Friday, December 30, 2005

more cowbell

Jimbo’s girlfriend had the flu last weekend and most of this week. We both figured that it was just a matter of time until I came down with it, too, as I was in close contact with her most of the time she had it. She’s feeling better, now, and went back to work yesterday.

The night before last I was driving home from work and I was starting to feel a little bad and I thought I might have a mild fever. Then, they played Don’t Fear the Reaper, by Blue Oyster Cult, on the radio station to which I was listening.

Many of you may remember the skit on Saturday Night Live re-enacting Blue Oyster Cult’s recording of that song and Christopher Walken playing the part of the music producer who wanted the band to increase the amount of cowbell they included. Perhaps you also remember Walken telling the band, “I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.”

Apparently that was the same fever I had, because I’m feeling fine this morning. To paraphrase Bruce Willis in the Atomic Shakespeare episode of Moonlighting, “I liketh a band that playeth the oldies.”

And we always will, here in Jimbo’s world.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

on my hands and knees for you, baby

There’s a story today on Yahoo! about some limey who is crawling 55 miles for love.

Now I don’t know about you, but it is my experience that women like attention, and if you give them attention they appreciate you for it. However, it must be specific attention directed at one woman in particular. Otherwise they think you are a nut, and all your caterwauling gets you nowhere.

Anyway, it appears this British guy is a performance artist who has done some other unusual things in the past. His current adventure will take him thirty days to complete and he will follow the route taken by the pilgrims in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. He is doing this for the dual purposes of finding love and to point out the plight of those who are alone during the holiday season. Apparently, we are told, that sometime during his past he was alone at Christmas and didn’t want to be around his family, so he stayed home alone and prepared fish sticks. This sounds like the basis of a good blues song, but, unfortunately, Elvis covered that territory in Blue Christmas, and said it as well as it could be said. Plus that, it’s been my experience that being around my family can cheer you up at Christmas, no matter how low you get.

It seems our British friend has performed a stunt where he did cartwheels to make everyone aware that people were taking beach rocks to use as landscaping and he kissed a picture of Tony Blair 100,000 times on Election Day. The story points out that our crawling compadre is single.

No shit?

I would like to think that if I were to kiss a picture of Tony Blair 100,000 times that people might look at me askance. I don’t think that is something that would motivate women to want to be around me. If I were to crawl on my hands and knees for love, I’m afraid that any women one would want to be with would suggest that I should crawl on by and continue crawling until I was out of sight.

And, those of you expert in fourteenth century literature would be quick to point out that Chaucer never finished The Canterbury Tales. I wonder if our crawling cockney will endure a similar fate. I would say his heart is in the right place, but perhaps he hasn’t thought this one all the way through.

Good luck and Godspeed, my English friend. I just wish you had given this one more thought.

At least, that’s what we think here in Jimbo’s world.

Friday, December 23, 2005

a small phish in a large pond

Well, it finally happened. I guess I have abused PayPal’s policies and ripped someone off again and they have suspended my account. Here is some of what they had to say to me in an e-mail this morning.

...as we try to verify your personal informations. If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but to temporaly suspend your account.

I guess I should feel really guilty. I guess I should respond and give them my personal information. What harm could they do if I give them my user name and password? Oh, and why can’t PayPal spell or use proper grammar?

Unfortunately for them, I’m too slick for them to catch me. I’m going to sleeze out of this one. One way I’m going to do it is by not sending them my user name and password. I'm going to squirm out of this one because in addition to being too slick for them, I don’t have a PayPal account, a user name nor a password to send them, anyway. I just hope their phishing trip doesn’t net them any big phish. I just hope the CIA is on their spamming list.

That would make it a joyous holiday season for all of us here in Jimbo’s world.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

lullaby of ebay land

I had an Ebay account once. As a matter of fact, I probably still do. I just haven’t logged on for a few years, since the primary reason I use Ebay is to find out what certain items are currently selling for. I can do that without logging on.

It is my opinion that Ebay is probably the best thing that has happened to commerce and e-commerce in the twentieth and so far in the twenty-first century. However, there is one caveat. Ebay has opened up previously unexplored territory in person-to-person and business-to-business and business to person online commerce. In doing so, it has unleashed bands of desperados stalking the Internet, trying to steal everyone’s money in the name of Ebay. Using the marketplace provided by Ebay these low lives have corrupted this Internet swap meet much the same way AIDS messed up free love.

Every week or two I get a very official-looking e-mail from Ebay complete with logos and not distinguishable from the official site. These e-mails tell me my account has been suspended for some little peccadillo I have foisted upon someone and asking me to respond with my user name and password. The e-mail I received today tells me that I ripped off someone by selling them a Pep Boys gift certificate that was no good. Since I have never purchased or sold on Ebay, this is likely not a valid complaint, or e-mail for that matter.

I once went on Ebay’s site to try to tell them about this, but the mechanism isn’t there to do it. You have to figure Ebay knows it is happening, but they obviously are powerless to do anything about it.

Many of you are probably asking right now, “Jimbo, what do you want us to do about this?”

I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose. I just needed to bitch about it, I guess.

Bitching is something we do well, here in Jimbo’s world.

dying laughing

Knowing that the movie The Producers is in theaters this weekend and knowing that I will probably go to see it sometime soon, I TiVo’d the original 1968 movie. It was showing in that 2:30 am time slot Thursday morning—the one coveted by advertisers-- on AMC. It had been a while since I had seen this movie, but I watched it on Friday. Although I’ll bet they will have changed a few things in the new version to update it, the movie pretty much stands the test of time. However, I came to one inescapable conclusion:

Dick Shawn was frigging weird.

You may (or may not) recall that Dick Shawn played the part of Lorenzo St. Dubois, whom everyone called by his initials, L.S.D. He was cast in the role of Hitler in the stage production of Springtime for Hitler, the play in the movie that was to be a sure-fire flop. In the movie, the play was a success because when Shawn took the stage, people had to stop and stare, point and laugh. This is because Shawn, and I’m sorry to repeat myself, was just so frigging weird.

Friday evening, in the course of a conversation, I asked, or was asked, whatever happened to Dick Shawn? Thanks to the Internet we were able to research his life and find out that he is no longer with us. As a matter of fact, he died at his craft. Although one could say he died laughing, it would be more accurate to say he died making other people laugh.

He who laughs last laughs best, it is said.

It seems as if Shawn was onstage in San Diego in1987, doing a monologue about the holocaust, when he had a heart attack and died. From what I read, it took people a while to realize that this was not just a part of the act. One of the versions I read said that audience members laughed as he lay there dying. While this might seem too incredible, I would like to emphasize that Dick Shawn was frigging weird.

I guess, in retrospect, if comedy is your game, then dying laughing or going out to the sound of laughter may not be the worst fate in the world.

I’m just sorry Shawn is not still around today. Maybe he could loosen up some of the people in the Bush administration. Perhaps he could perform his holocaust monologue for the leader of Iran. You don’t see the leader of Iran laugh much. Perhaps he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, or perhaps he doesn’t believe that a little laughter makes life better. Maybe he doesn’t believe in the holocaust any more than the religious right believes in Darwin.

You know, maybe Dick Shawn wasn’t so weird after all.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

recipes for quick holiday meals

It’s a snowy Saturday afternoon and here at chez Jimbo’s girlfriend, we are staying inside and trying not to venture out into the cold. Knowing that we both are going to be hungry sometime in the next hour or two and knowing that we really don’t want to go outside if we can avoid it, I am making my famous chili for supper. You recall that I gave you the recipe for my chili earlier this year. Here is the link.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/01/jimbos-chili-like-coat-from-cold.html

As I was putting the finishing touches on the repast, my girlfriend made a comment about holiday meals and suggested I could make chili again on Christmas Eve. I told her I could make it every night, if she wanted me to. I compared the chili to poker tournaments. I told her I occasionally play tournaments and usually don’t do well, but each time I play, I get a little better. I told her that if I made chili every night that I would improve a little each time.

It was about that time I realized to my horror that if I made chili every night, we’d get bored with it after a while. That’s when it occurred to me that I have an obligation to bring you good readers some quick and easy meals for these days leading up to the holidays, when you don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen.

I’ve decided that I’ll give you the basics of preparing my two super-quick favorites, cheeseburgers and fries and tacos and burritos, and I’ll show you a trick that can bring these items to your table at a substantial price savings.

First of all, you need to go to your local grocery store to pick up the needed ingredients to make these fast meals. First and foremost, make sure you stock up on plenty of drinks. I like the idea of the two-liter bottles which will give you several meals, depending on how many of you there are, but the aluminum cans work well too. You have the option of picking up whatever varieties of drinks that fit your palette. Remember, while you’re at the store to pick up some chips and dip and maybe some cheese cubes or blocks of cheese you can cube. Don’t forget to get a wide variety of crackers, too. And candy! Whatever you do, don’t forget some candy. As you know I am quite partial to M&Ms, plain, peanut and almond. If they make any other kinds I’m sure I like them, too. Maybe you should stop by the liquor store on the way home and pick up some wine to go with the cheese and some beer. I personally like Michelob Ultra in bottles, but keep in mind your own personal favorites and those of your family.

Anyway, after you’ve bought all that stuff, your budget may be strained, and here comes Jimbo to the rescue.

Cheeseburgers and fries

I’m going to give you the recipe for enough food for one person. Just multiply the amounts in the recipe by however many there are you are feeding.

First, you drive into the drive-through at Wendy’s and drive up to that post in front of the large illuminated menu and stop so the post is right outside the driver’s window of your vehicle. If you haven’t rolled down your window, do so at this time. You’ll hear a voice at this point that will say something like this:

“Welcome to Wendy’s. Would you like to try the combination today with the super-sized drink?”

Now, you are allowed to substitute other brands, so they might say McDonald’s, Hardee’s, Burger King, etc. No matter where you are, however, the initial spiel will be approximately the same. And, hell no, you don’t want the super combination deal, because when they throw in the drink, the cost of the meal goes up. That’s why I had you buy your drinks earlier. By buying your drinks at the supermarket you are going to save a butt load of money. But, just remain calm at this point and say:

“No, thank you. I would like the single with cheese, with lettuce and tomato, and a regular order of fries.”

The voice on the speaker will ask, “Can I get you a drink with that?
You remain firm, but polite at this point and simply reply, “No, thank you.”

The voice at the other end will then say something like, “Would you like mayonnaise on that cheeseburger, sir (or madam, if you aren’t male)?”

Dear God, no! This is America and generations of Americans have died so you can have the freedom not to eat your cheeseburger with mayonnaise on it. I believe it is your constitutional right—no, your constitutional duty—not to eat mayonnaise on your cheeseburger. But, instead of taking the flag and waving it over your head as you swear oaths, remain under control and simply say, “No, thanks.”

The voice coming out of the speaker will now ask, “May we supersize those fries?”

Perhaps, if your are really hungry you could say yes, but I would recommend that you stick with your original plan and politely say, “No, thanks.”

At this juncture, you are probably saying to yourself, “What kind of diabolical scheme has Jimbo gotten me into? Is it too late to turn and run? Wouldn’t it seem a better plan to fall to ones knees, raise ones arms to the heavens and shout to our deity to deliver us from this evil?”

Relax. You are home free. The next thing you hear the voice say will be, “That will be $3.49. Please drive through.”

At this point, you just drive to the window, exchange your money for your food, drive home and eat it. Wash down your repast with the drinks you bought earlier and you have just had a quick meal and saved money doing it.

Tacos and burritos

Drive to you local Taco Bell. You may have some other options, but from a financial point of view, you can’t find a less expensive meal than the one you’ll get at Taco Bell. Again, as with the previous recipe, it feeds one person. Multiply by the number of people you are going to feed. Drive up the illuminated menu and there will be a post with a speaker next to the driver’s window of your car. The voice at the other end will say the following or something similar:

“Good evening and welcome to Taco Bell. Would you like to try the super combination with three taco supremes, one burrito supreme and a super sized drink?”

You reply, “No thanks. I’d like two crunchy tacos and a bean burrito, please.”

The voice will respond, “Would you like anything to drink with that?”

You answer, no thanks and they give you your total and tell you to drive to the window. Your total will be less than three dollars per person. You can’t do any better than that. You take your tacos and burrito home and eat them, washing them down with the drinks you bought earlier.

Obviously, with either of these recipes, you can make some changes. Just be sure not to order any kind of a combination with a drink, or you’ll defeat the whole purpose of the economy we’ve just achieved. You’ll find both of these recipes to be quick and convenient, economical and good.

Just think about old Jimbo and all the time and money he saved you as you nourish yourself and your loved ones. Happy holiday eating.

Friday, December 16, 2005

snow for christmas

In the heart of America, we don’t have snow for Christmas very often. Most years we went Christmas shopping at the stores downtown and the only snow was the plastic variety in the window displays of all the stores up and down the avenue. Every storefront on the street was transformed to a Christmas scene or jammed with special presents which to give those precious and close. The only exception was the Army Recruiter, in whose window was depicted a battle scene, made up of tiny soldiers killing each other. The centerpiece of the battle scene was a tiny soldier with a flamethrower from whose weapon streamed a colorful red and orange arc, which rose across the battlefield and fell on two small warriors, causing their immolation.

I can remember a couple of times when I was a child that we had white Christmases. The first one was when I was just eight or nine and I remember the big snowflakes falling, being highlighted by the streetlamp across the street from our house on Christmas Eve. We played in the street, under the streetlamp, while the snow piled up on the ground. When we woke up the next morning, the snow had stopped and the sky was clear, blue and cold. I remember on Christmas morning the snow was knee-deep and I spent most of the morning running through it.

My father always drove a pickup truck. He had a blue 1950 Chevrolet he had bought used, that someone had painted with a brush, because the brush marks on the hood and fenders were obvious. There was a sheet of plywood in the bed of the truck, to cover holes in some of the wood slats in the bed that were broken or rotted away. The truck had a rack over the bed made up of 2” steel-galvanized pipe, for carrying boards, ladders and pipes. The truck was old enough that the ignition key had only two positions—on and off. To start the truck, one turned the ignition to the “on” position and pressed a small starter pedal on the floorboard to turn over the starter motor. It had a three-speed manual transmission with the stick shift on the column.

My memory is a little hazy, but I believe it was that truck in which my father and I set out in the snow a day or two before Christmas a long, long time ago.

There was an area of town called Armourdale, which received its moniker from a family named Armour, who were meat packers. Armourdale was a small town that was merged into the metroplex, but the area retained the name, despite the fact the city as an entity ceased to exist. There were some diners, bars and some stores in the Armourdale district where bargains were available and dad went there in order to buy a Christmas present for mom. He took with him his eldest, and only, son.

It would seem that an impressionable young man would remember exactly the year of that Christmas and remember exactly the gift purchased by his father for his mother, but I don’t have a clue. I just remember the lights in the store windows and on the buildings and houses in the area. Even though it was the middle of the day, the overcast and the falling snow made it seem to be almost dark and all of the Christmas lights were glowing. I could speculate about the gift, as there were no jewelry stores or fine clothing stores in that area. It would probably have been something along the lines of an electric frying pan or some sort of utilitarian kitchen item. Back then we didn’t have hot and cold running money, so the gifts dad gave mom were not luxury items.

I remember walking through the snow and into the stores and not spending a lot of time shopping. As his son would decades later, my father would walk into a store with the idea of the item for which he was looking, pick it off the shelf, pay for it and go. Our shopping trip was brief and mom’s present—like thousands of Christmas presents before and since—was temporarily in the possession of the giver but destined to be in someone else’s possession soon.

Before we took the present home, however, dad drove a few blocks to a place he had an obvious familiarity but which I entered for the first time. It was a tavern where we took seats at the bar. We took off our coats and laid them on empty barstools. The man behind the bar exchanged words with my father indicating they knew each other well—so well, he put a brown bottle on the bar before my father without dad ever telling him what he wanted. The bartender placed beside the brown bottle a small clear glass. The bartender looked at me and dad asked me what I wanted. I asked for seven-up and the man behind the bar opened a green bottle, set it in front of me and put beside it an identical glass to my father’s. I saw my father pour some contents from his brown bottle into his glass and I did the same from my green bottle. Dad took a drink and I did, too.

I sipped from the clear effervescent liquid in my glass while my father drained his in a couple of gulps and refilled the glass. While I continued to nurse my seven-up, dad refilled his glass and drained it again. He poured the remaining contents from the bottle into the glass and the bartender whisked away the brown bottle and replaced it with another. My father and the man behind the bar had chatted occasionally since we arrived, but I hadn’t heard either of them say anything about needing another bottle. My father was a man of few words.

I finished my glass and poured in some more soda. My father continued his routine of drinking and refilling. The bartender displayed a small bottle of whisky and asked dad if he wanted a “Christmas” shot. My father declined. When my father drained the last of the contents of his second bottle, the bartender removed it, without words and without replacing it with another. Dad emptied his glass and the bartender took it away. I poured the last of the contents from my green bottle into my glass and the bartender removed the bottle. Dad and the bartender made small talk as they waited for me to empty my glass. When the glass was empty, dad put some coins on the bar and the bartender took them along with my glass. Father slid off the barstool, and stood up, so I did, too. We put on our coats and went back outside into the falling snow.

My father usually worked two jobs when I was a child and he seemed to work a lot of overtime at his primary job, so he was not around much of the time. When he wasn’t working, and his time was his own—which wasn’t very often—he would spend his time on a barstool. Looking back at it, taking me to one of his favorite places and spending some of his precious time with me there was probably, in his mind, the best Christmas present he could give me.

All I know is this: I can’t remember what we got my mother and I can’t remember any of the other gifts I received that year, but what I can remember is my dad and I having a drink together and I remember having snow for Christmas.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

putting the OT in psychotic

A couple of weeks ago I railed on about the marquee in front of a local church. There was an insane question posed on this marquee, which I couldn’t understand. Here is the link to the blog in case you don’t remember.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/11/on-news-media-doughnuts-lotteries-and.html

I ran into my son on Friday night and he mentioned reading the blog and he was able to use almost psychic powers to help me understand what I couldn’t on that recent Sunday morning. Here is what was on the marquee.

Why do you never see the headline psychotic wins lottery

Whoever put the words and letters on the marquee must have put in some OT in order to get it done, because if they had not put the letters o and t in the word psychotic, it would have been psychic and would have made sense.

It has also led me to question why we never see the headline, “billionaire wins lottery?” I wonder, at around seven on Saturday evening, if Bill Gates or Warren Buffett don’t look at the clock, and shout “Oh, crap!” Then, they run for their car and head down to the Seven-Eleven to buy their Powerball ticket.

Your first reaction might be that they probably don’t buy Powerball tickets, and that’s why you never hear of either of them winning. I would offer a different explanation. Because there are so few billionaires, the odds of one of them winning is miniscule. I say that they probably play, just like the rest of us do.

Bill Gates probably goes into his convenience store in Washington, puts a dollar on the counter and says, “Quick pick for tonight, please.”

The middle-eastern guy behind the counter recognizes him and starts telling him about a problem he is having with Microsoft Outlook as he hands the ticket to Mr. Gates. Bill listens for a moment, says “reboot,” and walks out of the store.

In Omaha, Warren Buffett drives into his local gas station, counts out four quarters, lays them on the counter and says, “Powerball quick pick, my friend.” The Indian behind the counter prints out his ticket and asks if Buffett can get him a deal on a leather sofa at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Warren Buffett tells him that they are going to run the eighteen-months-same-as-cash promotion next weekend and that is as good of a deal as anyone can get.

Bill and Warren probably thumb through the Sunday morning paper to look at the numbers. Bill will probably tell his wife, “I got two numbers, but that doesn’t pay anything.”

Warren compares his ticket to the numbers in the paper and says, “I guess I’m just not very lucky.”

And, once again, no billionaire wins the lottery. And we can all hope that no psychotic wins either.

bush wins heisman?

I saw a headline on Yahoo! this morning that made me rub my eyes. But when I wiped the sleepy from my ocular orbs, it still read the same. I didn’t have time to read the story, but here was the headline.

Bush Wins Heisman

Now, for those of you not familiar with college sports, the Heisman is the award for the top college football player in the nation. I haven’t followed college football (nor professional football for that matter) this year, so I didn’t even know who the candidates were, but it was always my assumption that the person who won the award had to be a current college player. You can bet I won’t start following college football anytime soon if they are going to hand out this prestigious to the President of the United States.

Back in my day, it took a really special athlete to win this award. Dubya is way too old to be able to strap on the pads and go out there every week. I am just concerned there were some shenanigans in the Heisman voting this year—probably something like what happened in the 2000 Presidential election.

Hang your head in shame, New York Athletic Club. Hang your head in shame.

I am tempted to read this story to find out how he pulled it off, but I can’t dignify this injustice with any more of my time. I’m sure there were some fine athletes who deserved this award more than our President and it is a pity one of them didn’t achieve their due recognition.

At least that’s our opinion here in Jimbo’s world.

Friday, December 09, 2005

out of whack

Several times in the last couple of weeks at work, I’ve heard people say that something was “out of whack.” In each instance, I was reasonably certain what they meant, but in each case I couldn’t help but think about the parameters of “whack.”

Unless you work under different circumstances than I do, you’ve probably never heard anyone say something was in whack. Is there a metric we can use to determine the dimensions and the boundaries of whack? Is it time in our society for us to define what whack is?

Now, don’t get me wrong. When someone says something is out of whack, I usually know what they mean, even if I can’t define the exact guidelines of whack or find the exact terms to describe it.

Perhaps whack is supposed to be nebulous and is one of those words that can be used to describe anything that is not good, when proceeded by the words “out of.” Having been around during the 1960s, I remember another phrase that was used back then. The phrase was “out of sight,” usually shortened to “outta sight.” It simply meant that something was good, rather than indicating its being hidden from view, although the phrase could also mean that it was hidden from view. There were a couple of expressions in common usage back then that had multiple meanings. I would cite, for example, the word “bad.” Although, in context, the word could mean something was not good, it could also mean something was good.

For example, when someone showed up driving a really nice car, sometimes observers would say it was a “bad” car, meaning it was a very good car. While many of you would conjecture that in modern times such imprecision of language is not seen, I would argue that I remember seeing and hearing Dr. Dre refer to something as “dope,” meaning it was good. Back in my day when you hollered, “dope” at anyone without an interrogative inflection it was considered not to be an act of friendship. If you heard the word used with the interrogative inflection, it was considered a solicitation to buy or sell and those people who said it should be avoided to all extremes.

So if something is out of whack, then that is bad, but if something is out of sight, then that is good. If something is bad, it can either be bad or good. But, I’ve gotten off track again. Let’s get back on the subject of whack.

I’m wondering if we ought to create a six-sigma-type code for the measurement of whack—whether something is not within tolerance and therefore out of whack or something is within acceptable boundaries and therefore in whack. Or, perhaps I have complicated this too much and made too much of a big deal of it. Maybe I should be quiet now, before someone says this weblog has gotten out of whack.

Because the last thing we want to do is be out of whack here in Jimbo’s world.

internet commerce dying on the ruins of missolonghi

I hope to God I didn’t watch the commercial possibilities of the Internet die before my eyes today. I also hope my resurrection of Eugene Delacroix for the second time in as many months is not too much of a stretch. I’m sure that most of you have an academic familiarity with Delacroix’s painting Greece Dying on the Ruins of Missolonghi and the story behind it. You may recall that the people in Missolonghi destroyed their own town. Like those nineteenth century Greeks, I’m afraid that certain internet retailers may have inflicted wounds upon themselves.

I remember back to the mid-1990s and my first windows-based computer. I bought it for the spreadsheets and the word processing program, but it had a phone cord which I plugged it into the wall jack when I was assembling the machine and connecting all the wires. A free trial subscription to an internet service came with the computer, so I logged on. It was pretty neat and it changed my mind about the internet.

Prior to that, my vision of the World Wide Web was a couple of geeks typing code into their computers tied together with 9600 baud modems and talking geek talk to each other. I was favorably impressed with the internet during my first venture inside, even though I was only surfing around inside my internet service provider’s pages. When I finally figured there was a bigger world out there and wandered into it, I was even more impressed. Still, I thought, this is just some fancy toy, useless for anything practical, but fun to explore.

It was about that time I saw some guy on television—Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com—talking about the commercial possibilities of this new medium. Yeah, I thought, nice going, geek. You are using the internet to sell, of all things, books. Won’t people start reading things on line and won’t that hurt the sales of traditional print media? Books, for example? What a dork! Now, there was a guy who wasn’t looking very far down the road. The guy that was interviewing him had the same thought I did and asked if there was a future in his business. Bezos said there was. Then he said he could use the Internet to sell other things, too, besides books. All of a sudden the dork on the television metamorphosed into a genius before my eyes.

Oh, my God! A light went off.

It was like the first time I saw a woman naked. I spent the next few years piling money into the stocks of e-commerce companies with some successes and some failures. I was only disappointed that the Internet never seemed to gain the level of acceptance as a commercial tool as quickly and universally as I expected it would.

Anyway, it is ten years later and my zany kid sister told me she tried to buy some things on line and had trouble and was not able to complete her transaction. Ironically enough, she was shopping at Mr. Bezos’ store. She asked me if I would order an item for her and I said I would. The purchase went as smoothly as imaginable. A couple of clicks and the order was placed; the next day I received confirmation of shipment. After getting the confirmation, I dropped by the website of Best Buy, where I have made scads of Internet purchases and I bought a Christmas present. It was smooth as silk. I received confirmation that my order shipped the next day. Oh, my silly younger sister! Had she only put a little more effort into her shopping it would have been as easy as my own.


My sister’s present arrived by US Mail, and Saturday morning; there it was in the mailbox. Unfortunately, that happy moment was the last. I reached into the mailbox and removed all the other mail and then tugged at the package. It would not come out. We have one of those community mailboxes where everyone has their individual box with a locking door on the front. While the postman had no trouble fitting it diagonally into our box from the back side through a door that opened to expose all of the individual boxes, the package was more than one inch too big to fit through the framework on the customer side. If I could have bent the package in half, I could have gotten it out. However, knowing what it was and that bending it would be synonymous with breaking it, I had to leave it there. I put a note on the package (reaching through and putting the note on the postman’s side for legibility and easy notice) asking the postman to put the package in the door of our house. It was not read or it was ignored and the package was still there the next afternoon. I took off work early the next day and went to the delivering post office to explain the problem. The following afternoon the box was in our door. I figured this was one rare setback, and one could blame the postal service. This could have happened to a mail-order order from Sears fifty years ago, so it could be argued that it was not necessarily related to the Internet.

On that same day, there was a sticky note on the door from UPS, in addition to the Amazon package being inside the door. The note from UPS said that someone over twenty-one needed to be home to sign for the package before they could deliver the Best Buy parcel. I wrote a message on the sticky note, telling the UPS man to put the package in the door (as he had lo those many previous deliveries), as there would not be anyone home to sign for it. Then, I sent an e-mail to Best Buy telling them of the problem. I’ve ordered dozens of things via Internet from Best Buy. Never before have the shipments come with the prerequisite that I had to stay home from work in order to receive them.

The next day, there was another note on the door from UPS. It had a phone number to call. I called the number and they advised me that I could pick up the package at a local UPS warehouse. While there was a time I would have embraced going to the area where the UPS warehouse is, and bragging afterward how I had gone in and come back out alive, from where I live and work, that trip would be a major inconvenience. Earlier in my life I would have welcomed the opportunity to chat with the whores who troll the corner where the UPS warehouse stands. At one time I would have enjoyed trying to guess which of them were actually men in drag and speculating on what sort of weaponry both the males and females were sporting. At this point of my life, such danger holds no appeal.

When I opened the response to my e-mail from Best Buy, their non-answer was for me to contact UPS. Here is what I responded.


The story goes that the management at Archer Daniels Midland had an organizational mantra that the customer was the enemy. Obviously one or more of them who escaped prison must have found a job in management at Best Buy.

Picking this package up at the UPS terminal is going to be a wasted couple of hours for me and the irony is that had I picked up this item at one of your stores, it would have taken less time and been more convenient.

Thanks for nothing.


So much for the convenience of Internet shopping. I’ll be taking the day off work on Friday and going down there to get my package. I heard last week on the news in a story about cyber shopping that it is safer to use your credit card to buy something on line than it is to use it to purchase something at the mall. It may be safe and it may be easy, but we still have some kinks to work out.

It could be easily argued that the problem in both cases rested with the traditional media of delivery rather than with the on-line merchants. However, having had some experience in supply chain management I contend that the deal is not done until the purchased item is resting comfortably in the hands of the purchaser. While many other of the supply chain managers out there are wanting to remind me at this point that settling up the money is usually the final step, in a internet transaction, the money changes hand prior to shipment. No matter how good of a product you have and no matter how much I want it, the marriage of supply and demand doesn’t consummate until you have my money and I have your product. The online retailers, in order to achieve that nirvanic state of excellence, must guarantee all the links in their supply chain are in place to do that.

Thank all of you for listening to me bitch, which is something we do well and often here in Jimbo’s world.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

...and a chicken in every pot

On Friday, the government reported statistics that would indicate that the job market is robust. The unemployment rate is near an historic low at 5% and the economy appears to be growing (at a 4.3% rate in the third quarter). On the news Friday night I saw a report that said workers were in short supply in certain areas and that jobs were going unfilled. Oh, yes, and inflation is under control. This, many of you might conjecture, debunks much of the doom and gloom about which Jimbo has moaned and groaned over the past year. Based on these data, it appears that life is good and that the current administration is doing a superb job of managing the economy. I can only borrow a phrase from that rotund young man, Eric Cartman to describe my feelings about the accuracy of the government’s statistics.

“That’s a bunch of crap.”

Mark Twain said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. I have not seen around me evidence that there is an economic boom. I have always asserted that the unemployment numbers reported by the government are based on claims for unemployment insurance. I contend that the number would be higher if people who are not eligible, don’t file or have run out of benefits were included, and my own empirical data have brought me to come to a different conclusion about the economy.

As a minion of a manufacturing company that has difficulty paying its bills and whose management frequently reminds us we are navigating through troubled waters, it is my habit to look through the want ads in the Sunday morning newspaper to see what else is available. I can’t help but notice that the employment advertisement section of the paper continues to get smaller. As far as jobs in my own field, there are rarely more than one or two and they are rarely better than the tenuous one I already occupy.

When they announced to us last week that our health care benefits would be reduced after the first of the year—resulting in what is basically a salary reduction for everyone—they pretty much told us it was “take it or leave it.” They could do that, knowing that because of a tight job market, we would, for the most part, “take it.” After work on Friday, one of the senior managers told a group of us that he would be hit hard by the change. Then he told us that the company hadn’t given us raises for years and that they had been reducing benefits as well. He said that, perhaps, if things turned around and our business picked up, that perhaps the salary increases and improvement of benefits would follow. I don’t think he actually believed it, and none of the rest of us bought into it either.

Being new at the company, I was not aware that we were not getting raises. At job offer time, the HR Manager didn’t tell me that and my boss indicated he had the authority to give us salary increases commensurate with our performance at any time he saw fit. Unfortunately both of those people have been laid off since I came aboard and the part about raises, I notice, was omitted from my offer letter.

When we go to the grocery store to buy food and go to the discount store to buy necessities, I can’t help but notice the price of most everything is going up. When I look at the financial stability of our country, I can’t help but be concerned.

By the way, the area where workers are in such short supply and that jobs are going unfilled is New Orleans. This is a city of half a million that is currently occupied by 60,000 people—many of them construction workers, clearing debris and rebuilding. Well, duh. Of course workers are going to be in short supply under those conditions.

As the government has cut our taxes, telling us that this is “our” money and it should be returned to us, somehow they have managed to piss away billions and billions on themselves, looting the treasury and social security fund. You can figure that when they have spent every last dime, they’ll slither away like serpents and leave a mess for the Democrats to try to fix.

“Well, Jimbo,” I’m sure many of you are saying right now, “You certainly know how to brighten up a Sunday morning. Do you have any predictions of Armageddon or thermonuclear war?”

Well, no. I do have a prediction of better times, though. Like a cheap trollop or a gold digger, when all our money is spent and our debt is even more astronomical, this administration will take out a third mortgage, take the money and our car and book it out of town. They’ll leave us with our pockets turned inside out and not knowing where our next meal is coming from.

“How, Jimbo,” you may ask, “does that qualify as ‘better times?’”

Well, at least we won’t have to look at Dubya’s dumb-ass sneer on the television, telling us how good we have it.

At least, that’s our take here in Jimbo’s world.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

o xmas tree, o xmas tree

Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that a Christmas tree by any other name would still be as pretty? Or did he say, holiday tree? Maybe it was someone else. Maybe I’m confused on this one.

What I’m not confused about, however, is that there is some serious insanity going on between hard-line Christians and hard-line others about what to call that tall green thing with all the lights and balls on it.

You may recall that last year, a similar argument raged and here is what I had to say about it and a couple of other things during the holiday/Christmas season in 2004.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/12/christmas-bloody-christmas.html

It seems to me that we have the right to celebrate the season the way we want. We have the right to believe what we want to believe, but when it comes to the point of intolerance of the other fellow’s point of view, then somehow we have lost the spirit of Christmas.

This is the season of peace on earth and goodwill toward men (or women, if, like me, you share an affection for a member of the fairer sex), and it’s time to put aside all the fussin’ and fightin.’ Let me enjoy the season the way I want and I’ll let you enjoy the season the way you want. If I want to call it a Christmas tree, that’s my right; if I want to call it a holiday tree, it’s my right, too. If you want to call it Xmas, feel free. Just don’t tell me what I have to call it, and I won’t tell you what you have to call it.

There are places on this planet where the theocracy dictates how one is to celebrate religious holidays, but not in this country. Despite whatever you hear from Dubya, we’re still a free country and we have the right to religious freedom. If you are reading this in some country that doesn’t enjoy the same religious freedom we do, you have my sympathy. That freedom is ours and we are going to keep it, despite attempts from both sides to mold the season into their own image.

Attend your parties; send out your cards; buy your gifts and trim your tree—by whatever name you choose to call it.

That’s what we do, here in Jimbo’s world.

going ape over the female form

Earlier this year I told the story of a simian named Koko, her lust for boobies and the lawsuit that emerged from this tangled affair. Well, thankfully this whole sordid situation has been resolved. First, you may review the original tale at the following address:

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/02/too-much-monkey-business-or-tall-cold.html

It appears that two female employees at a California Gorilla Foundation claimed they had been requested to bare their breasts for the viewing pleasure of this gorilla named Koko. Koko, it seems, makes some sort of hand gesture when she wants to see naked breasts. I don’t know if this is the traditional gesture of cupping one's hands, holding them in front of one's own chest, palms toward the body and moving the hands with a slight up-and-down motion, or if the monkey just snapped her fingers or something like that. However the simian communicates this desire, the employees claim they were requested to display their racks, and refused. The story I read claims the women went to OSHA, which sent someone out to the ape farm and found some violations. The women claim they were terminated because of their actions.

Today I read that the women had reached a settlement with the monkey foundation, so, it appears on the surface that we can put this one to bed. There is still one nagging question in my mind, however. There is some monkey out there that seems to have a thing for boobs and I am concerned that she will try this same thing again. My resolution is that the ape foundation gets a subscription to Playboy magazine for this monkey. I haven’t seen Playboy for a while, but I assume they still depict boobies. Perhaps the ape will enjoy reading the fine articles they have in there, too.

At least, that’s what we think here in Jimbo’s world.