It seems like all everyone is talking about these days is the economy. Wall Street & Main Street, bailout and rescue plan, Fannie and Freddie, Paulson, Pulosi, stocks, banks, credit… It’s a good thing there’s something about this whole mess on the news 24 hours a day, and all over the papers and internet; otherwise nobody would know exactly what’s going on…

Oh. Wait.

Anyways, my take on the issue is this: FYnancial, FEHNancial. Pick one…and I realize that while both may be acceptable (I was surprised to see FEHNancial was the more appropriate pronunciation), some people will use both…sometimes in the same sentence.

Consistency, people.

Oh, and don’t borrow money if you can’t pay it back. That’s what got everyone into this mess.

That’s all I got.

In a twist of cruel ironic timing, a handful of my electronic luxuries are closing in on the finish line of the race to be replaced. The imaginary unwritten rules that exist in the town hall basement of my brain (protected by an understandably upset cougar, of course) clearly state “a device must fail to the point of complete lack of operation or at least to the point where I derive little to no enjoyment out of it from sheer frustration at it’s refusal to operate properly”.

My iPod, my TV, my camera, and my phone are all showing signs that they are checking out of this world. The phone and the camera are the most surprising, because they really aren’t that old. The camera is actually the newest device to become a contender. There’s above average wear and tear on the body (I usually have my camera with me when I go places), the lens is perpetually dirty and the wheel that selects the camera mode seems to be off, at times cycling through without any turn of the wheel. Also the battery life is nothing like it used to be. Most of these problems have a simple remedy: clean the lens, get a new battery, so it only seems like just the beginning of the end for this.

A new battery may also just be what my phone needs to keep it alive for a while. I keep it in my pocket while I work, so it gets it’s fair share of dust. Some of the pieces of the phone are missing, and it’s been dropped over and over, making it’s movements a bit less smooth than it was before.

My TV just started giving me problems. Turning it on, I’m greeted with 10-15 minutes of grainy picture, chock full of horizontal distorted lines. It’s the same for all video settings, so I’m pretty sure it IS the TV itself and not my connection or anything. After a while, the lines go away and everything is clear. Occasionally they will come back after 5 minutes of clear picture, but this time only for a brief amount of time, and then it stays clear for as long as the TV stays on. Another issue that plagues the television is it’s owner. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for deals on an LCD TV and anticipate that come Black Friday, I’ll find a deal I can’t overlook.

My iPod is the epitome of perseverance. That thing has been on it’s last leg for longer than most last legs last. It’s a Click Wheel Ipod (the ones that came out before the color screen ones). When I first got it, the back was shiny and mirrorlike. Now, it resembles a brushed metal finish. It’s been dropped, kicked, dropkicked, and it has the scars to prove it. I can feel the hard drive moving as it continues to work despite its old (digital) age, and there seems to be something loose inside of it; every once in a while I can hear something tumbling around. I’ve had a few scares with it turning off unexpectedly, but all in all it still works; though it doesn’t hold a charge like it used to.

So who takes the prize? It really is anybody’s game as each problem can easily escalate into massive failure without additional warning. Will any devices make it through this decade? Am I that cheap not to upgrade some things? Maybe. And while the iPod seems to be one that should go first, I’m pretty sure it’ll outlast the TV, and quite possibly the others as well.

One thing is sure: as much as you like to think you really don’t care at all about my latest adventures in what’s going on with my various electronic devices, you really do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have read this too long of a post all the way to the end. Good for you!

Unlike the last few years, this hurricane season has been steadily active for our area (that being the SouthEastern US). The lull in meteorological activity seemed to expose a dark, desperate desire that pretty much all weather reporters strangely have in common…they like bad weather. Maybe they don’t like it, but they like talking about it. They like telling everyone to look out, bundle up, and (if they should be so lucky) hunker down or batten down the hatches.

It may not be so obvious in some areas, but here in SW Florida, the news people can hardly contain themselves when a hurricane or tropical storm is within 1000 miles from us. The closer and closer it gets, the more they increase their intensity. They make graphics with name of the threatening system, they join forces with sister networks and do team coverage (the NBC people with the ABC people?! WHOA). But if it happens to move away from our area or the threat disappears, they almost seem disappointed. They try to keep the threat alive with desperate scenarios.

“The hurricane has been downgraded to a Tropical Depression and is going to completely miss our area, but we’re not out of the woods yet. It could turn completely around against all other driving forces and come back over us, or a South American weather mage could transport it directly over our town…so stay tuned as we keep an ever watchful eye on this deadly tropical system.”

That kind of sensationalism wasn’t too far from the truth during the last few relatively quiet hurricane seasons. Any time someone farted faster than 10 mph they named it and gave it 5 day tracking chart with special graphics and all. They jumped all over anything they could their radar on. It could’ve been a mass of clouds heading due north up the Atlantic, with no chance of ever even sending so much as a wave toward us, and our local weather would fill us in on “what’s happening in the Atlantic“.

It was like the hurricanes went on strike. But through careful, diplomatic negociations, hurricane season has hurricanes again. But active or not, one thing has been pretty consistant throughout my entire time I’ve lived in this town (over 20 years)— we have yet to actually be *hit* with a hurricane. Sure, we had some close calls. The closest, in my experience, was Charlie in 2004. It was slated to make direct landfall right on us, but then, at the last minute, turned up and hit a town north of us. Charlie was a smaller hurricane, so even we didn’t get that much damage from it. The power was out for a few days, and there was a lot of trees down and shingles off of roofs, but barely any flooding, if any.

It seems, and of this point I’m very thankful for, that this town is in an ideal area of Florida where it can be near the coast, yet still be difficult for a hurricane to zero in on us. That’s not to say getting hit by an organized weather system isn’t possible, and I won’t, by any means let my guard down…but 20 plus years of secretly frustrated meteorologists is a good thing to me.

Today I got a late start getting out of the house. I stopped to pick up a quick breakfast at McDonald’s, as I occasionally do. Today felt like an Egg McMuffin day…I usually just get a yogurt and an iced coffee, but I was feeling a bit more hungry for some odd reason.

Unbeknown* to myself at this moment was the fact that it was later than I suspected. I’d soon figure this out and come to an understanding as to why I was as hungry as I was. My usual small breakfast hunger was joining with a newly-spawning lunch hunger.

Anyway, enough omnipotence, back to the story: me, unsuspecting and temporarily obliviously ordering a “number 1″ (this is the Egg McMuffin meal on the breakfast menu). Pull forward, pay, next window. Iced coffee, bag of food. I open the bag…SURPRISE, it’s fries!

“Fries? They serve fries with breakfast?” I think to myself, as the imaginary audience that watches my every move Truman Show-style rolls their collective eyes and shakes their heads.

And then I get it. The time, the fries, McDonald’s unforgivingly strict and too early breakfast/lunch transition. “What’s a number 1 on the lunch menu? I never get a number 1 for lunch.”

Revelation number 2 hits me within 30 seconds of the first one, before I could even finish my first blessedly hot fry: I have never eaten a McDonald’s Big Mac. I felt like a robot learning new emotions. Special sauce? What’s this middle bread? Interesting…

I probably won’t get one again…it wasn’t that great. Plus I lucked out on the tomato front thanks to the salmonella scare (I think tomatoes are poison + tomatoes actually are poison at the moment = no tomatoes = I’m totally cool with that). Besides, I never grew out of Chicken McNuggets.

*You may’ve thought…”isn’t that ‘unbeknownst’?” It could be, either way is correct…and I figure: who needs that extra ST?

Recently, my family and I visited a pretty nice corner of Florida – the southeastern coastal area of Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton. The area was clean, I was off work, and the beach with some crazy-sized waves was literally about 100 yards from my bed. Over the course of the week, it became fairly commonplace to wake up, eat, walk to the beach, get pummeled by waves taller than me for a couple hours, stumble home, eat, sleep, repeat.

The beach area we were near was pretty nice in that it was not completely overwhelmed by people. Even the popular spots were relatively low key, when compared to some of the more suave beaches in Florida. However, that very laid back attitude that was so prevalent on the beaches was equalized by the fact that Boca Raton may in fact be one of the snootiest place I have ever personally been – and I have driven through Connecticut!

The scene was like this:

It’s evening time and everyone is starved. We don’t know where we want to go (as usual), and we don’t have any real idea in which direction we should travel (as usual), so we just start driving to see what shows up.

Oh there’s a nice pizza place. I like the architecture (Boca has some decent snooty architecture). Oh wait it has valet parking. Well I don’t wanna do that. Me neither. That’s so awkward isn’t it? I don’t know. Don’t you have to tip them? I think so. Yeah, let’s just keep driving.

Driving.

Oh hey I could go for sandwich. That place looks like it gets a decent amount of business. Yeah let’s – wait a second… It’s got valet parking too…?

Driving.

Oh, a Taco Bell! Let’s just stop and eat because I’m about to crack. Me too… What is that guy doing standing out in front of it? He’s parking cars.

Boca Raton must have taken way too many snooty pills for its own good. I have never seen so many valet parking only establishments. I am not embellishing the following two stories:

We stopped at one restaurant, even though we knew it was valet parking, just because we wanted to look at the menu. The parking spots that were so securely guarded by the valet man-boy had ominous orange cones on them. There was no way anyone could get a car on those spots unless they first paid a pact with the parking dude. Here is the thing. The spots that the valet guy would be taking our car to were exactly 24 feet from front the door of the place and probably about 6 feet from where we would be “dropping off” our car. The man would get in, collect a tip, put the car in drive and make one 90 degree turn into the spot right next to him. When we would finish our meal, he would walk across the pavement, all 13 step’s worth and start up our car and then maybe back it up about 7 feet so that we could then get in, tip him, and drive off.

This is almost EVERYWHERE in Boca Raton. If it is not a chain restaurant, you better believe it is valet. Story number 2:

We went to see a movie. Pulled up and noticed the place – surprise – has valet parking. But this time we had a choice so we naturally chose to NOT use that service. We parked 2 aisles away from the theatre. Just 2. About 100 feet. Not far at all. We could not park any closer, since those spots had, like soldiers of the great roman army, orange cones.

When the movie was over, we walked out of the theatre and were astonished to see so many people at the front door waiting for their cars to be picked up. There was ONE dude there and about 15 car groups waiting. What did we do? We walked across the drop off pavement where the valet guy normally stands, and where now about 300 people stood waiting for their cars, across the first aisle where the cones used to be but now there were about 20 valet-parked cars (the owner’s of which we just passed and laughed at), and then another 10 feet to our car that was not valet-parked. We got in, turned the key in the ignition, and drove off, staring in amazement at the 550 turds who dropped off their cars with the one turd who was currently picking them all up. I would guess that it took us 35 seconds to leave. I would guess it would take them at least another 15-20 minutes.

You step off a cruise ship and into a cab. You pay the full agreed fare, and also a tip.

You rent a hotel room, paying full price according to the hotel chains pricing scheme. You leave a tip.

You eat a meal at a restaurant and at the end of your meal you pay a tip.

You take one stupid photo in front of some weird-looking guy’s donkey! Tip time.

Tips are business. I don’t know the stats as to how much money is made on tips in any given period of time (I’m sure it wouldn’t be to difficult to find out) but I would venture to guess it’s one of those money making methods that stray into the billions of dollars per year side of the tracks. Oh and don’t get me wrong. I can see why they are needed. Restaurant owners are essentially robbing us as we are required to pay their waiters’ and waitresses’ salaries. Housekeeping personnel are also paid pretty much jack and so in addition to paying the hotel for a good night’s sleep (hopefully), we are also employing their cleanup crew.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it were not for the fact that:

1. Not everyone KNOWS how to tip, myself included at times. Here is some help in that field.
2. Tips are so commonplace in some situations that they completely lose their meaning. You tip because you are expected to tip, even if it is for a vague reason.

I daresay that there are probably conservatively thousands of persons in the world whose sole income is from “tips” that are placed outside the “normal” tipping range – taking a photo of a donkey, for instance – and don’t pay a dime in taxes on it.

And this is why tipping loses its meaning.

Case in point

Me: What a delicious meal we have just enjoyed wife of mine!
Her: Yes! Delicious!
All of us: We love this food, yeah! Hurrah!
Me: Oh here comes the bill. Hmmm… everything looks right. I’ll just take out my Discover Card here and – erhh what – ?

“An 18% gratuity has been added to your bill for parties of 8 or more.”

Me: What the crap!?

Now hold on, I know what you are thinking. Aazh is just CHEAP. Well, my good friend, you are right. But the explanation regarding that must be for another time or post. But not when it comes to tipping. I hold a pretty strong 20% when visiting the occasional cafe or bistro. So 18% is saving me money. My question is: Since when did I have no choice of whether I tip or not?

If a tip is supposed to be a reward for good service, did I miss the bulletin that proclaimed that all servers serving tables with 8 or more guests are incredible and deserve an AUTOMATIC 18% of my total bill? In that case, why don’t tables of 8 or more just get the more expensive version of the dinner menu as well and see it for what it is? It is a lack of choice. Oh! You can leave more if you wish… but can you imagine the hassle you would have to go through to remove or reduce an automatic tip if the service you received was abysmal?

Josh: (picks up large cell phone from the 80’s, dials 912) Hello, science?

Silence: …

Josh: Helloooo?

Silence: …

Josh: (realizing he dialed the wrong number, hangs up and dials 42) Hello, science?

Science: Ahoy! What can I help you with today?

Josh: I believe I have found conclusive proof that boys are indeed better than girls.

Science: Hey, that’s fantastic. Why don’t you come down to the office and fill out the official forms? If everything checks out, I’ll go ahead and make the worldwide announcement ASAP!

Josh: Cool, thanks.

Science: OK, then. Se–

Josh: (winding down) See you–

Both: (awkwardly wondering who should talk) Talk to you later.

Science: (hangs up)

Josh: Bye.

What science is currently looking over is a proposition, a scenario involving a man that isn’t necessarily me, using his bathroom, that isn’t necessarily my bathroom in my house. He walks into his bathroom and stands over his toilet to pee. Looking into the toilet, he notices something foreign. No, he is a responsible flusher and said foreign subject is not from a previous use.

This is a living thing. An insect. A spider. A black spider with a red tattoo of an hourglass on its thorax. Yes, a Black Widow, and one of mildly impressive size. It could probably straddle a 50 cent piece or completely hug a small strawberry.

So this arachnid is hanging out inside the toilet, almost under the rim and out of sight. If one were to simply enter the room with the toilet and have a seat, that person would likely not see the spider (who would then have access to your derriere and anywhere it may lead. But being able to point and aim urinary excretion allows one to bypass such an unfortunate happening. This also gives one the opportunity to knock a spider into the water of the toilet bowl, where it awaits being flushed into oblivion.

So boys are better than girls because they’ll never get bit by a black widow spider hiding inside the toilet seat while peeing (unless they pee sitting down). They’re also better because they can direct the stream to dispose of the spider.

So there you have it. While we wait for the official announcement, take a moment to think of what words of appreciation you’ll use to thank me for scaring you into sticking your head inside the toilet bowl any time you have to sit on it.

COP or OLD PERSON?!

No doubt, if you live in Florida you have played this, usually in-car, game.

For the most part, you come upon this game instead of purposefully playing it. A perfect example would be-

You’re driving down the road; its a beautiful day. You’re doing 62 MPH in a 55 MPH zone and a white Crown Victoria pulls out in front of you. He’s driving very slow.

That’s when the game starts is it a COP or just an OLD PERSON in a Crown Victoria.

Obviously it’s a high stakes game. A wrong choice on your part means severe consequences-
1) You are stuck in traffic going way slower then you need to behind some old guy
2) You fly past a cop doing just enough over the speed limit for him to pull you over

Generally I’m not very good at this game and always err on the side of caution. Today, though, I found myself playing this game with a difficulty setting of - IMPOSSIBLE. It started out exactly as laid out above. I went down the usual tell-tale signs of deducing the owner:

• Are there stuffed animals in the rear window
• Is there a spot light attached to the drivers side mirror (not always 100%)
• What kind of plates are on the vehicle (yellow is government)
• Is a Police Officer driving the car, and finally
• Does it say “Police Interceptor” on the trunk to the left of the license plate

No matter how stealth a cop tries to be in his blue Crown Vic with normal plates the little Police Interceptor badge tells all. Well this white Crown Victoria had it! I was 100% sure it was a cop. So, I stayed doing the speed he was doing, which was 10 MPH UNDER the speed limit. But as I started looking closer I realized I was getting very mixed signals. The license plate was personalized but it had ugly black rims, the windows weren’t tinted but it had the spotlight on the drivers side mirror. Finally I got brave and edged up next the him.

OLD PERSON! It was an elderly gentleman driving, his wife in the passenger seat, and what I could only guess was his mother in the back seat! This guy actually took off his stock rims and put on the default black fleet car rims. He bought a spot light and also put on a Police Interceptor sticker, which to me screams Impersonating an Officer.

Next thing you know Police Officers will be putting stuffed animals in their rear windows!

Be careful out there! You never know when it’s going to be a COP or OLD PERSON!

(I do not condone speeding or traffic violations of any kind. Please drive safe)

[Ed: For an explanation of the term tritch, see the Guide Entry following this post, or click here]

Hello, Four Two community, please welcome my first contribution to this site (it’s been a while in the making):

We all hate navigating through parking lots. Some of us hate it more than others. The struggle is having to fight with multitudes of selfish or mindless vehicles navigating to the most desirable 150 to 200 square feet sections of pavement between two white lines.

I personally have all but given up in striving for my own self-interest in this regard. It’s a hopeless struggle to say the least. I locate the first available space and settle for a mile walk of shame as I stroll past the privileged parkers to nearest store.

For those of you who still compete in this primitive display of self promotion I applaud your efforts. The only question I raise: How far would you go to get a good parking spot? This brings us to the title to my post. One member of our community may have taken this a little too far. Let me illustrate:

I met my good friend Mike (MJamus) at our local Olive Garden for lunch on Wednesday of this week. Mike prides himself on his innate ability to find the absolute BEST parking spots. I must admit he does have a knack for it. No one who knows him personally will deny it. He also prides himself in his Smart car which can fit into very small spaces. These two factors combined can produce the most shocking results.

The only real way to describe what happened is to demonstrate the pictorial evidence.

What might be considered shocking to some might be slightly less shocking to the rest of us. I just feel bad for the handicapped man that won’t be able to get into his car.

Hello cyberworld space!!! I am a blog media monkey! First blog post ever.

Here’s a little proof that being dishonest can save you cash - meanwhile giving people like me a reason to expose the punk that did the following thing:

So this morning went pretty well. I was running ahead of schedule by about 10 minutes which ain’t bad for a Friday. I avoided the increasingly annoying parking disaster that usually meets me on Friday at exactly 8:45 AM by arriving at my stop at 8:35 AM. More on that another time. As it was, running 10 minutes ahead, coupled with a fairly parched mouth meant that an oh-so-satisfying reward awaited me at the McDonald’s on home stretch. And by reward, I mean an 8″ tall styrofoam cup full of nature’s scalp-massaging rocket fuel, unsweetened iced tea. It’s only a buck ‘o six at most participating McDonald’s. And interestingly enough, that price is exactly what this post is all about.

I step off my truck and into the medium-sized queue, anxious to order my tea when I notice a woman standing off to the side with an armfull of breakfast foods and a cup holder with a few miscellaneous sodas. I figure she must have forgotten to order something since she had some change out and was looking in the general direction of the cashier, though she wasn’t precisely standing in either of the lines. I decided to let her jump in front of me, since I felt bad that she would have to go through that line again just for something she forgot to order.

She gets up to the cashier and in low tones mutters, “sweet iced tea please”.

She pays with a paper Washington, a copper Lincoln, and a metal Jefferson - buck ‘o six.

The cashier hands her an empty styrofoam cup and I order my tea next and also get an empty cup. I follow the lady over to the tea dispenser and find my eyes narrowing with suspicion as she places her cup under, not a tea dispenser, BUT a SODA DISPENSER! After filling her illegally purchased, tar-tainted cup with Powerade, she grabs a lid and heads out.

OK. Here are the facts. The iced tea cup is as big as a large drink at McDonalds. A large drink there typically costs, depending on region and franchise, about $1.69-$2.00. Iced tea is, say it with me, buck ‘o six. The candor and efficiency of the transaction made it clear, in hindsight, that she must do this regularly. Buy food to go, get back in line, buy “iced tea”. A supporting fact is that when you get your drinks to go at this McDonalds, they fill teh cups for you and so if she were to order a “sweet iced tea”, then that would be what her thieving self would get!

Closing thoughts; I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. I, for one, wouldn’t do it. There is a reason for the prices as they are set. It is obvious that an iced tea is cheap as anything since it is mostly water, which is why it only costs …. you know. My question is this: Is it worth it? Is the additional wait in line during the breakfast rush worth saving 69 - 86 cents? Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? I await your comments.