I don't pretend to know

Short order: Another Business gives Aycock Street a go

2011-09-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

You've heard the old mantra: in real estate, you need to worry about three things, location, location and location. With this in mind I was chagrined to read in today's News & Record about Karla and Daniel Paris opening their new venture, Lulu and Bubba's Sweet Shop, in a location where two previous businesses have gone bust in relatively short order.

In theory, the location--being cheek to jowl with UNCG and the massive apartment complexes on the west side of Aycock Street--would seem like a sure winner. The agent who sold the Parises on the benefits of this spot probably had all kinds of charts and graphs hyping the large population living within half a mile--a population of 20-somethings who love sweet things--and the vehicle count on Aycock Street. But I'm also sure he or she glossed over the two huge drawbacks of the location: zero parking and next-to-zero visibility.

The story in the paper portrays the Parises as wide-eyed innocents with next to no experience running a restaurant who optimistically think that they won't fall victim to the statistics of new businesses. It's the American dream, right?

I wish the Parises, well and I hope to heck they got a deal for that space (percentage rent?) but I doubt it. Long about Christmastime when the rent comes due and with the students gone on break they're going to wonder how they talked themselves into this mess. I feel like I should go over there right now and buy a cinnamon bun but I don't know if I'll be able to find a parking place.

Man versus Technology: The HTC Droid Incredible

2011-08-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

I am not new to technology. I have embraced technology wherever it reared its homely head. I own many devices that purport to be the latest innovation in communication technology. In recent years I have developed a fondness for Apple products and now regularly use an Apple desktop, two MacBook Pros and an iPad 2. So why in God's good name did I choose an HTC Droid Incredible over an iPhone when it was time to put my old BlackBerry out to pasture? Good question.

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me an HTC Droid. My friends all own iPhones which I must avoid. I'm kind of impatient and easily annoyed so Lord, don't buy me an HTC Droid." (Thanks, Janice)

Actually, both my sons own Droids and seem to be pretty happy with them but it took me exactly 48 hours to become aware of Droid's fatal flaw: it won't hold a charge for shit. Today, for example, I turned mine on around 8 this morning (fully charged), got one phone call, a couple of notifications, read two emails on it and it's already under 50% power. That doesn't seem right, does it? Apparently, this is a very common problem with this product. I posted a complaint on Facebook yesterday and got feedback from a number of Droid-owning friends who tell the same story. One woman said she bought a charger for home, office and car and still worries about whether she'll have power if one of her kids has to call her. Another friend has dubbed her phone "Incredibly Frustrating."

If you search the Internet (which maybe I should have done earlier) you'll find a whole bunch of sites telling you how you can extend Droid's Incredibly crappy battery life. I tried a couple of their suggestions: turn off GPS and Bluetooth, completely discharge the battery before recharging it, use -- or not use -- your Advanced Task Killer (some disagreement on that) but like those home remedies the Graedons hype on their show People's Pharmacy, none of them seem to work.

I guess in the rush to top iPhone, the HTC marketers trumped the engineers and put out this amazing device that unfortunately can't be amazing for a whole day at a time. It's like Ferrari selling a vehicle that goes 200 miles per hour but gets only 3 miles per gallon and has a ten gallon tank. Either that or their business plan depends on selling lots and lots of chargers.

If you got suckered into buying one of these devices and have to deal with a dead battery before dinnertime as well as the smirks of your iPhone-owning friends, let me know (just don't try to call me, my battery will be dead).

So, Wells Fargo, That's How It's Gonna Be, huh?

2011-05-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

With Wachovia signs coming down and Wells Fargo signs going up, I had a vision of the dystopian future that awaits us all.

At 8:10 on Saturday morning the phone rang. Anxious to ensure that the ringing phone didn't wake up my sleeping wife, I did something I almost never do: I answered it. Caller ID told me its was Wells Fargo so when an automated message wanted me to confirm I was me by pressing "1", I complied. In the twinkling of an eye I was transported half way around the globe to some call center in China. I'm guessing, Shanghai. The Wells Fargo representative obviously didn't get his English training in Oxford or anywhere that people actually speak English. I eventually figured out that he was calling about a late payment of $12. OK, I said, I'll pay it online as soon as I hang up.

This is where it got strange and annoying.

He protested that if I paid online it wouldn't be processed until Monday (not true). He wanted me to pay him or, allow him to draft my checking account (unfortunately also with Wells Fargo). I guess this process generates income for the call center. Anyway, this is where I lost my signature cool. I said I would pay online, told him not to call me again and slammed the phone down.

I went to the Well Fargo site, paid off the credit card entirely and fired off a angry message to Customer Service. Later in the day I got a friendly " we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you." message from someone code named Jessica M.

Being still pissed off I wrote back that in future instances when they needed to get in touch with me I preferred email and that I NEVER wanted to get a call from one of their "offshore call centers" again.

I must have pissed them off because the message I got in reply said

"If a cease and desist calls is placed on your account it will automatically be closed. Is that still your request?"

So this was how it was going to be. They would be nice to you--until they weren't. Oh, and this message was not from little Jessica M, it was from Wells Fargo Card Services.

I wrote back accusing them of intentionally misconstruing my message. The tone of their next message softened somewhat and I decided not to push my luck by replying further. My finances are so intimately entwined with Wells Fargo that pissing them off is not smart no matter how angry I am.

So what have we learned:

1) Big banks don't take shit

2) The miracle of fiber optics allows big banks to find the cheapest call center labor on Earth

3) English is optional

4) Don't answer your phone, ever

5) Never use that VISA card again

Avian Neighbors from Hell

2011-05-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

We had a new family move in with us last month. Right from the start we knew they were going to be trouble--they are European after all. They were up at the crack of dawn making all sorts of noise. We'd bang on the wall to get them to shut up and they'd stay quiet for maybe 15 minutes and then they'd start in again. They'd carry on late at night too.

Things have gotten a lot worse now that they've had kids. Their kids are always hungry and seem to be crying to eat every 15 minutes or so. I know they're running their parents ragged which would suit me just fine (they deserve it) but they're annoying the heck out of us too. Maybe if they were better looking I'd have a little more sympathy for them but they're not. The mom and dad look freakishly alike and to be honest, from a distance I can't tell them apart. I'm guessing their kids are ugly too but I've never seen, only heard them.

My wife encourages me to have patience with them but I know they're bugging her as much as me. She thinks they'll be moving on pretty soon but I don't know. Those kids can't even walk yet, let alone fly.

I'm not sure if this is the same family of starlings that bored a hole in my siding last year (the hole which cost us $$ to have repaired) but the hole they bored this year put them inside the wall just above our bed and for a while we worried that they would come through the drywall. Happily they didn't.

I probably should have called Terminex as soon as I heard them--I'm sure they would have taken care of the situation. But these were birds, not bats or mice. I like birds and feed them. Had I known they were starlings, however, I might have felt differently. Everything I've read online tells me that starlings are a nuisance bird that will keep coming back and are not easily discouraged. As kind-hearted as I normally am toward animals (despite what my wife may tell you), the first sign of bird re-occupation next year and I'm calling an exterminator.

In the meantime, until the babies leave home we'll be learning more about the lifecycle of the European Staring.

Cult of the Record Bar 5 years hence

2011-05-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

Five years ago I wrote a blog "Cult of the Record Bar." It's still there if you'd care to read it. It was a piece about remembering a time of relative innocence when I was younger, listened to a lot of music and managed a record store--a job envied by countless thousands. This was also the time I got the 1500+ vinyl records that I dutifully pack and take with me when I move. These LPs represent pretty much the only interesting inheritance I will leave to my children to fight over.

Anyway, the Blog somehow shows up on the first page of Google when people search for "the Record Bar." I started getting comments--just a few at first but then lots of them as people with Record Bar connections told their friends about it. A few years later when I was getting interested in Facebook, I created a Cult of the Record Bar Group Page in Facebook. As of today there are 674 members of the group. OK, that's not a big number but I fully expect it to grow since everything I read tells me that the fastest growing group of new Facebook users are old-timers like me.

The other day the Cult page was honored when the Record Bar's former owners Barrie and Arlene Bergman joined the group and posted greetings on the wall. I have to admit I got a little giddy. I've been validated!

Many thanks to all the RB formers who wrote on the wall and posted pictures from days-gone-by. There will never again be such a thing as a record store and pretty soon video stores and maybe even book stores will go the way of the dodo as the world moves online. Look us up someday, we're in the Book ;-)

La pizza della Morte

2011-05-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Like most people, I keep a frozen pizza or two in the freezer for occasions like last night when I want to eat something but don't feel like actually cooking. It was pretty late when I got home from rehearsing Mozart's Requiem with the Greensboro Symphony so I grabbed a Freschetta Simply Inspired pizza out of the freezer, preheated the oven to 425 and 14 minutes later I was enjoying a hot pizza. The wife came home from work about that time and she ate a couple pieces too. This pizza was pretty heavy on the garlic so what she didn't eat, we put out in the garbage to keep the garlic smell down.

After watching the Daily Show I headed for bed. The wife wanted to stay up to do some things but said she'd be coming to bed shortly. I woke up at 2 AM and heard her climbing into bed. Two hours later, I wake up and realize that she's not in bed but I hear water running so I guessed she was in the bathroom and would be coming back to bed in a minute--but she didn't, she went downstairs. Now she's ruining my beauty sleep and I have to investigate why.

Turns out she's been sick for 4 hours with vomiting and diarrhea. I realize that I'm not feeling too good either and I spend the next hour in the bathroom (reading a Reader's Digest story about some guy who writes papers for students and makes a nice living doing it.) I have to get up in an hour and a half so I find an ancient Imodium tablet in the bottom of my travel kit and take it. The wife had already taken a fresher one she found in the medicine cabinet and was almost asleep when I came back to bed. It took the Imodium a little while to work but I finally went back to sleep.

The alarm went off at 6:30 and for a minute I considered turning it off and going back to sleep but, unfortunately, the Imodium was wearing off or something--I barely made it to the bathroom. Since I was up, I stayed up, drank some coffee, ate a yogurt and swallowed another ancient Imodium tablet and came to work...where I've been completely useless (for evidence, I offer this blog.)

Tonight is another rehearsal but you can bet that when I come home and if I'm hungry, I won't be cooking another frozen pizza. In fact, I may never eat another frozen pizza again.

Chuck and Di and the RB Convention 1981

2011-04-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

All the buzz about the latest royal wedding got me to thinking about the last royal wedding between Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer thirty years ago. While that was going on, I was attending a Record Bar convention in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Like most Record Bar conventions, this one was enhanced with copious quantities of alcohol and a variety of other intoxicants that most of the attendees, if asked today, would deny knowing anything about let alone using. Oh yes, one other thing, a hurricane was passing by (Wikipedia says it was Tropical Storm Bret.)

Confined to my hotel room with an outrageous hangover, I sprawled on the bed and watched every single televised second of the wedding of the century while outside, wind and rain threw themselves violently against my windows and palm trees swayed ominously. The various ceremonies took forever and tempted as I was to drag myself out of bed in order to be accounted for by the senior Record Bar management, I just didn't have the energy.

I can't say that I remember anything specific about the wedding. Most of the images of that day have been replayed a thousand times so my memories of Diana looking innocently lovely in her gown and Charles looking gallant and dashing in his uniform could have come from anywhere. Eventually the wedding was over and by then I had sufficiently recovered enough that I was able to rejoin the uninterrupted debauchery going on somewhere else in the hotel.

Sixteen years later I watched every televised second of Diana's funeral. Coincidentally, just a few months earlier I had visited Westminster Abbey as part of my first trip to London. The next summer, in Paris our bus followed the same route as Diana's car and we saw the spot where she and Dodi died.

Obviously, the royal family and I go way back but I was not upset whenI I didn't get in an invite to the upcoming nuptials. On that Friday (who get's married on Friday?) I plan to take the day off, drink more than I should and relive a little history. What will you be doing? Come to think of it, what were you doing on July 29, 1981 (if you were alive may back then.)

Here today, gone six years later

2011-04-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

This blog is about impermanence and the disassociated ways we live with what we used to refer to as neighbors (would you be, could you be?).

We moved to our new house six years ago this May. As new neighbors, we were greeted pleasantly enough by many of the people who live next to and across from us including the doctor who lived with his wife and three children catty-corner from our house. He was going to introduce us to his wife on the day we met him but for some reason, she wasn't immediately available. Six years later, neither my wife nor I have ever spoken to her. We don't know her first name and if we ran into her in Harris Teeter we wouldn't recognize her. We don't know the names of any of their children either. We didn't intend for things to turn out that way, they just did. We're friendly enough with other neighbors--not going out to eat or socializing friendly--just "how you doing?" kind of friendly.

The neighbors we never knew, moved away last weekend. The didn't put their house up for sale beforehand so when the movers came, stayed all day Saturday and finally left, we had to clue where they were going. We're they splitting up? Who was moving, just him or the whole family? Happily, one of the neighbors we say hello to is also a Facebook friend. I wrote him and he wrote back with the story:

The family we never knew bought a house not far away and spent 6 months rehabbing it. Since he is a doctor in a very-well paid specialty, I guess money is not the issue it would be for the rest of us. I don't know anyone who can buy a new home without selling their current home, but I don't run with a very well-paid crowd.

So to paraphrase Richard M. Nixon, we won't have those neighbors to kick around any more. I wonder if they'll miss us as much as we won't miss them. Of course, on the other hand if they do put their house up for sale and we get crappy, loud obnoxious neighbors, we might miss them after all. (I'll bet they're planning to do just that)

UPDATE June 1: My mother-in-law keeps watch over the comings and goings of our neighbors from her second floor apartment. She's been telling us that woman who lived across the street comes over about every day and walks our other neighbor's dog. I've seen her a few times and have been tempted to speak on a couple of occasions but didn't. This morning I did. She had the neighbor's dog on a leash and would have probably walked by but I said: "you're a good neighbor to take that dog for a walk every day." She stopped and came over and we talked for the first time since we moved in. I introduced myself and we shook hands (she never told me her name) She had a lot to say about our neighbor who suffers from Lupus; about how and why they moved to the new place (her brother was moving to Greensboro and would buy her old house--except he didn't do either---how the dog was 11 years old and was a therapy dog but had some hip problems. We talked about her new house, the lake it was on and some of their new neighbors. Then I had to go to work and said goodbye. She didn't seem like the snob I assumed her to be so maybe I was just wrong about the other things I thought about her. Oh well.

The Dirty Little Secret Behind e-Books

2011-03-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Up to now, books were never considered impulse purchases--except maybe at airports, but even then you had to be physically present where books were sold to buy one. I have a number of friends who enjoy nothing more than browsing a bookstore; spending an hour or more before finally selecting some carefully considered tome--or just going home empty-handed.

My spouse is not one of those types but will quickly look over what's new by an author she's familiar with or has recently read about and sometimes (rarely) not buying anything at all. For her though, being without a book to read for any length of time eventually becomes something of a crisis.

I have a different attitude about books. I can make a book last forever and occasionally will stop reading one for weeks while I read another. I got so tired of Follett's World Without End (which I dubbed book without end) that I put it away for a couple of months before finally knocking off the final 100 pages last week. As a Nook owner with a slightly compulsive personality, I have to resist the urge to buy more books than I will ever read. It is SO incredibly easy to buy a book on a whim that you can, like I did recently, forget you bought something until you browse your Nook library and discover it. The good folks at Barnes and Nobles are in touch with me nearly everyday via email offering incredible buys on some book I simply MUST have. But they're not the only one touting books.

Used to be, I'd see an ad or read a review of a book in the NYT or elsewhere and make a mental note to take a look at it next time I was in a bookstore. Not anymore, especially if I'm reading the ad or review online. Both Barnes and Nobles and Amazon know me and greet me with a friendly "Hi Bob" whenever I access their sites. In mere seconds I can become the proud owner of the book in question. Before e-Books, I forgot about most of the books I intended to read before ever getting to the bookstore.

Sometimes, in moments resembling clarity I will download an excerpt instead. This usually will cure me of ordering the book because whoever it is selecting stuff to excerpt usually picks some god-awful section (actually, I don't think there is much "picking" involved with excerpts.) As interested as I initially was in The Autobiography of Mark Twain, the interminable Preface they chose to excerpt was all I needed to convince me I had no interest in reading it.

Unfortunately, today, I was not so wise and downloaded The Game of Thrones simply because I saw some action-heavy sequence from the upcoming HBO production of the book. George R. R. Martin damned-well better be this generation's J. R. R. Tolkien or I'm going to be pissed.

One last thing: I own a Nook, Barnes and Nobles, and can't imagine why I would need a new Nook Color. E-ink still only comes in black, doesn't it? OK, you've got magazines now too.

On becoming a Cyborg

2011-03-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

Six weeks ago I began my quest to become a cybernetic organism. My right shoulder which used to be made of bone is now some crazy metal amalgam (unfortunately, NOT titanium)--which will, for the rest of my life, alert TSA officials that I am not all that I appear to be. Currently I am undergoing the therapy necessary (I presume) to become a walking, talking killing machine.

The next phase in my transformation is a total knee replacement which will allow me to have powers similar to The Flash--again, I presume, because, try as I may, I cannot get my doctors to actually say these things out loud. I am taking their casual nodding for confirmation.

I knew that becoming a cyborg would be an expensive proposition (which the U.S. Army flatly rejected to pay for, by the way, citing some obscure clause in their budget that prohibits them from enhancing civilians) so I had to rely on our friends at BCBS to help me finance my transformation. I don't want them to get suspicious about my actual motives for having my joints replaced so I am doing this piecemeal. Luckily, I have been able to find doctors willing to go along with my plan.

If you ever plan to become a cyborg, like me, selecting the right doctors is a must. I have found that surgeons will almost always go along with anything that involves cutting into flesh and connective tissue. My own doctor was so excited about my shoulder replacement that he invited several other surgeons to join in the fun. And even though, they weren't in my budget, I was informed that I'd better pay up or I would be blacklisted. This is the cost of doing cyborg business.

I can't decide what to have replaced after the knee. I've heard that hip replacements are pretty well advanced and I can feel my left one deteriorating rapidly but my lumbar vertebrae are definitely higher on my list for an upgrade. I was kind of jealous when my friend, Adam, had his entire spine replaced last year but he took a really long time to recover and to be honest, I can't really see that he is any more formidable now than he was before. (He may even be less formidable.) I may wait for a while until they get that procedure perfected. I'm really hoping that engineered stem cells will be reality sooner rather than later. I didn't mind the surgery itself or the physical therapy but two days in a hospital room with all the noise and the 5 am bloodlettings got on my nerves.

I guess I need to start thinking about a costume. Any suggestions?

Irish Butter: what's the deal?

2010-06-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

After rescuing my E-VIC email from the spam folder where Gmail had consigned it, I noticed an ad for Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter. At $1.99 for a half pound (or a buck a stick) this didn't seem like such an extraordinary deal unless: 1) Normally, Irish Butter goes for $10 a pound, or 2) There is something so extraordinary about Pure Irish Butter that only a fool would pass this up.

I have been to Ireland and honestly can't remember being mystically transported by Irish butter at the time (as opposed to the Irish brews). I'm skeptical. I figured that I'm probably not the only person to be skeptical so I searched the Internet and sure enough, there is another blogger who wondered the same thing. The main difference between she and I is that she bought the butter and then wondered.

During the Atkins craze about ten years ago. I abandoned margarine for butter and usually buy the unsalted butter that cheapest at HT which usually is HT's house brand. I have been tempted by the European butter that is next to it but can't ever justify buying it. But maybe if I was making shortbread...for the Queen, I might opt for the high end butter someday. Maybe.

Spicing up a chicken sandwich campaign

2010-06-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

Chick-fil-A ran a very clever Twitter campaign to introduce their new Spicy chicken sandwich. It was brilliant for a couple reasons: it circulated widely but didn't flood the market with coupons. It also worked because Twitter loyalists are much more likely to actively participate rather than just be passive consumers. I fully expect to be surveyed about my Spicy chicken sandwich experience and will happily tell them how I enjoyed it. It was OK

If you've never been in a Chick-fil-A you have missed one of the great customer service experiences fast food has to offer. All the counter people are apple-cheeked young people who have been expertly trained to take and deliver your order with the utmost courtesy and efficiency. You never have to ask them to repeat anything, even at the drive-thru (which always is in perfect working order). The fact that a Chick-fil-A meal is more expensive than most competitors should come as no surprise.

Today, this nice young woman took my order, accepted my coupon and informed me that I was also entitled to free waffle fries and a drink (not expecting this, whoo hoo!) and that for a mere 30 cents I could have pepper jack cheese on the sandwich too (who can turn down a deal like that?) She gave me my drink and invited me to sit down. They would bring my order out to me when it was ready. But, before I could turn around, somebody called my name and handed me a tray with my food on it.

The sandwich itself was identical to their regular chicken sandwich but redder and spicier and just a little saucier. Like I said above, it was OK. Would I order it again? Maybe...probably. Regardless, it was the campaign that impressed me most so, whoever gets credit for this, take a bow.

My Wesley Long Adventure

2010-06-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Memorial Day and things were kind of slow. I read a little. Communicated with my co-workers and collaborated on a proposal. Teresa had to go to work so I made a frozen pizza for the two of us. I also took a couple of my Glucosamine tablets.

After Teresa left I was sitting at this very same computer typing away when I experienced pain in my chest. I figured it was heartburn and took a couple of Tums but the pain wouldn't go away. After about 30 minutes I took some Bicarbonate of soda. But the pain persisted.

I started getting nervous. My friend and fellow tenor, Andy, who is several years younger than me had a mild heart attack last year. He didn't think it was anything at first either but when he finally decided to go get checked out, he had had a heart attack.

I didn't know what to do and was hoping the pain would go away on its own before I had to bother anybody...but it didn't. After more than an hour I was wavering between calling 911 and just calling Teresa at work. I opted for calling her.

We arrived at Wesley Long's Emergency Entrance, filled out a card and were ushered into one of the treatment rooms. The triage nurse asked me a bunch of questions and asked me to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten. I figured it was about a 4 or 5. After a few minutes a tech came in with an EKG machine and stuck probes all over me. The EKG was done in a matter of seconds.

Then they brought me to another room and told me to lie down. A young nurse came in and asked me the same questions as the triage nurse (on a scale from one to ten...) and took some blood. She figured that she might as well put in an IV just in case. Not long after that a Physician's Assistant came in a asked me the same questions as the other two (on a scale...). She listened to my heart and decided to get me hooked up to a heart monitor. Ten or so minutes later, the triage nurse came back, hooked me up and took my blood pressure. It was 175 over 105. She made a remark about me seeming pretty calm but my bp told a different story.

The pain was getting worse and I couldn't get comfortable (especially with probes stuck all over me). I was getting oxygen too. After a long time the 2nd nurse came back with a G.I. cocktail. Apparently, my EKG was normal and maybe it was a gastrointestinal thing. The G.I. cocktail had lidocaine, Maalox and simethicone in it. I drank it. Nothing happened.

What seemed like really long time they took my bp again which had come down a lot. The PA came back and asked me about the pain. I figured it had grown to about a 6 or 7. She said she would get me some morphine for the pain. She left. The young nurse came back and shot me up with morphine, IV. It came on like a freight train but the pain didn't go away. About that time an x-ray tech arrived to take me for a chest x-ray. She wheeled me down the hall and took two films. I was feeling kind of loopy because of the morphine. More time passed. Yet, another nurse came in for a urine sample.

Eventually a doctor showed up and basically said all my tests were negative. He didn't know what was causing the pain but said it would either go away, stay the same or get worse. If it did get worse I should come back. He also said I should probably schedule a stress test with a cardiologist sometime soon. He said a lot of other things too, but the bottom line was that they were going to cut me loose. There was nothing more they could do for me.

The PA came back with a couple of prescriptions including one fore nitro glycerin. When she left, the young nurse came back, unhooked me from all the probes and sent me down the hall to discharge.

A copay of $200 set me free (God only knows what the final bill will be but I can't imagine it being less than a grand.)

Teresa took me home and I eventually persuaded her that I'd be fine by myself. She went back to work for a couple hours. Eventually the pain did begin to subside but I was still pretty looped from the morphine and just sat in my recliner until Teresa came home.

I went to bed and slept fitfully; tossing and turning and looking at the clock every hour. I woke up this morning with what can only be described as a morphine hangover. I was also seriously dehydrated but after a breakfast of dry toast and coffee I napped for another few hours and started to feel semi normal again.

Still don't know what caused the pain and why it finally went away. Maybe it was the glucosamine but I'd been taking them for over a week with no ill effects. Maybe it was the pizza but I really didn't have much of that. I guess approaching 60 I'm more conscious of my mortality. If I really had had a heart attack Wesley Long was a pretty good place to be. I'm just happy I didn't.

Never mind the volcanos. Hand me my boarding pass.

2010-04-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

If the latest threat to aviation, Mount Eyjafjallajokull, isn't proof enough that man will never fly, I don't know what is. Personally, every time I board an airplane I assume that somewhere, midflight, the Law of Aerodynamics will be declared unconstitutional and I will die screaming my lungs out in a vain effort to get the attention of any wandering deity who might be ambling by. This is why any airline trip requires a fair amount of medication.

There are two perfectly suitable substitutes for flying--technlogies that may need a little work before they are efficient enough to replace commercial aviation--rail and ocean-going craft (otherwise know as ships.) Rail has a better chance of approximating the time economies of air travel between big cities (if you count the time lost getting to and from airports). However, if you live in Greensboro and have to get to San Francisco, you won't be able to do it in 7 hours; you may not be able to do it in under one day--even if MAGLEV becomes a reality (which it currently isn't in the U.S.)

Ships are another story. At their current fastest, ships travel at the approximately 1/100 of the speed of airplanes, so not really able to satisfy the "let's fly to London for the weekend" crowd. Yes, the same crowd which has been sitting in a Heathrow terminal for the past week wondering if their flight will ever take off. If these same people had hopped aboard the luxurious new Queen Mary 2, they'd probably be home by now--in theory, anyway.

The presumption is that one day soon, the volcano will quit spewing stuff into the atmosphere and life will return to normal. This is probably what the dinosaurs thought too when the earth went through an extended period of vulcanism. Unlike the dinosaurs we may not go extinct waiting. But we may have to accept the fact that getting anywhere will take longer, maybe MUCH longer.

UNLESS

I read a science fiction book many years ago that envisioned undersea tubes in which train-like vehicles sped happy, smiling people from continent to continent. The Channel Tunnel proved that it can be done on a small scale but taking a gander at the map of the Atlantic sea bed, going through the bedrock will require alien technology which, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have yet. No, the tubes will have to be suspended somehow and, of course, we'll have to overcome the unknown threat of sea monsters attracted by the light and noise of a passing seatrain but we need to start thinking about that now and forget, for the moment, going to the Moon or Mars.

I don't want to think about crossing the Pacific so lets just presume that it will be impossible in the future.

Thanks for listening. You might have crazy ideas too but at least I put mine out there for everyone to see and scoff at.

Campus Walk Rebuilt but not Janet

2010-03-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

My friend, Bruce, and I were driving back to the office this morning when we decided to take a short detour to look at the new Josephine's restaurant under construction nearby. We chanced to take a turn at Howard Street and I said something like "oh, look the Campus Walk Apartments have been rebuilt."

Bruce, who remembers next to nothing (sorry Bruce) didn't remember the fire there that claimed the lives of four young people and sent young Janet Danahey to prison for life, eight years ago last month. I didn't know any of these people but it always seemed to me that Janet Danahey had little or no legal defense and that her attorney probably should have been disbarred--but like the commercial goes, that's more like an opinion. I wanted to name this attorney but in all the stories about the fire and its aftermath, he is never named. I wonder why.

At the heart of this injustice is what's known as the "Felony Murder Rule" which, not being an attorney, I wouldn't even dream of trying to explain. I just hope somebody, somewhere is trying to get Janet out of prison. One tragic but ultimately stupid act doesn't warrant a life sentence.

You can write to Janet here:
Janet Danahey #0774159

C/O NCCIW

1034 Bragg St.

Raleigh, NC 27610

It's not a lie, it's hyperbole!

2010-03-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

I grabbed this definition of hyperbole off the Urban Dictionary
hyperbole: (hi-PER-bo-lee) a bowl traveling an excess of 3-8 trillion miles per second

wow, with this new bowl we will reach new solar system easily

One of the many hats I wear is that of a marketer so I am accustomed to recognizing and using hyperbole. Hyperbole can mean outright lying or merely stretching the truth. I've always liked Lionel Hutz's explanation of truth in an episode of the Simpsons where Marge becomes a real estate agent.
Hutz: You see Marge, there's the truth (frowns shakes his head) and the TRUTH (smiles and nods enthusiastically)

What brought this to mind was a blurb about the new book Columbine by Dave Cullen. Some copywriter seeking to elicit emotion used the word "massacre" to describe what happened there that day. How do we know that it's hyperbole? Because while many students and teachers were murdered, they all weren't (classic definition of massacre). Another word we hear frequently in describing destruction is "decimated" which technically means every tenth person/building/business/whatever was destroyed. If your staff of 20 people is reduced to 10 and you said it was decimated, you'd be understating the situation by a lot. (personally, I like "eviscerated" when describing such things but it too is hyperbole and technically wrong.)

But the most recent and blatant use of hyperbole occurred with the unfortunate death of Sea World trainer, Dawn Brancheau. For years marine biologists have been beating their heads against the wall trying to get us, the public, to stop calling killer whales, killer whales. "They're Orcas," they insist. Technically, Orcas aren't whales at all--they're really great big black and white dolphins with extraordinary intelligence and prodigious appetites. But after this latest incident, orcas will be known henceforth as killer whales. Sorry, marine biologists. You lose.

Confidentiality Notices (hate 'em)

2010-03-02T06:30:00.000-08:00

"This e-mail is for the sole use of the individual for whom it is intended. If you are neither the intended recipient, nor agent responsible for delivering this e-mail to the intended recipient, any disclosure, retransmission, copying, or taking action in reliance on this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the person transmitting the information immediately. All e-mail correspondence to and from this e-mail address may be subject to NC Public Records Law which result in monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement. In compliance with federal laws blah blah blah and your mother"

Who came up with these things? Lawyers, right? And what is our response to these things? SO FREAKIN' WHAT! The first line reminds me of something from an old Lily Tomlin routine "Is this the party to whom I am speaking?" What is truly heinous about these things is that sender doesn't have much control of them. They are automatically tacked on to all outgoing messages. During a typical email exchange where there might be three or four replies, each one from the Notice-enabled sender appends the notice to the email, making for one long message.

I know some of you might defend these things because they make your messages seem more official, more hoity-toity, more intelligent--but they don't really. There is nothing keeping me from deleting the notice and forwarding to anybody I feel like. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. Of course, I won't do such a thing because I tend toward being ethical (tend toward).

So, take a stand. Tell the big brother than makes you use these things to kiss your ass OR, make up your own confidentiality notice like the one below:
Hey, I sent this message to you. Don't be a jerk and go forwarding it to my boss/girlfriend/wife/parole officer/massage therapist (wink wink). If you do and I found out about it , I will so kick your ass. If I don't know where you live right now I can find out pretty quick and your car/dog/cat/boat/girlfriend just might not be where you left it. Oh, by the way, if you don't respond to this message in a timely manner (like within the next 15 minutes) I will call your phones repeatedly until you do. Have a nice day

Lost in Translation

2010-02-25T06:11:00.001-08:00

Just because I have never owned Toyota does not disqualify me from weighing in on the current Toyota controversy. I have read Shogun (twice) and watched BOTH "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" so I know that SOMEBODY on the Toyota team should be doing the honorable thing right about now and if your knowledge of Japanese culture is as extensive as mine, you know what I mean.

I am troubled by one thing though. All day yesterday they played clips of the 911 call Chris Lastrella made from the doomed Lexus as it hurtled toward oblivion. This is just me talking but I think the last thing going through my mind in a similar situation would be "hey, let's call 911." Granted, in stressful situations people don't always act rationally but Lastrella had two options, neither of which he apparently tried: shifting the car into neutral and turning off the ignition. It wasn't his car so why would he care about screwing it up? So if you see where I'm going with this, remember, the title of this blog is "I don't pretend to know"

Ashes to Ashes

2010-02-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

Today, Ash Wednesday, used to be such a hoot for Catholics back in the day. If you went to mass early enough to get ashes before work, you could spend the entire day having people tell you your forehead was dirty. That was when Catholics were a tiny minority here in NC. Nowadays, with the combined invasions from Yankeeland and Yankeeland South (Florida) Catholics are as common as dandelions and nearly as welcomed.

That's not to say that we're any better understood by our Protestant brethren today than we were 50 years ago. Curious Protestants are still asking us if we believe in Jesus--I guess somebody told them we don't. "Jesus?" I'd say "you mean that bearded guy who won't let you drink, dance or believe in evolution?" They'd get all huffy and stalk away while I'd make a sign of the cross and invoke Mary (they really hate that.)

I understand that today some of the Protestant churches hold Ash Wednesday services. Who knows, this tradition might catch on and even Baptists will be going around with ashes on their foreheads and eating eating fish on Wednesdays and Fridays. They might even take up dancing.

Anyway, 6PM Ash Wednesday service tonight at OLG Church. The Choir will be singing, Yankees will be saying their prayers with thick Jersey accents and we'll all go home with dirty foreheads. See you there!

Red light

2010-02-15T06:32:00.000-08:00

It's not every day that an old George Clinton song percolates up from the primordial ooze of my brain but today one did. I guess you have to be pretty old (or very funky) to remember "Flashlight." As a purveyor of music during the 70s and 80s, I got a serious case of Da Funk back then courtesy of Mr. Clinton and the whole P-Funk machine and it never really went away.

But the reason for the emergence of this song was what I have noticed to be a serious RED GREEN colorblindness in this town. Waiting for the light to change at the intersection of Holden and Friendly this morning; watching the pedestrian countdown go to zero, I made a prediction that at least one car would run the red light. I wasn't even close---three did. Normally I would see this as a recipe for disaster but in Greensboro, nobody notices when the light turns green either so somehow it all evens out. Maybe we're all distracted by stuff or just in a God-awful hurry but whatever it is, I really wish they would bring back red light cameras because someday, somebody is going to get hurt and I hope to heck it isn't me. I'm normally the guy behind you who will beep his horn if you don't move the second the light turns green but nowadays I'll look in both directions and if oncoming cars aren't slowing down fast enough, I'll wait.

Hopefully those of you who read this and start humming "Flashlight" when you approach an intersection, be careful and remember the yellow light doesn't mean GO VERY FAST

Weighing in

2010-02-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

OK, I'll admit it, I'm paranoid. It's probably a result of living through both the McCarthy and the Nixon eras. The fact that I don't watch Fox news, I think, means I've made real progress in conquering my fear of the unknown or at least the unknowable. But when UNCG announced a kick off of "Healthy UNCG" my paranoia kicked in. This can only mean one thing: they're going to weigh me and find out I'm too fat--that my BMI is in the red zone and that I need to be paying twice as much for my health insurance!

Sure, they've made the Kickoff seem like a bundle of fun with "free food" (watch what the fatties eat), "games" (make the fatties sweat) and "more" (the "more" probably being the required weigh-in). The flyer announces that "Healthy UNCG is a program to support employee well-being" which I assume is code for "we'll love you even if you're a fat, disgusting blob of steaming adipose tissue--but not forever."

There's a rumor going around (yes, I started it) that those who don't measure up at the kick off are going to begin every day with a weigh-in a la "Biggest Loser" and 30 minutes of calisthenics. Those of us with a BMI over 25 will get mandatory nutrition counseling and have our lunches examined. If within 60 days our BMI is not under 25, we'll begin required Boot Camp staffed by the most aggressive, fatty-hating personal trainers the Student Recreation Center has to offer (I'm hoping for Olga but only because I like her tattoos.) Those of us failing to make the grade will see our health insurance premiums go up to $1000 per month. If that isn't enough to make your lose your appetite, you're hopeless.

Personally I'm looked forward to dropping 50 pounds and extending my lifespan by 20 minutes. Thanks UNCG for caring. Now, if you could only stop terrorists from stealing my underwear I'd be great.

The most powerful communication tool since the printing press and this is all you can think of?

2010-02-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

This is going to sound elitist or at least grumpy-old-man-ish. It's about the paucity of "clever" in social media. Here we have a growing array of social media applications (just added Google Buzz) and devices galore with which to access them and so little of anything interesting to read.

One of my greatest pet peeves (responsible for many unfollows and unfriends) is the posted aphorism or quotation. What is the point? Do somebody else's words of wisdom mean anything to you or are you just too dumb or lazy to write something original. Maybe some of you think you are passing along encouraging words to your equally dim friends but Ben Franklin wore this thing out in the 1700s. It's OK to read them and draw inspiration from them but don't pass them along as if you're the only one to discover them. Recently, a respected friend quoted a passage about the importance of being original and didn't see the irony. Upon reflection I just realized that most people aren't clever or original and need something to say that sounds clever or original even if they didn't say it. It's complicated.

Facebook, because of it nearly universal acceptance by the millenials is probably the worst example of dullness run amok. Young people without much experience using words in interesting ways, post the least amusing things imaginable and with great frequency. I wish I would learn to NOT post anything on young people's pages because I know that, all day long, I'm going to be informed of the inane things their friends post after me (and YES, I know I could disable this Facebook feature but there are people whose responses I may be interested in reading.) If your friend is having a birthday and all you can think of to write is "Happy Birthday" that's really sad. Better you don't write anything at all. Unfortunately, this proliferation of boring isn't restricted to the young. Of all my 300 some-odd Facebook friends, there are fewer than ten who have something interesting to say and several of those only because they're good at ferreting out interesting things from the Internet.

Twitter is a bit of a wasteland for many of the same reasons but also because of the sheer randomness of it. Every day I wonder why in God's name some of these people are following me and worse, why am I following them back? But Twitter and Facebook are numbers games and how many friends or followers you have are measures of your social media worth. I have one follower who only tweets info about getting more followers but I really don't want any more dumbasses filling up my Twitter feed with garbage causing me to miss something I might really want to see.

My wife is extremely sensitive about her followers and takes it very personally when one of them stops following her--especially if she thinks she may be still following them. I haven't quite figured out why people follow me in the first place so don't notice or care when they stop--unless it's someone I know personally and then I want to know why they don't love me anymore. Surely it's not because I wasn't clever enough because I work hard at that; harder than I should probably.

I guess trading bon mots with people of my same generation is the best I'm going to do. At least they get my cultural references and respond thoughtfully most of the time. Of course the smartest thing for me to do is ignore social media altogether and restrict my cleverness to my rants here but so much of blogging is just hollering down a well it makes no sense to waste time here either. Maybe I should start writing cranky letters to the editor like the other old cranks. maybe then the would care. Nah

Guilford's Most Wanted

2009-06-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

Readers of the News & Record are quite familiar with one of the N&R's Monday features: Guilford County's Most Wanted. Usually there are a couple of sullen male faces looking menacingly from the page with a paragraph about their offenses; a short bio and their last known address. I'm pretty sure that the N&R has taken some heat because so many of the people featured here are black. So today it was somewhat of a surprise to see this pretty blond girl looking calmly from the page.

Apparently, just being a pretty blond girl is not enough to shield you from life's slings and arrows because Tabatha Garner has taken a lot of lumps in her 30 years and who, despite her outward appearance is no angel. One has to wonder what "Chuck", the name tattooed on her foot, had to do with her downfall. Was he responsible for the "scars on her buttocks, arms and stomach"?

She has probably made a living from suckers like me who see a pretty blond and think: she can't be bad looking the way she does, can she? I guess the guys whose credit cards she was found with or the girl whose license she had (and who she tried to pass herself off as to the cops) learned their lessons.

So mamas, I hope you show Tabatha's picture to your boys and remind them that beauty is only skin deep and sometimes not even that.

Fox 8 goes weather map crazy

2009-05-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

If you happened to be watching Fox 8 on Sunday night, expecting to see Family Guy what you got instead was 30 minutes of Charles Ewing giving us a treatise on how his new weather reporting software works. Long after any danger from a reported tornado had passed we got to see Ewing cursoring over this or that section on the map to illustrate where the "red and green" met - which was supposed to show us something, I think.

I understand that Fox 8 has a responsibility to its viewing public to protect us from threats real and imagined but instead of going back to the show already-in-progress when this weather event was history, they decided to tough it out and let Ewing go on and on showing the same map over and over.

Remembering a time in the past when they preempted the Kentucky Derby to do pretty much the same thing, it occurs to me that weekend producers eager to do something dramatic - prove they have the right stuff - get carried away and apparently, nobody with any real power has the good sense to tell them to knock it off. So I guess I will: knock it off you guys!

May Day memories

2009-05-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Who would have ever thought that twenty some odd years hence, we'd be missing the old Soviet Union? Every May 1st I start getting a little nostalgic for the old Soviet Empire and those great parades they'd have through Red Square - heck, do they even call Red Square, "Red Square" any more?

Remember all those Soviet military officers with their chests full of medals wearing those impossibly large military-style hats reviewing rows and rows of grim-faced Soviet troops leading trucks pulling ballistic missiles and followed by all those huge tanks - tanks that Tim Clancy once envisioned rolling across the German countryside on their way to a date with destiny. Actually Clancy, shilling for Republic, had those tanks being chewed up by A-10 Warthogs - but that is another story (several stories actually, but I digress).

Today, I imagine the elite of Moscow are enjoying their May Day with chilled glasses of Clicquot and Beluga with toast points while cruising in their Mercedes wondering when the price of oil is going to rebound or when they can ship their latest "recruits" to the brothels in Europe and America. Let's face it, the Sovs just aren't any fun anymore.

Who wouldn't long for the days of Mutually Assured Destruction now that our economy is in shambles and the worst thing we have to face is a pandemic and maybe some al-Quaeda terrorist plot. Sure those things are scary too but they're sort of faceless. At least the Sovs were like us -granted, nobody could understand them but their women were hot and had sexy accents and the men, while crude, hairy and smelly were sentimental drunks whose asses we could easily kick if it ever came to that.

Maybe tonight I will dig out my DVD of Dr. Strangelove and relive those thrilling days of yesteryear sipping on a cold Budweiser and remembering May Day the way it used to be.

Addendum: Somebody just reminded me of the days BEFORE the Soviets when May day meant free love and Maypoles and buxon wenches serving frothy steins of beer - wait, isn't that October Fest? Now, I'm confused

Catholic Bishops should resign

2008-11-08T13:58:00.000-08:00

A headline on today's Catholic News & Herald about caused me to go through the roof: "Catholic leaders congratulate Obama, offer prayers for administration." These are the same conservative so- and-sos that told Catholic Americans in no uncertain terms that voting for Obama was tantamount to voting for Satan. And now you want to make nice? It's no wonder that the Catholic Church is losing followers faster than Wall Street is losing investors.

Well, you relics of a time long past, Catholic Americans voted their consciences like millions of other Americans and your unholy alliance with the Republican party did not turn the trick this year. In light of your irrelevance to our lives the proper thing to do would be to resign and promote moderate clergy to positions of power: OK, I know that's not how it works but I hope you at least feel bad about betraying the trust of the people of your respective dioceses. It's time for you to examine YOUR consciences and open your eyes to the big picture like the rest of us did. Perhaps, like McCain and Palin, it's time for you to go.

By the way, we're not going to forget this.

Sarah's Next Career

2008-10-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

I was among the 14 million who watched the October 18 telecast of SNL with Sarah Palin. Obviously, with her current schedule, she couldn't do much rehearsing so the skits that involved her didn't require her to say many lines. What lines she did have, she delivered well. The Palin rap with Amy Poeler was the highlight of the show and may be the best thing they've done all season.

What occurred to me the next day was what her appearance on the show meant. Despite all her rhetoric, she has no illusions that McCain/Palin is going to win the day in November. She is not a stupid woman. SNL has been vigorously satirizing her candidacy and the Palin Rap made fun of her and the ticket she's on. She is, however, an ambitious woman and the opportunity she's been given needs to be milked for all it's worth. Whether it's in politics or entertainment, the next time we Sarah Palin she will have landed on her feet and the future will be looking mighty bright for her.

Just as there is a Fox News for the conservative "side" of the issues, Sarah might become the Fox News equivalent of "Ellen" or "Oprah." After all, her degree is in communications and Lord knows, entertainment both pays better and is a lot more fun than politics.

Will "Chad" soon be saying "Can you hear me now?"

2008-06-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's sad when two brands merge and one of their pitchmen has to go. For quite a while we've been treated with the ubiquitous "Can you hear me now" guy from our friends at Verizon while Alltel has given us Chad, the tousle-haired cool boy who makes fools of the geeky guys representing the other brands -- speaking of which, why did they change the chubby guy representing Sprint? Anyway, with the announcement today that Verizon is buying Alltel I wonder whether either or both of the actors in these roles are updating their resumes and calling their agents.

Since Verizon is by far the bigger of the two and their "Can you hear me now" brand is so well known I kind of suspect that Chad's days are numbered. However, if the respective ad agencies decided to work together there could be a whole new series where Chad, being cool and in with cheerleaders could give the CYHMN guy a makeover; get him hooked up with hot girls and together they could take on the geeks from the other phone companies. Also I think that they should keep the "wizard" from Alltel who has been appearing in the latest commercials and together they could rule the mobile universe

Grocery Store Tales

2008-05-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

The local Harris Teeter is the center of my social world. Where else can you see so many interesting people in one place doing something so ordinary as shopping for food? Of course, the local HT is a bit more of social place than most HTs because of the large deli/hot bar area and adjoining Starbucks.

Grocery store shopping like any other activity requires some acquired amount of expertise. When the newest HT opened, for example, nobody was sure where to find anything. You'd read the headers at the end of the aisles and guess that was where the item you wanted might be found. The new HT also has the oddest design for the produce section, which, depending on which door you come in, you might miss entirely. Nowadays, of course, we know the store like the back of our hands and have come to resent the obligatory "did you find everything you were looking for?" I know the employees are required to ask it but, really, can't I have it encoded into my VIC card not to ask me? (Which would also be a great idea for the annoying self check-out: encode a "don't talk to me" message so the perky voice would stay silent after she asked me to scan my VIC card.) <>

Anyway, my point about all this is that I am a fairly sophisticated grocery store shopper and usually don't make the kind of mistake I made yesterday. I stopped in for a couple of things and ended up buying shallots in addition to the easy-to-scan items. I'm fairly certain that I would have been able to find the right code for shallots...eventually, but at the time I was walking by the check-out lanes, two adjacent lanes looked like they were both in the "pay and bag" stage of the transaction. I got in one lane and then decided that the next lane would be faster. Obviously forgetting the old maxim: Whichever line you pick will be the slower line.

If I had looked more carefully at the woman in the lane I eventually chose I would have known immediately that I had chosen poorly, because she was obviously a chatter/dawdler (but going back was no longer an option because some other shopper had taken advantage of my error.)

I'm not sure what happened between the woman and the checker before I got in that line but something was up. All her stuff had been checked but none of it was in a bag. I saw, with some chagrin that she was getting ready to WRITE A CHECK! God, do people still write checks in this day and age? I also caught a fragment of her conversation with the checker that involved cash back. Needless to say, the checker went through all the rigamarole they do with checks and finally put it in the register without giving her the cash back. Normally this would not have been a big problem but she appeared to have written the check for some even amount that required the checker to make change--which, now that the register was closed--he would have to figure out himself. Any critic of today's math education will tell you that a frightening number of people CAN'T MAKE CHANGE, and this befuddled checker was in that group.

I watched sadly as not one but two other customers in the lane I had abandoned checked out and were long gone before my checker (with the somewhat unhelpful help from the check-writing lady) finally figured it out. I finally got to hand him my VIC card, totally exasperated and when he asked me if I had found everything, I just said "I sure picked the wrong lane". He apologized and I wanted to tell him it wasn't all his fault that some of it was mine for picking his lane but I wasn't feeling all that generous and left him believing that I was one of those hateful customers he probably gets every day.

Next time I'll be more vigilent...I hope.

One of those days

2008-05-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have one of those days where you get up, shower, dress nicely and go to work only to find you can't do one productive thing? Take today for example.

I made it to lunchtime by reading my e-mail, answering the phone, following several links on digg, watching a couple episodes of "You Suck at Photoshop" (I really do. I have it on my computer and can do, like, 3 or 4 of the nine bazillion things you could do if you knew what the hell you were doing -which I don't) and doing some extensive research on Princess Eugenie - but only because I got her confused with big sis, Princess Beatrice. Who can keep the British Royal Family straight these days? Certainly not me.

Last night went to a discussion hosted by UNCG Prof, Charlie Headington, about the book "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. It was a very Earth Fare, Whole Foods crowd. I read most of the book and all the sex scenes (of which there are painfullyly few.) After the discussion I was hungry so I went home and cooked up a couple of hot dogs.

For a few hours today I considered changing the focus of this blog to something about food but there are already many such blogs out there and most of them seem to know more about food than I do. Plus the fact that, for lunch today I had a liverwurst sandwich on some seriously stale bread from Fresh Market and a 20oz Diet Pepsi out of the vening machine. I will probably cook dinner tonight but unless I stop at HT on the way home to get something, I will be forced to come up with a entree made from a 2 pound "chub" (why do they call it that?) of ground chuck that has been thawing in the fridge for the past couple of days and should be malleable -- wait! I HAVE to go to HT on the way home because we are down to the 4 bottles of wine that I am saving for a special occasion, whatever that might be. Need to stock up on some Oak Creek or Barefoot if it is under $5. I don't know why, if there is such a wine glut out there, I can't buy decent sulfite-free wine for under a buck.

People ask me why I don't patronize (if that's the right word) North Carolina wines. If I want this state to successfully transition from a tobacco-oriented agricultural economy to viticulture I should do my part right? I will one day. The day they make NC wines more affordable than California wines. One way to make me more interested in NC wines (yes, you know what's coming) would be for them to stop using corks and use simple to use screw tops. Heck, even wine snobs I know are getting behind the screw-top movement. So, if North Carolina wineries all banded together and agreed to use only the latest, wine-saving, screw-tops I would become an advocate for NC wines. Until then...well, I might buy the stuff if it was cheaper.

Boomers and Facebook

2008-04-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

I've been on Facebook for almost a year now. I joined because it seemed like a natural connection between me and my college-age staff. It took a while for me to get enough friends so as not to appear totally lame. My rule was that I would not add anyone who was college-aged or younger - they would have to add me. I added a few other Boomer friends who were just discovering Facebook. So now I have over 100 friends, of which I interact with maybe six of them (write on their wall, send them messages, post items of interest).

For the most part I have enjoyed being on Facebook and have become an afficiando of Scrabulous, Facebook's addictive Scrabble game. But there is something that bugs me about Facebook that I would like to address but don't dare do it on Facebook lest I be seen as an old curmudgeon [and if I don't like it I shouldn't be on Facebook because it wasn't designed for me in the first place, right?]. It's the constant stream of photos of drunken children (what I consider anyone under 30) that make me want to scream "guys/girls do you really want everybody you know to see your drooping eyelids, stoned-out smiles and do you really have to include the obligatory middle-finger shot?" Occasionally somebody puts up pictures that are little slices of life and don't include Bud Light beauty shots but most of the pics (especially from the younger kids) are "look how drunk I am." It is just so cliche.

Now, if we had Facebook when we were college-aged would we do anything differently? Nope. Jeez, getting old and crotchety is no fun at all.

Oh, one last thing. In this age of wonderful digital cameras won't somebody PLEASE learn to use "red-eye" flash properly? Or, failing that take two minutes to fix all those red eyes in Photoshop - you know you have it on your laptop, you mom and dad spent the extra dough so you could have the best technology so USE it, OK?

Spitzer Wiretap Transcript

2008-03-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

The following is a transcript from a Federal Wiretap. Elliot Spitzer is identified as Client 9

VIP: Good morning, VIP services where Very Important People get serviced promptly. Would you like to hear our monthly specials?

Client 9: Uh, no thanks, I'd like to make a reservation.

VIP: That's great! Have you used VIP before?

Client 9: Sure have, this is Elliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York.

VIP: Oh yes, Governor Spitzer, I'm sorry I didn't recognize your voice but I should have known from the Caller-ID. How can we help you today?

Client 9: I'm going to be in DC on the 13th and need some, um...companionship.

VIP: OK, I see that you've requested Ginger most recently; would you like me to check her schedule?

Client 9: Yes, please

VIP: Oh, I'm sorry, Ginger is in Dubai that entire week.

Client 9: How about Karen?

VIP: I'm sorry, we don't have a Karen.

Client 9: Maybe I got the name wrong...petite brunette, great ass, does that thing with her tongue?

VIP: Oh you mean Kristin! She's usually booked for weeks in advance...but let me check...you're in luck, she was going to be off that week but her travel plans fell through. That's the 13th, right?

Client 9: Yeah, in DC at the Mayflower hotel. I'll book her a room in the name of Shirley Smith.

VIP: You understand that you're responsible for the airfare unless you want to provide a private plane?

Client 9: Ha, no problem, I'm the Governor of New York. Just put it on my tab.

VIP: Of course. Do you want us to draft your account again?

Client 9: Yeah, hold on a second [Client 9 is talking to someone else in the room, unintelligible]. Sorry, a governor's business is never done. Do you have that buy two get one free promotion still going on?

VIP: Yes, it's running until the 22nd.

Client 9: Could I pay for a second one now and get, like, you know, two credits?

VIP: I'm sure we could work that out for you. OK, we've got Kristin in DC on the 13th at the Mayflower Hotel under the name of Shirley Smith. Is there anything else we can do for you, today Governor?

Client 9: You do have me down as a no-C preferred, right?

VIP: That's what I have but Kristin doesn't take no-C clients.

Client 9: Well, maybe she'll change her mind for the Governor of New York.

VIP: That's up to you and Kristin, Governor. Anything else today?

Client 9: Nope, that's it. Remember to vote early and often.

VIP: Oh governor, you're such a hoot. Goodbye.

END CALL

Make me a winner, Harris Teeter!

2008-03-05T09:27:00.000-08:00

I really wish I had been keeping track, but since I haven't, I'm going to estimate that this is 261st week in a row that I have not won Harris Teeter's eVic Weekly Sweepstakes. No, this week someone named Tamara Brawn from Dunn NC won. I mean, does that sound like a made-up name or what?

It's like those letters to Walter Scott's "Personality Parade" which seem to be so timely (Q: say whatever happened to my favorite singer - insert name here - who recorded ANYSONG back in 1976? A: Insert-name-here just finished a new LP due out in March) that you just KNOW they were written by some publicist.

Besides, anybody with an anagram generator can quickly figure out that 'Tamara Brawn' is really an anagram for Arab War Rant: no doubt a signal to some jihadist group.

You can tempt me all you want with your great deals on EZ Peel White Shrimp or your Buy 2 Get 1 Free Tombstone Pizzas but unless I see my name on next week's eVic Sweepstakes there will be hell to pay, buddy.

Hasta la Vista Bandits

2008-03-04T08:50:00.001-08:00

I was trying to think this morning just how long I've been using Skoal Bandits. Seems like a really long time -- like (damn!) twenty years. Can it really be that long? Well, anyway, I decided Sunday to stop using them.

My mouth felt tender and my tongue kind of swollen all day Saturday which I interpreted as the first signs of mouth cancer or something (My wife has been threatening me with this for years) so I decided to take a day off Bandits and see if there was any improvement.

I made it all day Sunday and didn't feel too bad so I thought maybe this was a good time to give them up altogether (I have quit things cold turkey before so no big deal for me). When I went to bed Sunday night I was unprepared for what nicotine withdrawal had in store for me: INSOMNIA! For a boy who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and sleep soundly for 6 hours this was unexpected and unwelcomed.

Dragging through Monday was a challenge. I read that nicotine withdrawal takes about 72 hours and I was only on hour 24! One of the conveniences of getting your nicotine from Bandits is that you can use them about any time you want to and nobody is going to notice. None of the Bandit users I know feel the need to spit so if you don't tell people you use them nobody has to know -- nobody except maybe the woman who empties my trash can every night and I doubt she cares. Since you can reach for them about any time you need a nicotine hit you can keep your nicotine levels consistently pretty high. When you cut off your nicotine supply, your body misses it and lets you know in a variety of ways.

So now I'm 48 hours and counting without any nicotine. There had better be all kinds of untold benefits involved with giving up nicotine because if I have to go through withdrawal and get nothing in return (except for not getting mouth cancer) I might be pissed

Wednesday Bloody Wednesday

2008-02-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

So I open my email from Harris Teeter only to find I am *NOT* the eVic winner...again. This is so unfair! The 3 for $10 Oak Creek Chardonnay is a pretty good deal though.

Oh, speaking of cheap-ass wine, there should be a ruling from the FDA or somebody that any wine selling for less than $10 should come with a screw-cap. Plastic corks do not make a cheap wine taste better. They only slow down the process of getting the wine from the bottle to my mouth - or occasionally to a glass. Somebody look into that, OK?

The Smell of Cinnamon Toast Part 3

2008-02-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

The Other Shoe

Lawyers, Brad and Jack tag-teamed for the next half hour about the vision of Aalaxis Media. I have to admit, these guys were well-rehearsed and the longer they talked the better it sounded to all of us. Aalaxis, they told us, had a global view. They likened the company to BBC but without the Brit bias. It was Aalaxis's mission to report the important stories from around the world with an emphasis on "why should I, the reader, care about this story." Aalaxis was concerned about Global Warming, fragile ecosystems, displaced populations, fair trade and of course, wars and not just the ones we knew about. Aalaxis's board of directors boasted of two Nobel Prize winning economists so it was important they educate their readers on the realities of economics.

"We believe that it is our job... and now yours, to educate as well as entertain," Jack began to sum up. "and that includes local news as well because all politics and economics is local. We're crusaders, people - I know that term has taken on some bad connotations over the years but the things we're crusading about are important."

Richard stuck up his hand. Eyes rolled.

"Sounds great, Jack but what if our readers don't want to be educated about upheavals in Yak butter futures or the elections in Turkmenistan? Heck, most of our readers couldn't find Canada on a map even if they wanted to. " Richard grinned.

Brad stepped forward. "Marleigh," he said to the couture-clad assistant "you want to get that guy's name." He smiled broadly letting us know it was a joke.

Richard spoke up again. "Hi Marleigh, my name is Spencer Dawes and if you're going to be in town for a while, I'd like to show you around."

The real Spencer Dawes, the semi-retired guy from the copy desk dozing in the corner, roused when he heard his name. Nobody laughed. Marleigh ignored Richard's comment and Brad continued.

"No, you're right. Newspapers and media in general have abdicated their reponsibility to educate their readers. I could cite you the statistics you know all too well. What's hot" Stupid celebrity news -- if you can call it that -- lurid crime stories, sex scandals. Schadenfreude, it's everywhere you go. It's time that news outlets did what they're supposed to do. It's a sacred trust that our founding fathers thought important enough to include in the Constitution."

A voice from the back of the room: "And circulation drops 90%."

"Certainly we expect some push back but we fully expect that what we lose in print we'll more than make up for in online. But print is not dead, it's not even sick, it's just a different market" he added hurriedly.

Cyrus and I both looked at Becks who was smiling remembering her own comment in Simone's office.

Cyrus chose this moment to insert what he considered to be the fly in this whole jolly ointment. "But doesn't foreign ownership...Middle Eastern ownership in this case change the dynamics?"

The group registered their surprise with squeaking chairs and mutterings

Brad didn't bat an eye. "Cy, I'm so glad you brought that up because it was next on my agenda."

Nobody called Cyrus, Cy but the fact that Brad knew who he was was not lost on anyone.

Coming Soon: The Other, other shoe

The Smell of Cinnamon Toast Part 2

2008-02-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

The Conference Room

I gather that the folks from United Way were none too happy to be evicted from the conference room judging by the empty Krispy Kreme donut boxes, half-empty coffee cups and lipstick-stained napkins that were scattered over (and under) the tables and counters. They had also stacked all the chairs in the back of the room for some reason. It was a mess - just the right setting for the meeting we were about to have.

Simone and Brenda were busy stuffing the papers and cups left on the front table into a green garbage bag while Jules in pricey pin-striped suit and shiny loafers read from a manilla folder sitting on a chair he had rescued from the pile in the back. Jules was probably close to sixty but he looked younger and fitter than most of the 30-somethings who make up the bulk of our newsroom these days.

Simone deputized a couple of stragglers, handing them the garbage bag and gesturing toward the other tables. A couple of us started moving the chairs from the back to around the tables so we'd have some places to sit. Most people stood around the perimeter of the room leaning on the counters and against the windows.

Jules kept looking at his watch but made no move to start the meeting. Simone fidgeted. Brenda came back into the room with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of Windex. Simone grabbed the Windex and went from table to table spraying the surfaces while Brenda handed the people sitting near them wads of paper towels. Everybody thought that this was some kind of weird contest and soon the tables were being wiped with a fervor you don't usually see from a group of people who pride themselves on the slovenliness of the workspaces.

The clock at the front of the room showed 4:15 and people were starting to get antsy. Bill obviously remembered something he forgot to do and made a move toward the door. A look from Simone stopped him cold. Seconds later the sound of hurried heels on the hallway tiles brought everyone to attention.

Two lawyer-looking types, followed by their couture-clad former-beauty-queen assistant entered the room. The lawyers smiled at us like they were the guests of honor at a political rally. They handed the couture-clad assistant their coats and shook hands with Jules who introduced them to Simone. The taller of the two who, I swear, was the spitting image of Stanley Tucci stepped to the fore.

"Good afternoon," he said effusively "I'm sure this day has been quite upsetting for you but I'm here to assure you that as far as we're concerned nothing major is going to change - life will go on with very few interruptions and most of you will keep your jobs if you choose to stay...and we hope you will." He paused to let this sink in.

Everybody looked at each other and then at Simone who was trying her best to smile like the lawyers but it was obvious that she was as confused as the rest of us.

"Please, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Brad Whitston. Those of you who report on business might recognize my colleague, Jack Alpert (we didn't). We're attorneys representing Aalaxis America. Let me be the first to welcome all of you to the Aalaxis Media family," he beamed. He undoubtedly sensed our suspicion but his smile never wavered for a second. He turned to his colleague. "Jack," he said "the first thing they teach you in journalism school is never trust a smiling attorney." Jack laughed and some of us did too. Most of the younger males -- their eyes locked on the couture-clad assistant who sat in rapt attention in the seat valiently offered by Jules -- hadn't heard a word he said.

Coming soon. The Other Shoe

On Twittering and Coliform Bacteria

2008-02-18T07:40:00.001-08:00

My friend Scott, Twitters. He is the ultimate early-adopter (he bought an iPhone on the day it came out). At any moment on any given day we can find out what Scott is doing, or thinking or feeling courtesy of Twittering. He does this via his iPhone and Facebook. We should feel privledged to know all this. Twittering - all the rage among the early-adopters - is either the most self-indulgent activity in the world or the ultimate BE HERE NOW. I had heard the word some time ago but it didn't enter my consciousness until a couple of weeks ago when the editor of a major metropolitan newspaper suggested his employees take it up. How, I wondered, did he expect anyone to get anything done when they had to stop every few minutes and announce what they were doing?

Famous people, like Barack Obama Twitter: "I am a golden god. Bow down before me former first lady", "Ann Coulter groped me backstage at last night's debate...and I dug it!", "California, you will pay for your apostacy." If and when he becomes president we can all find out what he is really thinking - the first-ever transparent government.

OK, now how am I going to relate Twittering to coliform bacteria? Every Saturday, I get an email from "The Straight Dope". Sometimes I read it and sometimes I just delete it. This past Saturday I read a story about the necessity of washing one's hands after using the bathroom. Like the reader who wondered why he should wash after if, like the old joke says, he was careful enough not to pee on his hands, I have to admit, I wondered the same thing from time to time myself. Well, you can read the article for yourself but the upshot is everyone of us is awash in coliform bacteria. The area between our navels and our knees is a vertiable Times-Square-on-New-Year-Eve of coliform bacteria and every time our hands come in contact with that part of our anatomy, the little buggers jump gleefully aboard ready to explore hitherto unknown regions. So, if you don't wash your hands, everything you touch afterward becomes New Coliform Land.

So now I have a new obsession and feel the need to Twitter about it: "Did David wash his hands before cutting a slice of cake in the breakroom?" "This men's room LOOKS clean but I know that if I sit on this seat, I will be sharing someone else's coliform bacteria." "Angela is looking pretty hot today but I bet her coliform bacteria is just as deadly as Jane's who is not looking all that hot today (or ever)" "I am running out of Purell Hand Sanitizer"

I imagine that I can see coliform bacteria and it's on everything! Happily, we've been sharing each other's bacteria for so long we're pretty immune to it. But what if someone new comes in the office (without washing his or her hands obviously) and suddenly there is a new strain of coliform on everything. "I think I might be getting sick. I should go home and be with the coliform bacteria that I know and love."

Every day, new coliform bacteria enters our world. Did the mailman wash his hands? Did the checker at HT wash her hands? Did the waiter at the restaurant last night wash HIS hands? Wait, who handled the menu at that restaurant? It could have been hundreds and hundreds of people and one of them might be carrying (and sharing) the coliform bacteria that will wipe out humanity and I will be among the first to go!

"Bob is worrying unnecessarily about coliform bacteria." "Bob is concerned that he is not worrying enough about coliform bacteria." "Twittering about coliform bacteria is not making Bob feel any better about it." "I wonder if Scott worries about coliform bacteria - he's an early adopter"

Stop reading this right now and go wash your hands and then Twitter about it so I will know you did.

Fences? We don't need no stinking fences

2008-02-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

Several people who I know personally have gotten their Depends® in a wad over illegal immigration and obviously it's an issue that's near and dear to the hearts of many red-blooded evangelicals who fear a massive influx of Catholics into this great Protestant nation of ours. If something isn't done and soon, our grandchildren will be worshipping Mary and speaking in Latin instead of in tongues. For some reason, these people think that building a huge fence along our Southern border is the answer. I guess because it has worked so well in Israel.

Well I just read a great article in Salon called "Killing Bubba from the skies". The article explores how the Air Force is using high tech devices like predator drones and 3-D mapping to hunt down and kill insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. They've gotten this down to a science, even scaling munitions to precisely knock off one or two individuals without harming innocent bystanders and unoffending buildings. Now it's possible that these wars could go on for another 100 years years as some have suggested but it could be that we'll lose interest over there and we'll have all this fantastic technology and no one to use it on (what a shame that would be!)

So, you see where I'm going with this? Who in their right mind is going to try to sneak across a border (fence or no fence) knowing that some military specialist hundreds 0f miles away might be sipping on a Dr. Pepper and dialing up a precise hit on their position? I mean, this is war people (it is, isn't it?) OK, we're probably a little squeamish about blowing up women and children on a regular basis but after a couple of well-publicized surgical strikes the word would pass quickly and voila, no more illegal immigrants.

Then we can turn our attention to the drug war - Lord knows we've been losing that one for decades. I believe good old Tom Clancy has explored this territory before but even he didn't go far enough to suggest how application of the new technology could be used on the streets of our inner cities. So here's Johnny Drug-dealer selling his dime bags on a corner in Anytown, USA. He is totally unaware that he is standing in the crosshairs of a predator drone circling out of earshot. In the twinkling of an eye POOF, he is a greasy spot on the cement while the rest of the neighborhood goes about its business unharmed and unconcerned. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Granted we may have to change a few laws governing annoyances like due process but you really can't fault the Founding Fathers for not envisioning how technology might eliminate the need for such antiquated concepts.

Personally, I'm kind of excited about the many unexplored uses of the new technologies. It's really kind of a shame that we won't have the Bush administration around to implement them to their fullest but, hey, time marches on.

So next time you're doing something even vaguely illegal, look up, smile, wave and hope that whoever is at the controls has a sense of humor.

There goes my baby

2008-02-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I never thought I'd see her again. When she left me, we weren't on very good terms. I complained about her all the time and towards the end of our relationship I ignored her and silently cursed her for just taking up space - space I needed for the new love of my life. But today, there she was; looking just like I remembered her. Sure she was a bit older and a little worse for wear but she still moved like she did way back when.

I watched her from a distance as she waited for someone in the parking lot across the street from where I work. For a second I thought about walking over to see her but didn't want one of those awkward moments if the new man in her life happened to come out and I'd have to explain who I was. Whoever he was he probably knew I'd treated her badly - some might say I'd abused her. But on the other hand, it didn't look like he was spending too much money on her either. We guys are all alike: love 'em when they're young and pretty; not so much when they get a little older and their beauty begins to fade.

Anyway, after a while, he came out and they drove away. She obviously wasn't smoking anymore, so that was a good sign that maybe he cared for her. So you're probably wondering: would I take her back if I had the chance? Nah, my new model looks pretty flashy and still turns heads and besides, she's only got 10,000 miles on her.

I love the smell of cinnamon toast in the morning...smells like destiny

2008-02-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

The smell of cinnamon toast coming from the breakroom was Simone's olfactory clue that all was not well. We have come to associate cinnamon toast with doom.

The messages started flying: "sup?", "who died?", "is it layoff season again?". Lately, all news has been bad news and today's would be no different except maybe worse. Pretty soon Simone's summons arrived via an "all_dept" message: "Stand-up meeting. 10:30 - no temps."

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters) milled around Simone's office waiting for her to get off the phone. Her assistant, Brenda, showed up, breathless, with a stack of papers, still warm from the copier. This was not good.

Simone put the phone down and visibly composed herself. Her brown hair, normally a mess, had been pulled back into a tight bun showing off the widow's peak she usually tried to hide. She put her jacket on - this was going to be official.

"Well, people, it's come down from corporate - I just got off the phone with Jules and he confirmed it." (Jules was the official corporate hatchet person). "We've been sold."

This shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. Corporate had taken great pains to let us know it was coming but nobody expected it would happen so fast. Who buys this kind of business anymore?

Doris did her gasping thing and everyone turned to look at her. She did it again and everyone turned back to Simone waiting for details.

"I don't have any details yet," said Simone "but I've been asked to collect, from you, your latest personal data - contact info, phones, that sort of thing...next of kin (she lamely joked)"

We all politely tittered. Brenda started passing out forms. Her hands were shaking.

"I need them back by one. Jules is coming down this afternoon. I'm trying to get the conference room sorted out (United Way was having it's annual kickoff meeting there) so stick around or be back by 4. I'm supposed to tell you to keep this to yourselves for the moment, but that's up to you. Cyrus, Becks, Michael, I need you for a minute." She pointed us out.

Everybody else shuffled away and the three of us trooped into Simone's office. She closed the door. Nobody made a move to sit down.

I broke the silence. "Who's the buyer, MaGhee, Watkins?"

"Neither," she said. "Anybody ever heard of AAlaxis?"

Cyrus ventured a guess. "Isn't that some shipping conglomerate, India or near there?"

She made a sour face. "Try the UAE."

We all must have looked stunned.

"Apparently, they're diversifying, getting into news services. They already own an Al Jezeera clone, a handful of Far East pubs - mostly financial ones, a couple of cable systems, Australia and Indonesia, I think. We're their first American acquisition."

"What in God's name do they want with this rag?" Becks blurted out. "Can they do that? Buy an American newspaper?"

"Nothing says they can't," Simone said "but the answer to your question, 'why this rag', is as much a mystery to me -- and I gather to corporate too -- as it is to you. But Jules did say one thing that might be a bit of a silver lining."

We waited.

"They've got deep, and I do mean deep, pockets. The fact that we haven't turned a profit for 4 years doesn't seem to have fazed them in the least and they are paying corporate cash for us. If we stay in the print business we might get to upgrade the pagination system..."

Becks wasn't getting it. "There's a chance we won't stay a print business? But if we don't what's left?" "OH," it finally dawned on her "the fucking online."

None of us had ever heard Becks use the "F" word before and it broke the tension like a brick through a plate glass window. We all started laughing. Becks turned a brilliant shade of crimson but even she started laughing. The sound coming out of the office must have startled the hell out of the peons trying to eavesdrop outside the door.

Coming soon: The Conference Room

Economics of Flying Skybus

2008-02-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

I need to take a trip (down the old Mississipp) to The Big Easy, The Crescent City...New Orleans. Well, as any resident of Greensboro will tell you,

you can't there from here (well not easily anyway). The major airlines will take you there for a price as long as you're willing to get up at the crack of dawn. If you don't mind driving to RDU you can get there a little cheaper via Expressjet (no, I'd never heard of them before either) but the same rules apply (and you have to deal with RDU).

So I smack my forehead when I finally remember "Hey, we've got Skybus here in the G and they fly to New Orleans (sort of)." Well, sure enough, you can fly to New Orleans (sort of) and the rate is amazing AND the flights depart at somewhat more civilized hours. BUT, here's where the "sort of" changes the economics. Gulfport/Biloxi airport is where Skybus really flies to -- but hey, it's only 74 miles away from New Orleans, right? Turns out that extra 74 miles makes a big difference. There are a couple of options to get from Gulfport/Biloxi to New Orleans. The most logical one, renting a car, now adds a couple hundred extra dollars for the time I plan on being in New Orleans. So now flying Skybus is MORE expensive than flying one of the major airlines from either GSO or RDU. That's pretty disappointing.

I've checked out flying to New York (i.e. Newburgh) via Skybus and if you don't mind a little inconvenience and some extra time (you have to grab a shuttle to the train station and then take the train to Grand Central station) it is a money saver - especially if you factor in the cost of a cab ride from LGA or JFK. But plentiful public transportation is a different story in the NYC Metro area (it EXISTS) than in Gulfport/Biloxi area.

Of course, Skybus isn't going to restrain trade by telling you the cheapest way to get from one of their remote airports to where you really want to go. No, you have to find that out for yourself. (I suppose that if you actually DO want to go to Biloxi - perhaps to gamble - yeah, Skybus is definitely the way to go.) The true cost of traveling via Skybus to any destination other than where the wheels of their Airbus 319s touch down is probably a losing proposition for most travelers.

Perhaps some enterprising person will, one day, create a web site that tells you, plainly, how to get from Skybus airports to real cities for the lowest cost (hint hint). Perhaps, if Skybus stays in business long enough, they will figure out a way to get us from their airports to where we really want to go for a price that will keep them competitive. That day is not today.

Southwest, usually another good option for flying cheaply (if you don't count the inconvenience of driving to Raleigh and paying RDU parking fees) doesn't fly directly to New Orleans. You have to connect through Orlando or Nashville. Baby, if I can't fly direct, I don't want to go.

I guess we really DO live in the middle of nowhere.

How scared should we be?

2008-01-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

OK, the Iowa caucuses have spoken and again (according to published reports) the Evangelicals came out in great numbers to support another conservative fellow-traveler, Governor Mike Huckabee. These are the same folks who foisted George W. Bush on an unsuspecting America and look where that's gotten us. Governor Mike has done a nice job pandering to his base while trying not to scare the hell out of the rest of us but if you look beyond the affable, erudite exterior, there's plenty to be scared about. Anybody who believes that dinosaur skeletons were placed by God to test our faith might also believe that God told him to nuke Iran, or Syria or heck, France for that matter. Faith can be a very scary thing in the wrong hands - like the ones in charge of our nuclear arsenal.

Now Romney, on the other hand, despite his Mormon faith, is simply naked ambition. He wants to be president like he might want to be captain of the football team, or prom king. For him, becoming president is just another of life's goals to achieve, and at least THAT we can understand.

So what about Obama? Does he stand a chance? Probably not in the former Confederacy (except maybe Virginia) and surely not in the west except maybe California. His only hope is that zillions of under-30s turn out to vote and we all know how they are.

It's all very disconcerting.

Expressly speaking

2007-09-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me you may have asked yourself, from time to time, why are some people so fucking stupid? Concepts that are as clear as glass to most of us simply elude others so completely that you have to wonder how they have managed to avoid the Darwinian odds up to now.

The concept I'm talking about today is the incredibly annoying yet theoretically faster SELF CHECK OUT. Self check out is a fiendish invention that allows you to do the work someone else should be paid to do and was invented expressly to replace the EXPRESS lane. Even though at some point after your second or third visit you would gladly watch someone torture the woman responsible for the unbearably perky HARRIS TEETER self check out voice (and wonder why there isn't an option for silent check out) you punch the buttons as fast as humanly possible so you can get her to shut the hell up and you can get out of the store without doing something (or someone) bodily harm.

Getting back to my point about this abomination being designed to replace the EXPRESS LANE, there are some people - and I regret to tell you that most are college-aged - who don't understand this. They have shopping carts FULL of stuff and still attempt to use the self check out. Needless to say, they spend nearly twice as long trying to check themselves out than they would if they had gone to a professional checker. The pros usually know by heart the price look-up of the peculiar produce item you chose on a whim and can't figure out what to call let alone find the right code to punch into the machine. In the meantime those of us who understand what an EXPRESS LANE is supposed to be about stand around with our two or three lousy items wishing that store security would quietly pull you aside and beat you to a bloody pulp. But since that never happens we are grateful that the other two working machines are not occupied by idiots. We endure the totally unnecessary "Do you have any items under your cart?" (NO YOU STUPID BITCH. 70% of us don't have carts). "Do you have any coupons? (I'M A MALE, OF COURSE I DON'T HAVE COUPONS). Please just let me pay and get the hell out, please, I'm begging you!

OK, enough ranting for one day. But for REAL fun, go watch the self check-out at Wal-Mart. Enuf said

I blame old people

2007-09-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

Before I launch into today's screed, let me first take a moment to make lame excuses for not keeping my blogging end up (so to speak). I don't know how some people who write for a living also write a blog. When I have writing chores to do, the last thing I want to do after a long day of pulling genius out of thin air is to write my blog. So that is my excuse. Oh yeah, I am also a lazy sod. Now, to the business at hand:

Pharmacists and the lack thereof:

Even in our current drug-addled culture it's hard not to notice that a new Walgreen Pharamacy is being built every twenty minutes and every Harris Teeter, Target and Wal-Mart is trying to get in on the pharmaceutical-vending action. Obviously, as any street-corner pusher will tell you, there is BIG money in drugs. What has really happened is that marketers working for drug companies have created a HUGE demand for their products without considering the limits of the supply side - where the drugs get into the hands of the end-users via little amber bottles served up in neat little white bags. So, that is the dilemma facing those who would cash in on the demand.

If you watch network TV news you might wonder how you've made it through life so far without benefitting from the multiple wonder-drugs that are curing diseases that you never even knew existed. I'm afraid to see how things are going in Iraq bcause I might find out during a commercial break that I am suffering from BPH (sometimes known as an enlarged prostate) or Irritable Bowel Syndrome or worse, Erectile Dysfunction (!) which I gather is something of an epidemic with my target demograph. The ubiquitous enjoinder "ask your doctor" also makes me wonder how many of us are on a first-name-basis with our physicians - hell, it takes me a couple of weeks to get on my doctor's calendar. When I do get an appointment I am always shocked and stunned when he fails to write me scripts for the latest and greatest medications that may, or may not, cure my many maladies - real and imagined. I feel like I'm being cheated.

My doctor must be an anomaly however because according to the News & Record there are not enough pharmacists out there to serve the real and imagined drug requirements of others. And by "others" I mean old people and when I say "old people" I'm talking about baby-boomers - my g-g-g-generation. We absolutely REFUSE to age gracefully - or otherwise.

So what do we do about this situation? The article suggests that we need more colleges to step up and graduate more pharmacists. But damn, becoming a pharmacist is hard! They have to learn all kinds of chemistry and drug-interations and stuff -- and for what? How many of them actually create the medicines they dispense? Very few. Most of what they do is count out pills or measure out potions. Oh sure, once in a great while they might see that the drug that doctor "x" prescribed will have a terminal conflict with the drug doctor "y" prescribed but how often does that happen? What most pharmacies need is high school graduates who can read and count to 30 (and on occasion, 50). Everything else is on computer. If the patient is taking, oh, say Paxil for example, count out the right number pills and then print out the drug warning that goes along with Paxil and staple it to the bag. Nobody reads those things anyway (that's why the TV drug commercials refer us to their ads in obscure "Golf" magazines.) Besides, who really wants to know what the drugs could potentially do to us - even if we could make sense out of the magazine articles. We sure don't need pharmacists, making upwards of 80K a year, ringing up sales of foot powder and hair gel now, do we, when a minimum wage clerk could do the job and not look so damned put-upon for doing it?

Of course, what the insurance companies would like us to do is to have us submit our prescriptions to THEIR pharmacies which we presume are in India and Thailand and where "pharmacists" work in sweat-shop-like conditions for 40 cents an hour but essentially get the same job done for a lot less dough. It's going that way whether we're ready for it or not.

In today's a go go world we need to get our drugs as fast as possible. I see a future where the 50 most-commonly prescribed drugs are available in vending machines. The doctor encodes your prescription on a card (most likely your ATM card) you stick the card in a machine and voila! drugs are vended and your account is charged. None of this waiting-around in drug stores perusing the condom displays. And speaking of condoms, why isn't Viagra, Cialis et al, available in most men's rooms right next to the condom machines? If the drug causes an "unsafe drop in blood pressure" we'll know that soon enough. And what's the deal with priapism anyway? What if our errection lasts over 4 hours? Should we panic? And why exactly is it that were panicking? They never say.

Another possible solution would be to just let pharmacists prescribe drugs. I mean, if a pharmacist is smart enough to know which drug does what, why not just go to them in the first place, get your drugs on the spot and not have to make a separate trip to the doctor? Isn't this what Chinese herbalists do now?

The simplest solution would be to let every drug be available over the counter without a prescription (boy, the drug stores would clean up then, wouldn't they?). Using a simple computerized display like they have at auto parts stores you find your symptom, enter, your age, weight and the drug choices get flashed on the screen. You make your decision and check out. No pharmacist needed (and no doctor either).

Look for our VIC special on Nexium in Wednesday's flier.

Say it isn't so, Junior

2007-05-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

Well, nobody was more shocked than I was by today's news that Dale Jr. would leave DEI (and his wicked step-mother) and start next season driving a Camry!! You could hear a collective "WHATDAHELL" resounding from America's heartland. But you had to figure that with Waltrip and Jarrett stinking up the place, the powers that be at Toyota headquarters would either have to do the honorable thing or find another star to hang their collective futures on. So when Jr's whining finally got heard across the Pacific, the boys in the boardrooms in Aichi, Japan started a typically quiet Japanese campaign to dangle a Godzilla-sized wad of cash in front of our boy's normally befuddled face. But, Jr., not well-known for either his command of the language or his extraordinary business sense was having none of it. Luckily for him, his sister --who tells him when to change his underwear -- saw the light.

Jr's diehard fans can't imagine it. They all think Jr. is out for one thing: to win the Nextel Cup championship and let's face it, until Toyota figures out how to take their Formula One expertise and dumb it down for NASCAR, that aint gonna happen. But in the meantime, Toyota's got money to spend [and, to be honest, they regretted having to settle for Waltrip et al when they really wanted Jr. or Jeff all along], so why not spend it on a brand as strong as Junior? Can't you just see a nation of future auto buyers sitting behind the wheel of their dad's Budweiser-red Camry pretending they're Dale Earnhardt Junior? I can.

The thorny issue yet to be resolved is if Budweiser - which is committed to Dale Jr - will be able to swallow having their quintessentially American logo on a rice burner.

Domo arigato Mr. Earnhardt.

What they didn't report

2007-03-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon has withheld a number of Khalid Sheik Mohammed's confessed crimes pending notification of historians. Among the items not included in the Pentagon report:

He engineered the Battle of the Little Bighorn
He planned the sinkings of the Lusitania and the Titanic
He personally assassinated Arch Duke Ferdinand, the Romanovs and Leon Trotsky
He trained Charles Manson
It was he who actually kidnapped the Lindbergh baby (but gave credit to friend Bruno Hauptmann)
He supplied the gunpowder to Guy Fawkes
He blew up the Hindenburg
He planned the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
He led the sack of Rome
He poisoned Socrates
From his prison cell he arranged for a colleague to put the "goo" in Michael Waltrip's Toyota
He precipitated the Salem Witch Trials
He invented trans-fat
He claimed responsibility for Global Warming (not verified)
The caused the eruption of Mt Vesuvius
He tempted Eve
He was the recreation director of Sodom (and later Gomorrah)
He was responsible for "New Coke"
He financed the movie "Gigli"
He was second in command to Genghis Khan
He engineered the "Great Depression"

Investigators still have many questions about some of KSH's activities - especially those that occurred before he was born -- but the fact that he has confessed to these heinous crimes should be sufficient cause for his trial to go forward. Said one investigator referring to the sinking of the Lusitania and Titanic "The fact that no major cruise ship has been sunk since his capture is pretty strong evidence that he was telling us the truth."

Fire Billy Packer!

2007-03-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

Billy Packer should be banned from working any UNC game forever. How that bast*rd could say that Henderson's FLAGRANT foul against Hansborough was incidental shows his utter contempt for Carolina. Luckily, the refs didn't have Packer's anti-Carolina bias and threw Henderson out of the game. Going for the ball my ass! Packer, you suck!

Time Keeps on Slippin'

2007-03-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

You know how it is. You get busy and think: "gee, I'll bet my loyal readers are probably missing the words of wisdom I used to dispense. But, I'm really busy so maybe I'll write a little something tomorrow." Of course, tomorrow never comes and the next thing you know, three months have gone by.

Now the problem is - what do I rail about? Does anyone care that *I* think that NASCAR is getting too complicated? Nope, probably not. Does anyone care that *I* think Alltel should be prohibited from sponsoring any more basketball games until they make a new commercial (I'm all for recycling but, gee guys, you wore us out with that one last year and my thumb is getting sore from switching channels every time I see your commercial). There may be a few basketball fans that would agree with me on this issue. Speaking of basketball, does anyone else think that Billy Packer should be restricted from calling Carolina games? He hates Carolina. He has ALWAYS hated Carolina and he's becoming a bit of a curmudgeon - and not the amusing kind.

Is anyone as tired of hearing from or about political conservatives and evangelicals as I am? You guys had six years of annoying the piss out of the rest of America so how about taking a break? How about, just for once, supporting a candidate who would be good for the country and not just in lock-step with your tiresome issues? You're probably going to have to support either McCain or Giuliani in 2008 so suck it up. Wait, you're not holding out for another Bush are you? That would be way too devious - even for you. If you really want to turn the political process on its head, support Hillary.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: I got an email from our friends at WFDD Public Radio. Seems they're hosting a reception for Bob Edwards here in our fair city on March 5th, complete with food and drink. Now Bob is somewhat of an icon (they say so in the email) and we were all righteously indignant when NPR gave him the boot; however, since finding a home at WUNC in Chapel Hill he has managed to come up with one of the most sincere and gut-wrenchingly TEDIOUS radio shows I have ever tried to suffer through. Initially, I figured that he was new and had a hard time finding interesting guests but as time wears on, no matter how hard Bob emotes, it doesn't distract from the fact that his guests are just...boring. Now, having said that I'm sure there are many earnest people who will disagree with me because when it comes to public radio the more boring, the better, but I betcha there's a bigwig at NPR who is feeling pretty daggoned vindicated right about now.

Darn! Busy again. Soon and very soon,

Why men hate department stores

2006-12-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Like every red-blooded American male who, as the shopping days until Christmas dwindle down to single digits, steels himself for the inevitable solo trip to the department stores to find that ALL IMPORTANT gift for the wife/girlfriend, I made my foray today at lunch.

You would think that department store managers would say to their staffs: "the shopping days until Christmas are dwindling down to the single digits and lunch time is a prime time for totally clueless men to shop. I want to see every department covered by totally helpful sales associates ready to take these poor fools by the hand and sell them everything in sight." You would think that is what they would say but unfortunately they must not because you could perform the third act from "Twelfth Night" in the middle of the sales floor and not attract the attention of a single sales associate. Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL AT LUNCH.

Jewelry stores know that men fear department stores almost as much as prostate exams and thus bombard us with endless commercials during football games; extolling the ease and simplicity of buying jewelry for our wives/girlfriends (pssst, one size fits all, diamonds go with everything, she'll truly love it, easy financing, take 60% off all prices). Guys are simple creatures. We trust because trusting is way easier than having to decide on our own.

This is a simple lesson that department stores could learn. One department store does know this and if you've ever shopped in a Nordstrom you know what I mean. Sure their prices will leave you gasping for air but the experience will make it all seem worthwhile. Unfortunately, the nearest Nordstrom is in Durham. (I love ya honey but if I have to drive more than 5 miles, you're out of luck.) But wouldn't it be nice to be able to call your personal sales associate and say: "Estelle, I'll be in around noon, get together a couple tasteful selections - you have all her sizes and color preferences right? Great!" Or even better: "Hello? Oh hi Estelle, sure, whatever you think. You still have my American Express Card on file don't you? No, don't bother, I'll pick it up myself at gift wrap."

Sigh.

Don't worry guys, we'll get through this holiday like we have so many others. Cheers!

Low Means Go

2006-12-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

I find it odd that in a town with "Green" in its name so few of the city's inhabitant recognize the color when they see it. Frequently while waiting at one of the many stoplights in our fair city the light will turn green and yet nobody moves. I imagine a conversation in the lead car going something like this:

"...so I said, 'you can't talk like that to me' and she says something like 'well, I am your supervisor' and then - hold on the traffic light just turned a different color. What color? I'm not exactly sure. It's kind of like that color I wore to Mary's wedding. No, the other Mary. Oh, that's right you didn't get invited. Sorry for bringing it up. I remember how irritated you were. (What is wrong with all those people behind me?) Oops, the light is turning colors again. I guess I'd better go. No, I meant drive, I can still talk. Oh, look, that idiot behind just got hit. Serves him right."

I have a theory (yet unproven) that the driver in the lead car in any line of traffic will always be the one with the slowest reflexes. Why? Because people with faster reflexes will always calculate to the nearest hundredth of a second, the interval between the time their light turns red and the time the opposing traffic's light turns green. On occasion, people with slower reflexes will not be being paying attention and will follow those cars through the intersection and get nailed.

Another theory someone else proposed is fear of people who learned to drive in any of the states we in NC refer to as "Yankeeland." Yankees assume that traffic signals are hung there for decoration only and not to impede their God-given right to go whenever they please - pedestrians and small animals be damned. It is for this reason that most cars in Yankeeland have license plates in the front as well as the back to alert out-of-state drivers in the opposing lane that, no matter what the light says, the guy speeding toward them is not going to stop. Of course, when these folks move to NC and get NC plates it is nearly impossible to distinguish former Yankees from anyone else - unless you're sharp-eyed enough to notice the Virgin Mary statuette on the dash.

The green lights that confuse most slow-witted people are the ones at Protected Turns where the green light is an arrow pointing left (and sometimes right). Not willing to take chances (or not able to distinguish the peculiar arrow shape) these people will wait until the light turns full green allowing them to turn in front of opposing traffic - and get nailed. For an example of this phenomenon, hang around the intersection where people from westbound Market St. try to turn left on westbound Wendover Ave. What fun!

Some of the problem with green lights can be traced back to our school system where, if you happened to be sick the day they were teaching the color "green" you might not recognize the color at all and assume that it was just an odd shade of "blue" - assuming you weren't sick the day they covered that color. In order to rectify this educational shortcoming I've been working on a new mnemonic that we can teach our youngsters and eliminate the need for teaching them colors at all. Here it is:

TOP means STOP
MIDDLE means VERY LITTLE
LOW means GO

And remember, let's be careful out there.

A Little Horse Play

2006-11-18T07:47:00.000-08:00

When I read the good old News and Record story this morning about the Greensboro Police department considering adding mounted patrols to its crime-fighting arsenal, the first thing that came to my mind was the opening scenes of Doctor Zhivago.

For you youngsters who have never seen Doctor Zhivago, let me quickly recap.
It's a cold snowy night in Czarist Moscow (or it might have been St. Petersburg - I'm doing this from memory) and a large group of ragtag protestors are wending their way through the streets toward the Imperial Palace. It's a merry little protest - something about bread and equality - with women and children trudging along together with their menfolk and led by some leftist firebrand. Cut to a scene in front of the Imperial Palace where a group of Cossacks are forming up - their chargers blowing clouds of steam in the cold night air. Eventually, the protestors turn the corner and in the distance we see the Cossacks in a neat line, their sabres drawn. The protestors go suddenly silent. The camera switches back and forth from the protestors to the Cossacks. Silence. The leftist firebrand tries to rally the group to go on but there is menace in the air. Silence. Focus on the Cossack officer who gives the order to charge. At first, in slow motion and then speeding up as the chargers gather momentum the Cossacks hurl themselves toward the (now) fleeing protestors. The carnage that results is swift and bloody and the leftist firebrand receives a nasty sabre cut across his face.

Now, I'm not suggesting this could ever happen in front of the Phill G. McDonald Plaza in Greensboro but it's harder to imagine this happening at all if the Greensboro Police Department decided to invest its resources in more bicycle patrols rather than loud, pooping, intimidating horse patrols. Personally, I kind of dig horses. When they're not being used to run down protestors they're kind of a neat public relations gimmick - especially with women and children.

CHARGE!!

Beta Blogging Blues

2006-11-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

Whew! Just converted to the new Beta Blogger. First time I tried to open it, it kept reloading and reloading and reloading. STOP! Not being a computer genius (well, maybe a junior computer genius) it took a few minutes (OK, hours) for me to finally figure out it needed to set a cookie (thanks for letting me know Google). So after I changed my settings to allow it, it worked OK. (This time).

If you haven't gotten an invitation to upgrade to Beta Blogger, you will soon. I wish you luck.

Sports Analogy for the 2006 Election

2006-11-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Coach,
Why did that mean old Dick Baddour fire that nice Coach Bunting? I mean, didn't they extend his contract just a year ago? Why don't they love Coach Bunting anymore?
XXX Becky Sue

Dear BS

It's interesting and timely that you asked that question because after Tuesday's election I'll wager there are a lot of unhappy alumni who would like to fire Coach Bush too. In politics, like in sports, it's winning that counts and Coach Bush hasn't won anything in quite a while. But unlike Coach Bunting who accepted responsibility for his team's poor performance, Coach Bush tried to blame his dismal record on his offensive coordinator, Coach Rummy, and gave him the old heave-ho. (Talk about taking one for the team!). In fact, quite a number of assistant coaches and waterboys lost their jobs this week.

When America extended Coach Bush's contract back in 2004, he hadn't even won a political Peach Bowl yet, but it must have seemed to the voters that Texas, being more of a football state than Massachusetts, would produce their best chance for a winning team. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way.

Besides having a poor win/loss record, Coach Bush's team has taken more penalties and been involved in more scandals than the NFL and Duke Lacrosse combined! It's no wonder that the alumni have been getting a little nervous. That sort of bad press doesn't make the old alma mater look too good, does it?

Come January when the new board of governors takes office I wouldn't be surprised if the topic of firing old Coach Bush doesn't come up. Of course, Coach Bush might pull a Chuck Amato and tough-out a few more seasons and who knows, he might pull off a win or two before retirement (it could happen).

Unlike Coach Bush, I expect Coach Bunting will land on his feet. He won't have the cushy retirement package of an ex-president but if he's frugal he can enjoy his declining years in comfort. I see him making future contributions to sport - maybe sports radio; maybe the NFL will welcome him back. He is a good man but being a good man wasn't enough for the Carolina faithful. By contrast, it would be nice to have a good man (or woman, I'm open to the idea) in charge of Team America for a change, but voters, like athletic directors, can be fickle at times.

It's a real shame that America doesn't have a basketball season to look forward to.
Love ya,
Coach

Too Funny

2006-11-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

At least the troops still have their sense of humor.

Post election pictures

2006-11-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Greensboro leaders react to Britney Spears' announcement of her divorce from Kevin Federline.
"I thought this one would last for a lifetime." says former Greensboro mayor, Jim Melvin. "They seemed so happy. It makes me wonder what else I could be wrong about."
The others offered no comment but Skip Moore was visibly shaken.

Vernon Robinson accepts post as Ambassador to Mexico.

"I only hope I can heal the divisions that keep our two great countries at odds," Robinson said. "Understanding and empathy are what I bring to the table." When questioned about his campaign signs that read, "Secure the borders!" Robinson said that it was the printer's mistake. The signs should have read "Welcome Amigos."

Out of business, baby!

2006-11-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's official. Becky Sue and I are out of the baby business. Unofficially, we've been out of the baby business since Baby Boy #2 was born 21 years ago but up until Monday all the equipment was in theoretical working order - now it's not, for one of us anyway.

Becky Sue, of hardy mountain stock, birthed both our beefy baby boys using nothing more than breath control and had not seen the inside of a hospital since they set her shattered ankle (without anesthetic btw) 15 years ago. She was not looking forward to spending time in a hospital this time either. When the day of the operation finally arrived we made our way to Greensboro's excellent Women's Hospital where the whole business of reproduction is like child's play to them (if you'll forgive the pun). Becky Sue was determined to tough it out but when I couldn't find the rawhide scrap she planned to bite down on (I think our granddog, Buster, found it first), she reluctantly agreed to let the anesthesiologist do it his way. Two hours and one uterus later, she was up in her room, a little groggy but ready to get dressed and go home. Alas, the doctor had other ideas.

She ended up spending two nights there with nurses prodding her every couple of hours to make sure she didn't waste any of her time in the hospital sleeping. She was raring to go yesterday morning but one delay followed another, so it was after lunch (Women's Hospital does a nice meatloaf if you ever get the chance to try it) before we got out of there. Becky Sue is now at home recuperating under the watchful eye of her diminutive dutiful 86-year-old mama. Becky Sue's supposed to be on leave for 4 weeks but I don't expect her to stay put that long. With a school fire and an election in the offing her newspaperwoman soul can't stand being away from the action.

Back at the office, my co-worker is huge with twins (and she's not due until Februrary!) which provides an interesting counterpoint to Becky Sue's current condition. If I was more of a philosopher I might say something about the grand spectrum of womanhood or the circle of life or the Karmic wheel or something, but I'm not, so consider yourselves lucky.

Holler at Becky Sue if you get a chance. She's already bored to tears.

Record Bar Blogunion

2006-10-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

Hey I used to sell a lot of these

Nut city

2006-10-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, we loaded up the truck and moved from beautiful Hamilton Lakes to beautiful, Hamilton Forest. One of the things that really sold us on the new casa (in addition to the must-have in-law suite) were the enormous stately oak trees that shaded the house during the summer months. Well, that was back in the summer, but now that its autumn we have discovered the downside of being surrounded by stately oaks - acorns, millions of them. Day and night it's like living through a non-stop hail storm.

At first it was kind of amusing hearing the occasional acorn bounce off the roof of the sunroom but lately, jeez, I mean, how many acorns can one tree have? Last weekend we picked up six lawn and leaf bags full of them (believe me those suckers are heavy!) and admired our newly-seeded acorn-free front lawn (the back yard is on its own). Then it rained. Now we have nearly as many acorns as before and they're EVERYWHERE. The backsteps are a minefield of acorns, the driveway is carpeted with them and I'm scared to even look in the gutters. It's a wonder all those squirrels I see cavorting around the yard aren't as big as polar bears.

But here's my dilemma: aren't acorns good for something? Aren't they rich in niacin, iron, magnesium or something other than tannins? Isn't there an oak tree restoration project going on somewhere that's desperate for the kind of quality acorns my trees are producing in abundance? Can't acorns be converted into building materials? How about paving the streets of our fair city (whose logo incendentally is an oak leaf) with a warm brown asphalt of acorns (so much nicer than the basic black)? Oh, I know (heads up Greensboro Beautiful) we should have an acorn festival where artists are invited to sculpt clever designs using acorns and Elmer's Glue; maybe an acorn parade with an acorn queen -- "Phil, her gown was created entirely with thousands of acorns." -- I hope the winner is a pretty sturdy gal. Surely the Guinness Book of World Records would take notice if we filled First Horizon Park with acorns. We could even adopt a new city slogan: "The Nuttiest City in North Carolina" or "Greensboro: the city of nuts". We could hire out-of-work painters to go around the Southeast painting tobacco barns with our motto: "See Nut City"

If anybody's got any good ideas what to do with a million acorns, I'd love to hear them. How about the Boy Scouts? Wouldn't they love to do a Scouting for Acorns project? They can start in my yard.

Even MORE sports analogies

2006-09-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Coach,

I saw some campaign signs for Vernon Robinson today with the slogan: "Protect our borders." Can you explain these signs to me with a clever Sports Analogy"?
Love, Becky Sue Kalashnikov

Dear Becky Sue,

Well, in order to divine the meaning (and portents) of these signs, we have to make several assumptions about Vernon. First, it's obvious to me and most sports fans that Vernon played a lot of football - maybe too much - and he must have faced a lot of third-and-goal plays. Third-and-goal plays as we all know, are every defensive player's nightmare: you either make a stand and force a 4th down, and theoretically, a crappy - but acceptable - 3-point field goal - or you fail and give up the touchdown. We have to assume that a majority of the third-and-goal plays Vernon played in, didn't go his way.

Most players eventually leave the great game of football and don't remember anything but the good times. A certain number - Vernon among them - take their football experience to heart and see third-and-goal plays in every aspect of their lives. Vernon looks across the border and sees an offensive line of Mexicans (or Canadians, we aren't sure which) getting ready to score on him and his team. The border is a metaphor for the goal line and the other team has scored waaaay to many touchdowns to suit Vernon. Now you and I might chuckle at the thought of a bunch of Mexicans playing football (or Canadians - OK, well, maybe not Canadians) unless it was fútbol (soccer to you suburbanites) but not our boy, Vernon. In his mind he's already hearing the count: "vientedós, vientedós, siete, hut, hut hut".

He knows he can't hold the line himself - maybe he could once, but not today - he needs our help. He needs us on his team.

But see, this is my problem: Vernon's team is an evil team - much like the accursed Atlanta Falcons - not a virtuous team like our beloved Carolina Panthers (may God bless John Kasay's holy kicking leg). So you, Becky Sue, have to ask yourself, do you want to be on an evil team like Vernon's and hold that imaginary goal line with him? I hope your answer is "not me, Coach!"

From now on when you see one of Vernon Robinson's "Protect our borders" yard signs know that in that deceptively nice house, behind those well-trimmed hedges and neatly-mowed lawn lurks a coven of Falcons fans. The same people who boo our saintly, Julius Peppers and disparage our blessed Jake.

Sorry, got a little carried away with the religious imagery but I do hope this Sports Analogy has cleared things up for you. Tell your mama that things have been a little slow lately but she'll get her check on time so there's no reason to call my editor again.

Much Love,
Coach

Brad Miller wants to sell your daughter to homosexual Mexicans

2006-09-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

and he performs horrible experiments on innocent little puppies and we have actual video tape of him selling his soul to Satan! Is this the kind of monster you want representing you in Congress?

YES! If the alternative is Vernon Robinson.

DAH da da da da duh (HEY!)

2006-09-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

During a recent NFL game, the announcers made mention of the fact that Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part 2)" would no longer be played at any NFL games because of Glitter's conviction of molesting two 12 year- old girls in Viet Nam. This troubled me.

Not because I disagree with the verdict but because it seems highly unlikely that most people would be able to make a connection between the song and it's performer. Most sports fans would immediately recognize the tune and many could even da-da-da along with it (it's an instrumental in case you didn't know) but ask them to "Name that Tune" you'd probably get a lot of blank stares. Ask them who performed it - more, blanker stares.

So what's the deal anyway? This has the malodorous quality of censorship about it and just a touch of über political correctness too. (The sort of issue that our friend Katherine Harris might run on.) Of course, to be fair to the NFL, they were paying Glitter some serious money to use "Rock and Roll (Part 2)" during NFL broadcasts, and that money probably enabled Glitter to pursue his perverted lifestyle and travel to Viet Nam (probably not for the first time) where his perversions caught up with him.

I guess what troubles me most is the question: "WHEN is it OK to censor?" Sort of like "When is it OK to wiretap American citizens?" Granted, in this case, it's not the government doing the censoring. The NFL is a private corporation that can do pretty much what it wants - for whatever reason (within reason). But I wonder, if Glitter had been convicted of something like multiple murder would anyone have cared? Beats me. But sex crimes? A no-brainer -- just like National Security. (OK, it's a stretch)

This will probably swim into focus for me one of these days. Maybe I'm just too wary of anything that hints of oppression - justified or not. In the meantime, there are a bunch of new tunes to learn when your team scores a touchdown. Here's a list

Only the Lonely

2006-08-31T06:33:00.000-07:00

Wishing a happy rainy Thursday to my fellow bloggers and bloggerettes.

Tell me bunky have you ever felt like you're whispering down a well? Day after lonely day you pour out your soul into your blog and day after lonely day nobody ever comments, nobody ever writes - not even to correct your grammar.

I once felt like you.

But not anymore. Not since I added Statcounter

Turns out that lots of people hit my blog - maybe not as many as the high profile bloggers like what's his name - but enough to feed my supersized ego. Now, I'll grant you many of the hits aren't really hits at all - your blog might show up in some poor slob's Google search (Statcounter tells you how people found you). Most people don't read these - you can tell because Statcounter reports that they spent ZERO seconds on your blog - but some do. Something I found particularly interesting was how many people searched for "sports analogies". I once wrote a tongue-in-cheek "Sports Analogy" (which incidently shows up as the 4th entry in a Google search). I can only imagine how pissed off these searchers must be when they click on this only to find out it's not what they expected. Sorry y'all.

Anyway, instead of feeling lonely, add Statcounter to your blog and bask in the attention. The world will love you. Gotta go. But remember, if you read this stuff, I'll know.

The Cult of the Record Bar

2006-08-25T06:17:00.000-07:00

For a number of years during the late 1970s and early 1980s I was a member of the Cult of Record Bar. If you were a member too, you know what I mean. Most people thought of Record Bar as a business engaged in selling records and tapes and a varied assortment of music-related items like Discwasher Record Cleaners, rock star Tees, and even phonograph needles (which came with a nice little incentive for anyone who sold one) but in reality, Record Bar was a cult. Once you were a member, you were a member for life. Right now there are people in their 40s and 50s who are leading seemingly normal lives, but hidden undeneath a (theoretical) mantle of respectability is a Record Bar employee. Many still have the blue jillion albums they collected (stamped "Promotional, Not For Sale) somewhere - unless they joined the eBay Cult later in life.

So why after twenty-five odd years has this come up? Why am I thinking about the Record Bar again? Let me tell you.
In the course of moving to a new house I was forced to sort through the junk that's been sitting undisturbed in my attic for the past two decades and came across a program from the 1981 Record Bar Convention: "Record Bar Goes to Summer Camp." (excerpt at left)

There were the faces of my fellow RB managers and the Durham office people including the Bergman clan. 1981 was before Barrie went nutsoid and came under the spell of Ron Cruickshank (who remembers him?) and before the disasterous (as it turned out) merger with Licorice Pizza. This was a time before we all lost our innocence; when all that mattered was the next shipment of new releases and before compact discs changed the face of music forever.

We were just learning how to bend album jackets to create 3 dimensional in-store displays - ah those chain-wide display contests with cool prizes like "London Calling" silk tour jackets. And who could forget the Purple Rain promotion of 1984? (pictured below)

This was also the time when summer meant RB Conventions at Hilton Head (the less said about them in print the better for all involved).

Actually, I still hear from some of my RB cronies but had to miss the Record Bar reunion that Barrie put together a couple of years ago. So for all the RB cult members that read this, ROCK ON! (if your physician still permits it).

BTW, what ever happened to Andy Woody?

The Black Hole of Rebates

2006-08-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

Last night my son who has only a nodding familiarity with deadlines came home and announced that our cellphone contract had expired the day before so it was time to upgrade his cellphone. After dinner we made our way over to the Verizon Store on Wendover where the object of his desire, the new LG Chocolate, was the first thing we saw as we walked through the door. The Verizon store is a very busy place so we had to wait our turn as other customers got new phones, changed their cellphone plans and bought Bluetooth devices so that they could have that ultra-cool android look that's so popular these days.

The Chocolate is not cheap by any measure but if you renew your plan for another two years it's affordable. Plus, it comes with a $50 rebate. "It has a $50 rebate, dad, they're practically giving it away!" So after signing up and forking over some cash we left the store with my son in "new cellphone heaven".

Knowing my own tendency to procrastinate until rebate offers expire, I made it the first order of business this morning to get the thing in the mail. Rebate offers are full of pitfalls designed to trip up the unwary (and thereby void the offer) so I paid careful attention to the instructions, filling in the information in capital letters and enclosing all the necessary paperwork. However, as I was about to address the envelope I saw the dreaded address: Young America, MN.

Young America, MN is a suburb of Minneapolis whose sole industry as far as I can tell is rebates. There, hundreds and perhaps thousands, of young Minnesotans spend their days poring over rebate requests looking for ways to reject them and, if failing that, consign them to the local landfill "I'm sorry, we never received that request." The economics are simple and I wished I had thought of it. Rather than actually pay expensive rebates, the companies involved pay Young America a fraction of the cost to "lose" the rebate slip. The companies are freed of any responsibility and we rebatees can only fume at the oddly named town "Young America." After all, all we have is some Post Office Box, not even a name (unless there is someone there actually named "$50 rebate Offer.")

But like they say" You pays your money and you takes your chances." And then wait 4 to 6 weeks before you finally realize you aint getting any rebate.

I'm out. Gotta find a mail box. (with a David Bowie song stuck in my head. Isn't that odd?)

and now for something completely different

2006-08-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it's about time! We're less than a month away from the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy; gas prices continue to soar; air travel is scary again; sectarian violence in Iraq is on the rise and the cease fire in Lebannon hangs by a thread, so what a relief that JonBenet is back in the news. Thank God we can move all that other stuff to page two and concentrate on the really important stuff: did that baby-faced John Mark Karr really kill JonBenet? He says he did but really didn't mean to - darn those fragile six-year olds!

Finally there's something in the news we can all get interested in and you don't have to remember which is Hamas and which is Hezbollah or try to explain the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ia to our confused co-workers (see, it all goes back to the succession of the Prophet and...hey, how about that JonBenet?) Plus we can all feel guilty about doubting those poor Ramseys even though Patsy will never know how sorry we truly are (but we're pretty sure she's smiling down from heaven.)

No doubt the race is on in the network newsrooms to be the first to air an hour-long special on the capture of Mr. Karr complete with a minute-by-minute rehash of the crime. I can't wait! And we still have the trial to look forward to - heck, we could be steeped in all things "JonBenet" for months to come.

Where did I go?

2006-08-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, you skedadle out of the "G" for a couple of months and suddenly, everything is changed. Not only do the wags at greensboro101 not seem to know me anymore but they went so far as to remove the link to my previous brilliant postings! As Madelyn Kahn (or was it Jar Jar Binks?) might say: "how wude". Well anyway, I'm back and ready to slay the various dragons that keep rearing their scaly heads over our fair city and deflating the overly pompous self-important types that make Greensboro101.com this nation's greatest source of alternative energy by-products.

I kid because I love.

So what is harshing Greensboro's zeitgeist buzz today? Nothing? Everybody is happy? Whew, what a relief. Greensboro is just as I left it.

So why am I annoyed that Vernon Jordon still exists on MY plane of reality? Why do his minions keep calling my house and leaving cryptic messages on my answering machine? Is there anyone with even the most tenuous hold on sanity actually planning on voting for him or is his campaign some sick joke devised by Dave Chapelle?

I gotta go. More later (if my blog isn't summarily deleted)

Hate Kids? You'll LOVE Chemnitz

2006-08-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

So what's wrong with the Europeans that they aren't having children anymore? According to an article in the BBC Online the entire EU (with the exception of good old Ireland, of course) has seen a major decline in birthrates with Germany leading the pack. The article did not take into account the fact that Germany hosted the World Cup this year and it's certainly possible that people were distracted and just forgot to have sex. This was particularly true in the former East German town of Chemnitz which has it's claim to fame "the lowest birth rate in the world"!

Oh yeah it's easy for us in the States to blame the European men's penchant for carrying purses and wearing what used to be referred to as "pedal pushers"for the drop in the birth rate but the terrible truth is that if it wasn't for those immigrants that the Minutemen are trying so desperately to keep on their side of the border, the U.S. would also have a negative population growth.

Most of my generation is waiting impatiently for our children to "get around" to marrying and reproducing but there are just too many distractions for Gen X and Gen Y so we may be in for a long wait.

WFDD puts me over the edge

2006-04-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

For the past month I'd come home to find 2 or three "missed calls" on my home phone every day. The Caller ID told me that these calls were coming from Medford, Oregon. Since I don't know anyone in Oregon I figured that these were solicitor calls. I thought we had put these bastards out of businesswi th the "Do Not Call" laws. I Googled the number and found out it belonged to Comnet Marketing. Comnet is a telemarketing firm specializing in raising funds for non-profits. They are sensitive to the fact that most people believe that telemarketers are something on the evolutionary scale that eventually leads to slime and bed-bugs and so tout on their Website:

RespectCall™ is what separates ComNet Marketing Group from other telemarketing companies.

This may or may not be true but since they were always calling when I wasn't home I never got to find out...until today. Let me just preface what I'm about to say by telling you that my phone had rung 4 times in the past hour and nobody hates talking on the phone more than I do, so when the phone rang for the 5th time and I saw the dreaded "Medford, Oregon" on my Called ID I was ready. I answered the phone and an avuncular-sounding gentleman asked for me. I went off: "What do you people want" "You've been calling me day after day for the past month". The avuncular-sounding gentleman said "we're calling on behalf of WFDD".

WFDD!! My hitherto beloved WFDD was using skells to beg for money. You bastards. OK, so I didn't make my usual annual pledge this year but times were tough and I'm really conflicted these days because I listen to WUNC as much or more than WFDD and I didn't give them any money either.

But this wasn't about listener-supported Public Radio this was about freaking telemarketers. I continued to go off on the avuncular-sounding gentleman until he interrupted me to tell me all I had to do was ask to be placed on the do-not-call list. "OK, put me on the list, whatever, just stop calling me." With this I hung up.

After I raved around the house for a while and briefly considered removing WFDD from my radio pre-sets I envisioned a fund-raising meeting at the radio station where pony-tailed, balding ex-hippies and aging women in Birkenstocks sat politely listening to a pitch from ComNet Marketing (probably including a sample of avuncular-sounding dialog). The general concensus of the meeting is "heck, if they can sell a bunch of old hippies like us they can sell anybody."

Sorry boys and girls. While the pitch might be all mellow and soothing, the relentless phone calls set me off just enough that even if Bob Edwards, Susan Stanberg or even Carl Kassel himself had been on the line when I picked up the phone tonight I would have told them to get fucked. Which I am currently telling you, WFDD.

So I missed a month

2006-04-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anybody who can summon the resolve to contribute to their Blog more than twice a week is either a) underemployed b) desperate for attention or, c) repressing other issues. Since I have not even visited my Blog in over a month I guess I can say I am totally in control of my life, reasonably satisfied and issue-free (for the moment).

Here are a couple of things I need to get off my chest:

A UCLA/Florida NCAA Final is almost as boring as a White Sox/whoever World Series

Who would have guessed that we ACC fans would get so desperate that we'd resort to touting the "ALL ACC Women's Basketball Final" as the equivalent of the Second Coming?

Chuck Amato could learn a few things from Herb Sendak (and Herb, my hat's off to you buddy)

Soft-shell crab in any guise (as an ingredient in a Thai dish for example) is an invitation to disaster

Deferred maintenance will eventually catch up to you at the most inopportune time

Immigration laws are this year's "Gay marriage"

Tom Delay and Bill Frist are both slimeballs

HBO's "Big Love" has convinced me once and for all that plural marriage sounds better than it is.

And in that same vein, I'm grateful my father-in-law was not Harry Dean Stanton

I have not gone to the movies or rented a video since before Lent started and it's got nothing to do with Lent.

Do doctors get kickbacks when they order useless tests?

If I knew in advance how debilitating growing older was I would have misspent my youth a lot more aggressively.

It sure is hard adopting a new sport from scratch - NASCAR for example - but I have learned to dislike Tony Stewart in a very short time.

_________________________________
OK, now I'm back on the board. The Blogging community can breathe a sigh of relief.

Where has all the E-D gone?

2006-02-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has a semblance of a life will tell you it's hard to stay current on positively everything. So along with my ignorance about foreign companies running U. S. port facilities (betcha you didn't know that either) it came as a bit of shock to see Mark Martin's #6 car sporting the AAA logo instead of the Viagra logo we've come to expect. But that led to another shocking revelation: I can't remember the last time I saw ANY E-D drug advertised on TV. Did I miss something?

Used to be you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing that little hussy touting Levitra. She was always just a little too slutty to be somebody's wife so I always assumed she was representing all the mistresses of the world who weren't getting their fair share. Now that the spokesmodel gig is over I figure she's working the door at some Kit Kat Club somewhere - Hoboken, maybe? I'll give Bayer Pharmaceuticals credit though, it was the sluttiness factor that made me remember Levitra commercials over all the rest. I have a vague memory of people lounging in outdoor bathtubs and some guy throwing a football through the tire swing but after the deluge of E-D advertising, nothing else remains in the old memory banks.

Usually the Web has the answer to every burning question, but search as I may the only thing that I ran across about the sudden disappearance of E-D advertising was an article that said the NFL was ending its relationship with E-D drugs - which, on the face of it seems a bit ingenuous but who am I to argue? But back to Mr. Martin, I'm relieved that Roush Racing has gone back to an automotive-related sponsor. There is a time and a place for drug advertising (the time is 6:30 PM and the place is Nightly News) but NASCAR isn't it (except for maybe Prilosec because having to race with Tony Stewart would give anybody acid indigestion.)

The sizeable gap left by the exit of E-D drug advertising from the marketplace has been filled with drugs to help us sleep. Levitra has been replaced by Lunesta and Cialis replaced by Ambien CR. I guess the awful truth is that after staying up for all that time (after four hours call your physician) America needed some well-earned rest. Sleep tight everyone.

Well whale

2006-02-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

After reading the story in the paper this morning about Japan's whale meat glut I was suddenly struck with the terrible realization that I have lived more than half a century and have never tasted whale. I've tried and enjoyed the flesh of a number of species not typically found at Harris Teeter. But whale? Not even once. I'm so ignorant about whale meat that if I were to pass by your house on a warm June day and you were in the backyard barbecuing a mess of whale steaks, I would not be able to sniff the air and say to myself "Ummm, somebody is cooking whale."

I figured that before I condemn the Japanese for their "culinary heritage" I'd better know wherefore I speak so I called around a couple of Japanese restaurants to find out what day whale would be on the menu. (I don't want to appear squeamish but I didn't call the Sushi restaurants - despite John Bachelor's glowing review of Sushi 101 - because I think you should walk before you run.) But, heck, you'd have thought I asked them what day kittens would be on the menu. (Before you too get excited I've never eaten kittens either.) You probably have to go to a bigger city like New York or Atlanta to get whale.

The newspaper story says that the Japanese are losing their taste for whale and the implication is (at least how I read it) that the whaling industry is concerned that not only will a number of hard-working whalers be out of work if the trend continues, but soon, the seas will be wall-to-wall whales. I've only seen whales in the wild once - in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia about 35 years ago - but with all the shark scares of the past few years, the idea of having my summer vacation cut short by pods of marauding whales fills me with trepidation. Those suckers are big and if we've learned anything from Jonah and Pinocchio, they'll swallow you whole and not think twice. If Gregory Peck was alive today he'd probably be the first to remind us that whales are mean-tempered and carry a grudge forever.

I'm pretty good at putting two and two together and getting five but I don't think it's any coincidence that the Japanese are boycotting US beef about the same time as their domestic whaling business is going into the toilet (so to speak) If you think Harris Teeter Rancher beef is expensive, try shopping for Japanese Kobe beef sometimes. I can see some harried Japanese working mother stopping by her favorite store on the way home, picking up a chub of ground Kobe beef ( at $25.00 a pound) and tossing it aside in favor of VIC Special whale chops (if whales have chops). Why not chicken you ask? Uh, bird flu. It's a conspiracy.

Actually, I think my fears of whale overpopulation are probably unfounded. Maybe if we left them alone for a while they might take the time they're currently spending avoiding Japanese whalers and over-eager Green Peacers to finally learn to communicate with us and share their rich culture. They've probably got a million porpoise jokes we never heard.

True Crime

2006-02-07T06:12:00.000-08:00

If you're one of the millions of people who watch one or more of CBS's CSI shows you might occasionally feel sorry for the poor writers who have to come up with a new plots every week. You know they're struggling because some of the plots are sooooo farfetched they strain credulity.

Luckily, the good folks from down Selma, NC way are the obliging sort of people who have helped to make North Carolina the "interesting and unique place to be murdered" state it has become. (Do I smell a new state motto?). The murder I'm speaking of was buried (sorry, couldn't resist) on one of the News and Record's back pages this morning. It's a classic tale of missing persons, dismembered bodies, false identity and "weapons of mass destruction" (how a sawed-off shotgun got to be a weapon of mass destruction is beyond me, but who am I to argue?). Anyway, this case just screams to be a CSI plot. It has the requisite ewwwww factor: the dismembered limbs have been mouldering in the ground since 1997 and the limbs belong to not one, but at least two different people. You can almost hear medical examiner, Alexx Woods turn to Horatio Caine and say: "Horatio, I've got two left femurs here." to which he will reply "I think our killer just tripped himself up."

Of course, the story needs a little polishing. The killers in most CSI plots are attractive wealthy people and not the "salt of the earth" types the current suspects appear to be - but you never can tell from mugshots. The Johnston County Sheriff's office is being typically cagey about the details of this crime, especially about the supposed "tip" they got about it in the first place so I'm going to presume they really don't know jack about the case. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the SBI wasn't poking around Johnston County at this very moment. But, who cares? I'm sure the CSI writers will fill in the gaps with their own devices.

That's all I've got for you today except to note that North Carolina - and Wilmington in particular - has been prominently mentioned in "Surface" over the past few episodes and last night Wilmington was drowned by a tsunami. I hope that the New Hanover County board of tourism hasn't been inundated with callers concerned about their summer vacations.

TV is my life.

Monday moaning

2006-02-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

It's late Monday afternoon and while I don't have anything in particular to say, I do have thirty minutes to kill and I could use the practice tyoing, I mean typing. So bear with me while I meander around for a few minutes (28 now) .

Todays topic is/are cellphones. I've had one of these suckers for five years now and just recently I learned how to use the T9 word function for text messages. I know, I'm an old fart and probably shouldn't be "texting" (it's a young persons' thing after all) but sometimes texting is way more efficient than making a call. It's quick, it doesn't require small talk and you don't have to answer a lot of qualifying questions. If you are a post-50 who never took the time to learn T9 word, do it now and your life will improve overnight. Well, almost. I still have to teach my wife how to read text messages - but that's another story.

Cellphones are in the process of becoming information devices and not just communication tools. It's no longer good enough for your cell to deliver calls from the same old lady who gets mad at you for not being the number she thought she dialed (personally, I think she thinks I'm hot), no, cellphones have to provide CONTENT. One of the latest conceits from our friends at Anheuser Busch, (and they're serious) is to provide you the opportunity to download their latest Super Bowl commercials to your cellphone at no cost to you. Who wouldn't want that? Well, me for one.

I get enough content from every other conceivable source. I don't need videos, movie trailers, sports scores, porno (well maybe porno), instant replays, MSNBC, CNBC or any of the thousands of other things available. But I do understand cellphone providers' dilemma. With very little effort (and I mean VERY little effort) they could be just like BellSouth.

Several of my very close relatives are retirees from this august institution and for that reason alone I will grit my teeth and pay my BellSouth bill every month and hate the stupid bastards there who, because of either conceit or narrowmindedness, refuse to come up with a competitive business plan. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it's stupid that I can call my son's Chapel Hill number on my cellphone for no additional cost on my cellphone but have to pay for a long distance call on my house phone. I gather that no one at BellSouth has a television so they probably don't see all those commercials from Vonnage and Time Warner offering broadband phone service for roughly half the cost of the most basic BellSouth home service.

Dear BellSouth, please consider the fate of General Motors and Ford and put all those bright minds of yours to work thinking up something that Sprint and Verizon (who used to be just like you btw) already figured out that will blow our socks off. Please. Do it for my relatives, do it for your children. Do it for this great nation of ours.

Sorry folks, didn't mean to excoriate BellSouth like that but who knows what might come out when you're free-associating. And while I'm at it, Suncom, you don't get it.

Where did January go?

2006-01-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

My hat is off to you bloggers who can post everyday. I last posted on January 9th and have not had a decent idea to write about since then. I still don't have one but feel compelled to let the bloggosphere know I am alive and well. I know this is really important to the people who leave incisive comments about car loans and country home decor on my blog. If it's all the same to you guys, I'd rather you didn't. There's probably some way to keep spammers out of your blog but I don't know what it is. [OK, now I do. It was so simple]

OK, today's topic is television and television commercials. I spend untold hours of my life vegetating in front of the TV. It's an addiction. This past weekend it was basketball games. I watched three of them: the NC State/Clemson game was pretty exciting and it was nice to see UNC humiliate Arizona and, even though I could care less about who won the Florida State/Miami game I watched every second of it - and it too was pretty darned exciting. I have one complaint about that game, well, two. The big one was the annoying color guy who kept insisting on calling one of the Miami players "Lethal Weapon III". He kept repeating it over and over and to be honest I never knew who he was talking about (Robert Hite maybe?). Jeez, buddy, wasn't there some producer in your ear telling you to lay off the "Lethal Weapon III"? We expect this sort of hyperbole from Dick Vitale and allow him a lot of license but you're not Dick Vitale so shut the f*ck up. The other thing was the same guy remarking on a spectacular play: "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" I'm not sure who started using this line but now everybody uses it. Whenever I hear it I feel compelled to shout at the TV, "NO, you a**hole, he's not kidding you." I'd almost rather these guys started saying "HOLY SHIT" when somebody did something cool.

One of the problems with watching a lot of sports (especially when they're all on Raycom Sports) is that you end up seeing the same ten commercials so many times you want to scream. Unlike non-sports TV where you can channel surf during commercials it's hard to know how long the commercial breaks are going to last during a close game. So, even if you feel like you're going to strangle that cute little GEICO gecko if you hear him say "pie and chips" one more time, you don't dare switch channels because they might return to the action immediately after the commercial and you'd might miss someone say "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"

It's also easy to get your fill of truck commercials on sports TV. And I got to tell you that after the announcement that Ford is going to lay off 30,000 people I thought it in poor taste to run so many Ford commercials - it was kind of like watching commercials for the Roman Empire after hearing that a bunch of Christians were martyred. Yeah, I'll be buying a Ford soon. Here's a great new corporate slogan they might want to consider: Ford, built tough on workers and their families. But...I digress.

I sort of like the "Bud Light Daredevil" commercials - I just wish there were more than three. Budweiser has so many product lines it's hard to keep them straight. There is a commercial featuring Augustus Busch XVIII where he tries to make some distinction between beer that is easy to drink and some other kind of beer that is something else. If you listen carefully, (which I rarely do) you probably realize that what he is saying makes no sense at all, but he says it with such sincerity that you just want to believe him. I bet poor old Pete Coors wishes he had all that charisma. Luckily for me I don't drink beer so I am immune to either of their charms.

Speaking of no sense at all, there is a spate of commercials out there that don't even try to make sense. There is one that Cadillac runs about CEOs and parking spaces which, if it has a message, it continues to elude me - but that's OK because I'm not in the market for a Cadillac either. There is a commercial that Alltel runs in heavy rotation that features this cute little blonde girl and her annoying father who always wants to be where she is. Dudes, I don't know if it occurs to you but this dad's behavior borders on the aberrant. It's the sort of behavior that child protective services investigates regularly. The real reason the girl wants a cell phone is so she can call the police on her weirdly-obsessed old man. It creeps me out.

I could go on but there's probably something on TV that I'm missing. OK, one more thing. GEICO's caveman commercials: I think they should be extinct too.

No man's Monday

2006-01-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

I'm not a huge sports fan but I get a little anxious about this time of year when Monday Night Football goes off the air. There is something reassuring about turning the old TV to ABC at 9 PM and hearing the words: "Are you ready for some football?" Even if the game is crap, Al Michaels and John Madden will entertain and (in Madden's case) mystify us with their arcane knowledge about the venerable game of football. Next Monday, the television equivalent of Methadone, the fifth season of "24" on Fox, will ease the pain of football withdrawl.

But not tonight. Tonight, Monday is reclaimed (if only for this one night) by women - who own TV every other night. ABC is totally abandoning men with a slate of God-awful sitcoms and reality shows. The only show tonight that has any Male-Interest-Quotient, or MIQ, is CBS's CSI Miami and that only because David Caruso is so frigging hilarious as the ultra-cool, sunglass-wearing alpha male, Horatio Caine (you'll never see William Petersen's "Gil Grissom" going all drama queen like Caruso.) If you get HBO you can watch Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel although Gumbel and Horatio Caine are cut from the same cloth (I believe it's silk).

Of course, the big fear many of us have is that when ESPN takes over Monday Night Football in the fall it won't be the same. Nobody is saying whether Michaels and Madden will be back in the booth, whether Hank Williams Jr. will open the show or whether ESPN will just pander to their base audience and make it a straight "sports" show. ESPN never seems to remember that the "E" in ESPN stands for "Entertainment". Oh well, we'll survive. We survived Dennis Miller didn't we?

In the meantime, Jack Bauer will make us all forget that tomorrow is Tuesday.

So long, Freddie boy

2005-12-31T18:22:00.000-08:00

Death has been chasing my father-in-law, Fred, for years. But each time it got close he's managed to slip its grip just in time. The day after Christmas, when he wasn't paying attention, it finally caught him. He was 87 at the time.

As I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper early on December 26, the phone rang. My mother-in-law, Ruby, was on the line but she wasn't talking to me. She was talking to the paramedics who were preparing to transport Fred to the hospital. She was trying to get them to tell her where they were taking him and insisting they take him to Osceola Memorial Hospital. Then the line went dead. A few minutes later the phone rang again and this time she was talking to me. "I think he's gone," she said. "Y'all better get down here."

What followed was frantic preparations to get everybody packed and ready to go. Ruby called back again and confirmed that Fred had died so then we had to call the NC relatives and tell them the news before hitting the road for Florida. With one thing and another we couldn't get going until almost two and then had to take the long route through Raleigh so our youngest son could get his suit and tie from his apartment.

If you've ever had the misfortune to travel by car to Florida at Christmastime you know what Interstate 95 is like: two (and sometimes three) southbound lanes packed with maniacs trying to go as fast as possible by changing lanes every few seconds. This, of course, results in the whole mess slowing to a crawl or coming to a complete stop for minutes at a time and then, inexplicably, everybody is driving 85 mph again until the next slow down. I won't even mention the Rec Vees cruising blissfully in the left lane at a blistering 45 mph. (OK, so maybe I will)

So anyway, it's well after 2 AM before we make it Kissimmee, unload the car and fall into bed. The next morning early, my mother-in-law, wife and I are at the funeral home - a dingy little pre-Disney remnant from the "good old days" when Central Florida was all orange groves and cattle ranches. Ruby and Fred had made pre-arrangements for this day a couple of years back but there were a lot details that needed attention. One of the details was a burial plot.

If you don't count the strip malls and toll-roads, Central Florida is not blessed with many physical features (remember: it all used to be orange groves and cattle ranches) so the cemetary we visited was pretty bleak by NC standards. The lady selling burial plots was originally from Wisconsin (practically nobody here is actually from Central Florida) so she peddled her expensive little holes in the ground with the flat matter-of-factness that Midwesterners are so famous for. Ruby was hoping for something nice - maybe with a tree or two nearby. The Wisconsin woman drove us out to inspect what she had available and showed us the only plot she had near a tree - a very dead tree - for $200 more than the ones farther away from the dead tree. Ruby wasn't buying it. We settled on a plot next to a Mr. Rogers and signed the papers (and wrote the check). One thing that is certain: death is very expensive and if you can't afford it I would advise you to avoid it.

The next preparations we had to make was for the luncheon after the funeral. Deli trays had to be ordered and beverages, napkins, table clothes etc. had to be purchased. Every few minutes the doorbell rang and soon the house was filling up with floral arrangements both tacky and tasteful. The phone also kept ringing. Relatives were calling to make excuses for why they wouldn't be able to attend the funeral. It was getting depressing.

Fred was not much of a church-goer so the funeral home found the Reverend Dr. Bob to officiate. He seemed like a nice guy on the phone and was willing to go along with whatever we wanted. He was a chaplin for the police department and a Baptist minister which we tried not to hold against him.

The day of the funeral finally arrived and everyone was up early. My oldest son and I headed to the Publix for the deli trays in a fog so dense you could barely see the traffic signals - a typical Central Florida morning. The viewing was not until 11 but Ruby was ready to go to the funeral home a little before ten. She and my wife went ahead while I waited for our two sons to get ready. We made it to the funeral home on schedule and were pleased to see that Fred looked pretty good - although the "blue casket with blue interior" they promised us looked decidedly silver with a gray interior. A few neighbors and Ruby's nephew from Maitland dropped in to pay their respects and we all sat around trying to make conversation (this was complicated by the fact that several neighbors didn't speak English. In Central Florida, English is the second language) After the longest hour of my life we headed to the cemetary.

The service was brief but effective. My wife wrote a nice eulogy which I read for her. The funeral director had forgotten to make arrangements for the military-style funeral arrnagments she'd promised but nobody really seemed to care much about it. Ruby did get a flag from one of the funeral home guys "with thanks from a grateful nation" but no rifle salute or honor guard. Oh well.

Back at the house we laid out the luncheon (way more food than we could eat.) My oldest son's catering experience came in handy as he dressed it up to look professional. A few of the neighbors who came to the funeral and Ruby's nephew also came by for lunch and another set of other distant relatives who had been hopelessly lost in Kissimmee throughout the proceedings found the house.

We ate. We remembered Fred, and finally, everybody went home leaving us with a ton of leftovers. At least we wouldn't starve.

As I was preparing to relax a little, my sons decided that they wanted to drive back to NC so they wouldn't miss New Year's Eve celebrations. I guess life does go on and when you're in your twenties like they are, people are expecting you to party down regardless of the circumstances. It's a burden. I left my grieving wife with my grieving mother-in-law and headed back to NC with the boys. At 3:15 in the morning we hit the driveway in Greensboro.

This was one of those events that will always change, forever, the way you feel about a holiday. For my wife, Christmas will always be the day before her daddy died and his funeral will always be the day before her birthday. So it goes.

So long, Freddie boy. You did good.

Simple Sports analogies for everything

2005-12-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been getting a lot of letters from readers confused by religious issues like this one from little Becky Sue in Julian who writes:

"Coach, I've been hearing a lot about the Rapture lately but frankly, I'm just not getting it. I've tried reading Revelations and praying extra hard but all I'm getting is a migraine. Could you explain this to me with a simple easy-to-understand Sports Analogy. Thanks, Becky Sue (PS: Mama says hi)"

Sure Becky Sue, the Rapture isn't hard to understand but certain writers feel like they have to complicate it up to make it sound more difficult than it really is. Lord knows Revelations is complicated enough to give anybody a migraine so we'll just leave that book out of our discussion.

Imagine the Rapture as the celestial equivalent of the NFL Draft - if the NFL consisted of only two teams: The New England Patriots, representing the forces of Good, and the Oakland Raiders representing the forces of Evil. For the past two thousand years or so we've been treated to an extended version of an NFL Draft Pre-show where commentators have picked apart the teams and discussed what they will be looking for in the Draft.

The main event finally arrives like a "thief in the night" which means that it's only available on ESPN Radio at 2AM. The Pats get the first pick and they go with the Mother Teresa types to fill in their Special Teams. Nobody notices these people are missing at first because there are so few of them to start with. The Raiders go next and of course, they're all about their offensive line so Enron execs, gun lobbyists and the entire Al Qaeda organization get sucked into the great training camp in Hell. The second round goes pretty much like the first with the Pats picking mortal equivalents of Tom Brady and Tedy Bruschi and the Raiders going with the Kerry Collinses and Randy Mosses of the world. Around the globe people start to wonder what all those "pop" "pop" "pop" sounds are.

By the third and fourth rounds ordinary people begin to notice that the Earth has a whole lot more elbow room than it did before (sort of what living in Montana is like). Entire businesses are totally shut down: credit cards don't work, American-made cars stop running, there is no Coke anywhere and Las Vegas is just gone. (However, the liquor stores are open and are doing land-office business.) This is when the ordinary sinners like third-string running backs from Grand Valley State start getting nervous about getting picked and run around looking for sports agents to represent them - which is a futile activity because the Raiders got them all in the second round.

After a few more rounds the Draft is over and those not picked are what we call "Left Behind". With limited options they can try out for Arena Football or hope that there is a spot for them in the Canadian or European Football leagues. Most will have to go into the dry cleaning business or work on the docks at UPS but it really won't matter because eventually, just like the end of THE NFL ON FOX everything will wink out of existence and a voice will say: "See Ya!"

You got it now Becky Sue? Easy peasy. So if you want to play for the Pats and NOT the Raiders you know what you need to do. We're either getting down to the two-minute warning or we're still in the first quarter, nobody knows for sure, but why takes chances?

Love ya,
Coach

Where's Dmitry?

2005-12-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

If you were among the throng that attended last night's Sealy Fox 8 Holiday Concert it might have crossed your mind to wonder about the conspicuous absense of the Greensboro Symphony's vaunted new conductor, Dmitry Sitskovetsky. It did mine.

When he was no-show last year I was willing to chalk it up to previous committments made before he was named the Greensboro Symphony's Music Director but I was sure that he would make his debut this year and take up the role that made Stuart Malina such a popular, almost beloved figure. But, nyet.

If one were inclined to be cynical (which I often am) one might think that Maestro Dmitry did not want to waste his valuable time getting chummy with the common folk that flock to these things. No, instead he would send the personable and charming Bruce Kiesling to minister to Greensboro's great un-washed. (In case you didn't attend, let me assure you that Bruce is nearly as skilled in schmoozing the crowd as Maestro Malina).

But wait: maybe I'm being too hard on Mr. Sitkovetsky. I've never heard him speak before and it could be that he has one of those impenetrable Russian accents that would have left the good folks from Pleasant Garden and Colfax furrowing their brows with incomprehension: "What'd he say, Erline?" "I'm not sure but I think he said the walls have flour foam dee Nude clapper spit"

Come to think of though, I've never actually laid eyes on Sitkovetsky here in Greensboro. I haven't made it to any of the Greensboro Symphony concerts lately (but what else would you expect from a rube like me?) so I have to trust the word of others that they've actually seen him on the podium. There are pictures of him (or maybe it's just an actor) on the Symphony's website. But, you know, all those billboards around town announcing "The Sitkovetsky Era" only showed a drawing of the Maestro - an artist's conception if you will. If you looked really closely at those billboards, way at the bottom, there in tiny lettering, were these words: This is what our conductor would look like if we actually had one but we kept the money and bought new tubas instead. Those Symphony folks are so clever - much smarter than those of us who attend the Sealy Fox 8 Holiday Concerts.

Concert Notes: I'm sure Neal McNeal is still regretting he implied that there are thousands of Old Dominion trucks on the roads trying to run us down. He may also have regretted saying that soloist Lisa Dames looked like Patsy Cline. She didn't. Speaking of Lisa, I think we could have done with maybe one fewer song from her - my vote would have been for the sappy "Christmas Shoes." Fox 8 personality, Julie Luck, looked very lovely (especially liked the shoes, Julie) but it was her unenviable task to "bring down the mood" with the announcement that cars parked in the Tobacco USA lot were being towed. She did manage to keep Neal McNeal from wandering too far off the schedule and for that we're grateful. The most charming skating moment was the gentleman who hoisted the little girls into awkward lifts and spun them around so carefully (liberal use of the awwwwwww factor). The Choral Society of Greensboro was brilliant, of course.

For Moon Children only

2005-12-16T11:09:00.000-08:00

Did you see it? I did.

The final full moon of the year was last night but with all the clouds and rain and general yuckiness it was out of sight and out of mind. However, this morning at around 6:15 when I stepped out to get the newspaper it was shinning brightly in a clear star-studded sky - it was quite a sight.

This particular morning our newspaper route carrier was a little behind his time so while I waited to see the headlights of his white Astro van coming down the steet, I enjoyed the moon-lit stillness of a magical frosty December morning watching the tiny blinking lights of early morning aircraft move silently across the sky. I might have stayed longer but the newspaper delivery was nowhere in sight and there was hot coffee waiting for me inside - and the aforementioned frostiness was finding its way inside my bathrobe. So, goodnight moon. It was nice of you to drop by.

Any resemblance of the above text to a certain poem by Robert Frost was purely unintentional.

Stay Home and Veg Tonight

2005-12-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

I was waiting for it: the ominous crrrraaaaaaaaaccccckkkkking sound of branches snapping under the weight of ice that usually heralds an imminent power failure. Luckily, it didn't come. However, the kiddies did get to have an early holiday break and those of us in the employ of the University got a nice little delay. When it comes to freaking-out over weather nobody freaks out like we doFrom where I sit in my ivory tower it doesn't look like the ice is melting off the trees yet and it appears that the promised "highs in the 40s" aint going to happen. In fact, the current forecast is saying "...POTENTIAL FOR DEADLY COMBINATION OF DENSE FOG AND BLACK ICE..."
Hey, you gotta love that!If I were you I'd make sure the liquor cabinet is well stocked and that there are three or four loaves of bread and several gallons of milk on hand. Tonight would be a great night to make a nice dinner, finish those decorating chores you've been putting off, writing the Holiday cards to the people low on your list, maybe building a fire and checking to see if you can find "It's a Wonderful Life" somewhere on TV. If you're the adventurous type who laughs at bad weather, tonight would be the ideal time to hit the stores or go to the movies where the lines for King Kong could theoretically be shorter. But wouldn't you rather veg since you've got such a great opportunity?
It's almost four O'Clock. If you're still at work tell your boss you have a family emergency and have to leave early. He will probably appreciate this because he'd just as soon go home himself.
Becky Sue and I'll see you at HT. Just be careful out there.

O Christmas Tree

2005-12-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

At this very moment my spouse is laboring at the annual chore of decorating the Christmas tree. I did my part Saturday: I vacuumed up the last few needles from last year’s tree, put this year’s in the stand (more or less straight) and put on the lights on. Whew! Talk about exhausting. I had to spend the entire day yesterday recuperating in front of the TV (watching the Panthers blow what should have been an easy game).

When you’ve been married for several decades, raised a couple of children to proto-adulthood and accumulated enough decorations to fill seven big Rubbermaid tubs the prospect of decorating another Christmas tree can be almost overwhelming. I can tell she’s not really up for it this year because she usually can’t wait to get her favorite decorations, the Hallmark Rocking Horses (1981 – 1997), on the tree. Why, yesterday she only got 20 ornaments up before she quit.

Part of our holiday torpor stems from the ravages of Empty-nest Syndrome. We’ve still got one in college and if he ever decides to come home for the Holidays maybe some of our ENS might go away. To be honest though, the Christmas tree has been entirely my wife’s chore since the kids got their first Nintendo game system way back when. After that time the kids never showed much interest in helping put up the tree (they will criticize it if it’s not up to their expectations.) So, having a child at home may add to the holiday spirit but not much to tree-decorating.

People may ask: what’s the matter with you that you can help decorate the tree? Well, let me tell you. There appears to be an aesthetic standard that can only be realized when a woman does the decorating – strange but true. I’ve asked dozens of guys about this and to a man, each reports that his decorating duties end at putting up the lights. We’re genetically incapable of discerning when a spot calls for a red or a silver ornament (when put to the test we will invariable guess wrong.) We are disqualified because of our gender.

Tonight when I go home I will congratulate my wife on another year’s triumph, fix her a drink (maybe two) and bask in the glow of Holiday magic. Now, if I can only figure out a genetic anomaly that would prevent me from having to Christmas shop.

Spectacular Light Show

2005-12-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

If you found today's N&R article about How to make lighted tree balls interesting (and even if you didn't) you owe it to yourself to take a little drive down Ridgeway Ave. It's one of those great community efforts with almost everyone on Ridgeway (and several intersecting streets) sporting these tree balls. Go on, pack up the fam and go see for yourself. What would be really cool, of course, would be if next year, the entire city of Greensboro made and displayed these balls. We'd be famous as "The City that loved Christmas." (Which we do). See the map below for directions.

Make Mine a Lexus

2005-12-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's funny how some companies tote out Holiday commercials (and play them endlessly) for what has to be a miniscule market. I'm speaking today about the current Lexus commercials.

In one, the model from the "All About the O", commercials (see note below) is obviously having a hard time trying to figure out what to give her hubby for Christmas. You can tell from her pouty perplexed expression that time is running short and those Internet pages she's perusing are all dead-ends. Luckily, she happens to look out her window and sees a Lexus sporting a big red bow (choirs of angels begin to sing "Allelujah" - in my version). The Lexus she's looking at pulls away revealing that the big red bow is really a decoration in the yard across the street. HA HA HA we were so fooled - the first few dozen times we saw that spot. So anyway, to make a short story shorter, in the next scene we see our heroine presenting a brand new Lexus to her model husband. Could he be a doctor maybe? Corporate exec? High-powered attorney? What ever he does for a living he must also play a lot of golf 'cause he just has that look.

We have a little ritual at my house that whenever that commercial comes on I say to my wife: "Hey, I know what you can get me for Christmas this year." (She no longer thinks it's funny btw). Of course, most of us aren't doctors, lawyers, corporate execs - or models in Lexus commercials for that matter- we also don't have that look that says we play a lot of golf (and I'm going to guess that means 99% of the schlubs watching TV at that time - and yes, I'm including myself) so we can't pop down to our Lexus dealership and drop $50K on a new Lexus.

But logic tells me that Lexus isn't going to spend the kind of dough necessary to hire the models, produce the spots and buy the expensive holiday television time unless they expect some kind of return. Which means that the 1% of the non-schlub population that COULD afford to make a snap decision to buy a new Lexus and might Just Do It. So now the rest of us all feel bad about our crappy lives. Why God, why can't I just put on my Nike golf jacket, jump into my 20 year-old Pontiac, drive down to my Lexus dealership and drive home in a brand new Lexus? It aint fair I tells ya!

If you're driving your 20 year old car down the street on Christmas morning and are passed by a beautiful couple in a brand new Lexus, remember: God likes them better.

Note: What the heck did we ever do before the Internet? I did a Google search for "overstock.com model and came up with this: The Sabine Ehrenfeld Internet Fan Page
Who would have thunk it? One minute Sabine (it's pronouced Sa-BEAN-uh fyi) is just a nameless (albeit gorgeous) face on TV and the next minute, I know more about her than I know about many of my co-workers.

Holy Title Loan, Batman!

2005-12-07T07:33:00.000-08:00

A couple of nights ago, while dozing in front of my TV I thought I saw the Reverend Al Sharpton shilling for a car title loan company. Nah, I thought, must be my imagination.

But last night I was wide awake when I saw the commercial again and this time it was NOT my imagination (I have witnesses). I have always secretly suspected that the Reverend Al inclined toward the slimeball end of the integrity spectrum and now we have confirmation.

Doing a bit of research about Loanmax, the company Al is shilling for, I found the following : END CAR TITLE LOANS and this from the Center for Responsible Lending. Turns out that this is another abusive lending practice with effective lending rates of upwards of 300%! But there is Al talking about how he is fighting for the common man and implying that when he needs quick cash he goes to Loanmax (that will be the day). Shame on you Al Sharpton!

In the commercial, Al references Virginia and not North Carolina so it's possible that this deceptive lending practice is not available to the common men and women of our fair state.

This from the man who wanted to be President!

Mr. 1000

2005-12-01T05:49:00.000-08:00

One dees days Boys
Gown see my bay-ee-ay-e-bee
Gown see my bay-bee
Comin' down the road.
She has my pardon
Pardon in her apron, woh lawd
Gone see the guvner
Said: release my man.
She's comin down the road, yeah
She's comin' down the road.
Red dress on, yeah
She's got her red dress on.

Ten Years After. "One of these days" from "A Space in Time"

New time suck

2005-11-23T13:35:00.000-08:00

For you, gentle reader, (no doubt) anxious to know what has been keeping me from sharing my poetic insights with you, I can explain in one word: Sudoku!

When the N&R decided to start running the column I had already seen Sudoku in other places and wondered if my brain was up to it. I browsed a table full of Sudoku books at B&N the other week and came within a hair's breath of buying the "Sudoku for Dummies" book. But I figured: how difficult could these things be? Well, let me tell you...

For the first week or so I studiously ignored the puzzle and stuck to my regular morning brain-starters, Jumble and Brain Boggle. Then I mentioned the puzzle to a co-worker (a computer type) and the next thing I knew we were both doing the puzzles and comparing answers. I struggled with the first few "Gentle" puzzles - always coming up with ultimate failures. But then, one Sunday, I solved a "Tough" puzzle and I was hooked. Now I have to reserve a couple hours out of every waking day to do the puzzle and everything else - blogging, work, reading other parts of the newspaper - have all gone to Hell.

It's simple yet insidious: if eight can't go here, or here, it must go HERE - but that would mean the two is wrong so that must be six (erase erase erase). I can't really say I've developed a strategy for doing these things and I've come to realize that regardless of what the developers say, some of the "Gentle" puzzles are as hard or harder than the "Moderate ones." Sudoku does not believe in truth in advertising. But here is the real kicker, after you work through the puzzle in the paper (for better or worse) the Internet has hundreds of sites just waiting to supply the hopelessly addicted with a new fix. (I've had to institute a "NO SuDoKu after noon policy in order to stay employed)

But I've got to say, as far as puzzles go there is a huge sense of accomplishment in filling in those last few numbers and seeing no conflicts - IN YOUR FACE MICHAEL MEPHAM!!

I'll be starting a Sudoku support group soon. Instead of a twelve step plan ours will need only nine.

A curious headline

2005-11-15T17:29:00.000-08:00

From today's NY Times Online: "Catholic Bishops Turn to Lay Ministers".

You just have to know that somewhere a headline writer is tittering to him/herself wondering when someone above him/her is going make the inevitable phone call.

I say, good for you! It's high time someone pointed out the abuse ministers are receiving at the hands (and other apendages) of Catholic Bishops - and here we all thought it was only altar boys.

My cars must hate me

2005-11-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

For a family of four drivers we seem to have more than our share of car problems. Granted, two of our cars were built in the 1980s and two others (each 8 years old) have well over 100,000 miles. Our "best" car is a 1999 Chrysler courtesy of dear old dad.
With what I spend on car repair in any given year I could be driving a BWM, but everybody else in the family would have to walk. My older son is currently driving the car I normally drive (which was my younger son's car before he took the former family car off to NC State.) Older son's vehicle has been in the shop for the past three weeks. The folks at the shop have tried many different, valiant (and expensive) methods to get it to stop hemorrhaging coolant - to no avail. I am seriously considering trying to resurrect the old van which has become a driveway ornament and storage facility since it was retired from service. (I'm sure glad I didn't donate it to charity as dear old dad has suggested on many an occasion.)
In the meantime, me and the missus are enjoying each other's company and conflicting schedules while we try to car pool. This works out OK as long as neither of us has to go anywhere during the day - well, her actually because I keep the car most days and can go anywhere I like except, if I do go anywhere I might lose my parking place.
None of us are really "car people". We drive them to the places we need to go and pay little attention to them until they decide to break down. Dear old dad on then other hand cherishes his vehicles like he does his children and treats them to every scheduled maintenance and even repairs the little dings every car gets. Everytime he gets the bug to buy a new car (every five years) he declares "this will be my last car." Of course, it never is, which is damn lucky for us.
The reason I'm sharing this with you now is because I'm steeling myself to go (shudder) car shopping. I'd almost rather have a root canal without anesthetic than step onto a car lot but the time comes in each person's life when we need to face our fears (in the person of a smiling car salesman) and boldly ask the stupid questions sure to betray us as sheep ripe for fleecing.
If I could figure out the bus system I might try that instead.

What God really wants

2005-11-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

I realize that it is somewhat presumptuous of me to pretend to know what God wants but as of RIGHT THIS SECOND, I am giving my fingers over to God to type whatever He wants. Go ahead, don't be shy.

[really long pause while leaves turn from green to orange, red and off-green. People come to work and go home again. Children learn valuable lessons about life and still not a drop of rain falls]

OK, I guess that's not going to work after all. Darn! With God speaking through so many people these days, I thought: why not me? I bet I know what's wrong, I don't have any credentials. Yeah, that must be it.

Hey, sorry for taking your time like this but even though He didn't speak through me there's no reason to believe He won't speak through you. Go ahead, give it a try. You might even have the credentials.

Who knows? Not me.

2005-11-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Judging by the gaggle (what's smaller than a gaggle?) of people milling about the local polling stations I'm going to guess it's election day again. Is there anything sadder than an election day during an off year? Personally, I'm saving up my energy for next year when...when we get to vote for Howard Coble again because they're aren't any other choices. Yawn, at least it's a nice day to celebrate our democracy.

But, dear friends, it's not voter turnout that's got my goat today; no, it's the CBS News Poll that says 51 % of Americans reject evolution and say they believe God created man in his (or her, I guess) present form. I may have gone blissfully unaware of this statistic if I hadn't been reading about the American Museum of Natural History's Darwin Exhibit in the NY Times.

Polling is an inexact science at best but even considering some percentage of error, this result ought to scare the bejeebers out of every thinking American. Granted evolution is one tough concept to prove, but doesn't it make you at least sort of wonder? Haven't we all seen archaeological specimens that look a little bit like current humans but aren't exactly us? And if He did create us in our present form, which present form? Seems like there are an awful lot of variations on a theme. I hope some of you are bold enough to stand up and say "I don't know whether evolution is true or whether God did what He is supposed to have done, but for the moment and until I am convinced either way (or some other way), I will just say that it beats the heck out of me." The poll didn't allow for this option. It gave you just three choices. A simple 4th choice (I don't know/no opinion) might have changed the result - but I doubt it.

The poll also failed to allow for some of the more arcane explanantions like: modern man is the descendent of aliens who crash landed on Earth a really long time ago (probably on or near Mt. Ararat) OR, modern man has devolved from a superior race of creatures who left the Earth (and their devolved brethren) in search of a better world a really long time ago. (You know, devolution might be way easier to prove than evolution - and I'm not just talking about the Bush administration). There are probably an infinite number of equally plausible/implausible explanations for how we came to be who we are. So even if you can't really get behind the theory of evolution, try to keep an open mind, OK?

If we are indeed God's creations it would seem likely that He would want us to continue to learn new things about ourselves and the world around us and not just go with a quick, easy and maybe wrong explanation. Be patient and read everything with a critical eye.

51%! Wasn't that the same proportion of Americans who voted for President Bush?

Easily confused

2005-10-31T09:06:00.000-08:00

I was just waking up this morning when I thought I heard Nina Totenburg say that President Bush had nominated Lance Ito for the Supreme Court. Well, I thought, it's about time Lance got the respect he so richly deserves for his masterful handling of the O.J. trial. However, after downing a couple cups of coffee I was disappointed to learn that the nominee was Sam Alito and not Lance Ito at all (but you can understand my confusion after the whole Harriet Miers fiasco). Personally I think Lance would have been a little easier to confirm but what do I know?

If Jay Leno features the Dancing Alitos on tonight's show, remember: you heard it here first.

Back to the Bunker

2005-10-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

Well it turns out that news of the Bush Administation's demise was greatly exaggerated but since it took us almost three hours to get the old Volvo started we decided to run a few errands before heading back inside. First order of business was a complete (and I mean complete) makeover for Becky Sue at Chakras. One of her sorority sisters works there and got her in without an appointment.

I was heading down to Zetos to stock up on some drinkable wine but remembered I'd spent most of the checking account balance on a bitchin' satellite radio. I figured I might have a royalty check or two in the post office box Becky Sue doesn't know about (I hope). And darned if I wasn't right. A quick stop by the Wachovia ATM at Friendly and I was liquid again. Since I was in the neighborhood I cruised by the B&N to check the inventory on my books. One of the drab little bookworms had moved my stuff to the Romance section again: "How many times do I have to tell you people, it's historical fiction - the lurid covers are my publishers idea. And besides, how do you know that Admiral Nelson DIDN'T have an octoroon mistress diguised as his cabin boy?" I made room for my books in with the legitimate literature and was headed out the door when I ran into Harley.

Good old Harley. We used to play racquetball every Tuesday at the rec center before he had his stroke. I persuaded him to follow me back to Zetos because I knew they'd let him sample stuff they'd never open for me.

They were having a promotion on Childress Vineyards' Signature Reserve so we tried all three of the offerings. Not terrible. Not terrible at all. But I had my eye on some Spanish reds and with Harley's influence we got into a few. A couple of cases later the checking account was back under a grand again. God only knows what Becky Sue was racking up at Chakras.

Harley started looking a little under the weather and I hadn't even pumped for the latest dirt in the department yet. As I helped him out to his car he stopped and looked me in the eye. "Are you...are you still with Becky Sue." (JEEZ are they still on about that?) "Because... you know, they'd take you back in a second if you'd just, you know, say you were wrong."

OK, so a man has a moment of weakness and his grad assistant is looking especially hot one day and, well...there was the whole election thing and one thing led to another and...Besides, dude the signs are all there and we're just hiding out until this Republican thing passes over like the Angel of Death.

Harley bummed me out big time so when I picked up Becky Sue (who was looking VERY hot - thank you Chakras) she was all like: "Dude, who pissed on your picnic?"

We stopped at Ganache and got a couple of ungodly expensive cheescakes to take back to the bunker. There was a "booze it and lose it" traffic stop on Market Street but the cop took one look at the Volvo and waved us through. Back at the bunker we knocked back a couple bottles of the Valderamino, half a cheesecake and slept soundly through the night. I dreamt of Bill Clinton during the good times.

I guess we can come out now

2005-10-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

After the 2004 election it was pretty gloomy around the old bunker. You try living without sunshine and fresh air for months at a time and see if it doesn't affect your outlook. Besides, things were getting pretty desperate: we were reduced to drinking California Merlot (shudder!) and Becky Sue was getting a little hairy for my tastes. I'm sorry but there is NO WAY I'm waxing anything but my surfboard (which is doing me little good down here let me tell you.)

So anyway, we read on the Internet that the Bush Administration was melting down because of some indictments or something and that next Tuesday some people are planning to run the Bush Adminstration out of town. Wow. I mean Becky Sue got out some of our old Jefferson Airplane/Starship LPs and we marched around the bunker shouting some old sixties slogans: Hell no we won't go. Hey, Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today. The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching - gosh we had such fun! We started watching some of our old Watergate Senate hearing tapes but we both fell asleep. Afterwards we acted out a play we wrote last February we call "John and Mo Dean - Nixon's cruelest revenge". (We always fight over whose turn it is to wear the blonde wig.)

It will be good again to breathe the sweet pure air of Democracy again. To tell you the truth we both were more than a little worried that America had turned to the radical right for good. But you know, you just got to have a little faith. Like Lincoln (a Republican, we should point out) once was reported to say: "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but Dick Chaney isn't fooling anybody any of the time." In fact, we heard that even Anne Coulter carries around a bottle of hand-sanitizer when she knows she's going to have to press the flesh with Chaney. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA But, you have to forgive us; we've been living on pimiento cheese sandwiches, non-vintage wine and "The Daily Show" since 2002 so we're a little left of center.

So if you see us on Tate Street give us a grin and a wave. I hope my graduate students eventually forgive my sudden absence but, kids, if truth be known, I haven't read a paper all the way through since 1987. Besides, see how well you've done without me? Believe me, you can't get that kind of education in anybody's classroom. (Becky Sue says to speak for myself).

It's good to know that we won't be the last of the Liberals. That there is a place for righteousness and truth in this country and that at this very moment all around this great nation of ours, millions of people are sloughing off their lethargy and taking back their country from our would-be oppressors. We're tired of being scared of the future. We believe there's hope for the future. Now fix me a decent Mojito and let's celebrate!

Gosh, I hope the Volvo still starts.

Lions 1, Harriet 0

2005-10-27T00:07:00.000-07:00

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue." Steve McCrosky

Bye Harriet. See ya (wouldn't want to be ya)

What an exciting and ultimately ego-deflating period this must have been for our heroine. For the rest of us who watched this poor woman suffer through this awfulness, we can, at last, stop feeling her pain. Wearing her bravest smile (and Eisenhower-era suits) she reminded us of one of those not-quite-so-confident Christians being led into the arena (which turned out to be an apt analogy.) We could imagine her initial panic (while trying to siddle unnoticed toward the door) feeling her benefactor's white-hot gaze turn her way: "Hey, how about Harriet? She's a woman AND a lawyer!" "Don't you worry Harriet, they're gonna love you."

Unfortunately for poor Harriet, they didn't love her. Despite her outward appearance, she wasn't mired nearly enough in the values and attitudes of the 1950s - at least we don't think she was. It was hard to tell.

So what's next for our brave albeit recalcitrant Born-Again Christian soldier? We imagine a couple weeks at Betty Ford Center ridding herself of nasty, recently-acquired Oxycontin habit. After that a smoking-cessation clinic followed by months and months of therapy; the inevitable talk-show circuit (Please be kind Oprah), the consolation prize book deal and finally, her consignment to the dustheap of history.

We're pretty sure the next nominee is going to be a certified fire-breathing, scorched-earth, born-to-be-bad conservative with skin as thick as elephant's hide just itching to turn back the clock as far as she'll go. We wonder what Robert Bork is doing these days.

If you're the praying sort we hope you include poor Harriet in your prayers tonight. She never asked for this much attention or abuse. She was just going along to get along. Only after the 100,000 watt media spotlight turned on her did she realize what she was in for. While you're at it, pray for Rachel Dratch who will return to bit-player status on SNL.

Appalachian is Hot Hot Hot

2005-10-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

This one's been making the rounds but in case you missed it, check out App State's promotional video and be sure you've got your speakers turned WAY UP

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2679633

If you end up getting a loop of promotions try it in another browser

Signs of life

2005-10-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

There's always some discussion about changing the signs coming into Greensboro to reflect the city's new and dynamic outlook. Here are a few suggestions that get at the heart of what this town's all about.

City of Conflicting Opinions
City on your way to somewhere else
City where progress stopped, took a look around and moved on.
City of denial
Our skyline speaks for itself
Still bigger than Cary
Will trade day jobs for nightlife
Where all the children (in the NW) are above average
Now bypassable from all directions
Just a short commute to the RDU airport
More corporate headquarters than most cities half our size
Biding our time
Tired of pretending were Raleigh or Charlotte
Where Nordstrom is coming next (maybe)
You're never more than two hours away from anything
Jet noise? What jet noise?
Where High Point spills over twice a year
It only looks like we've given up
Where issues come to divide
Fewer murders than last year
If only baseball season were longer
Ground zero of the blogosphere (bloggosphere?)
We'll get around to it sooner or later
Soft on crime but tough on trees
Let us relax our zoning for you

Maybe we can put a few of these on the ballot and get a real firestorm going.

Divina Comedia Reduxio

2005-10-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

A man dies and goes to Hell. When he arrives he is met by the Devil who informs him that, yes, Hell was sort of like that which Dante described - except that Hell, keeping up with earthly trends was much more modern now, having moved away from most of the Medieval punishments depicted by Hieronymus Bosch. The truly wicked sinners still end up suffering the torments of the 5^th and 6^th rings (with the 7^th ring reserved for politicians and prelates) but most run-of-the-mill sinners get off with an eternity of annoyance and frustration.

The Devil takes the man to a dimly-lit corridor and shows him three rooms. “You will spend eternity in one of these three rooms,” said the Devil. “You must choose one.”

In the first room a group of people in their late-twenties and early-thirties sat on concrete blocks talking. “These people are new parents and will spend eternity discussing every aspect of having and raising babies,” the Devil explained. “Would you like to join them?” The man thought for a while and asked to see the next room.

In the second room a group of gray-haired people sat on a cold bare floor talking. “These people are new grandparents and will spend eternity discussing the joys of being a grandparent and showing you pictures of their grandchildren.” Before the Devil could speak again, the man quickly moved to the third door.

The Devil grinned and opened the door to the third room. In the room a number of middle-aged people sat on fluffy cushions talking and laughing. “These people are pet owners. They will spend eternity talking about the cute things their pets do.”

The Devil closed the door and asked: “So, now that you’ve seen all three, which room do you pick?”

The man thought a moment and then said: “Listen your honor; I know that I've led a life of sin and depravity and don't deserve any special privileges but isn't there anything else?”

The Devil scratched his chin and considered a moment. “The only other thing we’ve got is treading water in a boiling sea while Harpies continuously rip out your eyeballs and monsters devour your lower limbs - it’s kind of old-fashioned.”

“Sounds good to me,” the man said.

“We’re talking eternity now, you understand?” the Devil asked.

The man glanced back at the three doors and nodded his head. In a flash the man was gone.

The Devil smiled to himself: “Nobody ever takes the three rooms.”

Disaster du jour

2005-10-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Well it’s happened again. Just when we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves because of the destruction and misery caused by our twin hurricanes in the Gulf (We’re number one! We’re number one!), along comes, first, Hurricane Stan burying all these villages in Guatemala under oceans of mud and then, right on the heels of that, an earthquake in India/Pakistan kills upwards of 20,000 in a matter of minutes.

It’s a fact - nobody does natural disasters quite like the Third World! The tsunami back around Christmastime set the disaster bar pretty high: not only thousands but hundreds of thousands dead! It boggles the mind. So does the question: Who’s gonna pay for all this mess? All the concerts and telethons in the world won't make a dent in the bill these latest disasters are going to generate.

While this column normally eschews all things political, today we’re wondering whether our friend President Bush might be feeling a little put upon. Almost as if (maybe, possibly) somebody (and you know Who we mean) might have it in for him. We're also wondering if being president might be getting a little old.

Being president must have seemed like a hoot-and-a-half back in 2001 before all the unpleasantness started. But the times are a-changing and not for the better. 9/11 was a huge tragedy but damn if it wasn’t exciting as hell. Those were heady times for the President. Everybody liked him – he liked himself. Then the wars, which started out so successfully, bogged down into what they are today. And then the scandals, the indictments and the natural disasters started. (Let’s not forget those four hurricanes in 2004). So we wouldn’t be surprised if the old boy didn’t have one of those little count-down thingies on his desk: “only 1194 more days to being a private citizen”. Gee, that’s a long time. Now, we’re depressed too.

Discovery Channel After Life

2005-10-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

Lot of talk these days about Evolution versus Intelligent Design. I'm trying to keep an open mind but the extremes of both sides (OK, mostly the Young Earth faction) make me wonder why people think the way they do. I personally subscribe to the "Who the Hell Knows?" theory of life on Earth. The major tenents of this theory are: geological evidence? interesting; paleontological/anthropological evidence? pretty cool; DNA evidence? I think you're getting somewhere; biblical evidence? sketchy, but maybe there's something there biblical scholars missed, intentionally left out, or misinterpreted. Those of us in the WTHK camp are ready to believe and disbelieve everything all at the same time.

Truth be told, how many of us really understand the scientific evidence anyway? Not me. My information comes from the popular press: National Geographic, Discover Magazine and a variety of newspapers and other magazines. I'm also, to my wife's continued annoyance, a Discovery Channel, TLC, and History Channel junkie. I recognize that what I'm getting is pre-digested for my meager understanding. I'm a curious-minded person but don't have the discipline to study anything in the depth necessary to defend any point of view with certainty. I suspect I'm not alone in that but that hasn't stopped a lot of people from trying.

Similarly, I worry that Scripture, is being pre-digested for the meager understanding of the masses. Who among us 9 - 5ers really has the time, inclination, talent and discipline to sort through the writings that eventually became the Bible? Not me. It's way easier to have someone tell us what they say. Although, I do find it annoying when someone who purports to know tells you something different from what some other person, who purports to know tells you. Someone recently said that "reason is the enemy of faith." Seems to me that ignorance is the real enemy of faith. OK, I'm climbing out on a very slender branch here so lets get back to the subject heading.

So here's what I'd like to see as part of the After Life (is there is such a thing). After the almost certain long lines, processing hassles, lost paperwork and harried civil servants you finally get your ID, meal card, rooming info and after-life schedule which includes orientation. You follow the signs or the yellow brick road or whatever to the "After Life Theatre" which is continuously showing "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know." Since time is irrelevent in the After Life the interval between "let there be light aka The Big Bang" through "life begins on earth", "what really happened to the dinosaurs", "the Adam and Eve you only thought you knew", "the veracity of every religion that ever was" all the way to "who realy killed Kennedy" and "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Aliens" flashes by in seeming nanoseconds. Missed something? Not to worry. Like we said it's "continuously showing."

What happens after orientation I'll leave to the imagination of other writers but I hope it includes a European-plan-type tour of the universes (no rock walls or paragliding though).