Happy Birthday to me....

Happy Birthday To Me

Yea, its my birthday, and I’m still here in Phoenix all alone. Confined to this desolate remote desert town with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Its like a prison here, trapped in my own personal hell. As you can see from the pic below, things are pretty rough here at the hotel.

















Seriously, as nice as things have been on this trip, I’m ready to go home. It would be nice to be with Ginger and my friends and family especially since its my birthday. Anyway, enough whining. I decided that in the spirit of Ginger’s ‘flashback’ posts, I will do one about my birthdays of the past.

All of my childhood birthdays were pretty much exactly the same. A small party at my parents house with family and friends. Growing up in such a small town, as I did, meant there would be no fancy parties at a Chuck E. Cheese, or amusement park. My mom did make things fun, making those cakes that were in the shapes of superheroes or cartoon characters.

The first birthday that I remember quite vividly is my fifteenth birthday. About a week prior to it, my dad had make a phone call and gotten me a job at a grocery store in Morgan City. I had already been through driver’s ed and had driven quite a bit with my parents in the car, so the plan was for me to drive my mom’s car to the new job. So, I woke up early on my fifteenth birthday and got in my dad’s truck, and drove us to Morgan City to the DMV. I took and passed the tests, and got my license. I then drove him back to our house, and took off in my mom’s car by myself for the first time, to my first day of work.

The store I worked at was called Food World, and I was adorned in a tight fitting green vest, with white dress shirt and black slacks. A really killer outfit especially after gathering shopping carts all day long during mid-August.

My eighteenth birthday should have been something pretty special, but as I recall it was not. There’s a videotape of it somewhere, and it basically consists of me walking around my friend’s house doing various stupid things. Pretty lame.

My 21st birthday apparently was either so incredibly lame or so exciting that I have no memory of it at all. I’m guessing I didn’t do too much.

I think I have probably spent most of my birthdays since then working. One that comes to mind where I was not working was my 26th birthday, in 1999. The company I was working for at that time gave employees the day off for their birthdays. I was living in Gonzales at the time, and had recently gotten a pool installed in my backyard. So, I went out to lunch, then picked up a large daquiri and plopped my heavy ass onto a floating raft in the pool for the afternoon. What happened is that I passed out at some point and woke up with a massive headache and bitching sunburn. Not fun.

I was living in California for my 28th birthday and was lucky enough to have some really great friends there who took me out to dinner. They actually took me to a place called Vic Stewart’s in Walnut Creek. If you have ever seen those lists of the best steakhouses in America, found in the airline magazines, its always on there, and on the top of a couple of them. It was crazy expensive, and I still owe them big for that one.

The big 3-0 was pretty nice. It seems like it was a long time ago, but I guess it wasn’t. I basically threw myself a party. I paid for all the stuff, and had all my friends over. I fired up the grill and went to town. Its what I wanted though, to have all my friends to hang out with, since its something that rarely happens anymore, with all of us doing our own thing. It was fun.

So, this year I have nothing really planned for the weekend following my actual birthday, but I still might come up with something.

South of the Border

Well, since I’m here in Phoenix for the weekend, I decided to go check out Mexico. I had never been there, in fact, I the only other country I had been to was Canada. So, now I can say that I have visited Mexico, and in fact that I have visited all the countries of North America. That’s the extent of the positive things I have to say about Mexico.

I got up early, had some of the complimentary hotel breakfast buffet, and headed out. A hundred miles from Phoenix to Tucson. Mostly desert to look at, with the occassional moutainous terrain to break things up. From Tucson to Nogales was about 60 miles, I think. Once you hit Interstate 19 south to Nogales, the signs are all in kilometers. Just like in Canada, the damn metric system rears its ugly head.

I got to Nogales, and parked. I wasn’t planning to drive across the border, since I had read that is was strongly advised against. First, you have to buy insurance to drive over. There are many places on the border that sell this insurance, but I wasn’t interested. Second, you can’t take a rental car into Mexico. Regardless, I didn’t want to drive there anyway. Nowhere to park, and crazed Mexicans everywhere driving like psychos.

So, as I approach the border area, I see several parking lots with signs saying things like, “Safe, secure, only 500 feet to border, etc.” These signs are accompanied by young Mexican boys with orange flags furiously trying to wave every car into their parking lot. As I waited in line to get into one lot, the orange flag waving Mexican in the next lot whistled at me incessantly to come to his lot instead. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this 'marketing' was a microscopic sample of what I was about to encounter.

I left my wallet in the car. I took only my cash, cell phone, camera, license, social security card, and insurance card with me. I put it all in my front pockets, since I had read it was unwise to walk around with a wallet sticking out of your back pocket. I followed the signs leading you to the actual border. There is a large building in the middle of the road, and a gate on the side of it. There is a turnstile that you walk through, then you are in Mexico. No security check, no one standing there. Apparently the Mexican government leaves all security up to the USA, and could care less who is walking into their country.

Immediately after passing over that invisble line, you know you have entered a different place. People in the streets everywhere. Mexicans, tons and tons of Mexicans. It seemed like there were ten signs for every one building. Mostly in Spanish, but enough were in English to lure you over. There were about two dozen cabs parked in about enough space for ten cars. Taxi drivers hanging all over the cars repeating the word taxi over and over again as I passed by. Not one step past them there were a group of guys who walked up to me and started asking what I was looking for…..’bar’,’pharmacy’,’cigars’,’girls’?? I waved them off and kept walking. All along the path are people sitting on the sidewalk. Some of them have cardboard boxes with little trinkets, and packs of gum, shaking styrofoam cups begging for money.

I was a little shocked by the number of pharmacies and dentists in that area. Apparently you can get a root canal there for what you pay for a six pack here. I was coerced into a pharmacy, so I checked it out. I was repeatedly asked, “What do you need?”, followed by a list of badly pronounced common prescriptions. My ignoring her didn’t stop the questioning one bit. Finally after a few minutes of my unresponsiveness, she produced a piece of cardboard, with a very crudely drawn chart on it, listing various drugs, complete with a pill of each type scotch taped to it. All your favorites were there, Darvaset, Xanax, Ritalin, Viagra, Loritab, just to name a few. I finally just walked out. They were cheap, but its not legal to bring them back into the US.

I walked around a bit more, and the harrassment didn’t seem to let up. One guy decided to walk alongside me, asking me repeatedly what I was looking for. At one point he extended his hand and introduced himself, and I foolishly shook it. He didn’t leave me alone until I went to go back across to the US. He was trying to bring me back to his shop to buy something. He, like most of the vendors out there, had a little bit of everything for sale. Jewelery, clothes, cheesy artwork, cigars, magazines, other assorted crap. He was trying to sell me some cigars, and when I asked if you could take those back with you, he said, “Yea, we just put these other labels on them, so the border guards won’t know.” Nice. I don’t think so. I asked if I would have to hide them in my ass to cross back over, but he didn’t reply.

So, I decided that I had seen all I needed to see, and headed back to where I started to leave this place. There was a long line waiting to go back across. I waited in line for about 45 minutes before reaching the actual checkpoint. Just as I was about to walk up, a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with rugs and boxes was approaching from the US side. The border guard checking people asked her something in Spanish, then looked at me and grabbed my license. The guard then looked back at the woman and quickly said something else in Spanish before handing my license to another guard and saying “Do you wanna handle this?” I looked over at him and he glanced down at my license, then instructed me to come with him.

Now I had been in line for at least 10 minutes in a place where I could see people going across. I watched all sorts of strange looking people just walk right through. Some Mexicans just produced a pile of wrinkled up papers, and were let right in. I had a US driver’s license and was being pulled aside? What the hell? I was taken into the little Border Patrol office, and a woman took my license and started punching things into a computer, as the male officer started interrogating me. “What were you doing in Mexico?” Apparently, my answer of just visiting was not acceptable. He continued, “What were you doing there? Did you buy anything? Bring anything back with you? Visit the red light district maybe?” I then re-explained that I was just visiting, just wanted to see Mexico. I asked him, in a rather annoyed tone, “Can’t you just visit Mexico and look around??” I was then informed that part of their jobs were to ‘establish itinerary’. I finally just explained for the third time again, this time in ridiculous detail, that I just wanted to check it out.

He followed this by many more questions, “What kind of work did I do? Where did I work? Where did I go to school? How long did I go to school?” This went on for a few more minutes, then the woman turned around and asked me what the first three digits of my social were. I answered her, and she looked at the male guard and said, “Okay”. I was then finally told that I could go. There’s no telling how much cocaine encased in ass proof plastic bags made its way across the border while I was being harassed. I’m sure the illegal aliens who jump the fences and get caught are probably treated better.

So that’s it. Not impressed. No wonder these people risk their lives on a daily basis to get the hell out of there.

Cruise-ing

Is it just me, or are most of you out there sick of hearing either anything about, or from Tom Cruise? It seems that lately I can’t get online, or turn on the TV without seeing his stupid smiling face. He’s in love, he’s excited, he’s jumping on furniture, he’s with Katie Holmes, he’s a scientologist. Who the hell cares?

I mean, correct me if I’m wrong but its not necessarily a news flash that someone with his fame and fortune can land a girl almost half his age. It happens on a daily basis, especially in the realm of Hollywood. I can’t understand why people are so fixated on the whole thing. If you ask me, he isn’t even that good of an actor. He basically plays himself in every movie he’s been in, just in different contexts. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but you tell me, who’s character was cooler in Top Gun, his or Val Kilmer’s?? I thought so.

I had the unfortunate experience of seeing him on Oprah, because my wife was watching it when I just happened to be in the room. I know he’s in love and whatever, but he looked like a complete jackass. His jumping up on the couch and acting crazy, to the screams of all the women in the audience literally made me nauseous. But, people loved it, talked about it for weeks after, and are still talking about it, therefore feeding the media monster to make it even bigger.

The root of the problem here is us, the public. We are the ones who pay too much attention to these celebrities’ lives and what they think about everything. If he wasn’t getting the attention from the masses, then the media wouldn’t give two shits about him. Why is that? Why are we so obsessed with celebrities? I guess its mostly envy. The fame, the fortune, the lavish lifestyle. I try to think about it this way. Tom Cruise, and others like him are entertainers. The perform for me on the screen, or the electronic box in my living room and do what I (and everyone else) want to see them do. Its no different than a little monkey in a red suit that is made to dance around and bang some cymbals together. He entertains me, and I throw him a piece of food. Same thing with actors, just (in most cases) they are more entertaining, and (in all cases) given a much, much bigger piece of food.

So, therefore based on that logic, who wants to hear what the monkey thinks about global warming? Or world politics? Or the economy? What is it that qualifies the monkey to be an expert on any of these things? Most of us have jobs in industry that require training, and schooling, and continuing knowledge of technology. Our opinions should mean more than the monkey’s, right?? These people’s knowledge consists of reciting a few memorized phrases in front of a camera and pretending to feel a certain way when they do it. I do that every day at my job, its called ‘customer support’. I just don’t get paid nearly as much.

I guess its my fault also that I read and watch the news way too often. Nothing ever happens, and if its major enough for me know about, its breaking news that I get on my cell phone anyway. But as I said, its my need to know what’s going on that drives the requirement of the media to find something to tell me.

Hot Hot Hot

I’m here in Phoenix once again for some company ‘training’. I could go into the reason why that word is in quotes, but don’t want to get myself into trouble with my job. I’ll just say this…..the person conducting my ‘training’ this week didn’t know she was going to be doing it until I showed my face in her cubicle Monday morning.

Back to the topic at hand though. It’s HOT here. People were telling me that it wasn’t going to be that bad, since there’s not any humidity here. Okay, well part of that is correct. There isn’t any humidity here, but the other part is dead wrong. It is bad. Regardless of any other factors, when its 114 degrees outside, its HOT!!

Yea, that’s not an exaggeration or overdramatic example. The high temperature was 114 today. You walk outside and literally burst into flames. Cases of spontaneous combustion have increased by 200 percent. Seriously, what it really feels like is stepping into an oven. What’s worse is that when the sun goes down, it doesn’t really cool off. At 10:30 last night, it was still 98 degrees.

Besides the heat, the other thing I have had enough of in Phoenix is Mexican food. There are literally well over 500 Mexican restaurants here in the greater Phoenix area. I have eaten Mexican 4 times in the last three days. Also, I have been on the toilet about 35 times in the last three days. Coincedence? I think not. These places should more honest in the meal descriptions on their menus and tell you what to expect. “The #7 special, 2 tacos, 1 Chile relenos, beef and bean enchilada, rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole, followed by a second course of hot diarrhea”

I’m here for another week, so I’m trying to find something to do this coming weekend. I’m thinking of going down to Mexico, just because I have never been there before. I plan to drink lots of water while I’m there, and harrass the Mexican police as much as possible. Seriously, I’m looking forward to seeing the abject poverty and pathetic desolation of the Mexican people. I think it will make me feel better about myself.

No, I shouldn’t say that. Seriously, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to go, mostly just to say that I have been there, and to add it to my list of places I’ve been. I’m sure it will be a blog worthy experience.

Once Upon A Time

This is a true story, based on events happening just about a year ago, right before I started my blog.

Once upon a time, there was a poor, lowly subject who had a job in a castle that was very spacious and elegant. He worked with only one other person, and they spent a lot of their days together not doing much work, but just kinda doing their own thing.

The subject’s co-worker and leader was known as Don. Don Juan to be more specific. Don Juan spent most of his days wandering around the castle they worked in, mingling and flirting with fair maidens all throughout the kingdom. As time went by, Don Juan began to focus more of his time on the maidens and less of his time on the work. Since the coworker of Don Juan was his lowly subject, he delegated more of his tasks down to him, to free up himself to spend more time with the maidens.

Several times Don Juan had exhibited odd behavior which led his loyal subject to suspect that there was some lewd and lacivious tomfoolery taking place during the working hours at the castle. Although he remained loyal to his leader, the subject began to harbor resentment and aggravation toward Don Juan for abandoning him in times of battle to frolick with the maidens.

Then one day, Don Juan found a fair maiden who was very young and beautiful, and who shared his affections. Don Juan would go off with her for hours at a time, frolicking about the castle in locked chambers, undoubtedly conducting all sorts of naughty business. Finally the subject had seen enough of this behavior, and confronted Don Juan, declaring that no matter what Don Juan was doing, or whom he was doing it with, that it should not be done at the expense of himself.

Don Juan became very angry, and began to secretly develop a menacing plot against his loyal subject. He made it his goal to remove the subject from the castle and banish him forever. But then, one quiet day, the subject was summoned to the castle for a special task, on a day when Don Juan was not present. Foolish Don Juan had neglected to lock his vessel of personal scrolls, and the subject discovered one of the scrolls that concerned him, and his very job at the castle!

The scroll was a message to the King, declaring that the subject had been neglectful of his duties, and had received numerous complaints against him by various royals throughout the kingdom. The subject had no knowledge of any of this, and realized that this was merely a weak ploy by Don Juan to eliminate him. The subect became quite angry, and decided that he would beat Don Juan at his own game.

Upon Don Juan’s return to the castle, the subject casually inquired about the existence of any complaints from anyone in the kingdom. “No”, Don Juan replied, “there have been no complaints regarding you.” The subject had instantly confirmed his suspicions and began immediately to start his own campaign for Don Juan’s demise.

The subject decided to approach the royal court, who handled all legal and technical affairs of the kingdom. He told the court of Don Juan’s actions, his neglect of job duties, and his wicked and naughty frolickings about the castle. The royal court listened intently as the subject told the tales of Don Juan, and filled many scrolls with notes detailed with this information. They informed the subject that they would be presenting this to the king, and the Royal High Order and that they would have to ultimately decide Don Juan’s fate.

Unbeknownst to the subject, Don Juan himself had abandoned logic for lust, and had infuriated to king with his bold and flagrant disregard for his authority by spending hours with the fair maiden, neglecting his own duties, and preventing her from her duties as well. The king had already delivered a message to Don Juan, through his Royal Knight that he was to abstain from seeing or communicating with the fair maiden whilst in the castle.

As you might imagine, these new tales of Don Juan, as told by his subject, were received from the royal court to the King, who did not take the news well. The king was now forced to bring this information to the Royal High Order to ultimately decide Don Juan’s fate. Don Juan was brought before the king again, and told that his fate was now in the balance, and that his time might be over within the kingdom.

Since Don Juan suspected nothing of the lowly subject, he relayed this news to him, and discussed his fears and worries regarding his impending doom. The subject cleverly acted sympathetic toward Don Juan, and offered him advice and consoling. But this was merely a clever veil concealing his true motive. The subject moved his plan forward, and prepared for his next move against Don Juan.

The subject approached Don Juan and told him that considering the fact that he may be dismissed from the kingdom, there may be a chance that the King would consider putting him in Don Juan’s place at that time. The subject meekly asked if Don Juan would be so kind as to draw up a proclamation to the king, stating that the subject was a good and loyal underling, who had done his job well, and had no complaints against him. The subject told Don Juan that in the event of his unfortunate dismissal that he would then be able to present this document to the King in hopes of being considered for advancement in the kingdom.

Foolishly, Don Juan agreed to this, and prepared the document. The subject now had in his possesion proof that his previous scroll to the king had been a vicious lie. The subject wasted no time, and immediately delivered this document up to the King’s lair, declaring to his handmaiden that it was something he thought the King should see.

Within a very short time, Don Juan was summoned to the King’s chambers, for what no doubt was a very unplesant confrontation. Of course the King demanded to know why a subject had just delivered to him a parchment that directly conflicted with the information he had previously gotten from Don Juan. Left speechless, Don Juan retreated back to his quarters and furiously interrogated his subject. “Why did you bring that note to the King?”, he asked, loudly and aggresively. In a very meek and quiet tone, the subject responded, “I just wanted to let the King know I was doing good work, sir.” Of course Don Juan could not tell the subject the true nature of his anger, and was left to merely shrug his shoulders and huff and puff back to his quarters.

This incident greatly moved the king toward the release of Don Juan, and the Royal Order was very disturbed by this developing chain of events. In addition, it so happened that the fair maiden was not helping things either. She had become angry with the Countess whom she was serving under and had caused much tension in her realm with other subjects, all over the nature of her relations with Don Juan.

Don Juan’s world was collapsing around him. His neck was on the line with the king, and he realized that it was only a matter of time before the royal court would probably force him out of the kingdom. But Don Juan had another personal issue, that complicated things even further. Don Juan had a wife at home, who was with child, and was due to give birth at any time. Actually, in the midst of all his scandal, his wife gave birth, but this did not detract from his time with the fair maiden. He continued to frolick with her all the while.

Finally the day came that the decree came down from the Royal Order of the High Court. Don Juan was banished from the castle, and ordered to leave the kingdom at once. His repeated disobeying of the King’s orders, along with his disregard for responsibility had been his demise. An armed officer of the court came down to the chamber and the subject watched with muted, yet elated excitement as Don Juan was taken from the castle, with his belongings.

The subject then was told of the dismissal of Don Juan by the king himself, and ordered to take over the tasks of Don Juan, until his replacement could be found. Apparently the King had become so enraged by Don Juan, that he transferred some of his aggressions to the subject. The subject took on the task, and worked dilligently to gain the trust of the King. Finally, after several weeks, the King appointed the subject to Don Juan’s position, and compensated him accordingly. Also, at about that same time, the subject received a communication from Don Juan’s wife. She inquired about the nature of Don Juan’s dismissal, and of his actions prior to his removal.

It took her little time, and little information from the the subject to realize the nature of Don Juan’s actions. She suspected another maiden was involved, and now knew the reality of her thoughts. She abandoned Don Juan, and left him to find his way alone. Don Juan had now lost everything, and became a wasted shell of his former self, left to wallow in his own pathetic self-loathing misery.

The moral of this story kids is……use the BIG head for thinking, it will save you lots of time and problems……and secondly, don’t screw with the help, especially if they are way smarter than you…

Hit Me Baby One More Time

Anybody see this crap? Its horrific. I watched the first couple of episodes and thought it was bad, but tonight it went over the top. The worst thing I had seen on the show before tonight was the bloated, winded lead singer of Loverboy, sausaged into a leather outfit.

I think I could better appreciate these people resurfacing if they were getting paid. I can imagine that Haddaway could use a paycheck these days, since he has probably exhausted his royalty funds from “Night at the Roxbury” by now. Of course after seeing his version of Britney Spear’s “Toxic”, I don’t think he will be getting a check anytime soon. Unless of course he explores a career in gay porn.

Last night though, the show reached an apex of horrificness when Wang Chung came out. Let me say, I liked Wang Chung a lot during the 80s. They had some hits, and yes, I did buy the cassette (sounds strange saying that, lol), but what I saw on this show was NOT pretty. They came out and did their big hit, then announced that they would be doing a cover of Nelly’s “Hot in Here”. I was dumbfounded with disbelief. What the hell were they thinking? I thought for a minute that I had heard wrong, and that they surely were not going to forfeit the small amount of dignity that they still had left by doing that.

As they started to perform it, I felt that the space-time continuum might be imploding into itself. It was bad. I don’t wanna pick on them only though, the others were not much better. The lead singer for Cameo shamelessly appeared still sporting the infamous red codpiece from the “Word Up” video. I don’t think it should be legal for anyone his age to be able to wear such a thing in public. As if that weren’t bad enough, they made a similarly inexplicable song choice by performing “1985” by Bowling for Soup. Huh?

I mean what’s next? Are they gonna bring out Billy Ray Cyrus to do “Toxicity” by System of a Down, or maybe we can hear REO Speedwagon cover “Bitch Better Have my Money”. I hadn’t seen this type of music mismatching since the last music awards show was on television. Does anyone else think its strange that they get Vince Gill and Travis Tritt to present ‘Best Rap Artist’. Then they have 50 Cent and Ludacris present ‘Best Bluegrass Album’. What you end up with are a bunch of heinous mispronunciations of names, and very akward moments as Ricky Skaggs gets a ghetto handshake from Nelly.

Chad is.....

Got this idea from Ginger. Here goes.

Chad is…

Apparently an actor on the WB show One Tree Hill who has quite a female following online
A poor, landlocked country in north-central Africa
A gay porn star
A rectangular or oval bit of paper that seperates from a punch card (got WAY too much attention during the last presidental election)
A college at Durham University
So into Super Monkey Ball Deluxe that he would do this
A saint in the Roman Catholic Church
Rad?
Rob Lowe’s strange younger brother
One half of a 60’s British pop singing duo

Joizee

I’m back on the road again, and back in New Jersey. I’ve been telling people that if they were to take a look at my company’s installation schedule, they could easily tell that I’m the new guy on the install team. The other installers travel to places like Colorado and California, my boss gets the install in Hawaii, and I’m sent to ritzy towns like Oneonta, New York, Saint John, New Brunswick, and my current spot, Trenton, New Jersey.

Jersey is a strange place. I’ve met several interesting people on this trip so far, and learned quite a bit. My flight from Houston to Philadelphia was slightly delayed due to weather. I only landed SIX hours after I was supposed to. While waiting in the airport, I started talking to the guy sitting next to me. He was fairly nice, and we ended up talking about fishing, and I showed him some pics on my laptop of past fishing trips. We were talking about the cost of a fishing trip, and that led to the mention of gas prices. This reminded me of something really strange that I actually learned on my last trip to Jersey.

It is illegal in the state of New Jersey to pump your own gas. Yes, you heard me correctly. You would be taken down at gunpoint and severly beaten if you were to lift that nozzle up away from the pump. Every gas station is full service, whether you like it or not, so I guess you might as well sit back and scratch your privates while your car is filled. I did some research to try and find out why this law is in place here, and didn’t really get a good answer. Apparently the only two states in the US where you cannot pump gas are New Jersey and Oregon. The law here in Jersey was passed in 1949, when legislators felt that it was too dangerous to have untrained people dispensing such a flammable liquid.

Maybe that made sense back when the gas pump was a death trap consisting basically of a metal box with a flimsy hose emerging from it. People were probably less aware of the dangers back then as well. This is clearly illustrated in a photograph I have of my grandfather leaning against an old gas pump in the 50s smoking a cigarette. Of course, now this law is grossly outdated, but I’m sure the guys who pump gas have their own Teamsters union, and can’t be touched.

Moving on…….the job site that I worked on up here was a bank, and as you might imagine security was extremely tight. I was allowed in the server room to do my work, but had to be accompanied by an employee at all times. The lady with me was very nice, and we ended up talking quite a bit. She’s Indian, and has only been here in the US for about 5 years. I learned a lot of things about India, most of which were quite fascinating. Didn’t learn much about Jersey, but trust me, India is much more interesting.

Then I got to talking to the guy sitting next to me at the bar of Chili’s while I was waiting for my food. He started talking about Jersey, and its corruption, and eventually moved into telling me about the police. He asked me if we had police ‘cards’ in Louisiana. I had no idea what he was talking about. He then showed me this card, which looked like a Libery card, or really fancy business card. It had the year 2005 in very large numbers, and above it, it said Police Benevolent Association. Apparently, police officers get a supply of these cards, which they can then dish out to family and friends. Get pulled over by a cop, flash the card, and you are free to go. I had many visions flash through my head while thinking about this. You run a red light and smash three cars in the process, then led a dozen police cars on a 50 mile chase, only to get stopped, surrounded by the SWAT team and dragged out of the car. Then just as they roll you down on the ground to commence the beatings, you manage to whip out your card, and they all step back, help you up and offer to drop to their knees for any inconvience you may have suffered.

Sounds pretty crazy to me.

Newsworthy

Its hard to get away from the news today. We are literally inundated with news everywhere we look. From the many news channels on television, to newspapers, newsradio, and of course the internet, with hundreds of news sites, and news even showing up on most people’s homepages. I even get CNN breaking news on my cell phone, so as soon as a celebrity dies, I get to tell everyone around me all about it, whether they care or not!

I never gave much thought about all the news we are surrounded by until recently. You have world news, local news, entertainment news, and sports news. Then of course, if you go through all that news and still want more, you can read offbeat news. You can even resort to the Weekly World News and read about 400 lb babies, or Elvis sightings, or maybe even some space alien gossip.

Not until this past week did I realize the bad thing about all this news around us. I finally felt the horrible impact of ‘too much information’. Not the Duran Duran song, although one could easily argue that it’s pretty horrible. You might be thinking, what could be so horrible about the news?? Read on.

A little over a year ago, I decided that my parents needed to join modern culture and come into the 21st century by getting a computer and getting on the internet. So, without even really talking to them, I bought some parts, and put them together a system. I brought it to them, set it up, and got them online. Since my parents are older, they have a pretty good bit of free time. Some of this empty time was now filled by them getting on the computer and figuring out how to navigate the internet.

My mom actually got pretty good with it, and checks mail and news online every day. When I call her for my weekly requisite call, we talk about things going on in my hometown and what family members are up to. That usually lasts about 3 minutes, so to fill some more time, we inevitably end up talking about what’s in the news.

So, today during this aforementioned call, we get to that point of akward silence between topics, when to my horror my mother brings up a recent news story. Its not the story, or the topic of it, or subject matter that is horrible, its just the headline itself. Never would I imagine that I would have to hear my mother say certain things to me. But, to my somewhat sickened dismay, she suddenly broke the silence with the question,”Did you hear about Deep Throat?” Even as I type it now, the horror flashes back, like a POW wartime memory.

That’s all for now, I have to get to the toilet.

Catch-22

I’m starting to be more aware of the impact of blogging. I wrote an entry before about those people who wrote about their jobs on their blog and got fired, but this is about more than that.

Of course, I want people to read my blog, and it is linked directly from my homepage on my website, so people are going to find it. Its just that once you know that certain friends, or coworkers, or family members are reading it, you have to start censoring yourself. If Uncle Joe is reading my blog regularly, then I can’t really write a blog about what an asshole he is. I don’t know who is reading this, and so now I feel like I can’t talk about anyone, out of fear that they will get upset with me for something I say. Don’t get me wrong, its not that I care that much about offending someone, its more the hassle and headaches that come with the resulting conflicts.

The whole reason I picked such a strange user ID on blogspot was because I wanted to have some anonymity. I felt like if I worried too much about what people thought, or worried about how people would take some of things I said, then it really wouldn’t pay to even do it.

So, there is the dilemna. Of course, I could do as I do with most things and just say screw it, and write whatever the hell I want. But that can sometimes cause problems. The last thing I need is to cause some big ruckus.

That being said, I don’t think it’s that big of a problem. Most of my entries aren’t about individual people anyway, their more about things, or events. I never really saw this as being a diary, but more a place to voice my opinions. So, odds are I won’t get myself into too much trouble.

Maybe I will just have to be more creative in how I present certain things when they apply directly to people who might be offended. Look for lots of analogies, and bizarre references to things that probably won’t make any sense.