24601

If you are familiar with the book Les Miserables, or its musical or cinematic adaptions, you know that the protagonist, Jean Valjean is sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. Hugo's story pits the desperate against the rigid inflexibility of the law. I was thinking about Les Miserables this morning when I was listening to the podcast of the Dave Ramsey show from yesterday.

Dave took a call from a 60 year-old woman who had become ill and declared disabled by Social Security. She said she was receiving $700 per month in benefits. The reason for her call was that she had $12,000 in credit card debt that she racked up on her credit cards while waiting for Social Security to kick in. That is how she supported herself when she couldn't work, but also couldn't collect Social Security.

I am not sure how I feel about that. A couple of years ago I would have been positive that it is stealing. She used the credit cards knowing that it was unlikely that she could repay the money she borrowed. To her credit she has stopped charging and is somehow surviving on the $700 bucks, but there is no way she can repay the money. She told Dave she is considering bankruptcy.

Does this strike you are dishonest? I think it is, but like Valjean, what are her options? As the man said, "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

I'm just not sure how I feel about this. On one hand it is clear that charging items you don't intend to pay for is wrong, but is theft in pursuit of survival wrong?

Then again, I can rationalize (there's that word again) it by saying the the credit card companies victimize the poor and that their business model is constructed to accept a high level of loss. Maybe they got what they had coming.






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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Calling

Warning! This might offend you more than usual.


I was listening to a radio today and I heard a call from a woman that got me to thinking about how people rationalize their behavior. I wasn't completely versed in rationalization, having never done it myself, but a quick Google search brought me up to speed.

For the purposes of this rant, I define rationalization as interpreting reality in a way that allows me to get what I want, when I want it, or makes my boorish behavior seem acceptable. That is, if I had actually ever rationalized something myself and I am not saying I have.

I have to stipulate that I have no use for financial irresponsibility and especially when people drag their religious beliefs into their irresponsibility. Also, as always, I have no religious belief myself, but I also have no quarrel if you do, unless it affects me.

The most offensive case of religiously excused behavior I ever had personal knowledge of, was when one of my coworkers joined a Christian sect that thought the rapture was happening soon, really soon. This fellow went on a debt spree, buying everything he could, not paying his taxes and living the high life because, as he put it, "I won't be here when the bills come due." He managed to cast God in the role of getaway driver. But he didn't see it that way and neither did the IRS when they came for him.

But back to today.

The woman on the radio told the host that she felt a calling from God to take a missionary trip to South Africa, rather than paying off her student loan debt, and asked his opinion. I guess if I ever felt a calling from God, I would take it as the final word and not ask some guy on the radio to second the motion, but that's just me.

The host suggested that having a calling was fine and dandy, but the timing might be off a bit. He suggested she wait until the debt was cleared up. But since she already knew what she wanted to do, she launched into a long-winded explanation about her plans to have children and that this was just the only time available to them. This lady had the hots to go to Africa and she was going. God was merely an unimpeachable authority to sanction it.

I also have an issue with the idea of religious tithing when you are behind in your financial obligations. I frankly don't care what you do otherwise, but when you stiff your creditors, we all pay. I hear calls all the time on the Dave Ramsey show from people who want to know if they should tithe while they are in arrears on their obligations or worse yet, in bankruptcy. Dave has this regular answer about how tithing is God's way of teaching people to be givers and he adds that God doesn't need your money. Great, then pay your bills and learn giving when you have your own money. I cannot imagine that a god who was, is now and for ever shall be, would be bothered by a short delay in your growth as a believer.

People are going to do what they do and find excuses that support them, even if they require the suspension of reason to do so. I find it odd though, that people can delude themselves into believing that a god they believe to be the essence of goodness, could be okay with their dishonesty, or if that is too harsh a word, their irresponsibility. But hey that's just me.

Merle.











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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Dancing

I read a wonderful expression today. "With one tuchus you can't dance at two weddings!" Tuchus is Yiddish slang for butt, behind, caboose, keister, you get it.

There are a lot of ways I can interpete the saying. The quote was from a business article about setting priorities about what needs to be accomplished in what order, but it applies to many other aspects of my life and I am betting yours too.

I may have mentioned a time or a thousand that I am tired of my job. One of my chief complaints about it is that our resources are spread so thin that difficult to do any one thing well, because we are asked to do five things at once. I tell my coworker all the time that I am not spending most of my life at the job to cover up the mistakes of poor management. I can't be a slave to my job because I only have one tuchus and many weddings to attend. And as astonishing as it may seem, most of them aren't held on company property.

I was thinking about other ways I try, or have tried, to dance at two weddings. Sometimes it is tough to be a responsible parent and have the kids like you too, but we try. Or maybe to tell a friend about an annoying habit of theirs, without hurting their feelings. Can't have it both ways.

I blogged about disgraced Pastor Ted Haggard. He found out that he couldn't be pious most of the time and immoral (at least by the proscriptions of his religion), the rest. Most of us are not all that bothered by the hypocrite label, but when you've hung you hat on that peg of holiness, you can't just take it off every now and then and expect everyone to overlook the empty hatrack.

In a financial sense, you can't make every guy-type money and spend like a rich guy. Well, actually you can for a while, but sooner or later you get dragged out of that rich guy wedding and back in with us chumps. American Express will not be impressed by who you impressed during your Donald Trump Reality Tour.

Anyway, it comes back to doing what we can with what we got, not doing what we can't because we don't got and the wisdom to know the difference (with apologies to Bill W.). No one should expect more than that of us, but of course, that won't keep them from asking.

In the words of the philospher Popeye the Sailor Man, "I yam what I yam." And that is good enough for me.










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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Clutter

A word about its or it's. You may have noticed that I frequently misuse one or the other version of the word. I blame it on Daughter Sneed who unlike me, can actually write. The woman constantly badgers me about my misuse and now even typing the word causes me to sweat and shake uncontrollably. I lose vision in both eyes and have a pounding in my head. If you see it misused it's her fault, or is it its her fault? Damn sweating.

(Image courtesy of National Capital FreeNet www.ncf.ca)

Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of your nose.

Casa Sneed is about 2000 square feet in size. It is built on a small lot because it was an in-fill cluster project in the center of our fair city, more or less. An in-fill project is one where vacant land within the existing city is used for new development. Cluster means that the homes are built on smaller than average sized lots. Our cul-de-sac had been slated as an apartment building, but it was never built, so in 1994 or 1995 a home builder got approval to put eighteen homes on the site. Each home is on a lot of about one-eighth of an acre. Fairly tight quarters.

The reason I bring this up is that storage is a problem at Casa Sneed. Add to the shortage of space, the fact that the lovely Mrs. Sneed is something of a packrat, and we have issues with stuff, lots of stuff.

The lovely Mrs. Sneed and I have different thoughts concerning stuff. To my way of thinking stuff is just stuff. You can always get more stuff. The lovely Mrs. Sneed has emotional connections to stuff that I lack. She ties the stuff to fond memories or relationships and likes to keep it around out of respect for those memories. And I hasten to add that there is nothing wrong with it.

My dad moved in with us during his last year, using the guest bedroom. When he died it became a convenient place to pile junk. A few weeks ago the lovely Mrs. Sneed decided that rather than being a guest/storage area, it should become her office and a play area for the Sneedlets. The only fly in the ointment was what to do with the stuff that was piled in the room.

For instance, there was my father's bed. Younger Son Sneed decided that he would take it in his room, so we gave his bed to a neighbor who was trying to set up a guest room in her house.

We had a china cabinet that became excess when we got our new dining room furniture. The old cabinet was purchased with the few dollars left to the lovely Mrs. Sneed when her brother died. We thought about selling the china cabinet, but instead we gave it to a young couple who were trying to furnish their new home.

We had two pieces of high-end exercise equipment that belonged to our late son-in-law. We took them to the Salvation Army rehabilitation program to be used by the folks in that program.

Anyway all this stuff went to good uses that would honor the people that they were being saved in honor of and they are out of our house. As a bonus, once you get past the emotional stuff, you can attack the stuff that you saved in case you ever needed it. We ditched a ton of that kind of thing. The old win-win as I see it.

So this morning the lovely Mrs. Sneed told me that the house seems twice as big with all the stuff out of the guest room and a functional office in its place. Not bad.

Merle.





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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Sleep

I am so tired today. The lovely Mrs. Sneed and I went out last evening until real late. Even though I got 7 hours of sleep there is something about the timing of it that caused me to be tired today. It seems to me that not all rest is created equal.

I got to sleep at a few minutes after 1 am. I woke up at 8:30 am, so that's 7 and a half hours. I usually get about six and a half hours, but since I usually get to sleep at ten thirty, it seems more restful than last night's seven and a half. Maybe the old wisdom that the sleep before midnight is more restful than the sleep after midnight is true.

I have posted before about how I sometime take naps in my truck at lunch time. Napping is something that is under appreciated here in the United States. Maybe it is our tradition of a strong work ethic that keeps us from embracing the nap. Maybe napping is viewed as a sign of laziness. Some people say that they can't sleep during the day, but I'm not among them. I can fall asleep anywhere, at any time, except for Sunday night, when I have trouble sleeping. The specter of a new work week messes with my sleep.

I have always been a guy who appreciates a good nap. I should have been born in Spain, where there is an appreciation for the nap. When I was in high school, the schools were so crowded that we had double sessions. I spent much of my high school years going to school at six in the morning and getting out at five past noon. I usually went home an took a nap.

One time the lovely Mrs. Sneed signed us up for yoga at the Jewish Community Center. During our meditation time, I invariably fell asleep. That wouldn't be so bad except that I snore.

I have slept overnight on the floor in the Denver airport, I've slept on tour boats, busses, planes and trains. In fact one of my favorite napping sites is the train in Disneyland. I can go 'round and 'round and nap to my heart's content.

But then there are the dreams. I am a anxious guy by nature, and my dreams reflect that. I have this recurring theme in my dreaming. I dream that I am on my way somewhere, like work, and try as I might, I just can't get there. I hate that dream. I am pretty sure that you can't get a restful sleep when you are having frustrating dreams, so maybe that is why I fall asleep easily.

We picked up daughter Sneed and Sneedlet One today and went to the mall. Sneedlet had lunch at Chick-fil-A, then I took him to the mall playground. We all had lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant and came home, where I took an hour nap.

Sneedlet is watching some videos in with his grandma and I am hoping he falls asleep soon, so that I can too.

Merle.





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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Thieving Crooks

I got a nice comment yesterday from another victim of Icon Design Concepts, who you might recall, made an unauthorized debit of $12.95 from my bank account. Evidently they have lists of Visa Debit Card numbers and are randomly trying to send through merchant charges on those numbers. I was able to determine that the domain name Iconconcepts.com was registered through Tucow Inc., a domain resistar. I sent an email to Tucow to see if being a thieving pile of crap violates their terms of service agreement. If you have been victimized by these guys, you may wish to complain to Tucow too, although the thieving crooks may simply have used the iconconcepts.com domain name. I also sent an email to registered owner of the domain name to see if he would respond, although again he likely is an innocent victim too. You see, I am a bit obsessive about things, plus I have time on my hands. I have always had this notion that serial scam-artists ought to be locked up forever, although I'm sure we don't have the jail space to do it. Some people go from one scam to the next during their entire lifetime. Anyway, the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I have to go out for the evening, so I will sign off. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Life Coach, Schmife coach

First things first. I hate it when it is windy and today it is windy. The wind is blowing at about 30 mph, or as I like to say, too darn hard. I came home to find the trash barrels blown over and no matter how I might try to keep them upright they will be blown over again in a few minutes. Luckily, today was trash and recycling pickup day so at least there is nothing in them to fall out and blow all over the neighborhood. The wind was a problem for those wacky smokers at work today. The poor things couldn't shield their matches from the gale so they resorted to using the back door as a wind break. They would hold it open and stand behind it to light up. This of course cause the wind to blow through and down the hall, but hey, you gotta light up, right?. I noticed that they looked like some sort of nicotine-addicted religious cult. They were all hunched over, facing west, backs to the wind, puffing furiously. We had a couple of transients earn the right to remain silent at our place today. It seems that someone working on the roof of our building spotted these two dopes leave the WalMart, walk to the dumpster behind our building, put a large bag in it and then go back to the WalMart. The worker notified our security guard, who looked in the dumpster and found a bag of WalMart loot. The guard called the cops and then kept these ne'er-do-wells' stash under surveillance. They returned shortly with a second bag, dropped it in and then headed back to WalMart for more. This time the guard took all the ill-gotten gain out of the dumpster and put it inside our fence, out of sight. When the two criminal masterminds came back and found their booty gone, they climbed in dumpster and began tossing garbage out, in a vain attempt to find it. Then they retreated a short distance away to ponder what might have happened to their stuff. While they tried to figure out whether they had been robbed, the cops showed up and they were hauled away. Never a dull moment, but it makes you wonder if there is any security at WalMart. Then there is this. I heard a caller on the Dave Ramsey show yesterday, who called in for advice about her financial situation. She was a photographer of some sort and her husband was a part time minister in a town some distance away. His ministerial gig was two week on and two weeks off, as I understood it. She said he was also a Life Coach. I Googled Life Coach and discovered that it is someone who has figured out how to get paid for handing out advice. Sort of a paid mentor. Anyway, this guy was ministering two weeks a month, including life coaching, and working part time being, and I am not making this up, a door-to-door-appointment setter, no doubt for some annoying thing like siding, vacuums or water softeners. The wife was trying to make a go of photography, selling kids photos on commission, out of someone's studio. Their big problem was that they had no money to pay for a sitter for their own kids and were in a disagreement about who should stay home evenings, while the other tried to work. Now, I ask you, does this sound like a guy you want life coaching from? I guess if I was paying someone to set me straight, I would want him or her to be less screwed up than me. But maybe that is just me. Time to go see where the trash barrels have blown off to. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Anna Schuleit

I heard an interview this morning on a podcast called, The Story. The host, Dick Gordon, was interviewing an installation artist, which at first hearing, doesn't sound like a real artist at all. It sounds like something that a company dreamed up to add a sense of mystery or glamour to a very ordinary job. Subway doesn't have minimum wage workers slapping meat on bread, they have sandwich artists. An installation artist sounds like something that a plumber decided to call himself. We will have our installation artist there at ten to install your furnace. It turned out that it is a real thing. Mr. Gordon interviewed an artist named Anna Schuleit, a 2006 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and accomplished installation artist. I don't pretend to understand much about art and since I had never hear of installation art prior to this morning, I know only what I learned in the interview. As I understood from the interview, the artist's objective is to give a new meaning or a different perspective to an existing space. These are not works that can be bought and sold, but instead are for the enjoyment of the observer, if that makes sense to you. Ms. Schuleit has produced a number of works using old mental institution buildings, that pay tribute to the men and women who both worked and were treated at these facilities. I am fascinated by her 2003 work called Bloom. Ms. Schuleit recognized that the patients and staff of this sterlie institutional didn't receive many flowers over the years. She created a beautiful work of art by carpeting the old building in flowers. It is as if the the flowers that were never sent crash through the doors like a flood, settling everywhere. Anyway, nothing I can say can do justice to her work. Take a look at her site, it is well worth the time. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

I'm Sinking!

I hate it when I get myself into a conversation that I just cannot escape from. At our building we have parking in the front for several hundred cars and a parking lot on the east side of the building, next to the WalMart, that can accommodate about thirty or forty cars. If you park in front, you can use the main entrance which has the guard station. In the side lot there is a card-access gate entrance to the building. I prefer to park on the side and use the gate. The only downside is having to walk past all the smokers from the call centers upstairs, but I can come and go largely unnoticed, so it is worth holding my breath for a few seconds. Now if I could just hold my tongue. This morning when I arrived and walked to the entrance, there was a woman fumbling in her purse at the gate. I assumed she couldn't find her access card, so being a charming and witty guy, I said, "If you swear you're not a terrorist, I'll let you in." The woman turned toward me and I was struck by two things. She is really heavy, which I had already noticed and she had a burning cigarette stuck in her mouth. Oh yeah, and she had a huge ring through her lip, so I guess that's three things. She tells me thanks and adds that not having her access card is a problem because since she smokes, she needs to get in and out the back door several times throughout the day. Again, not knowing when to just shut up, I ask her if she is aware that smoking will kill you? She says that she does, but says that since she eats so unhealthily, she might as well smoke too. I reflect on the logic in that for a second. Then, of course, I just plow on like a jackass, sinking deeper and deeper into this morass. "Are you under the impression that smoking somehow counteracts bad nutrition?", I ask. "Look", she says, "I eat crap, I smoke, I'm fat. I can keep on or just jump in a river without a life vest. It is all the same thing." I think a nanosecond about how to respond, tempted to ask her if those are really the only two choices, but I finally rein in my big yap, wish her a good day and scram. Talk about your weird encounters. I was struck by her cynical attitude about her own health, but then who am I to hand out health advice, since I am pretty heavy myself and show little inclination to slim down any? I am also having this email exchange with a guy who is way smarter than me, about the public vs. private school debate. The question is, which is better for learning? A couple of researchers did a study that says that if you control for the variables that are beyond the control of the public schools, their quality of instruction is equal that of private schools. The variables that are controlled for are socioeconomic factors, like poverty, unstable living arrangements, students with special needs, etc. What this says to me is that if public schools didn't have all these problems, they wouldn't lag behind. I guess I didn't need a study to tell me that and it seems unlikely to cause many people to return their kids to public schools. I think this fellow I am corresponding with thinks I am critical of the public schools. I am not. We get exactly what we demand of the public schools. We insist that they teach kids who don't want to be there and whose parents don't care. We ask them to compensate for many of society's failings and we hamstring them in many ways. I support public schools but I understand why people pull their kids out of them. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

We Got Snow

(Click on pictures to enlarge)






These are just some pictures that I took this morning of the snow that fell overnight. We only got a couple of inches in the city and since it barely gets below freezing and doesn't stay that way, the snow on the ground melted as soon as the sun came up.

A lot of you have asked for a picture of my WalMart and the second picture is that very store, with the mountains behind it. This is the best it has ever looked, kind of like a geeky teenager on prom night.

The news people are in an hysterical frenzy over the weather. There were predictions for freezing rain and possibly more snow this afternoon. Instead we got sunny and temps in the 40's. The five o'clock news is devoting the entire first thirty minutes to weather coverage. And not just any coverage, we get team coverage. Team coverage means that the entire staff is sent out to stand out in the cold, interview people dumb enough to talk to them and tell us how cold it was and how much inconvenience the snow caused.

In a desert city like ours, snow is so rare that we are completely unprepared for it, so chaos is somewhat inevitable and totally understandable. We drive on dry pavement for 99% of our lives. A lot of things happened today that have been an overreaction in retrospect, but we only get snow now and again.

Many schools chose to close for the day rather than have their buses out on icy roads. At my work a couple of people called in saying that the roads in outlying areas were impassable. Some roads were closed that probably should have been left open. We are amateurs at wintry weather.

Maybe you have experienced this but it seems that the smartest, toughest, most able and self-reliant people alive are the ones in our fair city that used to live somewhere else. I heard several folks today talking about how wimpy the locals are, because when they lived "back east", they drove through drifts of snow and gale force winds with no problem whatever. Unless there was a least a foot of snow they didn't even bother to plow, they just strapped one of the kids to the front of the car holding a shovel to push the snow away.

I suspect that if we suddenly had a plague of frogs some doofus would tell us something like this.

You call those frogs? I'm from Egypt and let me tell you that we know frogs. My great great...great great grandfather was Pharaoh and the god of Moses plagued him with frogs that were knee-deep. That was real frogs and he still made it to the job site to make sure the slaves were hard at it. Around here a few frogs show up and things grind to a halt. You people are a joke.

I hear this crap at work too. We have a couple of folks who will go to lengths to tell you how much harder and smarter people worked back where they came from. I like to think that dumber and lazier is not all bad.

This comment from a reader named Greg E. in the evening paper is typical.

Greg says, "As a Michigan resident, I find it very amusing to see the all out panic due to a trace amount of snow. This is hysterical!!!"

My response? Go the heck back to Michigan Greg, before we bring you down to wimp status. Your survival skills are going to waste here sir.

The fact is that I lived for many years in Omaha, Nebraska, one of the coldest places in the country, and driving in the snow was treacherous and most people weren't very good at it. The back east blowhards no doubt go home for a summer vacation an tell the folks in Michigan that they don't know what hot is.

Anyway, tomorrow the snow will be just a memory.

Merle.







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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Kid Soccer? Phooey.

I had to update my post for today. The guys at the weather service predicted 55 F. and sunny for today. It rained most of the day and now it is 30 F. and is snowing.



Now for our feature presentation.

Those who know me also know that I am not one to complain. At least never without a good reason, and even if my reason may not seem like a good one to you, trust me when I say it is.

Our fair city is hosting The Fort Lowell Soccer Shootout this weekend. Hundreds of youth soccer teams from Arizona, New Mexico, California, Colorado, Texas and Mexico have invaded our fair city in general and my neighborhood in particular.

Had Agatha Christie been a sportswriter and subjected to kid soccer players and their insufferable parents, instead of being a mystery novelist, we might have a movie named Monsters Most Foul, rather than Murder Most Foul, which was actually based her novel, Mrs. McGinty's Dead. You get the idea.

There is nothing more boorish in the world than groups of yuppie soccer parents. Wait, they are worse if they are willing to travel out of state to watch little Ashley and Justin run around a field while they talk among themselves about the poor sportsmanship shown by competing teams, where little Tyler and Jessica will play next year and what tournaments you just have to be at, if you are to be taken seriously in the ultra-competitive world of kid soccer.

Here's a hint. Soccer is an activity, it is not a career path, except for one in ten million kids, none of whom live in North America. Help your kids get a quality education and you will not have to support them in your old age. Some folks think kid soccer teaches kids valuable life skills. That may be right if by valuable life skills you mean being a delusional, self-important knucklehead, who confuses a child's activity with important stuff.

What got this rant started was an encounter with a mob of these hyperactive hooligans and their tedious parents. I went to buy bagels this morning and the shop was crawling with about ten eight year-olds and four sets of precious mommies and daddies.

While these four sets of aspiring sports agents, I mean parents, sat discussing the play of their little darlings, said darlings were wrecking havoc on the shop and generally annoying the other patrons. As I waited in line to pay, I could hear the conversation and one dad said solemnly, "While our kids tried to warm up, the other team came over and was warming up right in the way." Talk about your hardships.

One mom told her kid to "get your drink before someone throws it away." I guess she hasn't learned or had to clean up after herself. Perhaps it is multigenerational sloth.

We have had rain the past few days here in our fair city. These kids had tracked mud and grass in their soccer cleats everywhere through out the store in big clumps and smears. They had been crammed at a table together and their debris was everywhere, drinks spilled on the table and floor, wrappers and napkins everywhere. They kept holding the door open and letting the cold in. Finally one mom herded the hyenas out to the front of the store and supervised them while they emptied a rack of real estate newpapers and threw them at one another.

So anyway, come Monday they will all be back home terrorizing someone else. Until next year.


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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Drunken Louts

Before I bore you with today's drivel, I invite you to reread yesterday's post. I was working on making it readable and accidentally posted it rather than saving it. The lovely Mrs. Sneed came home from work at that moment and I went out for the evening, leaving it an incomprehensible mess, even by my minimal standards. I hope it makes more sense now.

I have an group of podcasts that I regularly listen to, including a very funny one called Never Not Funny, by comedians Jimmy Pardo and Mike Schmidt and their podcast producer Matt Belknap. The Never Not Funny podcast is a very funny conversation among these three guys and reminds me of the Ricky Gervais podcast, except that it is not based so much on making fun of one of the members. It is mostly a discussion of their experiences, with a strong dose of Jimmy Pardo's eccentricities tossed in.

In this week's show, Jimmy recalls how he embarrassingly wound up as a thirty year-old man at a teenage house party in his drunken days. It reminded me of a similar incident that happened to me years ago.

For about seven years in the mid-eighties through the early-nineties, I had a job as the staff person for a middle-manger I will call Von Tallman. Von was not a nice person. My official duties were to provide Von and the other members of the management team with data and to implement Von's directives. My unofficial duties included being his lackey, proving computer support for his civic activities and accompanying him on out of town trips, when the situation dictated. Since Von was also a serious drunk, I kept him out of trouble when we were away on business.

This was not always easy, because Von refused to ride in cabs, opting instead to rent a luxury automobile, when on the road. Von's attitude was that he lived the high life at home, so going on the road was no excuse to lower his standards. Von's boss was also a drunken lout, so no questions were ever raised about the very high expense account vouchers he submitted.

In exchange for my servitude, I was lavished with bonuses and raises. We had what you might call a symbiotic relationship. He believed I looked up to and admired him and, in exchange for financial reward, I didn't correct him.

One time in the late 1980's I had to go to a three-day accounting seminar in a major American city. Much to my chagrin, Von invited himself along, since he had old school friends in that city. This did not bode well, since I was likely to get sucked into his drunken hijinks. I was often the designated-driver for Von's drunken escapades. You get a couple of drinks in this guy and he became serious pain-in-the-butt.

At lunch of the first day of the seminar, Von dropped the bomb. He said that he had a dinner planned that evening with an old friend and that I was welcome to come along. I politely declined and he spent the rest of the lunch period trying to change my mind. The last thing that I wanted to do was to spend the next day dog-tired sitting through the seminar because I stayed out all night taking care of a 45 year-old toddler with a drinking problem.

We broke for the day at 4 pm and I returned to the hotel, where I flopped on the bed and feel asleep. Around six pm I was awaken by the ringing of the phone. It was Von cajoling me to go with him. I told him no and hung up. A few minutes later he began to pound at my door, saying he wasn't stopping until I changed my mind and went with him. I gave in. Big mistake.

We drove to the restaurant and met Von's old pal at about seven or so. They had a few drinks in the bar before we were seated for dinner. They had a several more drinks with their dinner and then they began to order wine, lots of wine. Around ten pm they got this really good idea to visit the friend's daughter who was bar tending at a club somewhere in the warehouse district. This is the point at which a smarter guy would have taken a cab back to the hotel. Not me, I was too cheap to spend twenty bucks to escape this unholy pair, since Von would not let me voucher it in retaliation for ditching him.

We drove around for an hour or so looking for the club. The friend was having a bit of a problem remembering where it was. Von was driving and was quite drunk. I tried to take the wheel when he stopped and went into a store to ask for directions but he made a scene and wouldn't give me the keys. I gave up and we were off to the club.

When we arrived and went in, I realized that we were at a club that catered to a very young crowd. Von set right in trying his best to impress twenty-0ne year old girls, with his smooth style. I was mortified at the spector of being seen as a creepy old guy trying to hit on young girls,or a pathetic loser and told him that I was waiting in the car. Of course he wouldn't hand over the keys out of fear that I might leave them stranded. I was relegated to standing outside in the cold talking to the bouncer.

Eventually, around two am or so the two drunken baboons staggered out and climbed into the car. Von still wouldn't give me his keys and sat in the driver's seat honking the horn until I agreed to get in. I was very foolish, but it was late, dark and I didn't know where I was.

We drove around the downtown area for maybe an hour, because Von's loutish pal couldn't remember what lot he parked in. When we found his car and Von got out so that they could hug and slobber over one another and tearfully promise to stay in touch, I jumped behind the wheel. Von had left the car running. When he returned to the car, we had a scene but since I had the keys and told him that I was willing to drive away and leave him, he staggered to the passenger door and flopped into the seat. In a nanosecond, he passed out. I had the pleasure of dragging him to his room and shoving him through the door at about 4 am.

The next morning, operating on two hours of sleep, I arrived at the seminar site. Von was no where to be found. He came in at noon, stinking to high heaven of booze breath. The jackass asked me how we got back to the hotel. When I told him, he said, "Thanks for not letting me drive." Total A-hole.

I really don't like drunks.








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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Never An Absence Of Malice Here

I find this strange. I stopped at Circle K today on the way home from work and I noticed a new Mustang convertible car parked in front of the store. It caught my eye because it was identical to our oldest son's new car.

The owner turned out to be a well-dressed young woman, who appeared to be going to or from work. She was at the checkout trying in vain to get her debit card to work for the purchase of an energy drink. Who in the world debits a buck and a half and what kind of a straight-thinking merchant would accept it? The transaction cost alone wipes out the store's profit on the drink.

The poor thing was telling the totally disinterested clerk that she was sure that she had at least two dollars in her account. Who would debit a dollar and a half of their remaining two dollars to get a drink? She finally left, saying she would be back. It's the age-old story, new car, no cash.

This is another thing that has been bugging me lately. I like to watch the People's Court, with the Honorable Marilyn Milian, The Hottest Judge on Television. The show appears on our local Fox affiliate and is on when I get home from work. I don't know whether our local station or the network is responsible for selecting the commercials that air during the show, but someone clearly believes it is mostly watched by the old, the infirmed and the stupid, an assumption I resent since I am not infirmed.

The program features commercials that hawk drunken-driving defense lawyers, technical schools, quickie loan places, furniture rental stores and lots of medical ads, including several about how you can get Medicare to buy you stuff, like free scooters. As an aside, the medical scooter business survives on payments from Medicare and the chief beneficiaries are people who ate themselves to enormous size. Another reason the program is going broke fast.

For my money, one of the greatest movie scenes ever is in a movie named Absence of Malice, which starred Paul Newman, Sally Field and included Wilford Brimley. It may seem as if I have veered off my point, but bear with me.

Wilford Brimley is a terrific character actor who is most recognizable as the spokesman for Quaker Oats but in this movie Brimley gives a riveting performance, especially in the scene I am thinking of, as an Assistant US Attorney named Mike Welles. I think this was the best performance I have ever seen Brimley give.

Lately though, Brimley has become the spokesman for some creepy outfit that has carved out a piece of the Medicare pie by providing the home delivery of diabetic testing supplies. I am disappointed in him and I am embarrassed to have admired his work so much.

Another of the stars of that film, Sally Field, is also cashing in on her star power by hustling in TV ads. Sally is doing commercials for a calcium supplement for women. Sally tries her best to convince us that she is just a regular gal who routinely sits around with her girlfriends discussing calcium supplements and bemoaning how difficult taking a daily pill can be. I doubt it. She comes across as a phony and despite what Sally believes, I really don't like her, at least in this role.

This is just another way in which I continue to be repulsed by entertainment people.

Merle.




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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Social Security

Our retirement plan is to see the country, once that big Social Security money starts coming in.

Warning! Do not drive or operate machinery while reading this.

I see that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is warning Congress again that the time to fix the Social Security and Medicare funding problems is now, not later. On behalf of the entire baby-boomer generation, I would like to add my support to this effort and encourage all of you youngsters out there to take second jobs, if necessary, to make my golden years as comfortable as possible. It is the least you can do.

I was thinking about Social Security because I got my earnings statement and estimate of benefits yesterday. According to the statement I stand to get $1545 per month, if I start collecting at age 62 or $2053, should I wait until my full retirement age, which is 66. According to the statement, I have payed in $85,000 for Social Security in my lifetime, with my employers kicking in an additional $85,000.

This means that if I choose to start collecting at 62, I will recoup the entire $170,000 that was paid in by me or for me, two months before I turn 71. Deferring until I am 66 results in full payback at 72. After 71 or 72, someone else is paying for my life of leisure. This what strikes me as a big flaw in the system.

Since I have reached 56 without any major health problems, my life expectancy is something like 82. That means that if I reach my normal life expectancy (and I intend to exceed it), I will take about $200,000 more from the system than I put in. The lovely Mrs. Sneed will do even better since her family lives to be ancient. Heck, her mom died at 89 in a snowboarding accident.

I won't bore you with the actual math, but after I reach the point at which I have collected all of the contributions I paid in, as well as those of my employer, it will take the Social Security taxes of four average workers, including employer matches, to support my sorry butt. And don''t for get the lovely Mrs. Sneed, she will need an addional four. Since the government estimates that there will only be 2.5 workers per retiree by then, trouble looms.

My dad waited until he was 70 to start collecting, but he was a much better person than I am, so no one should wait around for a noble gesture like that from me.

Social Security has become a Ponzi scheme and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Mr. Bernanke will wait a long time for the irresponsible goofs in Congress to fix it.

Merle













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 judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Cold

My posts keep getting later and later in the evening. I am a very busy guy, so you'll have to bear with me. I owe an apology to the fine folks at the National Weather Service and our collection of wacky TV weather readers for my remark the other day about their ability to forecast the weather. You may recall that I reported that they were forecasting rain, snow and bitter cold for our neck of the woods. By bitter cold, I mean about 25 F., which is about as cold as it gets here. It all relative isn't it, you don't see me telling you that 90 F. isn't hot in the summer do I? Sorry, I was having an argument with an imaginary reader. Anyway, we didn't have any appreciable rain, and no snow except at about 7000 feet in elevation, which is up in our mountains, during the three days of their forecast period. Plus, it wasn't very cold. It turns out that by rain and snow they really meant windy as heck. It is easy to mistake wind for precipitation, so I see how it could happen. They did get the really cold part correct, albeit several days late. We had about 3 days of temperatures in the 20s, with highs in the 50s. Cold enough for us to call it really cold. This brings me to a guy who knows all about the cold. I keep seeing this homeless guy sitting in front of the Circle K store that I sometimes stop at on the way to work. He is this old, old guy who sits on the cold concrete and leans against the window. He always speaks to me although I can't understand him. I think he is asking for some change. This morning I stopped and squatted down by him to see if I could understand him better. After we got past the spare change part of the conversation, he told me that the past three nights have been torture for him, because of the cold. He said some roofers threw tar on his sleeping bag and ruined it, so he had to spend the night walking from one convenience store to another and staying until they chased him off. Talk about your tough existence. We have shelters out the wazoo, but for some reason he passes on them. There was also a story on Yahoo today listing ten signs that it may be time to quit your job. Things like dreading Monday, having no career goals, shunning your coworkers, showing up late, being mad at work for no apparent reason, not seeing any value in your work besides the paycheck and bitching about or to your coworkers. Those are the ones I answered yes to. The three I answered no to were, using up your time off in the beginning of the year, being envious of the success of others and not doing your work. I answered no to the last three because I have too much discipline to squander valuable time off, I always have a plan for it. I have too much pride not to do what I get paid to do and I don't care how successful my coworkers are, because it doesn't change my life any. They weren't really about my specific job anyway. I have to say seven out of ten seems to be telling me something. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Cover Your A** With Paper.

Some people have asked me, "Merle, why is it the you don't mention the name of the company that you work at, with so many posts being about your lousy job and all?" That's a good question and there is a simple answer. I have refrained out of concern that I would get fired and possibly sued. Okay, not the fired part so much, but definitely sued. At the minimum I might be beaten senseless by an angry coworker or call center employee from our building. Or worse yet, one of the jackasses might write stuff about me in retaliation. But today I throw caution to the wind. For most of the past thirty-eight years, excluding a couple of years during my ill-fated teaching career, I have been employed by Tedious Systems, a leader in the field of internal process redundancy. At Tedious System, our pledge is, "We got your back...up!" With that in mind, I was sitting in my cubicle this morning when I received an email from Kendall Ling, my boss, instructing me to read the attachment to his email and act on it pronto. At Tedious Systems, the new year is the time for us clean up the processes from the past year and to get ready for the challenges ahead. We don't really do this every year, just when some one at the top of the organization has a fit about the backlog. Then it is numero uno. Our work generates plenty of files, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, reports, readouts and reconciliations, so there's plenty to do. Of course, someone at headquarters is put in charge of making sure we have dotted our tees and crossed our eyes. The attachment was a memo from one of the brown-nosers at headquarters, who had won the brown-noser lottery and been put in charge of producing a spreadsheet of what guys like me needed to do to get stuff closed out and put to bed. The possibility of a congratulatory memo from the bosses offering a hearty thanks for a job well done, must have been thrilling to the lucky winner. As an aside, I am amazed at what some people will volunteer to do for the chance to sit at the foot of the throne, even if it is just for a day. I looked over the spreadsheet, which had about 1900 lines of data and it made no sense to me. Not only did I not know the answers, I didn't even understand the questions. Only a few lines of the report seemed to pertain to me, or at least I assumed they did, because I was listed as the owner, corporate-speak. Owner is a term that Tedious Systems dreamed up when they laid off 99% of the clerical staff. We used to have people to do this kind of stuff, but now it is dumped on highy-trained professionals such as me. Like it or not, I am the owner., or as I prefer to call it, the chump. I told a corporate knucklehead last year that if I was the owner of the crap he was making me do, I would find the damn receipt and return it. He didn't see the joke. At Tedious Systems we actually design network cabling for our customers. No wait, that is our sideline business. Our cash crop is making up internal processes and their associated files, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, reports, readouts and reconciliations and, of course, conference calls, lots of conference calls. This report is the final accounting stuff for these projects. I try to finalize the paperwork for my projects as they close, so that I don't wind up with a sh*tload at once. Some people let them slide, hence we have a spreadsheet and its babysitter. No matter how diligent a guy is though, a few will be a problem and appear on the list, because of the complexity built into the tracking systems. That is why my few were on the report. If you are a procrastinator, you will have hundreds. I put in a call to the person who compiled the beast, May Askfor, B.S. and she set in to 'splainin' it to me. A conversation that went something like this. Her: Blah, blah, change the date, blah, blah, then go into blah, enter the close date, delete the work order number and your done. Simple. Me: Okay. By the way the guy listed after me on your list died three years ago. He may not be able to fix his lines. Her: Well, someone will have to complete his list. Maybe you could do to. (I had 6 entries, he had over a hundred, since they have been accumulating as his old projects finished since he died). Me: I have been working here 38 years, I don't do stuff like fix other people's problems, unless I get some big reward for doing it. Her: Well, I've worked here a long time too and when I see something that I can fix, I just fix it. I don't worry about who is responsible for it because I want to make Tedious Systems number one (I'm not lying). Me: Well, bless you, you sound like the sort of employee we need more of here at Tedious Systems. Her: I try and do what I can to make a difference to the company. Me: Uh.... (struggling to figure out whether she is kidding me). Me: Okay, I'll fix my stuff, thanks. Her: Thanks for getting right on this and call me if you need anymore help. The last thing I want to do is to be known as a guy who makes a difference. My goal is to be known as the guy about whom the big bosses ask, "Which one is he?" Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

King Day

I have to go to work today because my company doesn't close for holidays that honors individuals or groups of individuals. So we work King Day, Presidents Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day. We get Christmas Day off, which may or may not qualify as a holiday honoring an individual, depending on your point of view. Our holiday celebrations are limited to those honoring an ideal, such as liberty, sacrifice, gratitude or a strong work ethic. I have no complaint about this policy because overall my company's vacation and other time off practices are very reasonable. It's just that when someone, and she knows who she is, is fast asleep while I get ready for a full day of tedium, I have trouble remembering that it is a reasonable policy. Yesterday, I was inarticulately trying to make the point that instability in children's lives is destructive to their development. Debbie left a comment for me correctly pointing out that lots of kids flourish despite moving a lot. Military families, as well as those employed in the private-sector jobs, such as IBM (I've Been Moved), will attest to her point. My problem is that I always know what I mean, but don't always say or write what I mean. In the case our our granddaughters and the children like Pamela from my third-grade class, the constant moving around is a symptom of much broader problems in their lives. In the case of our girls, the moving is symptomatic of their parent's (or at least their dad's) willingness to subordinate the children's well-being to their own selfish behavior. In Pamela's case there was some issue beyond her parents job requirements that caused her frequent moves. Growing up I moved from city to city ten times, lived in sixteen different houses and went to nine schools by the time I was seventeen. I had the added factor of having parents with profound alcohol problems. My siblings and I have had varying degrees of dysfunction as adults, some readily apparent and some not so obvious. My brother was a drug and alcohol abuser, who went to prison and never really led a productive life. His children are terribly messed up (a technical medical term) and will soon add another dysfunction branch to our scary family tree. My sister dropped out of high school, is an alcoholic and has work at a menial job all her life, content to settle for the least work possible. She was pretty dependent on my father for financial help up to his death. As sad a situation as it is, my younger brother and I are the cream of the crop among the siblings. We have both worked in our same jobs for decades, with the exception of a couple of years when I quit and tried teaching. We sought mediocrity and it is ours (The Sneed Family Motto)! So, I guess in our little family sample group it is fifty-fifty on the question of stability vs. instability in child development. We had half failures and half merely below average. Go figure. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Instability

While I was working toward my teaching credential, I volunteered as a teacher's aide in a third-grade at a school not far from our house. One Thursday I arrived at school to find that we had a new student, named Pamela. Most of the kids in our class were eight years-old, Pamela was ten. Pamela was two grades behind in school and most education professionals and psychologists will tell you that she is at-risk of dropping out as soon as she legally can. In fact, it is almost a foregone conclusion. While I worked with Pamela, I was disturbed by how far behind even third-grade work she was. I spoke to the school psychologist about Pamela and I found out that her parents were food-service workers and that they moved around a lot. Pamela had never spent an entire school year in the same school. Pamela's teacher and I decided that I should spend some time working with Pamela one-on-one, since she was unlikely to benefit much from group instruction. So while the students did their math and reading, I worked with Pamela. I pulled together some drill work that Pamela could take home and practice on. I sent a note to her parents explaining what I expected of the lessons. I was shocked when some of the practice work came back with a childlike note, written by her father, explaining that they couldn't finish it because he didn't understand some of the work. I talked to the classroom teacher and offered to have Palmela's parents bring her to my house for tutoring in the evening, since they lived in an apartment building about a block away from us. She said that she would check it out, but Pamela's family moved away before she could. She was in our school for about a month. The reason that I was thinking about this today was that I received a phone call early this morning from one of the missing Sneed granddaughters. They aren't really missing, we just haven't seen them in about a year. Cletus Sneed, our adopted son, has been a homeless drug addict for some time. Recently, he has turned things around some and has been taken in by a man and his son who seem determined to keep Cletus on the straight and narrow. Cletus is working and not bugging me relentlessly for cash, so that's progress. These two little girls are eight and six and have spent their lives moving around. Cletus and his worthless girlfriend are the embodiment of the old line about having to move every time the rent is due. They have moved a lot. The girls are fortunate to have been taken in by their maternal grandmother when Cletus hit bottom and they had no place to live. That grandmother made sure that they were well taken care of and had some stability in their lives. Cletus brought the girls to our house today and I spent the afternoon with them. I have to say that even with all the turmoil that they have had in their lives, they are more well-adjusted than I would expect them to be. Unfortunately for these children, their mother puts her wants before their needs. She has found a new boyfriend and has taken the kids out of her mother's house and moved in with this guy. They don't stand a chance in this environment. This really pisses me off. I don't have any reason to think that they are being abused physically in any way, but being shuffled around so that Mom can have a warm body to hang on to, is just plain destructive to them. Kids really deserve better than a couple of bum parents. The lovely Mrs. Sneed and I do not become emotionally involved here because no good can come of these circumstances and nothing we can do will change a thing. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Psst...Hey Buddy.

I've been thinking about commercial advertising this evening, ever since I saw a Visa ad on the football game. Before I get to my chief complaints, a word about the football game, sort of. The game is between the Philadelphia Eagles, also known as my team and the New Orleans Saints, also known as the guys that I hope lose. I don't know about anyone else, but I am tired of hearing about how New Orleans has bounced back from the effects of the hurricane. If you choose to live below sea level, I can't escape shelling out my tax dollars to support your folly, but don't expect me to tell you it is a good idea. If the Saints make it to the Super Bowl, we will be pounded by the feel good stories about New Orleans. I can't take it. Daughter Sneed was a proud member of the United States Navy for four years, much of it spent stationed in New Orleans, Louisiana. This gave the lovely Mrs. Sneed and me the opportunity to see New Orleans up close and personal. I am totally sympathetic toward the victims of the hurricane, but I have to tell you that before the storm the Big Sleazy was impoverished, crime-ridden, politically-corrupt, vermin-infested, humid dump, surviving on drunken tourists and river traffic. People who made the choice to not go back after the clean up made a good decision. You can get rid of the wreckage and rebuild the city, but the same problems exist. Folks who tell you that New Orleans is the best place to live, have never lived anywhere else. About one-third of the population that lived within the city limits left and hasn't returned. Just saying. Anyway, back to the commercial. As a rule I don't watch advertising on television. Being an over-the-hill old skinflint makes me resistant to the lure of stuff and the folks selling stuff. One of the many beauties of Tivo is that I can record what I want to see and skip through the commercials. When I watch live TV skipping through isn't an option, so I saw this Visa commercial. The commercial showed a bustling carryout restaurant where employees and patrons are working together like a precision drill-team. Every toss is well-timed and greeted by an smooth reception. That is until some knucklehead pulls out cash, with which to pay, and the whole ballet grinds to a halt. Did you ever think that paying with cash would be looked down upon? Visa is trying their best to convince us. The lovely Mrs. Sneed and I went to the mall today with Daughter Sneed and Sneedlet. While it was busy there, it wasn't packed. I even got a spot in the covered parking. The two biggest malls in our fair city are owned by General Growth Properties, one of the largest mall owners in the United States. While they do a fine job of managing and maintaining these properties, I have one complaint about their operating strategy. Perhaps you haven't noticed this, but maybe you have. This may not be exclusive to General Growth, but at our malls the center of the mall wings are occupied by kiosks (booths) selling stuff. These kiosks are making use of and providing revenue from space that would otherwise be devoted to foot traffic. Pretty smart management. My complaint is not that the kiosks are there but rather about the type of businesses they attract. In the lofty world of retail, they are known as fly-by-night. I am tired of being accosted by guys selling cellphones. I was asked a half dozen times today what cellphone company I use. Even if you tell them you are a customer of theirs already, they badger you to upgrade your phone. Another gang is the skin cream and skin cream-related businesses. Their salespeople barge up to you, product in hand, offering to sell you the newest remarkable cream, good for whatever ails you. I recently had some woman with no medical training at all that I could discern, tell me that her mystery salve could cure my dry skin. Well, my dry skin is an actual medical condition, so I'm sticking with the dermatologist. The monthly co-pay at my dermatologist is cheaper than this mall voodoo cream anyway. We have some hustlers selling the latest gimmick toy, like the giant wooden glider, or an easy-to-use boomerang. No home should be without them. Need an alternative to Botox injections? We got it. Timeshare? No sweat. Fake granite counter tops, body jewelry, sunglasses, we got it all and I don't want any of it. One good thing that happened at the mall was that I bought a scratch lottery ticket to entertain myself while Sneedlet played at the playground and I won fifty dollars. Pretty cool. We had a nice lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant and came home. Sneedlet is busily playing away. He took a nap on the way home in the car, so we are likely in for a late evening. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Credit Sharks

Merleism: The more confident your local TV weather person is in forecasting an unusual weather event, the more like he or she is to be wrong. Our wacky, quirky weather guys and gals all got a memo from the National Weather Service about an approaching winter storm, that was likely to cause colder than normal temperatures and rain or snow, depending on where in the area you live. The memo became the basis for weather stories on the five o'clock news reports, with the weather reporters putting their own distinctive style on them. We were told that the temperatures would be the lowest in many years and the the rain would be heavy and the snow deep, especially in the mountains. We have had cool, not cold temperatures and sporadic light rain thus far. We are like the travelers stuck in Denver last month. Despite bold predictions, each passing day turned out not to be the day they were hoping for. Each day since the original forecast, the gravity of the situation has been downgraded on the TV weather segments. The two foot accumulation of snow in the mountains became one foot and the then a few inches. Our heavy rain was pushed back day by day. We are still waiting. In other news, I was talking to someone today who was thinking about getting an interest-only home loan. Let me repeat that, an interest-only home loan. A loan that no matter how long you pay on it, the balance never goes down. . My friend had been taking to a guy who was trying to convince her that there were some very good reasons, smart reasons, savvy reasons, sophisticated reason, to take out this loan. Despite his slick sales pitch, the reality is that there is no good reason for the average person to take out an interest-only loan. there are reasons they do so, but there are no good reasons. This is a terrible product for the average person because sometime, sooner or later, you will have to deal with the principal balance of the loan. Either through higher payments or through refinance. If interest rates are high or you have less income at that point, you have a potentially a serious problem. These mortgage guys tell you that real estate values always go up, so you are building equity anyway, through rising home prices. Of course, sometimes there is a drop in prices, like in most parts of the country right now. So I told my friend that she was heading down a dangerous path. I hope she listens. I think she will. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Can I Get You A Blackeye With That Big Mouth, Old-timer?

I was telling the lovely Mrs. Sneed today that she is likely to get a call soon from a hospital to come and get my battered body out of their joint. This is because, despite my rapidly advancing years, I continue to mouth off when a more prudent man would keep quiet. I was at a Circle K store this morning getting some coffee. If you are unfamiliar with Circle K, it is a national chain of convenience stores. As I waited in line, I began to pay attention to a young guy, maybe 22 or 23 years old, who was having a rapid escalating dispute with the clerk over a dollar seventy something. This fellow had worked some convoluted transaction involving a purchase made in part with cash and in part a debit transaction. He thought he was owed the change and the clerk said that she had debited the difference between what he gave her in cash and what he owed, so no change was due. The guy in front of me grew tired of waiting and left, so I moved up. The clerk finally gave the fool the change he was demanding to move him along, but told him that he was still wrong. This really set him off and he threw some coins and the receipt at her, began shouting insults, calling her an ignorant bleep who had failed to learn simple math and pounding the counter. This is the point at which I told him to shut the bleep up and get his bleeping bleep out of the store while he still could. I am not sure what I meant by while he still could , but that is what just flew out of my mouth. Perhaps I was thinking while he still could before he pounded me silly and the cops locked him up or before some burly young guy, possibly in line behind me, beat him to the floor. It was more advice than any act of intimidation by yours truly. Anyway much to my relief he left, stopping long enough outside the door to scream some stuff and rattle the remaining change off the front of the store. This caused the two homeless guys lurking in front to sprint to collect the coins, so some good came out of the episode. The lunatic tramped to a waiting truck and sped away. I was a weeny when I was young and the decades have not toughened me up, so I have no illusion I can back up my big mouth through physical means. I have just decided that I am sick to death of jackasses and their rude behavior, so I am speaking up. Plus, I rely on the hope that even thugs would be reluctant to beat up an old guy, no matter how obnoxious he is. I have really good health coverage, just in case I'm wrong. When I opened my email at work this morning there was a message reporting the death of one of my coworkers. She has been battling cancer for about four years and it finally got the better of her. She leaves behind a young daughter. For about the first hour or two, every chance meeting in the hall elicited, "Did you hear about...?" By this afternoon it was business as usual. Two decades of working at a place and you get an hour or two of acknowledgement. I have worked at the joint for thirty-eight years, so my demise will probably require a week's shutdown of the business or at least incite a mad rush to get my deluxe cubicle. In other news, I was listening to Dave Ramsey's show today and he was talking about credit cards and overspending. Dave always recommends a written budget. He says that even though he is worth several million dollars, he and Mrs. Ramsey make a written budget every month detailing how they will spend every dollar. That strikes me as overkill and something he does, because he feels obligated to do it, not that he needs to do it. Dave is also death on credit cards. The lovely Mrs. Sneed and I have a hybrid budgeting system. We have always operated on the premise that obligations always come before wants. We have our retirement savings deducted from our pay before we get it. Next we pay our bills, then we spend what we wish from the remainder. Anything that is charged is deducted from the remainder as it is spent or gets a spot at the top of the obligation list, to be paid when the bill arrives. For instance, I have some credit card information on file with companies that we use all the time. Southwest Airlines is an example. I buy tickets on line and they have my number. I could use my debit card, but I choose not to, because with credit I can dispute a mistake. With debit they take the money immediately from my account and I have to wait to get the cash back if there is a mistake or dispute in the transaction. It is a matter of preference. Dave was pointing out that studies have repeatedly shown that people that use credit cards spend more than if they use cash. This must be true because even fast food joints are taking credit. This is a practice that I would never use, but I guess people do it. I suppose that the bottom line is that if you are accustomed to living beyond your means you will find ways to do so. If you aren't so inclined, you don't. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

There's Worries and Then There's Worries

I had one of those days. I stayed up too late the past two nights and I was really tired about noon today. I spent the day at my desk drafting some workprints for a couple of projects I am working on. This is a sleep-inducing activity and when coupled with my lack of sleep, it made me very drowsy. It is difficult for me to get a good nap in my cubicle. There is too much noise to sleep soundly and the possibility of the boss walking in, makes rest uneasy anyway. Plus I may snore, or so some claim, and the last thing I need to do is to attract a crowd, while trying to catch a few winks. But I was so tired. Luckily, I had a backup plan. As long as it isn't too hot outside, I have found that I can get a decent nap in my truck. I recline the passenger seat back, stretch out toward the driver's side and drift off. So it was off to the parking lot for me. I no sooner conked out today, than my cell phone rang. It was a woman looking for our sometimes vagrant and oft annoying son, Cletus Sneed. Any call from him, for him or about him, is bound to be trouble for me. This ditz wakes me from a perfectly good slumber to ask for Cletus, like I'm going to say, Sure, I'll just go get him. I flat out told her that I didn't know him. She repeated herself, just in case I had "misremembered", so I hung up on her. Of course, I couldn't go back to sleep, which was a good thing anyway, because five minutes later Cletus called me to ask if anyone had called for him. I was already annoyed, so having His Dopiness call like I'm his answering service set me off. Cletus: Anyone call for me? Me: Some woman just called my cell phone looking for you. I draw the line at you giving out my cell number, got it Buster? Cletus: I didn't give it out. Me: Then why did you call to see if anyone called for you? Cletus: What is her number? Me: xxx-xxxx Cletus: (Click) He's always been a liar, just not a good one. Then there's this. Worry is such a strange thing. Daughter Sneed had something important today and I was very worried about it after she told me about it. It turned out okay, but it weighed heavy on my mind. I was turning it over and over in my mind, concocting the worst case senario, as Sneed's are apt to do, when my friend Roy at bowling got paged to the telephone. As an aside, Roy may be the last citizen of the world not to have a cellphone. When he came back from the phone, he was visibly upset. He said that his granddaughter didn't come home after school and her folks were frantic. She was about five hours late when they called Roy, hoping that she was with him and that there had been a miscommunication about her plans. This made my worry seem much less important. Roy's granddaughter is a nice kid and this is definitely not the norm for her, behavior-wise. It is very troubling. I am the king of the worriers and so I know how much this was eating at him. Roy has about 20 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, in addition to his own kids. That right there would make my head explode. If I had that many kids, grandkids and great-grandkids to fret over, I would weigh about 90 pounds and be confined to an institution. These type of things happen when you have teenagers and they usually turn out okay. Here's hoping. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Got a Light?

I have told you before about my building, neatly tucked between the really seedy Walmart and the municipal bus transfer station. Since our building is home to a couple of in-bound call centers, we have the perfect storm of oddballs roaming the premises. Our very large parking lot is adjacent to a main throughfare which connects directly to the highway, making us an easy mark for gangs of marauding car thieves. Something is always happening at our place. I park behind the building because that location allows me access to the building via the back door, rather than having to walk around to the front entrance. I prefer to come and go as inconspicously as possible. Plus, it affords an extra layer of protection for the Sneed Family Junkster. The downside is that I have to run the gauntlet of smokers to get into the building. It has been in the 30's F. these past few mornings and this makes the smokers crowd the back door for some reason. They think it is warmer there, I guess. I am a smoking bigot and proud of it. I have no use for smokers and their disgusting habit, so ridiculing them is a kind of hobby of mine. There is no good reason to smoke and a hundred good reasons to stop. Besides, it is not that I am belittling them for something beyond their control. Stupid is stupid. Some of the smokers are fat, so smoking ups likelihood that they will have serious health problems later. Some of the smokers are attractive young people, who will look bad in about twenty years if they don't stop. My mom was a beautiful woman in her twenties, by the time she died at sixty-three, she looked like hell. Smoking ravaged her health and her appearance. I've always wondered what would happen if I whipped out a before and after picture of Mom to show them. I'm guessing nothing. My mom never smoked until she was 33 year-old. Like most things in her life, she started smoking to get back at my dad. I remember they day she started smiking clearly. I was six and we were standing on our porch in Guam and looking at the waves. Mom had been arguing with my dad about money, specifically his drinking and smoking, she went and got a pack of my dad's Raleigh cigarettes and lit up, saying, "If he can smoke, so can I." I'm not sure how she thought that would help the family finances, but she did. She never stopped until she went to bed and woke up dead in 1988. My favorite among the smokers in the back of the building is this 60 to 70 year-old woman, who is evidently working to have something to do, rather than just needing the money. Everything about her cries out that she is a member of the horsey-set. She wears a lot of the tacky silver and turquiose jewelery that was popular in the southwest here during the 1970s. Her smoking isn't just a habit, it is an event. She takes up her post, sitting on a planter wall, right by the back door. She has a blanket that she puts down to sit on, summer or winter. In winter she has another blanket that she lays across her lap, covering her legs. In addition, she has an umbrella, laid on one shoulder, like Gene Kelly did in the movie, Singing in the Rain, to block the wind. This is just too much equipment to support an addiction, if you ask me. There is also an overweight, sloppily dressed and badly groomed woman among the throng, who is missing one of her front teeth. Why smoking is more important than teeth is beyond me. Five bucks a day for smokes buys a lot of dental care in a short time. Another abundant source of inappropriate behavior, at least in my opinion, is the constant cell phone use in our building. People will say things on the phone for the world to hear, that they wouldn't say aloud in any other public setting. I heard a woman today in the elevator telling someone on her cell phone about how she backed her car out of the garage without openning the garage door. Then she pulled forward and crashed into the furnace. She told the person on the phone that she was embarrassed to admit that it happened. It makes a guy wonder why she was telling the story in a packed elevator. Then there is the garden-variety conversations that we shouldn't have to hear. Last week there were two women in the elevator discussing how one was going to stop the foreclosure of her home, complete with how it happened and whose fault it was. This gal's big concern was having to pay a bunch of money to keep a house that her good-for-nothing, soon-to-be ex-husband was entitled to half of. Nothing is off-limits to these people. The best part of the day today, was when the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I were leaving Starbucks. As I pulled into the street a guy on a bike yelled that he was "coming through". It was pitch black and since he was 50 yards away, I had trouble finding him in the dark. I could have just pulled out and never been aware he was there. There was also no chance that I was going to hit him. Things would have been fine, if "coming through", hadn't been followed by f*ckhead. I yelled back that he should get a light, which may have been followed by A-hole. I pulled out and he pedalled furiously to catch up, the whole time screaming. I put down the lovely Mrs. Sneed's window and we had an animated shouting match at 20 mph, complete with hand signals. I think he may have been crazy and he probably thinks the same of me. Too bad he's both crazy and wrong. Merle. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Me and Brad Are Just Beside Myself

I heard from a guy that Angelina has weighed in on the Madonna adoption situation, saying, "She may call herself Madonna, but I think we all know who the real Madonna is around here." The Holy Mother went on to say that she was personally horrified by the attacks on the, "pretender to the throne" but added that unlike "that faker", she (Angelina) prefers to keep her adoptions immaculate, at least with respect to the paperwork, rather than arranging some shady deal like "that person who wishes she was me". Appearing on ABC Television's, Good Morning America in December, Mother Angelina said that she and her partner, the actor and suspected mortal Brad Pitt, would like to adopt more children to balance their mixed-race family. The following is the exchange as best that it can be recalled anyway, by the guy's mother who was making rum cakes for Christmas and since she drank all the rum, they were just cakes and she might have been drunk. We join it in mid-interview. Jolie: Now the questions are more when you have a mixed-race family, do you balance the races so there's another African person in the house for Z? So there's another Asian person in the house for Mad? Shiloh has Brad and I she can look at. Sawyer (clearly surprised): Me J: So we are thinking...what did you say, Diane? S: I said me. You said, "Shiloh has Brad and I she can look at." It should be Brad and me, that's all. J: Who the (bleep) are you to correct my English? You don't correct me Diane, you got it? You want me to take these (bleeping) kids and the (bleeping) nannies and the bodyguards and Brad and me will walk the hell out of here, is that what you want Diane, you ignorant (bleep)? S: I, its Brad and I, not to split hairs dear. J: That's the end, Diane, we're out of here. Brad get this sideshow together, we're leaving. S: Angelina, I was just...(fade to black). Fade up from commercial. S: And we're back with Angelina Jolie and she was just telling us about how her and Brad are thinking about balancing out their family. Just messing with you Angelina. J: What, huh? Oh, right Diane, we have an Asian kid, an African kid and of course Shiloh, a regular kid. So we're thinking of getting another Asian to balance out the family. That way there would be two Asians, three Caucasians and an African. Everyone would have someone to look up to. S: Who would Zahara look up to? J: We are still working out the details Diane, these things are complicated. There's me and Shiloh and Brad, then there's Maddox and the new Asian one, and Zaraha and, and...sh*t. Well ,irregardless Diane, it's a balancing act. S: This like shooting fish in a barrel. J: No, myself and Brad...Brad and me are...Damn you, Sawyer...We, hah!, we are committed to keeping the fish swimming free, Diane. We don't think anything with a face should be caged up. S: What doesn't have a face, and how can you cage a fish? J: Whatever. Angelina went on to explain that having all these kids is no walk in the park. It costs a lot of money to raise kids in the modern world and as you get more kids, you have to increase the staff and then there is just a lot of stuff you don't really realize, like birthdays and diapers and the nannies fighting and flirting with Brad and stuff. She said that her and Brad are committed to working night jobs if necessary, to balance their family. She also denied that the couple was thinking of adopting the entire pre-adolescent population of the nation of Sao Tome and Principe, one of the smallest of the African countries. The Prime Minister of Sao Tome and Principe, speaking through a translator in his native Portuguese said, "If I catch those two nut jobs in my country, I'll lock their asses up. Sheeit, with all our oil money, we can buy and sell those hicks" Merle Sneed reporting what a guy named Stuie at Walmart said that his mom saw on TV. Jolie/Pitt legal teams please read the following disclaimer. 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 judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor