Pic of the Day
Thoughts as they occurred to The Wise I during the week just passed. The thoughts run the gamut but all are from a smart, and humble, mind.
Heh.
Mike Huckabee...a Pleasant Surprise
I don't watch former Arkansas Governor's Fox talk show often but from time to time the TV channel mysteriously settles on his show.
So it occurs to me that Huckabee makes a fine talk show host. He's personable, political knowledgeable and has a fine sense or humor. He also will play the guitar from time to time with guests. Never see Wolf Blitzer doing this.
He's probably a better political talk show host than he was a Governor.
REAL Capitalism Comes to Deerwood
Deerwood is a little Delaware semi-rural community in which I live, as a matter of fact.
So with all the government bailouts of corporations and banks I chanced to witness, first hand and as part of the drama, some happening capitalism right here in my little community.
I had a trash pickup service called, well hell yeah I'll name it, Waste Management. I only signed up for this trash pickup service because the homeowner before me used them and as opposed to thumbing through the yellow pages for trash pickup vendors that might not even service our community, I signed on because I saw this company's trucks in the community on trash day so heck, I knew THEY serviced Deerwood.
One day I get a flyer in my mailbox, printed up by a neighbor lady we call the "Mayoress" (okay, so maybe only I call her that). It was a suggestion that we all think of switching from Waste Management to a new trash pickup firm called First State Disposal. Delaware is America's first state for those in Rio Linda.
The flyer listed the difference in prices between Waste Management and First State Disposal and I was shocked. I had been paying $85.00 a quarter for Waste Management and here was this upstart, First State Disposal (FSD) offering the same service for $55.00 a quarter!
Plus FSD would pick up large items at no charge so long as advanced notice was given. I once had an old barbecue to get rid of and hey, I was willing to pay and extra five or ten bucks to have Waste Management haul it off. But when I called the lady told me it would cost $85.00 to haul that old barbecue away. Well I could buy a brand new barbecue for this! "We're sorry but that's considered a 'large' item and that's our charge for hauling large items," the Waste Management rep sniffed.
Also, FSD would further reduce their price if they got so many sign-ups out of Deerwood, I forget the number but FSD did, indeed, get a whole bunch of new sign-ups from Deerwood residents because why the hell would anyone pay MORE for something when they can get the same thing cheaper?
Not to mention much better service as FSD wouldn't go charging $85.00 to haul off a barbecue. FSD agreed to charge exactly NOTHING for that service.
But of course, unlike the management of General Motors or Ford, it occurs to the trash removers of FSD that a business should be run on good common sense. Get as many Deerwood residents to sign up for their service and each sign-up brings in a progressively BIGGER profit. If I'm in the neighborhood to pick up 304's trash, if 306 signs up I'd be making the same price but it would certainly cost me less what with being in the neighborhood already. Continue on to sign up 308 and 310 and hey, offer the customers some of your savings and ...
So a whole bunch of Deerwood residents signed up with FSD and the best fun of all was calling up Waste Management and telling them to shove their service where the sun don't shine.
"I can offer you an immediate reduction in price of 10%", the Waste Management lady said.
What? They were perfectly willing to charge me 10% more until I called and wanted to quit their service? Not to mention that $85 bucks for picking up that old barbecue!
I now have First State Disposal and they pick up my trash dependably and the price of my trash pickup has been almost halved!
But we're not done yet.
The other day I find in my mailbox yet another flyer. I forget the name of this trash service but I smiled at the headline...
"JOE BLOW'S TRASH PICKUP SERVICE ONLY $45.00 A QUARTER!"
Which is a cheaper price than FSD but not by much. Still I'll keep an eye on these guys cause hey, it's how capitalism works.
Just in case the Democrats manage to take over the entire planet to be run by a benevolent and efficient government, know that in one little Delaware community...CAPITALISM LIVES!
O. J. Simpson
There's few people in America feeling any sort of major sorrow for the fine, fine OJ Simpson. Here's a man who got two free murders as a result of one of the few failures of America's great system of justice.
As an aside, where the hell has OJ's criminal jury been? I haven't seen one book written by an OJ juror. The talk shows are not filled with pundits culled from OJ's jury. There's been no movies starring any members of the OJ jury. This is a group of people who must live the rest of their lives being regarded as puppets, fools and idiots.
But hey, OJ went to trial and his defense team got him off. It happens.
It occurs to me that OJ could have, had he just one cell of humility, taken a deep breath of gratitude and went off to live a quiet, happy, peaceful life.
He could have worked on his garden when desired, signed up for a round of golf when the mood hit, visited Disney World with his children given the right circumstances. He could have every day breathed the sweetness of air without the presence of prison bars, he could have driven daily without fear of police pursuit, he could have lived modestly, quietly, and happily, a fortunate fellow who was spared a life locked away in a tiny cell.
But he had to be an asshole.
I am quite happy that OJ will be spending much of his remaining life span in jail. Much of America is quite happy, in fact. There's not many I've spoken to who have a whit of sympathy for the man, except maybe his original criminal jury. But nobody's heard from them.
If there's one thing most of America agrees on it's that we are all rather delighted that OJ is going to jail. It's called shadenfreud and it's a German word meaning having happiness at the misfortune of others.
Because Ron Goldman might be playing with his children this Christmas season had not some idiot slashed and killed him. Nicole Simpson might be planning the wedding of her daughter or the Christmas Eve dinner she'd be preparing for her family had not one waste of earth’s resources to keep alive decided she needed to die.
I feel very happy that OJ gets to plan his Christmas in jail.
Maybe that OJ criminal jury will visit him.
Heh.
Thanking God
Due to a recent most tragic illness of my husband, I've been spending a lot of time praying to God.
Mostly I've been asking Him for things.
First, of course, I've been asking for my husband to get better. Now, a week or so before Christmas 2008, it looks like husband is finally recovering, this after a horrific medical odyssey that began in late September and including him in a semi-coma in an upstate Delaware ICU for over six days.
I always ask God for the health and well-being of my granddaughter and daughter, or course. I prayed for my own continuing strength as I had a quadruple coronary bypass in May of 2008. I've managed to keep up regular visits to my husband in what has now been THREE different hospitals, one an hour and half drive one way. I keep the house together, pay the bills, take care of the pets...well I do it but I pray that my own health won't fail and some times I have to pray for some extra strength because at times I just don't want to do some things, though I must.
God, so far and with fingers crossed, has answered my prayers.
So last week I did something a little different.
I got down on my knees and actually THANKED God.
Yes I did.
I don't know, maybe yon readers thank God a lot. The way I used to see it, God is way more powerful than me and He doesn't need my thanks. If I prayed for something and my prayers were answered than I figured God felt like my prayers, for whatever Godly reason, DESERVED to be answered. He didn't need thanks from me, as I reasoned. He was God! Thanks from a mere mortal are a waste of His time.
But I knelt down in front of Jesus on the cross and I thanked Him. I thanked Him for making my husband better and I thanked Him for keeping me strong and I thanked Him for giving me hope and I thanked Him for keeping my daughter healthy and I thanked Him for giving me such a sweet granddaughter.
I didn't ask God for a single thing this past week during my prayers.
I just thanked Him. And I feel good about it, frankly.
Maybe God needs some gratitude now and again is my new logic.
And if God doesn't care, well it sure made me feel better.
The Dumbest Idea of the Week
This "New New Deal" of Barack Obama has got to be the dumbest thing to cross the road since the chicken.
Can anyone out there with a brain envision Americans lining up to repair bridges for God's sake? Teenagers maybe, will sign on. Illegal aliens for sure. But Americans need and will thrive best on jobs that suit their talents and abilities. Making a bunch of "make work" is just dopey and feel-good.
The Old New Deal was a dumb idea as well and only prolonged the Great Depression, no matter what the history books say.
Speaking of ...
...Barack Obama, the all-Knowing, all-Merciful...how about that Illinois Governor selling his senatorial seat at Obama knows nothing?
Obama's the only virgin in the whorehouse it would seem.
Snakes on Delaware Roads
I'm a Delaware transplant and for the most part, I like this state.
I am concerned, however, with all the dead snakes on the roads here in Delaware.
There are dead snakes on the roads no matter the season, no matter the road type, no matter the topography of the land.
Some of the dead snakes are very long and lay alongside the road twisted and coiled until I ponder that this must have been a twenty foot long snake when it was alive.
Some of the dead snakes are kind of fat and have traction marks on their back. Guess they got ran over bicycles.
All of the dead snakes are black.
It's worrisome.
My Simple Rule for Recycling
I've got one simple rule as to recycling our trash and I think that if everyone on the planet followed my logic we could wipe out global warming and the Al Gore scam, we could calm the seas, we could save the planet from a trashy grave.
I use those little plastic grocery bags for EVERYTHING!
A couple of these things are great to squash up and carry in your pocketbook. They're small and would fit in even the smallest purse. When required, pull one out to carry some sort of unexpected load. With a mere flip and sail through the air they go from the size of a dollar to a, well a full blown plastic grocery bag.
They work great for carrying something wet. They can serve to help keep things sorted if suddenly required.
I have trash cans specially designed to use these grocery bags as "liner". Just little trash cans, but they have protrusions that jut up on which the "handles" of the trash bags are wrapped around.
These little bags are the perfect size to store clumped cat litter when cleaning the litter pans. What I do, I take one of these grocery bags and stick a whole bunch of additional but wadded up plastic grocery bags inside. I stick the cat litter scoop inside and voila...a great and portable cat litter cleaning system.
Come time to attack the litter pans, get that packet down from where it should be hanging by the handles. Pull out one of those wadded up trash bags and the cat litter scoop. Flip open the wadded bag, scoop up the cat litter clumps and throw them inside. After finished the litter pans, "tie" the plastic grocery bag shut by the handles, give a gentle push on this to "whoosh" out the air and toss it into the trash. The plastic grocery bag, all tied up like this, keeps down the odor.
Put the litter scoop back inside the original bag still with a supply of wadded plastic grocery bags inside, hang it back up and boom, ready for the next day.
There is no reason for landfills to be filled up with these things. They hang easily for storage, they are very strong for their small size, they contain liquid fairly effectively...and they're free!
Patrick Fitzgerald
I don't believe a single word coming out of Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's mouth and this recent "sting" on Illinois Governor Blagojevich smells to high heaven.
First I could never respect any alleged champion of justice who threw Judith Miller in jail and indicted poor little Scooter Libby for allegedly "outing" those jerks Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson. There was a waste of taxpayer money which served no purpose but to attempt to keep George W. Bush from getting re-elected.
I should respect any so-call champion of justice jerk who gets involved in this?
Further, why the hell didn't Fitzpatrick wait for Blagojevich to pay somebody off? Even further more, how much class does a prosecutor have that holds a self-serving press conference and throws out such statements like "Lincoln would be rolling over in his grave"?
Well Lincoln probably would be rolling over in his grave but what the hell happened with "innocent until proven guilty"? Should a prosecutor be saying such things before there's been a trial even?
One last further...I think Fitzgerald is protecting Obama, yes I do. Else he could have made a REAL arrest when, say, Jesse Jackson Jr. actually gave Blagojevich a million bucks for the senator job. I think the very dishonest Fitzgerald thought that Obama or the lovely Rahm Emmanuel was going to get caught on tape during that sting and he decided to end the operation before the President-Select got into all sorts of trouble.
The Incredible Convenience of Cell Phones
I end this week with a story of horror about my cell phones.
Husband and I both have cell phones but they are on the same bill, of course.
So I get this call from Verizon Wireless, while I was a choir practice of all things. The stern voice at the other end tells me I better pay my bill right away or my service would be cut off. I owed, the voice told me, $629.00!
I almost screamed out during the second verse and hurried out of the choir practice room. How on earth could I possibly have a bill in that amount?
It had been a busy month in terms of usage what with husband in the hospital and everything. Didn't I have any carry-over minutes, I asked the stern voice?
"Ma'am, Verizon doesn't do that," stern voice told me.
Well this goes to show just what I know about cell phone usage right there. I've had Verizon for six years now, I pay a simple monthly fee and boom, no problem.
Only this past month I went some 800 plus minutes over and in a form of gunless robbery that Patrick Fitzgerald really ought to investigate, the cost of these extra minutes went upwards of $600! All those months when I used maybe a third or less of the minutes I paid for, let me really NEED the cell phone and I get hit with what is the very definition of extortion.
Not to worry. Verizon Wireless very graciously retroactively changed my service to include enough minutes to cover those 800 plus minutes. Of course I would have to continue paying this price in the future. The cost of retroactively purchasing these minutes was about fifty bucks. As compared to over $600 bucks so I know now that this is all a sort of a scam.
My contract probably does have me paying $5.00 or some such for each minute over my contracted monthly amount so Verizon wasn't breaking any law. They knew, or course, that such a large amount would surely capture a customer's attention. And said customer would, of course, gratefully agree to a future increase just so long as a credit was issued.
I did sign up for more minutes as husband and I decided almost a year ago to eliminate our home phone. I understand many Americans are making this choice.
Cell phones are great. Mine takes pictures, records messages, stores all calls in, out and missed. It's small and has a bounty of contact information. It sends and receives text messages, works over the car stereo and I have it with me at all times.
However did we live without cell phones?
While my husband was so ill and unable to use his hands properly, I put his cell phone on "auto-answer". This way I could call him and he wouldn't have to struggle to find his phone and try to pry it open with useless fingers.
I'd ring his phone and after two rings the phone would automatically answer. I put it on speaker phone so when the phone answered I could just say "Hi Billy" and he could speak to me from his bed. He could hear me fine and we could talk without him having to touch a key.
I think the one hundred bucks a month plus I pay for cell phone usage for TWO phones, for 2100 minutes (35 hours!) to call anywhere in the country, well I think this is small price for such an amazing convenience.
I still think Verizon Wireless is a bit of a jerky business.
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Below the beginning of a most unbelievable medical odyssey. The ending, a happy one, still to come. It gets more bizarre and terrifying than you’ll read here.
A Brain Infection?
Stories of my own medical odyssey with a coronary bypass
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