Sunday, October 30, 2005

a tale of the small screen on the big screen

Jimbo saw a movie last night and when it was over the audience clapped. It’s been a while since I witnessed such an occurrence, but it was a movie like none other I have seen for a while. The movie was Good Night and Good Luck, and I would recommend you see it, if it plays anywhere near you.

The movie was about Edward R. Murrow and his using his television program to denounce the caterwauling of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The movie begins and ends with Murrow giving a speech in 1958, before some members of the broadcast media, warning that television was being used more to entertain than to educate and inform. He made dire predictions for the future of the medium were that to continue. It’s just a shame he couldn’t have fast-forwarded to the future and caught a few episodes of Lost, Survivor and Entertainment Tonight, so he could have eased his troubled mind.

Between the bookends of his 1958 speech was the story of how Murrow took up the cause of an Air Force man, Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the service because his family had leftist leanings. Murrow presented his case to the American people and Radulovich was reinstated by the Air Force.

The primary story the movie told, however, was Murrow’s crusade against McCarthy and his struggle inside of CBS to air such controversial material. David Strathairn played Murrow; McCarthy played himself. George Clooney played Fred Friendly and also directed the movie. I’ve never given to much attention to Clooney, although I particularly liked O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I have to think that he must have considerable directorial talent, because of the way this movie looked and felt and the way the actors were able to tell the story with actions and not just words.

Clooney used tight close-ups and focused his cameras into the eyes of the actors, who completed the illusion by letting us feel we were looking down into their souls. It was a very tense and intense movie and the actors were able to communicate with us by just diverting their glance. For example, Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson were able to tell us there was a common skeleton in their closet. Throughout the entire movie, we wondered how horrible could it be? When it was revealed, we realized we knew it all along. Ray Wise manufactured a smile to disguise his discomfort about accusations that the former war correspondent he portrayed was a “pinko.”

It is a black and white movie, but the lack of color adds to the drama of the movie and it helps to take us all back to a time when right and wrong, good and evil were more easily defined in terms of black and white. It is an independent film, so it won’t be showing at all the mega-theaters, so you may need to look to find it.

If you can find it, I think you ought to make a point to see it.

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

Saturday, October 29, 2005

a sale, a move and a cleaning

Yesterday was kind of an important day for me.

Many months ago I wrote a blog saying that I had sold my house; my son had taken a job in another city and he was putting in the long hours. Here it is.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/05/good-news-bad-news.html

Well, a lot of things changed, but I didn’t record them for posterity, as I should have. The buyer on my house changed her mind at the last minute and didn’t show up for closing, so my house didn’t get sold. I got $500 in earnest money the buyer forfeited, but I later found her buyer’s agent had fronted her half of it, so the balance came out of his own pocket. A lesson learned for him, and me, too. When one is presented a contract and the earnest money is a photocopy of twenty-five twenty-dollar bills, it’s time to be suspicious.

My son had the good sense to realize that the twelve hours a day he was working were not what he was looking for and took another job, closer to home. He’s still putting in nine or ten a day, but time-and-a-half looks good to a young man. We’ve all been there. I encourage him to stop and smell the roses, but you know kids. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.

Anyway, yesterday I took a day of vacation. In the morning I went and signed some papers and they gave me a big check. I won’t be making payments on a house in which I don’t reside, anymore. It is sold and the couple that bought it seemed really nice. I’m glad I had the landscaper cut the grass the day before yesterday, so they can move in without having to do that for a week.

After I made sure the money they gave me was resting comfortably in my bank account, I spent the rest of the day helping my son and his girlfriend move to a place that is only about ten miles from chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. They had a bunch of their friends helping and it went really smooth. Jimbo is at that stage of his career where he let the young people do the heavy lifting and he engaged his intellectual capital on things like hooking up the washer and dryer and drinking beer. That said, however, I must have lifted something because I was used up when we moved furniture out of chez Jimbo’s girlfriend last night. I am feeling a little sore this morning.

By the way, we are not moving out of chez Jimbo’s girlfriend, we are just preparing to have her carpet cleaned. “Carpet cleaning,” I know many of you are asking right now and wondering if Jimbo is getting the job done, man-wise? Just relax. Jimbo is doing his share, but right now the carpet we walk on could stand some freshening up.

On the way home last night, the highlight of the evening was when my car turned over 200,000 miles. It seems one always remembers the mileposts, like where I was when I turned over 100,000 and where I was when I turned 100,000 in the truck I sold recently. My son was behind the wheel of the truck when it turned 200,000. Sometimes, I remember, I was not looking at the odometer at the exact moment and later I noticed the vehicle had 100,002 or something like that. Last night I saw 199,999, and I watched it turn over.

Yesterday was another eventful day in Jimbo’s world and we wonder what today will bring.

Monday, October 24, 2005

portrait of a young man named bill

Today during lunch I was checking the news on Yahoo! as I always do when I saw the mug shot of Tom Delay. He seemed jovial enough. Under his mug shot was a link to a website that shows other peoples’ mug shots. I was surprised to see the mug shot of the richest man on earth, taken in 1977, when he was just the son of a wealthy family. He too was smiling. Here it is.

http://www.mugshots.org/misc/bill-gates.html

The first thing I thought about was that he didn’t have the look of a hardened criminal. The second thing that crossed my mind was, I wonder what was the crime for which he was arrested? To the best of my recollection, looking like a nerd is still not punishable by time in the pokey.

He wore his hair very similar to the way I did in 1977, and his glasses were much like the ones I wore. Dammit! How did he end up with $50 billion and I end up driving a Toyota that will turn over 200,000 miles this week.

I can’t help wondering what he was smiling about. Maybe he was thinking as he looked at the cop snapping the photograph, “Hey, my family can buy your family ten times over, and someday I’ll be able to buy them 500,000 times over.”

Maybe he was thinking, “Damn. Here I am in jail. I’m never going to amount to anything. This morning I was thinking, where do I want to go today, and tonight I’m in the slam.”

I’d like to think that the cops rousted Ol’ Bill for getting drunked up and chasing the working girls around a cathouse somewhere. Maybe he got Old Testament with some bikers and whipped their asses.

No, more than likely he was thinking about some computer software code and he forgot to watch his speedometer and got busted for ten miles over the limit. Okay, I just went out and did the research and found out his crime was speeding—35 miles per hour over the speed limit.

Either way, I’d feel a lot better if he didn’t have that dorky smile on his face.

Hey, Billy boy, slow that Porsche down. Knuckle down and I bet you could make something of yourself. After all, you can’t be a slacker all your life.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

sunday morning gettin' up

It’s Sunday morning here in chez Jimbo’s girlfriend.

You may recall, if you are familiar with the works of Kris Kristopherson, he had a negative opinion of Sunday morning. In his song Sunday Morning Comin' Down he sings,

There's nothin' short of dyin'
half as lonely as the sound
of a sleeping city sidewalk
Sunday morning comin' down

That's where Kris and I have a divergence of opinion. Here at chez Jimbo's girlfriend, it’s time to read the paper, drink coffee and relax.

It's a good morning; a day of rest.

One may recall, if one reads his scripture—particularly the old testament—that even God took the day off.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

dead man parking, or the dead man from the land down under

From Australia this morning word comes that the dead are not immune from the long arm of the law. An elderly gentleman in suburban Sydney parked in the lot of a shopping mall and then proceeded to die. A few days later the cops came by and ticketed his car. It seems the dead man didn’t have the foresight to move his car to another parking spot after his demise, so he probably broke the law and deserved the ticket.

The concern I have is that the cops didn’t roust the old dude. As a matter of fact, it was another 24 hours after they gave him the ticket before they realized he was dead.

If the guy had been here in the states, he would have been treated differently. The first thing the cops would do is to yell at the guy and mess with him. They’d want to put the ticket in his hand personally. It’s been my experience that when given an opportunity to hassle someone or boss somebody around, the cops here seem to make the most of the opportunity.

“Hey, buddy, move that thing along,” they’d tell him, here.

When he didn’t respond, they’d pull him out of the car and mess with him some more. If they didn’t realize he was dead, they’d assume he was drunk and haul him into the station house. Somewhere along the line, however, someone would make the connection and realize his incarceration was futile.

Thank God we have sophisticated justice here and not the questionable frontier justice they have down under that allows this type of travesty to occur.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

sucess and failure

I don’t know why, but if you go to Google, type in the word failure and hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button, up pops the white house website with the biography of the president.

I can’t explain it, but try it, before it goes away.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

talking a good game

Yesterday and today it was all about communication. It was about my annual presentation and it was about the phone I found. I’ll start at the beginning.

I may have mentioned a few days ago that the staff and supervisors where I work each preside over a monthly safety meeting where all of the shop floor employees attend and we try to make them safe. The subject for October was hand safety and the presenter was yours truly.

Let me preface this by saying that Jimbo was never noted as a great orator. Let me further go on to say that Jimbo is less than an adequate public speaker. Oh, heck, let’s not sugarcoat this. Jimbo gets nervous and forgets what he is going to say and, in general doesn’t come off as being intelligent. I didn’t sleep well the night before. I spent a lot of time doing research and setting up my presentation on PowerPoint, inserting a number of pictures into my slides. I decided to lead off my presentation with the story of my hurting my hand last Friday night.

We are assigned shop floor workers to be our teammates and we had a meeting last week to discuss the presentation and for them to give me ideas. One of my teammates, Ron, told me that we had a boring subject. Another teammate, Elbert, told me that half of the people sleep through the safety meeting, anyway. My third teammate, Doris, reminded me about an hour before the presentation that the month before last, the day shift workers got hostile and shouted down the speaker. She said she expected the same would happen to me. My already-shaken confidence began to wane.

When it came time to give my presentation, I got off to a reasonably good start and I was able to tell my story fluently. As I got toward the end of my story and was a few minutes from presenting my statistics, I began to see a loss of interest in the faces of the crowd. I knew after I had used up all the story about the emergency room and the pain and the blood of life streaming from my broken body, there would not be enough no-doz in the world to keep these people awake. Ruth, a machine operator to whom I speak every day and who seems to like me, was in a chair next to the wall and she was using the wall as a pillow. Dreams of the end of the workday were dancing in her unconscious head. I ended the story of my injury by showing the slide of the utility knife blade, which I posted on this site a few days back.

Instead of saying “this is the utility knife blade that cut me,” I decided to wake them up.

“This is the little rat bastard that got me,” I said.

There was a wave of laughter and I paused for a moment and sort of waited for the commotion to stop. I saw a dozen pairs of sleeping eyes open to the conscious world. Ruth sat upright, faced me and never went to sleep again. People actually began to listen to me and I was able to make a lot of eye contact, working about 75% of the rest of my presentation without reading from my notes.

Did you know there were 4.4 million on-the-job injuries reported in 2003, the last year for which we have complete data, and that one out of four work-related injuries involved the hands, fingers or wrists.

I felt that if I got someone’s attention, and they listened to what I told them about working safely, then I was successful. They clapped when I was finished.

I went and sat down beside the guy who is temporarily in charge and he told me not to use the expression “rat bastard,” so I didn’t when I made my presentation to the night shift. I don’t think I did as well with them and I don’t think they paid attention like the day shift did.

If that little rat bastard made someone listen and, by listening, they pay attention to working safe, then that little rat bastard did his job.

I was on the way to work by six this morning, so I could make my third and last presentation to the graveyard shift. A few blocks from home, there was an open, clamshell cellular phone in the middle of the street. There was no traffic, so I drove up to it and picked it up. It was open and on, but I didn’t see anyone around. I decided I would try to find the owner after work, because I had to get to work and get the laptop and projector set up for my PowerPoint presentation. The boss wasn’t there for my final performance, so I called the rat bastard a rat bastard. We gave the abbreviated version and I don’t know how well we got through, but I was glad to have it out of the way for this year. A couple of people on the shop floor made comments today about the rat bastard, so I’m convinced they were listening. I hope they listened all the way through.

When I got in my car to leave work tonight the cell phone I found was ringing and I answered it. A little girl on the other end didn’t seem to know what to say, so I told her where I found the phone and got her home number and told her I’d call when I got home. When I called, her mother answered and we met at a local park and I gave her the phone.

Well, two good deeds done, so now I guess I can go out and do something bad. Well, probably not.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

marching to la mirada

I read on Yahoo! this morning that there is a national conference in California for bloggers whose subject matter is religious blogging.

Now, those longtime readers know that Jimbo is not one to shy away from an occasional quotation of scripture. I consider the Bible to be entertaining literature and a worthwhile read. Also, reading the Bible helps me better to understand the nut cases who swear by the holy word, yet somehow don’t seem to have any idea what their book is telling them.

The “God Bloggers” are meeting at a place called Biola University in La Mirada—a school that indicates it offers a “biblically-centered education.” I tried to pull up their website, but I couldn’t for some reason. Maybe it crashed due to the volume of interest, or maybe Satan put a worm in my computer to keep me away.

Anyway, one of the bloggers compared blogging to the 95 Theses of Martin Luther that launched the protestant reformation. Yeah, right. If I ever tell you this blog is comparable in importance to the writings of Shakespeare or Hemingway, please have the good sense to un-bookmark me.

However, one thing that struck me about the article is that these bloggers don’t appear to be your typical “yes-Mr.-Rove-we-will-crucify-some-non-believers” religious right followers in lockstep.

Maybe blogging is good for something, after all.

the old man

If my father were alive today there is no telling what he would have to say about the current state of affairs. He was a man who conserved things. He recycled leaves, grass clippings and coffee grounds in his garden. He didn’t demand the best of everything--just an adequate level of quality. He was sick a lot late in his life and he relied on the health care insurance provided by his employer, for which the company he worked continued to provide after he was retired and needed it the most. Again, in this instance, he wouldn’t have demanded the finest health care possible, just what was adequate.

Although he was a veteran of World War II and he knew what fascists were, he lived most of his adult life during the cold war, and he had a propensity for using the word “communist” to describe anyone with whom he disagreed. For him, that word covered right-wing dictators, conservative socialists, people who governed communist countries, political liberals, members of the government of the United States and various and sundry other people and institutions.

I read on Yahoo! recently that in 1991 (the year my father died), 80% of firms employing more than 1000 people extended their health care benefits to retirees. In 2003, the number had shrunk to 57%. Without having the benefit of the exact numbers, I would venture to guess that the largest percentage occurred since 2000, because eight percent of employers with a thousand or more workers said they had eliminated health care benefits for retirees in 2004 and another 11% said they would likely do it in 2005. The combined figures for 2004 and 2005 would indicate the numbers are increasing dramatically. My father would have called this “communism.” His son would use a different expression. I would call it “third world.”

Back in the early 1990s when health care insurance costs first started rising precipitously I was working for a manufacturing company and had frequent and daily conversations with our Director of Human Resources. He and I were both avid stock market players and we discussed our stock picks and also the economy in general. He told me on more than one occasion that the cost of our company’s health insurance was going up all the time just as it was for other companies and that it was inevitable the government would have to take over health care if companies like ours were to survive. It was like waging war and building infrastructure like roads and highways in that the cost was too much for private industry to bear and that it was only a matter of time before government would step forward and solve the problem. He wasn’t alone in his opinion. Practically everyone I spoke to on the subject felt the same way. He was older than I was and probably remembered that Harry Truman, when he was president, tried to nationalize the health insurance system.

Fast-forward several years to when the Clinton administration began to work towards a national health care insurance program. When we discussed it again, his reaction was that if government got involved in health care insurance, it would be a disaster. What had changed? Nothing really, it was just a sophisticated and well-executed advertising campaign by the health insurance industry that hid reality behind a slick and polished façade of fear.

My father would have called it “communism.” I would have called it deception.

Now, fast-forward to the present. The health care companies and the Republicans in congress won their battle against the Clinton administration and now we are back to where we were fifteen years ago, except now health care insurance is much more expensive and employers are giving up providing health care to their employees, and those that still provide it require their employees to bear more of the burden of cost.

Now, many of you might say that the problem is with the large companies who employ large numbers of workers. Those companies who have prospered by the sweat of their employees are cutting back on health care coverage they provide for their retirees and their active workers and, by the logic of many therein lies the crux of the problem. If those companies weren’t so quick to cut back and so unsympathetic to the needs of their workers and retirees, there would not be so much of a problem. However, in a competitive world and marketplace, it only makes logical sense for those large companies to cut back; to allow themselves to be on an equal footing with manufacturers in other countries. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t stay in business. In order to survive, they almost have to do what they are doing.

“There goes Jimbo,” you are probably saying, “Siding with the robber barons and big business again, as he always does.”

To which I answer, this is war. And war requires the organized effort of a central government. While our government seems content with waging war in Iraq and mobilizing world terrorism against us, the war against health care costs is one for which they apparently do not have the stomach to wage. The current administration and the grafters in congress are content to deplete our arsenal of cash until we no longer have the resources to fight the good fight, while touting the virtually-worthless Medicare prescription plan they recently enacted as the answer. They will not be happy until we have sunk lower than the lowest third world country.

My father would have called the current government response to the problem, “communism.” I would just call it chickenshit.

Of course, maybe the old man would have, too.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

reckless disregard of the truth

Yesterday I posted a link to a story on the Kansas City Star’s website about the continuing dog saga of the Katrina victim who signed over his dog to the fiancé of a guy I work with and then wanted it back. I sent an e-mail to the guy who did the television stories which I linked in a previous blog, and he responded that the Star printed information “which we verified to be false.”

I also received a second e-mail from them responding to my question about whether this would be considered reckless disregard of the truth. They said, “no.”

I don’t know all of the facts, and I haven’t seen the actual bill of sale. I’m certain that when anyone tells a story, they have their own personal viewpoint represented, so I can’t be absolutely certain that I know everything.

What I do know is this. When the news media attacks someone who has done nothing criminal—there has never been any question that the rightful and legal ownership of the dog changed hands—then we have crossed the line from responsible reporting to tabloid journalism.

I recently saw George Clooney on The Daily Show, talking about his new movie about Edward R. Murrow. That prompted me to pull the biography of Murrow from my library on the living room wall of chez Jimbo’s girlfriend, and begin to read it, preparing for when I go see the movie. Murrow was a journalist who would use advocacy journalism to take issue with people like Hitler and McCarthy, but he had the judgment not to attack private citizens.

In my college days, I remember that there was a 19” portable television in one corner of the newsroom of the University Daily Kansan. At 5:30 in the afternoon, the face of Walter Cronkite and the CBS evening news would come on and the racket of all the manual typewriters would stop and everyone would listen to what he had to say. Many say that Cronkite’s advocacy journalism may had led America to change its policies on the prosecution of the war in Viet-Nam.

Now, I’m sure that many of you are practically shouting at your computer monitors, “Jimbo, how can this dog story be elevated to the same level as stopping Hitler and McCarthy and ending the war in Viet-Nam? Let it go, Jimbo. Get a life.”

And, you are probably right.

Maybe a mutt that can predict natural disasters two weeks in advance is not a story worthy of the memories of Murrow and Cronkite. Opps! Wait a minute. Old Walter is still alive.

As our traditions and our values are interred one by one, as Murrow was and Walter and I will be sometime (we hope long down the road for both of us), we can only look at the state of tabloid journalism today and say, stop. We can look at local television reporting and suggest they concentrate on what is important and stop harassing these poor people.

I could go on about this forever, but I hear they are going to have something on Entertainment Tonight about Brad and Jen and Angelina, so I have to run.

the blade


the blade. This little rat bastard imposed its evil on Jimbo yesterday.
Posted by Picasa

I was less than a block away from home last night when my car began to make a strange noise. It was like that noise we used to make when we would take a clothespin and clip a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card to the rear frame of our bicycle and twist it into the spokes of the rear wheel, so it would make a repetitive motorcycle-like sound as we rode. Ah, for those sweet salad days of youth when we could throw away a hundred grand for a brief joyride, and those days before Bush when we could afford to do it.

I was a little late coming home from work last night because I was researching hand safety for a presentation I am going to give next week. Where I work the supervisors and staff take turns giving a safety presentation once a month to the shop employees. October is my turn and so I have done a lot of background work on how to keep ones hands from getting injured. Are you aware that when handling knives, one of the most important things to remember is to keep a sharp blade? The last thing I did at work on Friday was to talk to the shop supervisors about that exact subject. I told them that I had ordered a couple dozen utility knives since I’ve been there, but I didn’t remember ever ordering any replacement blades. They told me we order them a hundred at a time and they last a while. By the way, they told me, we’re getting low on them. I placed an order for a hundred of them and left work for the week. It was on my way home that the car started making noise.

I drove the block or so to chez Jimbo’s girlfriend, pulled into the driveway and walked around the car to see what was making the noise. It appeared there was a stick wedged in between the right rear tire and the plastic wheel well insert. I reached in to knock it out—a mistake. The “stick” turned out to be the little rat bastard in the picture above, and Jimbo cut the crap out of two of his fingers on his left hand.

The good news is that they didn’t have to stitch me up; the bad news is that they glued the wound on one finger shut and it is still oozing some blood this morning.

Oh, well. Live and learn, I guess. It will give me a brief anecdote with which to begin my presentation, and a “don’t you do this” admonition.

Friday, October 14, 2005

dog days

There was a story in the Kansas City Star today poking some holes in the story of the man who tried to get his dog back from the family of the guy I work with.

Here is my original blog about it.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/09/dogs-life-or-you-think-you-have.html



Here is the link to the story in the Kansas City Star online edition.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/12897232.htm

When you read this story you’ll understand why the dog is so important. The damn thing predicted the devastation on the gulf coast days prior to its happening.

I don’t have time to go into details because I have to go to work, but I’ll talk more about it later. Plus that, my friend Al told me yesterday that I hadn’t posted for a while, so I thought I’d better put something on line

Friday, October 07, 2005

blind dog jimbo


Blind Dog Jimbo. Blues singer whose song "Wyandotte County Blues" tells a story of triumph over inner-city tragedy.

...Those folks in Johnson County
Think I'm one hell of a man
I go into Wyandotte County after dark
And live to come out again....
Posted by Picasa

Saturday, October 01, 2005

"his" only begotten son on the tall stack


As a man who has, on a rare occasion, engaged in a brief game of poker, I know a little about the game. The most important thing I know is that when someone else has the best of it, one should be prepared to fold. If I ever show up at the table and Christ is the chip leader, you’d best bet that if he plays his hand strong, I’ll be mucking mine.

An Irish gaming site is taking some heat for it’s parody of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, depicting our savior on the big stack with various gaming going on all around him. Of course, while many are outraged, Jimbo is mildly amused by all of this.

Sometimes it is good not to take things too seriously. However, my best advise to you is that if Jesus gives you that Howard Lederer stare down and he pushes it all in, be prepared to bow out gracefully.

At least, that’s how Jimbo would do it.

poker tournament

I get to play in a poker tournament for free if I stick this thing on my blog. It's an ad, but I figure you can ignore it if you wish. If you are a blogger and play on poker stars, you can sign up too, if you want. Just list me as the referring blog.

Poker Championship

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 8465326



Sorry if advertising on my blog offends you, but I can win a WPT seat or a 24" flat panel monitor. That is if my big pocket pairs don't get cracked or if I don't go to the river with the nut full house only to get cracked by the quads like I've done six times in the last week.

-Jimbo

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

You’re probably waking up this morning, or maybe getting ready to go to bed. Maybe you’re at work or maybe you are spending the afternoon surfing the web and so you’ve stopped by to see what pearls of wisdom Jimbo has deposited for your reading enjoyment. And as you do, you think, “What is this? Have I gone to the wrong place? Is my monitor going bad?”

Well, relax, my friends (and those of you who can’t stand me). Don’t slap the side of your monitor. There is nothing wrong with it. After ten months, I have just changed the way my blogsite appears. After all, the first principle of liberalism is that the only constant is change. So, if you think my blogsite looks different, you are right. I’ll probably change it again sometime.

Because that’s just the way we are, here in Jimbo’s world.