A Message To The President.

Many things come to an end. Some because you want them to others no matter what you do to prevent them. I have some very good friends, two to be exact, and soon they will be moving on. Their lives are about to take them in directions far away from me. It is not what I would like to happen but I cannot be selfish. I will miss them and will think about them often. I can only hope that every once in a while they will think of me too. And now to the actual post:

As many of you know and some of you may not it is customary for an outgoing President to leave a note for his successor. A few words of insight or wisdom to welcome the new Commander in Chief. I thought the other day what would I write? What wisdom could in bestow? Well, let us find out shall we?

To ________________________.

As I sit here looking out the window upon the January beauty of the capital of this great nation, I think back too all those who have come before us and all of those who will come after. I know it is customary to leave a few insights to help you on your first day but I think that I could better serve you in this way. After all of the pomp and circumstance of the Inauguration begins to drain away the reality of what is before you will be cast upon you quickly. If there is one thing that I can tell you that you may not have realized this I think may be the most important. Democracy is living breathing creature. It will fight you when you think that you can fight no more and go silent when you are prepared for battle. It lives in the billions of faces in which you will see in your time here. It is like water. Fickle, free flowing, it will make you think that it is weak while the whole time it is carving stone and moving mountains and glaciers. Democracy freely carves its way across this great nation and not unlike water randomly goes underground and sprays forth hundreds of thousands of miles away with steam, passion, and all the fury it can muster. While it quenches your most desperate thirst in one part of the nation in the other it is destructive and does all it can to undermine everything you have built. But democracy, at all times, is beautiful. It is beautiful when the sun sets upon it, when the moon reflects from it and when the sun rises once again. It reflects the faces of all those who look upon it. Remember those who came before us and think of those who will follow. And, never forget that you are a guest here. In closing, Mr. President, the most you can ever hope is that you will do a better job than those that came before you, and we can only hope that we did not make it easy for you.

Sincerely,

J

lower case posts

ok. just so everyone understands. some of my posts will be in all lower case because i am posting from my mobile and it is just easier. now with that said, let's get dow to brass tacks. what does that even mean? my posting has been irregular and my two or so readers are getting irritated so maybe this will let me bring you my witty wisdom more often. so now for something from the complete idiot files. i see where a music teacher in hamburg was arrested for letting underage girls play his trombone. i guess it was only a matter of time till it hit nearby. this stuff went on less when i was in school or maybe it didn't but now with cameraphones and texting these idiots are just getting caught more often. i mean if you send pictures of yourself or texts to a twelve year old their parents just might see them. and anyway, why do eight year olds and twelve year olds need cellphones anyway. are their lives that busy that they need to keep in touch that much. are we going to have to pass a law that says no texting while operating a Big Wheel. be sure to use a handsfree device while drowning naked barbies during bathtime(you know your kids did it too). but in today's information age kids are getting dumber or maybe it is the adults. listen it isn't rocket science, if you are a young attractive female teacher and you are sleeping with a twelve to fourteen year old male student, he is going to tell his friends, and truthfully probably his enemies too. he is a young boy he doesnt know when to keep his mouth shut. and he wants everyone to know, i mean for young males it's like a race to see who can grow up first and if you not only grow up first but you grow up with the cute young teacher that four out of five of your friends want to grow up with too, of course he is going to tell them that's guys for ya, and we don't get smarter as we get older either. so for those of you out there who are thinking about it don't. if you are doing it stop. and i am not even going to comment on the recent event locally other than to say his God was paying attention even though many others weren't it seems.

See, I have this cat.

Ok, I have this cat, a black cat named Snoball. Not only is it a black cat named Snoball, but he is also a he. Now, when I first got this cat we were best buds. Now he barely tolerates me. He yells at me all the time, stays gone for days if you let him. Only comes back when he needs food or if it is too wet outside or cold. Maybe he has finally realized that he is a black cat as well as male and I named him Snoball. Maybe there is some animosity building down deep in his soul. Maybe he is a teenager in cat years. His activities somewhat sound like a teenager. Of course when other people are around he is the definition of cute and adorable, but as soon as they leave, spawn of satan or catan or whatever. Who knows. Maybe cats are just that way. I guess you would have to be that self centered if you were a cat. I say that without having any real way to know of course, it just seems that way. But, for the record. If one day you read that something terrible has happened to me and there are no suspects, no signs of forced entry, and nothing stolen........well.......you know who did it.

On Friends....

I have two friends in this world. I call them friends anyway; I can only suppose that they feel the same way about me. I know they are friends because they laugh at my jokes even when they aren’t that funny. I fancy myself a comedian, now how others feel about it I will never really know but, that is how I see myself anyway. We see each other about once a week on average and talk to each other with about the same frequency. One of my friends is into snakes reptiles and other utterly icky things and the other is into backing up without looking. Now that my be hard for you to understand the whole backing up thing but you weren’t there and you aren’t my friend so there is no need to explain. If my friends read this they will know exactly what I mean. Also one of my friends has trouble walking, seeing doors, and removing themselves from small bathrooms, but, they are still my friends. Now my friends have other friends so I am not their best friend but they are mine because I don’t have any others. Maybe these are the only two people I haven’t betrayed in some way. Or maybe I just grew up and became the person I am now before I had the opportunity to screw it up, either way they are my friends. Oh, by the way, it hasn’t been too long since I did the growing up thing so please take that in to consideration. I am not a person that needs a lot of friends, just a few really good ones and that is good enough for me. Luckily, I have been blessed with exactly that. I have noticed lately though that I don’t really fit in with their crowd but that doesn’t seem to bother them too much so lucky me. Luckily my friends and I have all been blessed with the same gift…..the ability to see the humor in ourselves and the complete stupidity in the population at large. Maybe that is why we are friends. So, Gerry and Tephie I say, thanks for everything.

Just A Reminder

Now I usually don’t do things like this but I thought that it was necessary because there is a valuable lesson that needs to be learned here. Many months ago the wonderful shadow government of the lovely city was trying to and succeeded to pass a tax issue. Now anyone who read this site realized that I was not against the tax but against the fact that there had been no attempt to specify why we needed it. I also remember stating that many promises were being made and many threats were being made as well to get this tax passed. Now I do not plan to sit here and go through each individual post, but if you don’t believe me you are more than welcome too. They are all still available for reading. But, I will touch on a few key issues that I raised and we will see where everything stands. First I stated at one point that the pro-tax crowd was traveling around talking to many fixed income citizens and telling them that if this tax did not pass their water rates would quickly increase and soon they would have to decide between water and food or medicine. I stated that even if the tax passes the water rates would increase. Well, guess what? Read the paper lately? Looked at your bill? How quickly we forget. I also stated that promises for a new pool at Jordan Park were being made. I stated that no pool would be built. Been swimming at Jordan Park Lately? Remember the article in the paper stating that a coalition of east side residents had come to the city council to call in the promises. They got lights, a sidewalk I think and maybe a few other things but a pool….nope. Will there ever be one? Doubt it. I believe that one of the city council members stated openly that they had promised them a pool. I think the statement was something to the effect of we promised "these people" a pool. A poor choice of words from someone who taught English for many years but ok she wasn’t a history teacher so I can understand it. Now, I am doing this from memory so the only part of the quote that I remember exactly is the "these people" part, but I think I am pretty close. If I am not I apologize but the fact remains folks were promised a pool, you know, I know, they know and they didn’t get one. I think the mayor even after they asked about the pool they were promised piped up with something along the lines of "how about a community pool at W.C. Whaley, he was still hanging on to hope at that time. Now excluding the area around the square, because that is a state highway and the state did all that, has your street improved? Now if you are one of the friends of the council members that has called in a debt and got your street repaved or your sidewalk repaired, you don’t get a vote, because you are one of the people I am talking about anyway. The bottom line is, the fire department is still a wreck, police department as well, streets, no pool at Jordan Park, water rates going up, because they couldn’t use the tax revenue to prevent it, they knew that and I knew that I was just hoping you would investigate on your own and then you would have known that but you didn’t and they weren’t about to tell you, but in the near future you are going to see some real shenanigans. They will try to tell you that building it will save the city money. But, what they are looking for is their Lake Monticello. See, former Mayor West can drive out to the lake anytime he wants with his grandchildren and say "I did this." The question is do you want them to be able to do that at your expense. Soon you will have to decide.

On Bailouts....

Man oh man. What I could say about bailouts. Probably nothing you haven’t heard already but maybe it is time to get rid of the big words and just call it what it is. Here is my analogy. You and a complete stranger are in a boat. You are thirty feet from shore in sixty feet of water. You both have shotguns. Someone has painted a bulls-eye with words shoot here in the bottom of the boat right in the middle. Now you both know that the right thing to do is not to shoot a hole in the boat. Now the complete stranger fire two rounds of buckshot right through the center of the bulls-eye and the boat starts to sink. Now, here is the real meat of the whole thing. You acted responsibly, you didn’t shoot, the boat is sinking and no matter what you do it is going to sink because once its starts it isn’t going to stop till it’s on the bottom. Do you A. Wait for someone else to come along and save you. B. Swim ashore and save yourself because you don’t know this person and they are the ones that acted without responsibility anyway. C. Bail out a boat that is going to sink anyway because the person in the boat who caused all of this isn’t going to pitch in and help. We gave billions to the car industry, they are filing bankruptcy, we give billions to finance companies and they gave bonuses and took vacations. Now everyone wonders why all this is happening. I know why. Here it is. In this country we have chosen a mentality that first place second place and third place…is the same thing. Folks, there has to be a winner. There has to be a loser. This mentality that everyone who participates gets a trophy is killing us all. We reward failure with ribbons, trophies, and billions. We reward non-performance with vacations and bonuses. I saw a kid with a ninth place ribbon the other day. Remember the days when if you didn’t win you didn’t get a trophy. The days when if you didn’t do your job you got fired? What if the Olympics said that everyone who participated got a medal? There is a harsh reality. Not everybody wins. We reward non performance, and those that succeed are rarely heard about unless they are riding a bike or running a football. Folks: failure builds character. If you lose it makes you feel bad and you don’t like feeling bad, so you try harder and harder until you win and then you feel good, and you like feeling good so you win again and again. We rewarded a President that was not performing with a second term just because he scared us into thinking we were all going to die in some terrorist cataclysm if we didn’t. Are we safer? Do you feel safer? Or do you feel broke and homeless. Yeah homeless is safer. I have always believed that.

You Don't Normally See Them In Herds Like That....

Recently I was enjoying coffee and sodas with the rest of the members of AIS, when a peculiar thing began to occur around us. I became acutely aware that we were witnessing an event that very few people get to witness in the wild. There is a species of animal running around out there that few have ever seen. You have heard of them, maybe seen a picture, but we had the pleasure of seeing this species in the wild, unconstrained by fences or basement walls. They are easily identified by their pasty complextions and obvious vitamin deficiency. The species is known as male-us-nevergonnagetlaidus. Now where in normal circumstances this species is found only in dark rooms or basements, usually in the parents houses, warming themselves by the soft glow of their broadband connections, and communicating in the dark and secretive language of Halo, or the even more secretive World of Warcraft, this species is rarely seen by the just everyday guy on the street. But here is the beauty of it, not only did I get the opportunity to actually see one of these elusive creatures, I witnessed a herd of them. Yes folks, a herd...I was giddy as you might imagine. It seems that the herd was brought out of hiding, in broad daylight no less, by their animalistic desire to take up all the booths in the restaurant, play Pokemon or some other ridiculous thing and not make any purchases. Please ladies and gentlemen if you happen upon one of these herds do not approach them slowly back away, do not run. If you are female, carry on as if nothing is wrong.....they don't know what you are anyway, and they are probably just as scared of you as you are of them.