Category Archives: Do the right thing

Two more links to keep the ultra rich from visiting my blog

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I can’t help posting these links. I feel like I’m at war regarding who pays taxes in this country. The middle and lower classes keep taking it in the shorts because the ultra-rich claim it’s good for all of us if we continue to keep them ultra-rich: We’ve worked so hard for our money and you haven’t.

I feel like I’ve been bamboozled by multimillionaires telling me to drink their Kool-Aid.  Well, I can’t drink this shit anymore. I’ve had it. (BTW, I like the word “bamboozled” and may use it to name out next dog. How cool would it be if our new dog escaped the yard and I had to drive through the neighborhood yelling, “BAMBOOOOOOOZLED, BAMBOOOOOZLED. Get your ass home NOW.”)

Here are two more articles that got my blood boiling. I guess this means I’ll never be invited to play golf with Donald Trump. Oh, well, I’ll be busy doing my taxes with Turbo Tax again because I don’t have a team of accountants to do them for me. But I do have a dog named Bamboozled, and he’s one messed-up mutt.

http://www.truth-out.org/how-rich-soaked-rest-us68155?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/22/income-inequality-america_n_772687.html

Shallow thoughts and deep fears

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The birth of my daughter nine years ago made me see the world differently – good and bad. It was a great day. There have been happy moments that have made me feel guilty I’ve experienced them, like the squeal of pure joy my daughter makes over the simplest discovery and surprise.

When she was three or four, I would hide an object, usually a small stuffed animal, under a couch pillow and let her believe she had magic powers. “Say the magic words,” I said. And she would do her best to say words that sounded magical. I would press the object against the pillow, lifting them both, and “presto” it was gone. Then through some strategic tosses with my wife the object would make its way into another room in the house where my daughter would discover it. Magic; magical. To live and experience that moment and the look on her face of amazement and pride makes me the luckiest of men.

But not every story has a magical ending. There is the reality and responsibility of raising a daughter into this world and ensuring she experiences the joy of her own child’s mad happy scream one day. And I try not to be a pessimist when I look at the future that is not my own, but was part of my creation. I see peak oil capacity on the horizon, more people in prison than ever before, whorish government officials abusing their power, depleted fish in our oceans, and population growth this earth’s limited resources cannot support. And I worry. I worry a lot. And I feel helpless. A lot.

Couple these fears with my opinion of how low humanity can sink, including me, and I spend my days holding dark thoughts at bay. I’m not ready to buy a Mayan calendar yet, but I’m worried “something wicked this way comes.” And I feel like I should be doing more to prepare my wife and daughter for the day it shows up, though I hope it never does. I want to be proven wrong, but the math and science don’t look good.

I worry about my wife and daughter when I’m gone. They’re not as street smart as they should be. It’s not in them. They are good. I have seen more than I ever wanted to, or asked to. Been in situations I shouldn’t have been in. Done things in the past I’m not proud off. Sins may be forgiven, but they’re not forgotten.

I have no answers tonight. Just the need to get the thoughts and fears out and fill the open space in my head with solutions and positive thoughts. There is always a solution. Now I just have to think of one. People I love are depending on it.

Rant: Repainting films

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I’ve spent many days and evenings escaping real life and CF by watching movies – good, bad and mind-blowing. However, I’m irritated by trend of the enhanced version, or director’s cut, or need to release a second version of a great film for increased profits. It cheapens classics and makes me wonder why this craze haunts the film industry and not other art forms. What about novels and paintings?

Apple products would have a huge role in the new version. HC can visit the NYC Apple store.

If we can re-do films, why not pen updated versions of the Catcher in the Rye or Catch-22? Or paint new brush strokes on the Mona Lisa. Perhaps my examples are cheating, as the novels came out in a different time period when movies didn’t get updated (along with the fact J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer and da Vinci are long gone).  However, should that really matter? Couldn’t these works be freshened up for modern audiences? Think of the possibilities: Mona Lisa sports a Bluetooth headset in her ear, reflecting the busy, independent woman she is now. The current painting doesn’t do her lifestyle justice. In the repainted version, the porcelain veneers of her $10K J Lo smile sparkle when she’s caught mid-sentence ordering another five thousand shares of DreamWorks stock.

Let’s not stop at paintings. Think of the possibilities when it comes to adding modern, marketable technology to novels. Holden Caulfield gets a cell phone to use in TCITR II, the Technology Cut. Or better yet, Holden gets an iPod playing marketable hits while he walks around New York City contemplating life, which will be the cherry on top to sell the music rights for a massive amount of money. Now there’ll be a Catcher soundtrack album, or two, and a Holden Caulfield special-edition iPod. And McDonald’s Catcher in the Rye drink glasses that will be recalled due to some nasty Chinese metal in the coating that causes us all to want to kill ourselves, which is how I feel thinking about this.

There is no greater example of my hatred of revisionist history than Star Wars, which I remember waiting three hours to see when it was released and have since seen a dozen times. But, and it hurts to say this, George Lucas has killed it for me with updated versions that include added scenes that weren’t part of the original footage. In the ultimate unfair do-over, he added scenes created with new special-effects technology. Why not just re-shoot the entire movie with new technology, George, if you’re going to apply that rule? Why make a quilt of old and new? Might as well get rid of the cheap masks in the cantina scene while you’re tinkering with your masterpiece.

Imagine the Na'vi in pink or purple or ecru or Home Depot orange, the latter creating unique marketing opportunities

Why not re-shoot the whole damn thing, George? Re-shoot it every year with new actors and you’ll have a billion-dollar hit every June. Or, instead of re-releasing 4 or 5 different versions of your crowning achievement, as you clearly screwed up the last four of the movies you made, why not let someone else take a spin with the characters and make new movies? My eight-year-old daughter would jump at the chance to see new Star Wars films, not Star Wars films with new scenes.

I know my cause is hopeless. There’s too much money involved. And that’s our world now. Marketing and packaging – or repackaging. Maximizing the return. I don’t blame anyone. I would do the same thing if given the chance. If I had made Avatar and had had total artistic control, I wouldn’t release a second version less than a year later like James Cameron did. No, no, no –  I’d release a new version every month with different skin colors for the “Na’vi.” Then, when I ran out of colors, I would give the Na’vi iPads. Today, Avatar 1, version 27, would be in theaters.

Oh, well, it’s a shame some artists can’t leave their masterpieces alone. It makes me sad, though hopeful that one day someone will release a director’s cut of Troll 2. Hopefully the new version will be a total of nine minutes long and come with 100 dollars in cash for those of us who wasted two hours of our lives watching it the first time. One can only hope.

Digging holes

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Strange that the bottles on the web site don't match the ones I bought.

The morning started out rough with me feeling like the Human Torch. Tylenol acted as the bucket of water. I resisted filling the Vanco Rx, which was the right decision, so far. I’m feeling better tonight. I spoke to my stomach doctor on the phone today and he allowed me to move up to Ensure, telling me that four of these a day would provide me with the protein and nutrients I needed. (But not much eating satisfaction.) Unfortunately, they don’t come in an M&M’s flavor. So, I had to violate the liquid diet this afternoon and eat a handful, or two, or three of real M&M’s. Though I did chew them up until they became liquid-like.

*               *                 *

My gardener came by in the afternoon. I hired someone else to do some water-saving landscaping. He did a crappy job and I got hosed for over $1,100. I didn’t really complain to my gardener about it. I just mentioned it in a matter-of-fact kind of way. I may have to go to small claims court for the first time in my life and my gardener may get the job after all.

So, there I was mentioning the botched job the other guy did when my gardener told me that he had purchased over 100 acres of land way north of here where he and his family would one day create a farm with corn and cows. And he’d retire there. Watch his kids work the land. Milk the cows. Eat the corn.

That’s really cool, I thought. Really cool.

He needed water on the land to do all of this. Of course. Corn needs it to grow. Cows drink it to survive. Makes sense. So he hired a guy to drill a well, which was going to cost him around 50K. He gave him 10K to start, then inspected the progress which was going fine. He gave the driller another 24K. The work stopped and the lawyers came out and the driller declared bankruptcy. My gardener got a half-dug hole and lost his life savings.

I knew he worked hard for that money, in the dirt. It didn’t come easy.

He wanted me to know because, I think, he, like many of us, wanted to share a painful story. And because he wanted to give me some perspective on what losing real money is like. I didn’t lose my life savings. He did. I wasn’t complaining, but my story triggered his.

When he told me it was going to cost him 25K to fill the hole, well, what can you say at that point. Of course I said something stupid like, can’t you just fill it in with dirt? Wrong, you can’t. According to the government, a 50K hole has a proper way it has to be filled. That put an end to my talking about my $1,100 hit to the wallet.

The situation reminded me of the times over the years when I’ve listened to someone talk about their health issues – they had the flu and had to stay in bed for three days, or they had knee surgery and stayed overnight in the hospital. Of course I’m thinking if you only knew how many days I’ve racked up in the hospital, my friend, if you only knew. But I keep my mouth shut in those situations. And I wish I had today.

60-Second Sunday Rant

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We need more people who are mad as hell

I’m looking at the front page of the L.A. Times right now. There’s an article about an automotive company that’s been in the news recently for problems with its vehicles. This article states that the company “sought to cut costs by limiting the scope of repairs.”

I’m not going to debate whether they did this or not. I’m upset because in five years this company will still be around and still prospering. I’m happy for all of the people who work there, but at what point are we as consumers going to say enough is enough? Do the right f’ing thing, companies. Don’t let us read about you in the L.A. Times again.

And the next time somebody says to me that we don’t need government regulation of companies – that companies will do the right thing on their own – I’m going to take a baseball bat to that person. Companies continually prove that they won’t do the right thing on their own, that they will always put profit ahead of customers’ best interests.

What’s sad about these poor decisions is that they are made by people working at these companies. And I wonder what these people would think if they were on the other side of one of these decisions? If their house was being repossessed because the person at the bank lied to them about the loan agreement? Or the product caused them to get cancer? Or if a known vehicle defect wasn’t disclosed to them before they loaded their entire family into the vehicle for a Sunday drive to the mountains?

At what point are we as consumers going to draw a line in the sand with the people who run these companies and take our business elsewhere? I guess at the point when we don’t let our desire for their product overrule our memory of their actions. Wishful thinking?