spiders and snakes

This week at work, someone made a comment to me about their pets and how close they were to them. I commented that Jimbo’s girlfriend and I have no pets or creatures around chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. I think I spoke too soon.

This morning, while assembling my blog about the coins, I had a confrontation with a wolf spider. At least, I’m pretty sure it was a wolf spider. One of the guys who was in here earlier this year giving a quote to spray for termites identified a similar spider as a wolf spider. They are scary looking bastards. Please observe the photo below. Or, at least it should be below when I get this thing organized. If it is someplace else, I apologize in advance.




wolf spider
Posted by Picasa

The spider walked up the wall next to my desk and gave me a nasty look. I don’t want to offend anyone who is an animal lover, but I took a junk mail envelope out of the trash, put in on the wall on top of the spider and smacked it. I somehow missed hitting him and he ran down the wall and hid behind my desk. I pulled out the desk and sent the spider to his reward with a shoe, repeatedly bashing him.

Then, this afternoon, we cleaned up the yard and I cut the grass. Afterward, when I was putting away the mower, I noticed a dead snake at the front of the garage. It appears he made a dash for freedom or a dash inside out of the cold one night this week and only got as far as the garage door, where he met an untimely fate. It looks as if he was crushed by the door on the downward cycle. I looked up the snake on the internet and found some that looked like he did. Their countenances are below, again if I get this thing laid out correctly.





ringneck snake
Posted by Picasa

yet another ringneck
Posted by Picasa

I've read the wolf spiders aren't deadly, which is good. I also read the ringneck snake is not poisonous but will bite viciously. I hope the snake is indeed a ringneck and not an eastern diamondback rattlesnake, or that deadly little bastard that Aldo Ray had in the movie We're No Angels.

All of this had led me to rethink my statement of earlier in the week. While we officially don’t have any pets, it appears we have more critters around here than Ellie Mae Clampett.

Now all we have to do is get us one of those cement ponds.

a penny, a quarter and heartbreak

a penny and a quarter. heartbreak is more difficult to picture
Posted by Picasa

Jimbo has money on his mind, this morning.

Many months ago, when it appeared my house was sold and I was going to have a few pesos in my pocket, I saw a desk at Nebraska Furniture Mart that I decided I wanted to buy. I made the leap of the imagination that if I were to have a nice desk on which to keyboard, the quality of my weblogs would improve. The desk was too expensive just to grab a wad of bills out of my pocket and throw them on the counter, but they had a “twelve months, same as cash” payment plan that would have eased the pain of the financial outgo.

Last weekend, after the sale of my house was finally completed, and I had a few coins jingling in my pocket, my girlfriend and I went back to look at the desk and I still liked it and the payment plan was now twenty-four months. That made me think I should buy the desk, but I decided, as I do with any major purchase, to think about it for a few days. I became convinced late in the week that I should act, and so last night we went to make the purchase. The result was less than satisfactory.

I found out that delivery would be an extra $50. With diesel fuel and gasoline prices up, they have to charge for delivery, now. I could have lived with that, especially since the salesman hinted that he could waive the delivery charge. In the jargon of business, that means I would have had free delivery, had I insisted on it. However, I found out that the twenty-four-month interest-free payment plan was over. It is now sixty days. I told him I was no longer interested. He followed us for a while sweetening the deal, but he couldn’t do the financing, so we walked out. If one reads Chester Karras, the accepted master of negotiating, his principal is to be able to walk away if the deal isn’t what you want. I applaud you, Mr. Karras, and I followed your advice, but I don’t have the damned desk. Oh, well, this is just reward delayed, rather than reward denied. My love for that desk will not be unrequited. I’ll have it someday on my own terms. You’ll just have to be content with lower-quality blogs for a while.

The other financial episode about which I wish to inform you happened on Thursday night. Jimbo and his girlfriend decided we would take advantage of the Arby’s “five for $5.95” deal for supper. Procurement of the evening repast fell into the capable hands of Jimbo—a man whose litany of journeys into fast-food establishments are epic as the tales of Homer. Anyway, Jimbo ordered two roast beef sandwiches, two orders of fries--one regular and one curly—and mozzarella sticks. I tendered a $10 and the total, with tax, was just over $6, so I received three ones and a handful of change.

After dinner, sometime later in the evening, I emptied my pocket, so I could put my coins in a jar. In among my change was a 1941 penny—which I will add to my coin collection—and a 2005 Kansas quarter. I have scanned both of them for you viewing enjoyment, however the penny is pretty much unreadable. My bad.

The Kansas quarter has a bison on the back and sunflowers beside him. There is a herd of buffalo along the highway between chez Jimbo’s girlfriend and Jimbo’s son’s new residence. Some days the bison come out and stand by the fence so you can see them as you drive by. It is pretty impressive to see one (or a bunch of them) in person. They are a lot bigger than you would imagine. I think this is a good symbol for our state. If you don’t live here you probably have the impression that we are pretty backward, but we have had our share of intelligent people. When you read the news and find out we are still debating evolution eighty years after Scopes and 150 years after Darwin, you probably have to wonder. But even though Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts are from here, we have produced some leaders who knew what they were doing. You may recall Dwight Eisenhower, who was also a Republican. He was a “conservative,” but not conservative by today’s standards.

You may recall I talked about the movie Good Night and Good Luck last week. It was actually the Eisenhower administration that Senator McCarthy targeted. McCarthy was diminished while Ike survived. I thought it was appropriate that, in the movie, when all the dust had settled, Eisenhower was shown giving a speech, basically defining American civil liberties.

This is a place where William Inge taught high school in Columbus, and William Allen White published the Emporia Gazette and advised Presidents. Langston Hughes matriculated elementary school at Pinckney in Lawrence. Kerry Livgren, Steve Walsh, et. al. rocked Lawrence, Topeka and most of the rest of the world.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

I defy you to show me a better song that rhymes see and sea. I defy you to show me a better song, period.

Melissa Etheridge came from here, as did Jimbo’s girlfriend and Amelia Earhart.

Many of you are probably asking yourselves right now, “How can Jimbo go on and on about twenty-six cents? How long could he have jabbered if it had been a dollar?”

I don’t have an answer, but if I find a dollar, somewhere, we’ll find out. But, for the time being, I guess I’ve put in my twenty-six cents worth. And that is about what it is worth, here in Jimbo’s world.

a tale of the small screen on the big screen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a sale, a move and a cleaning

Yesterday was kind of an important day for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

portrait of a young man named bill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sunday morning gettin' up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sucess and failure

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

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