Jeffrey D. Tharp's Blog, page 253

Traditions…

In keeping with my now long-standing Sunday tradition, I’m pleased to present this week’s installment of Sunday morning archive posts. Today’s selections come to you live and unedited via tape delay direct from March 2008. From Spring snow in Memphis to contemplating the end of a major stage of my career, we’re covering a lot of ground this week. There weren’t any epic rants in mid-March, so apparently most things were right with the world. I guess even I have weeks like that now and then. I suspect I’ll look back on more recent posts in five or six years and find that I’ve gotten more jaded an cynical over time. Some people would argue that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that it just makes for more entertaining writing.

Check back tomorrow when I’ll be blogging in the present day. I haven’t picked out a topic yet, but I’m sure someone, somewhere will do something ridiculous that will need commentary. One of the great perks of being an observer by nature is that it leaves you with an almost limitless supply of material. Even though I avoid people as a matter of principle, I do appreciate them as a source of content. I’ll be waiting for my Humanitarian of the Year award.

Where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain…

I’ve never been to Oklahoma, but if it’s anything like my perception of it, things have been boring there for a long time. If I had to put a date on it, I’d certainly say it’s been boring at least since we closed the frontier in the 1880s or at the latest during the oil booms of the early 20th century. The Old West and boom towns are full of stories about people being gunned down – for cheating at cards, rustling cattle, robbing banks, running liquor, and sleeping with the wrong man’s wife. What the old timey stories aren’t full of are examples of ass clowns who decided to shoot the place up because they were bored.

Seriously? They. Were. Bored. When I was a teenager back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth I’m not sure any of us would have even had the passing thought of running outside and shooting whoever happened to jog past the house. We had plenty of guns between us – and even used them to entertain ourselves by plinking bottles and aluminum cans – but gunning down someone for just wandering past never figured into the plan. Mostly, we entertained ourselves riding four wheelers, shooting pool, swimming, listening to music, exploring the just-born internet, playing the original game consoles, or what we generally called “hanging out.”

I’m already reading about how the shooting of Christopher Lane is a failure of society, about how these three turd burglars had difficult childhoods, and the hundred and one other excuses people have when their kids turn out to be assholes. Sorry mom. Sorry dad. You failed your kids, not me, not the government, not society, but you. Maybe if you had put a book in your kids’ hands at some point or sent them to music lessons or gotten them involved in sports they’d have turned out differently. Now you get to live with the consequences of your kids gunning an innocent in cold blood. Their actions are the result of your collective failure as parents.

It’s going to be up to the good people of Oklahoma to hand down the appropriate justice. I seem to recall them being the last bastion of the old fashioned firing squad in these United States. Let’s hope they put that tried and true method of sweeping the scum from the earth to good use.

This post is the third installment of “You Ask, I write.” Want an opinion on the news of the day? Feel free to leave a comment and I will opine.

Picked up…

Like a television being picked up for another season, I got my notice from GoDaddy this morning that the domain registration for http://www.jeffreytharp.com was renewed for another year. Assuming the blood keeps flowing to my fingers, I suppose that means the posts will keep on coming.

A new season often means new characters, a new story arc, and sometimes a completely different direction in an effort to breathe fresh life into a well worn formula. Rest assured, I won’t stand for that kind of foolishness here. You’ll keep getting the same surly, sarcastic, barbed, and vaguely misanthropic posts that you’ve come to expect when you point your browser at my small slice of the internet.

There are currently no changes, no specials, no 2-for-1 bargains planned in this seventh year of blogging. I’m just going to be over here doing what I’ve been doing since 2007. Hopefully you like it… but if it’s not quite your cup of tea or doesn’t live up to your expectations, feel free to bugger off at the earliest opportunity.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Details. There are two general schools of thought when it comes to details. One school says that you should cover every minute detail in as great a depth as possible. The other is that you should flesh out the broad strokes of an issue and allow maximum flexibility in determining which of the details is important. I tend to fall into the latter category… and it makes me ragingly hostile when someone wants to nitpick every solitary detail rather than use their own best judgment about how to get from Point A to Point B.

2. Timing. It seems to me that despite best efforts to the contrary, most events generally happen when they happen. While most of us make an effort to manage timing as best we can, as often as not that train is leaving the station regardless of what we do and there’s not a thing gained from laying down on the tracks in front of it. So, although I’m more than happy to concede that timing certainly drives events and gives them momentum, I’ll be damned if I’m willing let it alone be the determining factor in how those events unfold. Grand strategy is far too important to be left to the simple whims of timing.

3. France. Suddenly the French have decided to be all loud and militant about chemical weapons in Syria. Welcome to the party, France, but you’re a little late. I don’t remember you coming online when Iraq was in the crosshairs and we know for certain that they used chemical weapons against their own minority Kurdish population. If France thinks Syria is a war worth fighting, I’m all in favor of giving them the green light to lead their own coalition of the willing into that stinking quagmire of a civil war. But after a generation or two of France thumbing its nose at US foreign policy, I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump on board with whatever wild international game they’re hoping to play.

Long ago and far away…

Anyone who knew me in high school will probably attest that I wasn’t one of the kids that was going to show up at a party. Frankly, I’m still not one of the kids who shows up at parties. As a general rule lots of people and lots of noise makes me nervous and jerky. As usual, though, that’s not my point. My point (this time) is that I was a late bloomer in the world of alcohol. I don’t think I had my first “serious” drink until I was 18 or 19. At that point my illicit underage drinking budget mostly allowed for such libations as “Mad Dog” 20/20, Milwaukee’s Best, Red Dog, and Honey Brown if it was a McPayday.

That all changed late in the summer of 1997. That’s when I met Sam Adams Cherry Wheat for the first time and realized that beer didn’t have to taste like ass. Unfortunately, you do have to pay a premium for non-skunky beer, but that summer opened my eyes to the idea that tasty adult beverages could be about more than drinking until you fall down. Sure, I still managed to do plenty of that during the last three years of my academic career (Hello quarts at Hi-Way, dime drafts at Repub, and the serve-all-comers dive in the basement of the Gunter Hotel), but the seed was planted.

My palate has widened considerably from it’s humble beginnings with Sam’s Cherry Wheat, but on days like today, when the humidity is up and sitting out in sun is the order of the day, it’s still my go to beverage of choice. There are surely better cherry brewed beers out there these days, but none of them will ever take the place of beer I fell in love with long ago and far away.

Sex ed…

My employer has a problem. As hard as it is to believe the testosterone fueled echelons of our institution have a problem with sexual assault, it’s apparently a fact. I know it’s a fact because I spent the better part of three hours watching a movie about it this afternoon. That’s added to the standard yearly on hour Sexual Assault is Bad training, and the special 57 slide PowerPoint briefing about the ways in which sexual assault is bad, and the incredibly awkward conversation with the boss about sexual assault.

Know what? I got the message loud and clear. Actually I got the message before anyone related to my job bothered to mention that “Hey Jeff, you know sexual assault is bad right?” It feels like something that should be pretty common knowledge… and even if it weren’t common knowledge, you’re not likely to convince someone not to do it by blinding them with PowerPoint charts.

It seems to me that if senior leaders have a problem keeping their peckers in their pants or disciplining their subordinates who have that problem, the best possible way to send a message is to convene a firing squad in the Pentagon courtyard and beam the execution live via satellite to every camp, post, FOB, depot, and station on the net. Make it a mandatory participation event so every Joe and Jane, every civilian and contractor can see that it really is a “zero tolerance” policy.

You can show movies, give briefings, and have heart-to-heart talks until you’re blue in the face, but not a damn thing is going to change until you prove that echelons higher than reality are willing to do more than talk the talk. Otherwise we’re just wasting everyone’s time pretending to give a damn.

Jeffreytharp.com vs. Mike Hayden…

According to former Director of the CIA and NSA, because I’m an advocate for electronic privacy, I should think of myself as part of a collective of “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.”

I usually try to keep this place about halfway family friendly, but the only response I can come up with is: Fuck You, Mike Hayden. I swore an oath awfully close to the one you swore as a Air Force officer. We both swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Check that again. Foreign and domestic.

This republic has endured two centuries of revolution, invasion, civil war, trench warfare, sneak attacks, and terrorism. Our foundations are too strong to be brought down so easily from the enemies at the gate. If it is to falter, fail, or fall it will be from the domestic advocates who are willing to cut down every protection guaranteed by our Constitution to prove their point or press their agenda. Once that happens, I don’t know what the hell we’re bothering to fight for anyway.

Defining “normal”…

I’m glad I’ve got this backlog of old posts to work through on Sunday mornings, because quite frankly I’m nowhere near caffeinated enough yet to be all that coherent. Loading you up with old posts from MySpace is a convenient crutch for a brain that’s probably an hour or two from firing on all cylinders. That won’t last forever, but I’ll lean on it as long as possible.

This week’s archive selections feature posts originally made in February and March 2008, a time when I was contemplating getting a dog and changing career trajectory. Honestly it’s so far from today’s “normal” that it doesn’t even feel like the same life… and of course that leads to the inevitable questions about if life five years ago was so different, how different will life be five year from now. It’s a fun question in theory, but let’s just say I’m not ready to spend alot of time pondering 2018 and life after 40 just yet. I’m not sure there’s enough caffein in the country to get me to go there yet.

Enjoy this morning’s archive posts and I’ll be back with a “live” tomorrow for your reading pleasure.

I’m glad I’ve got this backlog of old posts to work throu...

I’m glad I’ve got this backlog of old posts to work through on Sunday mornings, because quite frankly I’m nowhere near caffeinated enough yet to be all that coherent. Loading you up with old posts from MySpace is a convenient crutch for a brain that’s probably an hour or two from firing on all cylinders. That won’t last forever, but I’ll lean on it as long as possible.

This week’s archive selections feature posts originally made in February and March 2008, a time when I was contemplating getting a dog and changing career trajectory. Honestly it’s so far from today’s “normal” that it doesn’t even feel like the same life… and of course that leads to the inevitable questions about if life five years ago was so different, how different will life be five year from now. It’s a fun question in theory, but let’s just say I’m not ready to spend alot of time pondering 2018 and life after 40 just yet. I’m not sure there’s enough caffein in the country to get me to go there yet.

Enjoy this morning’s archive posts and I’ll be back with a “live” tomorrow for your reading pleasure.

A trip to Walmart (or Barbarians at the gates)…

When it comes to grocery shopping in southern Cecil County, Walmart represents the least objectionable of three craptastic choices. Right off the bat that should tell you everything you need to know about the grocery situation here in the northeastern corner of Maryland. I would seriously consider selling a kidney if someone would build a Giant, a Safeway, or a Kroger somewhere closer than the current 90 minute round trip drive to get to any one of those options.

Since it’s the lesser of the local evils, that’s were I end up most weekends. I was there yesterday and here are my studied observations on the experience:

1. There are approximately 237 billion parking spots surrounding Walmart, yet nine times out of ten I end up pulling down the lane behind someone who will sit and wait for the family of six to load their two carts of groceries, buckle the kids into their seats, adjust their mirrors, turn on their GPS and select the “home” option, back halfway out of the spot, stop for no apparent reason for 30 seconds, back the rest of the way out into the lane, spend 20 seconds trying to shift into drive, stall out, restart the car, and then drift away at approximately .175 miles per hour. All of this might even be acceptable if it were midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s 11AM on a Friday. There are acres of open spots as far as the eye can see, but the douchtard in front of me wants this exact spot for some reason. Well, congratulations. You got it. You saved yourself at least 15 extra steps you’d have had to take from one of the already available spots. This trip is not going well and I haven’t even gotten out of the truck yet.

2. There are three carts inside the door. One filled with some combination of leaves, trash, and possibly a diaper, one that has apparently hosted a seagull convention, and the third and final option… That one apparently doesn’t have any bearings in one of its wheels, so I get to spend the next 40 minutes wiping bird shit off my hands or listening to THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE every time I take a step. I don’t know if there’s a hell or not, but If there is, I’m absolutely convinced the background noise is THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE.

3. Walked by the ammunition case. No ammo. Or more specifically no ammo for guns that anyone actually owns or uses on a regular basis. Can’t blame Walmart for that one, really. It’s just another disappointing part of this little voyage of the damned.

4. Milk, eggs, bread… Even Walmart cant screw up the staples too badly. Just when I thought things might be turning a corner a three year old girl came charging out of nowhere and flung herself at my cart. Looking up to see what she probably expected to be the face her theoretically loving parent, what she got was a surly look from an unknown middle aged guy with a goatee. Clearly this was not what she was anticipating as the result was a yelp that I can only equate with what happens when you step on a dog’s paw and the child attempting to sprint away and running directly into a bottled water display set up in the middle of the aisle. It seems that with enough momentum, one can really bounce off the side of a few pallets of bottled water. Who knew, right? The last thing I saw was her theoretically loving parent showing up from the next aisle over and clearly wondering why her little darling was lying flat out on Walmart’s floor.

4. I wanted to make a roast on Sunday. Roast beef was a regular fixture at Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house and about once a month I pull out the stops and make one with all the trimmings. I have found decent cuts of beef at Walmart from time to time, but they’re few and far between… as you might expect, this trip was not one of the exceptions to the rule. It looks like I’ll be partaking in the much more recent family tradition of Taco Sunday again this week.

5. I walked up to a checkout counter that had just cleared its last customer. Not waiting in line to checkout is practically unheard of here at my local Walmart and I thought maybe I was going to get a break here at the end of this test of my endurance. Of course it wasn’t. The cashier was apparently engrossed in her conversation with the last customer. After unloading my cart onto the belt, she was still engrossed. I pushed the cart forward so I was standing directly in front of her and she was still engrossed. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t started adding my two cents to their conversation, she would probably still be engrossed. Look lady, I don’t need you to be happy to be there. I don’t even need you to be pleasant. All I need you to do is slide my crap across the little scanner thingy, take my money, and let me get on with the rest of my day. The sooner that happens the happier we can all be.

Basically, the only good thing I can ever really say about a trip to Walmart is that no one has yet set my truck on fire in the parking lot. That’s probably only a matter of time, though, because truly the barbarians are at the gates.

Today’s post is the latest installment of “By Request,” where the readers pick the topic and I rant about it.