The Wrath, The Passing

Dear CEO(s),

Although it is regrettable when I am forced to do business with lousy motherfuckers like yourself, I am unable to to promise that I will ever consider purchasing a policy from your goddamn gypsy consortium again.

We had some great times.  Like when my apartment was burglarized, and my dog was missing for two weeks.  Thank fucking Christ that I had a $2154.72 check in the mail that I could use to replace half of my stuff.  Oh, $2154.72?  Yes, well when you tell your client that you are going to compensate them $3154.72, but only give them $2154.72 because of the $1000 deductible that isn't the same thing.  Learn to add you goddamn savages.  Why not make it a billion dollar deductible?  See, JH?  You should be grateful.  We paid you $1000002154.72.  See how great we are?  How fucking benevolent.

Or what about that other time that a rabid pack of humans wrecked my house getting inside and then stole the most expensive shit I owned?  I don't know what I would have done without the payout that ended up being roughly 40% of the actual replacement amount.  I don't know how I could ever repay you.  Those weekends that I spent repairing my house because that is the only way that I could stretch your oh so generous settlement to cover the cost of the materials for the repairs (and only still be down around $1500) were totally worth it. I didn't have anything more important to do.

JH
Engineer/Corporate Toilet

Cc:  everyone I will ever speak to about any product that you offer

--

In other news, and I assure you completely unrelated, I have decided to see a therapist.  Those of you who have been graced with my presence over the past two months probably know what I'm talking about.  Sorry for sucking.  Anyhow, that's happening.  Enjoy the stigma.  I know I will.

Trash Basura 휴지통 垃圾 мусор ごみ

I try to keep up with the local goings on by reading the local paper every day. Lately I have seen a rash of articles dealing with Tulsa's new garbage collection contract. I'm not sure why. I want my trash picked up. That is all. I will pay for it. Done.

First of all I'm not sure why there is a trash contract. From what I can tell there is a separate, unelected board of trustees called uh....I don't recall. The name was recently changed for some reason. The paper calls them 'trash board', so that's what I'll stick with. Anyhow, similar to EMSA, the trash board is a separate, unelected board of trustees who are responsible for overseeing garbage collection in our fair city. Also, similar to EMSA, the only reason it exists is to funnel public money to private contractors.

There is no reason that Tulsa wouldn't be able to handle its own trash and recycling collection; however, there are a lot of politics and economics and other assorted bullshit tied up in the trash contract, so here we are. The existing contract is with a local sort of collective of private trash haulers. The new contract looks like it is going to a different local collective of private haulers. So that's good. Keep it local. Unlike EMSA which currently has a contract with an out of state company...

I say the contract 'looks like' it is going to the local company because there is a catch. While they did submit the lowest bid their bid did not include providing trash carts. Now the city council is trying to figure out 1) why the trash board accepted the bid without the inclusion of the carts 2) why the trash board won't purchase carts using the massive slush fund that a separate, unelected entity with only one mission and absolutely no oversight tends to accumulate and 3) if it would be cheaper for the city to purchase the carts since cities don't pay taxes.

What I find alarming about the string of articles, editorials, and letters covering this nonsense is that nobody cares about the bid. Nobody cares that the trash board exists. Nobody cares about the cost. No, here in Tulsa the only thing people are concerned about is the carts. The fucking carts.

Why? God knows. There have been studies and polls apparently to gather public opinion on the matter. Believe it or not it seems as if most people are actually against the carts for some reason. There is concern about the size of the carts. There is concern about the how sterile the carts would be. There is concern about the weight of the carts. There is concern about the aesthetics of the carts. There is concern about the durability of the carts.

They.... They are trash carts. Plastic fucking trash carts with wheels. Where are you going to store it? In your garage or on the side of your house like every other asshole that lives in a place where burning your trash is frowned upon. How sanitary will they be? Here's a hint - if it smells like a dead rat that had a steady diet of burnt hair spray that bitch out with a hose. You know what definitely isn't sanitary? Plastic bags leaking trash juice all over the place. What are they going to look like? They are going to look like every trash cart that exists. You know, the same kind all of your neighbors will have. What about grandma down the street? There's no way she can wrestle devil trash cart to the curb. Well, I'm sure grandma will manage. If not, go help her. Don't be a shitty neighbor.

It's mind numbing. Without a doubt in tomorrow's World there will be some fanatical op-ed, letter or article crying wolf about the damn carts and the four horsemen that will follow. Is this where we are at as a society? Bitching about something that has so little bearing on any aspect of anyone's life that to call it insignificant would be grossly overstating it. Shitty schools? That's ok. Just don't make me put my garbage in a plastic box on wheels. Take my eyes, but spare me the trash cart. Ridiculous.

A Keg for the Seniors

For whatever reason I was in a fraternity in college.  Living in a fraternity house you become jaded to so many varieties of public obscenity that it takes something truly savage to garner a second look.  One morning I awoke and opened the door to my room to find that one of my brothers had carved a giant dick into the door across the hall.  Think less Michelangelo and more bathroom stall at the Beef'n Booze.  Why?  Because the guy occupying the room behind that door was a giant dick.  Hallway golf?  Played it.  Keg in a shower?  Seen it.  Urinal in a bed?  Placed it.  Fiji Islander sign?  Stole it.  Chapter President DS carrying his beer over to the Kappa Sig house, taking their flag down, walking back out into the middle of University Ave., dropping his pants to his ankles and wiping his ass with said flag in front of the entire Kappa Sig house, the Theta pledge class, all of the east bound traffic and any other unfortunate passers by?  Witnessed it.  After a while the sentences that began with, "Holy shit!  You gotta go check out _______" began to lose their luster.

One of the other joys that I always got a kick out of was the bulletin board.  It was supposed to be used for announcements and official memos, so there were the normal intramural football reminders and upcoming events and whatnot; however, the bulk of the board was devoted to....ummm.....feedback?  Basically it was the 2001 version of the Facebook wall (before your parents joined and you had to clean everything up).  To post something on the board you had to be an initiated member, and you had to sign your chapter number on each posting.

e.g

But this quickly eroded into

and then to

and finally

or

or

followed by

followed by

One thing that was certain, though, is that on the board somewhere there would be

Pledge assessment?  What is that?  Well, that is a mandatory $5 contribution to the social fund; otherwise known as a keg for the seniors.  Now anytime I am charged a usage fee or venue fee or staffing fee I call it a keg for the seniors.  Why?  Because it's a bullshit fee assessed by someone who has contempt for you.

Anytime you buy tickets to a concert you buy a keg for the seniors.  Anytime you pay your phone bill you are buying several kegs for the seniors.  Anytime you pay for shipping and handling you buy a keg for the seniors.

Yeah.  I bought a bunch of stuff from a single seller on amazon and they charged me almost the same amount for shipping as they did for the purchase.  The really insulting part is that all of this stuff will fit into a shoe box and weigh less than 5 lbs.  $89 shipping & handling for the seniors.

'Merca - War is Over

This morning NPR told me....again....that the war in Iraq is over.

Anybody remember why we were there?  Something about yellowcake?  Or was it the war crimes thing?  Or was it liberation of the Iraqi people?  Smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud?  Oil?  Long-range missiles violating UN sanctions?  I don't know, but I'm going to rank them in order of likelihoodednessabilitizationalism because I'm really pissed off remembering watch us bomb the motherfucking fuck out of Iraq when I was on Spring Break in college, how long ago that was, and how much we have lost.

1. Throw our weight around militarily in a part of the world that people sort of were already familiar with the 'enemy' (easy sell to the Americans) and where we could rack up as many civilian casualties as we wanted and nobody at home gives a shit because they are brown.

2. Oil - we suck.

3. Military infrastructure in place just in case Bush won the election in 2004 and a prospective invasion of Iran was polling well.

T4.  Yellowcake, war crimes, WMD's, et al.  All bullshit.  We knew that.  Actually, we didn't know that.  The people making the decisions knew that, but all we knew was what we saw in the State of the Union (that and there is absolutely nothing questionable about why so many people have recently bought new homes....).  Why would the President blatantly lie to us?

T4+1.  Liberation/Nation-building/Democracy/People.  We don't give one fuck about people.  Brown people anyway.  Not a single one.  Four rich white assholes that thought sailing their yacht (it had never occurred to me that yacht was spelled with "ch",  y-a-u-g-h-t....DAMN YOU SPELL CHECK!! WHY?  WHY??????) through the Gulf of Aden would be safe get hijacked by what CNN decided to call pirates and we send the Seals.  400000 dead in Sudan since 2003 (something else happened that year....what was it?) and we don't do a goddamn thing.  Of all of the genocides that collectively we have sat idly by and done nothing about Saddam Hussein's escapades weren't the worst.  e.g. - Africa....basically all of it

It's over, though.....for now.  I vividly remember screaming at one of my fellow human beings in 2008 about how the only way to "win" in Iraq was to just stop fighting.  Stop shooting, pack up our shit and go home.  Obviously, I am not in charge.  You cannot fight an idea with an army.  We knew that.  We should have known that.  We did it anyway.  Sorry about all of the dead kids.

Occupy the Fence

via the local paper

Three members of Occupy Tulsa chained themselves to a handrail outside the Tulsa City Hall on Wednesday morning to protest what they said were misguided efforts by the city to silence them.

The protesters set up outside the building's entrance at 175 E. Second St. just after 8 a.m., and City Hall security guards called Tulsa police shortly after.

One protester said they will stay “as long as it takes” to convince city officials to let them protest freely at downtown’s H.A. Chapman Centennial Green.

For the 99%.  Can we call this thing dead now?  We tried.  We failed.  No leadership which is why "grassroots" is bullshit.  Nothing is grassroots anymore - nationally anyway.  There isn't one political movement that start from the bottom up.  Tea Party?  yuk yuk

The Tea Party began as a protest against an obesity tax in NYC.  Then they began protesting every tax.  Then Americans for Prosperity (army of lobbyists, founded by Koch brothers, whores for Big Oil) registered teapartypatriots.org.  A NY Times article called them out on the transparency of the movement, so then the domain was sold and shuffled around and ended up at an office front in Scottsdale, AZ.  Meanwhile, a certain, uhh.....news?.....organization with overt political prejudices advertised the Tea Party Express rolling through Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook (and by gum, it put them on the map).  "What is it all about", Joe & Jane Sixpack asked.  Fuck Obama, of course!  What else could it be?

So the Tea Party movement was grassroots for a day because fatties wanted their cheeseburgers before it was hijacked by two dickheads that only wanted two things - to rape the Earth and not pay their taxes.  Then Fox News informed everyone watching (a shocking amount of people/sad, sad commentary on these united states) of a glorious party coming to their town where they bring all of the guns that they can carry, wear silly hats and carry picket signs telling the Kenyan socialist (and also communist.....somehow) Muslim to eat as much shit as he pleases.  Bring your kids.

Only after the "patriots" were hooked on Fuck Obama did the Tea Party as we know it today roll out a platform.  Occupiers, take note.  If the tea party platform of essentially Reaganomics v2.0, more guns and less coloreds was rolled out without first baiting the locals with Fuck Obama they would still be marching on city hall for cheaper Double Downs.

Which brings me back to occupy.  You are grassroots.  For sure.  That's why you are failing miserably.  There has to be communication between the groups.  In NYC there is camping in a city park with intermittent marches to actual Wall Street/arrests.  In the Oakland they are blockading ports/getting arrested.  In Tulsa they were camping/getting arrested, and now are chained to a fence/soon to be arrested.  What do these have in common?  What statement does getting arrested for the most-ridiculous offenses have to do with spreading the message?

You need a primary mission for the movement to coalesce around.  The Tea Party has Fuck Obama.  What do you have?  If the Tea Party can use Fuck Obama to draw millions of our fellow human beings in and then exploit them to win a midterm election by convincing them that voting in direct opposition to their best interest is a good thing, then why can you not do the same?

I have said before that your goal, I think, is honorable and moral, but the way you are trying to achieve that goal is completely unfocused and misguided.  If you want to achieve the goal it's going to be tough.  You need political power - of which right now you have none.  To get that you are going to need to win some elections - right now that isn't looking likely....at all....anywhere on the map.  To win those elections you are going to have to convince a majority of the 19% of the voting-aged population that give a shit enough to vote to elect people whose goals and positions reflect those of your movement - right now that definitely isn't happening.  To get those votes you need to help people realize that what you are trying to do is honorable and is moral - right now all they see is arrests which is neither.

My advice?  Unchain yourself from the fence.  Stop camping.  Regroup. Get organized......and then kidnap David Koch.

Postscript -- Oh, and stop using the goddamn Guy Fawkes masks.  It's obvious that you saw V for Vendetta, so you should realize from the cinematic depiction that Guy Fawkes, not being a pussy, would have never considered chaining himself to a fence to get results.

Christmas Parade (Smooooooooke)

Last night Tulsa hosted two parades.  One was the same parade that has been downtown since before the Great War.  The other was a new parade in, well not downtown, but...hmmm....that sort of area over by the highway...kinda by the river....oh!, by Best Buy.

In 2009, one of the local utility providers became the presenting sponsor of the parade, and changed the name to the Holiday Parade of Lights.  Nothing happened.  Nobody noticed.  Nothing.  People still went.  Local high school bands tromped through downtown blasting slightly flat renditions of all of the Christmas standards.  Santa made an appearance.  Standard practice.

In 2010, the myopic, asshole US senator that is slightly more shit-for-brains'd than the other myopic, asshole senator representing the great confused, poorly-educated masses of okies and rednecks threatened to not participate in the parade unless 'Christmas' was added to the title.  Articles were penned.  Protests were staged.  The city council approved the permit for the parade without the name change.  The dunce senator rode his horse in the Broken Arrow parade (and nobody noticed).  The annual full-blown War on Christmas crisis was fabricated with the help of Fox News and local Republican hate radio.  The media tide surged, peaked, and then ebbed once then next white baby went missing.

This year a group called Tulsa Christmas Parade, LLC, requested a permit to hold a parade on the same day, at the same time, as the Holiday Parade of Lights.  Game on.  Seemingly, the only difference between the two parades is the name, right?  One is an all-inclusive celebration of the season open to all walks of life in Tulsa.  The other is, based on the apparently volatile title, some sort of religious celebration open to zealots and the children of zealots without a choice.

Here's the fun part.  The Holiday Parade of Lights was held, as it has always been, in the streets of downtown Tulsa.  The Christmas Parade was held at.....drumroll please.....a shopping center.  Yup.

Obviously, the Christmas Parade is not about Christmas at all.  In fact, I wager that the Christmas Parade is even less about Christmas than the Holiday Parade.  It's shamefully misleading, but what else is new?  I don't think that many people would show up to the Thing and Then Spend Money you Don't Have on Shit for People that Don't Need it Afterwards Parade.

Sportz - The Thing about the Thing

This will be short.

Did anyone really think that before a single snap had been taken, before a single punt had been returned, before anyone went to stadium jail, before a single column about ugly uniforms had been penned, and ESPN was already talking about LSU at Alabama on November 5 that there was any chance that both of these teams wouldn't find their way into the BCS Championship game with less than 2 losses?  Not I.

In 2011 the total BCS payout was $174M-ish.  Of that, $145M-ish went to BCS conferences.  The powers that be (Athletic Directors at BCS conference schools and Athletic Directors at BCS conference schools alone) are willing to gamble that one school, maybe two (unless SEC then two guaranteed and anyone that doesn't like it can eat a dick), from their conference will make it into the big money bowls.  With a playoff this money doesn't happen.  With a playoff it seems simple to keep the same payout for teams that qualify, but after watching the conference realignment clusterfuck over the offseason and the lawsuits that ensued there is no reason for anyone to believe that a 500 Series full of lawyers wouldn't have it litigated down to some sort of winner-take-all king hell bastard payout scenario.  You know...for kids.

The system is flawed for sure, but it won't be fixed anytime soon.  You can't get mad because it's irrational.  How can you expect perfection from a system that isn't designed to yield perfection?  I always hear people bitch about NCAA investigations.  Why?  The way the NCAA handles investigations is completely arbitrary with absolutely no standard of review or precedence and, in general, totally fucked, but it's totally fucked for everyone.  Just like the BCS.  It is completely fucked up for everyone.  It isn't about producing a champion because the only people that care about championships are fans, and fuck the fans.....with a shovel.

And, finally, to the OU fans in the elevator still talking trash about all of your national titles back in the 40s, take heart; I'm sure whatever town hosts the crocs.com bowl has some stores that your players can steal coats or lipstick or gasoline from.