What do Kojak and Designing Women have in common?

One of my wife's favorite shows is The Closer.  One of my favorite past times is analyzing pop culture and picking apart the meta-narrative of what seems to be mindless entertainment.  When I combine my past time with my wife's we have an interesting afternoon of discussion that usually ends with "but I don't care what the shows theme is I want to watch Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson catch the bad guy and eat candy..."  Yes that's right eat candy, because all good detectives eat sweets, ask Kojak and Colombo, see that right there, yes I just did that.  If you want to take this a little further you could even take all these characters archetypes back to Sherlock Holmes, an eccentric genius detective.  Modern sensibilities prevent our current heroes from having cocaine addictions, so candy will have to do, until the HBO version of this character comes out that is.    

Yes, The Closer's protagonist is only the most recent in a long string of quirky detectives.  The twist they added to this character was that the detective is a woman, and, get this, she's a Southern Woman!!!  Oh yes, she eats grits, AND catches bad guys.  She has such a disarming accent, she's so cute and flustered by such things, not being able to find her keys and cell phone, and oh her poor little cat, until BAM!!!  She makes you confess for that double squirrel vehicular homicide you committed.    You were impressed with your ability to take them both out, and laughed that no one would ever know, yet now you've buckled under the sugar-high gaze of this southern candy freak.  This is the graphic they used to sell this show.

CSI: Designing Women, if CBS owned this show thats what they would have called it.

As we sit and watch this show all sorts of questions run through my head.  Is the fixation on sweets healthy, isn't this sending a bad message to an overweight America?  Does the LAPD have a really good dental plan for this woman?  Does the LAPD really have that much diversity or is that multicultural rainbow of a cast a PR story piece?  What is the show really saying?  Wait, your still staring at Kojak with his sucker aren't you, yeah you are!!!

Pay attention!!!

What is the show saying?  Well this season is about vengeance.  Every show seems to involve the blind spots in the justice system.  What is justice?  What makes the law the ultimate authority?  Who says what is right and why do they get the right to say it?  Says who?

This question is alive and well in many different movie and TV shows of late.  I believe our culture is adrift, the foundation on which we were built has been willfully removed.  We stand on nothing, our philosophy is existentialism, we all have our own world view, do what you feel, but how do you have a "do what you feel attitude" AND a civil society?  You cannot have law without a lawgiver.  If everything is subjective how do you have an objective law?  Everything becomes a "says who" all law is arbitrary.

What this equates to in The Closer is DA giving immunity bargains to someone who has committed a double homicide because of a politically charged situation.  By the end of the show justice is served by leaving the homicidal maniac on the street to face "street justice".  You may feel good about this, it feels right doesn't it?  I may feel better about it if the show were not so hypocritical.  The title character likes waxing very sanctimonious when catching a grandmother who has killed her drug addict daughter in-law to prevent her from gaining custody of her granddaughter.

What makes one right and the other wrong?

Anyway.  I had more to say about The Closer but I spent to long creating, I mean finding, that graphic above.  I'll consider this blogpost closed, I'm going to eat some candy.

Only Once

I could take a picture, but it wouldn't be the same.  I can write about it, I can describe the feeling of my first born son, laying on my chest as I rock him to sleep.  He breathes deep, steady, and drools a wet spot on my shirt and we gently rock back and forth, back and forth.  He is only 15 pounds, over double the weight he was when we brought him home, but so light.  He is warm in his pajamas, and his breathe makes my neck warm.  He likes to put his head right under my chin.  Every now and then he shutters, and I think he is waking.  He fits perfectly into my arms, so perfectly.  I come close to falling asleep as some memory I no longer have of my own babyhood lulls me to sleep as if by instinct as well.  Back and forth, he is asleep, but I keep rocking.

I can describe it, but it will never be the same, this is it.  I have but a few minutes, a few hours to hold my first born son then he will be gone to the maturity that steals all babies from all parents.  He is here, for a few minutes, asleep in my arms.  In a short time I will try to remember the feeling of him when he could fit into my arms, and when a simple shusssshhhh in his ear is all that was required as a lullaby.  I will miss this when its gone.

The worst part of getting old for a dude

is ear hair....  Women have their own demons of age to face, but for dudes its ear hair.  There is nothing quite like it.  It is your bodies ultimate rebellion, hair where it absolutely shouldn't be.  I'm not talking about the fine ear hair, the barely noticeable hair, I'm talking about the ear-stache that some old guys have.  Way worse than the dreaded back rug, and more annoying than the thinning retreat up top, it is an all out unavoidable assault on our pride.  

What is it about our bodies that makes them want to spawn little hair particles in the oddest places, while loosing it in the normal ones?

Anyway nothing to report on that front yet, but I'm sure its coming.  

Something else on the getting older / kid front.  Reactions from people.  I have perhaps the cutest kid in the whole world.  Wait, change that, he IS the cutest kid in the whole world.  No matter how cute the kid many have zero tolerance for any sort of whimper / cry / sob that comes out of his mouth.  I have to say that at one time that may have been me.  Those without kids have not sampled from the acquired taste that is a babies cry.  It doesn't take long to build quite the tolerance, two three nights.  

The other day as I attempted to walk around Borders several people bore holes through me as little man sobbed, wailed, and leveled an abusive war cry.  I tried to tell them he was just voicing his disappointment on the state of modern fiction.  

Its amazing how much kids change your life.  Even small things like trips to Target and Borders get complicated.  Its as if everyday tasks are burdened with the added clumsiness you would experience doing a three legged race.  Everything is a time trial, you can go and browse all you want as long as the browsing coincides with a normal sleep time, but not awake time, if he has gotten enough to eat, is comfortable in his stroller, has a fresh diaper, likes the music in the store, approves of the general feng shui of the moment, in short - once every winning lotto ticket.  

Then when your most disappointed at loosing the battle and retreat to the car, he smiles, and you wonder why you even went into Borders in the first place.  Little man is right, modern fiction is horrible, nothing to see there.

Bad Idea

Every now and then I come up with a crazy idea for an entire series of blogs.  They are usually perverse and would gather all the wrong sorts of attention, but they make me laugh during whatever meeting I happen to be day-dreaming in.  The other day one hit me that made me laugh almost to the point I couldn't contain myself, the idea was - anusoftheday (Anus of the Day).

In my head it would be abstract pictures of all kinds of animal anuses.  It seems the kind of thing that could go viral, get a lot of attention, and make you kind of sorry you started it.  Your name would alway be known for a website dedicated to animal anus pictures.

Anus...  It's funny because it has the word anus.

Has it been almost 3 months / It's only been 3 months???

You know that doffy book that starts "it was the best of times it was the worst of times..." yeah some guy named Dickinson wrote it, something about two cities, anyway, yeah life is a lot like that lately.  I've had some vague post ideas, but ideas are fleeting and seem mainly concerned with spit up and diaper changes lately.

I can't believe I'm almost 3 months in, yet it feels much longer than 3 months.  Weird kind of duality thing going on.  I remember right after getting married I would wake up and the thought would cross my mind like the fading memories of a dream, "I'm married".  I would have to wake up just a little before that idea seemed real.  Now that I'm a few years in I never think "wow, I'm married" instead it feels as if that is the way its always been, as if the time before my wife was some sort of fever dream waiting to break.  I really expect even more of that unreality with a baby, but that has not been the case.  I never think of it as strange, never really have to remind myself, it just is.

Anything else?  Maybe but I need to get to bed...  Just felt like hitting pause on a few moments...  Maybe next time I'll post up the thoughts I had on David that really interested me - the one's over David as a Dad.

Anyway, next time...

What I didn't expect...

My wife and I were either crazy or crazy like a genius mad scientist crazy when we got a dog about 2 months before our son was due.  We figured we would have a dog for our son to grow up with, a puppy for us to enjoy while we were stuck around the house, and in a weird way we figured that if we were going to be loosing sleep and changing our life anyway why not go the fully monty?  

We got our dog, a miniature schnauzer (he's closing in on 20 pounds - he's at the upper end of what I would call "miniature") he's awesome.  We kind of had something else stirring in the back of our heads, we thought taking care of a puppy would prepare us for some of the sacrifice it would take to take care of a kid.  Now we didn't believe that a puppy would be all a kid was going be on the scale of sacrifice, but we did think it would get us maybe 20% there, something like that.  Boy were we wrong.

I can hear the parents out there laughing right now.  I know, I know, ridiculous.  Whatever...

Here is what I didn't expect from the little guy, the biggest thing I didn't expect.  When we were taking care of our puppy during the first several weeks we got up with him probably 3 times a night to take him outside.  He would do his business, worst case we would be back in bed inside of 15 minutes.  I expected a kid to take up maybe 30 minutes, feed, change, burp, back in bed, right?

I can get up at night with our baby, but its the length of time that is really draining.  He gets up, he's wet, really wet.  I change him, he's upset because he didn't get up to get his diaper changed, he wants FOOODDDD!!!  I get a new outfit ready, wrap him in a blanket and begin feeding him, 5 - 10 minutes.  He eats.  This takes about 20 minutes or so.  Frequently he falls asleep during the feeding and you have to coax him to finish, I've learned that him falling asleep is not code for he's finished, oh no I made that rookie mistake, that's just him testing you to see if your naive, he'll be back up in 10 minutes demanding more if you call for that trap.  So he finishes up I put a new outfit on him, change him again because he has soiled another diaper while eating, another 5 - 10 minutes.  You swaddle him, you rock him, then you hear it, yes that is another diaper change.  You change his diaper.  You put him to bed, with the pacifier, he's content, you crawl into bed, victorious, sleep is your reward, and you drowse off to sleeeepppp, and what was that?  Is he crying?  Yes, you get back up and you find that he has wet his diaper, another 5 - 10 minutes.  He's got another fresh diaper, he's on his third outfit, and he's been feed.  Surely he's okay now, he will be good for another 3 hours, you can sleep.  

You put him down, breathing short breathes lest he hear your breathing and mistake it for an attempt to sleep on your part and wiz in his diaper again.  Carefully, slowly you back away, you get into bed, and you drift to sleep, and your asleep and what was that?  He's fussing, not loud just fussing.

WHAT IS IT NOW????

Plan B - turn him over to his momma.  She in turn will spend the next 30 - 45 minutes replaying most of the steps you did in the previous hour and a half.

The frustrating part is watching him sleep for 4 - 5 hours the next morning after a feeding and a diaper change.  

Ahhh parenthood is gonna be fun.

Snails and Puppy Dog Tails...

Our second most recent addition to the family, a one Mr. Jackson (miniature schnauzer) got a workout with some really energetic little boys the other day.  It made us feel good to see a glimpse of what is to come when our little boy runs around with our little puppy.  They are gonna have a blast together, I can hardly wait to see it!!!

My Firstborn Son

I've been attempting to write a post, a letter for my son for the past several months.  Writing a letter to someone who you don't know is not as easy as I would have thought.  What to say to someone who you don't know?  What do you convey in such a letter?  Is it heavy or light?

I think what I've been trying to say is this, there is truth.  The one thing I would like to pass on to you is that there is truth, it is not subjective, no matter who you are, or where you are.  There is truth, there is that which corresponds to reality.  Right and wrong exist, and they exist because God put them there.

You may face some very hard trials in your life, but thats okay.  Good times are not always so good, bad times are not always so bad.  Bad times can produce things in our life that are great.  Hard times can create a boon in your life.

The good times that you have, give God praise for them.  Remember your creator in the days of your youth.  Your Mother and I did not believe we could have kids when we found out that you were on your way.  God created you, he used your Mother and I to do it, but it was he who gave you life.

I do not know who you will be yet.  You are potential wrapped in a blanket.  You will ultimately be whatever God made you to be, glorify him, praise him, commit your way to him, no matter the life you lead it will end and you will be held accountable to him for what you have done with the life he gave.

I love you my first born son.  I love you so very much, I don't love you because of who you are or anything you've done, I love you right now just because God gave you to me.  You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Unconnected Paths

I finished a book the other day, it was not a small feat, it was the first book I've managed to get all the way through since moving into the house, it took me a month and a half. For those of you curious I am a pretty fast reader, in fact I read the last half of the book in about two hours, the first half was enjoyed in the sparse free time I've had over the past couple of months, in the last place I can find free time, yes I am talking about the bathroom. It maybe disgusting but a stomach virus wouldn't be a bad thing, I've been seeking them out. I've thought about having some Mexican water shipped here so I can experience a weeks worth of reading and free time. I could call it the Montezuma Porcelain Vacation Package.

Anyway, I feel the need to post without the overall theming that I usually place on a blog post.  The book I finished was All the Pretty Horses - really good book.  Didn't really want to go into the book, its a Cormac Mcarthy novel, he is not afraid of treating his characters rather brutally, but he goes a little easier on them in this book.  His characters always feel very poetically real.

Something else I've squeezed in was a few shows of Kitchen Nightmares.  I watch this show with my wife, its fairly enjoyable for a "reality" show.  I don't know how successful this show is, but it did occur to me the reason it was even on TV was that its an example of strong male leadership.  The premise of the show is family owned restaurants, in trouble, failing, about to go under and Gordon Ramsey comes in and turns the place around.  Gordon Ramsey is the foul mouthed head chef from Hell's Kitchen btw, successful restauranteur.

Problems with the restaurants are numerous, but generally speaking the problems are all the same.  You have a staff member or owner who is causing problems, the food is frozen and horrible, the food preparation area is nasty.  What Ramsey provides is not the food itself, he doesn't begin preparing the food for them, he doesn't run the restaurant, he confronts the issues and the personnel involved and forces change.  This is what leadership looks like.

Other than that I have nothing.  As I write this we have a few minutes between getting home and small group.  My wife is taking a nap, and I am writing away in the few minutes I have.  Time is not impossible to find, it is just sparse, and spread out.  Reading the book, watching a movie, watching a show, everything must be done in compressed periods of time.  I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

Life is not unconnected, there is a path, a way to go back and find a coherent narrative from every true life story.  I don't know the point of that, its just what I feel right now, and what I tell myself to keep moving forward, there is a point, God has fixed a time and a place, our job is to follow him as he leads and pushes us towards it.

It won't last for long...

Big stuff today. Wife got hit by another car in the Krogers parking lot. Wasn't high speed, but we did end up in the hospital for observation. I was scared for a while. The thought of loosing the baby seemed real. There was a moment when my mind ran through what it would feel like to mourn all the possibilities that would never be. It scared me, it really did.

It occurred to me during this process that I have made the turn, I now consider myself a Dad, I am not technically one yet, but close. When I first got married there would be times when I would wake and a feeling of unreality would wash over me, I would think to myself "I'm married" as a reminder, because it felt as if I had just been daydreaming the whole thing. Over the past several years that feeling has gone, I am married, to feel not-married would be surreal now. I wonder if that feeling of unreality will hit me often during the first few months of life for my little baby boy.

I honestly don't think I will have time to think about it, I think tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I'll be 55 and my son will be out of the house, and whatever other kids will be soon moving that way.

Thinking about today makes me amazed at how quickly things can happen, how quickly they can change. There is a feeling that the days pass so quickly I have to be imaging them. Today there was so much that went on, yet it was gone in the amount of time it takes to forget a dream once you open your eyes.

The Balance

I'm gonna be a Dad. I remember my Dad mentioning one time that becoming a father meant that you wanted to be better. I know what he means, I want to be better, to overcome some of the hidden sin, to be an example that my kid(s) can look to.

Growing up was not easy. I grew up Independent Fundamental, with a leaning more towards the independent in my household. My parents never agreed completely with all the legalistic trappings of our church, yet we still held a form of fundamentalism, just not the extreme. I have gone off about the whole fundamentalist doctrine many times, I am still resentful, and that is to my discredit. It is hard to know exactly the right thing to do. Norman schwarzkopf has a quote "The truth is you always know the right thing to do, the hard part is doing it." He is right and wrong, sometimes you know the right thing to do, others your left scratching your head.

I am not an athletic person, never have been. It was okay because I was never really interested in sports. I had a big imagination and was far more interested in books and movies than throwing a ball around. Sports were something I did in an attempt to relate to everyone else. I never related very well with sports because I wasn't really interested, and I was never any good. The thing was I didn't relate well with anything else either.

There are groups of kids who aren't good at sports, they relate through video games, movies, and music. I didn't relate well on that front because it was taboo, or at least a good portion was. Here is the thing, I understand my parents hesitation. The majority of the what our culture produces is filth. Aside from actual filth there is the underlying messages of the TV / film / music that is filth. Star Wars is a good example, it is an amazing movie, it teaches heroic self sacrifice, and a message of atonement, and it is also heavily steeped in a New Age philosophy.

For many christians sports is the safe alternative. There is a heavy christian influence that runs through many sports programs. The team prayer at the beginning of a game, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, sports are safe. Yet when you get in practice or a game you hear more cursing, talk about sex, exposure to pornography, and discussions about drugs than you would from most movies I was prevented from watching.

This world is fallen, and exposure to the fallen, fractured pieces of this life will happen. You can't really control it, but you want to build a wall around the innocence of a child, protect them, even though you really can't. I've been thinking maybe its not the exposure, its the awareness. An idol is an idol, regardless of the form it takes. A kid really into goth music worships the bands they follow, a kid really into football will worship their favorite team or player. Tell me how far apart are these two images, what is the real difference between the two?



These are the extremes right? Thats not the average fan in either instance. But that is how extremes all are, if you take sports fans in the extreme, and compare them to the extreme of those into role playing games there really aren't that many differences.

If you look at those who are fans in moderation? Can you really say that watching or playing football is far more wholesome than watching a popular movie? Last time I checked the cheerleaders still weren't wearing that many clothes, and the pride filled celebrations have as much to teach as the rock n' roll anthem that fills the soundtrack of a game during timeouts.

So what is the balance? Do you try to find the lessons in whatever your kid is predisposed to? It is something to try to figure out. I really don't know the answer, being a christian parent is going to be hard.

The House

We have been in our new house for just over a month. I've been meaning to journal how awesome God is. It seems kind of ridiculous to talk about the awesome of God regarding something as simple as a house purchase, he created the earth and the sun, he can handle 1600 square feet, still I feel the need to give him the glory.

On the way to look at our house we had a fight. I didn't want to go look at the place, I was tired and didn't wanna. We had an argument, but we went to see it. When we walked into the house I knew instantly that we would want to put an offer in, I didn't think we would get the place, but I knew we would offer.

The place was polished. The floors had been refinished, there was new paint, but there wasn't the fresh non-professionally installed flip house granite counters in the kitchen. Nice touches.

By this point in our house looking process we would put an offer in on anything, we had been rejected so many times I was confident in our ability to not get any place, so we put an offer in. There was a counter. What? Really? A counter? We had started looking 8 months before, we didn't quite know what to do. We had read the books on the process of house buying about a year before, what did the process look like after you put in an offer. We didn't know.

So we countered the counter. Their first counter was kind of cheese ball. I had been aggravated, I told Heather that I wouldn't pay over a really odd number - last four digits 450. We countered, they came back with that exact number. We looked at it as a sign, we had asked for direction - it seemed God was giving it.

We accepted the counter on a Monday night. On Tuesday morning I am having a quite time and Heather walks out of the bedroom, "I'm pregnant!!!" WHAT??? "I'm pregnant!!!"

We considered it another sign. If we had found out a moment before we may have second guessed, if we had found out any later we would have considered it maybe not quite the act of God we came to see it as.

The inspections came back good. We closed. We prepared to move in.

The night before we were set to move into the new house my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law came in to help. Around @1AM my mother-in-law comes into the room, "Jeremy someone is knocking on the door and calling your name." I get up confused, I go to the door, no one is there. I open the door and hear something. I walk around the side of the building and there is a geyser shooting up to the second story of the building. The water main to the building had busted, and it was right outside our apartment. I go back inside, walk to the bathroom, and I feel water on my feet outside the door. I turn on the light, a full two inches of water is on the ground, and more is coming in.

There a few moments that stick out. Heather jumps out of bed, doesn't know whats going on and throws a towel down on the floor. Praise God though, our apartment was packed, and the place where our boxes were stacked was high ground. If we hadn't been moving, we would have been moving. Our apartment was flooded, but there was no causalities, everything was okay.

What a month. God knew I needed the extra push out the door, the extra assurance that we were doing the right thing, of course he knew, he is God, he is amazing.

12-1D

Apartment 12-1D. I've moved out, forward all mail, but leave all bills please.

I sit here in my new home while rain pours outside and ponder the newness of this place, and all the memories of the old apartment. As with many posts on this blog I feel an incredible rush and urgency until the moment I begin to write then find a traffic jam of feeling and emotion sitting at my finger tips and an empty screen staring back.

I grew up in 12-1D. I may have graduated high school and gotten my first job in my parents house but growing up really started one night when I put a final load in my Dodge Avenger and drove into Houston to my new apartment.

When you spend a decade in a place you come to identify with it. You know it, you know the exact position of the knobs for a hot shower. You know the exact way to close the door. There are well worn paths throughout your place, they guide you no matter how dark.

Many neighbors came and went, but I stayed. I had a corner apartment, shaded in the morning.

I met my wife and we spent the first three years of our marriage in that little apartment. I will never be able to think of that apartment without a tiny knot of sentimentally welling up in my throat. Even the hard stuff seems easy in retrospect. When I first moved out I had little or no money. I ate Ramen noodles, watched TV on a 12'' screen. Weekends were spent alone, I couldn't afford to go out.

I grew up in 12-1D. There are memories, more than I can count. Most of the good ones involve my wife, my Heather. Before her I thought of my tiny apartment as a black hole, a place where I disappeared for a few hours of sleep. She put life into my tiny little black hole, she brought in the light.

One memory before I get to the story of moving out. Our first Christmas as a couple. Heather convinced me to get a Christmas tree. We were in the middle of finals, but we couldn't force ourselves to pay attention to them. We spent time watching Christmas movies, drinking hot chocolate, and staring at the most sparsely decorated tree ever. That Christmas was the first that I can remember thinking of that apartment as home. Prior to that Christmas home was always spent at my parents place, it was home, after that Christmas my apartment was home.

Moving out wasn't a hard decision, but the whole event has lingered in my mind.

Next post, getting the house.

Who your friends are....

Those who you invest the most time in are not always the people who will invest time back in you... Found this out moving into our new place November 21st 2009..

Government Downsizing

Read an article in USA Today about a trend in the Northeast to downsize local governments. Towns in New York are holding referendums to eliminate council positions. This is fascinating. You have a group of people who are finally standing up and proclaiming that government is "for the people by the people".

What is fascinating to me about this situation and others I've recently read about is the extent to which human emotion plays into decisions. I've been reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and the book gives some real insight into situations such as this.

The ringleader of the movement, Kevin Gaughan, has successfully ousted many town council positions consolidating the five positions down to three. He sells his downsizing by playing up the anger of the people, talking about how times are tough, that they've lost jobs, why shouldn't the government have to tighten its belt too? Council members sit on their bench, raised above the crowd, and that is just not how it should be. They are servant of the people, and if they are not doing something to fix the problem then they are a problem.

So to think through the situation logically, what does the council have to do with jobs being downsized by international corporations? Nothing. Have these council positions been expanded in the past ten or twenty years? No. Does a council position make someone wealthy? No, a position only makes about $16,000 a year, this means eliminating two positions would save each tax payer about $4 a year.

While I am not really for or against the idea of eliminating town council positions it is fascinating how a man can rally a cause using situations where people are scared and blaming those that have no authority or ability to change the situation causing the fear.

I remember a history professor talking about this. There is a need within humans to simplify bad situations into black and white. If there is an economic downturn the problems are rarely black and white.

Try making a talking point of the current situation, what exactly happened to cause the downturn? Economics has always been part black magic. Was it the oil prices going up causing inflation? Was it the real estate bubble? Was it the over leveraged credit? You know what I think it was, the guys with red hats, they did it!!! It was those guys!!

See how effective that is? You see the red hats in your mind don't you. You can visualize guys in red hats. You now have something to concentrate your frustration on.

I think this movement has the potential to go national, and by that I mean people actually discussing eliminating Congressional districts. If the current instability remains I have no doubt this will be discussed. It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense, that people would be asking to eliminate representation, they want to blame someone, who better to blame than politicians?

Mirrored Elevators

I do not care for elevators with mirrors. I'm guessing that in theory the mirrors help the more claustrophobic, make the elevator seem larger. Anyway forget that, take the suckers out, RIGHT NOW!!! They are to dangerous!!

Today I'm standing in the elevator doing what you do in elevators, wait and stare. I notice something, I'm staring at the reflection of a dude on the other side of the elevator. Worse he catches me staring at the reflection, which I thought of just as a side of the elevator until a second ago. Now me and the dude are having a moment, just the two of us, on an elevator, with the reflections.

I did the only thing a dude can do in a moment like that, COMMIT!!!! You have been caught, you were dude staring, or dude gazing, or something to do with looking at a dude in a confined area, you have to commit and win the staring contest. The goal is to make the other dude more uncomfortable than yourself.

This was a big dude, and he was not in the least uncomfortable, we stared, reflection to reflection, ding, elevator ride done. The dude stare was broken as the elevator doors slid back and the lobby replaced the view of some dudes kisser.

I stepped out of the elevator thinking next time I will be one of the impatient number gazers, anything is better than the thought of staring at a dude, then getting caught.

Do you tip everyone now?

So I've run up against something that confuses me and that is the trend of constant tipping. Is this something new?

A few years ago I could only name a few places I would tip - restaurants and the barber come to mind. At a hotel I would carry my own bags, and I live in Houston so I'm rarely if ever in a taxi. Lately it seems tip jars have popped up everywhere. Is this new or have I just not seen it?

Coffee shops, ice cream parlors, shuttle services, the porter at the airport, everywhere is a tip jar. The latest place tips have shown up is online on blogs and podcasts. I have occasionally tipped for a good blogpost or podcast but I've always felt it was merit based. The people on the other end are making little or nothing from their posts, they are working hard in many cases, they deserve a tip.

Should people doing their everyday jobs for which they are being paid get a tip? I mean if you need to tip the ice cream lady do you also need to tip the McDonald's cashier? If the ice cream lady why not the McDonald's dude? Am I missing something?

The waitress at a restaurant has her compensation based on the idea that she will get tips, is it the same way with these other services? If I'm paying $2+ for a cup of coffee is the salary for the "Batista" not built into that price? Is scooping ice cream into a cone really a tip worthy service? If so how much?

Its not that I'm uber cheap or anything I just find it confusing.

This week I was shocked to find a tip jar in the shuttle from the hotel. Why? I've never tipped before, have I been rude and inconsiderate? Is tipping expected for these types of services? I'm guessing the hotel employee isn't paying for the gas or the van that has the hotel name stamped on the side.

The other issue, I rarely carry cash so I always find myself sheepishly wondering how to deal with these situations. I mean its only a dollar or two, its not like I mind giving a tip, its just that its unexpected and I'm not quite sure merited.

Am I the only one who asks these questions?

Credit Scores and Giant Hemorrhage Inducing Constipation Turds, Is There a Difference?

Allow me to rant for a minute, or two if you don't mind.

Back in April / May time frame when we first began looking for a house I did what most buyers do - check my credit score, see if anything is hanging out that I wasn't aware of etc... No issues or problems, just checking it out. Had excellent credit, no issues, applied for a loan, got a good rate, life was good.

Six months later we finally find a place, before we found a place we also found furniture, nice bedroom furniture. We had no idea when we purchased the furniture how soon down the road we would be getting a house.

Pier 1 has a deal, sign up for a credit card get 10% off your entire first purchase. Bedroom furniture cost a lot, we are talking hundreds of dollars in discounts. How can we pass that up? We are looking for a house but it won't really affect the score that much will it? My credit is very, very good, won't hurt a bit, what's a few points?

Applied and promptly got turned down for the card. That's right turned down!! Have the embarrassing moment where the lady walks over and says that it turned me down. WHAT??? I'm not trying to brag but I have an above 800 credit score. There is not a late payment on my credit. How could I possibly be turned down? She says that I will get an explanation letter in the mail in a few weeks. A few weeks later I do not get an explanation, instead I get a Pier 1 credit card!!!

A shiny new Pier 1 credit card appears, and the first purchase will be 10% off!!! WHAT!!!!!!!!!!! We already have the freaking furniture!!!! It does me no good now!!!!! Okay, okay, that was mild frustration, but only mild compared to what I've seen this useless credit card do to my score.

How many points would you think applying for that card would throw me? Five points? Ten points? Ohhhh noooo, thirty-five points!!!! That's right thirty-five points off the credit score trying to grab a few hundred dollars of rebates. That thirty-five points is going to cost thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Man I hate credit cards and credit card companies. The whole credit score system is such a crock of crap. I am the most uber form of pissed right now!!!

"Dude, I'm married with patio furniture..." Prez

I have four posts "in the works."

Two of them are over Saul, the evil Israel overlord who tries to murder David. I will get back to that soon, I'm hoping by the end of the month, those posts take so long.

Another posts is about my Aunt. I just don't know what to say, its a horrible situation. I'm actually a few years older than my Aunt so we grew up as something more like cousins. I have never known a person so prone to drift with whatever influence came her way. Now everyone waits to see what will happen. What to say?

The other post was about two different books I have just finished, Up in the Air and City of Thieves. Of the two books Up in the Air was the most that I had something to say about.

I don't want to talk about any of that. Right now I am sitting next to a wife who nervously watches her Dallas Cowboys try to loose yet another game. We have spent most of the weekend setting up bedroom furniture. That's right bedroom furniture. Never thought I would spend so much on bedroom furniture. Never thought I would spend so much time setting up bedroom furniture.

There is something that has stuck with me from a HBO show we really like The Wire. One of the characters is asked if he wants to go out with everyone, he comments "I'm married with patio furniture". The level of married you are somehow has a correlation with furniture. Let me just say this, there is easily 4X - 5X the amount of money spent on this as I've spent on all the furniture I've ever had in my life. Of course when I moved in I spent I total of $75 on furniture, doesn't take much to get more expensive than that.

Married with bedroom furniture, yeah, I saw her eyeing some patio furniture online, wonder how long till we're shopping for that?

Up in the Air

Finished up two books recently, might explain why I'm having a hard time completing another post on David, but anyway the books.

First Up in the Air. Amazing book. The title, like most, has dual reference. Ryan Bingham is a member of the business class of flyers who rack up hundreds of thousands of miles a year always up in the air. At a deeper level Ryan's life, plans, relationships are all metaphorically up in the air, always circling the runway, and the story is about him trying to land only to find he has been circling the wrong runway.

What happens when you stop moving long enough to realize all the people and ideals you have put your faith cannot hold altitude?

I always enjoy getting a chance at peaking inside the lives of people who live so radically different than I do. I fancy that I could have been Ryan Bingham, a man lost in the airways of the United States given just a few different choices.

The book is the story of the crash landing at the end of such a disconnected life.

Some of the concepts I found fascinating in the book had to do with how endlessly worthless corporate ideology is. Ryan searches for value, for meaning, in his work with no success. He criticizes the religious while worshipping a god he knows is false and will ultimately sacrifice him. The book leads us through his faith in each and every one of his idols being destroyed.

Is that what the book was trying to convey? Is there a sense that once you slow down, once you stop flying and put some weight behind the ideals you have in your life they will give way underneath you. The only way to manage is to maintain altitude, never travel in a straight line, always jump from point to point?

It was a good book, very sad, and very modern.