Bitter – Page 3 – HappyStinkingJoy

The Dreams of Our Youth

Ahhh… remember back to the days of your youth. These were magical years where your future seemed so bright. Remember? From the end of August to mid-May, you learned and played sports and hung out with your friends all day. But summer was when the true magic happened. Summers were a seemingly endless period of long, hot days and cool, enchanted nights. You could ride your bike with your friends day after day and it never got old. As young boys, my friends and I would ride bikes and play catch and start a pick-up game of kickball of football and hike paths and climb trees and hang-out at our favorite stores (… uh… it was Fort Peck, Montana, so there was only one) and swim at the pool or at the lake and, as we got older, appreciate the way our rapidly-maturing female friends were filling out their bathing suits in spectacular new ways… and the summers seemed to last an eternity.

As we got older, some of us started getting summer jobs, and some of us got jobs year-round. School got harder, and we had to start really thinking about our futures. Then, college called to some of us, and some of us went straight to full-time, real-world work; but we still held tight to our dreams. Those of us who went to college soon joined our working friends. During these years, many of us fell in love, got married, started families; the dreams were still there.

Our kids started to grow up. Soon, we could see our kids enjoying many of the same things we enjoyed in our youth, and we were starting to feel a little old. The dreams were still hanging on, but we began to wonder how we were going to accomplish them with a full family life. Oh well, maybe after the kids are grown and on their own.

Soon, we start living vicariously through our kids. Maybe we want our kid to be that great sports star we never were. Or maybe we want our kid to be the genius we were never smart enough to be. Or perhaps we want our kid to be the singer or actor or musician we never had the confidence to attempt to find within ourselves. Our dreams migrate to the purgatory of our consciousness, awaiting the day when they will either realize the joyous fruition of heavenly accomplishment or be cast to the inescapable torment of hellish failure. We start trying to help our children with their dreams, which are merely extensions of the dreams we had in our youth. We start to realize that our age is actually catching up with us.

We become obnoxiously proud parents, praising the accomplishments of our children as if they were our own… often to the major annoyance of most other adults around us. Soon, we find that other adults begin to avoid us because they really don’t care how good little Jimmy’s baseball team did… or how excellent little Susie’s dance recital went. We become monsters who seem intent at driving everyone away from us… everyone except our families. We scream at the umpires or referees at a game because their calls made our kid’s team lose. We badmouth the teacher who doesn’t truly see our child’s intelligence. We harbor ill-will toward the second-chair trumpet player who screwed up during the concert and made our first-chair child look bad. We become bearers of vehement hate toward every single person or thing that interferes with our child’s success. Our age is no longer catching up with us; it has caught us and is a driving force in our lives.

Our children, meanwhile, are oblivious. They are focusing on having fun and creating their own dreams.

Soon, the kids are off to college or work, and we have the houses to ourselves again. We are still focusing on the dreams of our kids. We give career advice. We warn them of the mistakes we made along the way. We tell them what they should do to be happy, which is really what we should have done to be happy. Our hindsight is, for the most part, ignored by our children.

Our kids are now adults, they are working full-time, many of them are happily married… and before you know it, we’re grandparents. Our kids seem to have put their dreams on hold in an attempt to help their kids create new dreams. Finally, there is time for us to focus on our dreams once again, so we search. We search our consciousness for those dreams of our youth. We search for the motivation to once again bring them to the front of our minds. Funny thing is, when we search for our dreams, the smell of brimstone becomes overpowering, and just the thought of trying to accomplish those dreams makes us very tired. We have moved beyond old and are now ancient.

Ahhh… it was nice to have dreams. Too bad we never found the time or will to accomplish them. What to do now? Ooooh… looks like the grand kids could use some help with their dreams…

The City and County of Denver is run by Morons

I received a parking ticket while in Denver a few weeks back. I went to this DISH Network deal, because the place I work at is going to start selling DISH. So, it wasn’t for fun. Hell, it wasn’t even that enjoyable. The whole thing was kind of over my head, and no one was overly friendly, and the whole thing kind of sucked. This is going to come as a complete shock, but I’m not real fond of being around people. I know, I know, I seem like such a people person. Yeah, I’m afraid that too many years of dealing with bitchy, self-absorbed people and their stinking problems that I cannot fix have led me to see the worst in people. I don’t give anyone a fair shake anymore. I just start looking for the aspects of their personalities that are going to piss me off right from the start. Life is easier this way, and believe you me, everyone can piss you off if you just give them half a chance.

So, anyway, after this DISH thing, I go out to my car and there’s a flipping parking ticket in my door. ‘What the hell?’ I think to myself… actually, I believe I may have yelled it out loud. I grab the ticket and try to figure out what it is for.

Okay, so from my rear tire to my rear bumper is in the driveway of the place I went to the DISH thing at. By the way, their driveway is like a football field wide. I had no idea I was violating any sort of ordinance, so once I get home to Nebraska, I call the number on the ticket to dispute it. It is pretty obvious that the chick who answers the phone does not like dealing with people calling to dispute tickets all day. I explain the situation to her, that I’m from out of town, that I was hardly in the HUGE driveway, that there are no markings or signs stating where you can or cannot park, etc.

“Denver statute states that you can not park within five feet of a driveway,” she obviously reads from some sort of card.

“How am I supposed to know what Denver statutes are?” I ask. I’m not being snotty or rude or anything, just asking a question.

“Well, sir,” she practically seethes, “you will have to file a protest by mail.”

“Then why is this phone number on the citation I received,” I ask. I’m starting to feel not so polite.

“Or you can schedule a time in front of the magistrate.” She completely ignores my question.

I hang up.

So, I send the following letter, with documentation, to the Bureau of Idiots Who Penalize Visitors to the City and County of Denver… or whatever:

Yes, I’m anal and even included a Goggle Earth image of the driveway… just to prove my point about how long that stinking driveway was.

I mail my dispute, confident that they will let the whole situation serve as a warning and let it rest at that. I figure the next time I go to Denver, I will know better and I will be able to follow the ordinance. I start to have flashbacks to my dispute of my property tax increase with the idiots who call themselves commissioners for Scotts Bluff County, but I figure I can’t lose every time I battle the powers that be, right? Right?

A couple of weeks go by, and I get the following response from the Bureau of Idiots Who Penalize Visitors to the City and County of Denver:

Seriously… a form letter? I go off. No wonder my blood pressure is out of control and I’m on the verge of a heart attack. Every one I deal with has their head up their hiney and is out to get me.

“Screw it,” I yell. “I’ll just not pay it. What are they gonna do, send meter maid Lefebre up to Nebraska to arrest me?”

My wife tells me to calm down.

“I don’t care if they issue a warrant for my arrest in Denver. They’ll never catch me… and if they do, they’ll never take me alive!”

My wife tells me I’m overreacting.

“I’m not overreacting! Stupid meter maid Lefebre is obviously just a Colorado Buffaloes fan, saw my Nebraska plates, and is taking it out on me that the Huskers kick the snot out of the Buffs almost every time they play… and I don’t even care about the stupid rivalry!”

My wife tells me I need to watch my blood pressure. She tells me that the ticket is going to be paid and I don’t need something stupid like this going on my record.

“Fine,” I yell. It’s kind of funny how I let everything piss me off and I end up yelling at my wife because of it. She doesn’t think it’s really funny, but you know what I mean. “But I’m going to let them know how I feel about it.”

The wife rolls her eyes and smiles… which see seems to do a lot when I’m all torked off.

So, I type up the following and include it with the payment to the Bureau of Idiots Who Penalize Visitors to the City and County of Denver:

I mailed it yesterday. They will probably receive it the first of next week, and I bet no one even takes the time to read it… but I don’t care. I feel better for having written it, and the next time I go to Denver, I’m going to violate as many parking ordinances as I can… even though I don’t have a freaking clue as to what any of them are. I bet I’ll be able to do it without even trying… and I bet meter maid Lefebre will be waiting for me…

Why I Avoid Medical People…

My snore has been likened to the thunderous growl of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Now, I know that no living person is exactly sure what a T. Rex growl really sounds like, but I have been told that my snore has to be in the ballpark.

Of course, I have never heard my snore. My snoring has woke me up in the middle of the night on thousands of occasions, but by the time I’m actually awake, I’m done snoring. Funny how that works.

Anyway, my wife and I have been married for over 16 years. My wife has complained about my snoring for, well, a little over 16 years. I finally decided that maybe it was time to do something about it. See what a great guy I am?

Why would I avoid going to the doctor to have something done about my snoring? Well, the reasons are multiple:

1st: I hate doctors. I don’t hate them on a personal level, I just don’t like the fact that I have to rely on someone who makes a buttload of money for my physical well being. I also don’t like the fact that I have to pay said person a buttload of money for services rendered. Yeah… it’s all about the Benjamins.

I couldn’t be a doctor because I’m really not smart enough, and the thought of messing with someone’s other than my own bodily fluids makes me slightly light-headed. Just another of the “life isn’t fair” deals that pisses me off. Okay, so maybe I do hate them on a personal level…

2nd: When you go to the doctor, he or she always ends up finding a bunch of crap wrong that has nothing to do with the reason for your visit. It’s kind of like when you take your car in for an oil change, you know. All of a sudden, you’re needing new brake pads and a front-end alignment and your head-gasket is leaking… you, at the doctor… your car, at the mechanic… it’s all the same. Now that I am “in my forties”, I know that crap is going to start breaking down at an alarming rate. I’d really rather just not know about it. After all, maybe I can get another 2000 miles out of the car without fixing the problem, right? Besides, it seems like when they start trying to fix one problem, everything else starts to go to hell. You know, like the 35-year-old lady who goes in because she sprains her ankle, and they discover she has pancreatic cancer, so they cut her open to get to the cancer, and they find out that it is EVERYWHERE, and she is dead within a couple of weeks… because of a stinking sprained ankle. If she hadn’t gone in for the stupid sprained ankle, she would probably be alive today!

3rd: Uh… I don’t take exactly the best care of myself. I know this. I don’t need some yahoo driving a BMW to point this out and talk down to me while doing so, because when he or she does, my level of class-envy goes through the stinking roof!

Okay, so I don’t like going to the doctor. In fact, I don’t even have a doctor. I go to a local urgent care clinic (Quick Care) for all of my medical needs… which are few and far between. You’d think that, seeing as how I’m getting to the point where annual visits are looming on the horizon, I should probably find a doctor. I don’t like shopping for shoes… and I like shoes… so why would I spend time shopping for a doctor?

So, back to the snoring. I call one of them “sleep centers” (Western Sleep Medicine, I believe it is called) to see how I go about getting fitted with one of those Darth Vader masks to make me stop snoring.

They say I have to be referred by a doctor. I say I don’t have a doctor. They say I can use Quick Care to refer me. I call Quick Care and make sure that they can refer me, which they reassure me that they can. I ask, “So, uh, I’m wanting a referral for a sleep study… and that’s it. You aren’t going to test me for a bunch of other crap, are you?” And I am reassured that I will only be tested for the condition that I am visiting about. Great! So I drive on over to Quick Care. Never believe medical people.

I get to Quick Care and they make me fill out the stinking form that all medical places make you fill out when you first arrive. I get done filling the stupid form out and I realize that right beside the line where I fill-out my date of birth, there is a line for me to fill-out my age. I ask the receptionist, “So, why is there a line right beside my date of birth for my age. Wouldn’t just my date of birth be sufficient? Can’t you figure out my age?” Of course, I’m being a little smart-assy, but in a good-natured way. The receptionists at Quick Care are not exactly “good natured”.

“It’s there so we don’t have to figure it out,” the receptionist says, and I can tell by the look on her face that I’m pissing her off by breathing her air, so I let it drop.

So now I’m thinking to myself that I may be making a mistake by not actually having an actual doctor. I’m thinking that using Quick Care for a referral may not have been the swiftest of my most recent decisions. Did I have to list my age beside my date of birth so they didn’t have to figure it out… or because they couldn’t figure it out? I know, I should assume that the receptionist (or anyone else who touches my chart) would be able to figure out my age from my date of birth. However, before I entered Quick Care, I assumed that a receptionist in a place where people are going to have medical issues addressed and are looking for a little comfort would be able to smile… or at least be partially pleasant. I have learned to never trust my assumptions.

After a short wait, I am led into an examination room. The nurse tells me that the first thing she needs to do is check my blood pressure. Crap! This is exactly what I don’t want. This is why I called before I came… to make sure unnecessary crap wasn’t going to be tested. What does my blood pressure have to do with my snoring? But I’m already thinking I need to keep my mouth shut because of the whole receptionist encounter, so I sit down and let her test it.

170 over 130.

She looks at me like I should already be dead.

“Uh, is your blood pressure always this high?” she asked.

“No, these places freak me out,” I said. “It’s usually more like 150 over 100.” Of course my blood pressure is high. Everyone and their dog stresses me out. I hate any sort of confrontation and life is full of it… confrontation that is. The older I get, the less I am able to deal with the basic BS that every person on the planet seems intent on dishing out. If I could hole-up in a dark room and not have to ever deal with anyone or their problems, I bet my blood pressure would be just fine. I pray to God to let me not get stressed out, but stress is still there around every single stinking corner in this road of life… and God just looks down from heaven and laughs. I think jacking around with me is how God deals with His own stress.

Again… she looks at me like I should already be dead.

“I’m going to get the P.A.,” she said and disappeared out the door.

P.A. stands for “physician’s assistant”. A P.A. is like a doctor, except they didn’t have to go to school as long as a doctor, and instead of BMWs, they usually drive Audis. I don’t hate P.A.s quite as much as I hate doctors.

The P.A. comes in and he talks about getting me a referral for the sleep test, he fills out the necessary paperwork, and then he starts talking about what we are going to do about my blood pressure. He has the nurse run a ECG, and then she sticks me with a needle and red crap comes out my arm into a little vial. I’m ready to pass out as he tells me about the blood pressure medication that I’m going to be put on.

Crap!

So, I leave, I go and get my blood pressure medication, and I go home.

The next day, I take the first of the pills. It’s Lisinopril. It’s supposed to have very few side-effects. I notice nothing and think I’m golden.

I take my second pill the following morning. All is well… until I get out of the shower, reach for the hair gel (it’s Sunday, and I gel my hair up on Sunday to keep from looking like such a hippie freak), and I fall to the floor with chest pain. I can’t even stand up. The wife and kids are already gone, because the wife takes the kids to Sunday school.

Crap!

Okay, so I figure I’m having a heart attack. Figures, right? I mean, if I hadn’t gone in for the stupid snoring issue, I would have been fine. Anyway, I’m downstairs, and I need to find a way to get upstairs. I figure out that if I bend over and do not stand straight up, I can walk without a ton of pain. So I hunch it upstairs and sit down at the dining room table. I start weighing my options.

I can call the wife and freak the crap out of her. Yeah… not going to happen.

I can call 911 and get an ambulance coming. That would, however, be expensive. I’m all about the Benjamins.

Then, I start thinking that I really don’t feel like I’m going to die. You know how people who have heart attacks claim that they get all freaked out because they can tell that they are dying? Well, I’m not freaking out. I’m just pissed because my chest hurts. There is no pain shooting through my shoulder or up my arm, just a sharp pain under my left man-boob. Feels more like something is pulled than I’m dying. I think to myself, “If this cramp in my chest gets worse, do I feel like my heart is going to stop?” I answer myself, “No.” So, I sit there and wait for the pain to go away.

Western Sleep Medicine is supposed to call me to schedule a sleep study. I haven’t heard from them yet. I may not have to worry about it. After all, I went to medical people for one problem and they discovered another. I give myself two weeks, tops. Damn it… I swear, I could have got another 2000 miles out of this s.o.b.

Stinking “Social Network”

So I watched The Social Network last night. My oldest son just turned 13, and he really wanted to see this movie, and this movie is PG-13, so we got it for him for his birthday. If you live in a cave, you might not know that The Social Network is the story of how Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook.

We all enjoyed the movie. I thought they were only able to drop one F-bomb in a PG-13 movie, but it looks like this one was able to get away with a couple. The language and some of the implied sexual content made me a little uncomfortable watching this with my son (The Suite Life of Zack & Cody’s Brenda Song goes all Monica Lewinski in a bathroom stall… which was odd to watch with a boy who has grown up watching that particular show).

Overall, however, this was a good flick. It was kind of cool to see how one of the world’s most addictive on-line presences got its start. It’s kind of funny, the Mark Zuckerberg character is not very likeable, but you just can’t hate him. He is emotionally immature, self-centered, egotistical, arrogant… highly intelligent and hard not to kind of like. He screws over his girlfriend, his best friend, and a group of preppies that are counting on him. In fact, he appears to only have his interests in mind with almost every decision he makes. Still, you can’t help but root for the dorky little jerk. Whether or not the real Mark Zuckerberg is anything like the character played by Jesse Eisenberg, who knows. Not me, for sure. I am neither in the same social strata as young billionaire geniuses nor successful Hollywood actors.

I bet that a lot of people who have not seen this movie (or who haven’t gone to a prestigious college in the last few years) will not know that Facebook was started as an ultra-exclusive, Harvard-student-only website. Quickly, Zuckerberg let it spread to other prestigious universities, and then less prestigious universities, and then, when the true monetary potential of Facebook came into focus… the world. In the original plans for Facebook, us average folks weren’t included.

I remember a few years ago, I had a recent college graduate as a coworker. He had graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. I had recently started a Facebook account, and I was talking to him about it. He made a comment about how “Facebook just isn’t the same since it isn’t exclusively college students anymore.” I took offense at his statement. I felt he was saying that us old timers and regular Joes were ruining something that had once been “hip” and “fun”. How dare we reconnect with relatives and old friends. How dare we stay in contact with people who would have normally faded silently into our pasts. If I had known then what I know now, I may have said something like, “Yeah, I bet that’s the same thing the preppies at Harvard thought when they started to let a bunch of cornhusker hicks from UNL join Facebook.” Hahaha… sometimes hindsight makes me feel kind of good.

Watching a good movie should do one of two things:

1. let you escape from reality, or

2. make you think.

The Social Network , for me, did both. I enjoyed watching the snotty people get what was coming to them. I enjoyed seeing how Facebook got its slightly-shady start. As far as the thinking goes, it made me wonder why , in the grand scheme of things, some people are smarter than others, thus giving them an unfair advantage in the ability to come up with cool ideas and make a crapload of money. Why am I not one of those brilliant people? I know… I know… anyone can learn anything and you are only limited by your ability to sacrifice and learn and blah blah blah blah… that’s a load of phooey.

**SEE, look at ME, I’m all old using words like PHOOEY, for crying out loud.**

Some people are just naturally smarter than other. Some people have a definite advantage in the race to success. Of course, in the case of the movie versionof Mark Zuckerberg, he kind of screwed over a lot of people to get there. Part of me thinks his sacrifice is not something I could bring myself to do. The other part of me… the sane, rational part… thinks that for a net worth of that is now probably in the tens of billions of dollars, I may have screwed over a friend or two along the way as well 🙂 But since I ain’t real smart or nothin’, I’ll just keep tryin’ the way I have been tryin’ most my life…

Dr. Joyce Brothers, AKA, Ms. In-Her-Own-World!

Okay, so I’m reading through the local paper, the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, when I come across the wonderful advice column of Dr. Joyce Brothers. Now, I’m a few days behind on reading the newspaper because… well, I just am. So this is actually the paper from January 29th of this year. I usually read Dr. Brothers’ column, think to myself how silly her advice is, and go on my merry way. Her column in this particular paper, however, just seemed to rub me the wrong way.

The question to Dr. Brothers is from a high-school senior who wants to get a job. The kid refers to herself (or himself) as P.A. P.A.’s dad does not want P.A. to get a job. The reasoning P.A. gives is, “I am planning on working at a beauty salon after I graduate, and my dad says that is soon enough to join the ‘rat race.’ His only reason seems to be that he wants me to have fun while I can. Is this normal?”

Dr. Brothers gives a response and answer to the question, part of which is as follows:

“It may be normal for your dad, because he’s operating from his unique worldview and trying hard to keep within that comfort zone that he has set up for himself. Without knowing more about him, I can only guess that he has had to struggle in his life, and that he views work as something that isn’t very pleasant, just a means to an end. He sounds like a conscientious guy who has sacrificed for his family. He can’t imagine you being all grown up and wanting to take on the responsibilities of a job just yet. He’s definitely got some issues.”

Seriously… what the crap… huh? I guess all of this seems to make sense… until you get to that last sentence. “He’s definitely got some issues.” Is that a typo? Was that supposed to be “He’s definitely got a point”? I don’t think it was. I think Dr. Joyce is casting judgement on this father because of his view of “work”. Do most people in our society not at least somewhat share the worldview of this father? After all, it’s called “work”, not “playtime in LaLa Land”.

I don’t think most people wake up every morning and think to themselves, “Ah, another wonderful day of work!” Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. I really believe that most people view work as a means to an end… hopefully it has something to do with retirement. This doesn’t mean that everyone absolutely hates their jobs; but given the choice, I think most people could find something more enjoyable to do with their time than work a job. Dr. Brothers apparently does not fall into the category of “most people”.

I understand that there are people out there who absolutely love what they do for a living. Those people are few and far between. I think most of us can remember back to the days before we had to work a job. Those were, for the most part, less stressful and more enjoyable than time spent in the work-a-day world. Why would the father, remembering back to his pre-work days and wanting his child to enjoy those days in the child’s life, have “issues”? What a judgmental opinion to express! How dare she!

Dr. Brothers needs to wake up and smell the we-don’t-all-get-to-make-a-living-handing-out-our-opinions-as-advice-coffee. There are those of us who have slight trepidation at the thought of how our children will be forced to change when they enter the work-a-day world. It’s not about not wanting our children to grow up. It’s all about how so many of us become cynical, bitter old farts because of the crap we are forced to deal with in life, a large portion of which comes from dealing with “work”, and we don’t want our children to go through what we have gone through.

That’s not an “issue”. That is a point… and a damn good one.

Besides, the kid is planning on a career at a beauty salon. You can’t tell me that working with other people’s stinky heads all day is going to be pleasant? This father is really just trying to look out for the kid 🙂

The Weather Down Here? It Sucks!

Being short is not cool. Short people are seldom respected, self-confident, successful, or desirable. If being short was a positive trait, then in your youth, your parents would have lectured, “Drink your coffee. That stuff is good for you… it stunts your growth!” Instead, parents emphasized the danger of coffee stunting growth as a warning, much like the if-you-cross-your-eyes-they-will-stay-like-that-forever warning, or the if-you-do-that-too-much-you-will-go-blind warning. Being short is perceived to be as undesirable as walking around for the rest of your life crossed-eyed, blind and acne-scarred… with hairy palms. sigh Being short is not cool.

If you haven’t been able to guess this fact, I’m short. So, what exactly does “short” mean? Well, I’m kind of thinking that “short” means below the average height those around you. In other words, I’m short because I’m below the average height of a male in the United States of America. Wikipedia actually has a really nice breakdown of the average heights around the world.

Ok, so I’m 5′ 7″. The average male in the U.S. is 5′ 9 1/2″. See how they do that crap? ‘1/2″ ‘. They gotta throw in that 1/2″ just to rub it in a short guys face. The bastards! And that’s just “average” U.S. males. The average “white” U.S. male (which, I’m a cracker) is 5’10”. Seriously?!? I’m a full 3″ shorter than my cracker brothers?!? sigh… no wonder I can’t seem to get a fair shake.

Alrighty, so let’s think back to short people who have been successful. Any leaders that you can think of who were short? Well, of course, there was Napoleon Bonaparte, right? You know, the little French dude who was thought to be a little power-hungry. In fact, Napoleon, had a complex named after him: Napoleon Complex.

The Napoleon Complex is an informal term describing an alleged type of inferiority complex which is said to affect some people, especially men, who are short in stature. So, Napoleon must have been a real shorty, huh? Just a tiny little guy, right? Guess how tall Napoleon was. C’mon, take a stab at it! That’s right, Napoleon was 5’7″!!! Oh, for crying out loud…

So, who are some other famous short guys… or, maybe I should write, who are some other guys famous for being short? Well, there aren’t really many famous athletes. In order to be a competitive athlete, one has to be relatively tall. So, a career in athletics was never in the cards for me. So when I complain that athletes are overpaid entertainers, and people say crap like, “They had to work hard to get where they are,” I have to come back with, “Yeah, I guess working hard at having parents with the right genetics earns them a multi-million dollar-per-year contract.” Seriously.

Hey, what about Danny Devito! He’s a short dude, right? He’s famous, right? He makes a ton of money, right?

Well, who would honestly want to look like Danny Devito? I mean, c’mon. If he wasn’t an incredible comedic actor, he would probably be a side-show act at a circus.

Ooh, ooh, what about Tom Cruise? He’s real short too, isn’t he? I mean, he’s a dinky little guy, right? By the way, Tom Cruise is 5’7″…

Tom Cruise, is well respected, right? And he does the whole acting thing, right? He was even nominated for an Academy Award for that Born on the Fourth of July
thing, right? And the hotties… how can anyone forget the hotties of Tom Cruise?
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Tom Cruise has done pretty well for himself. And like I wrote earlier, he’s well respected…
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I mean, it’s not like he’s a little crazy or anything…
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Oh, who am I kidding. Tom Cruise is a complete freaking nutjob…
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See, being short is enough to drive a person absolutely INSANE!

Ok, so being short sucks because you really can’t be a professional athlete, and being short can drive you crazy. Oh, I know, there is gonna be some dipwad who says something like, “What about Spud Webb… Spud Webb was only 5’6″?” Well, Spud Webb is what is known as an “anomaly”. He is one of the shortest pro basketball players of all time. So people of his stature… err, our stature… are not likely to have much success in sports. Also, Spud Webb wasn’t a cracker. Crackers can’t jump.

In addition to the lack of multi-million dollar athletic contracts and the whole going-insane thing, short people are have a 50% higher risk of having a heart problem or dying from one . Also, tall people earn more money than short people, both due to height discrimination and also the fact that tall people are apparently smarter than short people ! For crying out loud… can us shorties catch a freaking genetic break here?!?

Even renowned marketing guru Seth Godin, who stresses that our “Lizard Brain” (which, according to Seth, is the primitive part of the brain that keeps us mired in fear and self-doubt) keeps us from accomplishing our real goals in life, uses a typical short-dude slam to get his meaning across. Of course, Seth is saying you need to build a quality reputation and a lot of anticipation for you and your products online before clients meet you in real life (or something like that), but “I thought you’d be taller” could be taken as “I’m disappointed that you are physically short”. I know (hope) that this is not what Seth meant, but c’mon, Seth… way to help feed the Lizard Brains of the vertically challenged!

So, yeah… us shorties have a rough go of it. I did happen to notice on the Wikipedia link that the average height of a man in Mexico is around 5′ 4″ to 5′ 5 1/2″. Suddenly, I’m all about allowing unlimited immigration (legal, illegal… who cares) from Mexico to the U.S. Hell, let as many of our little Mexican neighbors in as want to come. In a few short years (no pun intended… who am I kidding, pun definitely intended), I will feel like a giant around all of the short Mexican dudes.

Or, maybe I should consider moving to Bolivia. Dudes are only like 5′ 3″ there. I would be like a god to them… MWAHAAHAAHAA!!!

… and all of you jerkholes who look down on us smallies, stick it where the sun don’t shine… err, or in the above picture, where the sun does shine 🙂

Someone is Getting Out!

I received a letter-of-resignation from one of our staff recently. One of my coworkers is leaving the employment of the company I work for, packing up his family, and moving to Texas. A better paying job with more opportunity awaits him in a climate that is more to his liking. No one begrudges him the opportunity he is not letting pass him by. In fact, the only mumblings around the office that have been created by his announcement are mumblings of slight jealousy. He has done it… he has found a way out of Nebraska!

My coworkers and I seldom complain about the work we do on a daily basis (unless we have a particularly stressful day of telephone calls or the subcontractors we use for a majority of our service work are giving us grief). We all seem to like our jobs. We do, however, like to complain about living here. We have come to the conclusion that, of our little staff of nine (soon to be eight), the majority of us are not completely in love with living here. I figure that about 5% of the population here in the panhandle of Nebraska… a percentage that consists mostly those in the higher echelon of wages and stature, … actually “love” living here. The other 95% of the residents of our area fall into one of two categories (please remember, there was no scientific research involved in the estimation of these percentages… just raw, gut instinct from a guy who likes to bitch) :

1: People who hate living here. By hate, I mean anything from somewhat dislike to extreme, pull-your-hair-out hate.

2: People who are indifferent.

The second category are a bigger thorn-in-the-side of my attitude than the people who actually love living here (all 5% of them). The indifferent people make excuses and self-justifications and talk down to those of us in category 1. The lovers talk down to us as well, but at least it’s because they love it here and they don’t like us harshing their love mellow. The indifferents talk down to us because our rants about the crappiness of Nebraska makes them think about their own pathetic existences here… and they don’t like that.

The indifferents don’t really like living here, but they come up with reasoning that can be difficult to follow.

“Why don’t you try to find the positive instead of always looking at the negative?” Because “finding the positive” sounds like work, and why should one have to “work” to find joy in a community? If a community doesn’t offer joy, find a community that does.

“Instead of complaining, why can’t you try to appreciate what the panhandle has to offer?” This is like having a turd on your dinner plate. Now someone is telling you not to complain about the turd, and that you should realize that the turd actually has a small amount of nutritional value because of the undigested corn. Pick the corn out of the turd and enjoy it instead of complaining about the turd. Brings new meaning to living in the “cornhusker” state, doesn’t it?

“It’s negative people like you who make it difficult to live here!” The villager who complains about the wolves coming in and eating the village’s sheep isn’t the cause of the lack of food and wool. The villager who complains is bringing light to an issue that will not be solved if the other villager’s don’t realize there is a problem. If no one complains about it, won’t get fixed. Without the pessimist, the optimist has no bright side to look at… or, better yet, no dark side to look away from.

“If you don’t like it here, just leave!” Oh, if only life were so simple. For some of us, there are children in school, mortgages to pay, job commitments, lack of funds for a move, and many other excuses that really do make it difficult to completely uproot lives in search of greener pastures. Plus, I really feel like many of us who hate it here would love to not hate it here, but we don’t know how to institute the change necessary to make it better here. For example, Scottsbluff and Gering are currently two separate communities with two separate governments, school systems, law enforcement agencies, etc. Combining the two communities seems like it would benefit both communities by saving tax-payer money and by attracting new employers and jobs with a single community of about 25,000 instead two separate communities of less than 20,000. Problem is, the morons in Gering want nothing to do with the jerks across the river in Scottsbluff. In fact, the residents of Gering feel so strongly about “keeping their own identity” that they voted out the mayor who was in favor of starting to consolidate the two communities in favor of the hot-head who is all about keeping the communities separate. So Gering took one step forward by electing Susan Weideman and then took twenty steps backward by electing Ed Mayo. Opening the eyes of the people who don’t really want to see the communities grow and thrive as one, but who instead view the two communities as rivals, is a difficult, if not impossible, task to overcome. So, if we don’t like it, we’re supposed to leave; and many of us do leave and the population continues to stagnate… and no one can quite figure out how to fix this!?! We are just doing what you tell us to do!

I’m not usually one who gets too deeply involved in the whole positive/negative energy thing. However, there really does seem to be a negative energy in this place. Don’t believe me? Try spending a couple of hours at the Scottsbluff Walmart on the first weekend of the month when all of the government-assisted shoppers are loading up and you will know the meaning of the words “negative energy”. Given the fact that such a large percentage of the population here is either negative or indifferent, the negative energy thrives. At times, you can actually feel it washing over you. I can feel it, can you?

Happy Stinking New Year…

Stinking Facebook!

Facebook: a wondrous social networking site that enables people to connect with, reconnect with, share with, support, and live vicariously through one another. I have befriended people I haven’t really thought of since grade school. I also have come to find out that, as much as people change, we all have certain aspects of our personalities that remain the same in adulthood as they were in childhood… especially our senses of humor. Facebook can be a great thing.

Facebook can also suck. Facebook is a world unto itself. We manage relationships on Facebook differently than we handle real, live relationships in the non-Internet world. Sometimes, however, the line between on-line relationships and off-line relationships is blurred. I like to think of myself as the kind of guy who doesn’t really care what the vast majority of people think of him. I like to think that I really don’t care if I piss someone off. I like to think… not often, but sometimes…

I am trying to come to terms with unfriending on Facebook. It’s kind of funny, I don’t believe “unfriending” was even a word until online social networks came into existence. … and it sounds so harsh. UNFRIEND! This is the ending of a relationship. This is making a proclamation that the person you are unfriending is no longer someone you want to stay connected with in the online world.

Have I ever unfriended someone? Well, to be honest, I have. I went through a phase where I was adding friends left and right. I was friending friends’ friends, I was friending people I barely knew, and I was friending people I didn’t have the foggiest about except they played the same games I used to play on Facebook (Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, etc.) My friend-adding rampage was back when I was first getting this blog started. I figured the more “friends” that I had, the more people who would click the occasional link to this blog that I shared on Facebook… and the more people that I could share my wickedly funny sense of humor with… or something. And then I started to realize that people who don’t actually know me might not get my sense of humor. I tend to be slightly sarcastic and, maybe, a little cynical. Not everyone can relate. One of the cool things about my friend-requesting rampage is that I found some people that I barely know in “real life”, or that I really don’t know at all, who have some remarkable things to say from time to time, or are just kind of fun to keep up with (the whole “living vicariously” thing). I have found people who “get” my sense of humor, make smart-assy comments back to me, and make some pretty smart-assy posts of their own! These people are all still my Facebook friends. A few months after my rampage, I started going through all of these new friends that had accepted me for whatever reason. I started to to feel kind of stupid for having so many friends who I knew absolutely nothing about. The dude in England who was an excellent vampire in Vampire Wars really didn’t probably care that I was ready to turn 40… and probably never clicked on my links… plus he was taking up a ton of my homepage with all of his vampire-ish accomplishments. This was the point where I went through a lot of unfriending. I removed everyone who was just a gaming friend, and I removed everyone who I thought might be annoyed by my posts, comments, or shared links. And then the guilt set in: the guilt that maybe some of those people that I unfriended actually liked being my Facebook friend… that even though I never heard from them in comments or relevant posts, they will miss me and feel slighted that I had unfriended them. I felt bad… and, at times, I still do.

I still have way too many friends on Facebook. There are still some who I have no contact with who are pretty much just taking up space in my list of friends. But I figure, “Hey, if they want out, they can bail.” Whether I lose those “friends” on a regular basis or not, I don’t know because I really don’t miss them when they’re gone.

What gets me is the people I know, who I actually personally know, who I have been Facebook friends with (and I assumed at least “acquaintances” with offline), who I don’t believe I have ever said anything to personally offend… who all of a sudden show up in my “people you may know” list, and Facebook points out that I can “Add as friend” these people who were … I thought… already friends (at least they didn’t completely block me, I guess).

“Hey, wait a second… we already were friends. What happened?” And of course, the first thing to go through my head is, “What did I do… and I’m sorry?!?” I have no clue what I did to drive this friend away, but something happened to our online relationship that led them to horrifyingly unfriend me. The kicker is, how do you overcome the unfriending on Facebook when you see this person face-to-face in real life again? They made a statement that they want nothing to do with your jokey-little-ass on Facebook (where they can actually block you from certain aspects of your Facebook presence and theirs and still keep the friendly relationship), so why in the world would they actually want to even share the same breathing space with you in person? I can’t imagine that they would. It’s like a real human relationship has been decided by the click of one little link on Facebook: “Remove from friends”.

What’s funny is, in the real world, you may lose a friendship, but you usually know why it ended. No one is going to come up to you in person and say, “I’m removing you from my friends… please have nothing to do with me ever again,” without you having a question or two. Online, it just seems kind of creepy to send a message to someone who recently unfriended you, “Hey, what happened… why’d you drop me?”

For me, I just try to think that maybe they accidentally hit the “Remove from friends” link. I could message them (or ask them in person) why for with the unfriending hostility… and if it was a mistake, they can say, “Oh, man, I didn’t mean to unfriend you… I’ll send you another invite and we can be friends again!” Of course, I think I’d rather just suspect that the removal was an accident on their part and… someday… they will notice the mistake and request my friendship again. We all know better, but I gotta do what I can for my self-esteem 😉

I know that being a smart-ass and a cynic and depressingly funny at times can turn people off. When I started this blog, I knew a few (or many more) people would be turned-off by what I was going to write. I didn’t set out to make friends with my happy-stinking-joy attitude. I guess my attitude here spills over onto my Facebook account from time to time (or, all the time).

With a blog, if people disagree with you, or think you’re a jerk, or wish you would get run over by a steamroller, they can leave a comment or send you an email telling you what an ass you are. They usually just don’t go to your blog again.

With Facebook, if people disagree with you, or think you’re a jerk, or wish you would get run over by a steamroller, they can also leave a comment or send you a message telling you what an ass you are. Because Facebook is a little more personal than a blog, for some people, unfriending must be a little less sloppy way to say they’ve had enough 🙂

Getting unfriended on Facebook is something I just need to do a better job of coming to terms with… but it makes me want to write in my online outlets how I really feel sometimes. Oh yeah… that’s right… I’ve been doing a PG-13 version of the Happy Stinking Joy of life, while a R (or maybe even NC-17) version would help me feel like I’m getting more off my chest. I’m gonna keep it at PG-13, however… ’cause I can’t stand losing those stinking Facebook friends…

The Death of Mrs. Dryer: A Love Story?

We had to replace our dryer. Our old dryer just pooped-out. She had been in a state of deteriorating health for quite some time, but we have put up with her “quirks” because… well… she was our dryer. When the wife and I were married over 16 years ago, one of the first major purchases we made was a washer and dryer.

I can remember shopping for her (the dryer… not the wife… although I vaguely remember that as well). We went to every place in town, trying to get a good deal. We looked at all sorts of off-name brands, but we ended up going with Kenmore from Sears. I don’t remember the exact reasoning behind why we purchased this particular brand, but I know I have felt confident that we made the right choice. I have never looked at our washer and dryer and thought, ‘We made a mistake by going cheap.’ We considered buying our washer at one store and our dryer at another. “Matching appliances” that were to end up in the basement or the laundry room or the spare bedroom were never a big concern for us. However, the particular washer and dryer that we purchased in our first year of marriage just… well… they just seemed to go together, kind of like a newly-wed couple.
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Mr. Washer and Mrs. Dryer have been with the wife and me through thick and thin. Whether they were cleaning the bedding and lingerie of a newly-wed couple, sitting in storage while the wife and I hopped apartments in Denver, cleaning the tiny clothes of our firstborn, cleaning dog hair off of everything after we received our family’s first dog, cleaning up the spit-up of our second-born, cleaning up the spit-up of our second-born, cleaning up the spit-up of our second-born (oh, the joys of a RSV-prone and mucous-filled child), or preparing the daily garb of a laundry-producing family of four people and one dog in present day; Mr. Washer and Mrs. Dryer have always tried to be good to us. I have spent many a late night sitting downstairs watching T.V. or pecking on the computer, while Mr. Washer scrubs the whites and Mrs. Dryer fluffs the darks.

Listening to the two of them in harmony could be quite … err… interesting?!? While Mr. Washer went into spin cycle and Mrs. Dryer tumbled her load round-and-round, there unison motions often caught my attention. Mr. Washer would spin, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, shaking the stillness of the basement with his urgency. Mrs. Dryer kept the same unison pace throughout, yet I sensed that they were working toward a common goal. Finally, Mr. Washer, at a frenzied speed in search of some extraordinary outcome… stopped spinning. I could tell he was spent. Mrs. Dryer usually continued on, searching for her own “mission complete” banner. Every once in awhile, the two of them would reach their goal at the same time: Mr. Washer’s final spin cycle quickly grinding to a halt as Mrs. Dryer’s buzzing high-pitched alarm screamed that her load was complete. It was kind of exotic and erotic, in a very blue-collar and… uh… pervy kind of way… probably like the erotic encounters of most married couples 🙂

Mr. Washer started having issues a little over a year ago. He really wobbled when he went into the spin cycle, and we knew that something was wrong. Finally, he just gave out. Every time I tried to start a new load, he would just hum. I tried my best to get him working on my own… which, with my mechanical expertise, resulted in several swift kicks to his nether-regions.
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Mrs. Washer did not seem to approve.
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Nothing I did (i.e. no matter how hard I kicked) worked. We finally called an appliance repairman. Like $50 later, some doohickey was replaced and Mr. Washer has been working like a champ ever since!
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Mrs. Dryer has been in a state of decline ever since we moved into our new house over two years ago. It seems her heating element has been going out… or something. It used to be that we could throw a wet load into her and, within a multitude of mere minutes, she would have it dry. Recently, it would take a second, and sometimes third, cycle to actually remove all moisture from a load of clothes. Apparently, she had come down with something… something terminal. Finally, a few nights ago, she wouldn’t work at all. I threw a load of wet mass into her, closed her door, pushed the “start” button, and… nothing.
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Crap!

I figured, initially, that this was something I could fix… given my exemplary track-record with fixing major appliances and all. I gave her several swift kicks. Although the kicks did nothing to spur her into action, I did seem to notice several sever looks-of-reproach from Mr. Washer.
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Ignoring the ire of her spouse, I decided to perform a little surgery.

I think I’ve already mentioned this, but my mechanical skills are a little lacking. I blame my lack of ability on the fact that I don’t have the proper tools. Convincing the wife that I needed to add to my haphazard tool collection, I headed to… Walmart… and bought a multimeter. Armed with the necessary tool to assess Mrs. Washer’s condition, I started the procedure.

First, I tested the actual outlet she plugged into. As the multimeter’s needle sprung to action with the insertion of the red thingie and the black thingie into the slots that we are taught from early childhood not to stick anything into, my heart raced. I realized that between my fingers raced enough electricity to kill the average mortal. Feeling slightly immortal through my discovery, I proceeded to the removing-of-the-screws on the back of Mrs. Dryer. Leaving the appliance plugged in, I proceeded to test this and that… not knowing exactly what I was testing, but feeling exilerated that I was playing with something with which I shouldn’t. Not finding a clue as to the current condition plaguing Mrs. Washer, I unplugged her, turned the multimeter device to the “ohm” setting, and continued with my examination.

The ohm setting apparently tests the connection through different electrical components of a system without the necessity of outside electricity… or something. The multimeter’s AA battery provides everything one needs. All of a sudden, I’m not a general surgeon… I’m a “specialist”, as I test this component and that. I become increasingly disheartened as my search proves more and more futile. The wife recommends that we just purchase a new dryer. I remind the wife that Mr. Washer was fixed for next-to-nothing and recommend that we try the same with Mrs. Dryer. The wife points out that the average appliance lasts about 15 years, Mrs. Dryer is over said 15 years, and that we could really use a dryer with a little more capacity to dry our increasing quantity of clothes and linen-type-stuff as our boys grow. Feeling like I had let Mrs. Dryer (and Mr. Washer as well) down, I somberly agree. Mrs. Washer has fulfilled her purpose and her time had past…
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Mr. Dryer was devastated…
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After quick visits to all of the major local appliance places, we settle on a nice Maytag that Home Depot was offering at clearance prices. We brought her home, plugged her in, and tried her out. She works great. She gets hotter than Mrs. Dryer ever did. The new dryer is sleek, shiny, and has great capacity. We like her a lot. She may have been “cheap”, but you could never tell that from her appearance!
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Okay, maybe her appearance screams “cheap”… but only in the softest of screams.

At first, I was afraid that Mr. Washer would hold some contempt towards our newest appliance. However, I think he’s coming around 🙂
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In fact, this is the happiest I have seen Mr. Washer in a long time. His spin cycle seems to be a little faster and he cleans better than he has in years… and I can’t quite seem to figure out why…
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Appliances… go figure?

Scotts Bluff County Commissioners SUCK!

A few months back, I received the obligatory notice from wonderful Scotts Bluff county that my property had increased in value (which means my taxes were going up). My property value goes up every year, no matter the condition of the house I’m in or the neighborhood in which I reside. This seemed strange to me this year seeing as how property values have been falling all over the rest of the country. I decided that this year, I was going to protest the increased valuation of my property.

Now, like any sane individual, I want the value of my property to increase. Increased value of property means that when I finally find the will and way to leave the Craphole of Nebraska, I may actually make money on the sale of my house. However, times are a little tough around here, and paying out more taxes doesn’t exactly fit into our budget. So, I figure that until the economy actually turns around and this area starts to grow (which means NEVER), I shouldn’t have to pay more in property taxes. I didn’t figure that the jerk-wad commissioners of Scotts Bluff County would reconsider the increase in the value of my property (it is a well known fact that you never win with them), but at least I figured I could get an explanation on how in the hell they felt my property could be increasing in value in crappy, low-wage Nebraska in the middle of a recession.

I filed the papers at the county courthouse. When I handed the petition to the clerk, she looked at me like I was crazy.

“You plan on protesting the valuation of your house?” she asked

“That’s the plan,” I said.

She chuckled… and I knew this was not going to be fun.

I was given a date to appear before the commission like a month later. I arranged my schedule and, a month later, went before the county commissioners.

I showed up for my appointment about 5 minutes early. The commissioners meet in a small room on the second floor of the county building. I climb the stairs to the second floor and step into the room. Inside, the commissioners are sitting on their pedestal seats from which they can look down on everything else in the room. Fitting. And they are munching away on sandwiches. I notice a sign-in sheet on a table just inside the door to the room, and I jot down my John Henry along with the time of my appointment. I glance up at the commissioners to see if I can get any kind of inclination as to what I an supposed to do next. They are all busy staring at their sandwiches, so I just go back in the hall and grab a seat outside. I’m not comfortable around strangers, especially strangers with power. Plus, I hate public speaking, especially when it is going to be to a group of people looking down at me.

After about 15 minutes, I decide something doesn’t seem quite right, so I peak back in the room. A couple of the gods do me the favor of looking down at me from on high and then turn their attention back to their sandwiches. I go back out in the hallway. My appointment was supposed to be at 7:00 pm. I showed up at 6:55 pm. It is now 7:15 pm, and there are now 2 more people sitting in the hallway waiting for their appointments, which are after mine. I peak my head once again into the small room and they are still eating.

“Uh, am I supposed to wait in the hall, or should I wait in here?” I ask.

One of the gods , disgruntled by the fact that I am pulling him away from the stinking sandwich it is taking him 20 stinking minutes to eat, says, “You can wait in here. We’re running a little late, just getting some supper. It’s been a long day.” I actually believe he may have spoken to the sandwich. How dare a peasant such as myself speak to him directly while he is renewing his power with the regenerative, almighty tuna fish. I grab a seat in the room.

After about 5 more minutes (apparently my time is of no consequence to the earthly gods), we begin. I am asked why I feel my property value should remain the same. I go into a well prepared rant about all of the things wrong in my neighborhood. I speak of the ills of the drug-infested trailer park from which I am only a couple of blocks. I speak of the lack of county and city services available in our “rural” area. I also go into the lack of decent paying jobs available in the panhandle, as well as the high per-capita crime rate and the impact the recession has had on our area.

“How, in such an impoverished area, with such a high crime rate and such a low quality of life, can the value of real estate be going up?” I really feel like my impassioned speech may have hit the mark! I really feel that I may have a chance of making a winning argument! My hopes are starting to rise as…

“I haven’t heard anything here to overturn the evaluation,” says one of the jerk-wads. “I make a motion to accept the county assessor’s appraisal.”

“Second,” says a second jerk-wad… a little too quickly for my taste.

“All in favor,” says the head jerk-wad. Every single jerk-wad on the commission voted to piss me off, and I hate every single one of them every bit of my propensity to hate.

“That’s it?” I squeak.

No one even bothers to look my way. They are too busy sealing the fate of my tax-hike to notice my peasant-like presence. I pick up my crap, all of the notes with bullet points and other various garbage, and walk for the door. As I reach the door, I hear one of the jerk-wads say something to me, but I just keep walking. Screw ’em all.

So, that’s it. Until, like two weeks later, I receive a letter in the mail from the county commissioners. The letter informs me that, for a mere $25, I can appear before the commissioners again to re-protest the valuation.

ARE THEY CRAZY!?! Or, better yet, DO THEY THINK I’M CRAZY!?!

As I write this, I can actually feel a growing pressure in my chest. If I were to take my blood pressure right now, I’m almost positive that just seeing the actual reading would send me into cardiac arrest. Apparently the county commissioners of Scotts Bluff County think that all of their constituents are meth-heads and can easily be conned out of an additional $25. Why would I want to go through having those jerk-wads make me wait again, look down on me again, and vote against me again?

SERIOUSLY!?!

Home ownership is part of the American dream, right? Many of us slave away for the right to proclaim that we truly own our home. Once that mortgage is paid off, we own our house and no one can take it away from us, right? If you really believe that you can possibly own your house, you are an idiot. Don’t believe me? Try paying off your mortgage and then never paying your property taxes again. You will quickly find out who truly owns your house… and it ain’t you.

I think I had better call it a day before I’m found on the floor, clutching my chest and needing someone to call 911.

breathe… breathe… in through the nose, out through the mouth...