A Triumph Of The Will

Behind this calm appearance lies a will of iron. Lately Bo has made the trimming of his front paws a "Battle-Royale". It has reached the point that we only trimmed one nail a week. Usually the match would result in CP getting head-butted, scratched and both of us sweating like farm animals.

We decided to call in a hit-man, our neighbor Ruth who is a veterinary assistant. Ruth grabbed Bo and body-slammed him down like a calf in a roping contest. She put her forearm across his neck and laid on him. Meanwhile, Bo is squealing like a pig. I'm getting very upset and am about to come to his rescue when Ruth says "OK now do his nails". I was able to grind off a quarter inch off all sixteen nails.

This Saturday without Ruth, CP and I did Bo's nails. It was great to get the job done without a scene. When you have a stubborn Welsh Terrier you can never let him win, ever!

Your Father's Oldsmobile

The Oldsmobile's A/C quit working. I noticed it getting a little tepid in August. I'm glad it lasted til October. Down here A/C becomes life support in the summer. Now, this can be a terminal event in a seventeen year old car. As a matter of opinion, I considered the Freon12 A/C in the Olds was its best feature. I have all winter to ponder the option of selling my last connection to Petersburg, W.V.


I got this car and a 98 Olds Delta 88 from Hospice Motors. A nurse in the Hospice Unit would let me in on some real deals from her patients who wanted to divest themselves of their Detroit Iron before they passed. CP loved her Delta 88 which two deer totaled for me about a mile outside of Petersburg. We got more money from Geico for the car than we payed for it.


Maybe because of my Autism Spectrum Disorder I'm more sentimental about cars than people.
I refused to sell my 88 4-Runner to some teenager who wouldn't appreciate it, and would probably kill himself with it. I found it a nice home with an older gentleman in Red House, W.V.
I probably can get about $1000 bucks for this car even without A/C and with a noisy muffler. However, ten Franklins in my hand won't be enough to make up for a car that can take you down the Interstate on a Flying-Couch at 75 mph.

Local, Free Range, Non-Caged Talent

Vaudeville, what a wonderful change from the internet, television, politics, and Hollywood. Nothing entertains like seeing jugglers, plate spinners, magicians, dancers, dog acts, knife throwers, comics etc.



The energy and talent in Asheville is refreshing to an old coot like me, and they welcome broken down ex-hippies like Babba.



The proceeds from the show went to a local food bank and the local brewery donated four kegs of beer which helped to further the charitable mood. The music was from my favorite Asheville band Sirius B. CP and I went in our usual Tart & Vicar costumes.

People of Wal-Mart-Saturday morning @ 6 AM

I always go to Wal-Mart on Saturday, usually before sunrise. I try to avoid the People of Wal-Mart . I think I need to go a little earlier. I try to zip in and get my dozen routine things and be home by 7 am to listen to the same people calling C-SPAN. I make the store loop picking up Bo-Treats, coffee, ice tea, light bulbs etc.

I'm making good time, heading to the register that's actually open on the end of the store where I parked (it's Wal-Mart policy to only open up one register until the parking lot is full). Now, I have had back pain all week so I decide to skip the open register and zip back to the pharmacy dept. and get a tube of Equate brand Ben-Gay. The smallest tube they have is about twelve ounces; that's enough to grease the front end of an 88 Toyota 4-Runner ten times. I don't want to spend $5 on some crap that doesn't work anyway so I head back toward that empty register I spotted earlier. I now see the cigarette/snuff register has opened, but standing there is the lady who talks to herself. This Wal-Mart client shops every Saturday morning. I first ran into her a few months ago in the toothpaste aisle where she was talking to the Listerine. I by-pass this screwball and head toward the register I first lusted for.

I reach the other register and see a young lady with a cart full of Mountain-Dew twelve-packs. I sense a problem right away, the checker is waving for the manager (I guess the P.A. system isn't turned on til noon.) It seems she wants to get the 24-pack sale price applied to each pair of her 12-packs. Hyper-Mountain-Dew-Girl says she had called the store and they said it would be OK. Dew Girl is now doing jumping-jacks trying to wave down the manager (She then turns to me and tells me she's a Libra). They finally get the manager's attention and he starts to mosey on down to register #1. Now, the night shift manager is not too sharp (last week he was probably pushing the carts inside with the little trolley). The manager listens to her long tale, and then asks her who she spoke with. Of course she can't remember because that whole story is a crock. The manager gets out his calculator and is calculating how many 12 packs make up a 24 pack. At this point I bail out and head back to the snuff register.

The lady who talks to toothpaste is still there babbling to the cashier about computers in the classrooms. I push her cart away and start putting my stuff on the conveyor belt. She and the checkout lady get my message and I'm checked out in less than two minutes. I'm walking back across the store and I pass Dew Girl, who has finally checked out and saved five dollars on her caffeine score. I get out to my car and right next to me in handicapped parking is the think-out-loud lady talking to herself as she loads her car ( I guess talking to oneself is considered a handicap).

A week ago I went to Wal-mart and they were out of three pound Great-Value Arabica coffee. It never occurred to me that I could take three one pound cans to the register and and get them for the price of a three pound can. I'm thinking maybe I should go to Wal-mart at five AM, but it would probably be just a different cast of characters.

By the way, "How's The Family"!

The Socially Inept Network

"The Social Network" is a movie about the designers of The Facebook. I will put aside my own feelings about Faccia-Libre. I will not preach about how Facebook is just another symptom of our fragmented society. I want to review the movie.

At the onset, Jesse Eisenberg (Juno) and Justin Timberlake (N-Sync) do not inspire thoughts of good drama in my mind. However, both these young men, when given a good script, a good story and good direction stepped up to plate and hit one out of the park. The movie has three flawed protagonists, two are Harvard students and one is a cyber-hustler. The antagonist is the higher education cyber-establishment.

Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the socially inept ADDHD computer genius. Andrew Garfield plays Eduardo Saverin his business-major partner whose' practicality and lack of vision almost killed the concept. Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the cyber genius of Napster who sees the potential of Facebook. Parker realized that Facebook had to remain cool to appeal to the youth and also that the lack of privacy was the key to exponential growth. They had no idea that Grandma would be tagging people and playing Farmville on the site.

The movie works because it simply told the story. I couldn't believe how much I liked this movie. Perhaps I liked it because it was about a small group of people caught up in a unique moment in history. O.K. they didn't invent penicillin, they invented a self indulgent cesspool of sophistry, but still they had initiative. I give the movie four and a half stars.

It is a true American Tale.

Secretariat

We went to a preview of Secretariat while in Vegas. You can't go wrong with a Horse Movie, but they came close. About twenty minutes into it, after having a portion of The Book of Job read and two negro spirituals sung, a cold chill ran down my spine. I thought "this is a Christian movie", is a guy going to get up out of his wheel chair and give the field goal sign with his arms when the horse wins the Triple-Crown? John Malcovich overacted a bit as the eccentric trainer. Diane Lane really stepped up in her performance as the daughter trying to save the family horse farm during the 60's cultural revolution. She usually plays a ho or a home-wrecker.

Hollywood could have done so much more with this script. They could have had Lane having an affair with the trainer, the rebellious daughter getting pregnant, the neglected husband coming out etc. However, the story was about the horse. Aside from some clunky dialogue, the movie worked. My favorite line was "in horse racing there are no excuses." That is so much different than today where all we get are excuses. It is a good family film that comes up to the edge of Christian silliness. I give it four stars.

The Saga Continues. O'Hare Airport: Your stimulus $$$ @ work

We arrived in Chicago about 0800 and exited our pencil-jet onto the tarmac where it was a windy, wet 40 degrees. We wait outside for our luggage to be unloaded onto the trolley and driven twenty feet to a magical line where a shivering mob is waiting. After finding our bag among the thirty identical black carry-ons the march of the penguins begins. The flock begins the walk through a maze of concrete barricades, under dripping air-conditioners and finally up a stairwell to the terminal.

We were told to take the shuttle between B-33 and C-31. Now that's about as far away as you can get and still be in Cook County; we have 29 minutes to get our connection. We are booking along when CP sees the sign for the shuttle. It's between the Men's and Ladies' rest rooms and looks like the entry to a utility closet. I was looking for a monorail. We open the door to the closet and there is a stairwell full of people. They are waiting for the "hoopty", a little shuttle bus like the courtesy van a hotel would use. Finally we move till we get to the front where the lady pulls the rope across and says we have to wait for the next bus. CP is doing her out-of-towner schtick telling the bored attendant we have nineteen minutes to make our connection.

Finally we get into the hoopty and it lumbers the three hundred yards across the tarmac, stopping for every luggage train and almost getting hit by a catering truck. We arrive at B-33 just as they are calling our zone. I can't believe a major city airport connects its terminals with a hoopty! The super-sized fellow next to me on our plane tells me "it's been like this for ten years, O'hare is a #%$@ hole". on

Great Flight

My flight from Chicago to Las Vegas was a crusher. I was happy to get the bulkhead seat. The plane is about full and the window seat next to me is still open. In walks a couple with an aggregate weight of 700 lbs. They pass by me and I breathe a sigh of relief (my last deep breath for three hours). The lady sits behind me and the guy hurls himself into the seat next to me. Since it was a bulkhead seat I couldn't lift up the arm rest and lean on CP. For three hours I sat with this guys gut sticking in my side like a 20 lb. sack of flour.

Behind me was sitting a 300 lb Pickwickian. This guy had sleep apnea that sounded like a giant Pug with croup. If I had an oral airway I'd have put it in him.

Babba was gracious to both of them. It's part of my new persona; plus I took an extra Lyrica pre-flight.

Kids Know Better

This looks like a pretty easy job. After all, if Ralphie's Mom didn't volunteer him the lug nuts would've been safely in the hubcap on the ground. However, there were other "help your father jobs" that are more meaningful and fraught with peril. Hold The Flashlight was my favorite. I can't remember exactly what critical task required me to be pressed into service, but I do remember that I sucked at it. I had to hold the heavy flashlight rock steady for minutes at a time while my Dad fumbled around trying to fix something. This was before the age of LED's and lithium batteries. After a mere three minutes the glow would start to diminish as the batteries started to die. That would lead to more cussing and a trip to the fridge where we had old batteries aging alongside the cheese. A dozen dead batteries didn't dissuade Dad from wanting to terrorize you. All that meant was that the flashlight strength and agility test was replaced by, hold the match.

Another job that proved how utterly useless I was concerned the toilet tank. I had to hold this big copper float ball up to stop the water from shooting out while Dad replaced some copper tube. After a minute I couldn't hold it any longer. A gusher of water shot up to the ceiling and left a stain which I got to view about six times a day for the next ten years. Perhaps that is why nowadays I prefer to work alone.