Ready, Fire, Aim. I Mean Ready...

I must apologize for a long delay between postings but my life has gone from simply routine altering to someone hand me a fire extinguisher or better yet call the fire department. It reminds me of the news blurb I heard on Bob and Tom sometime in the last two weeks. A high school teenag couple managed to burn their parent's house to the ground while excaping from the blaze completely unclothed. It appears that their romantic interlude was interupted when the candles they lit caught the attic bedroom on fire. How do you explain that to your parents? We had to peel the burning clothes off our bodies in order to excape. Yea right. Or the bikini waxing went horribly wrong. Huh?

Work has been a lesson in what a severe lack of planning will do to any reasonably well run business. We have experienced a great increase in business since model year change (that is July for those not in automotive) which is a great thing. The bad part is we have not planned enough labor units (that would be hourly workers to the people living in any reality but our HR manager) for the increase in business. So now we are working everyone more overtime than they want and getting the standard diminishing results. Every week the crisis starts coming earlier in the week. When it finally occurs on Monday, it is time to sell.

So as I put on my red jacket and rubber boots and whistle for our dalmation so I can head out to work, I remember that adage they taught me in basic training, ready..., oh crap what was that again. It had something to do with the M16 and those targets that keep popping up down the firing range. Oh yea, fire was in there somewhere. I think you have to aim first though. That would probably help.

Icool

Cobb

Creeping Malaise

Sounds like a landscaper might use this as ground cover for a job at the Munsters or the Adams Family dwellings. It is actually plucked from the Pink Floyd album Animals. It is a phrase they use to describe the mentality of the sheep that graze quietly while the wolves prowl silently just out of sight. The sheep are content to rip up the grass and walk from meal to meal knowing that the size of the flock will protect them. When provoked by the fringe they dream of rising up to avenge the attackers only to realize that they are just sheep. They have been trained to believe that not making waves is the best way to survive so they return to their field of dreams and in the back of their minds, dread the creeping malaise.

Now how did we go from a country that was willing to risk it all to overthrow the mighty Britain to a nation of grazing animals? We have a great system of government that should be responsive to what the public wants but something altered the direction of that system. It is almost like we have become conditioned to be content grazing all day and being herded from one field to the next. The sheep dogs and the shepherd have been strategically placed to keep us in line and ensure that no one strays from the assigned path. Whether it is the legal system or the media, it is a matter of keeping the sheep from asking any question that are not on the agenda. Sounds mysteriously like a governmental system that collapsed about 20 years ago.

I have tried to shield myself from the broadcasts that numb the mind. I realize that we have been ingrained to watch television and that it is the only form of entertainment for millions of people. The innocence of the network broadcast was quickly shed when it was understand the power of beaming pictures into households. The days of I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke are gone. Now we forced to watch a parade of shows that are thinly disguised attempts for some one's political or moral agenda. Keep the sheep focused on those shiny things so they do not question the bigger issues. Sex, fame, and wanting the big, bad better life. What goals. What goals?
Either way. Look up and see where you are being herded. But don't trample the creeping malaise, the gardener won't be happy.

Icool

Cobb

For A While

Imagine winning the mega-millions lottery and not having a care in the world. $70+ million cash payout ($35 million after the federal thieves get their grubby mitts on it) and all the world to blow it on. What would a poor schmuck like me do with more money that can be spent in a lifetime? How to live a life of leisure with no worries other than what to buy next? What a sad idea to be thinking about having no real responsibilities? How pathetic can one get to become addicted to having everything you want? Well, I wouldn't mind giving it a try for a while.

It would be nice to have the funds to just lounge on a beach and soak up the sun for a few weeks with no one expecting you to jump through flaming hoops that they hold in their unsteady hands. Maybe learn to enjoy those fruity drinks with the straws and umbrellas and work on attaining that healthy glow. Of course, you would eventually have to find something else to do. The beach is fun but there has to be more to life than this.

Everyone you talk to wants to win the lottery and have all the money that goes with it. I do not think that most people have really thought through the stress and strains of having money. The isolation and reactions from people you once knew. Just take a look at those people that have actually won the lottery. Many of them have burned through the money and are broke, friendless, and divorced. Boy does that sound appealing. But I am sure that they had fun for a while.

Icool

Cobb

Everything That Glitters

I relaxed after dinner last night in my favorite chair, just staring at nothing, trying to recoup a little sanity after a week from Hell. Work has been a pirhana buffet with a great white appetizer for the last several weeks but like the birthing process, this too shall pass. Back to relaxation. My daughter had hit the button that brings alive the box filled with those alien signals from the broadcast networks. The long running syndicated show, Entertainment Tonight was playing on the screen and instead of whiling evening with a mindless self indulgence, I started watching what passes for entertainment news. How much can one person take in a week?

Now I love a great movie. One reason is that it is over in around two hours and you can buy it and rewatch it if you want. I really don't want to know about the actors lives outside the movies. It ruins the illusions and escapes provided by a well crafted theatre piece. The time I wasted watching ET was a parade of sound bites about various actors and the trials and tribulations surrounding their lives. Their prize story was about Lindsay Lohan and someone who had been in the same rehab facility she was currently inhabiting. What kind of horse hockey is that? I enjoy watching Lindsay Lohan in movies. Mean Girls was a fun show and the remake of Freaky Friday, although not a cinematic truimph, had good interaction between Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay. Now that Miss Lohan has issues with controlled substances, it allows these parasitic shows to make money from her misery.

The balance of ET was so memorable that I cannot remember who else was on. I realize that there are people out there who spend their entire lives living through other people. It is a shame to waste so much life on things that do not further you in any way. It comes down to worshipping someone because they are famous instead realizing that they are human and fallible and just like you. Maybe we enjoy watching the mighty fall because it makes us feel better about ourselves. If the famous fail, then we are better than them. But you have Lindsay Lohan who has not even begun to live her life, making the mistakes of youth and a nation that revels in those failures. It does not say much for our society.

Icool

Cobb

Third World Disasters

What is wrong with America lately? Our latest news blurbs sound like we are having disasters that usually only occur in third world countries. The biggest of late is the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. We have the bridge over a major traffic artery in a major US city that just plunges into the Mississippi and it makes us look like we can’t manage our own infrastructure. What are we the Soviet Union? Maybe we should go to those rope suspension bridges that you see in the Indiana Jones movies. At least there you are at the mercy of some knife wielding fanatic with a turban and not the inattentiveness of bridge inspectors.

Today we have a coal mine collapse in Utah. What is going on? Just recently we had a major metropolitan area submerge beneath a flood and latest reports are that the recovery is taking much longer than expected. The greatest nation in the world is suffering from a case of terminal bad luck. What is going to happen next? Maybe a volcano in Georgia or a tidal wave on the Great Lakes? How about forest fires raging throughout the west? Oh yea, those are actually happening.

Now the one theory I have not heard yet as to what was to blame for the bridge collapse is global warming. I mean the Iraq war, inattentiveness by George Bush, not raising gas taxes in Minnesota, and Detroit iron being too heavy are just a few of the blind stabs at the real truth. Someone did not perform a proper inspection on the bridge and their gross incompetence is what allowed this disaster to happen. It took a thought process that is way beyond mine to develop an answer that stabbed at the heart of total ignorance. Anyone that tried to place the blame on anything but the reason the bridge came down is fishing for an excuse to politicize the issue and not assign a cause. Can you say kook fringe?

I can

Icool

Cobb

Digesting Harry Potter

There was such a big fanfare for the release of the last Harry Potter book. I was caught up in Pottermania but after seeing the number of people reading the book, I know that I am not alone. I bought it the day it was released and 36 hours later, I had flipped the last page. Now I did not read straight through but I spend most of my waking hours, pouring over the pages. I must say that I was not disappointed with the outcome.

There was considerable speculation on who was going to die and whether Harry would win or lose. I tended not to participate in that speculation. It really did not matter whether any of the characters survived. I am not the author and brains behind the phenomenon. It was up to JK Rowlings to supply the ending that would either wow the world or disappoint the adoring readers. I was concerned that all of the loose ends would not be wrapped up, primarily because there were too many of them. There seemed to be too much ground to cover in just one volume but a single strand brought all of the ends together. It was almost too simple of a solution but knowing human emotion, it was all too real, even in the wizarding world.

I will not give away the ending, although anyone reading this will more than likely have finished the series. I applaud Rowlings for finding the solution that fit. I know that I have bee disappointed by many endings in recent years. The Matrix trilogy started out with such promise only to degenerate into a bowl of mystic jello. There was no topping the original Star Wars trilogy even though the special effects went beyond anything in the first three movies.

I am rereading the Dune series because the final book is due out in August. I started out with the books written by Frank Herbert’s son as they start with the great man – machine battle and progress up through the start of Dune. I have two of Herbert’s original books to finish and one by his son before reading the last and final. Somehow, I think that I will not be as happy with this outcome as I was with Potter. Time will tell. More on Dune as I finish the tales of the sandworms.

Icool
Cobb