jimbo's world

ghost of christmas past

2011-12-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

Back in an ancient time, my Cub Scout leader lived in a house on the block behind our house on Alden Street. The shortcut there and home was through their back yard, over the fence into my next door neighbor’s yard and then over another fence into my own yard. On that particular December cub scout meeting, I was wearing the shirt with my badges and a good pair of jeans. I was wearing a coat, so the shirt was safe, but I didn’t want to snag the pants on the fences, meaning the next shortest route was not much longer. I would walk from the scout leader’s front porch and twenty yards down the street and then up a driveway that once led to a garage that had been demolished at some time or other. With no garage at the end of the driveway, it led directly into my back yard. That driveway route was to be the route I selected that night.

But, while on the short sidewalk I heard chimes: Christmas songs.

It wasn’t some out of body experience. There weren’t any angels that appeared to me and it was not a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus kind of thing, What I heard was just the organist at Quayle Memorial Methodist Church playing chimes through the loudspeakers on the outside of the building.

So, instead of making the left turn down the driveway and toward home, I continued to walk down the sidewalk, north on 17th street, toward where the music being played. Seventeenth Street made a little ninety-degree hook to the left where the big stucco house was (and still is) and then a couple of hundred more feet to the corner of 17th and Yecker. That was where Quayle was. There was a stained glass window on the Yecker side of the church, if my memory is correct—and it may not be. I believe last time I was by there, it was boarded over, so I could not confirm.

I remember on that ancient December afternoon, I stood for a while at the corner and listened. There was something back then about Christmas that piqued the imagination of a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. There was something about the songs of the season that re-enforced the connection.

They still do.

I remember after hearing a song or two, I headed west down Yecker, took the shortcut through the alley and back home on Alden.

It is strange how one can forget something someone said this morning or the name of someone met yesterday, but still have a fairly solid memory of hearing a song fifty years ago.

Like I said, there is something about the songs of the season…

Well, no need to repeat myself. I just said that three paragraphs before. And they are short paragraphs.

However, we sometimes repeat ourselves in Jimbo’ world.

the north forty-forth street sidewalk surfing association

2011-07-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Most of the things we used to do in ancient times—back when I was growing up—have slipped into history. Kids today don’t do a lot of the same things we did two generations ago. One of the few, however, that seems still to be in vogue, is the skateboard.

Back in 1964 a group called Jan and Dean had a popular song on the radio called Sidewalk Surfin’ and we loved the song. Perhaps it was because we were riding sidewalk surfboards at the time, so it was something with which we could identify.

Either we were too poor to buy them or skateboards were not widely commercially available at the time. Anyway, we made our own.

I took a scrap piece of 1” X 8” pine, cut it to a couple of feet long and then penciled lines on it—a pattern that came to a point in the front and tapered to about four inches wide in the back. Then I took a hand coping saw and cut the board to the configuration I drew. Afterward, I sanded down the edges, removing any sharp corners and then smoothed out the top surface with fine sandpaper. I managed to find a skull and crossbones decal at the hobby shop and spray painted a thin blue stripe at a diagonal across the board, just behind where I applied the decal toward the front of the board. Then, I took a steel wheeled roller skate and used screws to attach it to the bottom side of the board. I put a coat of dark shellac on the board to give it a light brown color.

I was then ready to put my life on the line.

Forty-forth street had a gradual incline to the North of our house and it was a good hill to walk up and then ride the board back down. However, to the south, there was a very steep hill and, once we knew how to ride the board it was always the South hill we rode down. All of the neighborhood kids built boards or had their fathers build boards for them, and we would attack the hill as a group. There were a lot of bruises and skinned elbows and knees, because the hill was fast and we didn’t wear any protective equipment.

Because interaction in society requires that we belong to something and give a name to that something, we called ourselves the North Forty-forth Street Sidewalk Surfing Association. It was better than joining a street gang, I suppose.

Even though we are sure that you can go to You Tube and hear Jan and Dean sing,
“Grab your board and go sidewalk surfin’ with me,” Jimbo has reached the point in life that falling off a skateboard would require some time to heal, so he won’t be joining in.

But it is good to remember how it was forty-seven summers ago on Forty-forth Street in Jimbo’s world.

alden street

2008-09-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

Fifty years ago, two old men pulled up to the curb on Alden Street, got out of their car and began to point at things and talk. The child playing in the side yard of the house in front of which they were parked, walked up to the street to see who they were, figuring they were friends of his grandmother. They told the little boy they had lived in the neighborhood many decades before. The old men pointed to the houses and debated who had lived there and when.

“Do you know there was a community well where the entire neighborhood got their water?” asked one of the men.

“I’ll bet you can’t tell us where it was,” stated the other.

“Down by that peach tree,” said the boy, pointing toward the back of the yard in which he had been playing. “Under those concrete slabs.”

“Yessir,” intoned one of the elderly gentlemen. “That’s exactly where it was.”

“Still is,” said the boy. “Put concrete slabs over it to keep the cats from fallin’ in. You can pull the slabs apart and drop stuff into it, like peach pits and rocks. Then you slide the slabs back ‘fore momma sees ya’ and whups ya’ good.”

To that little boy, Alden Street stretched out in each direction almost as far as you cared to look. One time, when he ran away from home, he reached the end of Alden Street, up by the alley that ran through to Yecker Street, and stopped. That was as far away from home as he cared to go. And, when he stood at that end of the street and looked back at the entire expanse of Alden, it was so very far to the other end.

And when that boy stood on the front sidewalk and looked back through his side yard and all the way to the chicken wire fence on the back property line, he could imagine no wider expanse—no further vista of green. It was the yard where he had matured from infant to child.

We’ll never know who those men were. They were just like thousands of people who walk through ones life. The boy, however, was a different story. We know he grew up and became known as Jimbo. And yesterday, the Labor Day holiday, Jimbo again walked that sidewalk and street and pointed out to Jimbo’s girlfriend where the home of his childhood had been. Things are different today. Alden is such a short block one could lay the newspaper at one end, walk to the other end and still read the headline. Jimbo’s old house is gone and the yard he remembered as being so large is just a postage stamp.

There are only a few houses on the street that appear to be inhabited. There are a few houses that are open and abandoned, but the majority of the houses are gone, replaced by empty lots.

Jimbo’s girlfriend frequently commented about the total decay and squalor. She questioned how people could live in neighborhoods like these. She questioned how these kinds of neighborhoods could still exist in the twenty-first century and in the United States of America.

Jimbo, himself, had a brief feeling of having come home, standing on the sidewalk and on the rock steps leading down to where his house used to be. It was much like the tales of the old African elephants who, knowing the end is near, wander back to their place of birth, to lay their earthly remains at the foot of their childhood memories. But, it wasn’t like that at all, because we were all happy as clams when we were able to move out of that house. And, I do not grieve it nor mourn its passing. It was a dump. On the road of life, it was a start, and that’s about it.

I would have liked to stay and reminisce a little longer, but one of the locals was walking down the street and Jimbo’s girlfriend insisted in locking herself in the car for protection. I can’t say as that I blamed her, but he passed by harmlessly and no one was killed.

We drove the neighborhood for a while and past my grandmother’s old house, which is also gone and past the Spanish-style house one street over from Alden, which was always the nicest house in the neighborhood. It is still standing, as is one of my favorite buildings, Quayle Memorial Methodist Church, which is still elegant, but boarded up. I wonder if the woodwork is still intact. I wonder if the stained glass is still unbroken under the plywood.

Most of all, I wonder whether the people who inhabit these houses are better off where they are, or if they would be better off using a bulldozer to set the neighborhood in order. My old house was a shack. It has gone to a better place. It was good, however, to stand over its final resting place.

And to walk the sidewalks and streets I had walked half a century before.

A long time ago in Jimbo’s world.

words to a truck drivin' song

2008-04-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

“You a driver?” she asked.

“No,” I answered.

I knew why she asked. It was my hat. Jimbo has a black ball cap that says “Roadway” on it. I used to move castings in from Mexico on an almost-daily basis and the sales representative for the truck line we used gave me the cap one year at Christmas time. I’ve had the hat for a long time and it looks well worn. There’s an area on the right-hand side of the bill and another on the left-hand side that the black is dark gray from me taking it off and putting it on. The one on the right is more noticeable because I use my right hand primarily. However, I have the ability to do it with my left hand, too, when I am carrying something.

It isn’t the first time this has happened. Once, at a casino, a guy came up to me and said good morning.

“You drive for Roadway? Me too. Ain’t seen you around.”

I told him the story and said something like, “thanks for the business,” and wandered off past the slot machines.

My ex-father-in-law was a driver, and he told me the only way you could tell the difference between a truck driver and a cowboy was their footwear. Cowboys wore the boots; truck drivers wore sneakers. He wore boots, but it was legitimate. He ran a herd of cattle north and east of Lawrence, when he wasn’t on the road.

I have to admit, though, I have seen a lot of drivers wearing cowboy boots. Maybe they swung both ways. I don’t know.

What I do know, though, is that I have wandered off of where I was originally going. That happens more often now that I am getting older. Let’s get back on subject.

I was in Wal-Mart last Sunday morning.

A little shopping hint: If one needs to pick up some of the everyday items we all need to get through life—the kind of stuff that Wal-Mart sells—and one has no interest in fighting the crowds at ones local Wal-Mart, a good time to do ones shopping is seven in the morning on Sunday. The crowds are really thin at that time of the morning. There are probably a hundred people in the store, but they all work there, stocking shelves. If one can avoid getting run over by some teenager pushing or pulling a pallet jack, one can get in and out in a hurry. And, there will be some old man or woman to welcome you when you come in and tell you to have a nice day when you leave.

Anyway, last Sunday I had made my shopping choices and was checking out in the express line when the lady scanning my purchases asked me if I drove a truck. Although I was tempted to say yes, I gave her the real actual synopsis. Almost immediately, it occurred to me that she probably had a brother-in-law or a distant relative who drove and probably had a beat-up hat like mine, and my story about being a supply-chain manager and having had a regular move from Mexico may have gone over her head. It didn’t. She caught it and threw it right back.

“I’m a freight broker,” she said.

About that time I was signing my credit card receipt, so I didn’t immediately respond. I guess she anticipated my next question, so she answered it without my having to ask.

“Cost of diesel, there aren’t a lot of loads out there.”

In my present job, I move a lot of sheet metal on flatbeds and we use freight brokers frequently, so I asked her the name of the company for which she worked, and made a mental note.

I put my receipt in my pocket, pushed my cart toward the exit and responded, “you, too,” when the lady at the exit told me to have a nice day.

There is something eerie about that morning that keeps wandering through my mind. It is a story about how good it was last century and about how far we have fallen. It’s the story of Robert Rubin and Bill Clinton and their strong dollar policy. It’s how their strong dollar brought the price of a barrel of crude to less than $12 and how Friday it topped $118. It’s how the Euro was worth $.75 back then and now it exceeds $1.50.

It’s a story about how our worst two problems as a country back then were so radically different than they are today. First, that we couldn’t find enough workers to fill all the jobs that went begging for someone to fill them. Second, that our budget surplus was on the verge of creating a situation that could only be resolved by eliminating income taxes.

I guess our current administration solved those problems and a third problem, too. That problem was that their OPEC member buddies weren’t making enough money.

As a man who is getting some years on him, I guess it is natural to lament the good old days. Those good old days sort of passed by me when I was looking forward to something up the line a ways that I anticipated would be the good old days.

Hell, there’ll be good times coming down the road, I used to think when I was a kid. Then, when I was an adult, I would look back at those summer mornings of my childhood when I was first waking up and I could hear the doves calling outside my window. I would think back to those warm summer evenings when daylight hung on long after dinnertime, until almost bedtime, before it grudgingly gave way to darkness. Those were the days when the last school year was a distant memory and the one coming up seemed so far away. Those were the days when responsibility and homework assignments and the school day didn’t even enter the mind. I would recall those days when I had matriculated through school and was working and remember them as the good old days.

I remember working two jobs and struggling to get along when my son was an infant and thinking there would be better days. Later, I looked back to when my child was growing up and the time we spent together and thought those were the good old days.

Now, I look back to when we were partying like it was 1999 and I think those were the best days. I hope to God I never look back at the Bush and Cheney years and think these were the good old days. I hope I never think back on the huge budget deficits we have in the first decade of the twenty-first century and think we had it good. I hope I never look back at when gas was as cheap as $3.50 a gallon and tell stories about how good we had it. I hope I never look back at the war, the recession and the dope problem we have at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and remember them as good times.

But, most of all, I hope I never tell grandchildren the “good times” story of the lady who was the freight broker whom the government’s policies gave the opportunity to run the checkout line at Wal-Mart when the freight business dried up.

I hope I have a better story than that.

At least, that’s today’s view from here in Jimbo’s world.

letter to boone

2008-04-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Pickens,

I was delighted this week to hear that Bill Self has decided to stay at Kansas and that the large amount of money in your personal stash was not sufficient to hire him away.

However, after giving the matter some thought, it dawned on me that I have never mentioned to you that I know how to coach basketball. I coached my son's teams when he was young, and although we were more interested in developing talent than in winning games, we picked up some skills in coaching on the hardwoods.

I know you have money to burn, but I could be had for a contract in the low seven figures. Heck, even that is negotiable.

Please let me hear from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Jimbo

still champs after all these hours

2008-04-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

NATIONAL CHAMPS

2008-04-07T21:22:00.001-07:00

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK, KU

the big game

2008-04-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

Has Jimbo ever mentioned he is a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks?

Oh,yeah. I guess he has.

Well, it seems like the one thing that came screaming out of the headlines this week is that there are a number of Kansas fans who absolutely hate Roy Williams. The truth is that Jimbo is not one of them.

Granted, Roy was on the other side on Saturday night, and therefore, for one night, he became the hated opposition. I was more than happy to see him lose.

But the other side of the coin is that he was our guy for fifteen years, and they were some of the best fifteen years of our basketball lives. And, even though there seems to be a lot of hatred among Kansas fans toward Roy, I kind of think it is like when a lover breaks off a relationship with a guy. The first thing he thinks about is that he will never find another one again who is as good. Or, at least, that is what they tell me. I, of course, would not know that feeling, never having experienced it.

And, I have to admit that, right after Roy left, I might have felt that way for a few days. I felt the same when Larry Brown took off, but I got over it quickly and three years later we were playing in the National Championship game. I think I knew that, deep down inside, because of the tradition we have at Kansas, there would always be some top notch coach who'd say, okay, I'll come over and put some trophies on the shelf. And, we got a very good one.

But, while Roy was here he took us to that improbable 1991 championship game and to the sweet sixteen, the great eight and the final four more than once. They were good times. All good times, though, have to come to an end. One way or another, we all have to hang it up and move on. It's life. One hopes that he'll always hang on to those who are important in his life, but sometimes they say adieu or adios or goodbye, y'all.

No hard feelings, Roy. You're a good man.

Just sorry we had to kick your butt last night so bad. Well, even though I like you, I guess I'm not that sorry.

But, that's the way we do it, here in Jimbo's world.

rock chalk

2008-04-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

North Carolina coach Roy Williams

bush, happy as a clam

2008-03-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., enjoy a chuckle together at Bush’s comment, “The economy is fixed, now, and we still have another half-hour scheduled. What else can we fix today?”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (foreground) is slow to catch the rich irony and respond, much as he has been slow to recognize the threat of inflation to our overall economic stability. Moments later, after this photo was taken, Bernanke had a moment of recognition and laughed last and best (about the irony; not the inflationary threat).

historic moments in NCAA basketball bracketology

2008-03-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Here we see an artist’s rendering of Captain Ahab at his moment of decision of which team to choose in some long-forgotten game involving an eight-seed versus a nine-seed in some NCAA Western regional of yore. The entire story, of course, is not depicted, however.

The legend goes that Ahab—in trying to make correct choice for this game in his NCAA basketball tournament brackets used the common tools that all men do. He recalled his rote knowledge of brief snippets of highlights of the teams playing he had seen on ESPN’s Sportscenter. He analyzed the coaches overall records, especially their NCAA tourney history. He compared RPI and strength of schedule. He also considered the overall strength of their respective conferences. He looked at the teams’ won/lost records, including their quality wins against ranked teams and their losses of games against inferior teams. He analyzed their schedules and looked for performances against common opponents.

Ahab factored in the previous performances in the NCAA tournament of the players on the teams, where applicable, and the players’ overall talent and experience. He also considered the “X” factors, such as whether the site of the game was close enough to the teams’ respective campuses that they would have a fan-base in attendance.

Finally, after two solid hours of research, he reached the conclusion he should have reached 120 minutes earlier and had his crew paint the names of the teams on either side of a whale. Then, as we can see depicted here, he stood in the prow of his whaling boat, blindfolded himself, and prepared to let the harpoon aid in his choice.

a country for an old dude

2008-03-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year we went and saw the movie No Country for Old Men. Jimbo’s girlfriend didn’t care for it. I thought it was one of the best movies I had ever seen. When it won four Oscars last Sunday night, it occurred to me that someone must have agreed with me.

I’m pretty sure that Jimbo’s girlfriend considered this just to be another shoot ‘em up movie with a lot of guys shooting at other guys and a lot of dead bodies lying about, and this is not the genre (if you’ll pardon my French) of movie that she enjoys. However this movie was telling Jimbo a story that was a lot more complicated than that.

Oscar winner Javier Bardem, a Spanish actor I had never seen before, plays a character named Anton Chigurh. His haircut looks like mine did twenty-five years ago. Chigurh is a reasonably emotionless killer who occasionally gives his prey a fifty-fifty shot at survival by means of a ceremonial coin toss. Chigurh walks through this movie, playing a grim-reaper-type, just as surely as the character Death in the movie The Seventh Seal.

Josh Brolin, playing a welder named Llewelyn Moss, wanders across a massacre, which was the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. Among the carnage, he finds a survivor. Unable to get an answer from him as to who did all the killing, Moss finds a blood trail and follows it to the one more dead guy and a bag with 2 million bucks in it. Moss takes home the money and becomes the target of Chigurh, who is charged with recovering it.

Although Moss and Chigurh are relatively young men, the perspective of the story comes to us from Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who is played by Tommy Lee Jones. Bell gives us a narrative of a world gone wild—a place and time that has passed by decent and normal people. Bell is nearing retirement and laments a time when life was measured and predictable. Hence, the “old men” reference in the title.

Chigurh is the symbol of an end that comes and gets all of us eventually. Some of us, like Llewelyn Moss, put up a struggle and deny the inevitability, as he shoots it out with the mop-topped grim reaper and they seriously wound each other.

By the way, Jimbo will never again suture a six-inch gash in his leg with a needle and thread without thinking of the scene in this movie where Chigurh does exactly that after being wounded in a shootout with Moss. Eventually Chigurh gets the upper hand and Moss is discovered dead on the floor of a motel room.

At the investigation of Mosses murder, Bell discusses with another local sheriff the decline of civilization. The sheriff describes to Bell another similar crime scene he has seen recently, and asks rhetorically how is it possible to prepare for that kind of violence?

In the next scene, Bell visits a relative, presumably an ex-lawman, and announces his plans to retire. They discuss a similar crime scene to the one he had discussed at Mosses murder site. The crime they discussed this time, however, had occurred one hundred years earlier.

Having the benefit of perspective of the proverbial old men in the movie, it occurred to me that it is not the times that are changing-- rather, it is our perspective of the times. We carry with us a remembrance of times past and times largely forgotten except by ourselves. We seem to be prone to lamentations of the way things used to be. I remember my father used to do that and I used to think that it was just because he was old.

Anyway, the movie had an extremely abrupt ending. Bell was sitting at the breakfast table telling his wife about two dreams he had. Then, boom, the movie was over. At the time, I thought it was the worst way to end a movie as I had ever seen. Having had a chance to mull it over, I think my initial thought was wrong.

I don’t dream much, but that night I had a dream. I don’t remember much about my dream, but I think I had a much clearer understanding.

Then I woke up.

And that is the way things happen in Jimbo’s world.

let's caucus again like we did last summer

2008-02-10T07:22:00.000-08:00

We had the opportunity to attend the state caucus on super Tuesday, and saw our governmental process at work.

As one who enjoys a taste of sausage once in a while at Arthur Bryant's, Haywards and on my pizza, I'm told I would not want to witness sausage being made. As one who enjoys freedom and democracy and America, I think the same applies to witnessing the political process. It was ugly, disorganized and time consuming.

I figured it would be a win-win situation, because the two candidates were Clinton and Obama, and I have no problem with either. Unfortunately, at the caucus location where we were to vote, they were expecting thirty people. They assigned us by a consecutive number system and I was number 743, and one of the very last to pass through the verification process, so there were about 750 of us there, or twenty times what they expected. Because of that, one would have to expect that there would be some built-in chaos.

I was one of the last to be certified, even though we were there early. They divided us into four groups by alphabetical order of the first letter of our last name. Mine was the smallest group, so they processed everyone else first and held my group until last. I stood for over an hour on a long stairway, waiting, so I wasn't in the best of moods. When it came time to certify me, they couldn't find my name on the rolls, so I had to re-register. Since I am already a registered voter, and have been for almost forty years, now I am registered twice.

I was not the last person in line in my group, but because I had to do all of the re-registering crap, almost everyone in my group passed me up, leaving me to be almost the last person to be certified.

A brief aside: The people who were running the show divided us up into groups by alphabet, as I said earlier. As such, each group had a limited number of last initials. The people who were hearding us around would come up to our group and ask if there were anyone with initials that were not in our group.

The lady would ask, "Are there any 'Ts?' Anyone with the last initial 'T?'"

No, there were not.

Later she would come by and ask for any 'A' or 'B.'

There weren't.

Finally, I started catching her attention and pointing here the right direction. After a number of times of my pointing her to the correct letters, she started looking at me like I was some kind of genius. I can imagine that later, so went home and told someone about it.

"There was some guy there who knew everybody's name in the entire place. That guy must have been connected, but I didn't recognize him. Maybe he was just one on those savants."

Anyway, back to the subject.

When, at long last, it was time to stand up and be counted, they asked us all to sit down in the area where all the supporters of our candidate were, and not move around, so we would not be mis-counted, or duplicate counted, or missed entirely. After they came along and counted us, they gave a preliminary count. Then they asked for the undecideds to choose a candidate. I guess there were some people there who thought if they could remain uncommitted, they would be able to parlay their vote into some kind of power brokerage mechanism. Anyway, they did the recount and they announced the results and told us we could all go home.

Of the 750 or so votes cast, Obama got 710 of them and Clinton got 161. Sometimes the alphabet and math can be very difficult. Perhaps if we could alphabetize and add and subtract, we could elect competent leaders. Perhaps that is too much to hope for. Until then, I'll continue to vote and hope for the best. And, I'll probably continue to eat sausage.

At least, that's the view from Jimbo's world.

a philosophical question

2007-09-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

If a tree fell in a forest and neither of the following were there-- Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton or O.J. Simpson-- would it make a sound?

celeb photos

2007-09-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

spears lohan

hilton

simpson

forrest

tree

return of the prodigal

2007-09-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

“Jimbo? Jimbo who?” You are probably asking. Then, you are probably answering your own rhetorical question with another.

“Where the hell have you been, Jimbo?”

I’ve been busy, I guess. Today, though, I have something to say so I am saying it.

You’ve all heard the old joke. The parents of a young child are trying to teach their youngster to speak. He looks at them and pays attention, but when it comes time to say something, he is mute. They have him examined by a physician and he appears to be physically able to speak, he just doesn’t. A year passes and the speaking lessons continue without success.

One night at the dinner table, the child suddenly says, “The beans are cold.”

The parents are shocked.

“We didn’t think you could speak,” says his father, excitedly.

“What made you finally decide to talk?” Asks the mother.

“Well, up to now, everything was all right,” replies the child.

While everything certainly has not been alright, I figured I had said enough, but something in the news this weekend has caused me to speak. And, what caused me to complain is a visit from that grizzly old buzzard—camel jockey number one—Osama bin Laden.

Osama wants all of us to convert to Islam and he wants us to give up capitalism.

Yeah, right, ObL. Right after we give up apple pie, mom and the flag.

And, that is not going to happen as long as I’m here.

The thing that most struck me about what Osama had to say, was what he didn’t say. And, what he didn’t say—his body language-- told us all who is influencing him most.

Keith Hernandez and “Clyde” Frazier.

Osama’s new look told us all that he had been watching the television commercials that Keith and Clyde do. You know the ones I’m talking about. The one where the graybeard walks up to the good-looking young woman and she laughs him off. As she turns away, the graybeard’s eyes glaze in a look of tired defeat. However, this is one graybeard who snatches victory from the arms of that defeat by using the beard coloring that Keith and Clyde recommend. The next time we see him, his beard is dark; he is a young firebrand, and the next attractive young woman he meets greets him with a passionate look that almost certainly guarantees he will not go home alone.

Yes, Osama may be holed up in some prehistoric cave somewhere, but he obviously has the ability to violate his anti-capitalistic credo and purchase some of Keith’s and Clyde’s beard darkening stuff. I guess Osama wants to impress the young women, too.

It appears that Osama, despite the prehistoric conditions under which Bush supposedly forces him to live, can still get in a video crew and get his inane caterwauling plastered all over al Jazeera and the rest of the world media.

Still, it is good to see that Osama still cares about his appearance, because when his man is no longer in the White House, he may have to show up in a court of law to explain what he has been up to.

Until that time, I think I’ll stick with my non-Islamic beliefs and I think we’ll keep capitalism. I could go on and on, but right now I am heading over to mom’s house. I wonder if she’ll have apple pie and if the flag will still be hanging on the front porch like it was last week.

waiting for a train and something entirely different comes along

2007-01-27T21:27:00.000-08:00

Today is rapidly on its way to being yesterday. Tonight I can say that today I had an epiphany, but in an hour I will have to say it was yesterday. I looked into the present and saw the future while I was looking at the past.

“What the %$#@ have you been smoking, Jimbo?” many of you are probably asking. “We haven’t heard a word from you in a whole %$#@*+(& month, and now that you are communicating again, it sounds like you’ve gone off the &^%($*@ deep end.”

Well, I guess I better start at the beginning.

I was thinking this morning of the song Waiting For A Train, by Jimmie Rodgers, so I went online to download the lyrics to the song. While I was looking for them, one of the search results I found was a link to Jimmie actually singing the song. After I printed the lyrics, I clicked on to the link and it took me to You Tube, where I watched an eighty-year-old film clip of Rodgers singing the song to a couple of elderly women.

Jimmie sang:

My pocketbook is empty and my heart is full of pain
I’m a thousand miles away from home, just waiting for a train

I was able to follow along with the lyrics I had just printed off and look at the chord changes he made and made note of the key in which he played the song and the chords he played. If one knows the basic major cord fingering patterns, it is easy to read them while watching the video of a guitar player. Rodgers did a little fancy stuff with alternating basses, but he played primarily using major chords—no diminished chords or seventeenth-suspended chords, or anything like that.

Now, I can anticipate your next question.

“How does watching film from the early 1930s of some yodeling hillbilly plucking on his guitar for a couple of old ladies help you see into the future?” some of you are asking right now.

Well, posting videos on You Tube is the latest in-vogue thing, and all of this crap that people are posting on line is just that—crap. But, in among the crap is some important video and it is becoming a permanent record that will remain for years. Instead of just reading about someone or something in a book and maybe seeing a picture of them, future generations will be able to see them move and hear them talk, and dance and sing. And all those people that are posting all that crap—and that little bit of important video—are leaving a walking, talking video record of our time. Someday all that video—because it is so easily searchable, will become our history.

At least that is the view from here in Jimbo’s world.

2006-12-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

Happy

New

Year

2007

how the cypriot stole christmas

2006-12-26T08:20:00.000-08:00

Where were you thirty-five years ago yesterday?

I forgot about this memorable event until I was ready to go to bed last night. Those of us alive back then will never forget where they were when Garo Yepremian kicked off with a minute and seven seconds left in the fourth quarter of the longest game in NFL history.

It was the Chief and Dolphins at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City and the Dolphins came back and tied the game with 1:07 left. I remember the announcers were as worn out as the rest of us and when Dick Carlson made the call.

….Podolak and McVea at the goal line and Yepremian’s kick is in the air. Podolak up the middle; the ten, the fifteen….

The crowd erupted because they saw the hole develop long before Carlson did, but Carlson continued with his call, even though he was barely audible.

…the twenty, the twenty-five…

If one listened closely one could hear Carlson finally catch on while he uttered the word “five.” He screamed the word. He screamed:

…thirty…

After I spent hours replaying the reel-to-reel tape I made of the broadcast, I was finally able to make out what I believe was the following, but it was so inaudible over the noise of the crowd, I can’t vouch for its accuracy.

...the thirty-five, the forty! He’s gone!…

However, at the time of the live broadcast, the last thing we could understand was “thirty.” There was the uncomfortable half-minute or so when it was not certain what had just happened. Fortunately, after the thirty-seconds of crown noise, Bill Grigsby came on and explained that Podolak had broken the kickoff for 75 yards and was caught by one of the gunners at the twenty-three. It was just a matter of Jan Stenerud—one of the most reliable kickers of all time—to come in and kick the field goal to put the game away. Unfortunately, Stenerud missed the field goal and the game went into two overtimes.

Garo Yepremian finally ended the game with a field goal in the sixth “quarter.” Yepremian was probably the most notable American football player ever to come from Cyprus. It was a point at which the Chiefs’ dynasty began to go downhill and the Dolphins began to rise to the top.

It was one of those days we’ll always remember, even if it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to, here in Jimbo’s world.

reefer, man

2006-12-18T18:59:00.000-08:00

It was reported today that America’s biggest cash crop is not corn. It’s not oats. It’s not soybeans. No, it’s not even wheat.

Do you know what it is?

No! It’s not ginseng, either. No, not crabgrass.

It’s grass.

No, not that kind.

It’s marijuana. Here is the story.

smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

According to the story, our country produces $35 billion worth of ganja per year, while we produce $23 billion worth or corn and $7 billion worth of wheat.

Oh, wow, man, that’s a lot of doobie.

You may remember that your mother told you to eat your vegetables. As a country we produce $11 billion worth of veggies. Apparently, we weren’t paying much attention to mommy, because we are growing (and I would assume, consuming) more than three times that amount of wacky weed.

There is something that makes me wonder about this story, however. There are a number of people in this country that grow wheat. They put their profits on their tax returns and report that information to the government. The same is true with growers of corn and vegetables. I am wondering how many people write “marijuana farmer” as their occupation on their tax returns? Consequently, I am wondering how the authors of this study are able to determine the correct amount of marijuana grown.

Almost everyone I know eats things made out of corn and wheat and they eat vegetables regularly. Back in the day, I knew people who were rumored to partake of the fruit of the cannabis plant, but I have to admit I know of very few today. I’m certain they exist. My assumption is that there are probably not as many as there were in olden times who puff on hemp cigarettes.

So I have to think the data are questionable as to whether there really is $35 billion of wacky tobacco being produced and consumed. It just makes one wonder whether we can believe everything we read. Or maybe the way to phrase the question would be is there anything we won't believe?

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

jimbo: time magazine's person of the year

2006-12-17T09:19:00.000-08:00

You can imagine Jimbo’s surprise this morning about discovering he had been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

First of all, just let me say that, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I would like to thank of those who had an influence on my life. Many of whom read this blog regularly and I’d just like to say that I couldn’t have done it without you.

Secondly, let me say that I would like to thank all of those with whom I will share the award. I would like to thank all of you personally and individually, but there just won’t be sufficient time.

By the way, here is the story.

Time's person of the year.

Time has named anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web as their person of the year. It just dawned on me. You are person of the year, too. Congratulations on a job well done and on your selection for this award. It couldn’t have gone to a better person.

Perhaps in our lifetimes, there has been no other event that had a greater influence on the advancement of civilization than the popularizing and commercializing of the Internet. While the Internet has existed since the 1960s, its popularization during the mid-1990s was the watershed event that will define our era. You will recall there were a large group of forward-thinking individuals who seized upon the idea of commercializing of the Internet. Many of them are still around, even though the majority of them and the companies they founded have died and will be buried beneath the sands of time.

The medium they all nurtured has now stretched its power and influence to most every end of the earth. The Internet is like freedom and like civilization. While a few totalitarians still manage to keep the Internet and the exchange of communication from their people, it will only be a matter of time until they will be pushed aside by ideas coming from a cable or tower and flickering on the screen of a monitor.

You will also recall that the sitting President at the time, Bill Clinton, assigned his Vice-President to enable this new-fangled technology, which they dubbed “the information superhighway,” to insure its rapid growth and advancement. Their legitimatization of this technology represented one of the primary functions of government: that is the advancement of ideas of, by and for the people.

It will be poetic justice that long after the settling of the dust and ashes of the Republicans who doubled over with laughter and rolled in the aisles at their 2000 convention at the suggestion of the Vice-President having enabled the internet, the name of Al Gore will probably be the only one of this generation remembered 2000 years from now.

Yes, I accept this award on behalf of all of us. Thank you very much.

At least, that is our acceptance speech, here in Jimbo’s world.

out of office reply

2006-12-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

I can’t help noticing that I am getting a very large number of almost instantaneous responses to many of the e-mails I’m sending at work. I’m getting more of them than I am spam. The subject of those responses is “out of office reply.”

I’m not bitching. I think the out of office reply is great, because one can know immediately that the recipient didn’t read your e-mail. For example, today I sent out a request for proposal to three people and got an instant response from each. They were all out of the office, but their out of office replies advised me they would all be back Monday.

But here is the deal.

It used to be that people took their vacation throughout the year, but now, everyone is so busy that they have to take their vacation days at the end of the year. Everyone is on a quest to use up their days before they use up their year. I think it demonstrates a paradigm change in society. We’re all working longer, harder and putting off taking our vacation.

Either that, or we are managing our e-mail programs better.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this, but most of you won’t read it until next week because you’re probably out of the office, burning those last few days of vacation for the year.

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

twelve more days and still more money

2006-12-11T16:14:00.000-08:00

Those of you following along for the last two-plus years may recall that back in my salad days of blogging, I came across a Christmas article by the folks at PNB Bank in Pittsburgh putting a current value on the gifts from the song Twelve Days of Christmas, if they were purchased today. Before I bring you up to date, let’s revisit those glorious days of yesteryear.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/11/twelve-days-and-sixty-six-large.html

Or, maybe my update last year.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/11/twelve-high-dollar-days-of-christmas.html

You may recall that last year the index of dodecagonal Christmas giving was up approximately nine-and–one-half percent. This year the index of twelfth-night philanthropy is up three-and-one-half percent, meaning the average between last year and this is six-and-one-half percent. Due to compounding, if we extrapolate this rate of inflation over ten years, the actual annual rate is 8.7%.

If you are tired of hearing me complain about the lack of fiscal responsibility of our current government and especially the current executive branch of that government, you’d best hit the “next blog” button, now. For despite sacking that worthless John Snow earlier this year, the administration is still behind the eight ball.

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

How can this happen in a civilized society?

But, this is the Christmas season and a time of hope and cheer. With the same spirit that the spendthrift in the Twelve Days of Christmas song cast away his money on his true love, I will cast the seeds of hope before you.

Perhaps the new government that will be in place after the first of the year will be more careful with our dollars. Perhaps, unlike our current government, they won’t cast our dollars before the lobbyists in the same way that Jesus suggested in Matthew 7:6, when he said:

“…neither cast ye your pearls before swine…”

All I can say for sure, however, is that the love-struck dude in the song would best be warned to save his money for a rainy day, rather than laying down seventy-eight large to impress his lady.

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

christmas poems, christmas greetings and doom

2006-12-07T04:51:00.000-08:00

I think I saw how the next attack is coming yesterday.

It was in the form of a Christmas poem. I received it at work from one of my co-workers by e-mail. To sum it up, it was a poem about a guy who was sitting on the couch on Christmas Eve and his wife had fallen asleep on his shoulder. The kids were tucked away snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums (or Play stations) dancing in their heads.

Anyway, the guy hears something out on the lawn. He springs from the couch to see what was the matter. Instead of seeing a jolly old elf, a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, he sees an American soldier doing sentry duty in the front yard, protecting his freedom.

The poem went on to remind us how there are American soldiers standing watch over our freedom all over the world this holiday season and we should be grateful. This is, of course, all true and we should. You’re not going to get an argument on this blogsite. The sentiment of this poem is absolutely correct and there is no way a reasonable man or woman could disagree.

The e-mail said that we should forward this poem to anyone we knew.

After I read the poem, I went back and followed the string. It looked as if hundreds of people had seen it. It had been forwarded to what seemed like everyone in several of the previous senders’ address books.

“Well, Jimbo,” one or two of you are probably asking, “why didn’t you forward it to me?”

Those of you that know me well know that I don’t forward frivolous e-mails. It’s because I believe that is where the next attack is coming from.

We have some fairly sophisticated anti-virus software that we can buy and load into our computers. Most of our Internet service providers provide such a service, too. One of the things that anti-virus software does is to keep worms and viruses from spreading. One of the ways that worms and viruses spread is that they give your computer a command to send a virus you may have caught to everyone in your address book. Anti-virus programs try to prevent that. One way of circumventing that is for the user of a computer to give the command, themselves—by forwarding an e-mail to someone else, or everyone they know.

If a terrorist can imbed a virus or worm into a little dancing Santa Claus or a prancing reindeer that flashes “Happy Holidays- send this to everyone you know,” it can be a time bomb waiting to explode. If they can get you to pass along their doomsday virus to everyone in your home and work computer’s address book, the virus can just hibernate in your computer, waiting for the day Al Qaeda has predestinated to shut down our system of communications—or worse.

Maybe when Al Qaeda attacks, my computer will be the one that is still working.

Or, maybe not.

At least that is the view from Jimbo’s world this morning.

short people

2006-11-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

There are three things that come to mind this snowy evening here on the Great Plains.

I bought a CD by Randy Newman on Amazon last week and I listen to it through earphones while I engage in important enterprises on my computer here at home. Two of the three things come from song titles on that CD.

It’s Money That I Love

Short People

The third one is our nemesis Osama bin Laden and his group of merry men.

I read on Yahoo! tonight that Al Qaeda may be planning a cyber attack against financial websites in December. If they do, one of their motivations will be that it’s money that they love. If that’s the case, they will be short people. And as the song goes,

Short people got no reason to live.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jimbo?” many of you are asking. “Is the water cold there in the deep end?”

Yes. Yes, it is.

Well, what I’m talking about is that there are two basic ways to play the financial markets. The vast majority of us wake up in the morning, salute the flag and say we are proud to be Americans and proud to be long the US markets. We own stocks, mutual funds and other equities in our personal and retirement accounts. There are some who play the game a different way and they are said to be “short.” A short borrows your stock from your broker and sells it, putting the proceeds in a cash account. The short is expecting the value of the stock he borrowed and sold to go down. He will buy it back at a later time for less money, thereby making a profit. There are many derivative plays one can play on both sides such as options, warrants, etc., and the short person can play options to leverage his buying (or selling) power.

If Al Qaeda is planning an attack on financial websites, one result of such an attack would be a loss of confidence in the financial system and the markets by the people who are invested in these instruments (the “longs” I described earlier). If these attacks were to occur, a result would logically be a decline in the value of stocks. Let me use a recent movie to illustrate how this would work.

Last weekend we saw Casino Royale. It was a reasonably good movie. One of the subplots was that the villain went short on a company that was introducing the world’s largest jet airliner (despite his broker’s warning that everyone was going to make money buying that stock). The villain used the option chain to leverage his short position with the intention of sabotaging the aircraft and deflating the stock. I’ll make you have to go see the movie to know whether he was successful in sabotaging the plane or whether James Bond kicked his ass. But the villain’s plan was to make the stock go down by illegal means—sort of an insider-trading scheme.

This, I believe, is why that if Al Qaeda launches an attack, they will be firmly ensconced in short positions in all the financial firms first. While this might sound crazy, there is a story that has drifted through the financial blogsites for years that Al Qaeda opened short positions in the major airlines’ stocks shortly before September 11, 2001. That scenario was also spoken about in Casino Royale. And, while I’m sure that Al Qaeda insiders all had short positions on that infamous day, I’ll go to my grave confident that the brokerage statement for the man with the biggest short position was mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

If you see the percentage of short positions in the stocks of US financial firms begin to rise, then you should take on an appropriate amount of fear. However, if you don’t mind, I’ll continue to thumb my nose at Al Qaeda and its oddball headmaster. I’ll stay long—long and strong.

At least, that’s the way the prevailing wind is blowing here tonight in Jimbo’s world.

the baron, dean, mark and a couple of dubyas

2006-11-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

I’m wondering this morning whether Mrs. Elizabeth (T.D.) Lawson is still with us. I remember when I was living in Lawrence, KS, the local newspaper would interview her every spring—usually sometime in mid-March. I’m confident she didn’t have game, but she had a story. It was always about watching her brother shoot baskets at the family homestead in Halstead, KS, sometime early during the second decade of the twentieth century. Many of us remember the twentieth century, but few remember where we were in 1911. Mrs. Lawson did. Her brother, Adolph Rupp, went on to play four years for Phog Allen at the University of Kansas. While there he played on the 1923 national championship team. Later, he coached the University of Kentucky, where he was known as “The Baron of the Bluegrass,” and retired as the winningest college basketball coach of all time. John Wooden and Dean Smith have since passed him, but it is still in the family as Dean Smith is also a KU grad and played on the 1952 national championship team.

Halstead is just North of Wichita, and yesterday, in Baton Rouge, LA, the Wichita State Shockers upset six-ranked LSU in basketball. The shockers are coached by former KU player and coach, Mark Turgeon. That was about the most exciting thing that happened in Kansas basketball yesterday. That is only because when the University of Kansas knocked off number one Florida, it was actually Sunday morning here. Kansas played Florida in a city that the Associated Press referred to as Lawrence, Nevada. It is a city that just happens to be my home away from home, but I prefer to call it by its real name, Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was an exciting game, late last night and in the wee hours of the morning, here, but I am reminded how basketball is a game that is determined by a hot hand, and the best team doesn’t always win. I’m not sure if Kansas is really better than Florida. After all, Florida had an open look at a three-ball as time expired. The shot was short and the game was over, but it was one of those fifty-fifty chances and it could have gone either way.

It’s a lot more fun, though, when your team wins, even if it requires that one stays up past his bedtime.

Rock chalk.

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

it's christmas eve and these shoes are just her size...

2006-11-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

Well, it was bound to happen.

One leads ones life dangerously and one puts himself in harms way. That's what happened last night.

First of all, let me explain that I have been taking a bit of good-natured ribbing about the fact that I have been listening to Christmas music over the past couple of weeks. That's okay. I can take the heat. I can take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. After all, the ribbing has been in jest. I actually think that Jimbo's girlfriend is starting to enjoy the Christmas music, though she acts as if she does not.

Last night, however, I faced the obvious danger of listening to that kind of music. Yes, you guessed it.

They played that damned "Christmas Shoes" song.

Fortunately, however, they chose to put it on the airwaves just as we were driving into the parking lot of our local supermarket. I hurried up and got into a parking space and turned off the car, and coincidentally the radio. I only had to listen to the part where the guy was hurriedly doing his Christmas shopping, wasn't in the Christmas mood and had not yet arrived at the checkout counter where the saccharine-coated sentimentality occurs.

I was spared this time. But, I'm concerned that it will happen again, sometime before the season is over, and I will hear that little bastard sing his song.

I lucked out this time, but how many times will I be spared?

Only time will tell, here in Jimbo's world.

back when jimbo used to work out...

2006-11-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

two years to the day

2006-11-10T02:10:00.000-08:00

Some anniversaries today include the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, and the first time I blogged (coincidently about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald) on November 10, 2004.

Those of you who were reading back in those days two years ago may recall that I seemed to post more often back then. Those were, of course, during my days of leisure and, since I have un-retired, there doesn’t seem to be as much time to write these things.

My plan is, however, to continue doing it. I’ll continue to give you a piece of my mind—albeit a small piece—as there is not much to spare.

Jimbo’s girlfriend is up early today and so I got up early, too, and I am going to work early. I hope we all have a productive and a good day.

the book of revelations

2006-11-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

Life is good.

Tuesday will be an interesting day. If I were a betting man, I would wager the Republicans will hold on to at least one of the two bastions of the legislative branch. This would mean that nothing much will change in Washington over the next two years.

Wait a minute! I am a betting man. And, Jimbo, you may be asking, why are you saying that life is good if you are convinced the election tomorrow isn’t going to change anything?

That is because tonight at dinner I had a revelation.

My visions were different than the ones recorded by some scribe in the court of St. James who got all doped up or drunked up and penned that surrealistic final book of the New Testament, and while doing it probably said something to his companions like:

“Egad, Sirs, doth thou perceive the colours?”

The primary difference was that I was only drinking tea, though I will admit I had more than one.

I live in one of the most conservative states in the nation. The county to the south of the one in which I reside is regarded as one of the most conservative in the most conservative state in the nation. That county is so conservative that a best seller was written a couple of years ago documenting the county’s conservatism.

As I looked around the restaurant in which we were dining, I made the comment to my girlfriend that the place reminded me of the many restaurants in that conservative southern county. I also made the comment that all of the other people in the place had probably come from that county to get a bite to eat and have a drink. They were talking on cell phones and drinking alcoholic beverages. They were paying for their meals and drinks with credit cards. They were watching images on flat-screen monitors.

So what, Jimbo, you may be asking? Then you may be adding, “It looks like Jimbo has finally slipped off into the deep end.”

We all lie to ourselves to some degree. And my point is that sometimes we have a different image of ourselves than what actually may be true. While true conservatives hold on to the old ways and resist progress, I’m convinced these “conservatives” may have slipped off the left hand side of the fence.

The primary tenant of progressive western thought is that the only constant is change and, as Americans we have pushed the envelope of change—and we have pushed it hard. When the true conservative legislators in the western three-fourths of our state said that we would never change our mores and enjoy an alcoholic beverage with our meals in public places, we first said, “Oh, yeah?” Later we went into the voting booths and interjected our opinion. After that, we sat down in public places and enjoyed a potent potable with our repast.

When the electorate put a school board into place that outlawed Darwin, it dawned on us that our kids would go into school dumb and come out dumb, too, if the school board stole knowledge from us. We kicked their asses off the school board a quick as you can say “natural selection.”

When we go to the polls tomorrow, somewhere close by there will be a pole with a rectangular piece of cloth on it. Up in the corner of that piece of cloth, there will be a blue rectangle with fifty white stars-- one for each of the states of the union—symbolic of a union as perfect as any that has ever existed. There will be thirteen horizontal alternating stripes of red and white, representing the original colonies from which this nation emerged. That piece of cloth represents the progression of western civilization, and as long as it stands, we will never, as a country, stand still. We will continue to move ahead. Just let anybody try to stop us.

Life is good.

And we’ll stand by that statement here in Jimbo’s world.

one man; one vote

2006-11-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I was lying on the couch, resting my eyes after a long weekend of working around the house. I injured my left hand a couple of months ago and I’ve been an invalid since, so any physical work is a problem for me, so, like I said, I was resting. I was awakened by a knock on the door. I was too sleepy to realize what I was doing and I got up and answered it. Fortunately, it was not a Jehovah’s Witness at the door.

It was, however, a candidate for state representative and since I had answered the door, I was committed to talk to him. I figured I’d give him some crap and get rid of him in a hurry, but I had to wake up, first. I stepped out on the porch and listened to him while I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. He told me he was against negative campaigning and he wanted to bring a positive message. He seemed like an OK guy to me. After I woke up, I asked him some economic questions and I realized immediately he knew what he was talking about. He told me he owned an economic consulting firm, so that probably explained it. I told him if he stayed positive he had my vote. We have received several mailings from him since and he has kept his word.

Yesterday, we received a mailing from his opponent that blamed the gentleman I met that Sunday afternoon for about every crisis that has ever affected this nation. Remember that time that Howard Dean got all excited and started yelling? I guess the guy I spoke to was responsible for that, somehow. He is also responsible for all the social problems this country has. I considered this pretty impressive, considering he is running for this office for the first time.

We threw the mailing from his opponent into the trash. I’ve pretty much had my fill of negative ads this political season. It is a shame that we will consistently elect the candidate who runs the dirtiest ads. I guess that the result is that we get the kind of government we deserve.

All I know is that one candidate promised me he would stay positive and he has kept his word. Come Tuesday, I’ll go to the polls and keep my word, too. After all, we have a deal. Then, we’ll let the chips fall where they may.

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

a campaign appearance

2006-10-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, the President made a speech saying that those in the opposition party who didn’t support the war in Iraq were in the party of “cut and run.” I don’t think the Commander-in-Chief gave much thought to the rationale that he was insulting the majority of the American people, because only a minority support his failed Iraq policy.

Yesterday the Chief Executive made the comment that the opposition party was celebrating prematurely their victory at the polls in two weeks.

Today, Donald Rumsfeld said that critics should “back off” in their insistence of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. One could not be blamed for assuming that the white house was admitting the possibility of defeat the week after next in the mid-term elections.

I say that we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about this election being over. You may recall in the 2004 presidential campaign, the incumbent went into the final weekend of the race trailing in the polls. However, then, as I believe he will do in the next week or so, the President pulled out his big gun. You may remember that he got a last minute stump speech from his top supporter Osama Bin Laden. I think that we are going to get to see on our televisions the less-than-handsome countenance of the world’s number one republican sometime soon. I think that Osama is going to tell us we are right for opposing the war and that we are right opposing President Bush’s policies. I think he will tell us that we are right in our opposition to the Republican incumbents in congress.

I think that worthless Saudi Arabian pile of feces will say something that will sway the election, just like he did in 2004. And when that happens, can you imagine how much our government will be indebted to that less-than-fresh-smelling camel jockey? And what will ol’ Osama want in return? Will he want more representation of the Taliban in the government of Afghanistan? Will he want us to recognize Mummar Al-Qadaffi as an ally?

Oh, wait. We have already given him both of those things. Whatever he wants, though, he knows that our current government will give it to him.

Maybe this time, though, we’ll have the guts and foresight to throw Osama, George and their kind out. You can call it the optimist in me, but sometimes you just have to hope for the best.

At least that is our hope here in Jimbo’s world.

some people have all the luck

2006-10-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

In one of the “Dirty Harry” movies, Clint Eastwood discharges his weapon a number of times during a confrontation with some bad guys and when the action climaxes, he finds himself face to face with one of the perpetrators. He is not sure of the number of unspent cartridges in his weapon, or even if there are any cartridges remaining. He explains the situation to the perpetrator and lets him know the odds of whether there may be a bullet in the gun. This would not be considered smart police work, but it had high entertainment value. Eastwood concludes his logical imperative by asking something like:

“Do you feel lucky, punk?”

Using the logic that criminals are, by nature, risk takers, the “Dirty Harry” series of movies should have ended at that moment with Eastwood dying on the floor. Fortunately that didn’t happen and we continued to be entertained, because, we’ll believe anything, if we want to believe it enough.

The punk didn’t feel lucky and Eastwood was lucky. But, what if your luck is running bad? That is the case of some old guy in Germany. It seems the old dude got hit by a meteorite. Here is the story.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

Have you ever thought there was a black cloud over your head? Have you ever had a day when it was going bad for you? Well, cheer up. It could be worse. Your luck could go as bad as the guy in Germany. What are the odds?

Although the story doesn’t specifically say so, I am going to assume that this is not the only bad thing that happened to the guy. They say bad things come in threes. I’m guessing he was sitting there with a winning lottery ticket in his hand, thinking, “After all these years of playing the lottery, I finally won. With my luck, I’ll get struck by lightning.”

Then, he looks out the window and thinks he has gotten lucky because there is not a cloud in the sky.

“I guess I lucked out this time,” he says to himself in German.

About that time, our friend the meteorite pays his house a visit and as he surveys the damage, he sees the ashes of the lottery ticket on the floor. He says the following, in German:

“%&#$!”

Well, Jimbo, you are saying right now, you said bad luck comes in threes. That is only two.

Ah, yes, there is one more thing. Just imagine, if you would, trying to explain to your homeowners insurance company that your house was destroyed by a meteorite. Good luck collecting. That is number three.

I hope today brings you the best of luck.

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

american stars and bars

2006-10-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

I sat at an online poker table last night and many of the cities of the people around the table had very “American-sounding” names. I suggested out loud that while they may have been Europeans trying to convince everyone they were bad-asses from the US, trying to look defiant, I suspected that many of these players were actually Americans.

I argue that poker is an American game, and although some foreigners have gotten good at it, the true masters are from the good old USA. It takes something of an entrepreneurial spirit and mindset to master the game, and someday I hope to master it. The game is something Osama Bin Laden and his republican friends and supporters in congress will never understand. It is an American thing; so don’t ever expect Bush or Chaney to have a clue.

It is the same independent spirit that makes us do what they tell us we’re not supposed to do. It’s the same American mindset that made Bostonians throw British tea into the harbor two hundred and some odd years ago. When the government tries to take America away from us, you had better bet, that we’ll be telling them, “Hell no, you aren’t.”

And even when the chips are down and when it is time to cut and run, or stay and fight and make a bet on America, you can probably guess what will be the next words out of my mouth:

“I’m all in.”

And I won’t be the only one. No, not by a long shot.

At least, that is the wager here in Jimbo’s world.

republicans gone wild

2006-10-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

On Friday of last week, Bill Frist of Tennessee set into motion legislation to take away my privilege of being able to play Internet poker. Come Monday, he is in Afghanistan saying that the Taliban should be brought into the government of Afghanistan. He says we cannot win the war in Afghanistan militarily.

read the story here

I’m rubbing my eyes, hoping I’m going to wake up and this will all be a nightmare, but I’m afraid it’s true. First, the Bush administration and the Republican congress starts a war in Iraq to draw our attention away from their stealing every cent we have in our treasury. While they do it, they take their focus off the Taliban and Bin Laden and then the war in Afghanistan—which was virtually won—falls into the loss column. Then, they start telling everyone what a good friend Muammar Al-Qaddafi is and that he is our buddy and ally in the war on terrorism, disregarding that he was once the poster-boy for worldwide terrorism.

Several weeks ago, we marked the five-year anniversary of the blackest day in American history, and the President gave us that Alfred E. Newman, dork-ass expression, and the Krusty the Clown explanation.

“Don’t blame me! I didn’t do it!”

Now, as the story is breaking about one of their own coming on to teenaged boys, we are learning the Republican leadership was warned it was happening and chose to ignore it. Doesn’t it remind anyone of the same thing they did when they ignored warnings that 9/11 was about to happen?

So what do they do? They go over and suck up to the Taliban.

What’s next?

Will they make an effort to smooch the unpleasant derriere of Mr. Bin Laden? Will they ask the world’s number one Republican to send over some more of his minions to fly some more planes into some more buildings? “We’ve got lots of planes, Mr. Bin Laden, Sir. We have more tall buildings. Take us off the front page and put your own far less than handsome countenance there, instead of ours.”

It’s out of hand and something has to change. But, it’s been out of hand for a long time and nothing seems to be changing, except our government is getting bolder in their shenanigans. It’s like they think they can do anything they want and we’re not going to do anything about it.

And, they are probably right.

At least that’s the way it looks from here in Jimbo’s world.

congress is "all in" with a rag hand

2006-10-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Tennessee is sort of on my mind this morning. My father died fifteen years ago today. My father was born in Tennessee and my relatives from my father’s side came from Tennessee. My ex-wife’s mother came from Tennessee, as did Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 World Series of Poker. Moneymaker has generally been given credit for the online poker boom and the popularity of the rebirth of poker in the world and especially in the United States. Moneymaker won his way into the WSOP by means of an online satellite poker tournament. Bill Frist, also of Tennessee, was instrumental on Friday of this week, attaching legislation to ban online poker to a bill in congress to improve port security.

I have two opinions about the legislation. First, if there really are any terrorists who are not in the employ of the Bush administration—and I believe there are—they will continue to try to attack us, and congressional legislation to stop them by safeguarding our ports five years after it should have been done won’t be effective. Second, I will continue to play poker, as will most of the people currently doing it.

I took a new job a couple of months ago and I have been putting in some extra hours, so I haven’t been playing much poker lately. I haven’t won anything significant since before the WSOP in July. I was somehow lucky enough to be sought out by a headhunter who placed me with the top company in the world in our industry. I’ve been putting in a few extra hours at work so I can learn a very complex new business and so I can do my job better. Consequently, I haven’t been able to spend as much time playing poker online as I used to and I haven’t actually stared someone down across the felt, in person, in over fifteen months. You may have noted also that I haven’t had time to update my blogsite as often, lately.

We’ll get the job down to forty hours a week someday, just like we took the last job we had from a fifty-hour-a-week, uncontrolled catastrophe to a state of almost transcendental calm in less than a year. That is, unless this job continues to be as much fun, and we may want to find reasons to stay longer each day.

I can’t help but feel that once the Bush administration and the Republicans in congress drained all the money from the treasury and put it in their pockets and there was none left, they saw that money was changing hands on the poker tables and wanted to get a cut. These grafters make us long for the good old days when the conservatives were respectable men like Barry Goldwater and Dwight Eisenhower. These were men with whom we would disagree on the fringes, but we would not be concerned they would try to steal our wallet.

And, on this sunny and warm day, not all that different than the one fifteen years ago today, I can’t help but remember that my father believed that the President and Congress were all rascals. I’m beginning to think he was right.

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

cover story

2006-09-18T03:15:00.000-07:00

The cover story in yesterday’s Kansas City Star Magazine was about the company at which I am employed.

It is a very good and in-depth article and it give a good feel for what we do.

If you are local and have access to it, you might want to take a look.

true lies and false truths

2006-09-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Is it a lie when someone tells you something you believe and you tell someone else, and then later you find out what you were told was wrong?

For example, where I work, we have contracted to complete a sports arena in Tulsa. I spoke to a man in Tulsa last week who wants to supply us some of the materials for this arena. He told me the arena had been designed by I. M. Pei. He dismissed Pei’s contribution offhand and acted as if Pei was just one of those liberal easterners (or perhaps far-easterners) and seemed to indicate to me that he was unimpressed.

I sort of expected the next thing he was going to say was that the arena “Was like a scar on the face of Tulsa,” much as Bezo Fache, the French police detective had dismissed Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre, in the book The Da Vinci Code.

Anyway, I went in and looked through the engineering drawings and thought the huge glass wall of the façade of the arena reminded me of the glass pyramid, so I told a couple of people that I had been told that Pei was the architect. No one seemed to know any different, so my lie took on a new verisimilitude.

I came home from work that night and started doing my research to see how many other projects we had in works that were designed by I. M. Pei. In doing my due diligence, I was somewhat surprised to find that what I had been told was dead wrong. The designer of the building was actually Cesar Pelli. Now, Pelli is no slouch. He designed the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, which were briefly the tallest buildings in the world. It was necessary, however, for me to go back to work the next day and correct the error.

By the way, here is a picture of the events center. You can see why I believed it was designed by Pei if you look at the glass wall and entry. Click on the image once and the resulting picture is larger and clearer.

I guess the whole point of this rambling is that if we are told something and we believe it is true, then it stays true in our minds until someone comes along and corrects our error. Reality, as I say frequently, is only what it appears to be. If we believe something enough, then it is true—at least in our own minds. If no one ever comes along with the truth, we may go to our graves with “true lies” and believe them as solidly as we believe in the earth and the sky.

Reality is dynamic and we have to keep working on it until we get it right.

At least that is the goal, here in Jimbo’s world.

ode on intimations of immortality

2006-09-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night I had a chance to play some one-on-one half court basketball with my son, as is our custom practice and, as is customary, he beat me two out of three games. I had a lead in the first game, but he came back and won. I had my three-ball in the second game, so he had to come outside the arc to guard me and I was able to take him inside a couple of times when I caught him moving out to cover the long ball. The threat of my going inside got me a couple of looks from beyond the arc and I hit them, solidifying the victory. I’m embarrassed to say that in the third and final game—the one for the money—I failed to hit a single shot. I don’t expect to win, because he is much better than I am, but I ought to have been able to hit a shot.

The thing I came away with though, is the fact that my son is obviously my son. He is like me in so many ways that I realized that some of me has rubbed off on him. When we shot around before starting to play we had a long talk about life and jobs and houses and money and relationships—in general the little things that life is made of. I realized that my son had taken on many of my own values and some of my personality.

It is our purpose in life to pass on our genetics to our offspring. That is a biological function and we do it instinctively. What makes civilization, however, is that we pass along our behavioral characteristics as well. Long after I am gone that part of me will continue to live on. And, maybe, if he chooses, that part will be passed along to someone not yet thought of—both genetically and characteristically—and the lineage will continue.

For the present, however, if you ever find yourself on the court guarding my son, make sure you stay between him and the basket. If he gets inside—within seven feet of the hole—you can’t stop him. If he picks up the dribble, plan on getting a hand in his face as quick as you can. If he gets off an open shot, you are probably wasting your time looking for a rebound.

At least that is our advice here in Jimbo’s world.

a disappearance and a re-appearance

2006-08-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

If you wondered where I had gone, well, I had another computer problem.

They changed my format at my blogsite and I couldn't log in for a while.

I finallly figured it out today and I am returned to life.

At least, I think.

a miracle! a chocolate miracle

2006-08-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Just when you think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and that Armageddon is just around the corner, a miracle comes along and all is right with the world. I believe it was the Beatles who presaged this miracle in their song Let It Be.

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

Well, it seems that the Virgin Mary has shown up in California, of all places, giving us a sign that all is well.

“Oh, Jimbo,” many of you are saying right now, “the Virgin Mary is showing up on highway underpasses and cheese sandwiches from coast to coast all the time. You have never seemed all that interested in the sightings before.”

This time it’s different. This time she is chocolate.

The image of the Virgin Mary was found under a vat of chocolate at a California chocolate factory, and those of us who practice the chocolate faith believe. Yes, we believe.

While I may not be all that spiritual most of the time, when it comes to worshiping the holy chocolate, I will be the first to fall on my knees and put the dark brown confection to my lips.

This incident, however, puts our faith in conflict. Now we have to decide whether to pause for a moment of quiet reverence, or to take a bite out of her head. I guess this is what they meant when they said our faith would be tested. They never said life was going to be easy.

At least not for the true believers here in Jimbo’s world.

so far, so good

2006-08-01T03:26:00.000-07:00

One day down at my new job and all’s well. Everyone went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I have a brand new desk, a brand new office and a brand new desktop computer with a flat panel monitor. So far I’m happier than swine in defecation.

The boss took me and a group of other people out to lunch to a really nice place. We had a great meal; a nice conversation and everyone seemed relaxed.

When she came home from work last night, Jimbo’s girlfriend asked me if I had a hard first day. The only honest answer I could provide was, “No.”

I realize that one cannot make a conclusion after such a short period of time, but I am thinking, so far, so good.

We’ll keep everyone updated, here in Jimbo’s world.

hell freezes over, again

2006-07-28T03:29:00.000-07:00

While it may seem impossible to believe, the extended vacation I was planning to go on next week has been sidelined. I got a job offer Wednesday and they want me right away, so I go to work Monday.

It looks to be a really good job with a really good company with the highest base salary I’ve ever started with on a new job. When the headhunter I was working with made me the offer, he added up the bonuses and the benefits and told me the total package was worth annually about $25K more than I’m making, now. Of course, he didn’t know that the company where I am working doesn’t pay anyone anything, so when I declined the offer and asked for more money, he asked what it was I didn’t like about the job and/or the offer. I told him it was fine, but I just needed more money. The company generously agreed to give it to me.

Years ago I received a job offer for a company and I countered with a request for more money. They agreed and hired me. The entire time I worked for the company, the vice-president to whom I reported told everyone that they hired me because I asked for more money. He said that anyone who was not satisfied with the first offer was the kind of man he wanted working for him. I never asked him what they would have done had I accepted their first offer, without negotiation.

Therefore, when I asked for more money on Wednesday, I didn’t do it for me. The initial offer was fine. I did it for my new employer. I wanted them to know just exactly whom they had brought on board. I wanted them to know they were getting their money’s worth. Now, starting Monday, I get a chance to prove it.

Looking for work is a full time job, as I have said before. Starting today, I have only one full time job, and I have it for one more day. Starting Monday, I’ll have only one full-time job, so maybe I’ll have more time to blog.

At least, that is the plan here in Jimbo’s world.

mid-year update

2006-07-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

Many of you are probably wondering where Jimbo has gone.

“Did Jimbo die?” many of you have asked yourself. “And, why wasn’t I invited to the funeral?”

No, Jimbo is alive and well. I’ve just been busy. Looking for work is a full time job and I have an actual full time job besides, although I am scheduled to be terminated two weeks from Friday, so maybe I’ll have more time to be regular, here. However, Jimbo’s girlfriend has some “honey do” projects for me should I reach my termination date without having secured constructive employment.

I bought a new car in May—at Toyota Yaris. It is MP3 compatible, with a docking port for my MP3 player. Someday I may get an MP3 player, but it is not in my immediate plans. It is a nice car and I’m really liking it.

Many of you are probably asking why a man without employment prospects is buying a new car. “Are you buying a boat and a vacation home too, Jimbo?” those same people are asking.

Ha. Ha.

Well, I just felt like it, and that was a good enough reason.

It’s time to have breakfast, shower and go to work, so that is all for this morning, here in Jimbo’s world.

three squares for mr. hussein

2006-06-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

Some days I wake up glad that I am not a lawyer. I wake up every day glad that I am not a lawyer representing Saddam Hussein. It seems that not a day goes by when you don’t hear about one of Saddam’s lawyers, from his trial in Iraq, being executed. I would imagine it is difficult to keep a quality legal team together when they are all getting killed.

In the news today is a story detailing the extent of the hunger strike on which Saddam went to protest the killing of his attorney. Here is the story along with a picture of the former Iraqi president smiling for the camera:

A square meal for an Iraqi dictator

Anyway, it appears that Saddam missed lunch on Thursday, but he was able to put his anger aside in time to have dinner. I think Saddam went hungry long enough. When everyone hates you, nobody cares if you are not eating regularly. The truth of the matter is I can’t see that a hunger strike is a useful instrument of protest. Maybe he should make up a sign saying that the unstable political climate of Iraq is unfair to lawyers. Perhaps he should get one of those lapel pins that look like a twisted ribbon and draw the scales of justice on it with a magic marker. People would look at the pin and figure that Saddam was just like us. Now that would be effective.

Except then some dipstick would see it and start mass-producing them, and larger magnetic ones for your car and refrigerator and putting them up for sale in every gas station, convenience store and supermarket and everywhere else impulse purchases were made. People would get them confused with the ones for good causes and before long we’d all have symbols of support for Saddam and his lawyers plastered all over our lapels and cars.

Jesus! What have I started, here? Forget I said anything.

Saddam, if you’re reading this today, please understand that your skipping meals to protest the loss of your attorneys is an extremely effective tool of protest. Just keep doing it and I think it will serve dramatically to get your point across, and save food, besides.

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

from fat to slim and back

2006-06-24T04:05:00.000-07:00

Last year, after I broke my finger, I quit playing basketball for about six months. The result was that I gained weight. Even when I started playing again, the weight stayed with me. I began to realize the extra twenty-five pounds I was carrying was going to eat into my life expectancy, so I decided to lose weight. I cut back on my intake of sugar and reduced the amount of food I ate, in general.

I’m happy to report that I have lost weight. I regret to inform you, however, that the twenty-five pounds I have lost so far were only fifteen. I went from 205 to 180 in just a matter of a month or six weeks. At least, I thought I did. When I weighed anywhere other than home, I was 190 pounds. Jimbo’s girlfriend cleared up the mystery last weekend when she pointed out to me that I was reading our scale wrong. Despite the fact that the line on the dial points at a large 180, the line actually is the increment for 190.

So I take back what I told many of you about my losing twenty-five pounds. I’m hoping this is just a premature statement and I will be able to start saying it again in another month or so. Thank you to all of you who noticed my stomach is not as huge as it was six weeks ago. It’s nice to look down at my stomach and to be able to see something protruding from my anatomy below my stomach again—my feet.

In the meantime, I don’t foresee Jimbo’s girlfriend changing her hairstyle to look like Myrna Loy, nor do I envision us getting a dog named Asta.

For the time being, however, I’m the not-as-fat man, here in Jimbo’s world.

dead presidents of questionable achievement

2006-06-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

I had a chance last Sunday to talk to a fellow job seeker about his job search and we compared notes. While I’m looking for more of a managerial position, my friend Jonathan is looking for something more entry-level, since he is only eighteen. He also needs to find something within walking distance of his mother’s house, as he doesn’t have a car. His mother lives in the state capitol and Jonathan described to me the places he has applied and the names of the streets on which his potential places of employment are located. Not only will Jonathan be starting out on the ground floor, he will potentially be working on some street named after a president of the United States—and not top-ranked presidents, at that. Let me take you on a tour of his neighborhood—the mean streets of Capitol City-- from east to west.

Van Buren Street- Named after Martin Van Buren, a president whose native tongue was Dutch. In my reading about him, I found his nickname was Old Kinderhook (pretty catchy, huh?) and he was a fan of George Clinton. His picture makes it appear as if he had some kind of a white guy’s version of an Afro-Sheen blow out kit. I thought that maybe he wore his hair like that to emulate George Clinton, but I think the George Clinton with whom he was tight was not the one whose music we all know and love, as his presidency was more than 150 years before our George Clinton began recording.

Harrison Street- Named after William Henry Harrison, who was the oldest man elected to be president until Ronald Reagan. His picture indicates he had a big-assed nose. He also served only 30 days before he died. Some logic is starting to appear in these street names. As we go west, the streets are named after successive presidents. Harrison was succeeded by Topeka Blvd.

Topeka Blvd.- What the hell? There was never a president named Topeka Blvd. How did that one get in there?

Tyler Street- Named after John Tyler, the guy who pushed Topeka Blvd. out of the way and succeeded Harrison. It appears he was Harrison’s vice-president and was never re-elected, serving only four years. It looks as though his most important act as president was to meet his second wife and marry her while in office. Did fireworks go off when he met her? You bet. He met her at a ceremony during which a cannon exploded, killing two members of his cabinet and the father of his eventual bride.

Polk Street- Named after James Knox Polk, a guy who was ranked in the top ten presidents based on the research I read. I guess I’ll have to rag on him for the sort-of-mullet haircut he had. It is hard to describe, so try to look up his picture.

Taylor Street- Named after Zachary Taylor, who was known as Old Rough and Ready, apparently because he wore rumpled clothes and a straw hat, and not because of his sexual prowess. He only served sixteen months before he died in office and was succeeded by Western Ave.

Western Ave.- How did jump in line ahead of all the other dead presidents? Who named these streets, anyway?

Fillmore Street- Named after Millard Fillmore, who succeeded Taylor when he died. Fillmore served as president less than three years and when it came time for re-election, his party, the Whigs, failed to nominate him, so he ran for president on the ticket of the Know Nothing party. Now, we have had some presidents who arguably didn’t know anything, but I would propose that having “know nothing” written by your name on the ballot would not be a plus come election day.

Clay Street- Named for some guy named Clay, I guess. Logic would dictate that this street should be named for Franklin Pierce, the next president. I assume that it is because Pierce was a democrat and this is a republican state capitol.

Buchanan Street- Named for James Buchanan, who preceded Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan appears to be a man who did not enjoy his work. He told Lincoln on Honest Abe’s inauguration day, “If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.”

My conclusion that Jonathan’s neighborhood is a grid of streets named for presidents whose achievements are not as well noted and accepted as those of some of our other, more illustrious presidents. And into this grid of streets, someone whose feel for history has allowed the naming of several streets to add to the asymmetry of the mean streets of capitol city. Maybe, it will allow, years from now, for someone to insert the name of another unremarkable man. Bush Street! I like the sound.

As for Jonathan and me, we’ll continue to pound the pavement, looking for that opportunity to end his unemployment and to keep me from entering mine.

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

the hygiene hypothesis

2006-06-16T16:02:00.000-07:00

Recently, Jimbo’s girlfriend made a comment that sort of got me wondering. She complained that the house was not as clean as it should be and somehow hinted that this was a recent occurrence and that the house used to be clean. My reaction to her comment was to connect my being here with the dirt, and that somehow the lack of cleanliness was my fault.

Those who have known me for a long time probably remember that when I lived in my own house the place was immaculate and dust or dirt was never to be found. Okay, maybe I was not a perfect housekeeper, but my house was very clean.

Okay, okay! I would clean the house occasionally.

Today, however, I read a story on Yahoo! Which hypothesizes that perfect cleanliness may not be the best thing for human longevity. Anyway, here is the story.

You dirty rat.

The story says that rats that live in unsanitary conditions in the wild have better immune systems than rats in the lab that live in ultra-clean conditions. Because those feral rats are exposed to dirt and bacteria at an early age, they aren’t as prone to the maladies that plague those of us who live in pristine environments. Scientists refer to this as the hygiene hypothesis, and their assertion is that our clean living could be responsible for our high rate of allergies and asthma, type 1 diabetes and arthritis.

If this theory is correct, it may mean that we need a paradigm change in our lifestyle. Perhaps we should teach our children not to wash their hand after going to the restroom. Maybe we should encourage our children to play in the dirt. Maybe we should invite some germs to dinner.

For the time being, though, we’re going to save this argument for the next time our girlfriend implies that anything disorderly around our abode may be related to yours truly. I will use the tactic that I am trying to make life healthier for her.

At least, that is the plan here in Jimbo’s world.

words we understand about words we don't

2006-06-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

I have a problem this afternoon and I am in a quandary. I find myself agreeing with the President. Many of you feel that if the president said a piece of paper before him was white, I would say it is black. Many of you feel that I would disagree with anything the President said, just to be disagreeable. That is not true. I disagree with almost everything the President says because he is usually wrong. Today is an exception.

President Bush said today that immigrants need to speak in English. I heartily agree. I’m tired of sitting on the phone trying to navigate through an automated receptionist only to be told, “Press one for English. Press two for Spanish.” And then the voice goes on to say something in Espanol that I do not understand. At that point I begin to think:

“Is she making fun of me? Is she saying, ‘For those who don’t speak Spanish, you can kiss my large behind?’”

I just wish people would talk in English, so you could understand them.

I remember seeing a story on the news last night about Dan El-Padilla, a classics student and a recent graduate of Princeton University. He just happens to be an illegal alien. He seems to be an extremely articulate young man, and according to his professors, he is a genius, or close to it. He was even the class salutatorian. Where I fault the young man, however, is that he gave the salutatorian address in Latin. Who the hell delivers a speech in Latin, that no one can understand? Okay, most of you would have understood him, but despite my occasional use of Latin, even I don’t speak it. It would take some sort of deus ex machina for me ever to learn to speak it fluently.

Like the President, it is our belief if you are going to live here, you need to speak English, rather than ramble on in some tongue where you could be disrespecting us, and most of us would never know. Most certainly not the President.

At least that’s how we look at it in Jimbo’s world.

2006-05-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

phil hellmuth, jr. relaxing while not being pressured by jimbo
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getting bad with the bad boy of poker

2006-05-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

I sat across the table from arguably the best poker player in the world today.

It is Player appreciation weekend at Ultimatebet.com and Phil Hellmuth, Jr., the bad boy of poker is making surprise appearances at tables throughout the weekend. I was sitting at a $.25- .50 no limit table with two or three other players, when guess who shows up. He sat directly across from me and we went heads up three times. Twice, I was on a draw and he raised me big on the turn and I threw them away. The time I will tell everyone about (and as I get older, the story will get better) I had Jack/Queen of clubs and I raised fifty cents. Phil was on the big blind and he called me, as did someone else. I had a flush draw and straight draw on the flop and Phil checked. I raised fifty cents and he called. I hit the nut straight on the turn and bet again and he called again. The river was a rag, so I missed my flush, but I had the nut straight and there was no hand that could beat me. The board didn’t pair and there were no more than two of any suit on the board. To non-players, that means the straight was the best hand. The straight to the ace, which I had, is the best available hand in that circumstance. Players like Phil and I would call it, therefore, the nut straight, or, in shorthand, the nuts.

I bet big and Phil came back over the top. The third guy folded. I went all in and Phil called. Phil turned over JQ off suit and we split the pot.

I told him I’d tell my grandchildren that I went heads up with Phil Hellmuth and I didn’t lose. If he replied, I couldn’t tell. There were twenty people waiting in line to get on the table and two hundred observers and everyone was chatting.

I sent Ultimatebet an e-mail and asked if the player I had played was poker’s bad boy. They replied that according to their records, I had, indeed been playing this afternoon with Mr. Hellmuth.

I tell anyone who will listen that I absolutely don’t like Phil Hellmuth when I see him on TV. He was anything but a jerk this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have to change my mind about him.

I'm sure that Phil reads my blog regularly for tips to help keep his game sharp. The following is a special message just to Phil. I took it easy on you this afternoon, but look out next time, because I'll be playing for real.

At least around the table and here in Jimbo’s world.

another poker tournament

2006-05-24T03:08:00.000-07:00

By having a blog, I qualify for an annual poker tournament. While many of you may think this is a shameless attempt to do anything to get into a tournament without having to pay any money, you'd be right. By putting this thing on my blog I get a free entry. If you blog and want to enter, you can too.

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

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

2006-05-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

maid of the seas
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a joke? a fairy tale, or the truth?

2006-05-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

I read this today on Yahoo!

Am I lost in some distant reality or is there something I don't understand?

Read it on the link below.

Presidential administrations gone wild

the colonel, the idiot and the maid of the seas

2006-05-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a graceful bird that was known by everyone as the Maid of the Seas. The Maid of the Seas was sleek and beautiful and she carried people across the ocean and brought them safely back home.

In the same period of time, there was an evil dictator who tortured and killed his people and spread his violence to all of the other countries in his region. He hated the United States. Some might have said that he hated our freedom, but he didn’t give a crap about our freedom. As a matter of fact, he probably would have laughed had anyone suggested he hated our freedom. He probably would have said that anyone who said he hated our freedom was some kind of dope, and he would have been right.

“Oh, Mother Goose,” many of you are probably saying, “You’re talking about that awful Saddam Hussein, aren’t you?”

No, children, I’m talking about someone who was so much worse than Saddam that he made Saddam look like, well, some kind of pussycat. I’m talking about a man who called himself “the Colonel.”

“Wait a cotton-picking minute, you Mother,” some of you are saying right now. “If you’re going to start bad-mouthing Colonel Harlan Sanders, you’d better bet that we’re going to open a king-sized can of whup ass.”

No! No! No! I would expect to have my ass whipped if I spoke irreverently about Colonel Sanders. I’d welcome it, because I would deserve it. I’m talking about Muammar Qaddafi, one of the lowest-life pieces of crap you’d never want to meet.

Anyway, the Colonel saw the Maid of the Seas carrying Americans from one side of the pond to the other and it ticked him off. He sent his henchmen to bring her down. It was a few days before Christmas—a holiday the Colonel disrespected—when his secret police brought down the Maid of the Seas, killing her and the Americans she carried. This atrocity would remain the worst act of terrorism against Americans until that sunny September morning in 2001.

Many years later, in that great country which was to have been the destination of the Maid of the Seas, the third character in our fairy tale, the Idiot, sought to be the leader. Somebody pulled some serious shenanigans, miscounted some votes and the Idiot was “elected” to be the leader.

The Idiot wasn’t smart enough to do the job he was elected to do, so he had some of his terrorist friends knock down a couple of buildings on that previously-mentioned September morning and his people were so frightened they would eventually make the mistake of electing him again.

Then the Idiot started a war and de-stabilized another foreign country, giving the terrorists a place to run around and do what terrorists do. There were as many terrorists there as there were maggots in a steaming pile of dog feces warming under the August sun. If one were to ignite a flare in that country in the dark of the night, it would illuminate scores of terrorists scurrying across the desert floor, like cockroaches spotlighted by a sixty-watt light in an urban tenement kitchen.

The Idiot had made the world a haven for terrorists, but he still was not happy. What could he do, he asked himself, to aid and abet yet another terrorist?

The Idiot went to the office of his second-in-command—a man who was known as Shotgun, after the weapon he loved to discharge when he had gotten a few drinks in him. Shotgun was cleaning his namesake weapon when the Idiot paused outside his office. The Idiot was careful to announce himself before entering Shotgun’s office so as not to take a load of birdshot in his smirking countenance, as Shotgun was known to shoot from the hip (first, and ask questions later).

“I want to bring the Colonel into the fold. I want to restore diplomatic relations with him and his country,” said the Idiot. “He was the one who brought down the Maid of the Seas.”

“They say that the camel jockey used Semtex,” said Shotgun. He racked his signature weapon and added, “Give me this baby and a pint of Old Granddad and I could’ve done her just as good.”

“So we’ll do it, then,” said the Idiot.

“Sure as hell,” said Shotgun. “Now hand me that bottle from inside the top drawer.”

So the Idiot decided to make friends with yet another terrorist, because one never knows how much help one will need if the other party ever gets into power. And so the Idiot, the Colonel and Shotgun became fast friends. Legend has it that even to this day, if you listen really closely, you can hear the three of them, firing away, blasting their empty bottles full of birdshot.

From the looks of things, my children, this appears to be one of those fairy tales where not everyone lives happily ever after.

crack the code. crash the symbols

2006-05-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

A woman’s reputation is besmirched by people spreading falsehoods. The man who knows the truth is murdered. As he is dying, he leaves clues that only a few people can decipher. The clues lead us through a mystery that has more twists and turns than a roller coaster.

Oh, by the way, did I mention the woman was God’s daughter-in-law?

Despite the fact that The Da Vinci Code has been on the bestseller list for a year, Jimbo just got around to reading it last week. I mentioned that the movie based on this book was coming out later this month, and a friend who had the book loaned it to me.

Thanks, Tim.

Anyway, if any of you are among the few who haven’t read the book, I would suggest getting it on to your “to do” list as soon as you can. This is the best book I have read in a while.

The Da Vinci Code is about a college professor, Robert Langdon, who writes a manuscript about symbolism in which is a key to unlock a secret that has been protected for decades by sinister society. When a curator at the Louvre in Paris, who is a member of the secret society, is killed, he leaves clues for Langdon to help lead him to discover the secret. The police interpret his clues as an accusation that Langdon killed him, so throughout the book, Langdon is running from the law, trying to find the solution.

We find that Leonardo DaVinci was once a member of the secret society and the primary clue left by the curator is to lie on the floor mimicking the drawing of the Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci’s famous sketch detailing the relationship between anatomy and mathematics.

Langdon is aided by the granddaughter of the curator, who is a code expert, and by combining their expertise, they are able to twist their way through this suspense novel.

This is definitely on my “recommended” list, and I’m looking forward to seeing the movie later this month.

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

2006-04-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

pair of jokers
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2006-04-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

bush squared
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drawing to a couple of jokers

2006-04-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

This morning a story about a couple of jokers is on my mind.

“Oh, Jimbo,” many of you are asking, “Do we have to hear more about your poker exploits?”

To which I answer, no, this isn’t about poker at all. By the way, the games I play don’t have any wild cards. This is about Dubya and some other joker. Here, read the story.

Bush and the joker

I guess that Bush addressed the White House Correspondent’s Association last night and he brought along Bush impersonator Steve Bridges to translate what he said. It was a lot of laughs for everyone. Yet, I wonder if it has sunk to the point that even Bush knows he can no longer be taken seriously.

I am a proponent of humor as an aid to get all of us through the tough times, but I am concerned that we may all chuckle at Bush, the comedian, while the business of government is not done and the sanctity of democracy is undone. Much as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Dubya ridicules himself as the things we hold as important are incinerated and their ashes are scattered by the winds of history.

Someone once said it takes a big man to laugh at himself, but I wonder whether the person that said that had some joker standing beside him, mocking him at the time. While Dubya becomes the Homer Simpson of American politics, the rest of us can laugh all the way to the poorhouse. I, for one, think it’s time for Bush to take himself seriously. After all, he is the President, and not some nitwit out to get some laughs by making a fool of himself, or am I wrong about that?

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

i'll have potent potables for $20 please, art

2006-04-22T05:39:00.000-07:00

Why is it that no one can pronounce the word “potable” correctly?

One of the panelists on Real Time with Bill Maher last night was talking about the infrastructure in Iraq and the difficulty of getting drinking water available to everyone and mispronounced the word. She pronounced it with the short vowel sound as in pot, rather than the long vowel sound as in potent.

Perhaps you remember me bitching about the mispronunciation of this word in the far distant past.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/02/rose-by-any-other-name.html

“What is the big deal?” many of you are asking. “The important part is that we know what the word means, and that we understand the necessity of potable water to survival.”

Someday, in a dynamic language like our own, the short vowel mispronunciation will probably become acceptable and old fossils like myself who pronounce it right will probably be considered—well, fossils. We’ll be considered a relic of some past civilization that doesn’t exist anymore—dinosaurs who clung to the old pronunciation and were rendered extinct because of our inability to adapt.

Someday in the distant future, archeologists will dig up my remains and date me by the configuration of my jawbone.

“You can tell,” one will speculate, “that this ancient being was from the early 21st century, and his mouth likely pronounced the word “potable” with the long vowel sound.”

“Yes,” replies his associate. “And he probably couldn’t levitate, either.”

“He surely held onto his dated ways and beliefs and was relegated to the dust of history.”

“Yeah. What a toad.”

This chilling tale of our distant future could likely come to pass a long time from now in Jimbo’s world.

i've got your number(s)

2006-04-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but I have too many numbers to remember. It’s finally gotten out of hand and I have to say something about it.

First of all, I read on Yahoo! this morning that they are considering adding a new domain name. The new suffix would be .tel, and it would give one a domain name to store all of their numbers. The domain would primarily be for saving phone numbers, e-mail addresses, websites, etc. Reading this story got me thinking about how many numbers we have and a number of other things, too.

People ask me, “Jimbo, what’s you cell phone number?”

I answer them, “I don’t know, but hang on. I’ve got it written down somewhere.”

Also, don’t ask me Jimbo’s girlfriend’s cell phone number, or my son’s or my mom’s. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to invent the address book for cell phones or computers. Otherwise I’d be lost in the ozone if I had to call anyone.

And what about my personal finances? I have IRAs, 401(k)s, a Roth, brokerage accounts and checking accounts, all of which have different user names and passwords to access. And I have a couple of credit cards I manage online. Every one of them has some unique requirement so I can’t use the same names and numbers to access them. I also visit several other password-protected websites, requiring several other unique numbers, like the website I go to publish this blog.

And then I go to work. When I sign on to my computer there, I have a master log in user name and password. Then, my e-mail and the manufacturing software have their own unique numbers.

And what’s the deal with manufacturing software packages and business software? Who was the genius who decided that the log ins all had be case sensitive and one has to log in lower case? But every manufacturing software system I’ve ever used requires that you be in upper case to operate it. I find myself typing numbers and words into the cells in the software, getting done the necessary keystrokes that keep this county working and make this country great. Then, I toggle back to my e-mail and see someone needs a reply, and when I reply to them, I realize that I am yelling, still in upper case.

And who was the genius who decided that we had to change our passwords at work every thirty days for “security” reasons? Is the purpose of doing this to bore potential hackers to death? If a hacker got hold of a list of my user names and passwords, he (or she) would have a long list to read. Presumably, sometime before the end of the list, their eyes would start to get heavy and they would drift off into a boredom-induced slumber.

I’m thinking the new .tel domain may be a good idea as a tool to help us remember all of those numbers, but won’t it be another login name and number we’ll have to remember?

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

the "inside" scoop

2006-04-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Jimbo and his girlfriend saw the movie Inside Man. If you are thinking about seeing a movie today, and can’t decide which one, I’d recommend you see this one.

First of all, there is a great cast. Usually one can’t go wrong seeing a movie if Denzel Washington is in it. I first noticed Clive Owen as “the driver” in those wild-assed BMW commercials. You remember the ones. They also starred Don Cheadle, Little Richard, James Brown, Marilyn Manson, F. Murray Abraham, and many more. Any movie with Owen in it is also worth seeing. Jody Foster and Christopher Plummer were also good in this movie.

And, of course, if Spike Lee is the director, it’s likely to be something one doesn’t want to miss. I’ve been a fan of Spike Lee ever since he played the character Mars Blackmon and directed She’s Gotta Have It way back in 1986. I enjoyed School Daze, Do The Right Thing, Summer
of Sam and my favorite has always been He Got Game, also with Denzel Washington.

In Inside Man, the story is about Owen’s character, with a group of accomplices, robbing a bank and Washington playing the police detective who matches wits with him. There is a standoff with Owen holding a number of hostages and Washington trying to diffuse the situation. Of course, we find out that Owen’s goal is not the money, but the principal of the thing, although he ends up considerably more wealthy than he starts out.

As in He Got Game, Lee uses the technique of the full-screen close-up, focused in so tightly on the faces of his actors that we can see any flaw or blemish. Washington and Owen are engaged throughout most of the movie in a psychological duel—both trying to gain the upper hand. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about some of the good parts, because it might spoil the movie for you. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

Because we’d never lead you astray here in Jimbo’s world.

crazy

2006-03-26T08:21:00.000-08:00

It appears the charges against the Christian in Afghanistan I discussed a couple of days ago have been dropped. I consider this to be a victory for democracy everywhere, but it sounds as if the charges were dropped because the court decided the guy was crazy, rather than dropping them because it was the correct and just thing to do. I would like to believe that the Afghans read my recent blog and it helped to sway their opinion, but, in truth, I don’t think that many people in the Afghan government read this blog. And my blog was not aimed at them, anyway.

In the story I read about this today, Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying that “we need to be respectful of Afghan sovereignty.”

Wait a minute! Didn’t we go into Afghanistan and put into place the mechanisms for them to “elect” the sitting government? Didn’t the Afghans “choose” to put into place the government that is willing to kill this brother because he believes differently than the religious right in his country? Isn’t Afghan “sovereignty” something we put there in the first place?

Many of you are probably asking, “Jimbo, how many questions can you ask in one paragraph?” And then almost as many of you realize, “Oops. I just did it, too.”

Please cut yourselves some slack. It was Socrates who said, “Unexamined life is not worth living.”

It was the Socratic method to question everything. I’ve always thought you guys were a lot like Socrates, in that regard.

But, let’s get back to the subject at hand. I think it would have been better if the Afghans had said it was okay for this guy to be a Christian and worship his own God, instead of slipping out the back door by saying he was crazy. Perhaps this guy was just “crazy” about his God, and for any Christian that may be a good defense.

I contend that we would be crazy to assume that an Afghan theocracy would have the same separation of church and state that our own democracy enjoys and our constitution requires. We should celebrate the fact that we have that separation and pray we never allow ourselves to sink back to level of the Afghans. We’d be crazy to let that continue to happen here.

Are you with me on this one, or am I just crazy?

At least that is what we believe here in Jimbo’s world.

the trials of life

2006-03-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

“Where have you been, Jimbo?” many of you are asking.

It seems like forever since I wrote something on this blogsite, but I just haven’t had anything important to say until today. What I have to say is that President Bush and I seem to be in complete agreement on something today.

In Afghanistan, there is a man on trial for converting to Christianity. Apparently, in Afghanistan, that is the most heinous thing one can do. If the man is convicted, he will be executed, as converting from Islam to Christianity in Afghanistan is punishable by death. I say it is wrong; Bush says it is wrong. It appears that we are in agreement on something.

Many of you are probably saying that something is wrong here. If Bush says something is right, I’m usually going to say it is wrong. If he says something is black, I’ll usually be saying it is white. So, when both of us seem to be on the same side, it has to be confusing to many of you. Don’t be concerned, however. By the time this is over, I’ll be suggesting our President has spit for brains.

We have been moving steadily for a number of years toward the acceptance of Christianity as our national religion. I don’t have a particular problem with Christianity. If the truth were known, if they divided us all up into individual groups, you’d probably find me in with the Christians. The problem I have is making Christianity our national religion. You may recall that many of the early settlers of this country came here for the purpose of worship as they chose and to escape a nationalized religion. The founding fathers wrote into our bylaws the freedom to worship as we please. They were willing to fight for what they believed in and were willing to do violence to those who would take away those religious freedoms. I would like to believe that if those founding fathers were around today, they would take offense with those who would try to amend the constitution to include their religious beliefs. I would expect that they would willingly slaughter those of the religious right who would mix their religion with governance, just as they slaughtered those who proposed the same course back in their time.

Anyway, what we have in Afghanistan is mixing religion and government. We like to brag here in the United States that we are conservative and we believe in God. In places like Afghanistan they are really conservative and they really believe in their God. They have thoroughly integrated their religion into their government and if one commits a sin, they break the law. They are the model of what our religious right tries to be, except they make the religious right here look like a bunch of pussies.

The truth is, we want to be a democracy or a republic, but we don’t want to be theocracy. We want to worship our God on the Sabbath and carry him (or her) with us during the week if we wish, but we don’t want to integrate him into our government and let our government play God. Otherwise, we might become another Afghanistan.

As for our President, let him worship all he wants, but Lord, grant him the wisdom to see that an American theocracy in no better than an Afghan theocracy. When the Afghans put a man on trial for converting to Christianity under the threat of execution, it makes them look really stupid. It provides evidence to back the argument that we are better than they are and our country, our rules of law and our way of life is better than theirs. I agree with our President that what they are doing in Afghanistan is wrong. I just hope he agrees with my side of the argument that we never, ever want to be like them.

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

the big (or maybe not so big) blow

2006-03-12T09:49:00.000-08:00

I was an odd morning here at chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. We were up early and were reading the paper and were hearing thunder off in the distance. I turned on the weather channel, but they were not showing anything to be concerned about in our area. I went outside a couple of times to look at the sky. It was breezy, cool and overcast, but nothing looked threatening, so we came back in and read the want ads and the Best Buy advertisement.

My girlfriend asked, “Do you hear that? It sounds like sirens.”

I heard it, so I went outside again. I could hear warning sirens in the distance. One of the neighbor’s was putting her car in her garage and told me she heard there had been a tornado just west of us. I came inside and called my son, whose domicile would have been near the path of the tornado and he told me they were having large hail at his place.

I went to the West side of the house and looked out the sliding glass doors in time to see a wall cloud coming in.

We frequently have severe storms in the springtime here in the Midwest, but usually the storms come in the afternoon of a warm day. The temperature this morning was only 45 degrees, Fahrenheit, and it is still winter—too early for spring storms.

As I watched, a couple of sheets of newspaper floated by overhead—Frisbee-style—and the trees in the back yard started to sway in the wind. Then, a large number of leaves on and under a pin oak next door began to spin into a small vortex and the vortex came up on to our deck. It rattled the charcoal grille and as it passed across the deck, one of the patio chairs moved six inches. It was as if some ghost at some surreal bar-b-cue had sat down in it and pushed his chair up to the table. The vortex dispersed, the leaves scattered and it was all over.

It looks as if winter may have passed us by this year, but I wonder what excitement spring has in store for us.

It may be a long tornado season here in Jimbo’s world.

par for the course

2006-03-04T06:47:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, when Jimbo was a young man, he did a little golfing. Despite putting some effort into learning the game, we were extremely unsuccessful and gave it up after a year or so, allowing our clubs to pass from our possession during a garage sale. The lesson with which I came away from the game was that the ball doesn’t always go where one envisions it will go. My putting was awful and the “strength” of my game was getting the ball on the green. The weakness of my game was the many times I hit the ball with my putter and it seemed to go places I hadn’t imagined.

All of which leads me to a story I read this morning. It seems that a Russian Cosmonaut at the International Space Station is going to hit a golf ball into orbit with a fairway iron, and the ball is going to have some kind of tracking device by which we can all watch it, on our computers, orbit the earth for years. It’s some kind of advertising promotion for a company that sells golf equipment, and their advertising dollars will infuse some needed cash into the Russian space program. Here is the story.

Golfing in space

One may recall the tagline from the 1979 movie Alien that was used in advertisements for the movie, “In space no one can hear you scream.”

When golf and outer space are brought together, the tagline would be something like, in space no one can hear you scream obscenities at your ball when it doesn’t go where you intend to hit it. And that is the concern some scientists have about this whole advertising gimmick. From what I read, there is some concern that our friendly cosmonaut, “Boris” Woods, may have difficulty getting the ball to go exactly where he wants it to go. The ball may obtain an orbit different than planned and join the other space junk out there, and it may become yet another collision in earth orbit just waiting to happen.

Let’s face it, many of us have at some time or other been sitting in front of a television set on a Sunday afternoon, living life as if every second counted, and seen a very talented professional golfer misplay a shot. I have a concern that Boris is apt to choke under the pressure and slice his six-iron shot into and orbit that will—after carrying a few million miles—bring it back into a collision course with the space station.

When Boris realizes he misplayed the ball he will say something in Russian that translates into, “&%$#!”

When the ball arrives back at the space station, Boris and his crewmembers will also swear Russian oaths. One of the space station crewmembers will tell Boris that he should have used the five-iron, and he will again swear oaths, in Russian.

Someone will suggest to Boris that he should have shouted, “Fore!”

And, at that suggestion, Boris will again swear oaths. Of course, there will be some money riding on the shot, as there always is in golf, and Boris will have to fork over a couple of rubles to one of his mates, who will smile and make a comment about the shot as he counts his money. Boris will swear oaths.

Many of you are probably wondering where I am going with this. I wonder, myself. I guess my point is that we should master the game here on terra firma before we try to take it to new and unexplored frontiers. And, if your golfing experiences are anything like my own, that means it will be many, many years before the little white ball should take a trip into outer space.

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

look at the bright side

2006-02-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

Now we find out that if you think positively and have an optimistic outlook, you have a better chance of living longer. This is the result of a study of 545 Dutch dudes. Here is the story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060227/hl_nm/optimism_dc

You may recall that the study I cited earlier this evening about chocolate consumption leading to lower blood pressure was also a study of Dutch subjects.

This leads me to one inescapable conclusion. If you are optimistic about the possibility of getting some chocolate tonight, you’ll live longer. If your optimism is warranted and you actually do get some chocolate, your blood pressure will go down. If your blood pressure is down from eating chocolate, then you should live even longer.

I think I’m going to be optimistic that there is some chocolate downstairs, and perhaps I’ll live long enough to enjoy it. If that happens, the chocolate will be the elixir that feeds the cycle of good health.

The night is getting better and better here in Jimbo’s world.

sweet dreams are made of this

2006-02-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

Those of you who come back to read this weblog on a regular basis know that I am always looking for tips to make us all more healthy. One theme that keeps coming up is that cocoa and chocolate are about the best thing you can eat if you want to stay healthy. Here is the latest I read today.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060227/ap_on_he_me/diet_chocolate_health

Now, those of you who know Jimbo, know that he has a history of high blood pressure and he takes an assortment of medications to keep that hypertension under control. Now it seems, Jimbo has been swallowing the wrong stuff. Had he kept a steady diet of chocolate, he would probably have such low blood pressure that people would misidentify him as someone who is laid back.

It seems the magic ingredient in chocolate is called flavanols, and whatever flavanols are—they sound flavorful, don’t they—they increase nitric oxide in the blood, and I guess that’s good.

Damn! Life is full of missed opportunities. While I was typing the paragraph before last, Jimbo’s girlfriend called from the supermarket. She has to wait at the pharmacy there for twenty minutes to get a prescription filled. She asked if there was anything I needed. I could have had her fill a shopping cart with chocolate candy and get some cocoa mix and bring it home to me. Maybe she could have gotten some cookies, too. You know, the ones with chocolate all over the outside, or maybe some chocolate chip cookies.

And when she got home from the store, I could have had her open the candy and pour it in a large bowl and put it on the kitchen table. I could just bury my face in all that chocolate in the bowl and eat it like a dog would, without using my hands. In just a short while I would be able to feel that chocolate coursing through my veins like a very healthy screaming brakeman, on the railroad to good health. I’d have so much nitric oxide flowing through me that high blood pressure would simply be an unpleasant memory.

You know, I’ll bet the cost of that chocolate could be considered a tax deduction—right up there on the top of Schedule A of form 1040. In that case chocolate could make us healthy, wealthy and wise. Okay, healthy and wealthy, anyway.

I don’t know about you, but I think I need to get downstairs right away and see if we have any chocolate in the house. Maybe the rest of you should follow my lead. Because we never can be too healthy.

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

whistling through a graveyard

2006-02-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever walked through a graveyard and you were the only one there? I felt like that Friday as I was walking across the manufacturing floor where I work. The people on the shop floor are trying to get their vacation time used up before the place is shut down, and so, on a spring-like Friday, people were taking the day off. I couldn’t help thinking that in a few months, the place will be void of people every day of the week, and that got me thinking some more.

There was a sign over the copy machine the last place I worked that said something like:

If you don’t think your customer is most important, think again!

There was a sign above the urinal saying something like:

If you’re not thinking about pleasing your customer right now, you can be sure your competitor is

The only sign above the urinal where I work now is:

Wash hands before returning to work

The truth of the matter is that I have never worked anywhere that didn’t have signs all over the place reminding everyone how important the customer was, with the exception of the place where I am currently working.

“Ah,” many of you are probably thinking right now, “No wonder they are shutting the place down.”

While your conclusion might seem to be valid from the point of view of signage, I will respectfully contradict your thought. We don’t need signs all over the place to remind us, because we are the single-mindedly most customer-focused organization I think I have ever witnessed. If our customer orders something this morning that we agree to stock for him, the order ships today. If he orders something special that has to be made from scratch, it’ll probably ship today, but it will ship tomorrow, for sure, if not. If he wants something just a little longer or shorter than his specification, we’ll change the specification and ship right away. We’ll bend over backward and spare no expense to get our customers exactly what they want by tomorrow at the latest, even if they haven’t imagined what it is, yet, and it has never been designed or made before. And, we’ll do it for a rock-bottom price.

Your first reaction to that statement is probably wonder as to why a company so customer-focused is shutting down. Your second reaction is probably complete awe about how totally customer-conscious they must be at the facility to where our jobs are being sent.

My response to your first reaction is that we are shutting down because we are so customer-focused. And my response to your second reaction is that, no, they are going to turn down many of those orders we have accepted routinely and they are not going to lose money meeting almost impossible deadlines and working overtime selling low margin, low profit orders. They are not going to be customer-focused and they are going to continue to be successful.

The truth be told, if one provides the customer with exactly what the customer wants at the price the customer wants to pay, it will be at a price level that won’t allow any profit. Customers always want to pay the lowest possible price for something. I’m a customer and I want the lowest price I can get. I would venture to say that you, too, prefer to pay a bargain price.

“So, Jimbo,” most of you are asking right now, “Is this is the point in this story when you tell us your solution on how to fix the problem? Is this the time when you tell us how we can make everything better? What is your grand idea to solve this dilemma?”

I dunno.

It’s the law of supply and demand and it is not going to be repealed soon. That is, unless you are big oil and you have your guy in the white house and you know you can have your customer bend over his car on a regular basis and violate him with the nozzle of the gas pump. Perhaps we should exhibit a modicum of intelligence and make sure that next time we have the chance to step into the voting booth, we vote the rascals out.

As for the rest of us in our everyday lives, we just have to do the best we can. Make your customer happy, but do it without giving away the store.

We don’t have the answer, but we’re working on it. Our recommendation is that next time you walk alone through a graveyard, try whistling. Maybe it will scare away whatever is out there waiting for you.

At least, we think it’s worth a try, here in Jimbo’s world.

who got game? we got game!

2006-02-25T11:10:00.000-08:00

Jimbo’s girlfriend doesn’t have the love for the game.

No, I’m not talking about no-limit Texas hold ‘em, although she doesn’t like that one, either. I’m talking about the great game invented in Springfield, Massachusetts, by a guy they called The Deaner. It’s played on a hardwood court 50’ wide and 94’ long, with two 18” iron hoops mounted ten feet above the court, near each end of the court. Most notably, there is a large semicircle on each end of the court 19’ 9” from the center of the iron hoop, behind which a man whose prime time has past can extend his playing years, if he can stroke the three-ball.

The Deaner brought his game west to Lawrence, Kansas, where he became the first head basketball coach at the University of Kansas. Although the building in which the University of Kansas plays its basketball games is named after another legendary Kansas coach, Forest C. “Phog” Allen, the court in that building is named James A. Naismith Court, after the school’s initial coach.

You may recall last year after the Kansas team was eliminated in the first round of the NCAA tournament, I lamented the loss and predicted when winter again came to the Midwest, the Jayhawks would be back to form. Let me take you back to that lamentable day last March.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/03/ncaa-tournament-crimson-and-blues.html

I had a chance last fall to have a drink with some friends. One of them told me that the team should be good this year, only young and probably inconsistent. When the team started out with a losing record and didn’t seem to be getting better, I started to doubt that Mike knew what he was talking about.

Unfortunately, when winter came, the Jayhawks fell flat. It was only when the spring winds blew that the team started to look like a Kansas basketball team. Fortunately, winter showed up in the fall and spring arrived sometime in mid-January this year, here in the Midwest. There was a Saturday afternoon at home when we were beaten by Kansas State—something that is unheard of. Then, the following Monday night it was Missouri beating us in overtime and I thought that it was the single worst performance I had ever seen by a Kansas team. I began to doubt.

I don’t watch all of the games like I used to, because, as I mentioned, Jimbo’s girlfriend is not a fan of the game, nor a believer. I watched that Missouri game from beginning to end. How, I thought, could they dig themselves out of this hole?

Well, tonight Kansas plays Texas and the winner has sole possession of first place in the Big Twelve. Kansas hasn’t lost since the Missouri game six weeks ago. Of course Mike was right as he is most of the time.

Tonight will be a big game, but when the days start getting longer and March is only a few days away on the calendar, the games that count are still ahead of us. One of the announcers on ESPN on that ragged Monday night against Missouri said that the loser might risk not going to the NCAA tournament. No matter what happens tonight, the crimson and blue should be there when they start playing for real in March.

And you know we’ll be watching, here in Jimbo’s world.

a man and his dogma

2006-02-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

Jimbo was reading the news online this morning so he could ad lib comments on this blog site after seeing items in the news. I came across an article about Pat Robertson saying that the televangelist was losing favor with some of his ecclesiastical contemporaries for some of the off the cuff comments he makes. While I was wholeheartedly agreeing with the opinion of his peers, I read that Robertson had been interviewed on a recent segment of Good Morning America and he commented that he likes to ad lib comments after seeing news segments.

Oops!

Does that mean that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Pat Robertson and Jimbo? Does that mean that Pat Robertson and Jimbo do the same thing? Does it mean that both give their comments about religion, politics and life in general and are mirror images of each other—except that Pat will occasionally lead his audience in prayer?

Nah!

Jimbo would never call for the assassination of a foreign leader. Jimbo would never say that God would turn his back on a small town in Pennsylvania because they practiced logical thought. Jimbo would never say that God had struck down the leader of another foreign country because the man went against something some English King had translated from some ancient scrolls and attributed it to God.

Jimbo has never claimed to be the spokesman for God, nor has he ever tried to put words in God’s mouth. Okay, maybe once or twice.

The biggest difference, however, is that Jimbo will cut you some slack. Pat Robertson will promise you hell if you act up just a little bit. Jimbo will let you slide, as long as we’re all sure you are trying to behave. With Pat, it’s all black and white.

We have shades of gray and all the colors in the rainbow, here in Jimbo’s world.

guns don't hurt people-- vice-president's with guns do

2006-02-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

It appears that a member of the Bush administration took a day off from injuring the mass of the American people on Saturday and ended up hurting someone he was with.

The story goes that Vice-President Cheney shot his hunting companion with a shotgun in a hunting accident yesterday. Here is the story:

Dick Cheney: gunslinger

When you go to bed tonight, say a prayer to whatever deity you worship thanking him (or her) that you are not a hunting buddy of the Vice-President.

The veep never extended the invite to us, and we are glad, here in Jimbo's world.

friends and lovers

2006-02-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

It appears I may have a bit of a wrong to right. After reading my blog yesterday, my girlfriend insisted that I had misread her feelings and that she was, indeed, sympathetic to my situation. She is concerned that my family is going to think she is a “bitch” and that she has a callous attitude toward my current state of affairs.

We had this conversation yesterday, on the way to Wal-Mart, where she purchased some high-quality printer paper that made ones resumes look more professional and offered a better chance of the user’s resume to be noticed by potential employers.

I would like to apologize for any misstatement that I may have made or any misreading of her feelings on this matter. It is good to know she is behind me 100%.

And that is good news, here in Jimbo’s world.

pounding the pavement

2006-02-11T06:47:00.000-08:00

I’ve written in the last week about the tragedy that has befallen me. I’m not looking for sympathy, mind you, but I am getting a negative vibe around chez Jimbo’s girlfriend.

“I think you wanted to lose your job,” the little woman told me.

“No, dear,” I responded.

I think Jimbo’s girlfriend is a little like George Thorogood’s landlady in the song One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer. While Thorogood aficionados probably remember the discourse verbatim, let me remind the uninitiated of the conversation between the two.

The landlady said, "You got the rent money yet?",
I said, "No, can't find no job"
Therefore I ain't got no money to pay the rent
She said "I don't believe you're tryin' to find no job"
Said "I seen you today you was standin' on a corner,
leaning up against a post"
I said "But I'm tired,
I've been walkin' all day"
She said "That don't confront me,
long as I get my money next Friday"
Now next Friday come I didn't have the rent,
and out the door I went

Now, Thorogood’s song is the sad tale of a brother whose job parted ways with him, much as mine is going to in a few months. The song is the lamentation of the difficulty of finding another job in the economy that has been raped, pillaged and destroyed by the Bush administration. While many of you would be quick to remind me that George was not the original artist to record the song, and some might even say it was John Lee Hooker, I think I can successfully support my facts. The song was actually written by Amos Milburn and recorded by Hooker, but the original song didn’t have the story of George and his landlady. From what I have researched, that part was pure Thorogood. Some of you might correctly remind me that Thorogood performed the song and wrote the part about his landlady many years before Bush was elected President. I would contend that Thorogood’s artistic sensibilities helped him anticipate a day when the Bush administration would wreck the economy and leave guys like his character and me out pounding the pavement, looking for work. I also contend that he anticipated that there would be those who didn’t believe we were dedicated in our search for employment. Anyway, back to my story.

I don’t believe my girlfriend believes I am actually sincere in my grief. These weren’t her exact words, but this is a paraphrase that I believe depicts her actual opinion.

“I think you’re happy that you’re going to lose your job,” she said. “Now, while I’m at work all day, putting in the long hours, slaving for our rent, you will be out enjoying yourself. You’ll be sitting in some smoky gambling hall with your unsavory associates, smoking cigars, leering at the waitresses and telling your ribald stories. You’ll be playing pool and poker all day long and watching sports on television, wagering on the outcomes of the games. You’ll be drinking away all your severance pay, along with your friends, who won’t remember who you are when all of your money is gone. You’ll stay out late and come home in the middle of the night reeking of whisky and smoke and looking for loving. You’ll be piddling away your productive years in a life of sloth and debauchery and playing around on the Internet.”

“But, dear,” I’ll respond, “You know I don’t drink. Especially when I’m playing poker.”

This, unfortunately, will not dissuade her from thinking negatively about me. I suppose it always has been and always will be the lot of the workingman to suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and the skepticism of those who don’t believe we are actually trying hard enough.

And, that is our sad tale this morning, here in Jimbo’s world.

feed the kitty

2006-02-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

Last night we faced danger. If you are squeamish about bloodshed and violence, please don’t read on, as the following tale will send cold chills down your spine and your usual pleasant sleep will be interrupted by nightmare visions of impending doom.

Our night began much as in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Instead of a ship called the Nellie, our journey into darkness began in my car—a faithful beast that has gotten me and mine to many a far-flung destination. The sky, to paraphrase Conrad, “seemed condensed into a mournful gloom.”

Just as Conrad’s story had formed a basis many years after it was written for the movie Apocalypse Now, it might as well have formed the basis of our journey. While we were not seeking Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, the object of our escapade was just as frightening. No! It was even more frightening.

“The horror! The horror!”

Perhaps I should start at the beginning, because the story begins so benign. What could be more wholesome than for a mother to tend the pet of her son while he traveled across two states to attend the wedding of a young man and woman? Ah, the betrothal of a young couple—a fresh springtime in the prime of life. The young man who journeyed those many miles to attend the wedding was the son of Jimbo’s girlfriend, the mother who would attend to the needs of her son’s cat in his absence.

On the first night of the young man’s journey, his mother came to his apartment, fed and watered the feline and then came home to the arms of Jimbo—a gentleman with whom she shared her life.

“That stupid cat hissed at me,” she said upon arriving home. “He scratched me, too. I’ll have to put peroxide on this. I guess I got too close to him while he was eating.”

She showed me her bleeding hand.

“Never get close to a cat when he’s eating. I’ll go with you tomorrow night and help out,” I told her.

Sometimes twenty-four hours can pass in the blink of an eye, and in that amount of time, it was necessary to go back to feed the cat again.

When we arrived at the apartment, the cat was in a back bedroom with the door closed, as he had been left the night before. When we opened the bedroom door the cat ran out, seemingly happy to see us. I reached down tentatively and petted the cat’s head with my index finger. The cat pressed himself against my hand, as cats will do and sort of petted himself with my fingers. I took the cat’s water and food dish and rinsed it out and put fresh water in it. The entire time the cat was rubbing up against my leg. Sure, when I tried to put the dish back on the floor, next to his litter box, the cat was rubbing against my arms and we spilled a little water, but cats will get a little anxious when it’s dinner time. I rinsed out the coffee pot in the kitchen sink and put a little water in it and poured it into the dish. The cat followed me back to the kitchen and I reached down to pet it again after putting the coffee pot back into the sink.

This cat has been given a bad rep, I thought to myself. He can be very friendly and he is not at all as mean as he has been described to me. It was at that point the cat hissed and swung his paw at me, scratching the side of my hand and putting a claw deep into the palm. I went into the bathroom and got a piece of toilet paper and soaked up the blood with it. My girlfriend recommended I put peroxide on it, which I did. Afterward, she went back and finished cleaning out the litter box.

The cat re-entered the bedroom and saw my girlfriend straightening up after bending over to close the bag of litter. From seven feet away from her the cat leaped and buried his claws into her upper arm. Jimbo escorted the cat from the room and closed the door as his girlfriend swore oaths. Although the state senate is debating making carrying concealed weapons legal, the law has not yet been enacted. Therefore, fortunately for the cat, neither of us were in possession of firearms, so his life was spared.

We treated her wounds much as we had treated my own, and then we put food in the evil feline’s dish and the cat went about eating. One of us walked near the cat and he hissed again, and again my girlfriend swore oaths. The cat looked up at us with the eyes of Beelzebub himself—red as the fires of hell—so we booked it out of there, turned out the lights, locked up the apartment and left.

Yes, we had looked deep into the eyes of Satan and deep into the heart of darkness, and we lived to tell the tale. We discussed it much more that evening, and my girlfriend swore oaths many, many more times. Sometimes it is necessary for a man to go to hell and back—and a woman, too.

It certainly makes a tale for the ages here in Jimbo’s world.

a long day's journey into unemployment

2006-02-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

This blog is just for me and just to vent, so please don’t feel obligated to read it if you don’t want to.

Fifty-one weeks ago yesterday I had a job interview. I interviewed with five different people and I felt I did well. Fifty-one weeks ago today I wrote a blog on the nature of work. It was unremarkable. Fifty-one weeks ago Thursday was my brother-in-law and sister’s anniversary, and the day I was offered a job by the company with whom I had interviewed on the previous Monday. Here is the blog I wrote about that.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/02/anniversary-and-event.html

Fifty-one weeks ago Saturday I began working at that job, where I have been, since. I’ve told you the stories of my travels on several occasions last year that were required by my job, but what I may not have told you about are some of the successes I have achieved. When I started working there I was told by one of the senior managers that I would have my hands full and that the two previous incumbents in my position had failed to be able to control the situation. It appears one of them was universally hated and either that one, or the other had just walked out the door one night and never came back. I found immediately that the company had extreme supply chain problems. I was told that “We’re out of everything all of the time.”

While that had to have been an exaggeration--because I remember the first day there I saw there were some materials in some of the stocking locations—it wasn’t far from the truth. And a successful manufacturing company needs to have the proper materials in stock in order to be able to produce finished product on schedule. Unfortunately for this company they had some serious problems. Fortunately, they had the good sense to hire me. It wasn’t overnight, but the problems went away.

I’m not one to brag on myself, but I’ve had a lot of experience and I’m good at what I do. Okay, maybe I do brag a little.

During the last nine months of last year, the supply chain problems solved, it exposed the fact that the company was having manufacturing problems. In September, they fired my boss. I figured they would put me in his place, but they brought in a temporary boss from another plant and sort of let us fight out who would be the top guy at our plant. We continued to have manufacturing problems, but our supply chain was just fine.

Anyway, in December things were going pretty well, but I decided I needed to turn it up a notch. I sent a memo to management telling them that their supply chain management had been third world when I showed up there and I had obviously improved things, but now I was ready to make the management of materials first-rate. I came in to work the first day of the year ready to kick ass. There was an announcement that day that our company had been purchased and the rumors started immediately that our plant would be closed down.

I put in eight hours on a Saturday and several ten-hour days and I had everything really in good shape by the end of January. We were all convinced that it was just a matter of time until they closed down our plant, but I wanted to go out on top.

Today, fifty-one weeks and one day from the day I interviewed for the job, we had a management meeting and they told us they were shutting down the facility. They gave us termination letters and my last day will be May 8. I have three months to work and look for another job. I’ll get four extra weeks of pay if I stay until the end.

Later in the day, there was a meeting with the entire workforce where they broke the news. Many of the rank and file were peeved, but there was no violence. The cop they brought in was nondescript, not uniformed and not needed.

So this is the beginning of the end. It’s been a good ride and worthwhile, but it will be over soon.

What is the next adventure that awaits us here in Jimbo’s world?

plan 9 from washington, dc

2006-02-05T07:55:00.000-08:00

Last year I watched the DVD of Ed Wood starring Johnny Depp as the title character. Wood, of course, was a director who made weird movies. His movie Plan 9 From Outer Space could very well be the worst movie ever made. I can speak from first hand experience because after seeing the movie Ed Wood, I watched Plan 9 From Outer Space. It was bad.

There is no doubt that Ed Wood aspired to make good movies and he was passionate in what he did. Unfortunately, he just wasn’t very good. You have to give credit to the man, however. He may have been a cross-dressing weirdo and he may not have had the artist’s eye or the journeyman’s skill, but he pursued his passion. Many of us have a passion for something and we never get the opportunity to pursue it. For example, Jimbo has always thought he would like to handle the rock in the NBA. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately) his opportunity has not materialized. You just don’t see enough retirement-aged fat, bald white guys, who can’t run or jump playing in the National Basketball Association.

On some occasions, however, one sees examples of men who have a passion for something who manage to achieve a position of influence—like Ed Wood—who share Mr. Wood’s lack of competence for what they do. I saw an example last week of such a man, when I tried to sit through a TiVo-ing of the State of the Union Address. I quit watching after a while. I was reminded that we actually legitimately elected this guy once. I’m sure the man is pursuing his passion. I just liked it better when his passion was dope and booze and he was not steering the ship of state—or trying to.

I was hoping that the image of Leonard Pynth-Garnell would come on to the screen and tell us, “Oh, that was really bad, wasn’t it? That was our own Ronnie Bateman playing the part of the President of the United States.”

By the way, I quit watching right about the point that I thought there was a possibility that Bush was going to tell us the terrorists hate our freedom. If I hear that one more time it will have been a couple of times too many. The truth is the terrorists hate us for our cosmetic surgery. Not to disrespect the terrorists (okay, maybe I am disrespecting them) but they are, in general, a homely lot. Let’s face it, we’re better looking than they are (not me, just us in aggregate). Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and George Clooney have nothing to fear from the terrorists, if their concern is the terrorists taking acting jobs away from them.

All of this leads me to the point I originally was going to make before I wandered off, somehow.

Ed Wood had a story he wanted to tell, but he couldn’t be taken seriously. It wasn’t just the zombies from outer space, the pie pans suspended on strings that fluttered in the breeze, which were the zombies’ vehicles of transportation to earth, or their bad acting (and bad directing). It was that the story itself was not believable.

The Bush Administration reported this week that unemployment has dropped to 4.7%, which means we have virtually full employment. That would seem to be great news, except there is something wrong with this picture. When one uses the practical test of circumspection of the society around him, the numbers being reported to us appear to be as fictional as Ed Wood’s zombies. If you know anyone who is looking for work, please tell them about these figures and tell them they just aren’t looking hard enough because the jobs are out there. Well, maybe you shouldn’t do that, as they might reply with the proper response and deck you.

I would contend that you know, or know of, several people looking for jobs who seem to have been looking for a while. The ones who do find jobs seem to be take them for less money and less or no benefits.

How many raises have you gotten since Bush took office? Are you working more hours for less pay? Does someone cover for you when you go on vacation, or is the work waiting for you when you get back? Do you even have any vacation time? Do you even still have a job? Has your net worth increased or decreased since 2001? How about your benefits? Are they a lot better, now? Is health insurance more affordable? Is housing more affordable?

Is life more fun?

Do you feel safer from attack from terrorists?

Do you have it better than you did in January of 2001?

The measure of life is progress and that progress has slowed dramatically in the last five years. Is our problem the team or the coach? I look around myself every day and look at my teammates—the people I work with, my family and friends—and I say we have a damn fine team. It is the coach. He isn’t getting the job done—never has; never will—and it makes the team’s performance suffer.

So, President Bush can stand before congress and the American people and tell us that we have it good and his administration can show us numbers to convince that life is grand. Numbers lie. The proof is all around you. Believe your own eyes.

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

reflections on elections

2006-01-29T05:42:00.000-08:00

The day of the Palestinian election last week, the early exit polls said that the Hamas party had been defeated by a wide margin and would be a minority party in the Palestinian government. Bush went on TV and said it was a great day for democracy in the Middle East because a million Palestinians had voted in democratic elections. Bush practically took credit for the vote as if it would add to his legacy as the man who democratized that region of the world.

I’ll admit that I didn’t believe we could export American liberalism to the Middle East—especially an administration whose mantra was that they didn’t believe in liberalism. I had that brief optimistic feeling I did on that November evening back in 2004, when the exit polls here held out the very valid hope that Bush had been defeated. It had always been impressed upon me that America was the land of the free; home of the brave. I had read about the great things this country had done and I saw evidence of it around me, and to this day you’d better bet I believe it.

Bush had dishonored the country and the flag. He had failed to protect the constitution and yet there were still voters willing to go into the voting booth and put a checkmark behind his name. While the President entertained us with selections from My Pet Goat, his Saudi friends attacked America. While not being able to defend ourselves from these attacks might have ended the careers of most politicians, it only made Bush more popular. And that November, the election was so close that the Bush campaign brought out their top ally, Osama Bin Laden—the man we generally accept as being responsible for the attacks—to give an eleventh-hour stump speech to try to seal the election.

Even so, after I had voted, and those around me, there was only to wait and wait we did. When we began to see early exit polls, it appeared that Osama’s speech had not swayed enough voters and that Bush would be narrowly defeated. The exit polls that night were wrong, as you may remember, as they were the night of the Palestinian election.

Oops.

The following day, when the votes were counted in the Palestinian election, we found the exit polls were dead wrong and that the majority of Palestinians had put a checkmark behind the name of terror.

“Well, Jimbo,” I’m sure most of you are saying, “You’re not bringing much joy into my Sunday morning.”

My answer, of course, is that it is all in how you look at it—“spin it,” if you will. Every comedy television series has some dope of a sidekick who is doing dumb things, every episode, all season long. No matter how many dumb things he or she does, it is funny—the more dumb things, the funnier. We’ve come to expect this out of our Commander-in- Chief, also, every day; every week, every month, every year. Over and over, over and over. When you see Bush on television, you stop what you’re doing and watch and listen, just as you do when the door to Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment opens and Kramer comes in. What will he do this time?

And, for Hamas? Well, now that they are in power, maybe they’ll straighten up and fly right. And, if they don’t, well, will it be any worse than it is right now?

And, as for Wubya? Well, we have three more years of laughs before some other jughead takes his place. Maybe we won’t get an ex-rummy and ex-junky next time. I’m betting the constitution will be around long after Bush is gone.

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

drinking to our health

2006-01-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

I know that I’ll be sipping a strong one tonight. I also know it will be making me healthy. And, most of all, I know that if I were a religious man, I would cast my eyes toward the heavens and shout:

Thank you, Jesus!

Not being a religious man, I probably will skip the last one. The strong drink I am referring to is cocoa and you can bet your sweet cup of chocolate-colored beverage that instead of drinking one to your health, I’ll be drinking for my health.

Eureka! I read today more compelling evidence that chocolate is, indeed, man’s best friend. It seems that information presented by the National Academy of Sciences confirms that an ingredient in cocoa called flavanols offers cardiovascular health benefits to those who ingest the stuff. Their study presents information that a group of islanders off the coast of Panama, who imbibe large quantities of cocoa, have very low incidence of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

If this isn’t reason to eat and drink oneself into a chocolate frenzy, then we’re not as dedicated to health as we let on. Perhaps you remember previous occasions where I have extolled the benefits of chocolate. Maybe these will remind you.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/03/sweet-dreams-of-healthy-lifestyle.html

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/12/i-want-new-drug.html

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/11/cure-for-all-ills.html

Okay, I guess I have chocolate on my mind too often. But sometimes, if you listen to a man long enough, his passion will come to the surface. If you notice my Alfred Hitchcock-like profile, you know my passion runs deep.

But that’s just the way it is, here in Jimbo’s world.

don't put off until tomorrow...

2006-01-15T07:01:00.000-08:00

Around chez Jimbo’s girlfriend we have a problem. We tend to put off doing things. Well, Jimbo has decided this year will be different. I have made a vow to change my ways.

Oh, you say you put off doing things, too?

I don’t want to get into a game of one-upsmanship with you. In the area of putting things off, Jimbo is a serious procrastinator, while you are just an amateur-crastinator. Let me give you an example or two.

Last year when I did my taxes, I filed on line. The Quicken software I used has a rebate. I filed my taxes in February and the rebate papers had to be mailed by October.

Oops. I didn’t get around to sending it before it expired.

We bought a pressure washer at Home Depot last spring to use to clean the deck prior to resealing it. The first time we used it, something popped inside the spray gun and water started leaking everywhere. We never got around to taking it back. After a few months, I took the wand apart, found out that an o-ring had stretched and failed under pressure. I fixed it temporarily with some TLC and some Vaseline, and we were able to pressure wash the deck with it, but it leaked water badly. I determined the o-ring they used was not thick enough to withstand the pressure. We found a package of o-rings at Wal-Mart that had some the same diameter, but thicker, and we bought them. Where are those o-rings now? Still unopened, on a shelf in the garage above the power washer.

Last winter we noticed the kitchen floor, by the sliding door to the deck, was cold under our feet on sub-freezing days.

“I’ll have to do something about that,” I said, taking another drink of coffee.

Last summer, while working under the house, wiring a duplex receptacle, I noticed there was a vent under the sliding door, which would let in cold air.

“I can fix that by stuffing a little insulation in there this fall,” I announced, and then explained in detail the reason why a vent was necessary in that spot, owing to the construction of the house, using very specific engineering formulae. I further extrapolated that during cold weather plugging the vent to prevent cold air from coming in would not defeat the purpose of having the vent there. I believe I went on from there to explain why we lose one second every year due to the inefficiency of our calendar and that it would be necessary, therefore, to have a leap day every five-hundred years to overcome that inefficiency. From there I think I went into detail about why there was a third, un-insulated wire in the Romex cable I was using and the purpose of that wire. I explained why using the insulated cable was such an improvement over the way wiring was done early last century when the norm was using what was known as “knob and tube” wiring. “Knob and tube” wiring required that single insulated wires be run, in pairs, separated by a distance of six inches or so. Ceramic knobs were attached under floors and above rafters through which to pass the wires and keep them apart and when the wires passed through studs or floor joists, a ceramic tube was inserted to keep the wire from touching wood. I believe I may have gone on to explain some other scientific or engineering principles.

Well, to make a long story short, it is cold weather and I have somehow neglected to put the insulation in the vent.

Yes, sir (or ma’am, if that is your gender), it is time for me to make a change in lifestyle and it is time for me to start doing things right away instead of putting them off. I’m going to start first thing tomorrow.

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

magic bus

2006-01-14T03:39:00.000-08:00

Jimbo’s girlfriend likes to get into bed at night and read for a while before she goes to sleep. I’ve gotten in the habit of doing the same. Last week I finished re-reading Albert Camus’s book, The Stranger, and I looked through my library to find another book to read. I’ve had Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for years without ever reading it, so I started it the night before last. I understand that Wolfe’s book documents Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters, and what I have read so far seems to confirm that.

Lo and behold, I read this morning that the bus that Kesey navigated across America is being restored. This would definitely fit somewhere between Sometimes A Great Notion and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

It’s a small world.

It seems that Kesey’s 1939 IHC bus (whose name is Further) has been parked in a swamp for years and Kesey’s family is in the process of spiffing up the old wagon.

Some might say that it is a waste of time to bring this rusting hulk back to it’s status of a rolling junker—after all, the bus was scrap yard material forty years ago. We Americans, however, are defined by our pioneering spirit and Kesey, just like Kerouac, took off to find America.

So I say, fix it up. Make it a monument to American manifest destiny. Just don’t try to drive it anywhere. When they took off in it forty years ago, they weren’t sure if it would make it where they were going, so you know it is not going to be reliable transportation, today.

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

we can't stand pat

2006-01-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

Today, those of us who don’t claim to be devout Christians, nor members of the religious right, can thank God we’re not. We can also thank God that, in his wisdom, he has shown us the truth and the light. He has shown us the error of the ways in one that supposedly speaks for Him.

I’m speaking, of course, of the fact that Pat Robertson has started flapping his gums again in such a manner as to give religion a bad name.

If you haven’t heard, today Mr. Robertson suggested that the severe stroke that threatens the life of Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was a punishment from God for giving back some land to the Palestinians.

There goes Pat Robertson putting words in God’s mouth again.

“For both prophet and priest are profane;” reads Jeremiah 23:11. “Yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the lord.”

As Jesus was quoted saying in Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inward they are ravening wolves.”

All I can say is that if this isn’t what Jesus was warning us against, then Jesus and I aren’t on the same page.

Back in November I blogged about another of Pat Robertson’s foibles. You don’t remember? I guess it’s because I never pushed the button to put it on my blogsite. Here it is.

On Tuesday, the residents of Dover, PA, voted out members of their school board who had championed the teaching of “intelligent design” over the teaching of evolution. This prompted televangelist Pat Robertson to declare the residents of Dover had voted God out of their city. Robertson suggested if disaster were to befall those residents, they shouldn’t look to God for help.

Coincidently, also on Tuesday, the Kansas Board of Education approved new standards that celebrate the teaching of intelligent design. The theory of intelligent design assumes that the world is so complex it could only have been created by a higher power. The Board of Education went on record earlier this year as saying that evolution “is an unpredictable and unguided natural process that has no discernible direction or goal. It also assumes life arose from an unguided natural process.”

The day after Christmas last year, a tsunami created havoc in Asia. Late this summer, hurricane Katrina ravaged the gulf coast. Earlier this week a killer tornado tore through parts of Indiana and Kentucky. A common thread running through all three was that they fit the definition of an unguided natural process.

When an earthquake and resulting tsunami killed tens of thousands in Lisbon in 1755, the French philosopher, Voltaire, asked what kind of God would allow such a thing to happen? Perhaps the answer is that these were all natural phenomena, and that God didn’t have anything to do with them. If that is the case, then the residents of Dover are safe from Robertson’s veiled threat.

According to Genesis, chapter three, man’s original sin was to eat fruit from the forbidden tree that looked good, tasted good and made one wise. Adam and Eve’s first sin, therefore, was the pursuit of knowledge. When God found out, he told them they were on their own, as would be their descendents, the whole of mankind. As such, we are all predestined to continue the quest for knowledge. Neither Pat Robertson nor the Kansas Board of Education can reverse that, try as they may. Intelligent design may make us all feel more comfortable, but evolution offers a more rational explanation, even if it isn’t pretty; even if it isn’t flattering and doesn’t make us feel warm and fuzzy.

Voltaire also said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

Voltaire was one frog who could turn a clever phrase.

If Voltaire were alive today it is likely that he and Pat Robertson would not be in total agreement. As a matter of fact, Robertson’s abrasive comments would probably make them enemies. Voltaire is also credited with the following quotation. Both Voltaire and Robertson are considered men of God, but likely it would be Voltaire’s prayer that was answered.

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

The Lord, it seems, works in mysterious ways. If Pat Robertson speaks for the Lord, then it would confirm the old fellow’s ways are more mysterious than we mortals are capable of understanding. However, if the Lord chose a spokesman, I would hope he would pick one who wasn’t shooting off his mouth all the time, or opening his mouth in order to insert his foot.

At least, that’s the way it looks, here in Jimbo’s world.

howard's way

2006-01-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw Howard Stern on Larry King’s show on CNN. I’m not a huge Howard Stern fan, but the brother has helped put a centavo or two into my pocket, and he has the potential of adding another one or two, so I watch when I see him being interviewed on television. I’ve seen him on Letterman a couple of times and once on 60 Minutes.

By the way, Howard and I don’t have any financial partnerships, it is just that I started watching the stock of Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) late last year and I have been in and out several times since then and have turned a profit. You may recall I mentioned Sirius stock in a blog about some beavers a year ago November.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/11/more-money-than-brains.html

Had you bought and held on my recommendation, you would have doubled your money. Unfortunately, Jimbo didn’t buy and hold, but fortunately he has been a player.

The one thing I have noticed about whenever Howard is on television, he seems to have free reign to tout his new employer, Sirius, and to hype their service and their products. One cannot buy that kind of publicity, yet Howard seems to be allowed to turn his interviews into infomercials. No wonder that it was announced yesterday that Sirius has given Howard $220 million worth of stock. He’s earned it by bringing along his audience to pay radio. He has made it, “in spades,” as he told Larry King last night.

If I were with the competition, I would be concerned about Howard’s ability to hype his product for free, but I’m not, so I should be happy.

“Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars,” as Howard says. Oh, wait! That was Casey Kasem.

When the hype is flowing, sometimes we get caught up in it, too, here in Jimbo’s world.

a palindrome, a quark and a production

2006-01-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

I’m reminded this morning of why the Internet is so important.

We saw The Producers last night and I am considering reviewing it. In doing my research, I was looking back at some of the things Mel Brooks had done before. I was looking for some information about a television program with which I thought he was involved. It turns out I was wrong about his having any involvement, but I was able to find some information about the program. I found it under some other virtual junk, tucked away in a virtual nook, beside a virtual cranny, but it was out there for the finding.

I find that sometimes the mind plays tricks on us. Sometimes the things we remember turn out not to be exactly as we thought. For example, when I was nineteen years old, I remember I was 5’ 11-3/4” tall. Sometimes when they asked my height, I’d just say six feet. I remember that on the basketball court I could jump up and touch a finger or two on the rim. I can still remember how the rim felt to the touch, and it felt good. Today, I can touch the net, but there is a large distance from the bottom of the net to the rim, and last time I measured myself, I was closer to 5’ 10.” Did I imagine touching cold, hard steel? What the hell? I’m sticking with my story. All of which leads me to my next question.

Where were you between late February and mid-April, 1978? If you were alive and in front of the television, you may remember Quark. In space, someone has to pick up the trash, and Quark was about a spaceship and its crew that went around picking up the garbage. Richard Benjamin played Commander Quark (sounds like “Captain Kirk” doesn’t it)? The “Spock” character was a guy named Ficus, who was the science officer and, if memory serves, a plant. No, I don’t mean that some evil villain secretly planted him inside the ship with diabolic intent—I mean he was botanic rather than biologic. He was vegetable rather than animal; he was full of chlorophyll instead of blood. There was Gene/Jean, who was all man, or all woman, or at least 50% of each. They received their orders from Otto Palindrome. I had forgotten that his first name was Otto, which is, in itself, a palindrome. That character was played by Conrad Janis, who played Mindy’s father on Mork and Mindy.

Quark was a clever satire, but if you blinked your eyes you missed it, because it was only on for six episodes.

At this point, many of you are probably saying, “Jimbo, we could have gotten through this day without knowing about this. What about The Producers? Weren’t you going to tell us about that?”

Well, The Producers was good, funny and entertaining, but I’m not recommending it. I thought the original was better. There was too much singing and dancing for my tastes. Plus, they could have used Dick Shawn. Unfortunately, he is dead. Did I mention Dick Shawn was a frigging nut? Oh, yeah. I told you that a couple of days ago, didn’t I? I suppose when it seems to us that a failed television series of almost thirty years ago is more interesting that a hit movie, it tells us all we need to know.

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

having a smoke together

2006-01-01T05:43:00.000-08:00

I guess New Year’s Day is a light news day, because I read a story this morning about the hookah craze. No, this isn’t about a resurgence in popularity of ladies of the evening. Hookah’s are pipes used to smoke tobacco, and are typically used by several people at the same time. There is a community bowl of smoldering tobacco in the hookah and several hoses with mouthpieces connected to them. A group of people typically sits around the hookah and smokes from it at the same time. These things are popular in the Middle East. You may recall the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, was toking on one of these things. The general consensus, however, is that this particular insect was smoking something other than Carolina Burleigh in his pipe, and what he was smoking may have, it is suggested, caused his bizarre behavior.

The behavior of the caterpillar takes me back in time a number of years to my youth, when one could purchase a hookah at one of those “tobacco smoking accessories” stores. If you’re old enough you may remember having one in your neighborhood. They were typically places with sitar music playing, a door to the back room made of beads on a string and a guy who welcomed you into the establishment with the greeting, “Hey, man. What’s happening?” There were usually a selection of pipes and incense inside the glass counters and zigzag papers for sale behind the cash register. Or, at least, that’s what I am told as I would never have gone into one of those places myself.

You may recall that I blogged about hookahs a little over a year ago, on what must also have been a slow news day. Okay, you probably don’t. Hell, I barely remember it, myself, but here is what I said. Please disregard my ranting in the first paragraph about how oil prices at $42.50 a barrel were out of sight, as they are nearly 50% higher than that, now.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/12/happy-hookah.html

Anyway, like I said, it appears to be a slow news day, and I guess, for that matter, a slow blogging day. So I guess I just wrap this thing up by telling you HAPPY NEW YEAR from here in Jimbo’s world.

more cowbell

2005-12-30T05:04:00.000-08:00

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.

on my hands and knees for you, baby

2005-12-27T08:04:00.000-08:00

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.

happy holidays

2005-12-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas

a small phish in a large pond

2005-12-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

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.

lullaby of ebay land

2005-12-18T16:40:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-18T06:29:00.000-08:00

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.

recipes for quick holiday meals

2005-12-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

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.

snow for christmas

2005-12-16T07:22:00.000-08:00

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.

putting the OT in psychotic

2005-12-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

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?

2005-12-11T08:16:00.000-08:00

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.

out of whack

2005-12-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

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.

...and a chicken in every pot

2005-12-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

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.

o xmas tree, o xmas tree

2005-12-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-03T06:13:00.000-08:00

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.