The Late Tammy Faye

This is going to seem really mean.

There is no one that I hold in more contempt than a televangelist phony (redundant?). There is something especially vile about these people because they violate the deepest trust people have to offer them. They present themselves as special emissaries of the deity and credulous people fork over their hard-earned cash to curry their favor and that of their god. It is disgusting.

Tammy Faye Bakker died today. A better person than me could think of something nice to say about her or a least muster a bit of sympathy for her loved ones, but I am not that nice.

Tammy Faye was just another garden variety charlatan running a religious scam. She and her creepy ex-husband enriched themselves on the backs of the desperate and the gullible. They lived the high life with their hand in the pockets of the poor and the elderly. They preyed upon people's deepest fear, the fear of mortality, to live like royalty.

Then, apparently not having learned her lesson with Jim Bakker, she married one of his crooked associates, also a jailbird. Until her health completely failed her Tammy Faye continued to hustle for a buck. The only marketable thing left of the mighty PTL empire she and Jim Bakker created was the parody of herself that she had become, so she sold that, right to the end.

On to other matters.

If you take a toddler...wait. The lovely Mrs. Sneed tells me that the Sneedlets are no longer toddlers, but have moved to the preschoolers category, so let me start again.

If you take a preschooler to any traditional barbershop in the known universe and tell any barber that you want a regular boy's haircut, he or she will know exactly what you mean. The only issues will be tapered or blocked in the back and how short you want it. Unfortunately, the same isn't true when you go to a "stylist' or a salon or a storefront chain haircutting joint.

I was tasked with taking Sneedlet One to get a haircut today. Unfortunately, he won't go to a real barbershop, because he is convinced that you can only get your hair cut at Supercuts.

So bright and early this morning, before the crowd showed up, we went to the Supercuts location near here. Luckily, there were no customers and we got right in.

At a real men's barbershop the barber is likely to be a middle-aged to older guy who has been cutting hair his entire life and looks like your Uncle Phil. At Supercuts, the stylist is going to be a thirty-year old woman, fifty pounds overweight, with crazy hair. Ours today had hair blacker than deep space, with raspberry streaks. She also had several giant tattoos and about twenty visible body piercings . I shudder to think about what wasn't visible. She also had kind of an, "I don't really want to cut this kid's hair" attitude. Uncle Phil, at the barbershop couldn't care less about whether or not the kid wants a haircut, he's getting it cut.

I guess my age is showing. Then next cut the kid gets is going to be in the barbershop, if I'm in charge.

I told her that he needed a regular boy's haircut and she informed me that she didn't know what that was. I suggested trimming up the sides and top and tapering the back. That she seemed to get.

I'm not happy with the result. She didn't ask if we parted his hair at all, so he has a kind of Moe Howard look in the front. Square bangs, kind of short. The lovely Mrs. Sneed pronounced it "so cute", so what do I know? I'll tell you, not much.

I also awoke this morning to the news that when the irrigation came on early this morning there was a geyser on the side of the house. This according to Son Sneed who couldn't sleep and was awake all night.

My drip irrigation comes on at four in the morning, so I don't see it in action. Evidently, one of the larger pipes in the system, cracked, gushing water everywhere. This explains why our water bill was unusually high last month. It has probably been leaking for weeks.

Our system is twelve years old, so these things are not unexpected. I replaced about ten feet of pipe to be sure that I got the weak section completely and when I turned the water on, it held beautifully. Unfortunately, another leak instantly became apparent, this one under the brick patio.

In an ideal world, the pipe should be buried two feet deep. Unfortunately, we hired an ex and future convict named Kenny to install this system. Kenny buried much of the pipe very shallow, which has lead to many cases of inadvertent damage to it. This time Kenny's laziness worked to my advantage. The new leak was only 4 inches under the bricks, so once I had removed the bricks it was easy to repair the leak.

I fixed it, turned on the water and held my breath. No leaks. Sneedlet and I had to go get some sand so that I could relay the bricks. So we are back in business.

At the moment we are having a torrential downpour so I can shut off the system for at least tomorrow. Anytime we can conserve a bit of water, it is a good thing.





Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor