HOSING AMERICANS – OPEN LETTER TO IRVING OIL

Irving Oil HQ
New Brunswick, Canada

Hi Karen,

I've been keeping running notes of this morning's calamity. I intend to send it to every paper in the state, my twitter tweeps & my 300 + email addresses.

Narrative: I called Irving at 6:50 this morning when I realized we had no oil. It's 6 degrees and snowing, and I was told that we had been scheduled for Sat 1.20 but didn't know why they didn't come. He said that drivers come in at 7 and someone would call me to let me know when the delivery would be here.

No one called so I called at 7:22 talked to Karen who said driver was on his way from Effingham & would be here within the hour. I told her that Eff wasn't that far away. She said he might have other stops. I protested vigorously that this is Irving's fault & we are sitting in a freezing cold house. She didn't know why we didn't get our "automatic" deliv on Sat.

Driver arrived at 8:20 & I asked him what time he starts: "6:00", said he. How many delivs this am, "one, in Ossipee.". Have you been to Effingham? "No".
He then filled the tank but didn't have the right size wrench to start the BRAND NEW Irving funace that we had purchased in the spring of '11. I loaned him a crescent wrench. The nut was on too tight and he had to call for a technician. The driver said he spoke to someone in the office who had talked to me earlier. He left an invoice for nearly $900.

He left at 8:45. The temp is too cold to register on our inside thermostat/thermometer, which mean below 50.

Update: It is now 9:25 I am dressed just as I was to go skiing yesterday in 20 deg weather. My nose is dripping. My wife is supposed to go to a family function today. Looks like no shower for her but probably warm where she is going. No one from Irving has called so we don't dare even go out for breakfast where they would likely have heat. We don't want to miss the tech.

I think: What would I do if I had 3 little kids wanting to know why they are so cold, and, when is the man gonna come to fix it.
Also too, what would I have done if, as happened one year ago, I was just 3 weeks into recovering from open heart surgery.

Dispatcher said that Karen is in New Brunswick Canada and is the weekend service person for this area. But when I called after an hr & 10 minutes I was put through to Lisa in "Eastern Canada". She didn't know who Karen was but said she would "try" to find out where the technician is that is supposed to re-start our furnace. That took 12 minutes of me holding & listening to the same crappy hold-music that Irving had the last time this happened. Lisa just came on to say the tech guy will be here in 5 minutes. Right.

I'm thinking that even though we are on "automatic" delivery, Irving tries to bundle their deliveries so they don't waste fuel driving all over hell and back even though they promised their customers they will not run out of heat. (Damn, my fingers are cold. Back into my parka pockets they go.)

After 20 minutes the Tech guy called from our old address of EIGHT YEARS ago! He said he got instrux from dispatcher in Canada. Wait. They already filled my tank this am. How could they not know where I live? Hosers!

FORTY minutes after they said FIVE, & more than FOUR hours since I woke up, the tech guy comes . Nice local guy I’ve met before. He didn't know why the original driver couldn't have loosened the nut even with a pair of pliers. We now have HEAT!!

This is the 3rd time this has happened with Irving. I encourage everyone reading this to find a local dealer with a local telephone number so if something goes wrong you can deal with a real person. You'll also not be sending your money out of the country.

One percent solution

I may have finally figured out how to send a mass emailing so that I can get TSJ fired up again. When I got my new computer the Outlook program wouldn’t let me send to the old list and, long story short, I tried a bunch of shit and it didn’t work so my genius fren Jenn figured out how to do it through Gmail, and Bob’s your uncle.

I have worked around government for a lot of my life off and on. The army, Lib of Cong, small town administrator, reporter covering all the local crap, selectmen, school, county stuff, local boards and cetera. I have also been an ersatz small business type where you learn to spend carefully and husband your resources or you’ll go out of business even faster than I did.

Why then is our jag-off government so over spent? And why is their solution to financial responsibility to almost always cut big bird? Connie Mack, R-Flah, says all we have to do is cut 1 percent from the budget to get back on track. Say he’s right. Every office anywhere can cut that much. Recycle printing paper. Don’t order shit you don’t need. Turn lights off. Trim back on mileage allowance. Keep heat and A/C a little lower. And at budget time, sharpen the pencil. In government they round off to the nearest five or ten percent. In the tiniest towns they don’t pull out records to see what they spent on office supplies last year before putting down a number. The selectman, and this is verbatim, sort of look at each other and say, “Whaddya think? 5 percent? Ten”? The other two doofus’s just say “sure” so they can get a little raise for their project. And the reason they are so laisse faire with your money is because they, every last one of the thieving bastids, are “under paid”. Everyone in government is under paid, according to themselves.

I substitute “taught’ at the high school. They had a course called JAG. I asked several people there what it stood for when I got my assignment but they didn’t know and a couple of them never heard of it. Jobs After Graduation one of my four students told me. The teacher who left me notes said that I should help them fill out job application forms from two of the local ski areas. I only had NINETY freakin’ minutes to get this down their resentful little throats. They had been "studying" this for the whole semester. They were in there because it was a gut course for which they could get full credit. A full time teacher (who couldn’t be there because like so many teachers at the end of the year, he had to use up his “personal time” or lose it) is required for this bullshit course. He probably makes less than $40k but his bennies are close to half that. Really? Our kids need this course that bad?

So his salary with bennies is almost a half of a percent of the $13, 000,000 school budget. I can’t help but thinking there are some other ways to save but I’m not going to waste my fingerprints making suggestions because we all know that nobody is ever even going to bend over to pick up a paper clip when they’ve got a squad of unionized janitors to clean up after them.

John Boehner’s salary jumped to a quarter of a million dollars when he became speaker. You should see his office. His staff has their own offices. Of course he has a car and driver, free haircuts, gym, mess hall, and the ubiquitous franking privileges also know as free campaign funding.

It isn’t just frustratingly crazy. It’s damned expensive and it is my firm belief that it will never ever change. Too bad.

Too Many Questions

O my ridiculous frig! What can possibly be attained by releasing OLB’s SEAL team mug-shot? Who, besides me, wants to see this guys former façade in its new guise. I’m just a curious thrill seeker with a sneaker for the ghoulish. The idea that my whim should be satisfied at the risk of really pissing off some peasant with an RPG and little to lose, seems on the face of it, nuts.

I’m more interested in seeing the Donald’s tax returns and his “fantastic” grades when he was at Penn. I’m much more interested in seeing some actual footage of Michelle Bachman answering a question, any question, with a straight answer. We don’t really need to see Osama’s former face or even the “dignified burial at sea” clip that while fascinating for some, would prove little to me. After all, I read the Pat Tillman Story and will never believe my government again (without verifying) and most especially any thing coming out of DoD.

It’s as riveting a story that Krakauer has ever told. And having served in a combat outfit in peacetime Germany, I can vouch for how inefficient, self serving and stupid the army can be. Almost nobody wants to take responsibility and the ones that do, shouldn’t. The army thrives on routine by the numbers. What attracts seemingly capable young men to become lifers is the predictability of every day. You know exactly what you are going to wear each day, when you need to show up to be fed and what time to go to bed.

Corporal Tillman’s squad was divided up after a vehicle became disabled even though this was against standing orders. Some Captain over rode a wiser Lieutenant because he didn’t want to catch hell for leaving a vehicle behind. The two half squads became confused in a fire fight with the enemy and Tillman became a KIA from three shots in the head, which isn’t too hard to do with a BAR 240, which only Americans carry.

It was easy enough to figure out what happened but nobody wanted to except blame and instead of a friendly-fire report to head quarters, the famous football star who signed up with his brother after 9/11, was put in for a silver star, a really big deal.

Brigadier General (one star) Stanley Mc Chrystal was told to make up a story and write a report that would justify the award and make Tillman’s family feel better. This would require that the chain of command have absolute discipline to keep the story straight. Big prob. Pat’s brother was on the same patrol and knew what happened. Eventually the whole misguided plan was exposed and Tillman’s mother and brother testified in front of Congress. Apologies were made. None were excepted. Mrs. Tillman went back home with one less son. Mc Chrystal got three more stars before finally getting drummed out of service for doing something else stupid.
At this writing we are being told that one of OBL’s wives, a brave lass, charged at a NAVY SEAL! And he had to shoot her. He didn’t kill her because there was no need. Why he couldn’t have butt stroked her sorry ass, as even I was taught, doesn’t quite compute. “They” wanted us to believe that Osama “resisted”. Resisted what, being shot? Is that any reason to shoot a guy? How did he “resist” without a freakin’ weapon?

The guy needed to die and he did. Good riddance. Why all the balderdash? We can take it. He killed thousands. Three thousand just on 9/11. There’s abso-fkn-lutely no reason to claim self defense. The shooter had a kill order and now his target is with his seventy two new girlfriends. Who cares?

The DoD does. They never saw a story they couldn’t try to spin. So who in the name of allah would ever believe whatever image the military’s press department trotted out to show that he is dead. One Taliban chief reportedly said today that Osama’s been dead for a year and a half. Ya gotta picture Mac?

PS: O dear. After all that, the WH has just announced that no pics will be released. Just as well.

The Doofus

Is it not too funny that this behemoth gasconade has a hide one can read through? Bobby Deniro wisely declined to name the object of his scorn but Brian Williams did get him to admit to a description of the TV personality and self important silly-man known mostly for his jerk-off hair styling. The D-man fired back, attacking the intelligence of one of the most important and accomplished actors for almost anyone reading this.

Rove is a no-nothing political hack. Stuart and Colbert are nowt but comedians. Jonathan Alter, who just called him a “fool”on MSNBC, will soon be under attack for a lack of credentials (and probably hair) even as the POTUS’s attendance at fancy schools seems to be fair game for the least of all likely candidates for that office.
Trump went to a military academy. Now I ask you: Who gets sent to that kind of school? If my parents could have afforded it, me. A wisenheimer who could use a good ass kicking. Even “W” got into Andover. None of the Kennedy kids had to get their ears batted by some retired army major with boozy breath and a penchant for picking on kids. I will bet not too many military schools send kids to the Ivies and though I haven’t checked I shouldn’t be at all surprised if there isn’t a wing at Penn with the Trump logo that Trump pere thought might ease the skids for his pretentious pompadoured pup.

Is there a point Pete, you might inerroneously ask. This man, who inexpertly referred to a substantially important group in this country as “the blacks”, has now doubled down on that statement. Cool. Kiss them good bye. But my problem is that in questioning how, what he has termed , “a not very bright guy” got into, not one, but two Ivy League schools. He doesn’t mention that the Prez also went to the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii or that he got into Occidental College before transferring to Columbia. He likely never heard of it though it is first rate and very difficult to get into. The only take that I can see on this is, sadly, a racist one. Questioning Obama’s ability to get into a school like the one he went to, can only suggest that there he is concerned about an “equal opportunity” provided for people of color or three ears or not enough toes.

Apparently the man who would be king thinks that the snazzy school syndrome is only for realtor royalty and their spawn. I feel certain that we are going to leave this sht 4 brains media whore off the hook because some think that racism is passé and that the President and his retinue would never touch it themselves. He’s a joke to them. He’s too unimportant.
You likely don’t waste your time keeping up with all this malarkey. So I’ll tell you. The subliminal message from this sublimely superficial cipher, is that he believes that there is an underlying racism in this country and there are more of them than there are decent people and he will get their votes.

He must be forgetting that Obama is already President. That he got over half of the people who could vote to vote for him. The Donald’s is passing. Young people in the work force don’t fret about race or gender issues. They care about their Droids and BMers; getting their kids into the Country Day just above their station; and braces. Just, as in my day, our parents didn’t quite acknowledge certain European ancestry and we couldn’t care less, the same is true of our kids only with different categories. Their kids will probably march for equal rights for Martians.

I shouldn’t, but I really hate the Donald and all the Donalds of the world. The only thing this schlubby garish gonnef has going for him is his ostentation. And that’s pathetic because so many of us are paying attention. And I just saw that Trump is taking credit for the airing of HBO’s actual birth certificate. Ai yi freakin’ yi!

He who must be obeyed: The Trump bump

I’ve been having the devil’s own time trying to get a program that will send out a mass email to alert TSJ fans of a new post. My guru Sue thinks she has found a program that will do it and it is shockingly complicated compared to the old “create a group” click that even I could figure out. The restriction has made it difficult for others to do unwanted mass mailings. And I can dig that. Let’s give it a try.

I am truly fascinated with The Doofus, that is, the astronomical attention he has garnered from the press by continuing his assaholic schtick into a presidential campaign. I too think it’s fascinating that such a well known figure would think that he is presidential material because he knows how to make a real estate deal. The fact that he has a hit “reality” show does nothing for me. Billy Ray Cyrus created a hit show. But that the press is stringing him along at the expense of real news is in a way alarming. It’s like picking on the fat kid or the new kid on the playground. I feel like they are taunting him into some huge meltdown that will show to all who have been watching what a vainglorious victim of the ratings system he will prove to have been.

The second time Henry Kissmyass threatened to quit the Nixon regime if he didn’t get his way, John Chancelor said he was reminded of the guy about whom it was said, “the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted the spoons”. I know that I watch too much of this stuff, but it gives me the advantage of getting the joke of how many times Mr. Chump has touted how smart he is and where he went to school to get his fantastic grades. That his daughter is so great that he would date her if not for a somewhat sticky consanguinity issue. That the only reason the Chinese are beating our brains in economically is because he of the tornadic top is not doing the negotiating. This bit of foolishness was followed by the fatuous suggestion that he would simply make China pay a 25 percent tax on all goods shipped into our country. His implication being that La Chinoise would cave immediately rather than punishing the zillions of American businesses with facilities in China.

The whole birther bidneth is glossed over, over and over again. It was with pHuckabee, on tape saying that POTUS 44 was born in Kenya and got his “anti-colonial” ideas from his radical Dad whom he met but once after his father left the family to go get a PhD from Harvard. The Rev. back-tracked of course. But the benefit was established with all the racists put in radio land that cannot believe that a negro is their commander-in-chief. There is not one part of me that thinks this ploy is anything other. And this real estate mogul with his eighth-grade grasp of world events is using such a fear tactic to incite enough voters to propel him into the race. A race he seemed unsure of in an interview this morning of where his kids and wife stand in terms of him running.

I truly believe that the press is holding back on its real evaluation of the possible Trump candidacy because it’s kind of a free story. Have any of them gone down to Hawaii to find the supposed Trump “investigators” who were supposed to report back to him right about now. No. It’ll be dropped because they don’t want to piss off the freebie that keeps on giving. To hear some of the worthies of pundrity pull their punches on this egregious ejet, makes you believe that they are all in on it and that we are the chumps for taking seriously. It is very like the way they treated Sister Sarah. They never wanted her to go away but now that they’ve have Ol’ The Donald, we are pressed to find her anywhere except at the bottom of the Puffington Host and Politico.

Don’t think for a New York minute that I want him to go away. These sitcomish shenanigans confirm my extreme distaste for the electorate at large and aide my pissing and moaning on the printed page.

A heart felt note

It's eleven 11 all even. I don't know what you kids did on your c'mas vacation but I had an amb'lance ride, an EKG, stuff shoved in my veins, a star wars view of interior and anterior chambers belonging to my achy broken heart and then, "O yeah. It’s the big One. I'm coming to you Elizabeth" moment. It would have been some serious shit except I already knew that I was gonna die one day. I'm almost as old as when my father bought the farm. It seemed in the normal realm of things. Before I headed down into that endless tunnel where they do the actual cuttin' but you know nuttin', I turned to my wife and daughter and son and repeated the words of Richard Holbrooke who said at this very point, supposedly: "Tell Hilary to get out of Afghanistan."

Ambassador Holbrooke would love to trade places with me. I had two friends who also died on the table. One can't help thinking about that prior to saying goodbye. But, I woke up c'mas eve with stitches all over my chest (they come out Monday) and a couple of tubes sticking out just below the severed sternum. They came out right then. "Hi my name is RV." I tried to be friendly. I was in an assembly line of post op patients at Maine Meds celebrated 1st floor where all they do is hearts. "Yeah, I'm just gonna yank these suckers and you'll head up to ICU." Well, that sounds positive I thought. And while he was yanking what felt like foot long pieces of garden hose from my midsection, I told myself: I am airborne. What must it be like for the poor schnooks who have never tested themselves in an endurance kind of way. That too did pass.
Disgusting hospital food never tasted so good. Ice water; even better. The nurses were fabulous and I was double timing around their station and down the hall with in 24 hours. I knew what I had to do to get out early and I did it.
I’m likely able to write this drivel because, uncharacteristically I called 911 in a timely fashion. My peops, if this happens to you, and you want to live, call immediately. Turns out as soon as they slapped the Oxygen to me in the truck out in my driveway, the heart attack stopped. Very little damage to the organ itself. Problem was tons of cholesterol blocking the blood flow. A no no that is now fixed.
Three weeks later I’m walking almost a mile a day. But other than that I don’t have to do squat. So I’m doing it.

Hiatus to Haiti

I can’t tell you how many queries I’ve had about the SJ hiatus (two, maybe even three) and I have to say that I’m flattered having assumed that nobody reads it or if they did, resented that they were unable to wrap fish with it when they were through. And I assume that because the flood of snail-mail with checks that I expected never happened, and I’ve never been in the black enough to set up Pay Pal, that people were not willing to sustain my Hennessey habit, but people, these things don’t write themselves.

A dalliance with sobriety makes me realize that I have a lot more energy than I thought I had even without a six pack of Red Bull for breakfast. Rather than use it all up screaming at the news I have decided to put the nimble fingers back to the task of doing whatever it is that the SJ does. But then, thinking about that, is what caused the pause. And I have concluded that it is not a waste of anybody’s time since you don’t gotta read it and, I don’t gotta go onan’on if I don’t feel like it. Wen does her Sudoku and I do this. Sharpens the brain. Maybe.

A big question in the Internet and airwave ether is whether “we” are better off than “we” were a year ago and I can answer with an unqualified, Yes! Wen gave herself a raise and I had my arthritic shoulder fixed. We have a new grandson and we are going out to Chicago to see him in a couple of weeks. I also look forward to hopefully meeting “the Almighty Hawk who, comes sreamin’ down on ya like a giant razor blade, Jack.” And also, too, when the January thaw sets in, the heat here in northern NH is unbearable, but a little early for screens.

Others, by which I mean the 300 million plus inhabitants of the country that are not us, may feel similarly. “President Barack,” as Jesse Jackson recently called him, took office a year ago and immediately stanched the hemorrhaging of jobs to a mere trickle of tens of thousands (who can count that high anywaze?). Of course it’s still bad but you can’t make shit for people who can’t afford shit and employers can’t pay people to do nuttin’. It’ll come back but let’s hope more slowly. Can we please forego the bubbles. We all know that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. And that is what happens to the economy, gambling, heroin taking and bungee jumping.

I’m reading about the 14th century which Barbara Tuchman calls one of the worst of all twenty. The unmitigated greed at the top and most famously and astonishing is the clergy which, in Europe, was all Roman Catholic, you know, “the one true and Holy Roman apostolic church of Christ.” This was before Henry the Ape and Martin Luther Sr. These crooks spelled their god with an L in it. They had estates that equaled that of the really higher up “nobles.” They charged the rich knights for “indulgences” as in: “That mistress will cost you 10K florin old son, if you don’t want to go to hell.” Friendly old fat friar Tuck, that mischievous putz, used to charge the poor to hear confession. But, in France, they had free hospitals. And now, 659 years on, we are getting close to covering most citizens with a kind of slap-dash form of health care. Chalk one up for Pres. Barack, if he makes it.

A year ago the POTUS said we would close Gitmo. Do you really care? I know I don’t one way or the other. He also said he would wind Iraq down and I don’t know if that has happened because it’s rarely mentioned during the three or four hours of news that I watch each weekday. I know there are roadside bombings every once in a while and that has to be better news than, all the freakin’ time. He pledged to carry on the “good war” over in Hamid Karzaistan. Well, you can hardly call “a surge” of 30,000 soldiers, CIA personnel and an unspecified bunch of private contractors a drop in the bucket.

Our (yours and mine) image in the world is way up from the Bush years even as Pres. Barack’s numbers are off by a third from a year ago. I’d still vote for him over the guy who picked the foxy Fox pundit to be a heartbeat away and who called his own wife and meal-ticket the C word in front of reporters. Oh Johnny, you’re still tortured.

The crisis in Haiti will prove to all to be the measure of the man with whom the buck stops. Even his biggest detractors out there (and you know who you are Red and Fred) have got to believe that this situation will be handled better than Katrina, which still needs work that should have already been done.

I sent my whole allowance to Yele.com which is a boots-on-the-ground organization that has been trying to help the hapless Haitians for many years now. I hope no one out there is really worried about giving to brandname orgs because they are worried about how many cents on the dollar are spent on admin. If George Bush and Clinton (Bill) can work together on this, Smoking Jacketeers surely can.