Media Wars......
Media wars have come to this small time West Texas market! Full page ad's are flying in the newspaper from both sides in the fray. The participants are the local ABC affiliate KMID, hereafter called the Yokels and the cable provider, Cox Communications, hereafter referred to as the Evil Monopoly.

The facts as deciphered from the newspaper ads are this. The Yokels have declared that the Evil Monopoly should have to pay them 25¢ for every cable subscriber, i.e. a charge for providing ABC to the cable lineup. The Evil Monopoly has declared that "no, we're the city designated cable monopoly, we won't pay a penny". The Evil Monopoly is threating to jerk the ABC cable connection if the Yokels persist. No Stupid Bowl.......no Oprah! These are the simple facts....obfuscated effectively by both sides in their print tirades.

I hereby declare myself neutral in this contest and so will be completely objective in the discussion here. And so I add these further facts as the plain unvarnished truth. Cox Communications, the Evil Monopoly, is probably the most hated business in town and would jack up their prices yet again, to sell kiddie porn if they thought they could get away with it. They are vile and disgusting examples of a quasi-utility gone unchecked.

When I first contracted for cable service, not more than 10 years ago, the price was a reasonable $20/month for mostly basic service which included just about every channel I cared to view. I now pay over $40/month. I can't think of a single service I pay for that has gone up 100% in ten years. Some have gone down. Every time the Evil Monopoly has jacked up their rates, $1 here, $1.95 there, they have made some pablum statement concerning their service to the viewer in bringing us yet another blockbuster channel such as The Lutheran Cooking Channel, The Malaysian Garment Channel, or The Shetland Pony Training Channel. Moreover, when I moved into a new house two years ago, after waiting 10 days [w/o the tube] for the "service representative" to find the time to come out, I was charged almost $100 to have my system turned on and "checked out". This "service" consisted of approximately 8 minutes of hard work which involved hooking up one wire in the box, and looking at the TeeVee. "Yup, it's on, your service is checked".

In the current full page ad, the Evil Monopoly asks that we call the KMID-TV yokels and tell them to cease and desist in their demand for a piece of the Cox Cable profit. Their logic is that the network TV channels have always been free over the airwaves, and should remain so.......thus coincidentally allowing them, The Evils, to make a profit with no cost. I'll be making a call all right. To my friends on the City Council. The subject of the call will involve using whatever municipal powers they have over the Evil Monopoly to jerk their corporate chains into providing reasonable service. And I hope that Darth Vader, or whomever is in charge of the Evil Monopoly, will come to realize that the entertainment media is more than oversaturated with TeeVee options, movies, DVD's, and the Internet. Their days of continually jacking up prices to bring us more fine entertainment like The Czechoslovakian Fishing Channel, are over!

Jump on this.....
The other day when Julie had given me the moral courage to go shopping, she had one request of her own. "Please can we go by Sam's Wholesale Club and pick up a trampoline....for little Jack". I agreed, not knowing that a trampoline in a box weighs approximately 300 lbs, is ungainly and would stick 3 feet out of the back of my sedan, even with the rear seats folded down and the box protruding into the back of my neck. My luxury sedan, has a feature that I love. The rear seats fold down allowing large objects to be loaded into the trunk and thenceforth into the passenger compartment, and thusly my neck.

Well things that come in boxes have to be assembled, and ones that say boldly, "Easy to Assemble, no tools necessary", strike fear into any man's heart on Christmas Eve. But today was the day, and Jack will be back at home the day after Christmas so we needed for Santa to have the stinkin' trampoline, in "ready to trample" condition by then. I had allotted two full days for the chore, brought my full tool complement and struck heartily into ripping the box open to find enough aluminum tubing to build a medium sized airplane. Along with several acres of matting, and 96 springs that Hercules would have trouble putting a stretch to.

But to make a long story short....I was mightily pleased to find that, with Julie's help, it really went together quite easily [two hours] and really didn't require tool one. The instructions weren't too hard to dicepher, in spite of the fact that from step 5 one went to step 7. I suppose they found that step 6 was entirely superfluous and so they don't print it anymore. But the most important thing was that Mama was happy, 'cause if Mama ain't happy......ain't no one happy. She even took the first "trample" on the trampoline....

Scrooge strikes......!!
If anyone out there is still wondering what to get me for Christmas, here's an idea. I really need a barf bag. With only three days remaining until Christmas I was beginning to get into the Yuletide spirit. Julie has helped me get almost to even on my Christmas shopping, I've invited the folks over for Christmas dinner, and I've even received my first gift, a beautiful leather desk chair for my office at home.....compliments of the same Christmas angel, Julie.

And then this morning I read this. CNN reports that with Al "let me be your pal" Gore out of the race, Democratic voters polled now favor Hillary Clinton as their choice to head their party's presidential ticket. I had to ask myself a simple question, "What the $%#^# are these morons thinking?" I am really dumbfounded and have little to report on this matter except that Hillary is disgusting. And a coniving witch of greater proportions than her husband the ScumBag was. And, to me, she's a whole lot scarier, because she's probably a whole lot smarter. Like many people, I think that she masterminded much of Billy Boys rise to power from behind the scenes. Of course, she says she will not be a candidate in 2004, but if you believe this, you also don't believe they serve fried Twinkies in Arkansas.

Why, oh why, would they release this poll just days before Christmas? How can one enjoy the Yule season with the thought of Hillary as the next president? Not that I'm against a woman in the Oval Office. I'm not. I just happen to think that when the time comes the woman elected ought to have morals, ethics, a sense of humor, be somewhat of a babe, and ought not to have redwood stumps for legs.

Powerless over Christmas....
One of the first things we learn when we are trying to overcome addictive substances or behaviors, is to delare that we do in fact have a problem and that we are powerless over that problem. Having recognized the problem, we then turn our troubles over to a "higher power" for help.

I hereby declare that, apparently, I have a problem functioning normally at Christmas. Not with the holiday idea, or getting in the mood, but rather with the simple act of choosing, purchasing, and sending gifts to my loved ones. It's not about the money, or worrying about the size/price of the gift....it's just simple brain lock-up over deciding to "get into action" and get something, anything done. This is the same feeling I had when I was paralyzed by alcohol many years ago. It's the idea that makes AA work. You can recognize the problem, have all the best intentions and want to change, but until you "get into action" you are making no progress.

For years, well maybe decades now, I have sworn to myself that come September, or maybe October I would start buying gifts for my relatives and actually get said gifts to said relatives by November. And here again I sit mere days from Christmas a total wreck, agonizing over what to get, how to get it there in a timely fashion, and with a general malaise that I am totally lacking as a Christmas person and a human being.

But...I am making progress. This year I have turned my Christmas will and life over to a higher power. JULIE. She has gotten me into some form of action, and where my actions are lacking, she has stepped in with actions of her own. She has already ordered and sent gifts for my out of town brother and sister, looked in catalogues for gifts for my nieces, loaded me in the car for a trip to the dreaded mall to get these gifts and to find one for my nephew. She has personally surpervised me while I wrapped some of the gifts, and knowing that I am not yet ready for this next big step, is at the post office this very moment mailing the gifts.

I'm feeling much better about myself now, and I have the luxury of having three [3] more whole days to finish shopping for the local folks on my list. I have so much time on my hands, that possibly I can relax now, and wait until Tuesday to finish. I love having a higher power, and a beautiful, kind and sexy one at that.

Hasta la vista Al....
It was completely unexpected last Sunday evening as I tried to catch a moment of "60 Minutes". There was Al Gore abdicating his throne as the Democratic Presidential Candidate. Al acted sincere, saying that he had talked it over with his family and just plain decided not to run..adding that he thought he could be of more service to his country in other ways. I think that all of maybe 3 people will believe this. Here's a guy who got 50% of the vote and would have sued the Pope to become President the last time around, and now he says, "what the heck, I think I'll be of more service elsewhere." It's obvious that the Democratic Party powers to be decided that Al was just not the man they needed this time. Perhaps the light has dawned that he forever will be linked with Billy Clinton and the old liberal wing of the party...and they want to change that image. Who knows.

Now I will be cruxified by certain people I know, and some readers, for saying this, but on a purely personal level I have always liked Al somehow. And at one time, before she bulked up, Tipper was kind of a hot babe, as far as hot babes go in the political world. Al is interested in some of the issues I am, like the environment and the Internet. Al wants clean water, air, coastlines and to preserve somethings in their natural state. So do I. Al invented the Internet, and I am a big user of the Internet. We would have things to chat about. And he has had the guts to make fun of himself in public, something that is lacking in most politicians of all persuasions.

Having said that, I'll tell you why, besides possibly being a nice guy outside of politics, Al is still a political schmuck. In his short interview on 60 Minutes Sunday, the one political point of negativity he made about our beloved President Dubya Bush was this: "Bush is using the threat of war with Iraq as a means of deflecting the attention of the American people from the real number one problem today, his [Bush's] inability to fix our downtrodden economy".

Oh Al paaleeease! Thank God you are not President and will not run again. I will state here for the record that under the US system of government, the President really has nothing to do with the economy in the short term....as in the four years he's in office. The last [and perhaps only] President who had real power over the economy was FDR, and only because he had the government virtually take over the economy lock, stock, and bank. Policies that the President may initiate take years to effect change in the economy. In case Al hasn't been much of a reader on economics...businesses and therefore the economy runs in cycles of their own making based on an infinite number of variables. We are currently in a down cycle..get used to it and run up your credit card debt. And would I want a President who thinks that the soft economy is a bigger problem than the war on terrorism? Thank you hanging chads, no!!

And to actually and publically comment that a US President is drumming up a war, with all it's hell, just so the American people will forget about a bad economy [and really not all that bad, if you tally up SUV and home sales] is at best naive and more probably inexcusable. Al might be a good guy to go fishing with for a day, but I'm afraid his brain has been corrupted by his mentor and king of sleazy politics, Billy Boy Clinton. Go fishing Al.

On Ye Bulldogs...
My high school, the Midland High, "Fightin' Bulldogs", have had the longest non-playoff drought in the large school division of high school football in the State of Texas. 51 years. That's 51 years of not being quite good enough to be playing after the regular season. We've had some good teams mind you....just not quite good enough. Our cross town rivals the Lee Rebels have gone to the playoff's almost every year for decades and have the distinction of being the only HS to win the State Championship three years in a row. And this was recently. In our district this year, two of the teams were ranked in the state top 10 all season.

Well after 51 years the Fightin' Bulldogs finally got a playoff spot this year. Most of us thought that if they won one post season game, that would be great and we would all be proud and call it a great season. No one, I suppose, except the players, thought that they would be playing in the State Championship. But that is exactly what happened today. And I'm drained! Their opponents from San Antonio, Converse Judson, are a periennial playoff favorite and have won 5 state championships.

Oh, what a hell of a game. I think it has to be ranked right up there among the top championship games ever played, a sentiment echoed elsewhere. In Texas the game is televised statewide, so we got to see every play. MHS went up easily and early 13-0. Then Judson game back strong to take the lead 24-13. But MHS has always been a second half team and they came back late in the 4th quarter to trail only 27-25. But with only 55 seconds left, we had to expect a miracle......and the miracle came in a long pass and a TD to Zach Sledge, who lives down the street from me. Midland leading 32-25 with 17 seconds on the clock. Dare we hope?

We had endured emotional agony in the 4th quarter to get to this final 17 seconds. But more was to come. Judson threw a bomb of their own and scored the final points......I don't know when I've been this drained. Losing by one point in the final seconds is a gut wrenching experience. But what, other than winning, is the alternative? To lose by a wide margin, and have people say that you shouldn't have been there in the first place. No, this game could have gone either way, been won by either team. But it was one hell of a year for these kids who were not supposed to be in the playoffs at all. Someday soon I hope that they will realize this.

Final score:
Converse Judson: 33
Midland High: 32

Blow it out your #$*^@#....
The more I think about the failure of the posterior regions of my pants yesterday, the more mortified I get. No, and not about having 68% of my butt showing to the viewing public. Actually I rather get a charge out of that, and I have been told that I still have nice posterior features. No, I'm mortified, as in angry, that one can pay $20 for a pair of slacks and have them last only 10 or so wearings. I hadn't even had time to send them to the cleaners so that they could have a shot at ruining them. And, I had not damaged the pants, this was just a complete cloth failure.

I took the photo above to send to my insurance carrier to try and recover some of the cost of the slacks. Of course, I "fudged" a little in my description. To wit: "these slacks are Armani de la Gucci custom made slacks of the finest virgin lambs wool..etc" but I think that this is very close to the truth. That they are actually "Greg Peters, on sale at Steinmart, last years model and made of genuine petrochemical polymers." You know insurance companies, I asked for $895 so I could collect $18.95. Before doing so I reviewed my homeowners insurance policy, and although I didn't see anything about "catastrophic posterior pants failure", I do have extra coverage for my art collection and I think that Armani de la Gucci slacks of genuine virgin lambswool would classify as works of art. If, however, they bounce that one back, my next submission would be that slacks made of petrochemical polymers would classify as "yard equipment". I will leave no stone unturned in being reimbursed.

And while I'm thinking about it, I'm gonna' sue that Greg Peters character. My delicate nature has been damaged, not to mention my good name. I've been having bad dreams about slovenly attire and nakedness. How would you feel walking around in public 68% butt naked? Mortified I bet. Me too. Now if I can only find the scoundrel. I wonder how many Greg Peters there are in China? Well his factory is probably located next to their source of textile supply, a petrochemical plant..that should make it easier.

Addendum:
In attempt to find Mr. Greg Peters, I conducted an exhaustive Google Search coming up with this incriminating evidence linking Peters to insurance fraud, nakedness and another sales scam he is involved with.

---Suspect Device | Greg Peters
... myself, burn all the evidence, and just smile and shuffle my feet if I happen to
pass my insurance agent as I'm going into the dollar store to buy baby clothes

---Virtuality (2 of 2)
... Greg Peters. You know him, the guy from psychology class?" asked Elisa. "Of course" she said nodding. Elisa pulled off her clothes down to her latex underwear.

---Classifieds
... January 27th, Monday. Greg Peters, Auctioneer/Owner. ... Computer table, welders, iron
sawhorses, candy machine, dishwasher, antiques, collectables, clothes, misc.

The butt of a joke...
This is an Official Consumer Warning© to the male readers in the audience. DO NOT buy Greg Peters brand slacks. This is warning based on actual experience, and the experience I had today is that the butt-end of the things will smooth disintegrate on ya'. I had liked these slacks and had in fact only had them for no more than a month when the ass end of the things went south on me.

As I walked out of our office building, Lupe our maintenance supervisor was walking behind me as were several female office workers. Lupe, being a man of discretion, waited until the ladies were within ear range, and then with much tact said, "are you going home now?" I replied that "yes, I was". "Good", he said, "'cause you ain't got no butt in those pants". And you know he was right. Although "no butt" was not entirely correct. I had about 32% butt left. However the other 68% was just plain gone....vanished to wherever cloth goes when it's not there anymore.

The slacks were made in China, so I suppose I'm not to surprised at the vanishing cloth. I've always heard that the Chinese don't mind going around bare assed. And it's not as bad as it could have been. I could have been in a meeting with my friends and partners who are a very loving and caring lot, who would have said that they understood, but then would have never let me forget this. And I'm glad I wore underwear today...! It's one of those times that you hear your Mother's voice telling you about the reasons for having clean underwear on.

Minutia...
I'm only stating fact here, not complaining. I hate the minutia of life. The little things that one must do every day just to keep one's head above water. Things like updating insurance policies, going to the bank and going to the city zoning office to check on the new construction monstrosity the neighbors are planning. OK, so that's not an every day event, but it's typical, and one I actually had to do today. Much of my minutia is received by mail, from people I don't know who don't care if they are creating work for me or not.

Like the zoning letter. The city announces by mail that the neighbors want to defy the current zoning ordinance and build something. I'm not told in the letter what it is. It could be a nuclear waste facility, a Haitian refugee center or a home for thousands of wayward cats. I envision the worst. So, I have to trundle down to the zoning office, wasting my valuable time, to review plans for the cat motel or whatever. It turns out to be a new two story garage on the East side of their property which fortunately I cannot see from my rear windows so it's my next door neighbors problem. I dodged another one, although I may go to the zoning meeting and complain, just for leverage in having these neighbors remove some offensive lighting. More time wasted.

Or take the insurance update as another example of minutia. The mega-conglomerate who holds the note on my car writes desiring that I waste my time and send them copies of my insurance forms telling them that if I totally wreck the vehicle they get all the money from my insurance. Fair enough, but it took me 45 minutes of down time to accomplish this. And it would have been more if my insurance carrier USAA [advertisement..hope they see this and lower my rates] wasn't so efficient and helped my relatively quickly. OK, 10 minutes of downtime. The rest of the time was spent telling the agent about our* trip to Fredericksburg and the movie We Were Soldiers and I sent her some pictures as she said she loved the movie. But this is still time I am pulled away from important oil and energy business matters, whatever those are.

These are just two examples of minutia, and I am not even mentioning going to the store for food, buying gasoline and other of life's time wasters. After I make my 2nd or 3rd million, I'm going to hire a minutia assistant so I can concentrate on the important things in life...like sitting in a chair and thinking.

* By our, I mean Julie and me. I would like to mention Julie, who says that she is not getting enough mention in this column. I love Julie, she is the most beautiful woman I know, and she is far too kind to me. And she loves my dog. And she helps me with minutia. Like tonight, she's going to help me wrap the thousands of pennies, nickles and dimes that I have. Please don't tell her this, as she doesn't know it yet and I want it to be a wonderful surprise.

Pearl Harbor Day...
We journeyed to Fredericksburg on Friday to meet with my good friend Joe Galloway who was the featured speaker at the Admiral Nimitz Museum. He was speaking at the Pearl Harbor Day Memorial there. What a great time, such a good time in fact, that we ditched our plans to stay only one evening in favor of an all weekend affair. You can read the details in the Sunday entry of my travel partners website The Yellow Bug News. I hadn't seen Joe since March at the movie premier of We Were Soldiers but this time we really had some time together to catch up, relax, eat and tell stories. And Julie got to meet the fabled, "Famous Author".

Joe's remarks in front of the large crowd, including many Pearl Harbor survivors, were to the point. We owe the WWII generation so much, we owe them almost everything that America is today. And we need to show that honor, so many are leaving us every day. Joe told us what it was like to be a kid in the war years with almost every single male family member being gone to some strange spot on the globe. Not knowing whether they were alive or dead on a daily basis. And he reminded us of what they accomplished when they came back...mostly without much talk about what they had done while the were gone. Unlike today when every little deed qualifies one for hero status. These men and women, knew that they had done a job that needed to be done for our freedom. They came home, and went about doing the next job, building the America that we know today.

My dad was like that. Gone for three years of hell and heartbreak, and then not talking much about it for the next 50 years. Only in the past several years has he filled in some of the details of his life in combat in Italy. The agony of seeing his one and only good friend killed the very first day in combat, and of the misery of fighting in freezing weather in the Italian Alps with German artillery falling through the trees for days. We need to remember these people and to thank them. We need to remember that they went through some very hard times and made America better for it.

Civilization....partially redeemed
After yesterday's sermonette concerning the state of service today, and lest the readership think that I am some old passé naysayer, negative, misanthropic and living in the past, let me state this. You're right, I am. But let me also outline some things that are good about the modern age and some things that, thanks to computers and new ways of service, do make life more convenient.

Fresh in my mind is Amazon.Com. They've never disappointed me. They send out emails telling me my order is received. Emails telling me my order has been shipped, and emails asking me if I got the order. We are going to Fredericksburg Texas this weekend to see my friend, author Joe Galloway and Julie didn't have a hardbound copy of his book, We Were Soldiers, for he and others to sign. Well, no problem, get on Amazon Monday afternoon, order the book, pay a little something extra for fast shipment and guess what happens. Amazon tells me within three minutes that they have the order, they tell me Tuesday that they've shipped it and Amazon gets it to me safe and sound at noon today. This is one reason they are a Dot.Com that has survived. The other two that come to mind are Ebay.com [though I've never used them] and PayPal.com [I use them a lot]. They provide a useful convenient service, are accesible, and they do what they say they will...and they keep you informed.

Now to my much maligned bank. Their personal service still eats bad things, but I have to give credit [or rather debit] where credit [debit] is due to certain aspects of modern convenience that they handle very well. Because of the "debit" card, I have no use for "credit" cards..don't own one. With the debit card I can pay for anything anywhere in the country, and because of the computer age I can keep track of all outgo/income to the account on the computer. This is very good for me...an MBA who never got in the practice of recording his checks in the checkbook, and God forbid ever balanced it. With the computer and debit card, I can anytime, anywhere check to see how much is sitting on the bottom line.

And even though I fix my telephone equipment with a leaf blower, I am a person hooked to life by computers. I have met some very good friends through websites and email, Joe Galloway, one of my great personal friends being one of them. I keep up with old friends thru email and almost instantaneous photos of our goings on. I have two websites on which I've made some money selling maps and photos and the oil business is a natural for sending or acquiring data via the Internet.

So now, I'm off to the chic Targét store to exchange some jeans. Perhaps the teenagers there will be thrilled to see me, call me by my first name, and flutter around me waiting to answer my every question. And then perhaps when I get home, there will be a very apologetic email from the young saps in Santa Fe, begging my forgiveness for not being more intune with my Bed and Breakfast needs. These would be nice, but frankly between you and me, I'm not counting on it.

Phone repairs and the decline of civilizaton....
The first bit of good news is that I have, alone and without the assistance of the phone company, repaired my phone system. I did this with a 120 mph Black&Decker yard leaf blower. Balderdash you say. No, just good use of my native logic and American genius. Correctly reasoning that excessive moisture had caused a short in the outside line somewhere, I meticulously searched for water on the line. I found it under the patio, where water had been leaking all day. Thus the use of the Black&Decker 120 mph leaf blower which quickly dried the offending area. Within minutes of my second application of 120 mph. air I picked up the receiver and surprised even myself to find a dial tone. And I'm glad to see that 100's of fans read my previous post and did not call. But come to think of it, no one ever calls anyway.

Now to the decline of civilization as we know it, or more specifically customer service in that civilization. If you are over 40 you will know what I'm talking about, those under 40 probably think service is just fine these days. This topic entered my thoughts after calling SW Bell TelCo yesterday during the phone crisis. After enduring the call to the Haitian phone tree several times and talking to computers and disinterested Haitians, I reflected back on how the old SW Bell used to be. Looking back, it was wonderful. Number one, they had a big local office, staffed by actual English speaking people [choice #1 on the phone tree]. They also had a actual phone number in the yellow pages, to get to the English speaker. All one had to do, was dial the local number, tell Agnes what the problem was and she would have someone out within hours. If you had to wait for a moment while Agnes located LeRoy the repairman, you could talk to her about how well the high school football team is doing.
No more.

We recently visited Santa Fe and stayed at a B&B where I have loyally stayed the last several trips. The previous owner was a more mature woman, i.e. slightly older than me. But the B&B has recently been purchased by a "young" couple, who I found out went to the same small university I did. Since the owners were away during our visit, I left my name and email address along with a nice note with "what a coincidence we both went to Trinity U". When I got home I sent them an email about our pleasant stay and included some pictures taken at the inn. Well, do you think I've heard a word from these young saps. NoSireeBob. Not a word. Don't these ignorazzi know that although they own a B&B, they are really in the service business, the people business. Apparently not. I suppose they think that they have the finest B&B in Santa Fe and people flock to them for that reason. Well it's not the finest and there are 100's of places to stay in Santa Fe. The former owner used to stay in touch, send specials by email and just generally making you think she liked you and wanted you to come back. Which is the reason I did. I don't know now.

The list of the sorry excuses for customer care in the new service ethic is inexhausable. Neither my phone, electric, nor gas companies have local offices anymore and it takes forever to talk to a real person in Dallas or Haiti, if you can at all. I opened an account at Bank One years ago based on their personal service record [they actually used to advertise this]. Now there is one actual human teller at the bank and every week I get flyers in the mail advertising computerized banking and bill paying....at $5 a transaction. Screw you multi-national conglomerate, I'm getting ready to move my account to a local State Bank where I know an actual person. Probably the worst offenders are the retail establishments that utilize mostly very young workers. Used because they can run much faster to get away from you if you need to ask a question.

Now I am not against young workers, computerized systems where they speed up transactions or any other form of modern improvement. Improvement being the operative word. Apathy in service towards the paying customer is not an improvement. The first saying I heard as a young Army officer was, "take care of your troops". Well the paying customers are industry's troops, and they're not being taken care of. Could be why so many businesses fail these days. Especially the Dot.Com's run by smarmy 20 year olds who stangely know more than people who have been around twice as long as they.
Again, if you are over 40 you know what I'm talking about, if you are under 40 you should have been there.

The case of the bad electricity...
If you try and send any urgent and important information via email tonight, thanks, but I won't get it. It's been raining for 20 hours and this has apparently knocked my phone service out. No phone=no dial-up modem=no Internet. I called SW Bell this morning at some 800 number phone tree in Haiti or somewhere close. There they give you a state of the art computerized automated systems analysis [TelcoSysAn] of your phone status, which in this case generated the very helpful...."an equipment problem..good bye". So I called back on the phone tree and punched #1 to get an English speaking human. Had I punched #2 I would have gotten a Spanish speaking human. Having tried to use the phone in Mexico once, I have a hunch that English speakers know more about phone electricity than Spanish speakers. I related the problem and told her I thought it had to do with the rain. She say's no she thought that I had some bad electricity or something.

I have been chided already [see below] for believing this, but we have had electrical problems in the neighborhood, with service lapses several times a month so with the hope of the naive, I wanted to believe it was so. But to continue, when you have bad electricity apparently the proceedure is to go home and unplug all phones and the computer....to let them rest and get the bad electricity out. Which is what I did at lunch. You will not be surprised to learn that this did absolutely nothing except create a lot of unplugging and replugging for me. Not to mention the fact that I was very worried about the environmental impact. Just where does all this bad electricity go when it escapes from communication equipment?

So back to the office I went where I waded thru the whole stinkin' phone tree procedure again....finally talk to another humanoid, explaining that I got the bad electricity out...and the service was still a NO GO. "Oh" she says, "it's probably the rain, we'll have someone out...tomorrow, at the exact time of between 8 AM and 5 PM..so stand by". And so I wasted a whole half day today and a half whole day tomorrow on some bogus bad electricity theory!! But hey, it could have been true, those people in Haiti know alot about electricity....and Voodoo.

Can you hear me now?

Here is the comment on the bad electricity theory by best selling author Joe Galloway, in which, with metaphorical literary skill, he alludes to the fact that I might be a moron:

"....Bad electricity?? Unplug all yer equipment and let it rest????? Next thing they will be tellin ya to put your phone handset in the wastebasket cause they are about to blow out the line and you doan want all that dust in yore house. We usta pull that one on old ladies. ......."

Old Friends......
Old friends, Bruce and Arlene Crandall are in town for the weekend. Actually, they are "new" old friends. I met Bruce two years ago when he came out to help with a seminar I put together on the Vietnam War. He was introduced to me by my good friend Joe Galloway who wrote We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, which became the film We Were Soldiers. Bruce and Arlene now stop in several times a year on their RV ramblings across America.

Bruce is one of the leading characters in the real life action in Vietnam in 1965 on which the book and the movie are based. Bruce was portrayed by Greg Kinnear in the film. His actions are one of the reasons that the 1/7th Cavalry survived those three hellish days in November '65. When no one else would fly, he and his good friend Ed Freeman volunteered to fly their helicopters into an intensely hostile landing zone to deliver ammunition, food, and water to the trapped soldiers. And to fly the dead and wounded out. Ed Freeman later received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions.....he was recommended by his commanding officer, Bruce. Joe Galloway's father-in-law, Capt. Tom Metsker, was killed on Bruce's helicopter as he was helping the wounded on. Bruce watched a North Vietnamese soldier shoot his co-pilot thru the neck. He had to abandon several Huey's that were shot up too badly to fly another trip. Bruce went on to fly 900+ missions in two tours in Vietnam and is one of only seven modern army aviators to be inducted into The Eagle Flight, the aviaton Hall of Fame.

I've heard all these stories first hand from Bruce, but like most veteran's....after we tell our stories we move on to life today. We talk about what his kids are doing, baseball, football......how we're going to fix his RV which seems to get banged up everytime he visits us. This trip Bruce and Arlene got to know Julie, Jack and Amanda and Bruce took to son Jack immediately, they are both sports fans. And we look at Arlene's Hollywood photos. Bruce was the aviation consultant on the film, and Arlene was the only person allowed to take photographs during production. She has hundreds with Mel Gibson, producer Randy Wallace, Sam Elliott, Barry Pepper, Madeleine Stowe, and of the filming. And copies of the scripts, photos of the costumes, and the sets along with notes from the actors and behind the screen staff. It's a real treat and one that my friends and neighbors like to come over and enjoy.

But mostly we, Bruce and Arlene, Julie, Jack and I, just like to "hang around" together. With the assembled group last evening, I asked if anyone wanted to watch clips from We Were Soldiers on DVD. Bruce was the first to speak up, "No thanks, I've seen it".

Here's to The Band of Brothers.