Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Cervidae overkill

Country singer Jason Aldean.


That must be one smart, wily deer.  Heck, my daughter got one with the bumper of her car, and she hadn't been driving longer than a week.  And she was wearing shorts and a tee-shirt.

Truth be known, I don't think he was hunting the four-legged kind, considering the comments he got when he posted this on Facebook:


That was a few of about 400 comments just like 'em.  Girls are worse than guys... sheesh!

By the way, my favorite Aldean song:


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Social Media: The Great Divide

Many issues divide us here in the US: Baseball/football, paper/plastic, TP from the top/TP from the bottom.

A phenomenon is growing within the realm of social media that is serving to widen the divide.  Political and social memes are running rampant, ripping away at fellow citizens, berating those less fortunate or who embrace a different belief system, and making insulting blanket statements about entire classes of human beings.

Ironic that the intent of those who developed services like Twitter and Facebook was to bring people together.

One of the most popular memes is against those who receive government assistance.  A brief anecdote and some history - my Grandfather was a WWII veteran.  He survived Pearl Harbor and went on to receive a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in combat.  In the 1970s, he and my Grandmother fell on hard times, and for a period, were forced to accept government help.  The day he applied, he cried.  He never thought he'd need it.  At the same time, he was thankful to have it, and our family survived.

That was an era when upward mobility was common.  Income disparity was relatively low.  Today, as the ultra rich get even richer, and middle and working class Americans (remember that collective word, Americans?) founder, the subject of income equality deserves a peek within the context of our history.

It's not a simple issue.  The current status of inequity in America (among the highest in the world) has a variety of causes.
...the U.S. still stands out as a developed economy with such a great divide between rich and poor. The reasons behind its weak showing on the global stage are many and experts differ over which factors predominate.

Technology has contributed to the growing gap. As jobs require greater skills, it's harder for those with just a high school diploma to land good-paying employment. A college degree has become a requirement for more lucrative positions.

At the same time, increased globalization is squeezing the middle class. Many companies are outsourcing jobs to other countries where workers are paid less. Also, other nations produce goods at cheaper prices so fewer U.S. firms are making items here. Hence, there are fewer opportunities to make a decent wage.

And what's unique to the United States is the relative lack of government support compared to Europe and Canada. Other countries provide more public services, including health insurance, higher education, daycare and pensions. And these benefits are provided on a more universal basis, rather than being dependent on one's income level, as in the United States.

"The U.S. government has done far less to address inequality in American society than any other of the rich countries," said Frederick Solt, an assistant political science professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Other factors also play a role in the widening divide in America.

Low-skilled immigrants to the U.S. increase the competition for low-wage jobs, said Lane Kenworthy, a sociology professor at the University of Arizona. This allows employers to keep a lid on wages.

At the same time, unions are losing their strength on this side of the pond, while they've retained more of their clout in Western Europe. Experts cite the decline of U.S. unions as one cause behind falling middle-class incomes.
Productivity has far outpaced pay in America.  Workers produce more, and earn less, than any time in recent history.  Profits have been assigned a higher importance than people.

I would add that our tax code serves to widen the gap, as large companies are recipients of incredibly fraudulent 'welfare' benefits, but that subject, and congressional corruption in general, deserves its own essay.

Back to my original point.  Social media, rather than the relative privacy of email, has become the clearing house for disparaging remarks about, among other groups, those who have been forced to turn to government aid to make ends meet.  Given the ability to 'hide' the offensive material, I suppose it's a positive change.

As a percentage, fraud and abuse of government assistance is low, and examples are generally anecdotal, so I wonder what purpose it serves to trot out these offensive clichés.  It certainly doesn't build any bridges, and those who are abusing the system probably aren't Facebook friends.  It serves mostly to boost the self-image and self-importance of the poster, I suppose.  For the rest of us, those who indulge those posts in our news feeds, it provides a peek into troubled minds.

If Grandpa were alive today, he would not approve.

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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Infuriating.

An excerpt from an article on Huffington Post, entitled Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son:
We said all the things that we thought loving Christian parents who believed the Bible, the Word of God, should say:

We love you. We will always love you. And this is hard. Really hard. But we know what God says about this, so you are going to have to make some really difficult choices.

We love you. We couldn't love you more. But there are other men who have faced this same struggle, and God has worked in them to change their desires. We'll get you their books; you can listen to their testimonies. And we will trust God with this.

We love you. We are so glad you are our son. But you are young, and your sexual orientation is still developing. The feelings you've had for other guys don't make you gay. So please don't tell anyone that you are gay. You don't know who you are yet. Your identity is not that you are gay; it is that you are a child of God.

We love you. Nothing will change that. But if you are going to follow Jesus, holiness is your only option. You are going to have to choose to follow Jesus, no matter what. And since you know what the Bible says, and since you want to follow God, embracing your sexuality is not an option.
I wonder what kind of parent could say any of that to their child. Afterward, he turned to drugs, then died of an overdose.

It's hard for me to read something like that and not want to punch a wall. As harsh a poison as drugs were to that young man, religion and his struggle with self hatred was far more damaging. It was his guilt and self loathing that drove him to what eventually killed him. A guilt which, instilled by organized religion into each follower, keeps them 'in the fold.'

The horrific existence required of Christians, Muslims and pretty much any other organized religion, save maybe Buddhism, has driven more wars, facilitated more self hatred, and silenced more voices than any other single cause I can think of.

And that these parents still can cling to this fantasy, despite having witnessed what it did to their son, is beyond my ability to understand, except to write it off to extreme brain washing.  They are touring and telling the story, in hopes of preventing it from happening to others.  That, in itself, is good I suppose.  But that they can still see value in the warped sense of reality fostered by organized religion is unfathomable.

For some, this story will be satisfying.  For me, it was infuriating, and has reawakened my hatred of religion on Ryan's behalf, and those like him who have suffered the cruelties of self-doubt and self-hatred, and who now look differently and judgmentally on themselves and their fellow man because of their own religious indoctrination.  It would jazz me to no end to be able to witness the crumbling of every church built in homage to such a god.

All of that from a reformed, formerly-obsessed Christian who lived the life, and damaged a lot of decent people.  That is a guilt I will have to live with for a long time.
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Monday, June 03, 2013

Why I Unfriended Rodney Carrington - A Mostly True Story. (except for the part about being true)

My friend Ned asked me why I unfriended Rodney Carrington. I tried to pass it off that it was because he was a vile racist, or had insulted my mother, but Ned saw right through that, so here’s the real story, as true as I’m standing here.

Rodney showed up at my house one night, drunk, after a half-day bender at the country club in my subdivision. I let him in.

I noticed a blood stain on his golf glove. I offered him a drink and we exited onto the deck - the weather was gorgeous. South wind 5-10 mph, 78 degrees, clear skies. You know, the kind of night you think you’ll always remember but it slips from your mind the first time you have a similar night. Before he had even settled into the wicker chair that we had cleverly come to know as 'Rodney's Chair', he opened up with a story tinged with anger, fear and a little bit of horror.

Apparently, he had killed his caddy and buried him in a shallow grave near the 13th green between two trees and dangerously close to a three foot deep bunker shaped like Hitler.

I mean shit, after hearing the story, the guy honestly had it coming to him. Listen to this: He had recommended a three wood for a shot into the wind with over 200 yards to go and we all know that the MOST Rodney can get out of a three into a light southerly breeze is maybe 185, right? And that’s on a GOOD day. I mean, c’mon.

At first, Rodney (as he tells it) just let it go. And by “let it go”, he berated the guy, insulted his wife, and told him that, by god, Fords suck, and the caddy drove this pretty sweet 2013 F-250 Super Duty Crew Cab with a turbo-diesel V8, a pair of those freakishly long back-up mirrors and some Yosemite Sam “Back Off” mud flaps, but I digress.

Then, before he knew it, he was overcome with rage, fueled by eight Drunk Arnold Palmers, three 50-gauge Cohiba Robustos and a 3.25 ounce pouch of teriyaki flavored jerky. When the caddy wasn't looking, Rodney let him have it with the full force of that three wood right upside the temple. And by “full force”, I mean Rodney clearly could have hit that ball a lot further than he did based on that swing, and so really the caddy was right after all so, good for the caddy, right? But at this point it was too late.

The caddy gave him a look as if to say “who the fuck do you think you…” and then Rodney hit him again. This time square in the crotch and I don’t mean he sliced it a little to the left, it landed right in the middle of the 'fairway' – a direct hit to the jewels.

The guy doubled over in that weird moment that we've all experienced, when the pain hasn't really set in, but we all know it’s about to, and JESUS will it hurt but there’s no way a man can describe it because frankly our voice has already moved into a range only dogs can hear, and besides, our lips won’t form words anyway.

As the guy fell to the ground, Rodney removed his left golf shoe, a FootJoy. (Their slogan is, "The No. 1 shoe in golf," and it's certainly been the preferred choice of top pros for years, even for golfers who are fixin’ to put a beating on their caddy they won’t soon forget.) Well, the cleat opened up the artery right below the chap’s left ear, and all at once, Rodney lost his balance as he swung the shoe (which leads me to believe, once again, that he probably COULDN'T have hit the green with that three wood after all), fell against the guy’s abdomen, and the pressure of the fall caused a gusher of blood to come out of that little bitty hole in the neck of the unfortunate caddy with the Ford F-250.

At that point, Rodney came back into a range of sanity that most of us don’t see for hours after consuming that much liquor.

He panicked. As a weird gurgling sounds came from the mouth of this fella, Rodney knew he wasn't long for this world. So, what to do? As he tells it, he dug through his golf bag and found a divot tool, a real nice ProActive G-Clip 4-in-1 with a picture of Retief Goosen on it and hey, that’s nice to see because that guy hardly gets any respect, being a really decent golfer and a helluva nice guy, but I digress.

Rodney proceeds to use this little divot tool to dig a hole to bury the guy. I don’t need to tell you how long that would take for a normal human being, but at this point Rodney is anything but normal and he had it dug in about 25 minutes.

Then as he was dragging the caddy’s lifeless carcass toward the hole, Rodney tells notices a piece of paper hanging from his pocket so he pulled it out to take a look. It was actually a business card – a real nice one with green shiny grass on the bottom, the kind you’d probably pay fifty cents apiece for at Kinko’s but I’ll bet he got them from Vista Printing because they had a really great deal on them back in mid February as part of their anniversary sale, but I digress.

On the card, the caddy’s Facebook page was printed clear as day. And as Rodney told it, since I was going to probably have to talk to the police at some point in the future, it would probably look good if we both ‘liked’ the caddy’s page. Maybe it would seem like we were real friendly with the guy and would have no earthly reason to beat him to death with a golf club.

While we were discussing it, Rodney put all of this crazy guilt on me for never having friended him. He listed off about twenty other people on my friend list that weren't nearly as good of friends as he was, unless of course, as he put it, we "weren't as close as he thought."

At that point I panicked. He had just told the story of how he bumped off the caddy and I wasn't in the mood to get sideways with Rodney Carrington.

So I friended him.

Then it struck me. What if the police made a big deal of that little friending gesture that happened to occur on the approximate date the coroner had determined that poor caddy had been killed only two clicks east of my house near that Hitler-shaped bunker while caddying for Rodney Carrington?  I would be fingered as an accomplice sure as hell. I can’t have that happen at this point in my life, I have kids and a wife and a pretty clean record except for that night I spent at the St. Charles County jail for public urination.

And that’s why I unfriended Rodney Carrington.

Probably.
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Truth


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Monday, February 18, 2013

Play Something We Can Dance To

I met Mindy McCready when she came to St. Louis in 1996 before releasing her first single, 10,000 Angels. She was pretty much just a kid and was really nervous, but we joked around about her record company rep, and the radio business, and before long she had loosened up a little and we were getting along well.

I took the group of us to this Sinatra themed restaurant called The Summit, and we ended up staying out pretty late that night.  She hadn't turned 21 yet, so she couldn't partake of the wine we had for dinner, so I suggested we all go back to my place for a nightcap.

It ended up being just Mindy, her boyfriend (and legendary Nashville producer) David Malloy, and me, and we picked up wine and beer on the way.  I admit that at the time, Malloy was more of a thrill for me than Mindy, he had produced some of Nashville's biggest and best artists. (He was also her producer at the time.)

By midnight we were sitting on my living room floor drinking wine, rummaging through my CD collection, each of us picking off-beat songs we loved (album cuts), playing them, and lamenting how none of those songs got played on the radio.

Time did what it always does, and at about 3:30 I picked the last song of the night, Billy Dean's "Play Something We Can Dance To."  The song was important to me at the time because I had just been through a divorce which I described to them, and the song lyrics really hit home.  As we listened, the song made Mindy cry.  Every time I hear it now I think of her instead of my ex.

We finally wrapped up at around 4 am, and they headed to the airport for an early flight back to Nashville.  That morning at about 9:30 my phone rang, and it was Mindy.  She said she felt bad about waking me up but had a story she couldn't wait to tell me.  Apparently, when they got to the gate at the airport, there was a guy sitting there with a guitar case, and David recognized him as a songwriter from Nashville, Dennis Morgan - who co-wrote "Play Something We Can Dance To" with Billy Dean.  As they waited for the flight, she told him the story of our night, and how his song had been the teary nightcap, and he was very touched.  It's a small world.

It wasn't long before I saw Mindy again, as her debut concert happened in STL a few months later, opening for George Strait.  She was so nervous she threw up for 2 hours before the show, but when the lights came up, she was absolutely perfect.  What a night.

We stayed in touch and saw each other many times along the way.  We talked when she stopped seeing David, and again when Dean Cain proposed to her.  She also called me, heartbroken, when he broke up with her. After that she went off the rails a little, and ended up coming back to town to play on a much smaller stage, giving what I can only describe as a mystifying performance.

I haven't seen her in more than 9 years, but I've heard the rumors and read the headlines along the way.  And now, this news.  As I struggle to write down my thoughts, I could easily talk about how troubled she was, I could rehash her personal choices, and pick over her life with a fine toothed comb, but there's no need.  The truth is, she was one of the sweetest people I've ever met, and I feel a profound sadness tonight for her sons and family.

The photo I've chosen to include is of better days.  Goodspeed, Mindy.  I will miss you.
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Wednesday, February 06, 2013

It's all a matter of perspective.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The more things change

One morning, long before the recession hit, I was following a garbage truck down the street, watching as a large mechanical arm reached out and picked up trash cans, lifted them above the truck and dumped the contents inside.

As I watched, I remembered not long ago when two men would run the routes, one riding on the back of the truck while the other drove the vehicle.  The guy on the back was in charge of 'collection', not a clean job but probably good pay and an on-the-job fitness program.  He was also the socialite, waving to neighbors and exchanging pleasantries.

We used to leave Christmas goodies on top of our can on the last pickup day before the holiday.  Generally it was a big tin of cookies, enough for two.  But I digress.

As I watched the newer truck with its single driver, I wondered what became of the guy on the back.  Obviously his job was cut, a consequence of the confluence of technology and budgetary realities.  One could argue that the development of the mechanical 'garbage arm' permanently eliminated half of the collection jobs.  Fifty percent, gone forever.

I'm no Luddite, I embrace technology and love how it has made my life easier.  The dream of the human race has long been to develop robots to do the dirty work.  The Jetsons had Rosie the Housekeeper.  The Robinsons had 'Robot', whose verbal alerts of impending doom ("Warning, alien approaching!") saved the lives of the family more than once.  He was also a vicious chess player.

Be careful what you wish for.

When the housing market collapsed and the world slumped into the Great Recession, CEOs of companies with large work forces began licking their chops.  Though regrettable, this recession is just what they needed: an excuse to lay off huge swaths of workers.  Millions lost their jobs and found themselves, many for the first time, in the unemployment line.  Their replacements?  Algorithms, robots, and when a live person is needed, temp workers who receive no benefits beyond an hourly wage.  A CEO's wet dream.  Wall Street's Perfect Storm.

And the Middle Class's death knell.

Courtesy of the Associated Press:


"The jobs that are going away aren't coming back," says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of "Race Against the Machine." ''I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and abilities as they have over the past seven years."
The global economy is being reshaped by machines that generate and analyze vast amounts of data; by devices such as smartphones and tablet computers that let people work just about anywhere, even when they're on the move; by smarter, nimbler robots; and by services that let businesses rent computing power when they need it, instead of installing expensive equipment and hiring IT staffs to run it. Whole employment categories, from secretaries to travel agents, are starting to disappear.
"There's no sector of the economy that's going to get a pass," says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote "The Lights in the Tunnel," a book predicting widespread job losses. "It's everywhere."
The numbers startle even labor economists. In the United States, half the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession were in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are in midpay industries. Nearly 70 percent are in low-pay industries, 29 percent in industries that pay well.
The implications are startling.  The unemployment numbers remain in the 7's because it's the new reality.  There will be no big recovery this time.  A recovery requires new jobs.  Those jobs are now permanently gone.

We're not alone.  Technology has enabled US corporations to eliminate jobs in other countries as well.  Places like China, Taiwan, India and other developing countries are feeling the same pinch.  It's mind blowing.  For the first time in our history, we're facing the reality of the leaps in technology that have quietly, slowly allowed us to replace ourselves.

The Pollyanna in me says, great - we're free to spend more time with family, enjoy the little things, smell the roses.  Good, right?  The problem is, our society is built upon working, collecting a check, and re-spending that income in our economy.  If we can't do that, major changes will need to take place.

Watch this:


So now, we're faced with the challenge of our time.  How do we rise to meet it?  How must the world change if we're to continue our way of life?  What will the new paradigm look like?  Will we revert to farming our own food?  We won't be able to afford food from a grocery store.  Educating our own children?  The tax base will drop precipitously, making our current education system untenable.

It's difficult to imagine all of the implications, but it's clear we're whistling past the graveyard now, finger pointing as to why the unemployment numbers are still high.  Folks, the numbers aren't coming back.
You’ve been replaced. Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class. The working class. Most jobs that existed 20 years ago aren’t needed now. Maybe they never were needed. The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs crying through their cigars, “how are we going to fire all this dead weight?” 2008 finally gave them the chance. “It was the economy!” they said. The country has been out of a recession since 2009. Four years now. But the jobs have not come back. I asked many of these CEOs: did you just use that as an excuse to fire people, and they would wink and say, “let’s just leave it at that.”
I’m on the board of directors of a temp staffing company with $600 million in revenues. I can see it happening across every sector of the economy. Everyone is getting fired. Everyone is toilet paper now.
Flush.

The good news is, you won't need to bake as many cookies for the trash guys.  Post your thoughts in the comments section.

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Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Oldest Rock in the World (not even on AARP yet)

What have we learned from the 'oldest rock in the world'? Tons.

We've learned that what we think we know about early Earth is actually a patchwork of best guesses.  Most of them are probably wrong.
This period has a name; it's called the Hadean Eon, from the ancient Greek, Hades — basically, a polite term for "hellish." Hell melted all the rocks on the Earth's surface, and when it's as hot as Hades, you can't have life, either. The Earth had to wait for its first living creature until later — till things cooled and quieted down. That, anyway, is what we used to think.
Fascinating.  What we know about the universe is.. not much.  But we're learning.  More info here.

The core of a zircon.
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May I Borrow a Cup of Sugar?


My neighbor stopped by the other day to tell me my irrigation system was leaking into my side yard.  Norm doesn't stop by too often, but when he does, it's always because something within his purview is amiss. Last time, I had lost a few shingles during a storm.

Next-Door-Norm is handy for keeping me informed about my house.  But that's as far as we go.

I've tried.  I once wandered next door when he was weeding his flowerbed.  I asked him how he was.  "Fine."  Not, "how about you?"  So I mentioned the weather.  "Yep."  I stood there for 30 seconds watching him, hands in my pockets, then told him to have a good one.  I wandered back into my own yard.

Norm's daughter hangs outside and plays with my son, but Norm and his wife keep to themselves.  I know nothing about them beyond the tidy nature of their yard.  The yard is always very clean, which is impressive.  Very tidy.

Remember when neighbors used to talk?  When I was a boy, Ailene and Shorty were over twice a week for cards.  If we were out of something, Harold Young next door probably had it.  My grandpa "loaned" Bill Blackman a quart of oil once and I spent more time than I'd like to admit considering what condition it would be in when he returned it.

I wonder if Next-Door-Norm would loan me a quart of oil.  I wonder if he'd let me use his phone sometime. I kind of doubt it.  I bet he just wouldn't answer the door.

Neighbors just aren't the same nowadays.
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