Someone needs to send Classmates a Telegram

The last time I sent a telegram I phoned Western Union. I dictated my message to them over the phone, which they then read back to me. They promptly delivered my message -- by calling the recipient on the phone and reading it to him. They then sent a paper copy via U.S. Mail. Um, not really the effect I wanted, but I realized the telegram as a form of communication was dead. Western Union finally discontinued this service in 2006.

Every couple of weeks or so I get an email from Classmates.com informing me that someone has viewed my profile, left me a greeting or some such, and I should "find out who!" Of course, should I log in to my Classmates account to actually find out who -- I am invited to become a paid "Gold Member" which will allow me to send messages and directly contact other members.

Wow! Really? I can actually *pay* Classmates to contact old friends and share my story with them?

Hey Classmates!! Are you also thinking of opening up a mall-based travel agency to book my plane flight too?

Have you guys never heard of Facebook? I don't need to pay you money to send messages and share stories with my old friends. I do it every damned day on Facebook.

At one time, Classmates.com was one of the biggest advertisers on the .net. It seemed like every page I went to had a classmates banner ad -- "She -- Married him?"

Ten years ago maybe more, I was a periodic gold member at Classmates. The little trick I used to use was that I would only become a paid member for one month, about every year or two. That way, I could contact any friends I had found, send them all my email address, then cancel the account and maintain contact with my friends afterwards. I did this about three times until I had basically contacted everyone who was there whom I wanted to contact.

Ten years ago, their business model made sense. Today? Are you people nucking futs? Why would I pay you to find the exact same people I can find on facebook? Now, it's not like Classmates doesn't have a lot of "business partners" who post banner ads on every damned page. You're making money with each page hit. So here's an idea, why not come in to *this* century and encourage more people to visit those pages. Hmmmmm, I know!! How about making the whole damned thing free??!!!

I guess the Classmates people still book their vacation at the mall travel agency. They need to revise their business model. I think I'll send them my ideas by telegram.

Costas hits one out of the park

Closing cermony of the Vancouver Olympics. All of the pagentry is in full gear. Giant figures are being rolled in to the stadium.

Bob Costas says:

"And the always enjoyable, Giant inflatable beavers"

Dude, that was *so* perfect.


Nice

Facebook is starting to tick me off

We all join Facebook for different reasons. For some, it's complete social networking -- 300+ friends, many of whom you hardly even know. For others it's to keep up with family, whether immediate or extended, and yet others are there just to be there.

I joined Facebook at the urging of my longest and dearest friend because there is an alumni page for the summer camp we went to, the place where we met. Once there, I primarily used it to keep up on what my kids were doing, since I'm old now and don't see them very often.

My experience has since evolved to include mostly some very old and dear friends, people I'd lost touch with long ago and always wished that I hadn't.

And now it's starting to piss me off.

This afternoon, a friend of a friend of mine became friends with an old, old girlfriend of mine. Now, since I'm not a friend, I can't read all the particulars of her life, but I was able to browse through her profile photos. It's unmistakable -- this was my old girlfriend, someone I stopped seeing 34 or so years ago, who I last saw when I bumped in to her in a bar in Brooklyn in 1979 or therabouts.

So why does this piss me off? She was *so* recognizable. The woman has not aged. I'd have been able to pick her out of a crowd in an instant. And this is not the first time!

I must begin with my spouse, whom I met when she was 18. Today? Hot. Hotter now than then. But she doesn't freakin' age!

I scrolled through my friends list, and my four oldest friends, all of them women, one is another ex-girlfriend -- friends of mine since puberty or before -- they all look like a million bucks! Any one of the four of them could be walking on Main Street USA at Disneyworld amidst a thousand tourists, and I'd recognize them now, because they are just as they were back then. Damn you all!

When I was 15, I always liked the fact that I looked older. The drinking age was 18 back then, but I would never be asked for ID. When I turned 39 I didn't share this enthusiasm, as some coworkers assumed that I had turned the Big FIVE-OH! (I began coloring my hair the next day) Now that I'm 50, okay I've aged! But why isn't everyone else keeping up?!!

My friends, ALL the same age -- look young, sexy and vibrant.

I look like I'm about 100 with one foot in the grave. I'm sure if I had a photo taken with any of these friends, somone looking at it would say "Oh, is that your father?"

Bravo to all my old friends.

As for me, I recall the line from Indiana Jones: "It's not the age, it's the mileage."

Liberal Lies - Calling them out

A low-income client of mine asked me to compute her estimated tax payment for January 15th.

You see, some years back she had inherited some stock, and in 2009 the company was acquired and created what was essentially a forced sale of that stock. She wanted to make sure she had her taxes paid.

I spent a couple of hours computing the holding period and the amount of forced gain, then punched it in to the tax software and came up with the astounding realization that the transaction would not be taxed!

Wow!

I then went back and verified what I had once known, but had forgotten about since I have so few "low income" clients. And that is this:

Under the Bush tax cuts, low income people pay ZERO tax on long-term capital gains for 2008 to 2010. Zero, zip, nada.

I then informed this client that even though this was a forced sale, she should be happy it happened in 2009. Why? Because the Bush tax cuts will expire after this year. If this same transaction were to take place next year in 2011 -- her tax bill would be $6,980!

This applies for low income people only, and has nothing to do with middle or upper income taxpayers.

Read this again: When the Bush tax cuts expire, this low income taxpayer would have paid nearly $7,000 in extra tax.

Now -- How many times have we been told that the Bush tax cuts only benefit "the wealthy?" Hundreds? Thousands?

I can't tell you how often I tried to explain to people that this was total bullshit -- all taxpayers benefited from the Bush tax cuts and that in fact lower income people made out the best. But no, we never heard that. All we've heard for the last 8 years was that the Bush tax cuts were for the wealthy.

Well, I'll tell you what -- when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, there are going to be a lot of pissed off people, and the economy will slow yet again. That's fact.

Let the liberal lying continue.

Don't F*ck with Charlie Brown!

I was 6-years-old when television first aired "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

I don't know for sure if I watched the very first airing, my guess would be yes -- but honestly, I have no way of knowing.

I grew up in a big city. One where having a fireplace in your living room was something unheard of. Thus, on Christmas Eve, one of the TV stations in town used to run a film of a fireplace, with nice orchestral Christmas music in the background. It was supposed to give you a nice "homey" feeling, sitting before the fireplace (black and white TV) on Christmas eve.

Apprantly, long after I left town, that TV station discontinued the Christmas Eve Yule Log, and there was outrage, OUTRAGE!!! You just don't f*ck with long-held traditions!

Of course, the TV station resumed the Christmas Eve Yule Log, and things go on as they did before. Props to you TV people!

On Tuesday night, ABC TV Network presented this year's showing of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." We all have our favorite show for the holidays, I know my spouse is partial to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," but Charlie Brown is hands-down my all-time fave. I love our modern age as it is, and I was out on Tuesday night. But I had set the TiVo to record Charlie Brown. No harm, no foul.

That is, no harm, no foul right up until the time I actually *watched* Charlie Brown on Wednesday night.

ABC, which is owned by Disney, decided they needed to sell an extra 4 minutes of advertising during that half-hour, and BUTCHERED "A Charlie Brown Christmas!"

I'm not talking about minor edits here, I'm talking about eliminating major, significant elements of the show!

They took out the entire scene where the Peanuts gang is catching snowflakes on their tongues, where Lucy announces that she never eats December snowflakes. Linus goes on to demonstrate how he uses his blanket to knock a can off the fence with a snowball.

Most significantly, Sally Brown asks her big brother Charlie to help her write her letter to Santa Claus. Charlie goes over the edge when Sally asks Santa to make it simpler on himself, just send cash, how about tens and twenties! This is *huge* in the plot development of the show, highlighting Charlie Brown's frustration with the commercialization of Christmas.

The last significant elimination was the scene with Schroeder and Lucy, where Schroeder presents the music he's selected for the Christmas Play. The scene has three distinct parts. First, Lucy gets under Schroeder's skin by claiming Beethoven wasn't that great because he never had his picture on a bubblegum card; then Snoopy dances on the piano to the great jazz score of the show; and finally (and this is the part that sent me through the roof) Lucy asks if Schroeder can play "Jingle Bells."

ABC chopped this scene to shreds, airing *only* Snoopy's dance to the jazz music, eliminating both the Beethoven and Jingle Bells sequences. This is sacrilege!! You can't eliminate major elements of a show, and still call it the same show!!

It's Christmastime. No, it is *not* the "Holiday Season." It's effing Christmastime.

We learn traditions from the generations before us. Other traditions are created during our lifetimes. The whole appeal of the Christmas season is that those traditions continue year after year after year.

For me, one of most significant of those traditions is sitting and watching Charlie Brown. For ABC just to go bastardize the whole damn thing, is beyond a shame. It should be considered criminal.

When it was all said and done, ABC had eliminated 3 minutes and 45 seconds of a 25 minute show. That's fully 15% of the entire show, gone, not presented to the audience. Bite me.

For those of you who watched, HERE is what ABC didn't show you. Every second of it.

Hey, Merry effin Christmas ABC!

A Good Man is one who's being a Man

As much as I dislike Tiger Woods, and those who know me well know I can't stand him, I'm impressed with the way he's chosen to "man up" in this situation.

Wife beats the shit out of you and chases you with a golf club, being pissed that you've been screwing other women. Here in Florida, she's committed a domestic violence felony.

In reality, she's correct, Tiger Woods deserves to have his wife chase his ass down with a 5-iron. So, instead of letting FHP arrest his wife, Tiger lawyers up, stays completely mum, and there's no case against his wife. Tiger takes the fall, wife (who's the innocent party) gets off scott free, and he's "manned up" to his actions. It's an issue between him and his wife, not between his wife and the State of Florida.

As much as I can't stand you, good job Tiger Woods. You're still a shit, but you've manned up to it.

Trip Screwing A**holes

I find myself this afternoon in the uncomfortable position of defending the TSA. This is the Transportation Security Administration. A more bumbling, inept example of the uselessness of government employees cannot be found.



After September 11th, then Senate majority leader Tom Daschle absolutely insisted that airport screening be done by federal employees. "You can't professionalize if you don't Federalize." was the saying at the time. What a pile of horsesh*t.

I have observed TSA quite closely over the years and they are the perfect example of government incompetence. WTF is the point of wanding down a wheelchair-bound octagenarian with an oxygen tank? Please explain how taking nail clippers from the pilot makes the aircraft any safer?

Without delving in to how these idiots don't know their own rules on checked firearms, or why cigar cutters are not treated consistently from checkpoint to checkpoint, I recall a time when I really wanted to smack them all silly.

I was wearing an open overshirt going through the screening checkpoint and TSA moron "A" tells me I have to put the overshirt in a bucket and put it through the machine. I asked why, and he told me that "You're wearing it like a jacket, so it must go on the belt." I followed his moronic instructions, got to the other side, whereby TSA Moron "B" takes my shoes from the belt and sets them right on top of my shirt. I complained to TSA Moron "B" that he shouldn't treat my shirt like that, I didn't mind being screened, but treat my belongings with repect. TSA Moron "B" told me I shouldn't have put the shirt on the belt to begin with. Arrrgh!! I told him moron "A" told me I was required to, but moron "B" told me moron "A" would never have done that. Supervisor (TSA Moron "C") was sitting there watching nothing. Just sitting there, looking down at whatever was on his podium, oblivious to everything in the screening area that he was supervising. As I passed by, he may have even been napping, I commented "Great job, ain't it?"

In the private sector all three morons would be unemployed. Professionalize my ass.

So yesterday I ran across another TSA story that really had me pissed. A lady was selected for secondary screening and during that process, a TSA employee walked off with her toddler, literally took him away, to screen him separately.

You can read the entire account here: http://www.mybottlesup.com/tsa-agents-took-my-son/


I was infuriated.

Today -- I found out that the whole story was bullshit. The security video of her entire encounter with TSA has been posted online here: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-tsa-agents-took-my-son.html


As much as I dislike TSA (who now, because they wear metal badges no longer have to go through screening themselves, yeah I'm real confident) the video tells me they handled this lady perfectly fine, can't imagine what put such a bug up her ass. It isn't necessary to make stuff up. They're asshats alright, but lying about them doesn't help.

Bureaucrats with badges are bad enough, bitches on Xanex can be worse.