Stupid is as Stupid Does

Update:  Ahhh, C. Neul is a modern day prophet.  lol.  Thanks for reminding me of your psychic abilities.

I was all set to write a post of the stupidity of BofA newly announced $5 monthly fee for using your debit card.

I was all set to jump on the greedy bankers bandwagon.  Yes, I KNOW I've spent most of my career in that industry, which was why I was all set to get up in BofA's face about the increased costs that will result of people writing checks instead of using their debit cards. 

I was all set to tell you readers to close your account.

I was all set to explain the inner workings of the banking industry to the executives making this stupid decision.  I had half the post written

But I forgot.

I forgot that last year Dick Durbin's amendment to the Frank/Dodd bill was passed which limited the fees banks are allowed to charge retailers for electronic debit fees, cutting the fees in half.

Those fees are estimated to result in a loss of 6.6 BILLION dollars of revenue for the banks according to a WSJ article today.

I recalled the idiocy of the amendment when I heard the connection today on the radio.

This is where people JUST DON'T GET IT.  If any company is now restricted in a certain aspect of their revenue by some clueless branch of the government, the company will find another avenue to make up the loss of revenue.

How hard is that to understand?  Honestly? 

You don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to have predicted that the banks would find another route to revenue.

Yeah, it's all about those evil bankers.  Unfortunately for those that voted for this amendment, the connection between their passage of stupid regulations and the increase in customer fees has been reported on all the news. 

Oh, but I'm sure the retailers that are now profitting from the decrease in fees are going to pass that decrease down to their products, right? 

RIGHT?

Bridges of Orange County - He Said, She Said

The "new" old general store.

The old general store has been buried in a watery grave for about forty years now.  Swimming with the fishies, not too far away is the ancient rickety bridge that we would cross slowly in our car, eyeing every broken board always wondering if today was going to be the day it would finally give way.

Crossing that bridge was not just crossing a small creek into the small southern Indiana town formerly known as Newton Stewart.  The bridge was actually a time machine transporting us back into a world that time forgot. 

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go.  And so it was on the roads that took us from grandma to grandma in our southern Indiana roots.  From one small town known in the 70's for it's high school basketball fame (before class basketball ruined the sport forever for Indiana) through French Lick, the hometown of Larry Bird and back into the past.

Sometimes our advancement of progress towards getting from one place to another completely destroys the simple beauty of extremely winding roads and those quick hills where my dad would press on the gas just at the top to give us kids the "tickle-belly hills" we loved so much. 

Indiana is for the most part, just some flat piece of land where people travel from a state out east to a state out west.  But southern Indiana breaks away just a bit with a little vertical diversity that to this day tugs at my heart strings. 

The 15 miles from Loogootee Indiana to French Lick consists of ever so slightly elevating hills and winding turns reminicient of the old movie Duel, without the wide open spaces.  No one wants to get stuck behind some slowpoke, likewise no one appreciates the idiots that think they should take the wet-your-pants turns at break-neck speeds slightly pushing you with their front bumper.

Getting there is half the fun.  That's what we used to experience on the drive from French Lick to Newton Stewart.  The 12 miles from French Lick to Newton Stewart was even more adventurous.  Sure, nothing like scaling a mountainside, but it was certainly a thrill to four rugrats packed into the back seat of a 1958 push button transmission Chrysler wagon.   (OK, I'm making up the year and make of the car.  I know we had a push button transmission wagon, but I don't know the year or make,  I googled that part, but I'm sure CnC or my brother Mike can straighten that part out quickly).  I do remember it looked something like this, so you guys can figure it out.

This was back in the days where no parent thought anything wrong with letting a three year old ride the whole trek standing up in the front seat.  Of  course no one would consider that today, but back in the early sixties, this was  the equivalent of taking your kid to King's Island.  I never became a bullet out the windshield nor did I ever get thrown out of the back of a pick-up truck.   It was just routine travel back in those days.  I can relish that freedom while still never considering doing that with my grandkids today.  Sure, they are safer, but they'll also never know that feeling of having the wind whip around you like you could fly. 

Beam me back, Scotty.

So once transported across the time travel machine bridge, we would experience life as it had been since the 30's. 

My grandparent's owned the old general store just past the bridge.   The old store (pictured above is the "new" one) made Floyd's barber shop on the Andy Griffith show look like a modern-day hack.  It was a decaying building, housing the post office, the cabinet type refrigerators full of Choc Ola, Double Cola, Grape NeHi and Orange Crush, 

Remembering the store now, it seems as though it had everything that one would imagine out of an old time Hollywood movie, right down to the wood burning stove and the old men sitting around smoking cigars and cigarettes and telling old men stories. One of the old guys was asked once why he always wore the same pair of pants. He replied, "Well, I figured the new dirt just knocks out the old dirt, so it just really doesn't matter much."

Up the big hill stood my grandparent's home.

My grandmother gave birth to 15 children, 11 of them lived to be adults.  She lost her youngest (my uncle Kenny's twin) and her oldest within a week of each other due to the flu epidemic sometime in the 1920's.  She also lost a set of twins, all before my father was born on Christmas Day 1931. 

Up until the time my grandmother was forced to give up her home in the early 70's to make way to what is now Patoka Lake, there was no running water in her home and only an outhouse for a bathroom facility.   I can remember pumping water from the pump that sat on her porch onto my hand to slurp the fresh cool water.  I will also never forget the smell and general yuckiness of having to use the outhouse.

If you trekked out along the small stream that ran through the town you would come upon a clearing that was filled with arrowheads and Indian beads left there from a century or more before.

When the state of Indiana came knocking on my grandmother's door wanting her land, she asked to be allowed to stay on her property and maintain the general store and post office as that area sat atop a hill and was the only area of the former Newton Stewart that was not flooded for the lake.   Her request was denied and she and my uncle were forced to give up the home and move to nearby French Lick.

Of course the move was hard for her, but it did allow her to live her remaining few years in a house that had all of the conveniences that nearly all homes had long ago possessed.  Running water and an indoor bathroom.

I remember the rumor at the time that the caskets of the soon-to-be flooded cemetary would also go under a watery grave and that they would only take a shovel of dirt from each grave and place that dirt to a new location.  I doubt the story is true as I've unfortunately had to return to the cemetary where most of my dad's family is buried, including those children that died before my dad was even born. 

Several years ago, I returned to the area where my grandparent's house stood.  The house is long gone and the "new" general store was being used as a supply shed of some type.  The road that led us to her house now only remains a vague clearing between the old trees and I narrowed my eyes to remember that hill that led down to the old store and the rickety bridge.  I mourned the loss of the time travel bridge and the generations that will never know that under all that water lay many never to be discovered arrow heads. 

The path to get to the town f/k/a Newton Stewart still passes over the great Tillrey Hill.  The road has been smoothed out to a pristine boring flat straight path.  It's been graded into just a tall incline and I feel sad that there is now a whole generation of kids that are driven over the hill and have no concept of thrill of topping that hill, which used to feel you were on the front car of a roller coaster when you crested at the top, unable to see the road beneath you.  Where a dad can gun the gas pedal of the car right at the top and send their little tummies into a quick trip up and spread the giggles throughout the car like a roar.  They will never hear their fathers tell the story about being a little kid growing up in the 30's whose older brothers would scare them with made-up stories of the crazy lady that rode a pig sidesaddle while she stalked young boys along the stream. 

Are there any roads and bridges that still exist today that allow a youngster to go back in time?  Something tells me they have all been paved over or flooded away forever in the name of progress.   Yes I can get there faster, but now the generic lake that flooded the time travel bridge has no magical properties, so why would I want to waste my time?  Getting to Nowhere, Indiana faster seems to be a pointless journey. 

My dad trailing some of the Newton Stewart kids

What He Said

NOW We're Talkin'

Hopefully the start of something big.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/24/us-usa-campaign-winner-idUSTRE78N2RE20110924

I Left My Heart....

And just lost what I used to consider some of the best music ever.  Can Not, Will Not EVER listen to any Tony Bennett song again. 

Where I Make No Apologies for Who I AM.

It is not blood that runs through my veins, but the splash of a quick summer rain on a too hot day when it pelts down quenching the thirst of my parched back yard leaving it's sweet smell along the way.

The very cells in my skin.  They tell me I should only enjoy the salty air of a nearby ocean, a mere day's drive away.  But in fact, they are packed with the Indiana clay that will never go away.  Not from my skin, not from under my fingernails.  They are permanently part of who I am, what I believe and ultimately what I would not want to spend one single moment forgetting.

I cannot deny I love fresh caught seafood, but that cannot compare to the smell of my hands after man-handling a tomato plant in early July to taste the uncomparable goodness of a red ripe fresh picked Indiana tomato while it's still warm from the summer sun.  Or the dry smell when driving past a field of corn growing in a farmer's field. 

To walk out your backdoor and slice your arms just a bit on the corn stalks that some people only recognize from Field of Dreams and grab a half dozen ears of the Ambrosia sweet corn before a refrigerator has began to spoil the best of your supper for the night.

To bask in the glory of a morel mushroom in those first fine days of May, where we listen to the roar of the race cars at 200 mph while frying those smells throughout the wide open house.

Knowing all this goodness will be quashed under some gloomy dark sky that pervades this middle part of America during those thousands of days in that short month of February.

The place I despise in the winter is the very place that I love all of the days of the year.    I wouldn't trade this boring, flat piece of nowhere for all of the cement and plastic and nothingness that I see on my TV from the glorious elitest who attempt to explain to me that I am not like them.

You're damned right.  I am not.  

So, I'll leave you with the best of the best.  A bit of Pete Fountain, who knows in which state his greatest fan lives.   This courtesy of one of my best friends, whose father gave Pete his entire unparallelled collection when Pete's was drowned under Katrina. 



And I long for my Indiana home.

Technologically Challenged.

Figures.  The old man is just like every other man.  Guess where he gets sidetracked.  At least she keeps her mind on task.



H/T Beej.

The Enemy

For the past five and a half months I have had to work with the most vile creature God ever created.  In fact, I'm not entirely certain God did create him, every morning I'm quite sure he came straight from the gates of hell.  Sometimes I imagine I can still smell the evil foul stench of the day he was created.

From the first minute I walk in the door he begins to mock me.  No one else seems to notice, at least not like I do.  Although there is no expression, I can tell from the minute I round the corner that he will delight in another day of torture.

Literally from the moment I sit down until the last second where I run for the elevator at the end of the day he relishes in the pain he delivers.  Every position I take in those godless hours, he jabs me another blow.  Sometimes I spend the day taking stand after stand just to avoid the torture I get if I only sit back and attempt to be passive.  Passivity is not in my nature, but I try.  Honestly, I try. 

In my mind I dream all day long about picking him up and slamming him through the 5th floor window.  Would that give me some satisfaction?  Maybe, probably. 

I could be the forgiving type if he would just leave me the hell alone, but day after day, hour after hour he is there, waiting for me.  One wrong move, and I seem to be making a lot of them and he punishes me for hours on end.

I've worked with the evil before, but this is different.  This time I have no power.   I can only sit back and let him torture me.   There is no escape except for my flight at the end of the work day.  I can only pray that this vile, torturous creature will not follow me to my next job as he did with my last one.

In most cases I would never think of publishing such things that might label me someone that complains about their work environment to this extent.  But I have decided to fight back...the only way I can.  Through this post.

I have made the decision.  I will post his vile image here and I will revel if suddenly it goes viral and the entire world will associate his picture among the other evil forces this world possesses.

I hope you don't think lesser of me for doing what I would normally never do.  I know his picture will not reflect how truly evil he is, but trust me on this one.  I hate him.  HATE him.

Here, for all the world to see is the most torturous monstrosity ever created.

Ahhhh. The Sweet Taste of an Ordinary Life Returns

Just walked into a downtown restaurant when a Fred Sanford look-alike was shuffling out. I moved before he could reach me and then he said, "Look out Old Woman". I laughed. He didn't. I don't care I still think it was funny.

UPDATE:  Not only THAT, but I was actually able to be at two places at one time today.  Amazingly enough, while I was posting this at a Steak-n-Shake in Indianapolis, I was also apparently in San Jose, California at the exact same time.  How cool is that?  Well, that's where the IP address showed up anyway.  Which is interesting since Steak-n-Shake is actually an Indianapolis based company.  

I'd label that time travel, but it would be more accurately space travel. 

The Bliss of Innocence

She didn't know.

And she was only mildly interested.

I don't know how we got on the subject, but I'm sure it was spurred by the 10th anniversary.

So we talked a bit about Flight 93. 

I tried to not let my emotions overtake my discussion of explaining to her the facts of flight 93.

OK, she's young, but not young enough not to remember 9/11.  She was around 16 or so at the time.  How could she not have any facts at all about the first soldiers of 9/11.  Those brave passengers that were drafted into the war but were also our very first volunteers in that war we didn't know yet was being waged against us.  Have there ever been drafted and yet volunteer soldiers before in our great nation?  

They did not choose to be soldiers, but they did choose to volunteer to fight, to prove that Americans will not stand idly by when called to serve.

And she didn't know about them.  I wonder if she knows who Mark Bingham was?  I know she has some best friends who are gay, as do I, but does she know that a strong gay soccer player was a hero who gave his life fighting in our war against our enemy?    Did she know that he called his mom, left a voice mail where he identified himself as not only Mark, but Mark Bingham as if she didn't know his last name.  Did she know that this guy, that people claim the TEA party hate (we do NOT), was one of the very first volunteer soldiers on the war against terror.

Did she not listen to ANY news, regardless of whether I consider them liberal mainstream or whether I  believe they at least attempt to report the news somewhat unbiasedly?

Maybe because the majority of her life has been spent under this new insecurity that I did not know until I was 42 years old.  Maybe she's just a kid that just is not interested in the news, politics or anything outside of her world.  I don't remember being so disinterested in things in my mid-20's but maybe I was. 

Did  I spend my mid-20's not caring about anything outside of what would affect me that day?

I do know that when I was eligible to vote at 18, I did not.  I remember the rhetoric of how Reagan was a war monger.  I remember hearing only bits and pieces of how he was going to start a war with the USSR.  Thankfully, since I was completely ignorant on what's important, I did not vote in the first election when I was eligible.

Four years later I apparently knew bettter.  I'd have to google who actually ran against Reagan in his second election.  I do know that I voted for Reagan when he ran four years later.  I voted for Bush four years after that and I was sickened by Clinton's election eight years later.

Little did I know that I would long for the days of Bill Clinton.

George Bush was not my first choice for a Republican candidate after that.  I really thought Bob Dole was a great hero and would be our next President. 

Little did I know that just a few days after 9/11 President Bush would give me the comfort that America might endure.

Yes I believe we are safer today than we were ten years ago on the last day of my naivety.   But make no mistake, I believe we are just a breath away from losing our freedoms.  When we have citizens of this great country cheering when an American flag is burned but telling us we are not free to fly those flags for fear of offending someone.  That we are not allowed to say a prayer even though that right is granted to me by the First Amendment.

Today we still have people who hate our freedoms and sadly, not all of them are some crazed Islamic extremist.  Too many of them have grown up right here, under the very freedom that was bought for them by the blood of our soldiers.

So we've protected America and we've protected our youth.  But that protection has apparently evolved into dangerously insulating our youth.  We've insultated them in just ten short years by having them not even knowing the basic facts of 9/11.  Flight 93 meant nothing to this sweet little girl.  I explained to her why all the passengers of the other flights cooperated with the hijackers.  She didn't understand that up until that day, the playbook was go along with the hijackers and you would likely be safe.  She didn't know that the hijackers used box cutters and didn't understand why those would have been effective until just even a little information into Flight 93 allowed those heroes to know differently.

I wish I could envy her innocence.  I really do.  But that would put me in the passenger seat of a flight bound for the World Trade Center.  I would rather choose to be a passenger on flight 93 and know that those SOB's did not determine my fate, but I would choose my method of death.  Make no mistake Cindy Sheehan-types there is no longer a flight-full of passengers that would have chosen a fate other than those on 93 given the proper information.

I believe those people of every gender, religion, race, and sexual preference are true heroes, but I also maintain every group of Americans bound on such a flight, given the situation and the knowledge they had at the time would do the same. 

"As long as there is not an airplane crashing into this building, you're having a good day."

Let's Roll.

When Evil Calls Itself a Martyr

When all your hopes come crashing down.
Someone will pull Her from the rubble.
There She Stands.



If I haven't posted this before....well, shame on me.

NOT America's Mayor

Hey Dumbass.

NO. The separation of church and state is NOT part of the Constitution.

Read it sometime, you might learn something.

Sorry, just couldn't help letting the man who is not America's Mayor get to me with his exclusion of any clergy of any type and no firefighters or police being part of the 9/11 memorial in NYC this weekend. And today, faced with the outrage over this controversy actually said, "There IS a separation of church and state in the Constitution."   If I had to learn the Constitution in high school government class, is it too much for our politicians to know what it says?

THIS, my friends is what's wrong with America.

And THIS IS America's Mayor. 

“The microphone will not melt if we have religious leaders at the 9/11 Memorial.”

I Thought He Looked Familiar

Just sayin'.

Whoooo Are You, Who Who Who Who.

I wonder sometimes.

Well, I wonder when I go to the Recent Visitors link and I find someone who regularly visits this boring little blog of mine that seems to have no substantive value other than my own misguided belief that I had something to say worth reading.  There's probably a half dozen posts or so that I think are worth reading, other than that, I just have a boring little life in middle America.

So I wonder when I see someone visit often that I cannot place because they never comment.  And I wonder how they got here, why they read my posts and who they are.  I used to get regular visits from someone that worked for a local law firm.  Then, poof.  They were gone, or at least gone from reading occasionally at work. 

I get way too many visitors from all over the world looking up the picture of Swanson's chicken broth, which directs them to recipe on homemade chicken and noodles where I say I DON'T use that stuff.  Bet Swanson isn't too happy about that.

Got one this week from someone who googled, "Vietnamese prostitutes of the "60s".  Hilariously enough, it took them to my post about Jane Fonda.  Serves her right.

I can tell that Average Joe lives approximately 30 miles from me.  And since I know where GB and CJ live, I always assume visits from their part of the country are them.  Some people are easy because I visit their site regularly too and they tell where they're from.  That can lead to some interesting misunderstandings when Dana thought I was one of her asshat relatives that hijacked her blog.

I get a post now and then from Babs, so I know whenever I see a visit from that area, it's likely her, but I have no idea how she ended up at this godforsaken blog.  Hi Babs.

Then I have some people that read and comment semi-regularly, but they never show up in the IP addresses.  It's like they're IP ghosts or something, but I'm glad they visit.

The last one comes from someone that comes here often and never comments.  I wonder who you are Denver.  I suppose I don't have to know, but thanks for stopping by anyway.  I have never been to Denver and hear it's just beautiful.  Got an email from a recruiter a week ago asking about whether I would accept a 6 month contract there.  The job was an exact match for my background, so I spouted off an hourly rate double what I've ever made, but still "cheap" by consulting standards and got a quick response back.  Checked out the recruiter's background and company and it's legit.  I'm assuming he sent my information on.   While it would be odd to commute every week, it would be nice to make that kind of dough for half a year.  And it's not like it would be having to go somewhere like Gary, probably the ugliest city in America.

So hello all you people I don't know.  Glad you come past.  Well except for those 500 or so that google chicken broth.  They just get on my nerves.