I watched the E-Trade ad during the Super Bowl and I liked it. I thought it was cute. I also liked the idea that E-Trade had an ad during the Super Bowl. That meant to me that it was still a viable company and my stock in it will grow. I don't remember the slightest connection between the ad and Lindsay Lohan. In fact, I don't think the name the ad used, Lindsay (or Lindsey), whatever, even registered with me. The idea that the name Lindsay alone would identify Lindsay Lohan to me, like Oprah or Madonna identifies those personalities, is a preposterous idea. Until Lindsay Lohan's lawyers sued E-Trade for $100 million, Lohan was like background noise that filters through more important things when she's drunk and arrested or breaking parole and then only for a second. Her antics are quickly pushed back, out of mind, while, say, my grocery list becomes more important.
She must believe that her drunken antics are on everyone's mind, else why would she equate the “ milk-a-holic” Lindsay in the ad to herself? She also has a very high opinion of her own fame to think that a public relations and marketing firm would think of her, and deliberately refer to her, when developing the ad. Oh, and is she broke? Probably. Otherwise, why sue for so much money? I see arrogance and greed written all over the lawsuit. It's frivolous. If it affects the company's stock, maybe we shareholders should sue her with a class action lawsuit.
Lindsay Lohan just went lower than background noise to me. The next time I hear the name, I may say, “ Who? Oh, you mean that airhead no-talent who tricks her way to fame?” Isn't she responsible for her own reputation? We need a new adjective, “lindsay,” so when we describe another person as a “ lindsay,” we all know what we mean. The lawsuit is going to cause her more grief than happiness.
Dave
It must have been premonition that caused me to write that “ Your 'No Government' Tea Party and Your Dirty Tea Water” article back in September. I had no idea that Glenn Beck would take up the cause “against” clean water. I find that astonishing. Why would anyone be against clean water? Even more astonishing is why anyone would listen to a person who is against clean water. Wouldn't there be a nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is wrong about being against clean water? I think so. Yet, according to this New York Times article, Beck “...spoke at length against the Clean Water Restoration Act in December...” and “if you can get Glenn Beck to say that government storm troopers are going to invade your property, farmers in the Midwest will light up their congressmen's switchboards...” against the Clean Water Act. Even more astonishing is a Supreme Court decision against The Clean Water Act because the act specifies restrictions for only “navigable” water. I've never heard of any water shed that didn't end up in “navigable” water, whether the water flows on or under the ground. One way or another, water seeps or flows to the ocean and cycles back around in the form of precipitation. But, apparently we are allowed to pollute directly into to tributaries or ground water wherever it may end up. And, “they” do it because they can.
In my opinion speaking against the Clean Water Act is traitorous. Clean water is essential to life. You only have to look to Africa to see that. Africa has so little clean water that thousands (millions?) of people die from drinking the filthy, diseased water they have. Topping the list of “the most needed items” given to Africa by International Aid is water filters to “try” to increase the supply of clean water. It's everyday news that Africans have to “boil” the water they're able to get before it's drinkable. So, what is Beck saying? Is he saying that we should go the way of Africa? Is he saying that we should boil our water before we can drink it? That if we don't filter our water, then that's our problem and that's tough? That's what I find astonishing about anyone speaking against clean water in America or anyone listening to that kind of bullshit. That's the only word that describes this kind of rubbish.
In fact, I don't believe farmers do listen when they know all the facts and think through the problems they face raising crops and farm animals. In cases where they do listen, they've been lied to and they don't know it. Remember the tobacco lies? Even in front of congress, tobacco executives said tobacco is not addictive and tobacco doesn't cause cancer. But the medical and scientific research has proven the opposite, that tobacco is one of the most addictive drugs in the world and that it does cause cancer. Finally, after forty years of denying it, we learned that the tobacco corporations' own labs knew and hid the truth.
I also remember conversations on that farm long ago between Elvin, his dad, Harold and Jimmy about the safety of products and chemicals they were persuaded to use by agri-corporations. I heard those same conversations at the Owensville Mill and Elevator. Farmers had doubts. When they learned of unacceptable hazards associated with farming methods, they stopped using or doing whatever was suggested. They changed their methods or reverted to methods they knew were more safe. And, I remember the stories I heard from my nephew and niece about what may have caused their father's death. On that day, he had stopped applying anhydrous ammonia to a field of corn because he didn't feel good. Anhydrous ammonia is caustic and hazardous. Over exposure to the fumes alone can cause chemical burning in the lungs. And there's no knowing what chemicals the Monsanto Corporation added to the mixture to control application. That night he died of a heart attack, the doctor said. I have doubts.
There is more to persuading farmers to call their congressmen against the Clean Water Act than meets the eye, here. I'm suspicious of the Monsanto Corporation, and other agri-corporations, muddying up the facts with polluting propaganda; pitting farmers against their government by creating fear of losing their livelihood. There is a poisonous snake in the woodpile that needs his head chopped off. I'm thinking the snake's name is Monsanto.
There's a few more questions you have to ask yourself. If your fish are dying in your polluted pond or nearby stream, how can you allow your cattle, pigs and chickens drink the same water? If your child or grandchild gets sick every time he or she drinks your polluted well water, how long will it take for you to start spending money on water filtering equipment and how quick will you call your congressman about that coal-fired power plant polluting the ground water? If you pollute your own water and then constantly buy and maintain filtering equipment for clean water for your animals and family, where in that scheme are you winning? Wouldn't you want your neighbor to respect your right to clean water too?
You also have to wonder what Beck knows about farming. I'd say that he gives no more thought to it than going to the grocery store. As long as he can buy milk and eggs, he's happy. I'm hoping he'll get a diseased, polluted egg so I won't have to hear or write about him anymore. Good riddance.
Dave
This is about another experience sailing on the USS Saint Francis River (LFR-525), but before I tell that story, I need to tell you this one. I can't help but notice that I need a haircut and I'm a little peeved about that. Three months haven't passed yet and almost everyone who knows me know that I get a haircut once a quarter. That's because I'm a cheapskate. At $20 a pop, including a $2 tip, I refuse to spend more than $80 a year on haircuts. Call me eccentric if you want. So be it. I'm old enough, and probably deserve, to be that way.
So, when I do get a haircut, I like it short, just shy of white sidewalls. By the time I need one again, I'm pretty shaggy but it's still manageable. But, my last haircut was a “medium,” sold to me by persuasive “Little” Al at Castro Valley's Village Barber Shop. Well, it's probably my fault for two reasons. The first is that I specifically waited for Little Al's chair to empty because I noticed that Big Al was politically agitated, even though Big Al remembers how I like my hair and he gives a better haircut. A person shouldn't want Big Al cutting his hair when he's agitated. He was going on about Senator Boxer acting more like a Republican than a Democrat and that's not a time to have him cutting your hair. The last time he cut my hair while agitated, I walked out with REALLY SHORT hair. So, I chose Little Al.
The second reason is that explaining how one wants their hair cut is really difficult, so I usually just submit. In this visit, Little Al suggested a “medium,” whatever that is. It turns out that Al felt he needed to use “ thinning shears,” the most useless tool in a barber shop in my humble opinion, to get my hair to a medium state. I ask you, don't you think that if the hair on the side of your head is relatively short, shouldn't the hair on the top of your head be cut proportional to the length on the sides? I think so. I'm not a “top notch” kind of guy, walking around with thin hair on top standing up in the wind while the sides are laying nicely flat.
Al's first pass cut a lot of hair off my sides, as I expected and wanted, but he only snipped the ends of my hair on top. That left three inches on top, but only a half inch or less on the side, way out of proportion. I said, “Al. You need to take more off of the top.”
“We'll get it,” he said, and I kept quiet. Then out came the thinning shears. Crap. Thinning shears, in case someone doesn't know, are scissors that have one full, sharp blade and teeth on the other blade. The teeth cut half of the hair in a snip, leaving the remaining hair long. As the name implies, they thin the hair... which of course makes it wave in the slightest breeze or even when walking. I never wanted to be that guy who combs four strands of hair across the top of his head to cover a bald spot and who is constantly patting it down in the slightest breeze. If that's what life brings, then I'll just be bald. But, rather than tell Al how to do his job, I waited until I got home to shorten the top myself.
That brings me to the USS Saint Francis River and the question: How did I learn how to cut hair? I learned on that ship. If you've read my last blog, The Kraken and Other Leviathans, you know it was the most dangerous ship I was on. It was an accident waiting to happen, and it did more than once. I became the Ship's Barber for a little over four months on the River when our regular barber, Chicken Man, cut off his thumb in a rocket launcher loader. That ended his barbering, and any other enterprise with that hand. An opposing thumb is critical.
Chicken Man got his nickname because of the size of his nose, not because he was chicken. His nose was huge. From what I could tell, he wore it proudly. But, being a rocket loader, a “front man,” wasn't for the faint of heart. Not everyone qualified for the job. It took four extremely quick, coordinated men to keep a single rocket launcher firing; two to push fully armed rockets into the barrels and two others to take the empty casings out, and all of that happened in less than three seconds in steady firing. Harassment fire was slower, but when Army or Marines were in a hot spot with the Vietcong, we were in close to shore and shooting all we had to help them. We could empty our entire ship load of 5,000 rockets in fifteen minutes, if necessary, firing all ten launchers as fast as we could. When that happened, things got hectic. My loader and I were the only two sailors on the main deck manning the 40mm canon. We just ducked and pulled our shirts over our eyes and mouth, trying to breath in the thick rocket smoke and to not get hit by a side-winder, a bad rocket or misfire. No one was surprised about Chicken Man's accident. It was inevitable.
I hated to see Chicken Man leave. As senior Supply Petty Officer, I knew how hard his job was, especially with our S. O. B. XO the way he was. Doing anything for him was brutal. Nothing pleased him and cutting his hair was the worst. You may think that my mention in that past blog about fifty percent of the crew refusing to return to ship was a casual incident, but that was a serious breach of conduct, and our XO was more of a cause of that than anything else. The crew hated him. That incident was noted in the ship's log, and the logs are sent (some by teletype, as this one was) to the Commander, Pacific Fleet, the Pacific top dog, and HE demanded an investigation. On our next stop in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, a week or so later, a Rear Admiral Chaplain, hastily flown in from San Diego, commenced that investigation. As it was payday too, I, as senior Supply PO, sat beside the XO, acting as Disbursing Officer, at a mess deck table and counted the money as he gave each sailor their pay. I hated this chore; having to sit next to the XO. As usual, he withheld pay at his discretion and slightest whim, depending on whether “he liked” the man or not, a decision he had no right nor authority to make. Not even the highest Admiral had that authority. But this time the Rear Admiral was watching. I nearly burst out laughing when the Admiral, with all the investigative authority of the Commander, Pacific Fleet, leaned over into the XO's face, and said, “You're an ass hole. Pay these men what the Navy owes them or I'll court marshal your ass.” Whoa! In front of everyone! It was glorious. Not a soul on the mess deck breathed.
Unfortunately, the XO was not ordered off the ship as everyone expected. He left the ship on our return to our home port, Yokosuka, Japan, more than four months later. So, I soon got the word that I was the new Ship's Barber, ordered by the XO of course. From that point on until the ship returned to Yokosuka, I cut hair on the fantail every Saturday and Sunday. We had fun cutting hair. We made it a social event, talking and laughing at unintended hair “styles.” At first, most of the crew wanted a buzz using clippers. It was easy and clean cut and they were afraid of any other cut they might end up with. But, the XO noticed how easy that was and he ordered no more buzzes, I believed out of spite. So, I began using a comb and scissors and I used the clippers only for trimming edges. By the time we returned to Yokosuka, I was the only crew member with a buzz because none of the crew could cut my hair any other way. I had also given about 1,000 haircuts and the later ones were pretty good. Cutting hair was not that difficult, except the XO's hair.
The XO's hair was pretty long by the time he sat down for a hair cut. He ordered me to the Ship's Barber Shop to do it, out of sight (and laughter) of the crew, and usually after a tiring day on the gun-line, not on a relaxing Saturday or Sunday. The shop was just big enough for a barber's chair, upright, and one person – me. As usual, the XO was determined to make things difficult and he insisted on leaning the chair back, which took up more space, made it difficult to move or bend over his hair and usually ended up giving me a back pain. I gave him about eight haircuts over the four month period. He insisted that I use Thinning Shears, which, I learned, did nothing more than make him look stupid. It didn't make his hair shorter, it only made it thinner. There is always a breeze at sea, and in spite of his hat, he couldn't keep his hair under control. He looked like an idiot and everyone snickered behind his back. I got more facetious “good job” comments from the crew for his haircut than any other joke I pulled on that ship. On the occasion of the last haircut I gave him, I accidentally (on purpose) cut a gouge through his hair on the back of his head and then pleaded, “I'm so, so sorry, XO. I slipped.” He wrote me up for non-judicial punishment and tried to reduce me by one rank, but the Skipper wouldn't sign the reduction in rank order nor the hearing findings. The Skipper winked at me as he told me to behave myself.
Three days later we arrived in Yokosuka and our new XO reported aboard. As our old one walked down the gangway for the last time, a chief yelled out, “Hey XO. You need a haircut.” Everyone on deck burst out laughing. He just turned and scowled.
Dave
The news is all 'a twitter this morning about the new credit card consumer protection laws taking effect today. And, of course the news is full of tidbits about how the credit card companies have ways to “work around” the law. Is there anyone else out there who have these questions pop into their head? How does it happen, in America, that we must have laws to protect ourselves from our own companies? How did we come to have CEOs and company managers who can cheat and scheme ways to cheat its customers, put them in debt, and force them to pay years of payments, way over any reasonable limit of income, to the extent that any reasonable person would consider it bondage? Is anyone else angry about this situation? In my search for answers to these questions, I come up speechless. I have no answer.
It seems to me that predatory credit card behavior is a testosterone thing. A bragging right among the fat cats. Who got the biggest bonus for the best scheming? Who has the most customers paying the highest interest rates? Who has the most customers filing the most bankruptcies? Who has the most customers they schemed with “special offers” then screwed them with new fees and interest increases?
The only other animal, other than man, that is associated with greed and gluttony is the pig; or more appropriately in the vernacular of my youth – hogs. I can't think of a better word describing credit card company managers; they're hogs.
On that farm of my youth we “cut” pigs that were raised for market to limit the effect of testosterone on the pigs' behavior. They were less active, ate more and more apt to get fatter quicker. “Cuttin' hogs” was grabbing a young thirty or forty pound pig by a hind leg and its ear, flopping it over on its side and placing a knee on its ribcage to hold it down while someone else castrated the pig with a razor blade. That had to hurt... and the squealing pig confirmed that. Usually we dosed the cut with oil to prevent infection.
Maybe that's the answer, without anesthetic....
Dave
