The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Adopt a Less Adoptable Pet Day
USA Today has been running a column called “Pet Talk” that I sometimes read and sometimes skip, depending on the subject matter. Yesterday they ran a story about how Petfinder.com is making a push to highlight some “less adoptable” animals.
“Adopt a Less Adoptable Pet Day” sounds lame, but is in the best spirit. Here’s a statistic for you:
“A Petfinder survey, in fact, found that 96% of responding shelters and rescues said they have at least one, sometimes many adoptable pets for which they’re having extreme difficulty finding homes; 43% said some have been there for one year or more.”
So. True.
Once upon a time, in this very blog, I made a point to write about the different adoptable birds at the Refuge. I am going to start making the effort again.
Mrs. Shriver
I’ve been paying attention to the Eunice Shriver story over the last couple of days, so I was not surprised to read of her death this morning. It still made me sad.
Eunice rocked for several reasons:
- A woman graduating from college in the 1940s was no joke. She went to Stanford and majored in sociology.
- Her kids seem to have turned out ok. At least I can’t remember any big Shriver scandals. Having five kids turn out ok is a pretty solid achievement. When you are a Kennedy, it is particularly impressive.
- Oh yeah, the Special Olympics thing.
Joe Kennedy is widely and crudely quoted as saying, in effect, that if his daughter Eunice had been born male, she would have been a great politician. High, high praise coming from him. She was smart, she was tenacious and she actually used her gifts to make the world a better place.
Sometime in the last year, I saw her accepting an award of some sort on TV. When she stood up to give her acceptance speech, she was very frail and her voice didn’t sound right. But she had all of her energy and her eyes were sharp as she started speaking. The part that struck me went something like this:
The most important thing to have if you want a happy and successful life is family. A big family. If you don’t have one, go get one. Off the street if you have to, but get one. I can’t stress that enough.
I’m not sure we grow Eunice Shrivers in this country anymore, and that’s a damn shame.
The Wii
Yesterday, in a fit of tantrum over how much exercise I’m not getting, I went to Best Buy and picked up a Wii and a Wii Fit. Then I went to the new burger place to pick up dinner.
After dinner, I brought the new stuff up to my room. And remembered that game consoles require connecting things. Wires. To other things. With wires. I called my brother, who couldn’t help because he wasn’t looking at it and was distracted by a very large spider that had built a web on his lawn furniture.
After the debate over whether this web was in violation of the Treaty of Stay Outside in Your Natural Habitat and You Get to Live, I got off the phone and plugged the Wii into the front of the TV. No stereo. No connecting to one thing to get to another thing to get to another thing. The TV and that’s it.
I played a few games of bowling and a round of golf before figuring out that being left-handed is messing up my game. I’ll have to figure out how to change that in the program. Then I hooked up the Wii Fit, which told me that I am fat and must be tripping over my own feet on a regular basis.
I like that the exercises are two minutes each, so you can really decide how much time to spend. And I like the idea of working toward “unlocking” other features. I like that it works on my competitive instincts. Although seriously, calling me “unbalanced” and “amateur” is kinda harsh.
But mostly, I like that it feels like playing video games while actually sweating. I love this balance ball game.
I didn’t get very far last night, but I certainly found it more amusing than pretending to ski jump. I am feeling pretty good about this purchase.
Have You Ever Felt Like This?
One summer after I had graduated college, my brother and I went out for the evening. On the way home, we stopped at the Dairy Queen a couple of miles from the house for ice cream. As is usual on a summer evening, the line was snaking out the door. We didn’t mind – part of the experience.
After paying, we stepped over to wait for our order. Like every other ice cream joint in the United States, it was staffed by harried high school kids trying to do three things at once. So I was stunned..stunned..when the “lady” in front of us started yelling at a kid. He had given her an ice cream cone dipped in sprinkles. Her response:
“I said I wanted an ice cream cone with SPRINKLES ON THE SIDE!”
Let’s break this down:
- This was a woman at the Dairy Queen with her children. She is old enough to have been that high school server’s mother. And she was screaming at him.
- She was screaming in front of her children, demonstrating to them that she thinks this is an appropriate way for people to behave.
- Sprinkles on the side? Seriously?
She was still harassing that poor kid as we scurried out the door. The joke of this story is that whenever Scott and I see such buffoonery we can just say, “sprinkles on the side” and it diffuses some tension. But the point of the story was that we both walked out with the same feeling:
We didn’t want to patronize that Dairy Queen anymore.
How sad is that? When the clientele is so obnoxious that it drives customers away. We debated it on the way home – it wasn’t the fault of the business that this one idiot ruined our evening ice cream. We shouldn’t punish the business. And besides that, if we stay away, we have allowed the jerks to win. But we were so uncomfortable with that outburst that we really did stop going to that Dairy Queen.
I had a similar experience at Starbucks this morning. I stopped in to bring my mother an iced coffee (which is why I didn’t go to McDs in the first place). The place was practically empty. But a woman came in behind me to complain that her husband’s drink was wrong.
“I’ve had this drink all over the country and I’m telling you, it’s WRONG!”
First of all, what kind of man sends his wife back in to the Starbucks to complain about the drink? Nevermind. She was just horrible.
I am pretty well over Starbucks, anyway. But it was “sprinkles on the side” all over again. I hate people.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
In case you have never been in a Barnes & Noble in your life, A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second novel of Khaled Hosseini, the guy that wrote The Kite Runner. The Kite Runner was a tale of Afghanistan told from a boy’s point of view. This was told from the perspectives of two women.
The Shelby Foote Effect
It must have been on Academic Earth that I first heard it:
The speaker (presumably David Blight in the Civil War course) was talking about how after Ken Burns’ documentary on The Civil War, women were all swooning over the historian Shelby Foote.
My mother is one of them. Let me see if I can find a picture…
Yes. History nerd with a Southern Accent.
Anyway, Ken Burns new documentary (on national parks) is coming out and
in this article, I learned that Burns himself recognizes “The Shelby Foote Effect”. So for some part of the press tour he brought along the park ranger that he thinks will be the new superstar.Shelton Johnson is the gentleman’s name. And here is his quote about the old park wolves versus ranchers problem:
“When you hear the wolves are leaving Yellowstone and they are attacking someone’s cattle, it’s not like the wolves are getting together and saying, ‘Hey, what are you doing this Friday? I’m thinking about going out of the boundary and going after Joe’s sheep. Is that what you’re thinking?’ “
Snarky rugged park ranger? I’m in.
Here is a Scary One
The Tribune reported on an address given by retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter to the ABA:
“We know from survey results that two-thirds of people in the United States cannot even name all three branches of the national government,” Souter said at the opening assembly of the American Bar Association’s annual meeting. “This is something to worry about.”
The same junior high history teacher that told us that our generation would never have its own president also told us that our culture was descending into the next Dark Age. Stuff like this makes me believe him.
Google Ads
Sometime between when I posted last – about property taxes of all things – and right now, Google Ads decided that a “relevant” advertisement would be for Trojans.
Any guesses on how that happened?
Edit: And now it is back to taxes.
The Rug
I believe I mentioned that while I was in New Orleans, I custom-ordered a rug from a weaver in the French Quarter. They are woven from your average cotton quilting fabric. Besides being interesting looking, they are: Totally. Washable. As in you could throw it in the washing machine, if your washing machine was big enough. Or you could take it outside and hose it down on the driveway.
We needed a new rug. Before visiting this store I only knew of two kinds – the old oriental rugs and the cheap ones hanging from the ceiling at Bed Bath and Beyond or wherever. So when I saw these, I was pleased. We sent over the paintchips from all of the rooms on our first floor because we weren’t sure if the rug would go in the family room or the front hall. I think my mother also sent her some fabric sample from a quilt she hasn’t made yet. We expected to receive the order in 12 weeks, or the end of August.
A couple of days before I moved out of the house for the great mold elimination (which I am only mostly satisfied is over), I received an e-mail from Louisiana Loom Works saying my rug had shipped. It sat in my garage for a week. I wasn’t home an hour before I tore open the box. My poor mother was still at the hotel with the dog. And the cat. So I sent her a picture:
The fabric is espresso brown, rather like our family room couch. It is woven together with brick red, the color of the kitchen walls, sage green, the color of the bird room, camel-beige, the color of our family room walls and black. This is how it looks in the front hall:
My mother thinks it makes our dark hall too dark. Her damn fault for insisting on those teeny windows in the front doors. Wherever it lands, we are very happy with the purchase.
This is Exactly What I Mean
USA Today ran an article about how there are growing numbers of unpaid property tax bills due to the recession. No kidding.
I have long complained about my property taxes. I do not begrudge taxes in general – I realize they are necessary. But property taxes tick me off for several reasons:
- I still do not understand how they are calculated.
- The assessments are outdated – at least in my county. So while my bank says that my home is worth one number, Cook County thinks it is worth much more. And is charging accordingly.
- The value of one’s property is not necessarily consistent with one’s ability to pay property taxes.
- School budgets are directly tied to property taxes.
- My nice neighbors just moved away because they couldn’t stand the property taxes anymore.
Now let’s talk about those unpaid bills:
Tax collectors from South Florida to Wisconsin and Cleveland have noted the increase. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland, nearly 8% of taxpayers didn’t pay tax bills due this month, double the rate of four years ago, says Deputy County Treasurer Robin Darden Thomas. Now the county is struggling to collect about $400 million it’s owed in back taxes, she says.
$400 million that the county had budgeted as income. I realize that when income goes down, income taxes go down. So swapping income taxes for property taxes isn’t going to solve the problem. But as long as there is tax withholding from our paychecks, it must be more consistent than worrying about people that aren’t – for whatever reason – paying their property taxes. The idea that someone who has owned her home for decades, paid off her mortgage and retired would have to sell said home and move to some lame condo because she can’t take the property taxes makes me insane.
So increase my income taxes, if you must. I rather think we should be changing the capital gains rules, now that we are talking about it. But someone please, do something about these property taxes.
The Next Dark Age 