Signs of the ugliest street in America. This is a mural outside a "smoke shop" around the corner. Nothing says the great outdoors more than smoking up. Just a few feet west is another mural. This one for a porn shop. There's a nudie bar sandwiched between these two locations. Not all things on Speedway are ugly. This is a nice wrought iron door at an air conditioning company. The no parking sign is directed at the youngsters who park along Speedway on the weekends to show off their cars and socialize. A great American rite of passage. A sign company is using a bus to display their work. Nothing goes with fishing gear like a good tattoo. This fellow was working on an old sign. I'm not sure what he was doing. No neighborhood in the work-class areas of Hooterville would be complete without a car-title or payday loan place. Tomorrow, the walk back down the other side of the street. 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

Who invited a duck in? It used to be that I would stay up every night and watch TV until midnight and then get up at five the next morning and go off to work. Nowadays, I have to be in to work at 6:45 on Saturday morning and I am so tired by the time I get off at 1PM that I have to come home and take a nap in the afternoon. I feel like it takes me til Monday to recuperate. What's up with that? The lovely Mrs. Sneed, Noah and I went to see the new Pixar feature, UP tonight. As kid movies go it was pretty good, but as usual, I was pulling for it to end about half way through. We had a good time, all in all. Here's something else. I try not to be unpleasant to other people, unless they really piss me off. Then I usually feel bad afterward about blowing up. Case in point. In our store we have a greeter at the door to direct customers to the proper aisle and to summon one of us, via the radio, to assist them. This is kind of an ongoing issue with me because the management places a good deal of pressure on these folks make sure every customer is served promptly. In theory, this is a fine arrangement. In practice, due to over zealousness or stupidity or both, I wind up being barraged with meaningless and time-wasting calls to help folks that don't want to be helped or who have already been helped by someone else. Not to mention that I really don't like being told what to do. These greeeters pace back and forth across the front, looking down the aisle for unattended customers and bark out instruction incessantly. Some of them are so eager to please the manager with their fine performance as greeter that it gets kind of pathetic. This morning, the assistant manager assigned one of the high school kids to the task of greeting customers and annoying me. The annoying me part is just a bonus, not part of the actual job duties. The kid announced over the radio that there was a browser on aisle five. The reason the kid knew the guy was browsing is that the fellow told him, "I'm just browsing." The proper thing for the greeter to have done would have been to say, "Let me know if you need assistance and I will call someone." But that requires some actual thinking. Instead, the little imbecile announced that someone needed to check on the browsing guy in aisle five. I would have ignored him, but once he asks for help, someone has to respond or one of the managers will ask if anyone is going to respond, and that just pisses me off more. Being a helpful guy, I replied that I would go check on him. The browser guy told me that, (a) he was just looking, and (b) that he just told the kid in that he was just browsing. He was nice about it, but it was clear that he didn't want help. So, I went back to what I was doing. About a minute later, the kid called out again for someone to check on the browser on aisle five. Sometimes, the famous Sneed restraint reaches its breaking point and this was one of those times. I relied over the radio, "He told you he's browsing, I checked with him and he told me he's browsing and I told you that he told me that he is just browsing. This is the third time you've called about this guy and you need to knock it off now. You are standing five feet from him, if he wants our help he will tell you." The silence in the store was deafening. The hush was broken by the sound of the assistant manager running down the stairs and hustling over to me. He told me that the owner was in the store and that I should be careful what I say. I told him he needed to do some training with his folks at the front. Then, of course, I felt bad about the whole 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

We live a block off Speedway Blvd., famously described by Life Magazine, as the ugliest street in America. According to Life, Speedway is 23 miles of strip malls and billboards. But that was 1966. Today, Speedway is 23 miles of strip malls. The billboards are largely gone, victims of city ordinance. Why, you might wonder, would Life be concerned with an obscure street in Hooterville, a dusty place in the corner of the country? It had to do with a guy named Charles Schmid, the 23-year-old adopted slacker son of a wealthy Hooterville family. Schmid's parents lavished him with money and stuff, probably in the hope that he would leave them alone. He lived in a guest house on their property. Schmid had a penchant for picking up and as it turns out killing, high school girls. Three young women fell victim to the sociopath Schmid. Life and Time Magazine both made Schmid into a cult figure. They dubbed him "The Pied Piper of Hooterville", giving him the stature he so desperately craved, but that his 5-foot-4-inch frame denied him. Schmid famously wore custom made boots that allowed him to add three inches to his height. Schmid developed a bad boy personae, that adolescent girls found irresistible. While many older women never really get over the bad boy thing, one mature lady that wasn't buying it was his birth mom. When Schmid located her, she is reported to have told him, "I didn't want you then, I don't want you now. Go away". Schmid was a psychologists dream subject. Schmid was convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to 50 years in prison, when the US Supreme Court halted the death penalty in the 1970s. In a blast of karmic payback, Schmidt was stabbed to death while incarcerated. Here is a link to Schmid's Wikipedia page if you want to read about the little creep. Anyway the decades have not improved Speedway much. Sometimes it seems that Hooterville is one giant strip mall. This is my barbershop, located on Speedway, a few blocks west of our house. It is a dump. don't be fooled by the exterior, it is worse inside. I like Bob, the owner. He is always trying to give someone a hand up, so on any visit you might find a barber in residence that no one else will hire, or a homeless guy sleeping in the backroom. My little pal Noah has been staying with us even more than usual because his mom has been sick for sometime now. After my haircut yesterday, we went to play miniature golf and hit balls in the batting cages. Astute readers might wonder why there was no golf yesterday? I've had a cold and the Seafood King was out of town, so I begged off. Then it was off to lunch at the usual spot. Where else but in a bar in a strip mall? 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 crankyn

Bill Gates I ain't. I'm the guy who thought NetFlix and Amazon would never make it. Back in the 70s I boldly predicted that the mini-storage boom would never last, because no one in their right mind would pay to store their junk. Or at least not enough people to justify an entire storage facility. I based that prediction on my particular brand of cheapness. I was only off by a factor of a couple of hundred thousand storage locations and several million paying customers. Luckily for the world, the billions of us clueless are offset by a few hundred million visionaries. I once heard business guru Tom Peters remark that the beauty of innovation is not only in the innovation itself, but in the other uses people find for the technology. Peters used the simple example of the zip lock bag. It has morphed from the lowly sandwich bag to dozens of variations, for dozens of purposes. What got me to thinking about this was NetFlix. I've been a subscriber on three or four occasions. I subscribe for a bit, but then I remember that I don't watch much television and I quit again. When I first encountered Netflix, I thought it was an unsustainable business model. How can you make money mailing DVDs? Next time I signed up, I found that they were delivering some content via the internet to my computer, which cuts out a lot of mailing. Now they can use the internet to bring many of their movies and television shows directly to my TV set. What's next? I suspect that we will soon see premium television networks on-demand via the internet. And I don't mean that we can subscribe to HBO or Showtime via the internet. I think we will get television completely on-demand, if we want. I have HBO because they had the Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire and Big Love. Beyond those, I don't watch it, so why should I pay for it? I think we will soon see services where we can just pick and choose what we want, when we want it. Why should I pay $10 a month to HBO to see movies Netflix or someone else can give me cheaper? We pay about $90 a month to DirecTV in order to watch, what they show, when they want us to see it. Or we pay them to let us TIVO it. I think that is going the way of the home phone and sooner rather than later. 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

Warning: Nothing in this post should be construed to mean that the Merle Wayne Sneed blog endorses or condones homicide. From time to time in my work in the hardware store, I meet a customer so vile that I actually have a grudging admiration the audacity of their repugnance. How does a sixty-year-old obnoxious shrew reach her seventh decade without someone having killed her? I got a phone call at sevenish this morning from a woman asking if I had a cap for an ice-maker water line on her refrigerator? I told her I did. Then she asked my name and we had a back and forth as she repeated it incorrectly three time. Finally she told me she was on her way and that I should wait by the door. I told her that I was the only guy working in the store until eight-thirty and she would have no trouble finding me. Her response was to repeat my name incorrectly, three times more. Five minutes later, the cashier told me that a woman was looking for me and she was sending her back to the plumbing aisle. The customer and her husband disconnected the water line from their frig so that he could move it out because they were painting. The line continues to drip, even though they turned off the water valve behind the frig. I suppose the husband would have come in himself, except he was probably trying to figure where she hid his testicles. I'm just making a guess based upon the fact that she is still alive and still referring to the guy as "her husband." I asked her where she was trying to cap the line and that set her off. She wanted to know if I even understood the problem. She said that she wanted to cap the line where is was disconnected from the frig. On the frig itself or on the line, I wondered? This question just irritated her more. She asked me how hard this was for me to understand? I'm not kidding. My question was perfectly reasonable, unless you got up on the wrong side of the fiery pit of Hell. When you take the line off the frig, you have a male connection on the frig and a female one on the line. Male connections get capped, females connections get plugged. I went to our brass parts bins and started to look for a plug that she could screw into the end of the line. As I suspected, we didn't have a proper plug. In fact, I'm pretty sure that no one has a plug for a ice-maker line, because plugging the line is the stupid way to do it. The right way to do the job is to disconnect the line from the wall valve and cap the valve off. This is where things really went wrong. Out of the blue she says, "Is this how you operate, you tell people on the phone you have something and then when they come in you look and see if you do?" Have you ever had one of those moments when blood rushes to you eyes and you can't see? This was that moment. My instinct was to tell her to get out, but that is not in my job description. So, I mustered what composure I could and with my vision returning, said, "No madam, that is not what I do. You asked for a cap, not a plug. There's a difference." I used a couple of parts to fashion an adapter that will let her plug the end of the line and sent her on her way, without so much as a thank you. She reciprocated. 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

A fascinating photo of the inside of my rain barrel. That object in the middle is my reflection. I was awaken by the sound of rain hitting the roof this morning. It doesn't get any better than that. In answer to Mum, my rain barrels did fill, sort of. One more than the other. I have some design issues to resolve. On to my rant of the day. We have a major controversy developing in the small border town of Douglas, Arizona. Douglas, AZ. and Agua Prieta, Mexico, are basically one metro area, split by the international border. However, for the residents of both communities, the international border is a technicality. People cross back and forth everyday for work, shooping and family matters. The growing controversy is that a charter school in Douglas, financed by the Arizona taxpayers, is suspected of enrolling about fifty kids from Agua Prieta. The Department of Education authorities have a video tape purported to show van loads of Mexican children being driven across the border to attend the school. The headmaster of the Douglas school has invoked the much used, "liar, liar, pants on fire", defense. He says he has done everything according to the book. Besides, due to a loophole in state law, charter schools are not required to make students prove residency. Only public schools have to do that. The only reason this matters to me is that Arizona school authorities are demanding that the legislature close this loop hole, asap. Plus, the usual citizen suspects are out of their minds angry over this. This is all a tempest in a teapot because, even though public school students are required to establish valid residency, the schools cannot ask about their legal status. All they can do is make sure the student lists a valid address for attendance purposes. As we all know, anyone can rent an apartment. Arizona has three border towns that are contiguous with Mexican counterparts; Nogales, Douglas and Yuma. Virtually every kid living south of the border, has relatives who live legally just north of the border. It has long been a practice for Mexican kids to attend U.S. schools by listing the U.S. addresses of their U.S. relatives. The children who cross into Douglas to attend school will not be deterred by a border crackdown. They will just go to live with their Douglas relatives during the week. It seems to me that we have really big problems, but a few hundred Mexican kids attending school in the U.S. isn't among them. If the government wants to make all students, in all schools to prove that they are here legally, so be it. But we have neither the will nor the way to do it, so what's the point? 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

Looking north down the cul-de-sac, there show be mountains visible. As you can see, it is still cloudy and overcast, with one important addition. One problem with not having the sense to come in from the rain, is that you tend to pick friends that are equally clueless. Or as you might say, wetness loves company. The usual suspects and I played golf this morning. It began innocently enough, the weather was overcast and unseasonably cool. When I arrived at the course and fellow sitting in his car got out and asked me if I thought it would rain. Since May is our driest month, I was confident in my assurances that it would soon clear up. He was not convinced because he got back in his car and left. For about 15 minutes I was spot on about the clearing. Then, the occasional droplet, became a drizzle, and finally a steady rainfall. The rain lasted all morning, leaving me wet, cold and pissed off. I had come completely unprepared for rain, but Some Guy Named Bob came to my rescue. Some Guy Named Bob is a denizen of the thrift stores and carries about two weeks changes of used clothing in in the back of the dumpster on wheels that passes for his car. He dug out a lightweight jacket for me to wear. That helped until the rain got heavy, soaking me down to the skin. Later, when we finished playing, Some Guy Named Bob came up with dry shirts for us all, so that we could have lunch without dripping water all over the restaurant floor. What a guy. To make it even worse, I was absolutely horrible at golf today. Maybe the worst 18 holes I've ever played. Ever. I had a bad case of "the hooks". Every shot hooked left. I don't know why this happened today, sometimes golf is a mystery. The mark of the bad golfer is a slice or a ball that goes right. Me having the hooks, is beyond explanation. This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie Tin Cup. Roy is trying to cure himself of a case of the shanks, with the help of his caddy, Cheech Marin. Anyway, we set records for both lowest high temperature and rainfall for May 21st. Our high was just 65 and we got over one-half inch of rain, a lot for a place that only gets 12 inches per year. Rain is never unwelcome in the desert. 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

We are enjoying a brief respite from the heat. It is only supposed to get to 85 tomorrow. Clouds, but no rain. One of Hooterville's finest was arrested for drunken driving over the weekend. This is not an Earth shattering event, from time to time one of the local cops gets arrested for one thing or another. Like most places, I suppose. What mystifies me is that the offenders are always put on paid leave pending an investigation. If the offense is not too egregious, arrestee usually takes his or her punishment and gets to come back to work. When I worked for Tedious Systems, a DUI bust, or most any other arrest, would get you fired the next day, no leave pending, no investigation.. I think that public employees enjoy a level of protection not available to us average citizens in the private sector. When I was working in the middle school, a job I wanted was held up because the incumbent teacher was contesting his dismissal for striking a kid. Setting aside the fact that the kid probably had it coming, how much investigation does it take to ax a guy who hits a student in front of thirty other kids? Just this past week, a teacher at one of the local middle schools was arrested on this way into the building on charges that he had sex with a student on campus. He is suspended with pay, pending his dismissal. Based on stuff he posted on Facebook and emails that he sent from his account to the kid, there is little doubt that at a minimum he was conducting an inappropriate relationship with the kid. God bless the spokesman for the Hooterville Public Schools who in commenting on the situations, said that the teacher had been "assigned to work from home." I guess saying he was assigned to work from jail cell is not in the HR handbook. Anyway, just a thought for today. I never said it was a coherent thought. 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

I don't care how dry it is, 103 is hot. This is the temperature in my backyard, in the shade, at 4:14 pm. At least it will cool off over night. In another month, it will still be over 100 at ten or eleven at night. Why do I live in this hell hole? A customer in the store sold me two 55 gallon plastic drums for 10 bucks each. One of the hospitals gets industrial soap in these barrels and this customer has an in at the hospital. I put a hose bibb on each one and cut a hole in the top to catch rain from the scupper. Now if it would just rain. No matter how hot it gets, the bougainvillea thrive. These things are indestructible. They freeze way back in the winter and come summer, they are back again. 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

When temperatures soar here in the desert, any flower is welcome. In the wee of the night, When the whir of the fan is my companion, When glow of the clock casts blue shadows, He comes knocking at the window of my mind. He comes, uninvited, unwelcome, and despite my resolve to keep him from my bed, he comes and lies with me, The solitude has robbed my reason. I sleep in fits and starts, turning this way and that, but as slumber comes, he prods me. He will not be ignored. Then daybreak brings new light, and my old foe gets up from my bed and excuses himself, he is a giant in the stillness of night, but at morning he is a wisp, a fleeting shadow. As I have grown old and come to grips with the things that I cannot control, my nighttime tormentor rarely visit. As an American of Dutch ancestry, I'm obliged to adore Van Gogh. I hope you do too. 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

Do you suppose that people who discuss inappropriate things on their cell phones in public, have always been that way or has the cell phone made them socially misfit? I personally think it is the former, but cell phones are just another manifistation of their lack of common sense. For instance, I was cutting some screen material for the maintenance supervisor of one of our neighborhood schools today, when his cell phone rang. This is not some dopey kid, he is a guy in his 60s. Anyway, he answered and he had a long conversation about a late credit card payment. He told the person on the phone that his wife would send a payment today and that it would be for the minimum amount because that is all he could do at the moment. Call me old-fashioned, but that is not a conversation I would have in public. The hardware store bosses included a letter in our paychecks this month telling us that they are capping our pay and cutting back on annual raises. I guess the way things are at the moment, this is far better news than most folks are getting. 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

If there it an official symbol of Arizona, it's the Saguaro. In reality the Saguaro only grows in the southern half of the state, from Phoenix, south to Hooterville and westward. Further south and east of our fair city, it is too high in elevation for the plant to grow. Did you know that the average American family that has at least one credit card, owes over $10,000? That's is shocking to me. No, not shocking, sickening. Speaking of being deeply in debt, I have always been fascinated by the cars sales business. What else do we do that involves so much overt dishonesty? Anyway, I was looking through the list of almost 800 Chrysler dealers that Chrysler is abandoning. That's one in four of their current dealers. These closures are a huge blow for lots of small towns, because that is where most of these dealers are. In small towns, car dealers are the guys who support schools and civic activities. Chrysler says that 90% of their sales come from 50% of their dealers, so this 25% of dealers that are closing must represent just a percent or two of total sales. Too bad, all around. I was talking to Mrs. Sneed yesterday about a new car to replace the Sneed Family Junkster, my nine-year-old pick-up truck. Then, I check my records and discovered that I drive an average of 80 miles a week. That is mostly going to and from bowling and golf. I guess I'll just drive the Junkster for another few years. It only has 59,000 miles on it. Some Guy Named Bob, The Seafood King and I played golf today at a place called Santa Rita Golf Course in Corona de Tucson. It is a community south of Hooterville and up in the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains. The elevation is 3300 ft, so it is slightly cooler than Hooterville. It is also pretty windy, all the time. The Seafood King doesn't believe in riding in a cart, so he and I usually walk the course. The fellow in the clubhouse who checked us in tried to talk us out of walking because the course is pretty hilly and the weather is pretty hot. Evidently, he mistook us for the run-of-the-mill geezers, rather than the studly specimens that we are. He even came out in a cart to check on us during the round. I guess he thought we might keel over. By we, I really mean me, since I'm a few years older than The Seafood King. But, as I told the golf course guy, we are men and walking a golf course and carrying our clubs is no big deal. It does require a nap when I get home, though. 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

This is one of my favorite pictures. Sometimes companies do things that are so consumer unfriendly, I have to wonder what they are thinking. Sometimes they take it a step further and do things that are not only bad for the consumer, but bad for them. I was talking to my friend at lunch yesterday and he told me that he just ruined his new Verizon cell phone by washing it along with the laundry. He's only had the phone for two months. He called Verizon and they told him that it will cost him $200 to replace it. The cost to cancel his service early is only $165. Why wouldn't he just cancel his service and sign up with someone else? He would be $35 bucks ahead. Instead of doing that, he is going to pay the $165 and go without a cell phone for awhile. I'm guessing that most of us could live without cell service. 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

Mother's Day at the Cemetery

Mrs. Sneed and I visited Southlawn Cemetery yesterday. The cemetery is on the southside of town and caters these days to the heavily Hispanic population of the area. Southlawn belongs to Dignity Memorial, the nation's largest funeral provider. Mrs. Sneed and I were both struck by the apparent lack of care the cemetery receives. It stands in stark contrast to Eastlawn, another of their cemeteries, located just up the street from our home. This picture of the cemetery sign was taken from the car, because we really could stop due traffic. These are the gravesites of Mrs. Sneed's parents. As you can see, there is no grass in this area. The sprinkler is not working and no one seems to have noticed. A view of a nicer section of the cemetery. In the Mexican tradition, mother is the glue that holds the family together. She is the undisputed queen of the her little world. Mother's Day at the cemetery is a time to gather the family and spend the day. When it is 100 outside, a tent is a good idea. Sometimes even two tents. This was a group of about ten men. They had the good sense to bury Mom under a tree. This isn't Nyack where people readily pose for pictures, so I had to take this shot on the sly. The cemetery folks allowed a taqueria to set up in the cemetery to serve those spending the day. The southside is loaded with mobile food vendors. This is my mother's plaque on the wall of the area where cremains can be spread. I'm not sure why my old man chose Southlawn as the final resting place for Mom's ashes, but he did. Maybe this was the only cemetery where it is allowed. Nothing say dignity like a row of outhouses, but at least the cemetery guys thought of everything to make people's day as pleasant as possible. 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

If I have shattered you illusions about Arizona, I'm sorry. Arizona is a fine place, but it is not perfect and Hooterville is not Scottsdale or Sedona. Hooterville is a metropolitan area of 195 square miles in size. That's the size of Manhattan and Queens, more or less. Our population is just over one million, making us the 52nd metro area in the country. I have no objective data to confirm this, but I suspect that we are the poorest city with a population of over one million. Hooterville is only 60 miles north of the Mexican border and in many parts of our city, it is indistinguishable from Mexico. In a large swath of our city I'm guessing that English is the second language. That's important because recent immigrants tend to work lower service jobs. To illustrate my point about the disparities in the city, consider income by zip code. In my zip code 85711, the average income as reported to the Internal Revenue Service for 2006 was exactly in the 50th percentile for the United States. In the four zip codes that cover our northern foothills, the incomes ranged for the 95th to the 98th percentiles nationally. On the south side in the 4 predominant zip codes, the percentiles ranged from the 2nd to the 14th. This huge disparity causes all sorts of problems. Also, like many places the city has grown outward, chiefly eastward and northwesterly. The affluent and the middle class have gone those ways, leaving many parts of the core of the city to the lower middle classes and the poor. Our northern foothills are home to the city's elite and wealthy, as is the far east side. The adjoining towns of Marana and Oro Valley on our north are both over 90% anglo in the poplulation makeup. they are poster children for the concept of whiter flight. In general, if you have a south address, you live in an less desirable area than if you have a north address. The farther south you go the worse the neighborhoods get. There is also so really rough neighborhoods in the near northeast address, north of the old downtown. that's not uniformly true, but mostly true. There are pockets of affluence in the core of the city, especially around the University of Arizona. One of the big drivers of poverty and its associated social problems is that we are a service economy. Unless you work for the government, or a government-related industry, you likely work in service or construction. Right now things suck for non-governmental workers. So, while Hooterville is a great place to live for many of us, it is a huge struggle for many more. 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

Mother's Day at the Sneeds began early and will run into this evening. Mrs. Sneed and I went to our oldest son and daughter-in-law's house last evening for a Mother's Day dinner. It was a really nice evening, topped by a good meal. Aiden and I shot some baskets in the back and then we played a game of Yahtzee, which he won despite minimal cheating. At games end, he proudly proclaimed that, "I won and I only cheated once." The kid has a future in banking. And of course, Miss Riley was as cute as can be. Tonight we are having dinner out with Daughter Sneed and her husband Greg. Along with Noah, of course. This morning Mrs. Sneed and I took a drive down memory lane, culminating in a stop at the cemetery to pay our respects to our mothers, who are interred in the same cemetery. Well, technically Mrs. Sneed's parents are interred. My mom's ashes were spread in a special area of the cemetery. This is the first house Mrs. Sneed lived in when her family moved to Hooterville in the 1950s. It was a working class neighborhood then, now it's in the 'hood. The decades have not been kind. Mrs. Sneed and I went to this junior high, when it was shiny and new. It was built for the throng of middle class families moving to what was Hooterville's east side. Now it is in the center of the city and is in an economically depressed area. It ranks as the poorest performing middle school in the district. The neighborhood residents got old and the neighborhood ran down. These days the residents are largely immigrants from Mexico. The school enrollment is 87% minority children. When we went there it was nearly all white. It failing because it's students are poor, who also happen to be Hispanic, black and Native American. Ethnicity has nothing to do with academic potential, but poverty does. There are hundreds of apartments in immediate proximity to the school. This demographic leads to a 30% turnover in students each year. It is hard for a school to succeed with mostly poor and highly mobile students. The last stop before the cemetery was at my dad's old house. He lived there until he got really sick and had to come and live with us. Dad died in August 2005. The house is in a really tough, really scary neighborhood. It is a classic 1950s Hooterville concrete block structure, completely square, with no frills. The outside is painted white. Dad loved his house and said that he saw nothing wrong with his neighborhood. Even the late night gunfire and police helicopter visits were, "No biggie", his words. The current owner who doubles as my sister, has made some additions to the property. Not improvements necessarily, just changes. She lobbied long and hard for Dad to give her the house in his will, but he wouldn't do it, so she had to buy us out of our share. Why she wanted it so bad, I can't imagine. I said or did something, real or imaginary, to piss my sister off and she doesn't speak to me. Anyway, Happy Mother's Day, one and all. Tomorrow scenes from the cemetery. 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

It's time for another installment of life in the hardware store, featuring me. We had a police incident today. An old man who has some affiliation with the cafe two doors down from the store, accidentally hit a parked car as he was leaving the parking lot. The old man was quite oblivious to the crash and continued on his way. The parked car belonged to a young man and as young men are prone to do, he overreacted. He chased down the old guy's car and then verbally threatened the old man. For reasons that are not clear to me, the old man took refuge on a bench inside our store while the younger fellow stood watch outside. The old man asked the manager of our store to call the police for him. The young guy also called the police to report a hit and run accident. Accidents on private property are not police matters in Hooterville, but I'm guessing that the young guy didn't know that. Anyway, the police showed up and oversaw the exchange of insurance information and made sure the old guy got safely on his way. It takes a long time, sometimes forever for young guys to realize that it's just a car. 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

Congratulate us, it hit 100 degrees today. I feel all toasty. Here's what we are up against in Arizona. We have a three billion dollar deficit in our state budget. People are being laid off and services are being cut. The state universities are scrambling to make ends meet and teachers in our public schools are being let go. It's a mess. So what's our legislature up to? They are making sure that citizens have the right to have guns in their cars at work. Even if the company prohibits it. The Arizona House of Representatives passed this legislation on a voice vote. The voice vote was to provide cover for the cowards who voted yea, but don't want their constituents getting pissed at them. In order to keep guns off company property, the owner of a business, an apartment complex or a commercial property would have to fence in the parking lot, hire a security guard to search every vehicle entering it and then provide gun lockers for any guns they find entering their fenced in lot. I'm not kidding. 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

To paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. The Congress of the United States, in attempting to rein in identity theft and illegal immigration and to prove that they are actually useful, passed a regulation that provides for a two-year prison sentence for a person who knowingly uses the identity of another. The Congress could have said it is a crime to use another's identity and they would have been on solid ground. But that is not how politicians work. They craft legislation in an way to try to cover every possible contingency and to not make anyone unhappy. And in doing that, they generally make a mess of things. Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Flores-Figueroa v. United States, in favor of Mr. Flores-Figueroa. Flores-Figueroa, an illegal immigrant, used fictitious SSN and resident alien cards to gain employment. He later, used a real SSN, one not belonging to him. His employer reported Mr. Flores-Figueroa to the federal immigration officials and he was arrested. Mr. Flores-Figueroa was charged with both illegal entry and aggravated identity theft, under the knowingly law. Mr. Flores-Figueroa disputed the charge that he knowingly used someone else's ID. His contention was that since he didn't know he was using an actual persons actual SSN, he hadn't violated the aggravated identity theft law. At trial he was convicted and he also lost on appeal. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "knowingly means knowingly and since Flores-Figueroa had no knowledge of whose SSN he was using, he is not guilt of violating the law. They never said he was a swell guy or anything, just that he didn't violate the law as written. The article about the ruling in the Hooterville Daily Dish generated over 100 comments, most angry and outraged. I find fringe outrage terribly entertaining. Francisco R. wrote: Hey, I "took" that car but I didn't "know" it belonged to someone else. It's not stealing. Francisco apparently forgot that the law about car theft never says that you have to know the car you steal belonged to someone else. Doug P. had an interesting thought: The Supreme Court is wrong in this ruling and someone should challenge the ruling!! Maybe to the Really, Really Supreme Court? John H. attempted to instruct, by writing, The question the article did not answer is what portion of the Constitution did the Supreme Court base this decision on. Afterall, that is supposed to be the basis of all their decisions. John needs a copy of the Constitution. Article III, Section 2, is pretty clear about the scope of the Supreme Courts powers. Their decisions are not strictly based in Constitutional interpretation. Anyway, the wackos are in a dither about this. What else is new? 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

My gardenia is in bloom. Have you ever thought about how much our understanding of the world around us, keeps us from understanding the world around us? Or the universe beyond us? Or how our willingness to accept the easy answer, robs us of the important discoveries? Or how hard we will work to stay where we are? And how far we will trudge to keep from running? Someone once said to me, "The only things that are impossible, are those things you can't imagine." So maybe the laws of thermodynamics are inviolable and maybe father actually knows best and maybe God made it, or maybe not. 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

As regular readers know, Hooterville is presided over by a kindly old mayor and six council members, some of whom are personally very accomplished, but all who are buffoons. Oh yeah, and because of our bizarre city charter, they are perpetually Democrats, elected by the overwhelming Democrat majority, among our electorate. They are people whose hearts are in the right place, but whose heads are not. Unless you consider "up their arse", the right place. Our state legislature gave the city access to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax money to revitalize our downtown and a hundred million later, we have nothing to show for it, except studies, consultants, waste and outright fraud. The state is going to pull the plug on the whole idea. A local writer in a weekly paper here, called some of the council members dumb, in his column two weeks ago, for firing our city manager. Or more specifically, for not being able to explain why they fired him. The dismissed city manager was the only guy in Hooterville with any credibility left, when it came to dealing with the state over this money. That writer said he was confronted by an angry citizen in the grocery store, who demanded to know why he called her favorite council woman dumb in his story? He claims to have replied, "Because the editor wouldn't let me say f-ing idiot." Brilliant, if true. 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