christmas in prison

I was thinking of prison, John Prine and Fyodor Dostoevsky today, and Martha Stewart. I also was thinking of Christmas, figuring since it is New Year’s Eve and New Year’s sort of unofficially marks the end to the Christmas holidays; it was my last chance to blog about Christmas for the next eleven months.

You may recall that John Prine made a famous quote about prison and Dostoevsky picked up his six-string and wrote a song called Christmas in Prison. Oh, wait a minute. I have that ass-backwards. It was John Prine that wrote the song. Two lines of the song stick in my mind.

The searchlight in the big yard swings ‘round with the gun,
And spotlights the snowflakes like dust in the sun.

Dostoevsky said “We can measure the degree of civilization in a society by entering its prisons.”

I’ve never done time in the big house, but I’m sure if President Bush starts reading my weblog on a regular basis, he’ll try to find a way to put me there, if he isn’t trying to send me up river already. The reason I am thinking of prison this fine New Year’s Eve is that I read a story this morning about Martha Stewart’s doings in the pen. You’re probably wondering what kind of shenanigans Ms. Stewart has been up to this time. You’re probably asking yourself when that lady will ever straighten up and fly right. “What sort of havoc is she causing this time?” you are undoubtedly asking yourself right now.

No, no. It is nothing like that. It seems, according to the story, Martha was a contestant in a decorating contest in the slam and her team lost. Martha’s team made paper birds that hung from the ceiling and were beaten by a team that made a nativity scene. I understand that both teams were to make decorations based on the theme “Peace on Earth.”

Perhaps you recall that the week before Christmas I discussed religious dogma and said that I preferred the scripture of Luke, chapter 2, verse 14, “…on earth peace, good will toward men.” I’m sure the nativity scene made symbolic reference to the heavenly host and angel appearing to the shepherds that was the subject of this verse. It appears Ms. Stewart’s team went more for the scripture of Luke, chapter 2, verse 24, which concerns sacrificing two turtledoves or young pigeons. To be honest, however, there was no reference in the story I read that would indicate any violence, symbolic or otherwise, imparted on the birds Ms. Stewart’s team constructed. I would venture to say that if the contest had been judged by some of our more famous art and style critics, the result of the contest might have been different. I am wondering whether the aesthetics of the rendering of Ms. Stewart’s team may have may have been too sophisticated for the tastes of the judges. I am wondering, however, if Martha Stewart will come out of prison a changed woman and the tastes she picks up in the slam will become the mainstream tastes of our society. Will Martha popularize, and therefore all fashionable society begin wearing, prison blue and prison gray, or, God forbid, that ugly jailhouse orange?

One of the criticisms of our penal system is that many minor offenders go behind bars only to learn the tricks of the trade from more serious offenders and come out of prison more dangerous than they went in. I’m not implying that Martha Stewart is going to be a danger to society when she comes out of prison, but I understand she will become a talk show host after her release and she will be able to impart upon an unsuspecting public the ways of a hardened insider. However, we will all have a few months of innocent bliss before we are exposed to the ways of the incarcerated.

Until then, I will continue to read Dostoevsky, listen to John Prine and wish you all a Happy New Year.

well of the blues

I live in a rural community and my son returned home from our nearby metropolis and told me he read a sign on the front of the local music emporium that the Scissor Sisters were coming there to perform. I’m figuring I won’t be making the trek to see them.

I’m afraid I upset a number of you a few weeks ago when I made a negative comment about the Scissor Sisters after seeing them on Saturday Night Live. I compared them unfavorably to Robert Johnson, one of the greatest blues players who ever lived, to which many of you are saying, “Who?”

The bottle was in the news yesterday and I thought of an old song by Jerry Jeff Walker. The song was Well of the Blues and it was about drinking. I remember the lines:

Borin’ a hole down deep in the soul
That only the bottle could fill.

I know you are thinking right now, “Who? Jimbo you are indeed a relic of some ancient time.”

My answer would be, he was the guy who wrote Mr. Bojangles. But you probably haven’t heard of that one, either.

The story I read said that when schools served milk to students in plastic bottles, replacing the old cardboard cartons, the amount of milk sold went up 8 to 18%. I remember when I was in school, I kind of enjoyed drinking milk out of those cardboard cartons. I know at this moment you’re probably saying, “Yes, but back then it was probably a drink in celebration of not being eaten by a dinosaur on the way to school.”

Touche. But, please, let me stay on subject.

We are a society that drinks out of bottles, whether it is cola, beer or the bottle of “natural spring water” Jimbo seems to have by his side all day long. The interesting thing about the story I read says that it is cheaper to put the milk in bottles than cartons, but that the bottlers are leaving the price the same and taking the difference to profit margin. This means that the bottlers of milk are selling more, making better profit margins and their customers are getting the same amount of product at the same price and enjoying it more. That would seem to be a win-win situation and it’s the way our economic system is supposed to work.

You might be thinking it’s a bad thing for the milk bottlers to be making excess profits at the expense of school kids but the fact is that in a capitalistic society supply and demand determines the price of goods sold. If the milk bottlers are making a reasonable profit, then the marketplace will allow them to do it; if not, then someone else will come along and sell the product at a lower price and less of a profit margin, but a margin that will allow them to make money. Then, of course, someone else will come along and send the milk to Bangladesh for bottling and eat everyone else’s lunch, so to speak.

But, until that day, belly up to the bar, or the school lunch line, and raise a cold one to fill that hole in the soul that only the bottle can fill.

oh lord, grant me my prayer

I didn’t add anything to my weblog yesterday and I apologize to any of you who came by to see what pearls of wisdom I set down on virtual paper only to find there was nothing new-- just the same old crap. With the suicide bombings and the tragedy of the earthquake and tsunamis, it is hard to maintain my sense of humor and write anything vaguely humorous.

“Jimbo, your weblog is supposed to be funny?” is the question most of you are asking yourselves right now.

Ha, ha.

I guess if I could blame the natural disaster on the Bush administration, I would, but in good conscience I think they are free of blame from this one. I read yesterday a quote from Voltaire who, after an earthquake killed tens of thousands several hundred years ago rhetorically asked “What kind of God would do this?”

Of course you probably also recall Voltaire said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Voltaire was one frog who could turn a clever phrase. But I think you can blame this one on God about as effectively as you can blame it on Bush. Stuff happens, and sometimes there is no one to blame. I guess all we can do is lament that it happened and give money to the relief effort, if we so choose.

In checking out the Voltaire quote with my good friend Mr. Bartlett, I found another one that I rather liked. Voltaire said, “I have never made but one short prayer to God, a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous,’ And God granted it.”

I can’t say that Bush is my enemy, but every picture I see of him, he looks ridiculous. Thank you, God.

In the news this morning I read that tickets to the inauguration are a hot item and are in short supply. The tickets are to be given to our representatives in Washington who will distribute them to us, but there will not be enough to go around. I won’t be needing one, which is good as no one has offered me one. Bush can put his hand on a bible and swear an oath (at which time I may, under my breath, also swear oaths); give a speech; dance until the wee hours and toast with champagne. Meanwhile, I won’t be partying. I will be focused like a laser on the news of the day; waiting for the President to make a misstep and then ridicule him, the President, and anyone else doing something at which I can poke fun.

Because it is rare when we can go for more than one day at a time without stooping to base humor here in Jimbo’s world.

i want a new drug

With all the bad news I have been reading this morning, notably suicide bombings and over 20,000 dead in Asia as result of earthquakes and tsunamis, it was good to see some positive news. I read an article on Yahoo! that indicated chocolate was good for the heart and also improved ones love life. If you are a regular reader you probably recall that back in November I wrote in my weblog about the amazing and wonderful things chocolate could do. My blog centered on a story that indicated researchers had found an ingredient in chocolate could cure coughs. At the time I suggested that I felt chocolate could do oh-so-much more. I believe I said the following:

Chocolate! Is there anything it can’t do? Maybe it can cure baldness or maybe some ingredient in chocolate could be used to cure erectile disfunction.

Okay, I know I said it. I went back and looked. At the time you read this you probably said to yourself, “Jimbo, we appreciate your informing us about the latest medical breakthroughs, but shouldn’t you stick to subject matter with which you are more familiar? Shouldn’t you stay within your core competencies? Shouldn’t you be grounded in and shouldn’t your intellectual capital be invested in your area of expertise, whatever that area might be? To which I would respond:

Yeah, what you said.

You people sure use a lot of big words and you have an uncanny grasp of intellectual concepts. I’ll bet you are all successful, have good taste and have lots of friends, and I’ll bet you are well respected in the community. I guess that’s why I like to write for you.

But I digress. The story I read today cites an Italian study in which women who ate chocolate frequently had more sexual desire and greater sexual function. “Chocolate,” says the story, “seems to make the mood more fulfilling.” It also states that “Chocolate seems to straddle the line between a food and a beneficial medicine.”

It was Ogden Nash who said, “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” It was Taj Mahal who added, “You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica.” Perhaps he would have been more accurate if he would have said, you can eat all the chocolate down at Russell Stover, but I guess that would have screwed up an otherwise good rhyme.

I guess it goes to show that all that time we spent plying women with alcohol would have been better spent giving them chocolate to get them to put out. I mean, all the stories I have heard about other guys trying to ply women with alcohol, which I would never have done, myself.

You are probably saying right now, “Jimbo, chocolate indeed seems to be the wonder drug (and confectionary) for which mankind has strived throughout his history, but what about the evil side effects—those awful zits?”

Relax, bon ami, and savor that bon-bon. The story goes on to say that the myth that chocolate causes acne is just a myth and “doesn’t seem to be true.”

I’m sure at this moment you are on your knees with your arms extended into the heavens shouting, “It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!”

And, you are right. It tastes great, cures what ails you and makes you feel sexy. Now if we could just debunk those nasty myths about chocolate having all that fat and all those calories. If those outrageous lies could be proven to be incorrect, then life would be perfect. I don’t know about you, but there is a Christmas-tree-shaped candy dish downstairs with M&Ms in it and I think I need to wander downstairs and take my “medication.”

Because in Jimbo’s world we want to be healthy and we want to be on the cutting edge of medical science.

you're a mean one, mr. snow

It’s Christmas Eve and it feels very much like a holiday. I just made Jimbo’s omelets for my girlfriend and me. You may recall a while back I gave you my recipe. My girlfriend made a suggestion that might save on the ingredients that I should pass along to you. If there are only two of you and you are making only two omelets, cut up only half of each of the peppers and save the remaining halves of the peppers for next time or for use in salads. Since I have been busy cooking, I haven’t had a chance to read the news-—only the headlines. Two headlines jumped out at me almost enough to read the stories that accompanied them, but time didn’t allow. The first headline was:

Euro rises to fresh high Vs. dollar

Without reading the story I can assume that the US dollar has once again hit new lows against the Euro and other foreign currencies. I can assume the Treasury Department and, yes the Bush administration continue to allow the twin deficit demons, both trade and budget, to run amok. Where is Robert Rubin when we need him? Now, there was a man who knew how to manage an economy. Plus that, he never did the disruptive, and just plain mean stuff that Snow has done the last few days.

Another headline that caught my eye read:

Snow buries parts of the Midwest, South

I don’t even want to read the story that accompanies this headline to find out what shenanigans the Treasury Secretary is up to today. I have quit reading the stories about John Snow, only the headlines, because I don’t care to see details of the problems he is causing for people. You probably recall that two days ago he fell halfway across the country and then yesterday he turned an interstate into a parking lot. Now it looks as if he is burying parts of the country. My God, when will it end? I’m certain that if I were to read the story, I would find that the budget deficit he is amassing is burying parts of the country, if not the entire country, under piles of debt from which we will never be free until the tax-and-spend republicans are replaced by fiscally responsible leaders.

Now, I’m wondering what sorts of dastardly deeds can we expect to see in the next few days from the Treasury department. Will they make like the Grinch and steal Christmas? Will they put widows and orphans out in the cold? Will the Secretary take target practice at Santa’s reindeer as they make their annual journey from the North Pole? Will they send more American jobs to the third world until America itself is third world?

But, I digress. Today is Christmas Eve and it is time to think happy thoughts, so my present to you is that I will not say any more about Secretary Snow or the Bush administration for the next thirty-six hours. At the risk of offending those of you who may be God fearing, my wish to you is Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays. My hope is that you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday season.

As we say in Jimbo’s world, I just have two more words for you: MERRY CHRISTMAS.

snowblind

I read another headline on Yahoo! this morning that has me wondering whether our government has gone berserk, most notably the Treasury Department. I didn’t have time to read the story, but here is the headline:

Snow turns interstate into parking lot

I am assuming that Treasury Secretary John Snow must have been angry from the fall he took yesterday (you may recall that I wrote yesterday about the headline saying that Snow fell from New Mexico to the Great Lakes) and he must have brought all the force of the Treasury Department to bear to close the interstate. You know, if this were the middle of summer all the travelers on the interstate could stop and park and have a cool drink and maybe listen to some of the truck drivers’ colorful stories. You have to ask what is Snow thinking to turn interstate highways into parking lots during the holiday rush. People won’t be able to reunite with their loved ones; the important last minute holiday gifts won’t be able to move down the interstates to the waiting arms of the children. Banks won’t be able to move those dollars that have declined in value during Treasury Secretary Snow’s tenure back and forth and commerce will be disrupted.

This is yet another instance of our government gone wild. Here in Jimbo’s world we wonder, when will it stop?

christmas, bloody christmas

There are so many stories in the news this morning that I can’t read them all. I can just scan the headlines. One headline in particular caught my eye.

Snow Falls From N.M. to Lower Great Lakes

I didn’t read the story but I assume that the Treasury Secretary, John Snow, must have tripped over something to fall that far. The secretary has been in the news a lot lately and obviously he has a big footprint, but I didn’t realize how big until I saw this headline. If he can’t avoid falling that far, himself, it’s no wonder that he has not been able to stop the dollar from falling against foreign currencies.

Another headline piqued my curiosity enough that I read the story.

Christians protest secular Christmas

The story pointed out that some disgruntled Christians are fed up with people taking references to Christ out of their holiday greetings. The article pointed out that the use of salutations like “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” by businesses and individuals annoys some people. Public schools teaching about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa upsets some Christians. If you are a regular reader you are aware that I have emphasized that we all should celebrate Christmas as much or a little as we wish, and, although I may not have said it in so many words, in the way we all want to celebrate. I personally have no problem with using the expression “Merry Christmas,” and I have actually wished all of you a Merry Christmas on a couple of occasions (and will probably do it yet again). I do it, however, to the inclusion of all and to the exclusion of none.

This is the season to celebrate family and friends and the only person I am trying to convert is my girlfriend who is getting sick of my elation with the holidays this year and my inability to understand why everyone isn’t as elated as me. I will pick and choose the religious dogma with which I will celebrate this season. I will take the advice of the heavenly host that appears with an angel to shepherds in Luke, chapter 2, verse 14: “…on earth peace, good will toward men.” I will not sacrifice a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons as requested in Luke, chapter 2, verse 24, unless, of course, they shit on my car.

I think the season, although it is undeniably based on religious dogma, should be celebrated as you see fit, as long as the rights of others are not violated. Call it Xmas, if you wish, but just watch your back. History is filled with examples of religious people being upset because their particular religious beliefs are not supported 100 percent by others, and frequently the end result is violence. Having the lord on your side doesn’t necessarily make you correct. You may recall that President Bush had the support of a large percentage of Christians in the last election, and through their support the devil himself, the demon Dubya, was returned to office.

We might not have Christmas at all if it weren’t for religious intolerance. You may also recall that 2000 years ago, so the story goes, there was a guy who challenged the religious status quo of the time. The moral majority of the time nailed him to the cross and from those humble beginnings Christmas eventually emerged.

If you think that Jimbo has gone off the deep end this time, allow me one more example. I would like to propose the name of a man who is probably one of the most devoutly religious people we know. He will do whatever it takes in the name of his god. His name is Osama Bin Laden.

Well, does that get you into the Christmas spirit? No? Well, let me add a postscript to my story. Christmas is bigger that the people that want you to celebrate it their way. It’s bigger than the demon Dubya and the towel-head Osama. It’s bigger than the corporate leaders who farm your jobs off to the third world. Christmas will be here when all of them and us are gone. Celebrate it the way you want. But make sure you tell all of you friends and families to enjoy the season. Maybe tell a total stranger the same thing. Use the greeting you prefer.

As for me, I think I will give my girlfriend a hug tonight and stop trying to convert her and I think I will stick with my familiar salutation for you. Merry Christmas to all of you and your loved ones. Happy Hanukkah and happy Kwanzaa, too.

Because here in Jimbo’s world we mean what we say and we say what we mean.

jimbo's nomination for person of the year

Yesterday I lamented Time magazine’s choice of President Bush as Person of the Year. I know many of you who read my weblog probably said, “Jimbo, we just don’t think you like Bush. Maybe it’s because he has a J-O-B unlike some blogger we know who shall remain nameless.”

My answer to that is, if you’re so smart, why aren’t you president? And, maybe I would have a job if he weren't president. But, I digress.

I advanced some other choices for person of the year yesterday, but you may recall I did so with tongue in cheek, while ticking your funny bone, with a grain of salt and while trying to resurrect any other old bromide I could. You may also recall that I said there were probably numerous others who did things in 2004 that would qualify them for person of the year, if one were willing to do the research. I still haven’t done extensive study into the subject, but in my reading this morning a familiar name came to the surface. I nominate Warren Buffett.

I know you are saying, “Jimbo, you big suck up. Didn’t you just write a letter to Mr. Buffett last week suggesting he nominate you to the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway? We thought you had principles and here you are selling your soul for thirty pieces of silver. For shame!”

No, that’s not the case at all. In my lengthy professional career, I always made an effort to make my boss look good and theoretically, if I were named to the board of Berkshire Hathaway, as chairman, he would be the boss. Board members are independent, however, and if I serve I will be my own man, so this is not an attempt to suck up at all. Unfortunately, Mr. Buffett has yet to contact me. I am assuming that he has not yet seen my weblog over the huge stack of money he has in front of him.

I read this morning that Buffett is top on the list of the fifty most generous donors to charity this year. Buffett and his late wife gave two and a half billion dollars to a foundation they shared this year. The foundation supports reproductive choice and reduction of nuclear weapons.

“Aw, jeez,” you are probably saying, “Are you and Warren Buffett both bleeding heart liberals?”

Yea verily I say unto thee, please stop asking so many questions. I’m trying to blog, here.

It sounds to me that Buffett has a social conscience and he is willing to put his money where his mouth is. All of us should respect that, even those of you who favor more nuclear weapons. If you should care to lump us together, I suppose I could think of worse company in which to be included. You know I would donate my money to good causes, that is, if I had any money.

And you know, we care about the company we keep here in Jimbo’s world.

man of the year

I was surprised to see over the weekend that Time magazine had named President Bush as Person of the Year. It makes me wonder whether I went to bed Saturday night in a comfortable, familiar world and woke up Sunday morning in a hell, presided over by a ghoulish demon named Dubya.

Perhaps there were not a large number of people who, during 2004, did historic, memorable things. At this point, no really earth-shaking accomplishments jump to mind, but I’m sure if I did the research, I could come up with someone better. The story I read quoted Time as crediting Bush with “reshaping the rules of politics…” Also, it says Bush remains polarizing to America and the world.

Using these criteria perhaps I could forward the name of Ron Artest for bringing the sport of basketball closer to the fans, or perhaps Osama Bin Laden for making us all feel closer to the threat of terrorism. In the same vein, let me propose the name of Lisa Montgomery for her efforts to nurture the children of others.

If I could paraphrase Leigh Hunt‘s poem Abou Ben Adhem:

Osama Bin Laden (may his tribe decrease)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace

Osama, of course, can dream peacefully because he has nothing to worry about from Bush. As long as his ally is in the white house he is able to roam the middle east free from any threat from the current administration. It is those of us here in America who have to worry about the nightmares.

In my nightmare I am in bed in a dark, cold room. I can see the vapor from my breath condensing in the icy air. I realize my arms and legs are restrained. I am tied down to the bed. Then I notice I have little girly arms and legs. A man in a dark robe comes into the room. I don’t recognize him at first because my head is rotating three-hundred and sixty degrees, spinning around and around. Finally, my head stops rotating and as the man approaches my bed I realize it is John Kerry.

“Are you here to help me?” I ask in a voice deep and masculine, definitely not a little girl voice, but deeper and louder than my own voice, like someone is speaking inside of me.

“I tried,” he answers. “I gave it my best, but it will be another four years…”

I let out a long string of expletives. He is somewhat taken aback.

“Come closer,” I say.

He leans toward me. He is unaware of what is about to happen, but I know that the green projectile vomit is coming and it is coming in volume, and as it does, I began to fall through space until I see there are fires all around me. I see armies of workers shoveling coal into the fires and throwing logs on, stoking the flames. Then I see the smirking face of the devil Dubya himself. He chuckles.

“Wanna buy some wood?” he asks demonically.

The demon Dubya pokes one of his workers with his fork until the worker cries out. Then he turns his attention back to me.

“Running this place is hard work,” he says. “We outsource the good jobs.”

He holds up a burning magazine. The name of the magazine is Hell. The cover features his picture along with the caption Satan of the Year.

Then he roars with laughter and as the volume of his laughter increases all I can see is his demonic expression, and I wake up, perspiration dripping from my forehead. I realize it was only a nightmare. I wipe the sweat from my face.

“It’s been a hell of a year,” I tell my girlfriend.

Because sometimes it’s hard to tell the nightmares from reality unless you’re in Jimbo’s world.

hix nix chix flix

My girlfriend and I like to go to see a movie on Saturday afternoon and this week the movie was Spanglish. Overall the movie was okay, but it wasn’t quite what I expected. I was sort of expecting a comedy and what it actually was fit better into the category of “chick flick.”

What was right with the movie was that the narrative was in the form of an essay attached to a college entrance application written by the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, leaving the daughter to become the narrator and tell us the story. I thought it was a clever way of taking us into the story, but our first clue a chick flick was coming, because one rarely bares ones soul in a college application or a resume. The immigrant, who became a housekeeper for a wealthy family, was played by Paz Vega and added some eye candy to the movie, along with Tea Leoni who played the wife in the wealthy family. I saw Leoni on Conan late last week and she said she had worked out to get in shape for the movie. I’ll say she did. She had the kind of abs that Jimbo always resolves to have as the New Year approaches, but she succeeded where poor Jimbo always fails.

Anyway the story morphs into a love triangle, or some kind of a multi-sided love polygon with Leoni cheating on her husband, Adam Sandler, and Sandler falling for Vega and the parents doting over each others kids. This was all entertaining, except I was waiting for Bob Barker to show up and Sandler and he to duke it out or for Sandler to sing a silly song in the high falsetto we’ve grown to know and love. I was looking for laughs and what I got was unrequited loved and deception. I was expecting to see an audience rolling on the floor and instead I saw Sandler show us his character’s fear of success in his professional life.

In Spanglish Sandler is a caring and compassionate guy, facing his fears with some amount of angst and detached resolve, unlike the way Bogart faced his fear of the leaches in The African Queen. Ah, Bogart, was there ever anyone better?

The bottom line is that this film is not a waste of time, of course I saw it with my girlfriend and any time spent with her is quality time, but it is not the comedy I was expecting. The humor is there, but it is cerebral and a smile rather than a belly laugh. And maybe I’m holding Sandler to too high a standard as a dramatic actor, comparing him to Humphrey Bogart.

But, as we say in Jimbo’s world, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

more notes from the underground

Last weekend I wrote a blog criticizing the Scissors Sisters and lamenting the fact that Bernard Kerik's nomination for Homeland Security Director had gone down in flames due to a "nanny problem."

I have just one word to say in my defense about the Kerik story. That word is "Oops."

The story I read today on Yahoo! still insists, as did the original story on which I based my blog, that Kerik is, indeed, bald.

I still stand by my statement about the Scissors Sisters, however, and hope they aren't nominated for a Nobel prize anytime soon.

Because we reserve the right to change our minds when the rumor and innuendo begin to overwhelm us. We, and Bernard Kerik, are entitled to an occasional faux pas here in Jimbo's world.

open letter to warren buffett

Dear Mr. Buffett:

Merry Christmas. I hope you are doing well.

I read with interest earlier this week that you and others on the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway have voted for Bill Gates to become a member. I think I can say without hesitation that you made a good choice. I think it goes without saying that Mr. Gates has proven business acumen and I understand he is computer literate. If you are a regular reader of my weblog, you probably know that I good-naturedly told him to hang his head in shame the other day because of quality problems my mother was experiencing with the Microsoft Network. But you know me, I was just making good natured humor. You may also recall that the Guardian Unlimited in Great Britain quoted my blog about him getting four million e-mails a day, indicating that I was showing little sympathy for his problem. In fact, I was merely empathizing with him in that we both receive entirely too many spam e-mails. By the way, Bill didn’t ask me to write this letter of recommendation. I did it unsolicited. After all, Bill already has the job. I was writing in behalf of another job applicant: me.

It appears to me the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway is top heavy with high rollers. After all, you and Bill are the two richest men in the world. It also appears you have some others on the board who are well-capitalized. I think it would be the right time to elect someone to your board of directors who understands the day-to-day problems and concerns of the average person, and who would be more average than me? Again, if you are a regular reader, you are aware that due to my being temporarily unemployed, I have the available time to attend board meetings. And, may I assume the members of the board are well compensated for their efforts? Would there be stock options? At $85,500.00 per share of common stock, it is a little pricey for me to open a position right now, outright.

I’m sure that Berkshire Hathaway’s customer base contains some upscale clientele, but I would venture a guess that the majority of your customers are middle-class like myself. And, since the generous offer I made yesterday to help the unfortunate lottery winners who are not happy with their lives since winning the money is apparently not going to be accepted, it appears I will remain middle-class for a while. I believe I can bring the board of Berkshire Hathaway into closer contact with their customer base and therefore offer a valuable service. My intellectual capital is invested in knowing how to get by without being rich; my core competency is spending what money I have wisely. Your board members represent a fraction of the top one percent of America. I could represent the other 99 44/100%.

These would be assets I could bring to the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway.

I’ll be anxiously awaiting your response.

Sincerely,

Jimbo

a few million for your thoughts

I read on Yahoo! yesterday that the wife of the man who purchased the largest winning lottery ticket in history regrets that her husband ever bought the ticket. Apparently, the family’s lives have been miserable and they have endured a series of mishaps since they came into the money.

Her husband, who bought the ticket, has been charged with the assault of a bar manager and arrested twice for DUI since winning the jackpot. Their house, auto and office have been involved in thefts and a friend of a family member was found dead in their house. I’m a little disappointed that there were no reported incidents of the man cavorting with super models, but obviously he is happily married.

I know this leaves you saying to yourself, “Jimbo, you’re a good man for telling us all about the problems of the world, but why don’t you ever do something to fix these problems. Talk is cheap.”

Pardon my french, but au contraire, mon frere.

In this case, I have a solution. Do you remember in the movie The Exorcist how the exorcist lured the demon out of the little girl and sacrificed himself to save her? I’m willing to do the same to help these people in specific and society in general. My solution is for these people to give me the money they have left and I will take on the responsibility of spending it properly and relieving them of the pain of having to manage it.

“You’re a generous man, Jimbo,” you are obviously saying to yourself right now. “You’d be willing to make this kind of sacrifice for perfect strangers?”

Look in your dictionary right now and I’m sure beside the definitions of compassion, love and kindness you’ll see the line drawing of my less-than-handsome countenance. Sure, they are strangers, although they appear to be somewhat less than perfect, but how many of us are perfect? Yes, I am willing to help. Put that money in my hands and their demons will be exorcised and their lives will be back to normal and I will face those demons, myself. I will look at my reflection in the rear-view mirror of that new car I have been wishing for and say, “Do your damnedest, Satan, do your damnedest.”

When those super models come by offering their temptations of the flesh, Jimbo will tell them, “scat, be gone,” knowing that when the money is gone they will be, too. I will look out the window of the massive new house I have been lusting after and feel the joy of being able to do the good I was put here on this world to do.

Because we care for our fellow man here in Jimbo’s world.

customer disservice

It all started so innocently and then it went so horribly wrong.

Imagine, if you will, my poor old gray-haired mother, doing the things mothers and grandmothers do, not harming anyone, nor ever wanting to harm anyone. At the urging of her children and grandchild, my mother has, for the past two years, journeyed into the computer age. She bought her first computer early in 2003 and we got her set up with the Microsoft Network. Within days, her computer was hit by a worm and became useless. She had to take her CPU back to Best Buy to have it disinfected and they sold her some virus protection software and she has had no infection since.

Mom doesn’t use her computer for much and rarely surfs the net, but she uses it to e-mail her friends, children, grandchild and fellow members of the Red Hat Society (an organization less sinister than the girl scouts), and to visit the blogsite of her eldest child, Jimbo’s World. Then, on Tuesday of last week, the unthinkable happened. After a year and a half of signing onto the internet with MSN, using the saved user name and password she had used for eighteen months, suddenly on Tuesday, the user name and password were no longer any good. ACCESS DENIED.

Several phone calls to MSN’s help line yielded several solutions, but because she had dial-up and no cell phone, she couldn’t call and be on-line at the same time and she couldn’t test the solutions until after the phone calls ended. Nothing worked. MSN customer service suggested mother had done something to her computer, which she hadn’t, but these were computer experts; my mother a helpless computer neophyte. Surely the MSN people knew of which they spoke.

O tempora! O mores!

Enter the savior, my son, a college senior who knows his way around a computer. Mom called him and told him of the problem, so, after we finished playing basketball on Sunday, he went to his grandmothers house, booted up the computer and called MSN help on his cell phone. Obviously grandma, not knowing the ins and outs of the computer was doing something wrong or not understanding what the MSN people told her, but now the young man who knew what he was doing would be able to understand and, with the help of MSN, get the situation back under control.

In defense of the people at MSN help, you know that they must get hundreds of calls a day from people with problems that can be corrected by doing things like turning on the computer or plugging it in, so they have probably seen every incompetency possible foisted upon them by helpless computer users. One would have to assume that so many people call them with problems caused by the users themselves that MSN probably assumes the vast majority of problems are not the fault of MSN. Excellent customer service, however, is based on the assumption that the customer is always right. Even if he is a hapless boob, he does pay the bills.

But on this particular Sunday, my son explained the problem to the MSN help person on the other end of the phone and he was led through a series of solutions, leading to various and sundry new screens and windows and small pop up error messages, now error number 47; now error number 22. He was on the phone with them for more than an hour and the person on the other end of the conversation continued to insist the problem was not on MSN’s end, but in the user computer.

Level of resolution: zero; level of frustration: infinite.

Because my son had an office Christmas party to go to, he had to end the conversation and got a number to which to refer when he called back at a later date.

“Oh, good,” you say. “Someone in Jimbo’s household has a job.”

At the end of the conversation, the help person described the problem my mother was having and said that they were having a number of occurrences of that problem, but that it wasn’t the problem my mother was having.

I asked my son if he had been talking to someone in the United States. He said the person sounded “foreign” but that he couldn’t be sure. Whatever the circumstances, the level of customer service satisfaction was somewhere between bad and lower than a snake’s belly. Can I blame this on Bush? Darn tootin’, but the geometric progression necessary to put it at his feet would be too lengthy, so for the time being, I’ll blame it on the easiest target.

Hang your head in shame, Bill Gates. Hang your head in shame.

Now, in the movies they have “flashbacks,” where everything gets blurry for a minute and when things come back into focus you realize that you are viewing something that occurred before, something in the past. Imagine for a moment that everything just got blurry and now it is coming back into focus. What you see when the picture regains clarity is me, sitting at the desk in my home office, doing the crossword puzzle from the Sunday newspaper, with a telephone resting on my shoulder.

“This is terrifying,” you say to yourself. Then after a brief pause, you recant. “No, this is not terrifying; it is boring. Why the hell are you boring us with the crossword puzzle?”

Let me explain.

Earlier this year I tried to sign on to my own Internet service provider one morning and got an error message. In my location we had only one ISP with a local number until just recently, and only dial-up, no DSL. My ISP is a company called MyVine. I called their help line and after several levels of voice mail, I waited on hold for forty-five minutes before I gave up. That week I was helping a friend remodel the place where she lived. I helped her wallpaper her bathroom; I put in a new floor and a new toilet. Occasionally during the week I tried to log in with no success and tried to call but I spent a lot of time on hold listening to the message that the wait time was in excess of thirty minutes and that I should log on and go to the help screen, which, of course, I couldn’t do. The following week, I finally broke down, got the Sunday crossword puzzle and called and held for three hours, while doing the puzzle to entertain myself.

I listened repeatedly to the message about logging on and going to their help screen, which I couldn’t do, and hearing that my call was important to them. Eureka! Finally human contact—-someone answered on the other end. I explained my problem and they told me that they had changed my user name and that they had sent an e-mail telling me about it. I would later find out that I had the e-mail but it had been sent to me several days after my user name had been changed. I guess their assumption was that I would use one of my other ISPs to log on and be informed, but the fallacy was why would I have multiple ISPs and if I did, why would I need theirs? I changed my user name to what they told me it was and I was able to log on. In a way, it was nice to be out of contact with the world for a week, a little bit like being away on a vacation, but to my horror when I checked my watch list of stocks they were up an average of over ten percent from the week before. This was bad because I didn’t own any of them. I have a group of stocks I know like the back of my hand and I can always play the quarters, halves and points and eke out small profits. When I miss an upward ten percent move it’s like missing a month’s paychecks. And, of course, I compounded the problem by making the decision that the rise in one of my stocks was just the beginning and I established a large position as if it were a momentum play. As the stock dropped for several months, and I held on, it put me in a huge hole that I have only recently dug myself out of.

“Where the hell are you going with this?” you might ask.

Well, I am saying that customer service is not what it used to be. It seems that many commodity-type things we buy are getting so inexpensive that the companies that sell them to us are being marginalized. You could say that we are getting what we pay for, but I would say that we’re getting screwed. The management of some companies are cutting out costs by outsourcing and by reducing the amount they invest in providing good customer service at their own detriment. The law of supply and demand will enforce itself and the companies that provide poor customer service will themselves be marginalized as others will come along to offer better service and take away their customer base. One can ignore the law of supply and demand only as long as one can ignore the law of gravity. Ignore the former and the latter will bring you back down to earth in a heartbeat.

As you are aware, we know and respect the law here in Jimbo’s world.

head 'em up; move 'em out

Everything was going well yesterday and I had blogged about everything that was on my mind and then some things happened to get me blogging again.

I found out yesterday that a guy I play basketball with on Sundays is going to Romania early next year. He’s being sent by the company he works for to train someone else to do his job. His company is outsourcing his job to the former communist block and he has to go over there to train his replacement. This is Bushes America, all right. As I have said before, and I will undoubtedly say again, this shortsighted thinking is economic suicide. Where is Henry Ford now that we need him? I know you’re thinking, “Jimbo, get with the times. How can you resurrect the memory of a relic like Ford? We don’t need twentieth century thinking in the twenty-first century. And what is a relic like you doing playing a young man’s game like basketball?”

Well, you young whippersnappers, I don’t get up and down the court like I used to, but I can still get the three-ball through the nylon if I can find the holes in the zone or lull my defender to sleep.

But, don’t try to get me off the subject, because here is my point. When Ford came up with the idea for the Model T, he knew he needed to create a need for his product. He knew if he could create enough demand he could sell a lot of cars. The way he did this was by using the assembly line and producing a large numbers of cars. To do this, he had to standardize parts so that he could use interchangeable components, and that his workers could pull the parts out of a bin and use them in any car that came down the line. This was sort of a prehistoric version of six sigma. By doing this, he could increase the speed at which cars were manufactured and hence, he could make more cars. He also needed more workers to do this, but by hiring more workers, he was creating potential buyers of his automobiles. You may call this socialism, but in fact, it is good entrepreneurial practice. First, one creates the demand; then gets a targeted market and makes sure they have money to buy ones product and then one sells the product to them. Pretty damned simple, isn’t it?

Now, it seems, our top business executives make their money by putting their workers out on the street. This will yield short-term profits, but it removes long-term profit potential by reducing the number of people with money to buy their product in the future. America has always liked the short term, but our passion has always been for the future. It proves we have become too shortsighted and that America has lost its way. We pay these executives scads of money to make these lame decisions when they could listen to Jimbo’s gems of wisdom for free and be as wise as you are and do the hard work you do. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but whom do I blame the most? Who do you think: The dope in the white house.

Hang your head in shame, Mr. President. Hang your head in shame.

Well, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I’m sure you’re aware if there is something wrong you can bet I’m going to have something to say about it and I know some of you are listening. Because that’s the way we do it in Jimbo’s world.

notes from the underground

I saw the Scissor Sisters on Saturday Night Live last night. I was surprised that one of the Scissor Sisters is a brother. No, I don't mean he was black; he was a man. I shit you not, as host Colin Ferrell might have said. Unfortunately, the Scissor Sisters are far down the list of my favorite singers. To paraphrase what Willie Brown (played by Joe Seneca) said to Eugene "Lightning Boy" Martone (played by Ralph Macchio) in the movie Crossroads, they aren't a pimple on the ass of the late, great Robert Johnson.

I read yesteday that Bernard Kerik had removed his name from consideration for the post of Homeland Security Director. It seems that there were questions of the immigration status of a nanny that Kerik employed and he was forced to take his name out of the hat due to that. I am not familiar with Kerik's politics, so perhaps I am not qualified to comment, but it would seem that he would have been imminently qualified to do the job.

The story on Yahoo! referred to Kerik as "the bald, mustachioed former New York City police commissioner." The writer of the story, Katherine Pfleger Shrader-- the three-name using, presumably hirstute and un-mustachioed AP writer-- said that Kerik had a moderately troubling problem in that he had recently exercised six million dollars worth of Taser options. It would seem to me that had the options been exercised prior to his becomming Homeland Security Director there would not be a conflict of interest. If there was a problem it would be exposed during confirmation. With the soaring price of Taser stock this year who among us would not have exercised options in the stock if we had them. Unfortunately for my portfolio, I had none to exercise.

It would seem to me the nanny issue is a pretty minor indisgression. You may recall that during the Clinton administration, the Republicans in congress shot down some of his nominations for cabinet posts. It would seem to be poetic justice that the actions of some renegade Republican congressmen in the 1990s may come back to scuttle Bush's nomination of Kerik if it wasn't for the fact he appears to be a good choice. Which of us doesn't have some minor indisgression in our past. Even Jimbo has a moral dilemma in his recent past. Once, when playing a poker tournament, I won the side pot and someone else won the main pot. When the dealer pushed the side pot to me, I felt he included an extra chip. I should have said something, but I wasn't sure so I didn't say a word. I don't think I'll go to hell for this, but I wish I had spoke up. I went on to finish out of the money.

It would seem to me that Kerik would be a better Homeland Security Director than some politician who has no terrorism or security creditentals. We could surely do worse.

celebrate christmas if you have the balls

Today is the day to be in the holiday spirit, and because I am, I want to get you in the spirit, too. Lets all join hands and sing a Christmas Carol. How about, O! Christmas Tree? I’ll start it out. You sing along.

O! Christmas tree, O! Christmas tree, how ever green your branches.

That’s good. Now women only.

Very good. Now men only. Hey guys, don’t let the women show you up.

I read on Yahoo! earlier this week that some people are going all-out in decorating for the holiday season. It appears there are several companies on-line and also bricks and mortar companies that have gotten into the Christmas spirit and will sell you whatever quantity of Christmas paraphernalia suits your fancy. There are, as expected many who take this to the extreme and try to make their display the most elaborate in the neighborhood. The story sites instances where people have spent thousands of dollars to decorate their houses and displays so impressive that the traffic into the neighborhood to see the decorations becomes disruptive. In one instance, because a particular display was so massive, neighbors took it to the state’s supreme court which ruled that the display was so disruptive it had to be moderated.

Now, just those of you in the northern hemisphere.

I’m a little hazy, but wasn’t it that great supporter of Christmas gayety, Barry Goldwater, who said that extremism in the quantity of Christmas decoration is no vice? Maybe it was someone else. Like I said, I’m a little hazy and Bartlett takes me to Patrick Henry. I’m thinking Henry only said that moderation in the quantity of Christmas decoration is no virtue.

Now, just the southern hemisphere. Come on! I can’t hear you. You can do better than that. Oh, yes, that’s much better.

I think that is fine to get a little carried away. Celebrate Christmas as much or a little as you care to. I’ve gone for the subtle approach this year. You may recall I decorated my tree last week. The previous Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, while fool poets were making poems in various locations around the world, my girlfriend and I played God and assembled her tree and decorated it. Because my girlfriend is the one woman in the country who doesn’t have a gazing ball (and insists she doesn’t want one) this is the only time of year I have to bring my nose into the close proximity of a reflective convex globular ornament and amuse myself by looking at my reflection. Try it, if you haven’t done so already, and do it again in a week or so. Look at yourself in a red ornament and you will appear to be demonic as well as having a massive nose; try a silver one and you’ll look like the tin man in The Wizard of OZ with, of course, the exception of grotesque massive volume in the area of the proboscis.

Now, just those in north America. Oh, that’s good.

Look at yourself in a gold ball and you’ll swear you are C3PO, except, of course, with a nose that approaches obscenity.

Finally, just those of you outside of north America. Very good! Everybody sang very well.

In past years I have decorated the outside of my house with strings of lights across the front façade of the house and down the sides. Last year I put blue rope lights under the eaves and it gave a blue backdrop to my multi-colored lights across the front of the house, but this year I am just using the rope lights. It gives my house a blue glow and it looked really good last week when we had a little snow, but the snow is gone now and the temperature is approaching sixty degrees Fahrenheit. But the blue glow still looks good.

Just remember, though, it’s not the quantity of the decorations or even the size and value of the presents. Christmas is being with the ones you care about. Let’s all not get stressed out about it. Let’s have fun and enjoy the season.

In Jimbo’s world we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, Merry Christmas.

blame it on john kerry

I read on Yahoo! this morning that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld fielded questions from the troops in Kuwait on Wednesday and was asked by a member of the Tennessee National Guard why armor for the vehicles the soldiers use in Iraq was in short supply. Rumsfeld, obviously a fan of the old sitcom Welcome Back Kotter asked the soldier to repeat the question. Had Rumsfeld more closely followed the guidelines of Vinnie Barbarino from the old Kotter series, he may have been able successfully to avoid the question. To aid the Defense Secretary I would like to remind him of Vinnie’s technique, so if this happens again, he can better avoid the question.

The questioner would pose the interrogative to which Barbarino would respond, “What?” The questioner would repeat his question and Vinnie would then respond, “You talkin’ to me?” The questioner would again have to repeat the question, unless he gave up in defeat.

Had Rumsfeld more closely adhered to the Barbarino method, he might have been able to avoid the question altogether instead of telling the questioner that the troops had to make the best of it with what they had and that the army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it faster.

On second thought, we have the finest army in the world on the ground in Iraq and Kuwait. The soldier would have articulated his question a third or a tenth time if it was what he thought he should do.

Rumsfeld told the soldiers he spoke to they should discount critics of the war in Iraq, but no matter what ones opinion of the war going on in the middle east, the primary concern we should all have is for the safety of the U.S. troops over there. Rumsfeld was informed by the soldier who asked the question that our soldiers were going through landfills to find armor and bullet-proof glass to protect themselves and their vehicles because the Defense Department is not providing the armor for them. The commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait said he was not aware that soldiers were looking in landfills for armor and bullet-proof glass. I guess they must not get to watch 60 Minutes over there, because I saw the same story on that program a few weeks ago Sunday. 60 Minutes indicated that one of the reasons that our soldiers’ vehicles are going without armor is that congress diverted funds that were supposed to go for that purpose to pet projects back home and other pork. No lobbyist left behind.

I know you are thinking, “Jimbo, we know where you’re going with this, but how are you going hang this one on the Bush administration when it is obvious that the finger of blame points squarely to this group of crooked, dishonest grafters we call the republican-controlled congress?”

Just watch. And read on.

Tax and spend. Tax and spend. And the republicans tell you that’s what democrats do. The president has the power and duty to veto these pork-laden spending bills and he should do it. Instead, as you remember during the debates, he blamed the lack of armor for our soldiers on John Kerry. I blame Kerry, too. At that moment Kerry should have charged across the stage and popped open a king-sized container of whup-ass and after order was restored and as he was being restrained by secret service agents he should have shouted:

“You son of a bitch. If you ever say that again, I’ll kick your ass, again. Every time you say it.”

But, to his discredit, he didn’t. It would have made for more entertaining debates, and possible careers for the two as wrestlers after they retire from politics. It gave Dubya someone to blame all our problems on. After all, the President is doing his best and, as he says, it's hard work. I just hope during the second Bush term a meteor doesn’t come into a collision course with earth. Bush will call for network time for a nationwide address during which he will tell us:

“This is John Kerry’s fault.”

another dumb blonde joke

There were these two blondes reading the story on Yahoo! this morning about an ingredient in shampoo, conditioner and hair color that kills rats’ brain cells. One blonde said to the other:

“The neurobiology professor who has been doing the experiments on rats with the chemical methylisothiazolinone says that there has been no neurodevelopmental testing done on the substance according to his studies. That would explain a lot.”

“The spokesman for the cosmetic industry,” said the other blonde, “Says that it is known that methylisothiazolinone causes neurotoxicity if it gets into the bloodstream, but that there is no evidence of its causing neurodamage to consumers and if applied externally in the low concentrations used in household products it is safe.”

“However,” replied the first blonde, “The professor says that our understanding of the long-term effects of this compound on our health is incomplete, and further testing needs to be done.”

“These data,” concluded the second blonde, “Seem contradictory, but in light of the preponderance of information, it is incumbent upon us to weigh both sides of the argument and make intelligent and proper lifestyle decisions based on the evidence available to us.”

“I think we both know what needs to be done until further data come to light to help guide us to make better, more informed decisions,” said the first blonde.

The second blonde sighed and looked wistfully at nothing in particular, and then, with only a shadow of regret, said:

“But I will miss the fresh clean smell and the soft silky feel of my rat after shampooing him in the morning.”

those wacky french gendarmes

This morning’s story of crack police work in the news comes from France where it seems that French police hid a 150 gram bar of plastic explosives in the suitcase of a random airline passenger at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris to test the prowess of their bomb-detecting dogs. Then, the French cops lost track of the small dark blue suitcase in which they had stashed the Semtex and the explosives are still missing.

Sacre bleu!

One of the bomb sniffing dogs detected the suitcase, but a second dog, who presumably was off sniffing a poodle somewhere, was brought in and in the interim, the suitcase escaped from police surveillance. The gendarmes notified the hundred or so airlines flying into and out of Charles de Gaulle airport, but so far no one has found the material.

Details were sketchy, so I’ll use my imagination to reconstruct how all of this could happen. I would assume the man in charge of the operation, we’ll call him Inspector Jacques Clouseau, probably asked one of the dog handlers:

“Does your dog bite?”

At which time the dog promptly clamped down on the seat of Inspector Clouseau’s trousers, tearing away a large piece of material, exposing the Inspector’s underwear. From that point on, the Inspector was forced to remove his hat and hold it behind him, covering the hole in his trousers. The first dog discovered the suitcase in which the explosives were hidden and the search for the second dog began. At that very moment, a very attractive young French woman, wearing a low-cut dress that exposed her ample cleavage dropped her handkerchief and two policemen hurried over to help retrieve it. They arrived in front of her simultaneously, and as they bent over to pick up the handkerchief, they bumped heads, then stood and staggered dizzily for a moment.

“You fools!” shouted the inspector. “Stand back.”

The inspector then retrieved the young woman’s handkerchief and handed it to her while bowing and holding his hat in front of him. To his rear, two young girls began to giggle and pointed at the gaping hole in the Inspector’s trousers. Realizing he was the object of their laughter, the inspector returned to the full erect position and his hat returned to the area of his buttocks.

“Where is the second dog?” asked the inspector. “Hurry! Hurry!”

Now, how a sheet of flypaper could suddenly appear on the floor near the baggage conveyor in a modern airport I cannot tell you, but sure enough as the inspector paced, waiting for the second dog to be brought forth, he managed to put his foot right on the piece of flypaper. He looked down at his foot and seeing the paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe, he put his other shoe on it and pulled the first shoe away freeing it from the flypaper, but now it was stuck to the other shoe. He repeated the process, but now it was stuck on the original shoe, again. He reached down and pulled the paper off his shoe, but now it was stuck on his hand. He put his hat under his arm and used his other hand to try to remove the paper. The two girls behind him begin to giggle and point again.

“Sacre!”

The inspector looked around and saw a large red suitcase on the conveyor. He put the sticky edge of the flypaper in contact with the suitcase until a corner adhered, then held one hand against the non-sticky side of the paper and pulled his other hand from the sticky side. He was free. The suitcase proceeded down the conveyor for a few feet until another suitcase came into contact with it. A loose edge of the flypaper caught the second suitcase and they were connected. They formed a barrier on the conveyor that trapped every suitcase behind them until suitcases began tumbling off the conveyor by the dozens. One small dark blue suitcase proceeded down the conveyor by itself and out of the baggage area. An alarm sounded and baggage personnel began to converge on the area and quickly stopped the conveyor. The inspector walked away and acted as if he didn’t see all of the commotion.

The second dog arrived and the search for the small blue suitcase commenced. The dog was not successful in finding it.

“Stupid mutt!” exclaimed the inspector.




That’s how I imagine this could have happened, but I guess the story isn’t finished. The vast majority of us couldn’t recognize plastic explosives if we saw them, so imagine the surprise of the owner of that suitcase when it comes time to unpack. I’ve heard that sometimes in Hollywood they will make a movie and have two endings and have test audiences choose the one they think is best. I’ll have two endings and you pick the one you prefer.


Ending number one:

In London, Nellie Bell, the sweetest grandmother you’d ever want to meet, is unpacking after visiting her grandchildren in Paris. When she opens her small dark blue suitcase she finds a small package she didn’t remember putting in there. Obviously the grandchildren put it in there as a joke. She throws it into the trash and it is never seen or heard from again.


Ending number two:

In the port city of Aden, Yemen, Achmed Abdul Aziz is returning from a trip to Europe to contract for explosive materials. He has failed to make contact with any of his potential vendors and knows when he reports to the people who sent him, he will be considered a failure. He opens his small dark blue suitcase and discovers to his surprise the small package inside. He knows and loves the feel and smell of Semtex more than the smell and feel of a woman. It’s not much, but enough to bring down an airplane. He bows to the east and thanks Allah for this deus ex machina.



I think I like the first ending better. I think I’ll stick with it because we prefer slapstick fun here in Jimbo’s world.

the happy hookah

Two things in the news caught my eye this weekend. First, the Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed Fahd al-Sabah called for fellow OPEC counties to cut back on oil production because the price of oil was falling too quickly. I'll grant you, the price of oil on world markets has tumbled in the last week, but we are still looking at oil priced at $42.50 a barrel, down from the fifty-dollar range last month. First, even in the low forties, the price of oil is still too high. Second, I thought the Kuwaitis were our friends. Perhaps this rat bastard doesn't remember who it was that saved his ass back in 1991. Perhaps he doesn't remember that a group of countries, led primarily by the US, pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait during the first gulf war. That's gratitude for you. It's in times of crisis one finds out who his friends are. Sure, Gordon Gecko said "Greed... is good," and we all want to be paid as much as we can, but enough is enough. This ungrateful Kuwaiti wants to milk us for all he can and he probably feels he has someone in the white house that is in complete agreement with him. The last oilman I felt we could trust was Jed Clampett. You may argue that there were not many members of his family with any formal education, only his nephew Jethro, but I'd put Jethro up against dubya in a battle of wits, anytime.


The other item in the news that caught my interest was an increase in the use of hookahs by Americans to smoke their tobacco. I'll grant you, puffing on a Lucky is not very romantic in this day and age. Sharing a bowl with friends using a community hookah may seem more social than catching a quick smoke break on the back porch, but I am wondering where this will all lead. Will these things start showing up at clubs and coffee houses? Will politicians begin crusading against hookahs and then against coffee saying that our young are being lured into coffee houses only to be encouraged to try flavored tobacco? The next obvious step would be for an outcry against coffee, with the argument that coffee is the first step to harder stuff.

I'm totally against the use of tobacco. I think the evidence is there to dissuade us from exposing ourselves to the stuff, but one is never going to legislate tobacco usage out of existence. I do, however, enjoy my morning cup of coffee. My concern is that our politicians will begin a hapless effort to outlaw coffee saying it is the first step to tobacco usage. They will never be able to outlaw tobacco because it is produced in the US and the tobacco companies will be able to fight off any attempt. But we don't grow coffee here and politicians will be able to launch a campaign against it. They'll put forth the argument that coffee usage leads to harder stuff like tobacco, then to marijuana; then to hashish and then heroin.

I can see the public service advertisements, now. A clean and innocent young boy walks into the kitchen and to the coffee pot, half full of orgiastic brown liquid, on the kitchen cabinet. He looks around the room to insure he is unseen and pours himself a cup. A look of intoxicated ecstasy passes over his face and the picture blurs then fades to a scene of the same young man, a bit older, lying between two trash receptacles in a dark alley. He tightens the rubber tube around his bicep and presses the syringe into his arm and his eyes fade into that same look of intoxicated ecstasy.

"It’s only a short step from the coffee pot to the opium den," says the voice of an unseen announcer. "You can stop this. Don't wait until tomorrow; give to the National Organization for Coffee Prohibition. Write your congressman today. Tomorrow may be too late."

It will be only a short step until the religious right begins to attack coffee from the pulpit. Ministers from all across the land will encourage their congregations to get out to vote against coffee; to write their elected officials and demand a constitutional amendment to outlaw coffee. Starbucks will assume the role of the great Satan and the right will boycott.

Right wing talk radio will stay out of the fray at first, as I'm sure as misguided as many of the talk radio hosts are, they still enjoy a steaming cup of joe in the morning. That is, until one talk radio host, while frequenting his local coffee house, is disturbed as he sips his delicious java to see a group of young men, drinking coffee, sharing in their hookah a bowl of tobacco, when two of the men exchange a brief kiss. The talk radio host will have a paradigm change in his opinion of coffee, not unlike the biblical story of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. But rather than being blinded by the light, in his mind he will make the shocking connection: coffee leads to tobacco, marijuana, hashish, heroin, and then, worst of all:

HO-MO-SEX-U-AL-ITY!

He will began a nationwide campaign against coffee and all of the other right wing talk radio hosts, not wanting to be left behind will join in. Coffee will be un-American and any political candidates drinking from a steaming cup will be branded with the scarlet letter of being unpatriotic. Even the left wing and politicians in the center will separate themselves from any hint of coffee usage.

I hope I haven't upset you with this frightening view of things to come. But for me, I'll have another cup, with sugar, please.

Because that's the way we drink our java in Jimbo's world.

four letter words

In keeping with my recent Christmas theme, my first four-letter word is TREE. I decorated my Christmas tree yesterday. Many people go out and buy a tree this time of year; others pull a box out of the attic and, defying the logic of Joyce Kilmer, assemble the artificial tree inside and decorate it. I keep my tree up all year. I know you’re thinking, “Jimbo, you lazy bastard.” But let me explain. Several years ago on the day after Christmas we made a trip to K-Mart for batteries for my son’s Christmas presents. While looking through the after-Christmas bargains, I saw fifty or so small trees, Norfolk Island Pines, eighteen inches or so tall, decorated with silver balls with red ribbons. Forty-nine of the trees had root balls shriveled by lack of water, soil hardened like brick in the dry K-Mart air. Those trees had a greenish color to them, but to the discerning eye of the of the experienced gardener, the only option left was to perform last rites; the only decent home for the trees was the mulch pile. The fiftieth tree, however, had been grossly over-watered. Its root ball was in an almost gelatinous stage. I decanted the excess water from its pot into the pot of one of the dead trees and then I purchased the tree for a dollar.

When I brought the tree home, I let the root ball dry out and transplanted it into a larger pot. I put it in front of the south-facing window of the third bedroom of my house, which serves as my home office where it remains today except for brief visits outside during the summer months. The tree now stands four feet tall and sets on a table twenty-four inches tall, so the top of the tree is an inch or two above my head. Every year at Christmas I decorate it with three strands of white lights, various balls and bells and other decorations and a large gold bow. If Martha Stewart wasn’t in the slam, you’d think she had done it.



My second four-letter word is BLOG. I read on Yahoo! that blog was Merriam-Webster’s number one word of the year. I’ll grant you, a month ago I had no idea what a blog was, but on consecutive days my son told me they were using a blogsite in one of his classes in school and I saw some bloggers on TV. That’s when I started blogging. With three weeks under my belt, I’m now an experienced blogger. It was pretty exciting when the Guardian Unlimited in the UK quoted one of my blogs that second week. I’ve had no international notoriety since, but I’m still new at this. The blog is the ideal medium by which to communicate opinion that is outside of the mainstream. If one were to look up the definition of outside the mainstream in one’s dictionary, it would likely be illustrated by my less-than-handsome countenance. Long live the blog.



My next four letter word is JOBS. The jobs data came out today indicating the economy created only 112,000 new jobs in November, a number far weaker than economists expected, while the unemployment rate dropped to 5.4%. I think the government is under-reporting the rate of unemployment. I have a very small circle of friends and acquaintances and dramatically more than 5.4% of them are out of work. It’s my understanding that the unemployment numbers are based on people making claims for unemployment insurance. There are many people whose benefits have run out or people who are not included because they haven’t collected unemployment . In any event, this has been a jobless recovery. We need to put this country back to work.



That leads me to my fourth four-letter word: BUSH. Mr. President, you need to get this economy back on track by putting people back to work. The way you can do that is balance the budget. Stop spending all our money on pork. When congress recently passed the “no lobbyist left behind” spending bill, it was your job to veto it. Hang your head in shame, Mr. President. Hang your head in shame. It’s the Christmas season. The best gift you could give the American people is leadership. It would cost nothing compared to all the money being squandered on special interests.



The last four letter word is NOEL. Webster defines it as (1) a Christmas carol. (2) Christmas. Remember to treat everyone well this month and spend time with your friends and family.

Merry Christmas.

That's what we say in Jimbo's world.

gift of the magi

I reread O Henry’s short story yesterday and I thought it summed up the Christmas spirit very well for the time it was written, but I felt the story was somewhat dated so I thought I should rewrite it better to meld into a contemporary time frame. The characters in the original story were Della and Jim. I figured if I left the names the same that many of you would assume the male character was based on me, so I have changed the names to more contemporary ones. I figured since I changed one, I’d better change the other. You may note that I have even spelled the name of the male character correctly, unlike someone who shall go nameless. I'm not one to drop celebrity names to be popular, but let’s not hash that out now. So, here goes.



Five thousand, four hundred and ninety-five dollars and thirty-one cents. Hazel scrolled down through the transactions of the on-line bank statement on her computer screen to make sure all the checks and debit card transactions had cleared; then scrolled back to the top of the page to review the on hand balance. Five thousand, four hundred and ninety-five dollars and thirty-one cents. At one time it would have sounded like a lot of money to her. But this was two days before Christmas, 2004, the eve of a second Bush term, and for what she needed, five thousand dollars was squat.

She walked from the second bedroom, the room that she and her husband Phineas used as a home office, and to the living room of their modest house, where she reclined on the couch. She covered her eyes with one hand as if to avoid the afternoon light coming in through the front window. She made a small whimpering sound that turned into a sob and finally burst forth into uncontrollable tears, something she had not heard herself do since she was a small child. And the tears kept coming as water from a well as deep as the history of all mankind.

The need for money and the reason for the tears were for a gift for Phineas for Christmas. It had to be the perfect gift, and Hazel knew the gift and she could see its perfection in her mind’s eye as clearly as she could see the lights twinkling on the Christmas tree by the window. The one thing upon which Phineas based his proof of existence-- yes, even his manhood-- was his ability to provide for his young wife. That meant a home, food and warmth; a car, health insurance and a retirement plan, all of which he had provided in years past. But this year-- the fourth of a Bush economic debacle-- his employer had decided to reduce expenses by canceling their employees’ health insurance and retirement plans. As a result, Phineas had lost the primary reason for his being and was no longer the joy to be with he had been when Hazel enthusiastically agreed to marry him. The loss of his self-esteem had also resulted in his inability to perform, man-wise, and the viagra so sorely needed was beyond their abilities without a prescription plan.

You may ask, dear reader, why Phineas didn’t march right into the office of Mr. Scrooge, show the old bastard the tall man, and walk out the building leaving the firm of Scrooge and Marley forever for a better position. Well, dear reader, Phineas didn’t work for Scrooge and Marley. That is an entirely different story, with a lot of spooks and stuff, perhaps to be explored later this season. Phineas worked for a publicly traded company whose executives, rather than do the difficult work of improving efficiency and cutting costs by intelligent managerial methods, took the easy way out by sodomizing their employees whom they knew could not leave the company for other jobs in the tight job market that so hideously marked the times.

These executives so closely resembled the elected officials of the time that if one put them together with criminals and thugs, the only way one could distinguish who was who is that the executives and politicians would have all of the stolen goods at the end of the day. If one filled the ballroom of a grand hotel with executives and politicians and added some Arab terrorists whom had been shaved clean and dressed in suits, the only way to determine the identity of the only man in the room worth the air he breathed would be by the silver tray of drinks in his right hand.

Hazel had suggested to Phineas, when he informed her of the cutbacks that perhaps he should threaten to resign and find another job, with benefits to which Phineas had answered:

“There are just no good jobs out there, and those jobs there are don't pay anything. In this day and age there is always someone who will work for less money than you.”

Their government reported to them unemployment figures that were historically low and held to their story that the economy was booming and there was a high-paying job for everyone. Those data flew in the face of what Phineas and Hazel saw around them in their daily lives. So many of their friends were unemployed or underemployed and those who were working were terrified that their own jobs would be exported to the vast foreign masses who would work for pennies a day.

So with two days before Christmas and no present, Hazel knew she must do something. She turned on the television and was changing channels with the remote control when, like the star that two-thousand years ago led the Magi from the East to the birthplace of the Christ child, a beam of light from the television led her on her journey to save her family and Christmas. It was a television commercial for the Second Mortgage store: the place where your financial dreams come true.

She brushed her hair, fixed her face and hopped into the car. To the mall, she reasoned, and the Second Mortgage store or bust. When she walked into the Second Mortgage store she saw a man sitting behind the counter.

“Do you make second mortgages?” she asked.

“Sure do,” he replied.

She filled out the application; he ran the information through the computer and she was accepted. She filled out the rest of the paperwork and then it was across the mall to the Trusted Insurance store, where she hurriedly filled out the paperwork and got the policy arranged. She was told that due to a minor pre-existing condition that the rate for the insurance would be very high. But, she knew that. She had researched the purchase of individual health insurance extensively. She knew that dealing with health insurance companies was tantamount to being dragged into a dark alley, being pushed between a couple of trash dumpsters and raped repeatedly. She just swallowed hard and put the money on the counter. Then she hurried home and wrapped the envelope containing the insurance policy in red and gold Christmas wrap and put a large gold bow on it.


Phineas had just left work for the day. Normally he would have gone out, gotten something for supper, like a cheeseburger and fries or a couple of tacos and then gone back to work for a couple of hours in the evening. Even with the reductions in benefits, his employer had still laid off a fourth of the workforce that fall, so everyone had to do a third more work, which meant long days, evenings and weekends spent at the office for Phineas. But today was the last working day before Christmas and he needed to get something for Hazel for Christmas and there was not enough money for what he wanted. Although Hazel had never spoke about it, he knew she needed to feel secure and he felt that as long as he had money in a retirement plan that she would be taken care of when they were both old. But, now he had no retirement plan and needed one. Where would the money come from for the initial funding? As Phineas walked down the street to where he parked his car, he passed a storefront that had a sign reading “Payday Loans.” Phineas walked through the door and was greeted by a man behind a desk.

“Do you make second mortgages?” he asked.

“You betcha’” said the man behind the desk.

Phineas filled out the paperwork and the man put the information into his computer.

“You guys are mortgaged pretty heavy,” he said, “But everyone is these days. You’re accepted.”

Phineas left the loan office and went across the street to the brokerage where he set up his new retirement plan. The guy at the brokerage gave him a shiny silver envelope with an embossed gold seal with the paperwork inside. Phineas headed to his car and home.


When he arrived home, Phineas gave Hazel a hug and a long kiss and she pressed her body against his.

“Um,” she said, “it feels like everything is alright again.”

“I know that Christmas is the day after tomorrow, but I can’t wait to tell you this,” said Phineas. “I know we said we couldn’t afford to give each other gifts this year, but I started a retirement plan for both of us.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I bought a health insurance policy for us.”

“That’s great!”

They hugged again, and then asked almost in unison: “Where did you get the money?”

“Second mortgage.”

“Me, too.”

Phineas gathered together the paperwork for both mortgages, got his calculator and began pressing buttons. He showed the total on the calculator to Hazel.

“We’re in some trouble,” she said.

“We were in trouble before,” said Phineas. “Now we have what we need. I’ll just have to work a few more years into my seventies, that’s all. Maybe I can get a part time job. Minimum wage, but it’ll help us get by. Just as long as the value of our house continues to go up, we'll be solvent.”

“I’ll get a part time job, too. We’ll make it through this. Do you still think I’m pretty?”

“Of course I do. And I always will. Lets put on a couple of burgers.”

The magi were wise men. Back in the day they didn’t run around with AK-47s yelling “Jihad! Jihad!” Instead they brought gifts to the Christ child. They started the tradition of giving gifts at Christmas. They gave Jesus some pretty cool stuff, but the gifts that Hazel and Phineas gave each other were wisest. All of us that give and receive gifts are the wisest of them all.


Well, that’s my story. It’s my Christmas gift to you. You know, however, it’s not as happy as I wanted it to be. I have an idea. Let me add another paragraph to the story to give it a happy ending. Here it is:


The board of directors at the company where Phineas worked gave the executives who eliminated the health care and retirement programs six-figure bonuses for saving the company all that money. They also gave them a ski vacation trip to Colorado over the holidays. They flew the families of the executives by commercial flights several days earlier and then flew the executives there on Christmas Eve in the corporate jet. The jet clipped a power line on takeoff and crashed and all the executives burned up. The pilots survived, unhurt. The executives were big contributors to the President’s campaign and when informed of the tragedy, it really messed up the President’s Christmas.



There, that’s more like it.

We have a saying in Jimbo’s world, and this won’t be the last time you hear me say it. That saying is, MERRY CHRISTMAS!