUT LOOKING INTO MY COMPLAINT IN OVER A MONTH'S TIME.

I called the Ky State Auctioneer Licensing board to help me out, and what I got was a bunch of B.S.
Basically (I will be telling about this part in great detail ASAP), I discovered what a ruse this group is, IF you count on them to do any real, 'in-house' investigatory work regarding their 'members'.

Instead of even listening to any part of my account, they put their best efforts into mindlessly and needlessly looking up Bouchey's record, which, according to their guy Larry Mahaney, was spotless--I was not only the problem, but somehow had lied to them.

Interesting--I gave up hope...and am publishing this blog now, in hopes that someday something more will pan out in my favor. Meanwhile, these jerks will either ignore it (never admitting fault, I realize that, much less making things right toward me) or simply behave more disgracefully (I'd expect primitive legalities, which I'm prepared to answer with expanding the media awareness of this story online, to other outlets of a more 'regional', then 'national', area of coverage).

LINKS USED TO COMPOSE THIS BLOG:
bouchey's auction profile: http://www.auctionzip.com/KY-Auctioneers/89905.html
wku journalism professor bob adams: http://www.wku.edu/news/releases07/july/hoda.html

ABC Blogger Makes Assinine Racist Comments

2012-06-08T03:59:00.001-05:00

I'm writing this blog just so I can actually 'respond' to a cute little racist idiot who posted an ABC blog the other day indicating the somehow Aroldis Chapman was responsible for the break-in in his own hotel room while he was gone (and much, MUCH worse).
Since my response was obviously 'too upsetting' to this idiot's sensibilities, I'm responding here, but first, a link to the idiot's blog:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/aroldis-chapman-pittsburgh-hotel-room-robbed-woman-found-185506493.html
Here's the entire content of this loser's page, copied directly here, so you can read his slanderous comments about something he knew nothing about:

Aroldis Chapman’s Pittsburgh hotel room robbed, woman found bound and crying

By David Brown

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By David Brown | Big League Stew – Wed, May 30, 2012 2:55 PM EDT

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(Getty)On the field, Cincinnati Reds left-hander Aroldis Chapman has been nearly perfect. He has yet to allow an earned run in 26 innings pitched, and his other stats are just as dominant. He's on top of his game. Off the field, however, trouble has been following him closely.
With the Reds in Pittsburgh to play the Pirates, a robber ransacked Chapman's hotel room late Tuesday night and tied up a 26-year-old woman inside, leaving her crying for help, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Two guests heard the woman's screams.

The guests, who were staying in a room on the same floor, went into the hallway to see what was going on saw the woman inside an open room with her hands bound by cloth napkins, police spokeswoman Diane Richard wrote in a news release.

She did not identify the woman, but said she was from Silver Spring, Md., and was "the hotel guest of a male who attended the Pirates baseball game and who was not present at the time of the incident. During this incident the male guest had various items taken and was later interviewed by detectives," the news release said.

The woman, who was taken to UPMC Mercy, told police she answered a knock at the door to find a man claiming to be from the hotel's maintenance department, there to fix a toilet.
Police do not think it was an actual hotel employee who robbed the room and the woman and terrorized her. And Chapman thankfully was not present, as his team was at PNC Park playing in a game delayed by rain. But the crime is at least a disturbing coincidence considering Chapman's recent arrest for speeding on a suspended license, along with a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed against Chapman that accuses him of being an informant for the Cuban government.
What kind of international man of mystery is this Aroldis Chapman?

For all we know, the lawsuit is groundless, or propaganda, or both. It's being brought by a man in prison. In Cuba. And Chapman, 24, is an easy target. But is he helping to make himself one?
Speeding isn't that bad. The suspended license is worse. And now this woman found tied up in his hotel room. What is Chapman's relationship to her, or the robber, if any? Does the robber have anything to do the the lawsuit business, or Cuba? Among the items stolen were jewelry, clothing, a computer, credit cards and ID cards. ID cards. Huh.
If they aren't already, the Reds ought to consider getting a chaperone for Chapman. Just for now, just in case he's in any danger — either caused by someone else, or himself.
Big BLS H/N: CBS Sports Eye on Baseball

That was retarded. Socially, culturally, intellectually, morally, retarded.

Now, let me crack my knuckles...here's what I have to say about THIS:

"ID Cards. Huh."...you mean, as in hotel room door entry ID cards...yeah I agree, he ought to be mirandized before he gets into any more trouble...
What a moron.

I'm glad you some media idiot invented the term jumping the shark.
and what a good ol' boy hidden racist agenda we have here. Please assure me that you are not one of the thousands of fans whipping out his cell phone everytime chapman pitches over 100 m p h...then at least I'd see something else at work here, instead of narcissistic envy bordering on libel and slander.
next you'll be saying that the communists genetically engineered him to infiltrate the United States, but added to that a youth of guerilla warfare training in cuba to hone him into the perfect baseball player, in order to affect the perfect cover for his espionage. Might as well go ahead and call in Disney too...I'm sure they'd be interested in purchasing the rights, even if only to turn it into an overproduced farce--exactly like this tripe you've written here.
it's got to make you wonder the continuing appeal to even come to America, especially free speech, when god knows no self-respecting human being--and I am absolutely, positively sure no any self-respecting 'commie'--would implicate another with such little factual knowledge about the incident.
you are such a ridiculous poser, and you do not even care. I'll say it: "shame on you".

Upon Ray Bradbury's Death

2012-06-07T19:44:00.003-05:00

Ray Bradbury died yesterday. I never met him, but as a teen, I'd heard of him.

'Fahrenheit 451' was justifiably a choice for required reading in my junior high school, so I'd read it as an assignment. It was great, but I liked true Sci-Fi (complete with Robots, Dinosaurs, and Spaceships) over any other genre, so when I saw a little paperback book of collected Bradbury short stories with the title 'Dino Tales' at a local used book store, I bought it for around 10 cents.

It included what instantly became my favorite short story, entitled 'A Sound of Thunder'. Although I read the entire book, I liked this story so well that I often muse to myself that it should have been the title of the whole book. It was excellent.

I still place 'A Sound of Thunder' atop my list of favorite science fiction short-stories--above those written by Heinlen, Asimov, and other greats--the best of the hundreds of Sci-Fi short stories I have enjoyed through the years, by dozens of different authors.

The original short story was as awesome, inventive, exciting, and chillingly-rendered message as I ever saw created for the Sci-Fi genre.

Soberingly and ominously detailed, with expert foreshadowing, complete with an original 'twist' ending rivaling any of the construed, predictable ones we have since, it describes a business far into the future which can provide any man rich enough with the actual experience of hunting a real, live dinosaur, complete with 'the kill', and bragging photos.

The story was influential as one of the 'best' versions of a common fantasy among anyone who ever imagined what a real dinosaur even looked like, while involving also the more hidden, dangerous, and perhaps selfish fantasies surrounding what one would do if they ever actually had to 'see one'.

In other words--once the self-indulgent fantasy was carefully laid aside--what we'd do if we were actually in the awesome presence of say, one 'terrible lizard' (and I'm not talking about Larry King, Sally Jessie Rafael, or your politician of preference).

What we'd do, aside from "RUN!", that is; and moreover, what would happen as a result, even laying out some speculation about the future of what we did in such a situation, especially a repeatable, even dare-say 'commercially-available' one, as depicted in the story.

Nobody can argue that it was simple, eloquent, and beautiful--the clearest part being it's openly, 'eco-friendly' warning, long before such language was entered into the American lexicon as it is today.

Originally printed in Collier's magazine in 1952, 'A Sound of Thunder' was has been admired for half a century for it's hard-hitting and darkly elegant ecological message, nearly 60 years before the movie version was released, and more than 50 years before the theme of ecologically and environmentally sensitive sci-fi flicks (like Avatar) were conceived.

Ironically it was so far ahead of its time that a movie of it couldn't be made for decades. It would have looked dumb (but unfortunately not as dumb as it looked when it finally did come out in 2005).

'Are these some kind of DARPA thing?'
(final scene from 'The Mission' episode, Amazing Stories)

We owed Bradbury so much more, and I'm hoping for a remake. Even a Spielberg short story, like his 'Amazing Stories' series would make so much more sense, if given the proper treatment.

The premise of this story is a deceptively appealing one: at some point in the future, anyone (with the surreal bankroll) can go on a real safari-type hunting expedition, into the past, to play out their very own 'Big Game' fantasies in the time-honored tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, Allan Quatermain, and all the old 'Great White' hunters--except in this trip, you'll be hunting actual, real, living dinosaurs, via time-travel, only recently mastered, and involving tons of other potentially legal, personal, and ecological stakes.

For example, you can't bring anything back--no trophies--except for pics. No blood swaths for DNA verification, even. Whether or not an oversight at the time it was written, DNA testing and actual sample verification was a highly speculative field of study for another years, until the present day.

Other examples of 'No-Go's':

The dino's ear-shattering road reminds you of your mother-in-law...it's 'Not Okay' to carve the full record of her previous married names into the T-Rex's open, bleeding jawline after the kill...and not just because 'it wouldn't be sporting', or 'his dentist would be more harried than usual', either.
Say you get a 'quirky hankering' to sneak a small 'time-capsule' back into the Mesozoic era, which might contain selected favorites from your WWII-era 'Walking Liberty' antique silver half-dollar collection, a keychain with your high school logo and mascot on it, or perhaps even a locket with a cameo of 'your sweetie' inside it; this notion is a big 'red flag', and will get you ousted from the hunt during the initial pre-launch inspection (which all policy makers hope is remembered);
This one may be a 'reach'...but lessay, somebody has a 'sci-fi' buff for a buddy, who dares you to take along a rare but, say, poisonous, and quickly-reproducing spider, or worse, an egg-casing of such...or worst of all, a type of hardy bedbug that would settle nicely enough to impress even Loki, the Norse god of mischief...you're out, your buddy's out, and we'll research and work to ban anyone on your Facebook 'friends' list six-times removed, into the millions. We'll do it...don't press us.
and don't even think about carving your favorite Fantasy Football team's logo into anything...we know what that looks like--we've noted your "I 'heart' Yankees' Genuine Team Logo Cap", and that's all we have to say on the subject.

All for good reason.

See, the company ('Time Safari, Inc.') has 'found the proper time' that a huge, dangerous T-Rex will be tromping madly about a protective swamp area, gone there, and being such 'Pros' at time travel, they are counting on being able to cut costs and kill that particular Rex over and over. You kill him, take some Polaroids, then leap back into the future and brag, and the whole process starts again with another customer. You can't really mess around with the staging of your safari--in this 'window' of time--especially mussing up the scene, because--no matter how 'staged', 'stuffy', or downright 'fake' it may seem--well, generally speaking, messing around with the past can cause changes to the future, and those can't be controlled, are often irreversible, and also, if not calamities themselves, at least hard to adjust to once you get back.

In fact, it is 'presented' to the client, that "really, it's 'best' if you don't actually even pick your nose or breathe the wrong way' while 'on safari'". You certainly can't leave anything behind, either--and "No, carving your name into the tree just off the trail is not 'ok', either, no matter what you read in the reviews online'". Things--even little, otherwise totally, inconceivably tiny things--be they nouns OR verbs--can have astronomically huge [read catastrophic] effects on the future as we know it now.

So...'again'--it's like 'TS, Inc.' is saying "it's better that our 'clients' aren't left to their imaginations, and things proceed on a nominally-acceptable schedule, even if that seems a little preconceived, choreographed...we can't warn you enough, our concerns are so huge, you can't even conceive of the smallest of them...and oh--this is supposed to be your vacation'.

Time to consider that hefty ominous foreshadowing I mentioned above.

In fact, 'Time Safari, Inc.' has not only 'done the math', but also taken into account some more difficult aspects of such a visit, such as laying an actual suspended pathway right in the known path of the Rex, in an area he hasn't been in awhile (so as not to spook the big fella), and always sends along supposedly well-trained, crack shots in the inevitability that nervous clients wet their pants and 'oopsie' that ever-important initial salvo, and so become potentially--er, 'chummy' with ol' T.R., (who apparently isn't being reimbursed for that sickening worst-case of animal deja-vu in history).

But, just like any human beings, these chaperones aren't exactly perfect themselves (or maybe they aren't being paid enough to be). So, we learn in this story, things can, did, and so, will forever 'go awry' (did you get that little piece of writing there)?

It happens.

But like 'Time Safari, Inc.' always says..."NEXT!"

Even though 'clients' are outfitted with what amounts to an elephant-gun on steroids (read the following excerpt from the original story)...

"Can these guns get a dinosaur cold?" Eckels felt his mouth saying.
"If you hit them right," said Travis on the helmet radio. "Some dinosaurs have two brains, one in the head, another far down the spinal column. We stay away from those. That's stretching luck. Put your first two shots into the eyes, if you can, blind them, and go back into the brain."
The Machine howled. Time was a film run backward. Suns fled and ten million moons fled after them. "Think," said Eckels. "Every hunter that ever lived would envy us today. This makes Africa seem like Illinois."

...we're eventually, darkly, reminded, that this short piece of Sci-Fi relates to us the 'worst-case'...unfortunately for all involved (and--'SPOILER ALERT'--inclusively, all those not even remotely involved).

Working our way back through some good historic examples, it's like...

Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger had said "Jersey!? Jeez, I hate Jersey...but...oh, alright...here goes nu'in...everybody grab those ankles!"; OR,
Al Gore had won the recount; OR,
Hitler's mom had opted for an abortion; OR,
the light bulb hadn't been invented; or better yet, it was, but used a Uranium filament because 'it glows longer, for some reason'; OR,
America had been 'discovered' by actual, real, space aliens (as in, little green ones); OR,
Jesus had been abandoned by Joseph for 'personal' reasons; OR,
the inventor of the wheel had been more interested in 'hair products'; OR,
[God--however you name him] had been too busy playing video games to 'create the universe' (aww, mom!);

The original story (read it at this link) was incredibly brief--in compendium format, around five printed pages--yet truly fascinating, richly-complex, and (at the risk of sounding cliched) masterfully conceived and written. To me, it represents Bradbury's magnum opus, one of the finest stories in all of science fiction.

Again, all this, in less than 10 pages, an easier read than even this blog, by far.

As the original story plays out, one wonders what the inevitable stakes will be, and how they will take place, and you get the feeling that they may even be irreversible. Certain scenes portray 'certain' societal conditions before the fateful trip, and after. That's all I'll say (if you can't read this one, it's remedial English 'til you can--and it would be worth it for this story alone).

In 'A Sound of Thunder', Bradbury actually created one of the earliest Sci-Fi versions of a concept of modern scientific thought now known as the 'Butterfly Effect'.

The 'Butterfly Effect' is one of the most widely recognized and shared concepts among several major schools of modern ideas, not just in science fiction, but in modern thought among metaphysics scholars, historians, physics scholars, even theologians and chaos theorists. The concept is not only still very alive today, but actually one of the more commonly-referenced ideas among all these schools of thought, among their largest lexicon of shared concepts and general ideas.

The idea, or ideas, behind the 'Butterfly Effect' can't be said to be Bradbury's sole invention: actually, the 1st widely-distributed literary version was H.G. Wells' classic 'The Time Machine'. But let me say it here: Bradbury was to the 'Butterfly Effect' as Edison was to the light bulb as we know it today--he basically packaged this extraordinary concept in one of it's earliest literary forms ever printed, and did so in a way as to make it much more readily available to the consumer of the day. He streamlined this idea for mass consumption as it were, making sure to hold true to the important parts of the idea. The Butterfly Effect, as packaged and presented in his story 'A Sound of Thunder', was as important to the perpetuation of this self-perpetuating, inventive concept as the UL Listing is to any light bulb we use today (that, plus the mass production of it, of course).

Wow. That's some good story-writing, and one of the best examples of one of the best Science Fiction minds that has existed so far.

By comparison, ask about Stephen King's literary legacy, and you get something akin to 'record use of unnecessary profanity', 'modern cultural references', 'over-visitation of vulgarly taboo and obscene literary devices', finishing up lastly with 'straight-to-DVD over-commercialization of the horror-genre so profane that it alone can cause nightmares'.

In fact, pick any other Sci-Fi writer, and it's just as hard to see any of them with the overall effect that Bradbury's immense volume of thought-producing stories had on ideas so entrenched in our modern day schema that we may never even know their full extent. The influence of Bradbury's writing is that far-reaching--across the genres--it's biblically, epicly, monumentally, fundamentally, incomprehensibly, axiomatically, absolutely, irrefutably, true.

Now, that really does take skill and creativity. He was really a genius who happened to love the art of telling great stories. One of the best. But his greatest gift was his rare, unique ability to simply tell a story--even a very difficult-to-relate one--with a simple, beautiful elegance and wit, depicting the finer aspects of each character within, without losing any part of the entire message secreted inside each of his rare gems.

His marvelous stories could easily be deemed parables--none of them were written for a reaction, but instead, each it's own rare artifact, as if Bradbury wrote each one as a message in a bottle to himself.

He excelled at revealing small, previously-hidden portions of himself in each of his stories, and each part of him was one in a long string of hidden gemstones. With this literary legacy, he seemed to have given himself over to the absolute integrity of his stories, writings, and ideas, all as carefully crafted as the most intricate and valued Faberge Egg, yet each given to his readers with the calm reference of a remotely-perched monk-scribe, as if he was determined that he leave nothing undone or imperfect in each; as if to avoid re-writing them in some post-apocalyptic, self-imposed solitude, in some other dimension where he'd be granted all the time in the world, and inclination, and the spark.

"Don't Listen to that last guy--I'm the one who'll be back"

'A Sound of Thunder' was the sole inspiration for a mammoth collection of nearly all the 'Butterfly Effect'-themed Sci-Fi stories after it; today, it continues to inspire and influence every form of media, including comic books, movie scripts (see here, here, and here, for starters), and many video games.

It brought the somewhat difficult phenomena (especially as it is verbalized by scientists) into such vernacular use that it made possible many more depictions of the self-same effect, including the series starring Ashton Kutcher.

A whole plethora of alternate universe concepts created by the Sci-Fi genre is also grounded on the concept that changing something in the past can adversely affect the future.

To many who consider that just 'responsibility', 'sensible', and 'common sense', well...of course, it was.

The thing is, these intrinsic values seemed to be missing from the Sci-Fi genre until Bradbury.

Many time-travel, and morality, concepts created by different Sci-Fi authors over the years, were based entirely on Bradbury's storytelling. In fact, it would be harder to find a Sci-Fi author who didn't owe something to Bradbury, than not. Nearly impossible, and that's no fiction.

Even the latest Star Trek movie in that long and storied franchise built heavily on it, with Spock actually meeting himself several times, and, at the end of the movie, having this playful verbal joust with himself.

"Live long and...Hey, if you're my 'future self', can you
give me the spread on the next 20 SuperBowls?"

While some theologians, logicians, and scientific theorists stretch its limits, making their versions of its 'simplest concepts' truly morose and evasive, not Bradbury's version. Any child can understand cause-and-effect once their parents explain it to them.

Bradbury lent this kind of understanding to all his stories--but most memorably, to me, this one.

Unfortunately, his wonderful story was absolutely obliterated in its movie rendering.

Is it a disaster movie? Or a movie disaster?
With scenes like this, you can guess.

Instead of adhering to any remnant of this story faithfully, the producers obviously sought to pad out the thing into an unrecognizable monstrosity that completely left behind the deftly-engineered, poignant little short story that had been the idea behind it. Sadly, Bradbury had either sold the rights to his little masterpiece--or just lost them entirely--only to see them destroy his work with reckless abandon, interested only in the bottom line, a hastily-made screw-up of a movie that lost everything in screen translation.

Worse, the movie bombed, and not due to competition, either.

The eloquent little story simply hadn't been penned with a near-two-hour, grinding, monotonous, farce in mind, and it was obvious to anyone who watched it. It was one of the worst screen adaptations of any Sci-Fi story in existence, and I hate to say it while reminiscing, but to all who read the original story, the movie was a real shit-sandwich.

"Let us operate under the pretense
that we are not killing this movie."

Producers took the original, 5-page, mini-classic, Sci-Fi/morality tale Bradbury had lovingly written, and turned it into one of Hollywood's most garishly-obscene profiteering gambits ever, replete with more unnecessary, scene-stealing CGI than anything joked about by anyone poking fun at any of Spielberg or Lucas' projects.

The movie felt as though it had been hacked together like some bizarro-version of the original, with scenes spliced together by some IBM mainframe with a name running at unprecedented megaflops to push it into production before word could get out how bad it was.

Worst of all, you get the feeling that maybe even the computer splicing this monstrosity together should have known how awful this thing would stink.

With this worst-kind of Hollywood greed ruining it far worse than any of the monsters depicted in the movie itself, the movie had the genuine look and feel of an actual turd in a punch-bowl (although I can't claim to know the look and feel of either).

'A Sound of Thunder' was released as a sparklingly tedious, 1 hour 50 min. long, rife with hackneyed movie devices and characters, and strayed so far from the original story as to lose the entire message in a murky, tiresome, epic, CGI fail...one of the best examples of a poor adaptation ever in Sci-Fi movie history.

The movie was poorly cast with a motley combination of unknowns, over-actors, and forgettables (and that includes the one 'major player'--Ben Kingsley--whose portrayal of the greedy Time Safari CEO was so awful that his lines could have been randomly selected from a box full of cut-up Mad Libs books and been an improvement).

Even with the blatant obscuring of the original intended message, the movie still covers the idea behind 'The Butterfly Effect' crudely. In fact, the over explanation of this easily-grasped idea is actually over-explained to the point it's offensive to the viewer--overkill taken to the power of '11', as in 'Spinal Tap'.

"This amp goes to eleven..you know, to compensate
for the lack of cowbell"

Long after we forget the movie version, however, we'll still have the original story with us as a masterful example of the American science fiction short-story at its best. The message certainly wasn't lost in the original, nor did Bradbury's style overburden his intent to the point it made the story unreadable or forgettable. It was perfect. And, as writers go--so was he.

Which raises yet another eternal question: 'What would we have been like without him? How much less would humanity be, as a mass of intelligent, sensitive, and caring people, without Bradbury's technical brilliance, his expertise in his forte, and his affection for the very art he produced so well? What would we be doing, how would we be affected, as we go forward into our collective future, without his thoughtful, inspired, mind, and his prodigious, provocative, and wondrously imaginative body of peerless work?

Let's hope his contribution won't be lost in time. We should hope we never lose anything we glean from his inspired, haunting scenarios, that primed our minds for a better future, especially knowing ourselves, and the potential worst-case scenarios.

Let's hope we can progress without losing ourselves, our humanity, and what makes us better...

Lest we ourselves never hear the impending Sound of Thunder.

Car Insurance

2012-05-26T12:08:00.002-05:00

Over a decade ago, I was involved in a fender-bender with a ginormous...em, jerk-o, who rolled into a local pharmacy parking lot at around 35mph (he bounced his mom-in-law's Park Ave. crazily when he rolled in, everyone could hear it), and promptly rear-ended me while I was trying to make a lane-change (had people I didn't like in my car, but was helping 'somebody' pick up their meds, and wouldn't you know, had pulled into a line of around 3 or 4 'full-maintenance' drivers ahead of me, who'd already taken around 10 mins. apiece to have their scrips filled)...

Turns out that this 'dude' in the Park Ave. was the worst kind of bad-driver to tangle with--he was:

driving without a license
on a suspended license
slightly under the influence
somebody else's car (his screaming, belligerent, filthy rich mo-in-law); and,
with absolutely no insurance (and she, with none on him)

Still, his [now SCREAMING] mom-in-law angrily demanded he get out and approach me for insurance info, on a (literally, now) DIME-SIZED DING in her plastic front bumper (again--literally), while clutching her neck as if she was planning to falsity a personal injury claim (like the classic 'whiplash' or something).

I couldn't have been more unfortunate, as this was just before we had camera smartphones, so I waited for 45 (can I say 'frikkin' here?) minutes while the BGPD showed up, briefly 'met' with ol' 'Monster-in-law' (she was HIGHLY connected locally, needless to say), then calmly separated us and began grilling ME or my patently dismissive, all-wrong, and just plain POOR driving habits (possibly a given, but I'd debate that strongly--and...well, not really, this time, anyway).

This 'fine officer' then gently handed me a citation for 'distracted driving', and gave MY personal and insurance over to the crazy old woman in the other car, who clearly had been waiting for an opportunity like this to subsidize her alcohol habit (and problem--she was raving like a lunatic). The old woman immediately stopped her acting and greedily clutched my insurance info, eyeing me triumphantly, like a tantrumic, spoiled, child.

Despite the several people who had lined up to give their eye-witness accounts of the event, the BGPD officer stubbornly ignored them, telling some to leave, and others merely 'disbanded'. She handled EVERYTHING on her own, without backup, or allowing objective, non-familiar, eye-witnesses to approach with their CORRECT versions of what they'd just seen.

The cop took NO PHOTOS of the 'car in question' (highly questionable, IMHO)...the son-in-law over-apologized (later everywhere he met me, like a real grub) publicly to me, relating his own story that he was brow-beaten, constantly humiliated, and had been FORCED into subjecture by old 'mom' over there (who kept vacillating between glaring openly at me, and copping a little-ol-lady act for the duped & naive, civic-and-politically-minded, local cop).

It was hard to feel sorry for this 'tool': he stood around 6'3"--and his crazy mom-in-law looked to be around 4"11, and well over 70 years old. She'd never even gotten out of her luxury car and looked at the 'damage' to it. (She looked a lot like the 'Where's the Beef?!' grandma, complete with blue hair).

'Hmm', I thought. 'This won't be good'.

Over the next few weeks, I waited for the hammer to fall (to hear from her insurance agent), but time went on, and...well, nothing happened.

Until I breathed a 'sigh of relief' about a month later when I got a call from my own, local (some might say, 'Good Ol' Boy' wanna-be), extremely-overpriced, good-for-nothing, agent (who still runs an Allstate office on the ByPass, so you'll know).

He had 'Monster-in-Law' in his office, using the police report as her sole evidence, trying to bilk me out of hundreds of $ for 'repairs' for her Park Ave., also insinuating she'd begun mentioning a personal injury lawsuit, but 'if I'd play nice, and settle out-of-court', she was big-hearted enough to drop everything if I'd pay her around $500 to repair that little 'dime-sized' ding.

My insurance agent was obviously working for the other team...who, really, should have never even been on the road, for a multitude of reasons (listed above, remember).

When I balked, reminding him 'who he worked for'...things got ugly.

That's when his threats worsened, promising me he would have to begin taking action against me himself, obliterating my already-high rates (over $117 by this time, due to his constant rate-changes over a five-year term with him by me--JUST FOR CAR INS.!)...

I asked him (for purposes here, we'll call him 'Bob') if she'd presented ANY kind of evidence backing up her claim (as in, photos) and he said she'd been to her DEALER for an official insurance repair estimate.

Then I asked him if she was there, at which point he made a flawed attempt to deny she was...but not a substantial enough attempt to bridle the old...uhm, 'patron' and 'friend', and I heard her begin railing on him like she had her own son-in-law.

I laughed (pretty edgily), and then asked him if she'd driven herself, and perchance if she'd driven her 'baby'--the Park Ave.

He mumbled and stumbled, so I went on to ask him if he'd gained weight lately (and if he'd merely peek out the window and look at the car for himself--as it was indeed parked right out front of his office window--within 15 feet of his prying eyes--that very moment).

Well, sometimes an old snake can get dangerous when he feels cornered--and flight wasn't an option for 'old Bob', so he lit into me like a cornered gator with an M-80 up his sphincter.

I hung up, having successfully called him out, but not before screaming at him something like "well go ahead then, y'old bruiser--[expletive deleted] me solid--I'LL PAY the old hag, but I'm terminating my policy as of now! I told him some other things which I don't think would fly on anything owned by Larry Flynt, and hung up. I never got the image of that stupid ding out of my head (and the local ding-bats who had greedily blown that thing so far out of proportion).

He did [the expletive deleted thing], and over the next few months, he did as 'promised', and raised my rates to nearly $200 a month until I paid off her 'balance' (which she likely spent on Orange Schnapps--every penny, from what I'd understood her to be).

About a year later, I notified old 'Bobby Boy' via snail-mail, very clearly-written, communicae, that I'd found a great company (a very BIG one, if not the biggest), and had moved on.

Suffice it to say, I found a better company to deal with, and 'paid on'.

I moved forward, BTW (hard not to, I admit)--I'm not bragging, but my current total for the 'common courtesy' coverage (other motorist--I'm safe by myself) PLUS renter's insurance is nearly down to $50.

So, I have some 'pointers', therefore, for local people in finding insurance (esp. for students):

Shop around (and by that, I do mean outside your city limits, or general area): you'd be surprised how much some local insurance 'providers' gouge locals, once they think they've cornered the local market. We're not talking 'fixed rates' here. This is something you don't hear a lot about, but it's commonly very true.
Shoot for 'low'...but not 'too low'. Look for that rural provider with rates below the...erm--'mini-metro' avg. we have here in BG. Local providers have become more like 'dealers', hiking rates, aiming for the WKU crowd--it's wrong, and can even be discouraging. But YOU WANT INSURANCE (it's like the 'Golden Rule', for driving issues)...so find that rate with a 'sweet spot' for you--NOT so low it's suspicious (like--they're operating a store front from a cheap hotel, and your agent's car looks like a real 'beater').
Avoid local 'GOBs' (good ol' boys)...we've made 'some' headway in decades of dealing with these old bullfrogs, but what is left of them is still a very gentrified network of insanely-greedy, over-protective, and outright extortive, ill-mannered, and seedy individuals. They're 'crotch-rotten', and when put on the spot, would literally kill, for their 'kill'. They brag about it a lot--it's their lifestyle, but to support it, they have to have the local 'chum' of anyone outside their circle, to munch on. Don't be that.
BUY INSURANCE--it's the right thing to do
Try to be a good driver (don't drive like a bunghole, be overly-considerate, get where you're going, and learn your driving area pretty well). BG, f'rinstance, seems to toggle madly between a cattle drive and a NASCAR event, with slugs hogging the fast lane for miles, making you late, and 'those darn kids' cramming their 'frontage' up your exhaust pipe so far they could charge you for an oil change. Don't be 'that' driver...and don't drive drunk, texting, reading, and minimize phone use--it's really safer, and you'll even end up with lower rates, if your insurance offers that.

I'll just say it outright--on the advice of a family friend, I went with 'State Farm' insurance out of Glasgow (I'll say that, too--Mike Bryant). I couldn't believe how friendly they were, out of the hustle-and-bustle, and they apparently had 'time' to go over my policies like top-rate accountants (they are!) and GET MY RATES LOWERED THREE TIMES DURING THE FIRST YEAR.

Seriously--I liked that so much, I began jokingly asking my agents there if they realized they were an insurance company. They even sent me a [cashable] $25 'Christmas' refund my first year.

So...you can get...erm...'messed over' here in BG, esp. But look...and look....and look. I was with at least 5 different companies (and 2 of them really did 'mess with me' enough to merit dropping them) over my 26-year driving history.

I'll readily admit my driving record isn't perfect...but my last 'infraction' was over two years ago--a 2 MPH 'Cali-roll' in an area I should have been more careful about driving in (residential). As many would say, I'm not the worst driver, either. I've just learned since how to look out for my budget in an often personally-hostile economy.

Buying insurance, to me, is everywhere as important an honor and privilege as the honor, privilege, and LIBERTY of actually driving...and every bit as American.

We're not all NASCAR material, but IMHO--isn't most driving for utility, convenience, and even leisure? Take that 'pro' stuff off-roading...maybe you'll end up on Youtube or Tosh.0 instead of America's Most Wanted or 'Dumbest'....

Installing Democracy in Yet Another Anti-American Country

2012-03-04T13:41:00.001-06:00

Once again we are trying to defend a middle-eastern country that has harbored dangerous terrorist, dedicated anti-American groups for decades, with that inevitable, undeniable hidden agenda--to attempt to install in them the genuine goodness of a democracy.

Yes, we should know the benefits ourselves, and everybody respects our time-proven, honored, and self-instilled rights--there are more patriotic, true, born-and-bred, Americans living now, than ever before, and more indeed who have actually fought for, sacrificed for, and known those who have died for those rights.

So, in its simplest form, its a two-way street, with some dangers involved.

First, there were more Americans living in Lybia, than ever, even before the long-overdue rebellion against Mohamar Khadafi which began two weeks ago. American journalists certainly began popping up on camera all over the area, many of whom had just left Cairo after the Egyptian uprising. This event seemed to be moving forward quicker than Egypt's, and Khadafi's own public statements and actions have made it appear that the area is soon to be overtaken by someone, and another dictator would be just that, which nobody needs.

The Egyptian political overthrow was a huge struggle, too--not many of us can deny that we could almost feel the hierarchy's vain, dying breaths--even though, afterward, we found out on our own public news media that the Egyptian event had been almost entirely engineered by a Google Marketing Executive.

That's right--in his many public interviews on Egyptian television and our own, Wael Ghonim almost seemed cocky in his relating the tale, told in the immediacy of the moment, of how he'd done it via Google's own social networking skill and power. It was almost like an intensely-scripted live reality TV show made on a grand scale...but for the 'net. Any 'older' viewers at home may not even 'get it'--a whole country freed from subjection, and taken through an entire national revolution, in just over 3 weeks.

Now, just as quickly, we are seeing many reports on our major news networks that things aren't really going well in Egypt at all. Many Egyptians who participated in their revolution, only days old, were reporting that none of the idealism thrown about during the fray was there afterward. Scenes in Egyptian courtrooms showed their own journalists being 'escorted' out by large, heavily-armed governmental thugs, after having committed the crime of asking about the new regime, and the current state of affairs.

These weren't nationalistic crazies, or fringe-element student journalists. These were people who only days before were reporting both sides of the affair, as truly as journalists should. These were journalists who asked the 'wrong' questions--people who put Nancy Grace to shame on a daily basis.

Catholic Herald article: "Cardinal Defends Release of Lockerbie Bomber"

The cardinal said that given the “steady rate” of executions in the United States, American lawmakers should “turn their gaze inwards, rather than scrutinising the working of the Scottish justice system”.

later, in his same statement released to his affects, he went on to criticize the American justice system more directly. As the article went on to say...

Then, accusing the United States of adopting a “conveyor belt” approach to capital punishment, he added: “I would rather live in a country where justice is tempered by mercy than exist in one where vengeance and retribution are the norm.”

“Perhaps it is time for them to ‘cast out the beam from their own eye before seeking the mote in their brothers,’ ” he said.

Solyndra Dynamics

2011-11-30T15:13:00.006-06:00

Solar energy is the best alternative energy resource we have.

I was actually proud that Obama decided to 'invest our money' in Solyndra because I'd seen that technology on TV a year before and was incredibly impressed by it's potential.

A Leisurely Stroll with Good Friends

Face it, we'll never know all the money the Bush's invested in anything, much less any money the entire country would have potentially profited from. They only thing they're openly transparent about is that they're personally rich (and GW, 'dumb'). Oh--and that they both get the very best seats at Ranger's games.

Good Times...Bad Times
(at least we got good seats)

Before the recent media-generated widely-publicized political fallout over Solyndra's supposed pre-destined doomed status, they actually were the industry-leader in a field showcasing the biggest potential advance in solar energy's history.

Scientific American reported on the idea in 2008, in this article, complete with pointed, positive references to Solyndra themselves.

Shame is, with all his potential power, Obama didn't have some intelligent patent lawyers look into the company, because it turned out that Solyndra's technology was SO good that, as soon as its competitors saw the gaping loophole that they hadn't decided to copyright their product properly to protect investors, they grabbed it for themselves, and only then, WE ALL LOST.

The technology is based on a simple idea that you could generate a LOT more energy PER AREA by simply wrapping a long tube in the same old solar panel, then paint the surface they're mounted on white to reflect any sunlight missed back up onto the underside of the cylinder.

I'm no genius myself, but I've had some ideas I'd considered acquiring patents for, so I'm familiar with the United States patent website that I know this idea would be considered an 'adaptation-type' patent--a pre-existing idea that was made better by a simple adaption.

In this case, it was wrapping the original product around a tube--that's all.

So, it was inevitable that other companies charged after the idea as soon as they found out they could, and began producing it in-house themselves.

Patents may be expensive, but any company mass-producing such a progressively advanced version of the traditionally costly-to-manufacture 'energy of the future' should have undertaken some serious efforts to legally protect their product. Solyndra's problem was, they didn't.

What Price Football?

2011-11-17T01:11:00.015-06:00

Jerry Sandusky
Man as Monster

The level of secrecy in place at Penn State is far beyond any Stephen King scenario I've ever heard of...all you have to do is swap some small, white-picket-fence Maine locale with Penn State, and only then is it possible to hear what is coming out of there now with any level of comprehension at all.

The recent reports that ex-coach Jerry Sandusky used his position, even his charity, to gain the trust of his community, and eventually began sexually abusing young boys, is is by far the most damning thing I've ever head of occurring in any sport administration.

The smallish Pennsylvania community that apparently hid this from the world should be seriously investigated with an interest in what evil they collectively harbor to quietly allow this to go on for decades--and, in fact, go to great efforts to hide it even now.

With all the talk about the regional Pennsylvania policies regarding the privacy they shroud themselves in, we should forgo the media proceedings and get on toward pushing for subpoenas and governmental intervention, especially in disallowing this state--and all others--from gathering such legal power to avoid the same transparency to which we rightfully hold our troubled government.

'Pa' Familia and Creepy Pal

That this secrecy was sought after prior to these events, is one evil--that it was granted among all the other proceedings to make our very gov't more transparent, is tantamount to granting these corrupt, evil men the same power that enabled high-ranking Catholic ministers to do the same type of thing. Worse, it's like granting any local priest with perverted tendencies the same power as the Vatican itself.

Watching this haggard, tired, and worried mother being interviewed on Anderson Cooper now, I'm most surprised that her son's school allowed Jerry Sandusky to come there and remove her child from school WITHOUT her consent, permission, or even notification of any kind. In fact, it was evident that the school principal who enabled that charade was not only behind it himself, but also could have attempted to hide that it ever happened from this mother.

It's hard to believe--but, if true, the school principal allowed the child to leave with Sandusky WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE, for hours at a time, even quite recently, then proceeded to level veiled threats toward her when she called them to account for their (in)actions...the principal, she said, warned her to "think what could happen" should she go to the police with her concerns (almost immediately after he asked her to help him try and look up Sandusky on the 'Megan's Law' website)...

Geragos with his previous client Scott Peterson
(now on death row for killing his wife Laci)

So many 'special places in hell' that the devil probably has to hire more architects and contractors every day; but one person who earned a place like that, for me, was Mark Geragos (the attorney who defended Mark Peterson), who showed up between Sunny Hostin and Jeffrey Toobin on Anderson Cooper's panel tonight; from the start, Geragos did his best to cast doubt and raise shameful, negative (immediately shown false by Cooper, BTW) proponents to his argument that the mother of the 1st child should have, quote "called 9-1-1" while sitting in the child protection services office ITSELF (tantamount to calling 9-1-1 from the ER, BTW)...

Geragos wrangled two or three minutes out of his shameful display, even after both Toobin and Hostin began openly displaying their astonishment and exasperation with his mindless and libelous, insulting behavior. Hostin pretty much gasped--Toobin, too, expressed his disbelief, with an incredulous look, his own gasp, and a comment or two on Geragos' ridiculous prattling.

One Sexual Predator
Representing Another

Sandusky's attorney Joe Amendola himself committed a sex-crime. Back in the 90s, he had sex with his 16-year-old client-turned-intern Mary Iavasile, getting her pregnant, later even marrying her (when he was around 49). He has represented other known sexual predators himself, as well. See this article.

Ray Gricar, the former District Attorney
Missing Since 2005

And this morning, reports are now being released of the story of the disappearance of the previous District Attorney who was given evidence of the very first abuse case back in 1998. Ray Gricar--who would have been prosecutor over the case as it stands now--disappeared in 2005, but not before using his home computer to search the internet to learn which software to buy to completely erase his laptop hard drive. After his disappearance, his car, laptop, and separately, that laptop's hard drive, were each found in or near a local river nearby. He has never surfaced anywhere since, leading many to speculate that his disappearance had something to do with the cover-up in 1998--that he had enough incriminating evidence on his laptop hard drive against Sandusky (and indeed, the entire Penn State staff/admin) to put Sandusky away. Click here to see the NY Times article does the best job of describing the strange details surrounding this aspect of the case.

It must have been enough to cause him to disappear. Did he make some local deal with Penn State admins to ditch the evidence back then, only to be murdered for the 'Program's sake'?

Breast Cancer "Mammorial" Display Problems

2011-11-01T23:31:00.002-05:00

Over the past few months, a local physician specializing in MRIs and other computerized imaging processes has had a street sign in front of his local office--on a main thoroughfare--exposing passerby to a large number of bras; this, in his effort to promote Breast Cancer Awareness, and the seriousness of his commitment to providing assistance in diagnosing, and hopefully preventing, this dreadful disease.

It's a very serious issue--but his sign has led to several letters to the editor of the local paper (both in defense of, and criticism of, the sign, it's appropriateness, its message, and its affect on the community), local commentaries by the same paper, and other news media reports of various kinds.

I personally have never driven by it and laughed, giggled, or even smirked, because I know that cancer in general is not a joking matter, nor will it ever be. It's not appropriate to joke about a disease that kills so many in such a merciless, often slow, process, seemingly draining the very spirits of those affected by it.

At best, what I'd like to say is that the 'display' pushes the boundaries of what is considered appropriate--possibly even locally so--in order to do what it's intended to do: raise awareness. It has worked to do that--even a few local women who claimed breast cancer had affected them personally wrote in to publicly question the sign's affect, or even its intention in general. No matter the 'right side', no one can deny that the sign has had its affect, that the phenomenon definitely deserved some attention, or even that there are much less appropriate, or important concerns which routinely receive much less attention, or even much more of the inappropriate kind.

One can look at many comedy acts today and wonder how much time the comedian put into looking for humor, or even finding something laughable; sometimes, I wonder what they must think of their audience, with the subject matter premeditated into their acts. Many times, they are met with mixed reactions of glares, stares, and audible gasps, with their treatment of even some of the more horrible aspects we are routinely confronted with, especially in a media we appear to have very little control over (besides the remote, and consumer habits).

This recent Halloween night, that sign was vandalized--it was set afire by some bunch of local idiots. Aside from the remote possibility that this vandalism kept them from doing something else more recklessly idiotic that night, there isn't much positive that could come from their having done this. It plainly indicates more deterioration of our local moral fiber, that somebody is always willing to vandalize somebody else's property, and just that people can still do some pretty stupid stuff.

Amazingly, the sign was right across the street from our local Steak & Shake restaurant, which is always highly populated by the local police, as one of the few places they can meet centrally to eat at all hours, night and day; so I wonder how the hell these idiots pulled off their little scheme without some planning (which makes me wonder if they're an active part of our local workforce, or maybe need some help finding work).

Regardless of how people locally viewed this sign, or even its affect on local views of breast cancer, I have little doubt that somehow the sign pulled off its purpose with much less disdain and 'aftershock' than a local sign similarly attempting to draw attention to prostate cancer sufferers, patients, and even victims.

Life constantly forces us to make difficult, and sometimes ridiculous decisions, commitments, and then seems to wait while the results of those decisions play out right before our eyes. I thought the breast cancer sign a harmless, almost intentionally silly and light-hearted way to make a point. But I am also quite thankful that the same imaging specialist has never (yet) decided to display a similar sign to gather attention (worse yet--'support') for his clients whose lives have been affected by prostate, or, God forbid, rectal or colon cancer...

Yet.

Open Letter to the USPS: "Just Drop that First S"

2011-10-10T14:57:00.002-05:00

When I see and hear all the news about our vainglorious United States Postal Service having screwed up all its finances and over-expanded to the point it needs to drastically and radically 'downsize', and all the internal hub-bub and protesting going on, all I can think is that they deserve it, and we've always deserved better.

The United Parcel Service has never had such problems, and, despite its astounding workload, has readily and quickly adapted to fill its daily obligation to its customers. They've also been handling regular envelope mail (if slightly over-size) for years without incident, and their track record--as long as you don't count their ill-fated hand-off partnerships with the USPS--is sterling, as far as corporations can ever be.

So, we should just let them handle the USPS's business. Not necessarily clean up their messes, and definitely hire some of the better workers from them, but mainly, just allow them to benefit from the USPS's internal screwed-up, well-deserved bad reputation resulting from its just horrible poor service (always bad in a service industry, BTW).

Despite all the crying, protesting, and squirming of local USPS employees, I can think of nothing that would better serve the public once again. When I see all the national protests, I'm always too busy thinking of how much mail sits in transit, undelivered, to even listen. It's been a bad ride for the last, oh, my whole life, to even stay on the channel and tolerate this anymore. You'd think they were all raising 15 kids, the way they talk about supporting their families, and the guilty looks they toss at passerby.

We should all realize how much we've been misled by the public spin given this 'story' by the media. These aren't people without training, skills, and opportunities. They are instead a highly-trained group of skilled workers who were hired for their often-blind, quietly-passive, following and instruction-taking skills--except that hiring sessions were, over the last decade, often tainted by open assurances by the USPS that hirees would make tons of money themselves.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

In 1996, I myself responded to a local newspaper ad to take the 'Postal Exam' test at our local university; I showed up, took the test, and was called to 'try out' at the local Encoding Facility. The original print ad had stated only that the exam was for postal workers, so I'd wanted to be out delivering the mail itself, not--as things turned out--confined in a cubicle at a terminal dedicated to 'helping' their internal optical character recognition system sort mail to local regions. During the 'try-outs' I tired of the boring and tedious nature of this work, which reminded me glaringly of old psychological films of chickens trained to play tick-tack-toe for feed (for the record, there were never any thin chickens in those films--they ended up nervous, fat peckers).

Happier, Liberated Chicken

Worse, I tired of hearing the carny-style verbal pitches by all the organizers of the hiring 'event' (most of whom you could easily tell had never worked daily jobs for the USPS themselves), touting the financial glories all workers would achieve should they proceed into the final stages of the selection process and be hired. You'd think these fattened-chickens were working toward a degree in WWE; or the Nazi party. It was ridiculous, and by the third day, not only were the nerves in my hands destroyed, but also my image of the Postal Service as well. They were greedy, misleading thugs operating a ponderous, inefficient, and now over-glamorized circus-style sweatshop.

You Do Want that Integra, Yes? Then Get To Pecking!

I realized not only that this wasn't the job I'd applied for, it was a work-place I'd hate, and further, that it just wouldn't last, as the jobs at the site were only in existence to correct the millions of mistakes made per-hour by their terribly over-automated, and ridiculously dumb, computerized-sorting system. Again, the people working their were like chickens; pecking meaningless codes into their otherwise useless terminals, all day (and night) long, driven by incentives that were even more ridiculous. For example: one 'hiring team member' constantly raved about how much money employees were going to be making, even though this was an entirely new facility, and one of only around six in the entire nation. It was like being in the middle of an indoctrination, rather than a legitimate hiring process. I think I remember one other person questioning this reason, but all reason was lost after the 'hiring team member' yelled out "You know that Acura Integra you've been wanting? Well, this is the job that will get you that car!" It was like watching an Oprah episode where they found keys under their seats (except in this case, only one winner with 'real keys'!). As people 'got on board', I recognized I'd never be delivering the mail in this job--I'd just be getting fatter, lazier, and insanely dumber--so I got out; I intentionally fouled up during the last week of the process, got paid for wasting my (and their, apparently) time, and took another job locally, ruining my vehicles delivering newspapers.

To this? 'Thanks', boss!

From this...

I often use that experience to sift through the various USPS media releases, and even the smaller local protests and stories, for any indication things have gotten any better, and made the USPS an organization worth having, much less funding. After all, they seem to intentionally allow their status as a lifelong icon with heritage to cross the line as an image with a federal economic anchor, even though any ambitions as such have long been lost to other carriers--some of whom took away from the USPS then failed themselves (DHL). Doubtless, the USPS Company has oft-used any kind of federal manipulations it can to undermine their competition, even while providing much less real service than their competitor.

More 'Things that make you go Hmmm'.

There are some real reasons the USPS deserves an absolute buyout by their major competition, UPS. It's like the difference between Ford and either GM, or Chevy, in that Ford didn't accept government billions in a down market--instead, they waited for it to play out, made their own business even better, and even played the 'donor card' in a recent ad--which was immediately yanked after pressure from no less than the White House itself (yay, liberty and democracy!). See this article from the Detroit News for reference.

I was right about the confining nature of the job; but even more right about my observation that, despite what the hiring team was told to say (and gleefully reporting all along the process), this was a temporary opportunity--a temp job--until the USPS got some better software and tech toys to sort the mail automatically. This was only alluded to occasionally by the hiring team--all very motivated people in the most anonymous, fly-by-nighter, high-pressure, carnival-barking style. The area's RCE (Remote Encoding Center) was closed in under five years, and now those people drive their Hyandais to work at AFNI, Community College, or maybe just walk to Walmart to shop sometimes, if they're lucky.

The data online for a search on 'USPS Remote Encoding Facility closures' is so profligate that I'm just putting a Google search result link here.

The whole thing seemed scandalous to me, but done under the auspices of the USPS, it was almost as if the younger folks they were indoctrinating were just along for the ride, a perfect flush during a perfect quail hunt, if you will. Once the inductees were flushed from their own lifestyles, they were made into the perfect fools for this temp hiring process.

Some bigger indicators of the USPS's failings have been there for decades, while some have come more recently.

Here are a few notables, in my opinion:

'Going Postal'

Memorial of the 1986 post office
shooting incident at Edmond, OK

Ever wonder where the phrase came from? Not if you're over 25, hopefully, because here is one uniquely-American phrase we should never forget (or allow to bear repetition). This nefarious, negative phrase originated in the United States during the mid-eighties, and was popularized by the media until it found its way into regular usage by anyone wanting to make a case that someone else is 'nuts for no apparent reason'.

The various uses of the phrase today rarely ever pause to relate its origin, but often still come followed by a dreadful melancholic pause, because it was never funny--but instead, pathetic, dreadful, and psychologically-tinged with pathos, as in the more common modern uses of the words apathetic (when describing our declining national outlook), and the use of the word pathos (when describing a sickly-engaging movie).

For those born after the mid-80's, the phrase originally was coined by the media to refer to a (likely dead) person who, seemingly without warning, snaps, and goes on some kind of killing rampage, often after raging silently for years at an increasingly oppressive, over-demanding, and unrewarding job (as in the USPS jobs that--even then--lacked any redeeming qualities). Many times this unfortunate incident killed off innocent bystanders, even hapless customers already made to wait in line at the post office. Worse yet, many of the incidents that gave rise to this sinister phrase were preceded by the killer's desperate pleas to his supervisor, or even higher-ups, begging for better working conditions. Most often, with the USPS, the 'condition' requested--even begged-and-pleaded-for--have been mere better pay.

For years, the United States Post Office has seemed to foster and promote it's own corporate image, while apparently, internally failing to the point of absolute bleakness from within.

From 1986 to 1997, over twenty incidents occurred, involving more than 40 people murdered by American postal workers. Following every incident, details emerged later that involved severe stresses being forced on the worker, mostly in the way of an over-demanding job, in an 'unfeeling' environment (my words--most involved cases where workers had filed formal grievances over work conditions, which had been ignored and worsened).

See this wikipedia article for more info. (Be ready to be depressed).

The 'Forever' Stamps

Let's go buy grandma some stamps (before she does).

Everybody recognized the 'necessity' of the 'Forever Stamp' from the start. It was the USPS saying, "We're going to raise the rates indefinitely, so we're putting out a stamp now that'll give you the opportunity to pay a higher fee now", with the unwritten, malingering thought "and yes, we're worried we won't last 'til next year" left wide open.

The media was reporting postal service office closures all over the United States. The prevailing consumer attitude was, generally-speaking, 'Quick--call grandma and stop her before she goes out and buys a lot of these things'.

I mean, how long could they last? The cloudy fortune of the USPS had already made the mainstream media, and most everyone not working for them was unhappy with almost every aspect of their service as well. So, why would people go out and buy a stamp that was an open declaration of a failing company's last stand--an act of desperation made worse by the USPS attempts to make this a 'saving throw' to their own crippled infrastructure. They released emotional press statements encouraging people to buy the new 'Forever Stamps' in order to save the good ol' Postal Service from extinction, basically--but they'd been driven out of business by their own greed, first, and, all throughout, their own incompetence (in failing to compete with the better-run, better-managed UPS).

Blaming eBay for Insufficient Postage

It's become a real pain to have to scan for eBay auctions that avoid the USPS's messed-up 'at-home' label printing system. Sellers often send you an item only to surprise you with insufficient funds, and if you're not available (IF your postal delivery-person has the time to go to your front door) to pay the extra fee, you get a notice in your mailbox saying you will now have to bring the ticket down to your local post office and pay the unpaid postage before you can receive your package.

Many times, this is cause by eBay sellers who intentionally get around the official USPS postage system by printing their own labels at home until they get enough complaints to eBay that their accounts are closed.

Your postal worker, and the postal service, is right to blame the seller, but one thing has been missing in this blame-game from the start--an improvement in the USPS online label system in general.

They could stop all this by just restricting labels printed at home to those running actual businesses at home; or, they could have merely placed more restrictions on certain eBay account-holders who have made this a habit (eBay would stand to benefit from this, too).

If the Postal Service was really in the black, and doing well, on their own ledgers, we'd have seen dedicated little scales offered by them years ago, which, for a miniscule fee (due to the sheer volume of eBay business coming their way), could prevent people from underestimating the weight of their sold items, and end all this right away.

But, it hasn't happened--and this is a characteristic of a business solely run for profit--as in the local car lot that sells used cars without a mechanic's shop inside, or the cell phone company concentrating more on overage fee policies without restricting the phone's actual functionality during overage times.

As a small businessman who often 'relents' and buys computer parts from eBay which can't be purchased locally, or even regionally, at retail parts vendors, this situation has haunted me more than a dozen times in the last two years alone--especially when I've promised a local customer their computer by a certain time depending on the tracking number's report of the location of their item, only to find a note in my mailbox reporting the eBay vendor did this....and especially on a Friday, or Saturday!

additional info link here

and here;

and here.

"Please Leave Your Complaint at the Beep"

Over the past five years I have noticed a decline in the local post office's ability to deal with local calls, regardless of their nature. Whether you are dealing with a terrible delivery-person, previous resident's mail coming to your box, or even someone stealing your mail, you won't be talking to a local, real person, it seems, ever again, if the current USPS policies stay in effect.

Not that there isn't a local telephone number listed for them--there is here, anyway--but you will never be able to use it to talk with a human being, much less any kind of supervisor, again. Your call will be routed to a mailbox that reports that it is 'Full', and you will then be hung up on.

Nice...so, what, then? Wouldn't it seem ridiculous to call some national 'hotline'? Even worse--imagine the defunct state of things if and when you finally broke down and related your story/needs to a national online form of some kind?

Well, that's what you're getting--unless your town is a town, anyway. When your town 'grows up' and becomes a 'city', then you'll feel the big-city pain of anonymity in this new, profoundly ridiculous, way. Get used to it--it's not a good thing, but it's been propounded by a USPS that is unwilling to make changes to get better, and instead seeks to constantly get you to throw money at it in the way of unearned, higher fees.

That's what's wrong with the USPS--more demands should mean a balanced budget paying higher salaries and increasing the quality of services, not necessarily the sheer number of them. It has become a ponderous, bureau of mindless, robotic corporate decisions based on that bottom line, with no attention to 'how' along the way, at all. It's hit rock-bottom.

Not UPS, which has continued to make strong headway in the area of steady growth. Rather than make idealized projections, the seem to have stayed busy by making their service better, which has paid with realistic earnings steadily.

Pardon my sarcasm, but this is incredible in the modern US market, especially the 'needy' corporate environment we've let creep into the automotive industry through the years.

Considering their industry, size and potential, UPS stands to gain from USPSs loss, anytime. The only hold-back has been the USPS's delivery service type (or more accurately, the type of deliveries they...deliver). The USPS origin as the Pony Express involved primarily paper, envelope mail, and still does today. If they ruin that, it's their mess, and the corporate big-wig idiots capitalizing on this failed infrastructure should be left holding the bag while UPS strides in valiantly and offers all the stressed-out postal workers better jobs and better pay. That's what it's all about for now, especially.

If the USPS grandstands (and it would), and begins over-valuing their own local offices, they should be reminded every step of the way that a) they're not an official government office, at any point; b) they drove themselves to their own extinction solely by their own incompetence (even while driving out DHL and other mail carriers out of business Monopoly-style); c) they never treated their own very well at all; and d) many of their supervisors now protesting local office closures could be working at UPS very quickly, and so also offer up whole lists of their own best employees for hire there. Hopefully this would end any stand-offs, delays while the entire USPS stepped-out of their own offices and merely changed the logo while their corporate heads changed into something more efficient and successful. Everybody would benefit--especially us, their customers.

If it was possible to change only the company logo while changing out the entire corporate oligarchy that preceded their problems, and dragging demise, I'd say 'to it!', but it's not. Unfortunately, there are enough ridiculous people working for the USPS in the form of scores of attorneys who would inevitably be contacted ASAP, to somehow 'revive their' tarnished image once again, as they've focused on doing for the last two decades or more. They've gotten used to spitting into the wind, likely due to all the sweet-talk they've been spouting about themselves for years, anyway. That spit got to the point it actually tasted pretty good to them.

But all along the way, they crapped on their employees and customers. That will never get better.

As you can see by their stock page on 'TheStreet.com' here, their dividends have continued solid growth as well. This is striking considering their sheer size and potential pitfalls (all of which they now have the USPS as a model for).

additional online sources:
http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/content.detail/id/542890/Insufficient-postage.html

If the Crap Hits the Fan, Just Make Crappy Lemonade

2011-09-05T01:08:00.011-05:00

I'm finally breaking down and posting a matter to my blog, after months of trying to get help in making my 'corporate landowner' property owner be responsible enough to assist me in any way in dealing with a huge septic tank issue I've had over the last 4 months.

I live in a 'money pit' of a house that was referred to me by a local client [who, unless he causes me any MORE trouble, with blissfully be held nameless]...it was 'such a great deal', and I'd 'saved him so much money' by working for him on his office--and home--computers (literally saved him over $300 on one office job alone)--that he 'did me this big favor' and told me about 'this deal' where his youngest brother was moving 'down the street' [wha?] and that little brother's house would be available for rent, 'the very next week', for what amounts to a true 'pittance'.

This was all true, except:

it turned out to be a money pit...no part of it could ever have passed any kind of inspection when it was built [systemic problems all around, including electrical, septic, furnace--big stuff like that...primary stuff]...I may post some of the many instances of safety issues, money-wasting/efficiency problems, and just plain dumb stuff never maintained, here later, but suffice it to say now, that they were 'MANY', they were 'RIDICULOUS', and they were entirely avoidable before I ever moved there.
the guy who referred it to me also offered to handle all my initial payments...but later turned out to be impossible to reach for payment, even more impossible to get receipts from, and eventually turned out to have mishandled my payments several times over a mere four-month period this year
the corporate a-holes who own the place were, for the most part, even worse--after I contacted them to 'remove the middle man' (which turned out to make everyone very happy, actually), they began sending me receipts themselves only after my 2nd payment, and only after much prompting (actually, begging) on my part
I discovered that anyone anywhere in Kentucky below Louisville, who ends up having a 'rough relationship' with their landlord over health issues caused by their residence had better just reach down, grab their ankles 'in a non-threatening manner', and get ready to become violated in a very petty, ridiculous, mind-bending, frustrating, childish, impish, preposterous, and stress-inducing manner. Go ahead and call your 'treatment team' if it's your septic tank, because, well...'they live among us'
In dealing with our regional health department, moreover, I found that you put yourself in real jeopardy when wasting your time with these 'officials' (any local will understand me if I just say 'see Insight Communications'

>ahem<

Below is the entire email I'm sending (yes, after I publish this blog), to the head of the Kentucky health dept office that deals with 'consumer-end health issues' (like, septic tank issues).

Before that, I'll list here, with no allowances for any 'remarks' of any kind, what I do know [this is for the record]:

Don't ever get suckered into any kind of unwritten tenancy 'agreement', even if it's 'golden'--nothing is perfect, and when that becomes evident, in any way, your landlord, no matter how 'rich', will 'leave everything to you' [meaning you'll end up fixing everything yourself while you continue paying him your monthly rent--no matter how expensive, and apparently, no matter how health-threatening the matter is, or becomes]...to put it briefly, 'you're screwed'.
If the first condition above is true, you're even worse screwed if you get the crazy idea your city, county, or (especially) state health department is somehow 'there to help you'. It's not--and you're not only crazy yourself if you think so, but you're also likely to be highly perceived to be delusional if you continue your 'insane rantings' (really! you're insane now!)
You better hope and pray (as I'm doing this very second) that, when your 'landlord' [where the hell do they get these terms?] gets your month's rent 'minus your bill for repairs' for this septic tank issue [or put any major household systemic condition where the underline phrase is], that they're a)feeling abnormally [see your psychiatrist] generous, b)celebrating "Christmas in [x marks the 'current month here']", or getting ready to be visited by the three 'Ghosts of Christmas' (with the 'Future' one wielding some kind of weapon of some sort), because...well, you're delusional, AND your getting ready to be delusional, screwed, and evicted (I think in that order)...and after that, well who knows--maybe you'll be screwed once more if you have to commit a petty crime to find residency over the winter ('Bubbah--I do love you more than the night guard...really')

So, if you haven't gotten the context of my subject here yet, read on--here is the email I'm sending to an 'Angela Billings' in Frankfort, KY.--and I do hope you'll all forgive me for not allowing any remarks on this page--I really have been up to my ankles in shit until I called the plumber this past Friday and finally dealt with it 'my own damn self':

[I HAVE NOW EDITED THIS EMAIL SLIGHTLY TO REFLECT SOME GRAMMATICAL CHANGES I WISH I'D SENT HER THE FIRST TIME--BUT IT'S THE SAME EMAIL, WITH MY POINTS STATED MORE CLEARLY]

Mrs. Billings,

I'm sorry you wouldn't see fit to be able to hear me out Friday, when I was at my wit's end and worried about losing my residency. You sounded like a nice person until you'd apparently heard enough from me and started telling me stuff without letting me respond in any way.

I realize I'd said a lot, but telling me to shut up over and over while you obviated your role was really petty and maddening. You were starting to ask questions indicating you had not listened at all, to one thing I said.

You began a long, dismal speech indicating you weren't willing/going to help, so 'thanks' for telling me to 'hush', and 'shut up' time and again. You'd already begun making statements indicating such, and calling into questions things I'd said without giving me further chance to respond to your questions one-at-a-time.

It sounded like you were regretting not having interrupted me sooner, actually. Treating me like a child, telling me to 'hush', threatening to hang up on me (then actually doing it, and not answering your phone again)--now, that's childish. You got paid to do it, too--wonder if you'd ever heard this: 'This is part of what's wrong with America these days'. Don't worry--I've had to say this to my local sheriff's dept. once before when a local officer there told me I should 'just move' in reaction to my neighbor's loud, obnoxious, put-on 'lifestyle'.

Leaving me wondering--over 10 times, I guess--if you'd already hung up on me already was disgraceful and childish, too. This type of behavior is completely unsuited to helping anyone 'at the bottom' get any help, and I hope people like yourself either get replaced with people driven to help others, or, frankly, lose your funding and eventually end up in the same place as me.

Your complete and total lack of help, your impish mishandling of my issue, your childish slamming of the phone down on me, and your overall behavior made your point quite clear, and I want to give you the heads up that any attempts you make to reply to my email, now, or in the future, will be simply forwarded right back to your email address.

Perhaps a job at Afni would more suit your nature--it wouldn't be the first time we'd lost a bureaucrat in Kentucky; maybe you should shop around now, before you need another job (or outlet for your disgust and loathing of others).

For the record, I got similarly ineffective treatment from the local WC HD office, and so am already blocking them. All Kentucky health dept officers seem 100% caught up in keeping their jobs and being totally ineffective in providing any real positive assistance, instead of making sure your neighbors don't get sick under mistreatment by the slumlord infestation we've been enduring for decades.

I got this impression from speaking with some of my local friends and neighbors, and even some local political offices, that this is what you do for a living--run an inept bureaucratic mess, passing out political favors that trounce on the rights of unsuspecting citizens, and get tax dollars handed to you for sitting idly by and letting our many slumlords walk all over good people.

This is yet another symptom of our current political problem here in the States--people just trying to pave the way for their dreams by starting a good foundation and paying their bills, can't even get to work while suffering in sickening conditions, as long as you're on the job.

I was sick with bronchitis for six weeks back in March due to my septic tank problem--I tried to tell you that, but you didn't care. FYI, I have had bronchitis many times, due to a previous job delivering newspapers in the cold, but always recovered quickly with the 5-day Z-Pac treatments. Not this time, with a moldy bathroom with untreated sewer water backing up into my house; this time, I spend six weeks between the months of March and April, trying to recover, and recently had a two-day relapse! Thanks!

Attached are some 'juicy pics' of what my bathroom looked like during the months I waited for help from anyone in the position to do so, without any whatsoever. I hope you're thankful this Thanksgiving that you don't have to live like myself, or the hundreds of others you've doubtless treated with identical contempt.

The health dept was my last hope, so after I was dismissed by you, I had nowhere to go but risk paying the entire fee my landlord should have, take it out of that month's rent payment, and hope they didn't add insult to injury and evict me.

So, I paid $250 to a local septic tank specialist to have the system pumped without any other outside resources or assistance (besides the helpful constant advice of the Kentucky BBB, who've been indispensable). I wasn't surprised at all when the plumber--who I'd never met--began telling me things about this system that validated nearly every fear I'd had about it: first, the the entire system had not been installed OR even designed properly, that it almost certainly had never been inspected by anyone at all when originally installed, and that it also had likely not been pumped or maintained in almost a decade of continual use by the previous resident.

This was one of those cases where being right serves as absolutely no solace at all. It made me angry; yet finally relieved to have the problem resolved, even if under the worst conditions, mishandled as it was by yourself, your offices, and the local health department--as well as the property owner, themselves.

So, it's no consolation, but at least I'm not sick every day, or trying to fight off the conditions that spawn black mold every time I wash my clothes.

It helps to know how right I was about so many of this system's faults, down to my suspicions over inadequate measurements of the rear PVC pipe leading to the 'wetfield'. The local and also regional Health Dept. (certainly yourself) were so diligent to avoid responsibility, it was incredibly disheartening, discouraging, and furthered my disillusionment with our national policy-handlers.

You were the worst about wheedling over the semantics of what I was trying to say, you vilified yourself in your process of mishandling the direst environmental health issue I've ever lived with. You were so focused on correcting my vocabulary (which turned out to be 100% true and correct, BTW), that you missed my point--and the point in general, I am sure, is that you should be doing your jobs instead of grilling callers Guantanimo-style over their wordsmithing abilities to cover up your own moral lassitude and apathy.

Instead of doing your job, you became tactfully evasive, even calling my personal character into question when you began feeling railroaded into making a genuine effort to even understand my situation. When you're about to lose your house due to inept officials like yourself, maybe you'll understand. But I doubt that will ever happen as long as you bureaucrats circle those wagons every time you feel defensive.

I'm through with trying to get help from my Kentucky government officials, and I'm through talking to you. That's why I'm setting my email up to block your dissenting and (I'm sure) personally offensive emails, and send them right back to you each time you try; because 'why set myself up for disappointment, when I obviously didn't need you after all, at all'. I'm beginning to realize how little a truly independent American needs his/her government at all, as well (that's one thing I'll be thankful for every Thanksgiving, I assure you).

I'm also blocking your calls; they'd only be a nuisance, I'm sure.

Next time, just try and do your job. If you start with that (maybe a Post-It will help), then you can learn to be responsible and even accountable for the way you are being paid to treat others. It's that accountability that will make or break your office's viability. Failing that, you will just end up another line-item, unjustifiable, state expenditure. It's sad you have to be reminded of that, seeing as how I thought I was speaking with another human being (a larger inclusive group there).

In the end, I was only able to pay half my rent because I had to pay this righteous plumber to come do his job. But I appreciated his attention to detail and the speed with which he performed the septic tank maintenance (cleaning the line, pumping the tank, writing a proper receipt). It turned out that he was familiar (through high school) with the previous owner of this house--and he speculated without hesitation or prompting that nobody'd ever inspected the house back when it was built in 1994.

So...good luck, stay on your local city sewer system, and pay your bills, I guess. This is your 'kiss-off' letter--you've been total 'a-holes' to me, and completely, intentionally ineffective in helping me in any way, shape, or form; much less helping protect my rights to live in a decent place without the threat of disease and other health threats.

As often happens, you are so concerned with the 'letter of the law' [or, in your job, 'rules and written policies', however untested] than actually upholding it or even assisting the people those laws were made to protect, that your lunch-break (whenever that is, or how many times per day) has become more important than any human being you've been paid to serve and help, so you've become yet another example of a redundant, hopelessly unresponsive, dysfunctional bureaucratic office in small-town America. Try not to think about it while spending my tax dollars in your local Walmart, on your fine house, or making your outrageous car payments--it's the status quo of the day.

Bye,

Mike Denney

physical address withheld for reasons made clear above

I hadn't just 'lucked into', and 'guessed', the things I found to be wrong with my septic tank system--I'd slaved and pored over days of internet research on various plumbers' 'self-help' sites (actually made to help people in general avoid getting the idea they should undertake septic issues themselves, and for good reason, to educate they as to 'why not').

I literally took a self-initiated crash-course in septic tanks, septic tank design, and septic tank issues, in order to make my decision 'not to' do anything myself, that is, to keep my frikking hands off the system because I knew that messing with it was more risky and potentially destructive than anything else you can do to your house.

For Blog Readers: Mere 'pictorial' cannot truly capture the stench--merely realize that any 'SciFi' movie involving 'smellavision' would truly be a horror flick of the worst genre. Death, warmed over...served lovingly with a side of moldy bread, stanky-stank, and more death. Mold is your enemy when you run into stuff like this...and breathing airborne 'black mold' over mere weeks can leave you with symptoms approaching mental retardation (which is NOT usually something you're not born with, BTW, so...)

The conditions I was right about, that were messed up in my system, from the day it was installed in 1994, are are listed below:

The system had been installed without any downward gradient in the line from the house to the main tank, causing effluent from the house to stall midway in the line, and in fact, to sit there and eventually muck it up. In fact, this also caused the line itself to eventually develop another problem--a downward bow in its middle, stalling the feces and other solid waste there even further.
The system wasn't pumped for almost a decade (possibly even never), so this 'great place' had a nasty pre-existing condition there, that really should have never been 'perpetrated on anyone' (I wouldn't my worst enemy). You should normally have your septic tank pumped clean every 3 years, regardless of your financial condition--and, if you are sensible to have a written tenancy agreement, you'll have that in there--not be responsible for this yourself, unless your renting to own or paying off the bank. Being deathly sick 24/7/365 with no help, costing you weeks of down-time and even more productive work leads to a downward financial and personal spiral--and showering each morning while standing in your own shit isn't too good for your outward demeanor, or lend to your 'perky charm' either.
The system had been installed without a big enough 'back line' going down from the main tank to the wetfield (where waste-water collects to dry), which, since the tank hadn't been pumped in so long, caused solid waste to drift on over toward the rear of the tank, where that 'too-narrow' [2" instead of 4"] rear line was clogging up, too. This made the system back up from the rear of the tank to the front of it, even if and when the line ever 'magicked itself' into any rare condition to drain any at all [which it didn't shortly after I succeeded in snaking myself from outside to the house a few weeks before the 'shit hit the fam' here, haha]
Even the 'wetfield' itself, one of the lesser-important part of the immediate drainage, and so, the system, had been put in with 'pea pebbles' to dry it. This may have been according to specs back in 1994 when the house was built, but since then, it's not...so, even that wasn't drying very well. Plus, it was ridiculous, even without the 'peagrain' pebbles--it was open to the sky at either end with 8" plastic corrugated drains, at ground level, which allowed rainwater into the wetfield continually during every rain. In fact, tonight's rain [it is] is the first that isn't going directly in to these open pipes, since I took the trouble to add some galvanized piping at either end, and covered those with home-made 'rain-hats' I fashioned from aluminum pans, screwed to the piping with small guttering screws. In early July I had gone out and put down some 4" garden edging around the front edge of the wetfield, since all other rainwater runoff was also cascading down into that field, totally inundating it--it wouldn't dry for weeks after a small shower. Toward the end of July I even went back there and put down some landscaping timbers behind the edging, to keep it there, and began mowing the wetfield to the quick to keep it short enough to not hold any water on its top.

Each thing I have done until the point I was forced to call a plumber, turned out to be very helpful, as I was careful not to interfere with any functional part of the 'poorly designed', 'never maintained', and so, 'barely working system' there already.

I'm writing this blog for my own personal reference, because I really do have my months' rent out in the mailbox ready to go, along with a nicer, more friendly, description of what I've had to do in calling the plumber finally myself, along with the plumbers receipt, shown at the bottom of this blog post. My payment was half my rent, subtracting the plumber's fee, because that's what landlords are supposed to do--pay your outside septic tank maintenance costs, unless you sign otherwise, and I've been railroaded into thinking I was the 'rare case' who'd been screwed due to my own oversight--which turned out to be not my own, but somebody else's.
Intentionally.
And then, 'everybody else's'...
Because most of the time you just don't plan on screwing yourself financially for no reason.

'Post-post' (afterthoughts)

And I begged, too...

I'll never forget how I literally begged to get help for this from the property owner, who instead gave me some half-baked, concocted, nonsense about my missing my very first payment. This was 'corrected' the very next day by the 'middle-man' mentioned above, who had an office worker go through his desk and find my unsent first payment.

The point--rather, the overt threat--was made very clear, though, because the corporate-assholes who currently own the property had been accepting my payments through this middle-man from February to May without any complaints prior to my calling them regarding the septic tank issue.

I'm not insane, here--hell, I'm not even naming names that matter, really (the health dept. proved that themselves). If the owners really had questions about my very first payment, then why hadn't they just called me, or called the middle-man, to get my damn number?

It just doesn't happen that way--if you're accepting just enough (and I do mean, exactly, to the penny) in rent on a property to pay your yearly taxes on it, you don't really glaze over when you miss that very first payment. These guys don't get their self-prescribed jobs by laying down and forgetting who is paying them, no matter how small the amount. Heck--my rent is at least green fees at one of their favorite courses, anyway--or a cheap black-market hooker for at least an hour during lunch (someday, you guys--you'll 'get there').

What they did was as much bullshit as half that last paragraph--not the way you do business, and really inappropriate. After they got their 'February' payment, and mine continued, now direct to them, they thought they could get away without ever hearing me mention 'getting help on' the septic tank again (what a wimp, right--I mean, come on, this place could be rented for well over $1000/mo. to anybody with it, and they could lose this little ridiculous complaining pimp [me] and get on with business)...

Nope, not at all, like I said, there wasn't a single system in the place that had been inspected when it was built, so there's something to be said for leaving well enough alone, all parties considered.

So, here, in this blog, for the record, in addition to mine,

Now, instead of living like a dog, I've taken care of the place, repaired and maintained it (in fixing the furnace, electrical issues, and tons of other stuff); making it a home instead of a keep (the last couple had been satisfied with less), and even lived in the place. The Orkin man gets rid of any bugs, and domesticated the local barn cats to remove any rodents, if any ever show up.

Finally--for anyone nice enough to read through this lonely little rant--here is the best online resource for learning about septic tank systems, which I found online in my own research, and which proved to be an honest and helpful guide in leading me to every correct diagnosis a noob could ever make 'out of the blue' on his own septic tank system without going to school for it.

The Think Tank

(Because Country Living has its price, kapish?)

IT HAPPENED AGAIN

Rick has written the problems on the bill, so I don't keep getting blamed for the pre-existing problem with this septic system.

LAST TIME, although threatened with eviction, I kept back the repair fee from my monthly rent, and sweated it out while I waited to be evicted.

This time, I emailed the same corporate owners, saying:

Susan,

Wanna make it clear I am paying the full amt for my December rent, but have had to get the septic tank cleaned once more.

The repairman made it clear this system was not installed correctly, leaving the 'rear line' too small (and high) to clear off liquid waste down into the nearby 'wet field'.

Again, this is just a note: there won't be any surprises from me next month--I plan on paying my full $450 monthly rent then.

Thanks,

Mike Denney

1671 Morgantown Road

the HVAC system (both fan motors--I paid $270 for both fans, installed them myself)
the A/C system (it's leaking--twice filled at a cost to me personally of over $300)
this septic system (the first time, I withheld $250 from my rent payment...this time...?)
much, much more (too many for even a frikking BLOG!)

Bullshit.

Always Phone the REAL Cops (not the 'elected' ones)

2011-08-01T21:15:00.001-05:00

Decided to submit these little 'ditties' to our local sheriff online tonight:

'Exhibit A':

Sheriff Gaines,

I am deciding tonight whether I bother to call to report any traffic incidents in your jurisdiction ever again. I am tired with the way some things are being handled in your office, including some recent noise complaints I had, met with "I've got an idea--why don't you move?" from Mr. Stephenson down there, earlier this year.

On the way home tonight, only about 30 mins. ago, I came across an accident that had just occurred at the intersection of Glen Lily and Vets. Blvd., where two cars were pulled off on the shoulder, and one was just left sitting in the middle of both lanes approaching Morgantown Road. I was in the left, and the car in the right both had to diverge to avoid debris and glass, and it was getting dark (it now is completely)...the first thing I noted was that a) no one was injured, since all drivers were represented in two basic areas, and b) all autos were movable, yet the one left in the middle of the road.

With night coming on, I bothered to call 393-4000--I knew it wasn't a 911 call, but didn't quite know the jurisdiction at that intersection. My call was taken by BGPD, then politely forwarded to a female dispatcher at yours. Things broke down, with your dispatcher first asking me if I myself was involved, then starting to bicker with me on a point she perceived was relevant (it wasn't), which was, how I couldn't recall the colors of the three cars involved, yet could accurately tell no one was injured, and it was likely an insurance argument ongoing, with the single vehicle (dark colored minivan, I think) left in the middle of Vet's Blvd. Since I had run over some windshield (or other) auto glass in attempting to avoid the scene myself (and so had the other driver avoiding to the right), I decided to report the incident. I'm to the point where I'm debating the usefulness of reporting any future traffic incidents to you, with the arguments forthcoming like they always do.

Your dispatcher angered me by basically questioning my judgment, which I thought was not only pretty sound, but level-head, quick, and appropriate, in the interest of other drivers. The smallish, 5' 6"-ish blonde woman waving and arguing with a guy the size of Hillbilly Jim made quite a scene, and I guess you could say I just 'wasn't in the mood' to find yet another unnecessary, pointless, and time-wasting argument in the 'line of questioning' from your dispatcher in the stead of actual police response of any kind.

Hope the accident scene resolved itself--I'm sure some deputies were actually sent out quickly, and they'll all get their due credit on the WBKO news at 10PM tonight.

My condolences in your re-election, and 'many happy returns' to you all.

'Exhibit B':

Listening to my online scanner (to hear your dept. joke about my earlier call), I notice SOMEBODY lost their own cell phone...instead of wasting taxpayer's time deputizing the homeless from now on, why don't you guys just take my advice and use the HTC Android app called 'Lookout'--it's free, it's an antivirus, and it backs up your phone data to your free online account as well...OH--and you can use it to locate and pinpoint your phone within few feet, utilizing a LOUD siren signal sent to it--if it's on, in these cases, you'll hear it over the din of that 'big red Mack truck' every time!"

Hope they have nice 'half-lives'--I know our taxes always do....

And this is why I won't be calling in to report any 'potentially' unsafe traffic incidents any more...I'm not married to these people, and so, I don't feel like arguing with 'em every time...

Sorry.

Mike

American Injustice

2011-07-08T02:34:00.007-05:00

This past week those of us who eat their meals in a room with a TV had to stomach what was perhaps the greatest mistrial of the century in the Anthony case. Among the most sickening components of this debacle were the general cadenced--and inappropriate attention--given it by said media.

Grace Plumped up on this Story for the [all?] Ages

The self-made media maven (actually, late night media diva) Nancy Grace fattened her career (and herself, obviously choosing post-pregnancy as an acceptable time to gain over 30 lbs.) by spending every single night over the last two years of her dragging, four-hour CNN news 'show' reveling carnival-barker style in any unexploited facet of the case, like a shameless pig wallowing in the best mud he'd ever found. Fatter than a tick, fanning the fervor nightly, her coverage was so oppressively foul, crude, and tasteless that P.T. Barnum would have turned his face away (or found out what a 'remote control' is).

When Nancy Grace resorted to bringing in (i.e. 'hiring') paid character-actors like Leonard Padilla (who was convicted of tax evasion in Sacramento California, and still ran for political office there--from prison) to try the case on their own merits (remember Padilla actually used his own moneys and influence--while likely still owing hundreds of thousands in unpaid taxes himself--to pay Casey Anthony's bond in 2008 within a month of his 'injection' into a situation he knew nothing about, at all).

Melinda Duckett / Nancy Grace

The devil had one big laugh, I'm sure, in giving Nancy Grace that idea to throw off negative attention to herself after causing the honor-suicide of another young (and sorrowful) Asian woman named Melinda Duckett she had hammered on her show over the woman's loss of her own child. Grace subjugated Duckett--who turned out to have some strong emotional ties to her own child, as well as the emotion necessary to carry out a remorse-driven suicide. It's plain to see that Grace saw the Anthony case as an opportunity to redeem herself, indeed, rise as a champion, among her demographic of 'young American moms'. It's easy to see she despises them, yet needs to culture them into watching her show--repetitively, as in, an addiction, more so than a real-life soap opera

The Embodiment of 'Courtroom' Glee: One of the Many
Mocking Images of Casey Anthony

It seems that Nancy Grace, in spite of all her self-heralded 'experience' in the legal field, and her conspicuously-pushed public image as media professional, practices an unsettling double-standard that goes something like this: "If she's not happy with her ratings, she'll pick on somebody, and even sacrifice the hapless creature as mercilessly as a bully going around kicking neighborhood strays". But if she 'likes' you--or, more properly, 'likes your situation' for its story value, 'you're a made-man-or-woman'. Compare pictures of the impish, perky, and plucky Casey Anthony to the sad visage of Duckett, which would haunt anyone with a conscience (and so, sadly, not Grace). What you see in Anthony is the exact same guile, the near-elvish quality of a liar and murderer who got caught merrily dancing away (and worse) as her daughter's very bones rotted in the neighborhood swamp--remorseless, now emboldened by her pending release (and I won't allow myself to magine what that currently means to her party-people, BTW).

Judge Belvin Perry Exchanging an Uncomfortable Glance
w/ Casey Anthony During the Trial--from the Orlando Sentinel

Of course, the most vital element to any trial is the judge, however he/she conducts himself, however important or well-known they are prior to their fame-making and illuminating trial. This brings us to Judge Belvin Perry, whose self-absorbed, almost autistic nonchalance gave the impression that he seemed to miss the proverbial forest for the trees on this one. His ironically pedantic, media-starved attentiveness to every trial proceeding made the whole procedure a case study in itself--of how not to allow a media-driven trial to proceed at all. From start to finish, he broke momentum, withheld motions by the the prosecution and defense alike, but he seemed stilted, inefficient, and actually, somewhat confused and irritated by the whole event, like he'd rather be doing crossword puzzles, or relaxing in his local spa or hot tub. He wielded a catastrophic lack of control over the overall court proceedings.

Yes, that is a guy with a neck-brace helping a fat person
with a back-pack up off the floor. Hope they were all
satisfied fully (since P.T. Barnum's gone).

Videos of the daily public stampede to attend the Anthony case gallery were sickening as well. Insane people trampling each other in their crazily hapless early-morning rush to jam-pack the courtroom looked more like the crush to the year-end big-city bridal dress sale, or a 'Black Friday' half-off sale. My heart sunk when I realized that the trial had 'no business' being open to public attendance. The result was a surreal, sideshow characteristic that made any real tacit presentation of the facts of the case impossible, and so, an adequate judgement even more so. Nancy Grace's over-coverage of this case had made it impossible to find any intelligent people on earth who could qualify to be in this jury, who could honestly say they had never seen anything on television that might hinder, impede, or even cloud their judgement in either direction.

Attorney Jose Baez w/Anthony

And this was just the public attendance to the trial. Anthony's attorney used subterfuge and every trick in the book to throw the focus of the trial away from the victim, and used the media craftily every night to garner emotional support for his own victim, in his client, Casey Anthony. Undue comparisons were made to the 'OJ case', what with her release on bond, then re-incarceration, and from there, more media dissonance (more 'media experts', in the form of every major TV judge on TV, along with more 'personalities' such as Geraldo, even to the end), made this a nightly TV show, and how viewers felt certainly became more important to the entire outcome of the trial, and all those involved, than even any kind of certain decision as to why the little girl was killed, much less who murdered her.

The 'Crybaby Judge', Larry Seidlin (now retired)

Even Larry Seidlin--the former Broward County, FL judge who insinuated himself into perpetuity by using his antics and personal drama (a.k.a. the 'Crybaby Judge') while deciding over the Anna Nicole Smith case in a vain attempt to obtain his own 'TV Judge' show (like Judge Judy--surprised, anyone?) was interviewed numbers of times on FoxNews during final days, even though he's now-retired and most likely still living off the money he himself scammed from a local elderly neighbor years ago. As for his 'credentials'--perhaps in looking at the sheer coincidental number of appearances his county made on another show called 'Cops' would shed light on his political character: "Coward of Broward" sounds more appropriate to me. What another disgrace he is, if Broward could be misconstrued as his, or more objectively, any part of his responsibility, in his past life as their county seat judge. Look at it this way--there are 3,143 total counties in the United States--while trouble in Broward pops up on such a significant number of "Cops" episodes to make it worth note for that alone (my figure--I'd say something like 10%-20%--what a disparity!). Additional note: "Cops" liked Broward so much that an entire series spun-off it: "The Police Women of Broward County".

So many 'media darlings' turned up at the 'scene of the crime'--and by that, I mean the crime from the beginning to the trial itself--that various outdoor venues in Orlando appeared as if they were preparing for an Olympic decision to hold the '12 Summer Games there (sorry--London bought that honor this time around). The last, sorry sarcastic thought I had was to imagine Michael Jackson, OJ, Anna Nicole, JonBenet Ramsey's father, and some other catastrophic American justice system failures showing up there to further the dark shadow cast on the whole event by the media's undisciplined, uncontrolled, inappropriate, and unchallenged presence in this trial.

What is becoming of our justice system, and so, our way of life? Frivolous lawsuits had to be scrutinized by new laws over the past decade, while a NY City judge was himself busy suing his dry cleaners for $6.5 million dollars over the loss of his expensively-tailored suit. We seem powerless to challenge it when another 'dandy' shows up in this trial who is more interested in his media image than the outcome, or if justice is indeed served. A recent trend in 'inventive' and 'creative' judges who ignored the warnings regarding 'cruel and unusual punishment' (namely, by the ACLU) has sadly ended--the 'worst' [read 'best'] they'd done was to 'force' local shoplifters to walk the sidewalks outside the establishments they'd robbed, while wearing sandwich-board signs announcing their crimes publicly. What happens to that type of sensible punishment to a known crime, once the media gets hold--and control--of it?

This miscarriage of justice was bound to happen. The final nail in this case's coffin has been ignored by many media outlets once more. The fact is, Casey Anthony was indeed denied the right we all share for a speedy trial. No, we don't share much else with her, I hope, but among the other pathetic 'explanations' [excuses] seen around the nation for the miserable outcome of this trial, this overtly obvious one has been missed time and time again. Even terrorists and terrorist sympathizers get speedier trials than was allotted here. It seems once again, the price for our modern justice system--actually, it's replacement--has been the shuffling to afford the media ample time to announce to all what we'd all smell as stinking to high heaven from any locale--injustice, greed, and selfishness. The news media--mainly, CNN, it's programming owners, programming directors, etc.--was to blame. In feeding the fire to the point of reckless abandon, everyone failed to see that our sedentary lifestyles made viewing this travesty more important than being even remotely involved in its outcome.

So, how do we prevent this from ever happening again? After all, it may well be the only lasting legacy given in honor of even the memory of this poor child, lost forever to the void of her mother's careless self-involved hedonistic lifestyle, and all who supported it.

Well, maybe we should start praying for things like mercy, and true grace (not the 'Nancy' kind), and what Christ said in the Beatitudes, when he said "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled". We could all use more of that kind of thing, because surely--surely, we're all tired of what we've seen in this, and truly hungry for something better.

We all watched it, from beginning to end, unfold, without properly intervening in some way or another. Here I am blogging about it. What will that do for the child lost? Nothing--she never knew what a 'blog' was, nor does it matter, now. She deserved a better life, by way of a better mom, a real father, and a grandma and 'pa who weren't corrupted to the core by letting the media set their core family values, but instead gathering those from within.

I'm counting myself among the most guilty, here--I'm an idiot without any real understanding of the law as men understand it, much less what we make of it--and far from what God intended it.

Water Water Everywhere

2011-06-23T03:46:00.002-05:00

It's America...we could do it.

What?

Well, a cross-continental water pipeline, of course.

Why?

We have such direly varied weather circumstances across our continent--Texas in the middle of it's worst drought ever, and yet again this year, hundreds of thousands of acres of land (much of it inhabited) engulfed in wildfires...yet across the nation, so much rainfall in so many states that hundreds of homes are caught on film and video literally sliding off newly-created sinkholes into rushing waters (where previously only dry land, or even city streets had been before).

Public outcry against high gasoline prices is well-deserved--it's almost as though the layout and geographic location of our fuel pipelines are merely one of many pawns being played by oil companies in a global chess-game to outsmart us, confute us, and defraud us.

A continental water pipeline would be more useful than a gas pipeline, and could pay for itself in a short time by saving us hundreds of billions; we could utilize it to move mass quantities of water from one state to another to ease flooding, and also provide it to areas engaged in massive firefighting situations.

If one region had been hit by enough constant rainfall to cause historic flooding, while another was in the middle of its worst wild-fire in decades, water could be transited from the flooded region to the one in flames, and used to fight the fire.

Another less dramatic--yet arguably just as important--purpose of such a system would be to provide one area in drought with priceless irrigation directly from another with an excessive supply.

Strategic planning could pinpoint areas with historically self-leveling water tables, and locate aquifers in the other areas, to drain or store water by moving it the hundreds of miles necessary to balance the differences that are creating such dystrophic, calamitous, and disastrous conditions everywhere in the United States.

No Terror Trials in Kentucky, If You Please

2011-06-18T12:17:00.003-05:00

I just typed this letter to the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. I added the photos for this blog:

Please forward this message to the Attorney General Eric Holder

I am writing you in support of the large, and still growing, number of Kentucky citizens who agree with Sen. Mitch McConnell and our other state leaders (our governor Steve Beshear, Sen. Brett Guthrie, and all our city officials) who are urging citizens here to write you in favor of trying the two recently-discovered suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay instead of here in Kentucky.

The city of Bowling Green harbors no criminals—to the contrary, it’s likely the two turned up here because they thought they could easily hide among our large number (and welcomed to grow) of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian refugees, who found Bowling Green to be so similar to their original homeland. I know this because I work for so many of them as a self-employed computer repairman (best rates around—fiercely competitive nationally, too!).

Bosnian Food...is Good Food!

The first time I worked for a Bosnian couple, over 8 years ago, I found what good people they were. They were indeed Muslim, and I immediately came away from the experience having found two new friends. Their middle-European views were enriching to me, and broadened my understanding of their culture, and their tragic flight here.

Our similarities abounded, and we became good friends/neighbors, and I was their ‘computer guy’. They practiced many family values that were of a higher standard than even my own hardworking, core-American, traditional Christian upbringing (ahem—they tipped better, and seemed to appreciate my work more than my own mom, who herself is no Grinch, and well-educated, a retired teacher!).

Computer 'Noob'

Through these new friends came many more genuinely good Bosnian, then Croat, then Serb local customers. Their backgrounds and lifestyles varied as much as anyone I’ve ever met and known as a lifetime resident of my hometown here in Bowling Green. There were some bad apples, but statistically, I’ll note here, they actually beat many of my local clients at understanding/appreciating my work, even if they themselves had language barriers, and the usual non-familiarity/’noob’ tendencies of the average computer user (they often couldn’t understand what I was talking about, but actually tried and did grasp my explanations of their PC problems much more than our ‘local yokels’, believe me).

In the 8 years I’ve been working for Bosnian/Serb/Croat neighbors and friends here, I can’t count the number of times I received welcome tips—substantial tips, BTW, many times more than 30% of my overall fee for my repairs.

So many of my Bosnian neighbors fought to grasp, understand, and appreciate my work, that I picked up a new phrase (to me) that they often said while happily handing me that extra $10, or even $20 bill: “go buy yourself some coffee”. Actually, I admit I learned to love one of their own brands sold here (not coffee after I add all my vanilla/caramel creamer AND heaping spoons of sugar, BTW).

These first two harbored no ill-intent toward anyone I ever knew. Classically good people—family values off the chart, both working (he a trucker, she working at a local bank until cuts forced them to move, broken-heartedly, to Germany, where his brother lived—after 15 years here). It hurt seeing them go, and Facebook is no solace for me or them.

For years I’ve worked for our very large Muslim Bosnian community, never once feeling any tinge of any impression that they would have me change one bit of my lifestyle, much less my Christian faith, or American patriotic outlooks. Understand that our Bosnian population is very large demographically (and by Bosnian, again, I am by inference including those Serbs/Croats who came here after their horrible war). It has been estimated at over 8,000 local Bowling Green honest-to-goodness, naturalized, home-brewn Americans living in our city are from ‘over there’—in a city whose population was merely 45,000 when I was in my mid-twenties, now it swells at well over 60k with our Bosnian community. I can truthfully and reliably state that not only are there more Bosnians here than any other demographic from any other population, but that they are overwhelmingly, fiercely patriotic Americans whose primary reason for being here, esp. in our community, is the equally overwhelmingly and intense similarity of our local hills and ‘hollers’ to their own homeland, no matter which side of the river or tracks they were born in.

I can’t say enough good about them. My fledgling computer repair business grew like wildfire due to them, and I owe much, much, of my success and popularity here to their patronage and indeed, true friendship. Not only have none of my Bosnian friends thrown shoes at me, but they have been quick to seat me in any chair of honor they had, in order to chat with me, always offering me enough in the way of food, friendship, and hearty atmosphere in their own households that I left away won to not only their charm as people, but convicted of their intense American patriotic pride as citizens, families, and a working populace, without a doubt. Their culture and conviction led me true to many of my own ‘eye-widening’ and soul-searched conclusions that they are no terrorists here, they number as some of our truest friends and ‘sold-out’ allies.

One of my Bosnian friends tearfully celebrated New Year’s Eve 2009 by calling me over to his house to fix his Gateway notebook computer, which I’d shown him how to use connected to his TV to watch movies and chat with his relatives overseas online. As the evening progressed, I’d repaired his PC to the point that I told him it was usable, so he went straight to YouTube and began watching Bosnian videos related to the war there, and the aftermath. What immediately struck me, was the environmental similarities between their homeland and our local rolling hills, and gently flowing rivers, so I commented on this to him. He quickly assured me that my observation was already a ‘given’ among the Bosnians who fled here: “yeah, yeah, Mike—it’s so beautiful there...like Kentucky, just like...”

Bosnian River

That was enough for me to openly (and somewhat crudely) blurt out something to the effect that “that must be why there are so many Bosnians here, because look at it—it’s just like Kentucky!”, to which he quickly replied “yeah, Mike—so many here—Bosnian, Serb...everybody, because...just like, so much”. I was stricken by the brutal truths of what I learned about some of the atrocities committed during that war, and left (hours later, yet again swearing onto another diet to get over my caloric intake that night) realizing that I owed my Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian friends and neighbors, that much—to indeed try and understand, to even make veritable insights, as to what drove them here, if they’re truly happy here, and more—much more about their homeland, people, and culture.

Cumberland River, Kentucky

I owed it to them, and myself, so have taken many opportunities while at my friends houses repairing their computers, to ask them, many times, embarrassingly ignorant questions regarding their experience their, what they’ve found here, and sometimes, even if they’re truly happy here. Again, overwhelmingly, I’ve been trounced with the stark reality of their fierce nationalistic pride, and aggressive stature as hard-working, family-oriented people. By this, I mean dually nationalistic, Bosnian more by memory, and more fiercely and outspokenly proud of their American status than anyone I’ve ever known from any other country of origin—and, on the record, more genuinely so than many people I’ve grown up with, and with much less media-related ‘sparkle’ (no segmenting or splitting, no media-tainted fragmentation, just honest, American pride).

American Family Together

My message in saying all this is one that comes from a lifetime Bowling Green citizen with an in-depth perspective, with many true insights gathered from years of observation and direct interaction: our Muslim population doesn’t need a terrorist trial right here in Kentucky—they don’t tolerate it themselves, and support anyone in our city, region, state, and nation who is against terrorism. They are families who didn’t know these guys, and I’d bet that 99.99% of them had never even met, much less knew, anyone who even knew these men from the ‘sixth degree of separation’ that supposedly ties any of us together from across the globe.

Their families alone do not need any ‘terror-trials’ here—their backs are already loaded down with the day’s work, labor, and business, keeping track of their kids, keeping up with neighbors, and planning for tomorrow along with the rest of Kentuckians who’ve been here for generations.

As for the rest of Kentucky, like me, we’re against ‘hosting’ any trials that would even acknowledge, God forbid highlight, Bowling Green as anything but what it is--a mid-sized city struggling valiantly to grow healthier in today's clime, with today's challenges, and in keeping with everybody's best interests.

Please move those trials to Guantanamo Bay--and keep them there--because the two found here were as rare as a naturally-formed fissure in the hardest, finest diamond of highest worth, or as a piece of chewed bubble gum naturally imbedded in the finest gold bar in Fort Knox; as likely as a finding an Intel CPU encased in a 65 million-year-old piece of fossilized amber.

Thank You,
Mike Denney
The 'PC Doctor'
Bowling Green, KY