Tag: This Dangerous Year

Friends,

While in San Francisco, we thought it’d be fun to Ride The Ducks™.

This may have been a foolhardy mistake, had we been in Philadelphia. First, I’m profoundly sad that there were holiday makers like us who were lost on what was supposed to be a fun outing. Second, who knew it was a chain? Third, I’m now afraid of amphibious vehicles. I know this isn’t a common fear and there’s clearly no Latin equivalent but it’ll surely be quickly coined. I won’t suggest ridetheducksaphobia, but it’s as good as any.

Yikes.

– bob

Hey! Is that Eli Manning?

Friends,

Just a quick note to remind everybody that California State Highway number 74 is a place for my car to go way too fast and for me to take numerous reckless chances. It is not a place for you to ride a damn skateboard after donning a skydiving outfit with a helmet you ordered from the back of the International Dorkbot catalog. This is especially true if you feel the need to launch this adventure just as I’m careening around a blind right hand turn immediately behind you. Kick as hard as you want, you pathetic extreme sports chimp, but I might have a hard time scrubbing off enough speed in the space allotted next time and I’m not looking forward to explaining how the impression of your pointy white behind in the paper-thin metal on the hood of my tiny racecar got there.

That said, I’m willing to cut you some slack if you wear a jet pack next time.

– bob

Care for a delicous fried round thing? Try the dip!

Friends,

Yesterday there was a government in Kyrgystan led by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Corrupt, sure. Some would even say yesterday’s government was a teensy tiny bit kleptomanical and that could be a fair assessment. Today, there’s a new government led by former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva and propped up by the military in Kyrgyzstan after protests against the old government cost the lives of at least 60. The new prime minister has agreed to continue the arrangement reached between the United States and Bakiyev for use of an air base in the country conveniently located near Iraq and Afghanistan. For now. If this doesn’t seem eerily familiar, it really should.

We’re still pals though, right?

– bob

 

Friends,

Today’s story on the Riverside Press-Enterprise blog seems troubling. Apparently, our local retirement and manufactured home haven has themselves a wee little gang problem. For some reason, the city isn’t too enamored of the motorcycle-based social clubs in town, so it’s not a big surprise to learn that those dapper young gentlemen have taken it upon themselves to retaliate against this scrutiny. John Asbury takes it from here:

Hemet police are investigating four city code enforcement pickups that were torched in the city lot about 11:30 p.m. Hemet police have closed several blocks of Florida Avenue after the fires were reported to police. Both the vehicles and City Hall were vacant. No one was injured, Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana said.

Police arrived within about a minute of the fire and found the trucks completely destroyed. Police are considering it a threat against the Police Department and the city. Detectives have not determined how the vehicles were ignited, but reported no explosions.

Now if you stop right there, that’s bad enough. Setting fires to city-owned pickup trucks is pretty serious, I think you’ll agree, but as another installment in our continuing series—It’s Related—Mr. Asbury lays out the other bizarre crap that’s been going on in Southern Riverside County’s former potato capital…

On New Year’s Eve, the gasline to the Hemet-San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force was rerouted to fill the office with natural gas, aimed at triggering an explosion when officers went inside to start working.

The same building was targeted again in February when a gun was rigged to the gate of the Gang Task Force office and fired a bullet, missing an officer as he was opening the parking lot.

A week later, a Hemet gang officer discovered a deadly device beneath his car designed to kill the officer, before it fell off in a gas station parking lot.

Unnamed sources have offered on deep background that there has also been internet chatter between groups in the San Jacinto valley and one Acme Corporation.

Earthquake pills. That’ll never work…

– bob

**UPDATE: Well, well, well. Look who finally has come to the reporting party. It’s our old friends at the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Kelly hits on the points I made here, of course, but misses the potatoes and the cartoon violence reference. I think that we should cut him some slack though. After all, he’s just a journalist.

Friends,

Today, Nina Hagen turns 55. Another data point in the continuing stream confirming that we’re old.

That is all.

– bob

**UPDATE: That is not all after all. Sadly, Merlin Olsen passed away today. I’m not a big Father Murphy or Little House on the Prairie fan, but I did have the Mattel Instant Replay with the football pack, featuring Mister Olsen’s finest plays for the Los Angeles Rams, narrated by (I think) Dick Enberg. Rest in peace.

 

Friends,

I haven’t been paying attention to the news over the last few days, but returned to learn of 23-year old Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane over Christmaswith a package of plastic explosive attached to his, um, package. Sure, the passengers did a heroic job of halting Mr. Abdullanutjob’s attempts to correct the problem of his bomb not properly blowing up his crotch, but the Secretary of Homeland Security spent the day on the Sunday chat shows saying that “the system worked”? I suppose Secretary Nepolitano has a point, if the system now consists of malfunctioning devices and passengers needing to forcibly subdue terrorists to save their own skins. It appears that there’s now no need for TSA in this new system, which is good if they’re going to increase security to such an extent to close this particular barn door.

Heckuva job, Janet.

– bob

Friends,

Now that the Riverside Press-Enterprise is outsourcing more and more of its news-gathering capabilities, we turn to City News Service for this breaking news bulletin (from yesterday. -ed):

“A 19-year-old reputed gang member who allegedly used a machete to rob a pizza deliveryman in Desert Hot Springs was free on bail today.

I hope they took Sparky’s big butter knife away when they let him out. We’ll pass over the middle of the story to see exactly what motivated the lad to audition for Tiger’s spot in the next Gilette commercial…

 

“Investigators believe [Machete Guy] and another young man were armed with machetes as waited in the driveway for the deliveryman. Two other alleged cohorts arrived in a vehicle during the holdup, according to [the sergeant].
[Machete Guy] is suspected of swinging a machete at the deliveryman, who was not injured, the sergeant said.
The men got away with $30 in cash and $30 worth of pizza, according to [the sergeant].

Got that? Four guys were willing to go to jail for one and a half yuppie food coupons, plus a couple mystery pizzas. That’s pretty cheap!

 

And they say Americans aren’t willing to take on the hard jobs…

– bob

Friends,

Assorted live versions of influenza virii still inhabit the “spray” emitted from the pie holes of passers-by here at work, so at the moment of this writing, I’m hiding in my office. I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am about this, so I’ll start somewhere around the middle: since my asthma diagnosis prevented me from enjoying the inhaled version of the swine flu vaccine, I get to wait for the injectable version to arrive in a week or two. We have also not received the vaccine against the seasonal flu, putting me in a position uglier than an inside-out monkey**.

I’ve always said that the I.T. tomfoolery I undertake daily is 90% customer relations, with only a tiny sliver of my time performing actual technical work, which is true enough. The customer service part is getting harder and harder though, as I spend more of my time asking people not to breathe on me. Or touch me. Or inquire about the last time a sanitizer was let loose upon their desk, keyboard, and the armrests on their chair.

If you need any evidence of how poor a patient I can be, just look back to last weekend. I had injured my back last week and spent the entire weekend laying down on the couch complaining to the puppy dog about how much my back hurt. I also complained to my imaginary friends on Facebook, callers on the phone and the checker at the market. As unsufferability goes, I may have won a prize as the unsufferablist with what seems now as a mild sprain. Should I contract the flu – THE FLU! – I will surely turn into a sniveling, hacking monster. An incapacitated baby-man who will be useless, save for the temptation of the puppy dog to forcibly remove my face for lack of kibble in her bowl at regular intervals.

So I thank you all in advance, or at least I should, for not getting your stuff on me. Also, I appreciate that you’ve received your swine flu vaccination and are doing your part to protect me. Your generosity and sacrifice has not gone unnoticed. Just please keep the mask on for a couple more days, would you?

– bob

** Apologies to Jeremy Clarkson who is not even a right-side-out monkey, but sure can turn a phrase.