Category Archives: My Opinion of Something

Jan16

Season of the Witch = What I’d Expected

Posted on by
Standard

Budge and I didn’t buy tickets to Season of the Witch expecting we’d be viewing an Oscar vehicle and we weren’t disappointed. We went to see this sword and sorcery flick because we both like Nic Cage and I particularly like Ron Perlman. Once again, no disappointment.

This was a movie that gave what it promised, a two hour escape from reality with a clear good guy(s) to root for and an ambiguous to increasingly clear bad guy to boo and hiss. The film accomplished its mission with alacrity and style. I liked it; as did Budge. I am a HUGE fantasy fan and while this wasn’t my beloved Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy, it wasn’t the worst fantasy movie I’ve ever seen by a long shot.  Nothing at all like, oh say, Bloodrayne or King’s Quest.

In brief, Nic and Ron are two burned out Crusader knights who hack and slash across the known world killing all enemies who would oppose God’s holy Church. Best line of the whole movie? In the middle of ANOTHER huge fight, Ron Perlman’s characters says to Nic’s, “Is it just me or does God have too many enemies?” With the typical deadpan we’ve come to expect since Con Air, Nic’s character replies, “I don’t know about that, but being his friend isn’t much better apparently.”

Anyway, these two erstwhile friends are fiercely loyal to each other so when Nic accidentally skewers a young girl on a smoky battlefield and tells the priest / general he quits, Perlman walks out right behind him. Unfortunately, leaving the Crusade is tantamount to desertion and the medieval church frowned upon desertion. The two are arrested in a plague stricken town and given a choice by the dying head priest of that town — deliver a young girl who is a confessed witch to an abbey of monks for trial, or face hanging or burning at the stake.

Well, that’s not much of a choice for a couple of Dark Age original gangsters like these two so they take the offer and accompanied by a few companions, set off with titular witch encaged in a wagon. Dark forests, wolves, plague ravaged villages, you know, basic fantasy stuff. Generally, mayhem ensues.

So, this isn’t a movie that’ll win an Oscar, but it’s a terrific way to spend the afternoon with a significant other.

Love y’all and keep your feet clean.

Dec31

Tron Legacy is Eye Candy!

Posted on by
Standard

I love what Budge said as we left our viewing of Tron: Legacy in IMAX-3D, “Jeff Bridges does a great job of capturing a guy lost in the late ’80s.” Since she was in elementary school in the “late 80s”, I’m not sure how she knows this . . . but she’s right. HA!

My favorite line of the movie — Flynn, Sr to Flynn, Jr: “You’re really messing with my Zen thing, man!”

I was in elementary school when the original Tron showed at the now-paved-over-with-a-parking-lot Oaks Theater in Laurens, and it was one of the movies (along with Star Wars IV, V, and VI) that made me into a sci-fi / fantasy geek. You always worry when someone remakes one of your childhood landmark events, but the guys behind this sequel did a great job filling in the intervening twenty years and bringing us up to speed with some plausible (for a sci-fi flick) reasons for Flynn’s captivity in the machine. Of course, some other areas, like how “digital” food keeps carbon based life forms alive for all those years are a bit lacking, but at least it’s not Jar-Jar Binks!

The story was interesting, but no one came to an IMAX 3D theater for a STORY. This movie is a special effects dream. As incredible as it sounds, Tron: Legacy was my first IMAX movie and I’m completely spoiled now. The picture is beyond explanation, but the SOUND!!

I want to see Handel’s Messiah on-screen in an IMAX now.

But I digress in rapture at the medium rather than the media . . .

The movie is one of those shows you need to see at the movies. Some movies don’t lose much from the big screen to DVD, but this one will. I don’t care that you have an LCD the size of your living room wall and home theater surround sound . . . it ain’t IMAX and those lightcycles won’t look the same otherwise.

In short, if you, too, were an 80’s child and have an old TRS-80 or Commodore-64 in the attic, you won’t be disappointed in Tron: Legacy. It doesn’t run rough-shod over your childhood and it’s a ball of fun to watch.

Dec20

Well Merry *bleep*ing Christmas to You Too, Jerk!

Posted on by
Standard

For 22 years, starting in 1659, our lovely Puritan forefathers banned Christmas. Now I don’t hold too much with Puritan beliefs. I’ve had enough commerce with modern day Fundamentalists (who are only a pale shadow of the Puritans!) to know most of their beliefs rest in the authority of men rather than Scripture. However, on this whole idea of banning Christmas — well, they may have been on to something. I just spent parts of three days at the mall with about 350,000 of my closest friends and I can testify to one irrefutable fact — a whole truckload of people would be better off mentally, emotionally, and financially if we just skipped Christmas.

Now, before anyone wants to skewer me as being a Jehovah’s Witness or irreverent towards Jesus’ birthday, let me get one thing straight. For those of you who don’t know, Jesus Christ was not born on December 25, 8 BC. The Gospels state that the shepherds were in the fields with their flocks. If you ever have the time, check out the Weather Channel for Bethlehem in December. Not all the Middle East is hot all the time. Suffice it to say neither the shepherds nor their sheep would have been out in the fields in December in Judea.

No, Christmas as we know and love (or loathe) it today is a pastiche of pagan traditions adapted by some early Christians to make their new religion more appealing to their pagan neighbors. They basically co-opted the traditional Feast of Saturnalia from Roman pagans and later on, when Christianity reached the British Isles, the Druids added a healthy dose of their traditional Winter Solstice or Yuletine celebration to the Roman underpinnings. Honestly though, I don’t care about the origins of the Christ Mass. Christ can be honored at Christmas just as much as people want to honor Him. Or not. Paganism has nothing to do with my musings on canceling Christmas.

I’d consider canceling Christmas because it has morphed from “Tis the Season to be Jolly” into “Tis the Season to be a Raging Douchebag!”

Face it, NOTHING brings the collective inner a-holes of society to the surface like the Christmas season. Starting somewhere around August these days we start seeing the first glimmerings of the tinsel to come. Then stores get fully decorated as soon as the black cats and witches hats come down for Halloween. Thanksgiving gets brushed off and then OMG!

It’s Black Friday and the world loses its freaking mind!

From the Friday after Thanksgiving until sometime around the first week of January, you take your life into your hands if you venture to within a mile of a retail establishment. People will SHOOT YOU over a parking spot at the mall. I have personally been given the middle finger by several little old blue haired ladies driving their stretched out Cadillacs around the parking lot of Haywood Mall like the Malachy Brothers and Pinky Tuscadero in a demolition derby.

The Bird — from GRANDMA! That’s what Christmas DOES to people these days.

If you want to visit a breeding ground for strokes and heart attacks, head out to the nearest US Post Office starting around the second week in December. I was in my local station last Thursday to pick up some stamps and this guy a few people back in line from me gets on his cell phone (I will refrain from my “cell phone in public places” rant) and starts pitching a fit with whoever was on the other end. He actually SAID, “I’ll be here for AT LEAST an hour because for some reason EVERY IDIOT in this town brought TEN BOXES to mail!”

Really?

And people accuse ME of going off at the drop of a hat! Dude, word of advice — buy a calendar and some Xanax! Better make it the PURPLE ones too, because you are BEYOND the orange ones.

What I don’t understand is WHY ALL THE FUSS?!

For nearly six solid weeks, the great mass of quietly desperate sheeple run around like AD-HD lemmings on meth buying gifts they can’t afford with money they don’t have to give to people they probably don’t like. Why? Men are forced at bayonet point to put up trees and string lights on those trees and many of those men resort to alcohol in an effort to deal with the madness of trying to make out the color of the one remaining microscopic fleck of paint on the tip of a boxful of artificial tree branches! Is it orange or brown! Makes a difference you know.

We won’t even TALK about the lights. I don’t have the raw numbers, but I’m nearly certain the three leading causes of divorce in America are fights over money, lack of communication, and STRINGING CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON A TREE!

“YES, DEAR, I see the big gaping hole where we need more lights!!”

People don’t enjoy Christmas anymore. They can’t. The “retail therapy” pushers won’t let them. What should be a nice, calm time for friends and family has turned into a materialistic feeding frenzy! My two oldest nephews get more toys and gadgets and stuff at ONE family get-together than Wilson’s Five and Ten’s whole inventory when I was growing up. The push to keep up with the Joneses who don’t even know you exist has driven people to madness.

People will STEAL PRESENTS out of a car. That is almost, but not quite as low as stealing money out of the offering plate as it comes by (not making change in the offering plate, that’s different). I’ve just recently seen women get into hair-pulling, shirt-ripping cat fights over the last Elmo doll — WHILE THEIR KIDS WERE WATCHING!

It’s unbelievable! Folks get trampled to DEATH every year at Wal-marts and Target stores over a sale on DVDs or some such nonsense. A person’s life has become cheaper to society than a round piece of laser etched plastic.

I can imagine Jesus looking over this chaos that — once upon a time — used to be set aside to celebrate His birth and thinking, “Really, guys?”

So watch out for the bird-flipping grannies out there and if you MUST go out to a mall sometime in the next four days, PLEASE be careful! It’s a tinsel wrapped, tiny light strung jungle out there!

Love y’all! Keep those feet clean!

Dec13

Why I Wear Crocs and Shorts in Winter

Posted on by
Standard

I’ll be the first to admit that the inside of my head isn’t a place most people want to visit, much less live or even stay for a while. It gets weird in here at times, even for me and its MY head. I think strange things; not so much “bad thoughts” or “thoughts I shouldn’t think” as much as  “where the blazes do these thoughts come from?” I’m sensitive to odd things. Odd moments make me emotional. Strange things can make me cry.

I also do some strange things. They aren’t strange to me. In fact, they seem quite normal while they are in the planning stages inside my head, but when they break out into the open, they make people look at me oddly. I’ve rather gotten used to it.

I guess one of the strangest things I do — as far as others looking at me goes — is wearing my Crocs and shorts in the coldest weather, often with a short sleeve shirt and no jacket. Folks think this is strange behavior, and they are always asking me why I don’t wear a coat or why am I wearing shoes with holes in them and other, perfectly valid questions. Even though I wear Crocs all the time, they take on a special meaning in winter.

Yes, I do get cold. I am fat and so have a goodly amount of natural insulation and it helps more than you’d think, but my arms get cold and my legs get cold and sometimes, my feet are too cold to feel. Still, I’ve never told anyone before — not even Budge or Mama — why I intentionally let myself get very cold, to the point that sometimes it actually hurts.

Here’s why.

When I’m letting myself get cold, I’m reminding myself that, no matter HOW cold I get — how cold I LET myself get — I’m never going to suffer from the cold in any way as badly as others have. Enduring a tiny bit of frigid discomfort is my small, weird way of honoring those people whose memories lay like limestone blocks on my soul.

No matter how cold I get or how wet and frigid my feet get,  I’ll never be half as cold as the men — boys really — in the trenches of the First World War. My feet aren’t going to go numb and get frostbitten and develop trench foot. I’ll be going into a warm house or car shortly, not standing constantly in ankle-deep water that doesn’t freeze only because the constant movement of men keeps the ice broken up.

No matter how cold I get, I won’t be anywhere near as cold as the political prisoners of the Soviet Union’s GULAGS. I read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich my first year as a teacher. It was hard. These were men, and some women, enduring the Siberian winter with nowhere near enough cold weather gear, working with bricks that would freeze to their hands. Not enough to eat, never warm for months at a time. Ice and snow everywhere, and all the time knowing you’re here because of your beliefs and principles — not any “crime.”

I read Night as a senior in college and I’ve never looked at cold the same since because God knows I won’t be as cold as the poor souls of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Mauthausen or the other hundreds of concentration camps spread throughout the Nazi Reich.

Every time I feel the cold, and especially the biting winds,  slashing into me so I feel myself trying to “draw in” for some relief, I see rows and rows of wretched men, women, and children standing on the appelplatz with snow on their shoulders and no shelter from the Polish winter winds. Standing in the elements, freezing to death for the unspeakable act of being born Jewish, Gypsy, Polish, or Russian.

I think of them trying to sleep on a wooden plank with a “blanket” — more of a worn bed sheet — for warmth, knowing through the winter blackness that dawn would bring no hope, no reprieve only more cold.

PLEASE understand I in no way claim kinship with the Shoah victims. Nothing I could inflict upon myself would approach the deprivations they endured, and certainly a few shivers and goosebumps can scarcely bring their suffering to mind, but I do attempt  to remember. And so, to honor their memory.

When I get bitterly cold, I know a warm shower, hot meal, and invitingly comfortable bed with mounds of warm quilts or an electric blanket await me just inside my home.

So, I know I’ll never fully understand the plight of the homeless in America’s cities, huddled about burning trash barrels, sleeping atop steam grates, stuffing their rags with newspapers — all the time trying to raise their temperature just a degree or so.

All the while enduring not only the biting cold, but also the biting stares of those who’ll never have to worry about their next meal or where they will sleep or what will happen to them if the temperature drops again tonight. Knowing that there, but for the grace of God, do I lie huddled while my fellow-men walk quickly past.

I’m trying to honor and remember these brave, damned souls who fought against Old Man Winter. From Valley Forge with its bloody footprints in the snow, to the bitter winters around the Chosin Reservoir and Inchon during the forgotten Korean War, to the Arctic and Antarctic explorers and all the snowbound, ice rimed humanity in between, in war and in peace, but always in cold.

Men and women, some fighting for God and king, some just down on their luck, many freezing to death far from home, but all denied the most basic human right — the right to be warm.

So that is why I often wear Crocs and shorts without a jacket in winter. It’s not much, but it’s the least I can do.

To give honor; to remember.

Love y’all and don’t forget to keep your feet warm, dry, and clean.

Dec11

Stop Hijacking Jesus

Posted on by
Standard

As a matter of good raising, I don’t normally discuss sex, religion, or politics in polite company. Lately, though, a trend has developed that has me frothing at the mouth and I’ve reached the point of putting my irritation into print.  Therefore, this post will be quite religious and political in places. So, if you are an atheist or you hate religion or you just don’t like reading or talking about spiritual things, here’s your warning. Hit the bricks now and if you still read to the bottom, don’t send me some comment about how “weak-minded” or “old-fashioned” I am to believe the Bible is real or that God is real or that Jesus is real. I’ll take my chances, thank you very much.

So, you’ve been warned.

If you’re still with me, know that what’s driving me nuts (well, MORE nuts) is the growing tendency of people in all forms of public endeavor to drag religion into everything. What has finally pushed my quarter off the table is the rash of comments in my local newspaper by people claiming to speak for Jesus. It’s on my last nerve and it has got to stop.

People need to quit hijacking Jesus.

As an example of what I mean, watch any football game from high school to pro. As soon as a player makes a

I'm pretty sure He don't care, son.

touchdown, he hits a knee or points to the sky in some obvious move to “give thanks” for his touchdown.

Really?

I am not a seminary educated theologian, but I am willing to bet on a few things in the theological sphere and one of those is I’m pretty certain Jesus Christ is not a football fan. Or a baseball fan. Or basketball. Or hockey. . . you get the picture.

See, for those who don’t know, Jesus and His dad, aka. God Almighty, have tasked themselves with the creation and maintenance of the universe. Now, even though being omnipotent makes this task vastly easier and probably does leave time to take in a few quarters of football here and there if They so choose, I just don’t picture Jesus being a football fanatic. Of course, the Saints DID win the Super Bowl last year, but I think that was more on God-given talent than any divine intervention.

Leave Jesus out of the scoring celebrations!

The proper order is "get award" THEN "get drunk!"

Another group that boils my innards and boils my blood over their misappropriation of the Lord’s Name is the lot of “award winners.” Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys. CMAs, AMAs, and Grammys. Stage, screen, or stereo. The medium that is the source of the awards show is irrelevant. They all have the same seriously annoying habit. As soon as they get up on stage and take their pot metal statuette or crystal resin miniature from the vapid, chattering host or hostess, the first thing many of them do is lean into the microphone and say, “I’d like to thank God for this award!”

Really?

Again I appeal to my admittedly self-taught body of Biblical knowledge and I feel very comfortable saying God probably doesn’t care that you won your silly award. After all, He and Jesus sit on thrones (well, technically Jesus is standing at God’s right hand for the moment) in a room vastly beautiful beyond our finite minds’ ability to comprehend. They are surrounded by seraphim and cherubim that do nothing 24/7/365 (366 on leap years) but sing songs more glorious than our greatest songwriter can dream of. Do you really think They stop listening to an angelic choir just to hear Lady GaGa warble out “Bad Romance?”

I’m betting against it.

One other thing before I leave the entertainment industry alone and move on to the REAL target of my derision. If, after receiving your pot metal or crystal resin, you lean into the microphone and drunkenly or doped-upedly slur your thanks to the Almighty, I wouldn’t count on that thanks reaching the ceiling. I am no longer a teetotaler where faith and alcohol come together. My thought is Jesus’ first recorded miracle was turning fetid water into fabulous wine. I don’t think He has a problem with a glass of wine or a cold beer after cutting grass in July in the South.

The whole drunken slurring thing though? Probably not so good. The Bible has several instances of people (usually men) getting drunk and the results are always disastrous and ugly. You may THINK you’re different, but I can pretty much assure you, you’re not.

Leave Jesus out of the “awards ceremonies!”

Now, before I begin blasting away at my most despised blasphemers, let me make clear that I think anyone anywhere can respond to and accept the Gospel, be he a self-indulgent basketball star or be she a babbling, bacon bikini wearing songbird. I have it on good authority that one of my very best friends accepted the Gospel message halfway down a 150′ ravine during the third end over end flip of his 280ZX. One of my former students, a self-proclaimed atheist, hear Jesus’ call in a fighting hole in Afghanistan right after a Taliban bullet made a crease in his armor helmet.

Any time. Anywhere. 24/7/365 (366 in leap years).

Now for my true venom. The group that I despise the most and the absolute WORST Jesus hijackers are POLITICIANS! I am at the point of getting nauseous whenever I hear some scheming, conniving, back-door-dealing Washington sewer dweller talk spout out something like “Our party won control of thus and so because God is on our side!”

Let me go puke.

This wrapping oneself in the Cross covered prayer shawl is completely bipartisan as well. Elephants and Jackasses alike invoke the name of the Lord to hopefully win the passage of some “vital” piece of legislation or, much more likely, to appeal to the “folks back home” who expect their representatives to be moral, preferably Christian, men and women.  Nowhere is this malady worse than here in my beloved Southland. We are a devout people down here. Sure, we may go out on Friday and Saturday nights each week and drink ourselves blind. We may switch from bed to bed like our heads are on fire and our butts are catching. We may swear and spit and carry on, lie, cheat, steal, etc.

But we’ll be in church come Sunday.

We expect the same from our politicians and they deliver. If I hear one more politician say “I feel this is what God would want me to do,” I may collapse into an uncontrollable conniption fit! It wouldn’t be so brazenly blasphemous and hypocritical if the politicians were not so “cafeteria” style about their so-called “heavenly mandate.” A senator can vote to increase the deficit, increase taxes, increase involvements in wars — but he’ll still get elected by a landslide as long as he claims to be staunchly against abortion! A representative can back big business, spit on the middle class, and whore-hop around Washington, DC worse than a Heidi Fleiss call-girl working on a new Ferrari, but as long as he keeps pushing a bill to get prayer back in schools, the people will support him.

535 member congregation and every single one of them is a politician! Who'd a thunk it?

So it goes on with this party claiming divine favor then that party claiming some new revelation. They’ll get up on TV with tears in their eyes as they talk about their conversion experiences in a little country church (he or she may be from Atlanta, Nashville, or Jacksonville but it’s ALWAYS a little country church) when they walked the aisle and let Jesus into their hearts.

All I know is Jesus must be pretty lonely in there since He’s the only thing in that heart.

Let’s get one thing straight and clear once and for all now and forever. Jesus Christ is not a Republican. Jesus Christ is not a Democrat. Jesus Christ is a King and not just ANY king but the King of Kings. Neither He nor His Daddy give two toots in a tornado about our petty earthly politics because They know who ACTUALLY runs this show! It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to Either of Them that Barak Obama defeated John McCain to become POTUS. They. Don’t. Care. They have bigger fish to fry.

So please, all you politicians posturing on a false faith or even a genuine faith that you can’t stop ramming down people’s throats, stop. STOP!

Leave Jesus out of politics.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Dec6

Beam Me Up Adobe!

Posted on by
Standard

You ever just had one of those days?

People are baffling to me sometimes. I try to be caring and understanding of everyone’s little peculiarities and proclivities, but I can not tolerate stupidity. Ignorance, I can deal with. Someone ignorant can be educated and “fixed,” but as Ron White puts it so eloquently, “You can’t fix stupid.” Since I have hypertension already, I attempt to avoid stupid people as much as humanly possible; however, one arena exists where stupidity is not only impossible to avoid, but is also seemingly a prerequisite for the job. I’m talking about the Tenth Circle of Hell known as Customer Service.

 

This school year, Budge’s district switched from a bi-weekly pay schedule to a twice monthly pay schedule. They now get paid on the 15th and 30th of each month. Okay. Fine. Since we have such a definite system in place, I figured I’d try to make my bookkeeping a little simpler by setting up some automatic drafts. We only have two major bills each month — the car payment and the mortgage. Since the mortgage is due on the 20th, I planned to set up to have it drafted from our account on the 16th of each month. That way, the mortgage would get paid early but with enough lead time to make sure the paycheck went in the bank.

This being the 21st century since the Incarnation of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, I logged on to my trusty PC, went to the mortgage company’s website and couldn’t find a form to download and fill out in order to make this transaction happen. I was filled with sorrow because if it isn’t on the website, the only place to get the information is by making the call to (cue the creepy organ music) Customer Service.

Now as anyone knows, Customer Service is the worst misnomer in the long and storied history of misnomers. I am convinced that an IQ somewhere in the vicinity of warm milk, or maybe stale bread, is necessary to be a Customer Service rep. I have yet to only make ONE call to Customer Service anywhere and have my problem fixed. A three call minimum is my usual working plan. This adventure would crawl along similar lines.

I need to make the point right here that I’m talking about Customer Service, which is NEVER to be confused with the high and noble profession that is Technical Support aka “IT”. Tech Support is a horse of a decidedly different hue altogether.

 

REALLY? Why? What freaking good will it do?

Anyway, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, picked up the trusty Uniden, and called. I had no illusion of getting a human on the first ring and I was not disappointed. I was immediately confronted with a quite mellifluous female voice asking me to choose English or Spanish. Then came the litany of choices that included everything except what I wanted. The worst part was this company had gotten smart and pressing “0” didn’t do anything until The Voice gave the caller that choice and, wouldn’t you know it, that was the last choice!?

 

So I pressed Zed and listened to some horrid Muzak for about an hour during which I was reminded at irregular intervals that my “business is vitally important to us and we will answer any questions as soon as the next available operator comes on the line.” Just when I’d started tightening my grip a little unnecessarily on the phone, a woman picked up, gave me her name in a very disturbing nasally voice, and said, “Can I have your name, please?” Done. “Can you verify the address of the home?” Done. “Can you verify your home phone number?” Done. “Last four of your Social please?” Done. “and do you intend to keep the home?” Yes. “Now, Mr. Wham, how may I help you?”

This wasn’t my first rodeo with this company, so I endured this recitation with a certain grim stoicism and asked about the bank draft form. She pointed me to a wildly obscure corner of the website under a heading like “Miscellaneous Garbage Having Nothing to Do with Forms” then asked, “Will there be anything else, Mr. Wham?” I asked for a number I could fax the form to and she said, “Oh, that number is on the form, have a good day, Mr. Wham.” Then she was gone.

I pulled my newly acquired form from the printer and, guess what? NO. FAX. NUMBER. Checked the website. Of course not! Why put an unimportant thing like a fax number on the website? Only one thing to do — call back. Again with the pretty voice and the list and the Muzak and the reminders and then, “hello, this is [someone I can’t recall]” can I have your name please?” Done and at this point, you would think she would see that I hung up with her colleague not 30 seconds ago. You would think, but you’d be wrong. Nope. Whole spiel again, right down to the “Do you intend to keep the home” bit before the “How may I help you?” I asked for the fax number. She gave me the fax number. I thanked her. She hung up. I instructed my fax modem to call their fax. The number she gave me? It wasn’t a fax machine. None of the metallic / mechanical squawking associated with a fax answering a call through good computer speakers.

She gave me the wrong number.

I had to call back, again.

I wasn’t happy anymore.

Dial. Voice. List. Muzak. Reminders. “Hello my name is Slim Shady, can I have your name?” Once again through the entire run of blabber down to “Do you intend to keep the home?” I was sore tempted to say, “No, actually, I’d like to tow it down to your office and shove it somewhere” but I didn’t. I simply said I was given the wrong fax number. Then I asked her if I could just email her a pdf of the form with my voided check attached. She said no, that it had to be sent via snail mail or fax. I pointed out that a pdf would be much clearer and easier to read and that’s when she took the conversation from the ridiculous to the sublime. She said, “Maybe so, sir, but we have to have the check and your signature and you can’t email a pdf with the check and your signature attached.”

Had I not asked the next question, I’d have probably managed to salvage the day with a tiny bit of compassion left for the human race, but nope. Had to ask it.

“Ma’am, are you saying you need the ORIGINAL voided check and my ORIGINAL signature?”

“Yes, sir!”

“But you’ll take a fax?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Ma’am, by any chance do you know who installed your fax?”

“No, sir, why do you ask?”

“Because, honey, if his name wasn’t Montgomery Scott or Gene Roddenberry, that fax machine AIN’T GONNA SEND YOU AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENT!!”

And I hung up.

Without getting the fax number.

So I had to call back

. . . again.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean!

 

Dec2

Please Do Not Antagonize the Crazy People

Posted on by
Standard

I went to the unemployment office first thing after dropping Budge off this morning. Even though my Tier 1,2, and 3 benefits are exhausted, the office is advising everyone to keep registering for the next tier (4 in my case) in the fleeting hope that the Elephants and Donkeys will reach a 12th hour compromise and 2,000,000 people won’t lose their benefits as a Christmas present.

Anyway, I left and hit up Hardee’s for a nice gravy biscuit and sat working my crossword puzzles until it was time to go see Dr. Stephens, my psychiatrist. Dr. Stephens is phenomenal. He has been a big help and he’s the only mental health professional, besides Dr. Catherine, that I trust. He is a specialist — one of the only ones in SC —  in child psychiatric treatment and I sometimes think that’s why he’s so good at helping me . . . he’s on my level!

Actual photograph of my psychiatrist's office manager!

Well, the visit with him went fine, but then I had to confront (cue the ominous music) The Creatures of the Front Desk!

See, Dr. Stephens doesn’t have his own office. He leases space, along with a dump truck load of other doctors, in a building owned by one of the older psychiatrists. In exchange for 40% of his patient income (I really don’t want to think about how much he must be making — he drives a Dodge Viper AFTER paying rent) he gets a front office that sets his appointments, does his insurance filing, does his billing, and drives his (and ever other doctor’s) patients INSANE, which may be redundant since this is a psychiatrist’s office in the first place.

Therein lies the problem! These harpies at the front desk seem to absolutely DELIGHT in making visits to this office as miserable as possible. They are shrewish, shrill, and about as useful / helpful as a screen-door on a submarine. Now did I mention that this is a PSYCHIATRIST’S OFFICE? These “ladies”, to use the term loosely, are fiendish experts — knowingly, willfully, or not — at cranking up the stress on people and some of these people you REALLY don’t want stressed any further than they already are. I’ve seen folks come into the waiting room red-faced and shaking, or crying uncontrollably and these women are more interested in making sure they have a current copy of an insurance card.

Not everyone I’ve dealt with at the front desk has been so difficult. As a matter of fact, two of my former students once worked there as office staff, but the Queen Bee, who could have been a lead actress in Gossip Girls if she was 20 years younger, eventually ran them off. They were sweet girls and sweetness is not rewarded in the Lair of the Gorgons. I have no idea why the doctor who owns the building keeps her around. I’ve asked Dr. Stephens and Dr. Catherine before she left and they don’t know why either. The only reason I can come up with is the same reason people like her manage to keep positions all over the world when their workplace would run so much better without them:

They know where all the bodies are buried and they have pictures.

I swear this guy has stood in front of me to check out. Does he REALLY look like someone you want antagonized? Just saying.

I’ve seen — actually seen with my own two eyes — one of these women pretty much berate to tears a lady who was bringing her teenage son in to see my doctor. I know the family because I taught the oldest child about seven years ago when this kid was in third grade or so. His sister used to tell me stories. The kid was rough back then. That young man has more issues than National Geographic not the least of which is a violent streak a mile wide, but the one thing he cherishes above anything else in the world is his mama.

Those women had no idea how lucky they were. It’s all well and good to say “I’ll call the police” but the police take time to arrive and some of the people who come through that office could do a lot of damage before the cops got there. He once attacked a neighbor who accidentally backed into his mama’s new car because he thought it would make his mama cry. He’s REALLY touchy over his mama. Issues. National. Geographic.

Even more than that rare side of things though, what drives me to distraction about them is the callousness.

Most of the patients the doctors see are really depressed or have terrible anxiety issues or other painful emotional problems. Is it so difficult to be a little kinder? The front desk staff acts like the money they are collecting is going directly into their pockets. It’s not, so chill a bit people.Why add another bad day incident to a person who is already having too many bad days as it is?

I tend to agree completely.

All I know is, I had some borderline psychotic students in my classes through the years and I was always on the greatest of terms with them. Kindred spirits? Dunno. Other teachers couldn’t understand how I could be so tolerant, patient and calm with these terrors. I told them it was simple self preservation instinct. Whenever they wanted to know how being nice to the “wild bunch” was self preservation I had one simple answer:

“When they come in with a gun one day, I want them to remember they LIKED me enough to say, ‘Hey, Coach, you were good to me . . . I’ll shoot you last!” Any port in a storm, right?

Y’all take care and be better to each other than these Jenny Green Teeth are and, as always, keep those feet clean!

Love y’all!

Dec1

This Way to the Road Rage!

Posted on by
Standard

Circus showman PT Barnum had a problem. His sideshow attractions were so enthralling that people dawdled along at too leisurely a pace. He needed some way to get the flow of traffic moving. His answer was a wonderful new exhibit called “The Egress.” Barnum had a huge colorful sign made up and installed near the final exhibit of the sideshow proclaiming “THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!” It worked like a charm. People flocked to the “new exhibit” and traffic sped up allowing Barnum to make more money.

Imagine the people’s surprise and possible irritation when they discovered that “egress” is the Latin word for “exit” and instead of a fascinating new exhibit, they found themselves standing outside the sideshow’s one way door!

I witnessed something this morning I’m pretty sure evoked the same reactions. I’ve been watching the news all day to see if anyone ended up murdered as a result of road rage.

See, what had happened was . . .

A group of guys from my church meet every other Wednesday at IHOP off Woodruff Road around 7-7:15ish to catch up with each other, have some pancakes and usually a laugh before starting the day. Today is Wednesday and hand to Heaven, gun to my head I could not remember if we met last week or if this week was the meeting. I mean, I do good to remember what I had for supper the night before; a week? Please!

So, I dropped Budge off for bus duty at school and headed on up to see if today was the right day or not.

Not to actual scale.

When I got to 385 from the Connector, I noticed traffic had already started getting sluggish, which is nothing unusual for that stretch of road, but it did seem a little early. It was a 20-30 mph slog northbound with the usual brake tapping and lane weaving. I figured a wreck or something else equally awful must be just ahead to slow things down this soon in the day.

 

Nope. A brown, late-model Ford F-150 was sitting in the center median straddling the cable fence that runs the length of I-385. The fence is meant to stop the deadly head on collisions that were becoming all too common on the highway when a car would lose control, cross the relatively flat median, and plow into oncoming traffic in the other lanes.

Apparently, the fence had done its job well. The aforementioned truck was nicely strung up around the back axle and the whole vehicle was cocked over to the side. Looked like the crash took out about five posts as well. In any event, that’s ALL THERE WAS TO SEE! No wreck. No bloody dismemberment or other carnage. Not even a woeful morning commuter trying to explain to one of Mauldin’s finest why he had nearly ripped the radar off the cruiser’s dashboard.

Other than the truck sitting in the median, the road was clear. The traffic was slowing down because fools were rubbernecking a lone truck in the middle of the median. Even the driver was gone already. The truck had an orange tag on the windshield from the SC Highway Patrol so this Ford had been sitting in its spot for a good while.

I just shook my head and drove on to IHOP thinking little of it. Of course, this was the wrong Wednesday and the guys were not, in fact, gathered around pancakes which was actually a bit of a relief since I had forgotten it was Wednesday altogether and had on my ratty shorts and a Hawaiian shirt Budge swears contains a phallic symbol. I can’t find it. Go figure.

So I circled the parking lot and went down the on ramp to head home. As I neared the forlorn Ford, I noticed traffic was getting both heavier AND slower. Driving on, I saw it was worse. This single abandoned brown truck had brought traffic to a gridlocked standstill  from just past the Bridges Road exit all the way back to the West Georgia Road exit. For my handful of readers who are not from Simpsonville, SC, the rolling traffic jam was about THREE MILES LONG and growing steadily.

I-385 was a parking lot. I saw big rigs almost jackknife as they ran up on the tail of the jam all unexpectedly. Cars were slamming on brakes and, faintly over the sound of my iPod, I heard the symphony of horns. An LA scale traffic jam had come to Simpsonville.

OVER A PARKED TRUCK!

I wish I’d had a way to get back to the median and hold up a huge sign saying “IT’S JUST A TRUCK PEOPLE! JIMMY HOFFA’S BODY HASN’T BEEN DISCOVERED IN THE MEDIAN OF I-385!!”

 

IT'S JUST A TRUCK, PEOPLE! GEEZ!!

As it was, I just pulled off on the next exit and shook my head as the jam continued to build. Knowing Upstate drivers like I do, it wouldn’t have surprised me if some Bubba in a jacked up Bigfoot wannabe with 54″ Super Swamper tires hadn’t taken to the median and tried to beat the traffic with an end around. It also wouldn’t have been a shock if I’d seen someone pull a gun. Early in the morning? Bad economy? Layoffs coming this close to Christmas? I imagine a few of those cars were carrying powder kegs waiting to explode into action ala’ Michael Douglas in Falling Down and lay down a curtain of hot lead at all these people who were screwing with their day and their happiness. So far, I haven’t heard or seen any reports of death or injuries though and I’m certainly glad.

 

So just remember the next time you are sitting backed up in traffic and ready to kill someone in the car in front of you, someone may be mangled and dead in a pile of twisted metal up ahead in which case, your grousing, middle fingering, and horn blowing is going to be pretty tasteless and you should be ashamed.

On the other hand . . . it may be just a truck.

Hope y’all don’t run up on any traffic jams any way soon! Keep those brake pedal feet clean and remember who loves y’all!

Take care now!

Nov23

Don’t ask, just eat it.

Posted on by
Standard

Budge and I were having a discussion on the way to school this morning about Thanksgiving dinner coming up and all when she broached the subject of what kind of -vore humans are. Someone had once told her that we are anatomically designed to be herbivores because of our extended digestive tracts and lack of sizable canine teeth. Apparently, whoever told her that figures all meat eaters have to have short colons and saberteeth, but who really knows. Anyway, I assured her that humans are, in fact, omnivores and I offered as proof the fact that people the world over will eat pretty much ANYTHING.

To quote Mr. Jerry Clower, "slick, slimy, boiled okra!"

Just take my wonderful homeland of Dixie. People down here eat something called collard greens. If you Yankees and other foreigners want a good idea of what collard greens are, next time you cut grass, empty your mower bag into a 20 quart stock pot and boil for about four days. Add vinegar. Enjoy. People around here love that stuff. To me, it looks like someone already had a go at it before me.

Another godawful Southern “delicacy” is boiled okra. If you don’t know what okra is, google it. Once you have a picture of this strange vegetable in your mind, picture it boiled and canned. People love it. I believe those people also ate their own boogers when they were small as well because boiled okra is as close to snot as you can get outside a nose.

We southern boys don’t have the market cornered on strange stuff to eat though. Look at Scotland. Their national dish is some concoction called “haggis” which I’m pretty sure is Gaelic for “this is made out of what?!!” Haggis is a bunch of chopped up meat bits — the origins of which are better left unknown — topped off with oatmeal and spices. The whole kit’n’kaboodle is chopped up, swirled around, salted, and stuffed into a SHEEP STOMACH, sealed up, and boiled. People in kilts everywhere eat this.

My, my, my! Doesn't that stuffed sheep stomach look delish?

See, it’s dishes like haggis that make me wonder about our distant ancestors. I mean, look at eggs. Who is the first caveman to stare at a chicken and say to his hirsute brethren, “Ug, omaoma mooka go mabab mambo,” which loosely translated from Old High Caveman means, “I think I’ll eat the next thing that drops out of that bird’s butt!” You stop to think about that a minute. If these old boys had mistaken a rooster for a hen, breakfast could be a WHOLE lot different to us today.

Truthfully though, people will eat anything that can’t get away from them. In several parts of the world including Iceland, most of Scandinavia, and great swathes of Southeast Asia, people eat fermented fish. Basically, they bury, box, or barrel up a bunch of fish with some salt and stuff and wait. Eventually, the stuff rots enough and they bring it out and slap it on a cracker! Um, um good! REALLY?! Who was walking down the beach and came across a fish carcass riddled with scavenger holes and thought to himself, “I bet this would taste awesome with a little salt on a Ritz,” ?! In Norway, and parts of Minnesota by extension, they mix herring in with lye to make a concoction called lutefisk. Folks, if the recipe says, “add two cups of Drano to the fish mix,” y’all can just leave me out.

Of course, I mentioned Southeast Asia and I know we’ve all heard the jokes, but some of it isn’t a joke. Dog, cat, and rat are all considered delicacies in places like Thailand and Vietnam. The country folk in those nations don’t make a big ceremony out of it either. They’ll just stick a field rat on a skewer and pop it over a fire. Next thing you know, roasted rat.

Now please understand that I’m not making light of anyone’s plight. Some people eat what is available and I understand that, but someone explain “fugu fish” connoisseurs to me. For those that don’t know, raw fugu (or puffer fish) is considered a delicacy in Japan and commands HUGE sums of money. Just one little problem — if the chef doesn’t prepare the sashmi PERFECTLY, you will die about thirty minutes after dinner and that’ll really put a crimp in your movie plans, now won’t it? These people are eating something they KNOW will KILL them if just a tiny little bit of the wrong organ is missed in preparation. The aficionados of fugu claim to like the “thrill” of cheating death as well as the pleasant “tingling sensation” even properly prepared fugu creates on the tongue.

Right! I’ll stick with my Long John Silver’s fried shrimp thank you.

Ah! Casu marzo! Smooth and piquant, with a nutty, maggoty overtone!

Still, just to show I’m not trying to bash the Orient, people in Sardinia have a local favorite called “casu marzo.” This is a local cheese that is so “good” it’s illegal. Actually, the legality of the cheese has nothing to do with it’s flavor. No, casu marzo is made by leaving strong goat or sheep cheese out for flies to infest with maggots. Yes. You read that correctly. Part of the preparation is to have maggots crawl through the cheese. Apparently, the maggots “pre-digest” the cheese and give it a unique taste and texture not possible any other way. Of course, you can’t eat the cheese with the maggots in it because this particular species of “cheese maggot” is impervious to the hydrochloric acid present in our stomachs. That’s right. Our stomach contents can dissolve steel, but these maggots just swim right through it. Then, all nice and warm in the digestive tract, they can — and have — munch right through the intestinal wall into the body cavity and that boys and girls produces a little condition we like to call septicemia or septic shock. Simply put, forget and eat a maggot with your cheese cracker; die a painful, lingering death.

All for a piece of cheese? Really? So who looked at a hunk of cheese someone accidentally left on the table in the garden and now it’s crawling with maggots and thought to himself, “I bet those maggots made that cheese something special. I think I’ll try some!” Wow.

So yes. Humans are most definitely omnivores. If it grows out of the ground or beneath it, if it crawls, runs, swims or flies, someone, somewhere will put some ranch dressing on it, munch it up, and wash the whole thing down with a coke.

All I can say is, “ewww.” I think I’ll just stick with ice cream and McNuggets!

Love y’all and keep your feet clean . . . unless you want your toe cheese to become casu marzo!!

Nov20

Unstoppable is a fun ride!

Posted on by
Standard

Budge had a great idea yesterday. She finished grading the week’s worth of fourth graders’ work much earlier than usual so she asked me out on a date. Since I’ve been out of work going on two years now, date nights are few and far between, so I figured we’d just pay a bill late and go have a little fun.

We’d both wanted to see Unstoppable with Denzel Washington and Chris “the new Captain Kirk” Pine ever since we caught a trailer on one of the trailer sites. Denzel is one of my favorite actors ever and I really enjoyed Chris Pine’s portrayal of Kirk in the Star Trek reboot, so we went to Hollywood 20 and took in the 3:10 matinee.

Apparently some movie about a bunch of teenage wizards fighting some evil dude was released the same day, so our theater was sparsely populated, which is great because I get wildly claustrophobic in crowds. I’ve only broken down four times in ten years and actually gone to the opening weekend of a blockbuster and that was once for each installment of Lord of the Rings and once for Star Trek. Otherwise, I let everyone get his fill and go once things have quieted down.

So, popcorn in hand, we took our seats.

The movie was great. Now don’t get me wrong; it’s no Oscar vehicle, but it’s not over the top ridiculous either. The good guys are easy to root for and the bad guys don’t get much air time . . . except for the runaway train, which is pretty much on screen tons. Both leading men turned in solid performances and several supporting members, including one or two you are certain at the beginning will grate on your nerves, actually become quite likable and you start rooting for them as much as Denzel and Chris.

Like I said, it’s not an Oscar winner at all, but if you want a fun, low key, high adrenaline way to pass an afternoon, this short (99 minutes) but action packed film is just perfect. It’s even got enough “romance” to sneak in as a possible date night movie for someone other than old married couples.

If you do go see it, though, I have one request. Please comment and tell me your theory on where in the world Ned had that nice, pressed three piece suit stashed for the entire film! If you see the movie, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Love y’all and have a good rest of the weekend!

Keep those feet clean.