Marmot Monday

Couch

I know this picture has made the rounds, but I still laugh every time I see it. The good news is that the army has new camouflage. The bad news is that it only works if we invade grandma's house.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Living the Cliche

So I finally had a quintessential cliche moment. Thursday I was on the treadmill, three sweaty miles into my five mile run. I was panting like a trout in bass boat and sweating like a fat man in Phoenix when she gets on the treadmill next to mine. We've all seen the type: Betty I'm-just-here-looking-for-a-boyfriend. (I know, this type also exists in the male of the species.) They're easy to spot, with their $200 workout fashion ware and hair done, spending more time looking around the room than at the treadmill readout. This particular Betty had applied about 3 liters of her cologne prior to entering the sweat deck. Her eau d'Phosgene made the air shimmer for ten feet around her. My eyes watered like I'd been tear gassed. I coughed like I'd swallowed a chicken bone. A spike of molten vomit made it as far north as the spot where my tonsils used to be. Compounding the damage was my breathing at double the normal rate due to the aerobic activity. I actually longed for the smell of a Chinese restaurant dumpster in the Georgia sun. The treadmill has a fan, which I quickly engaged. This simply introduced the mustard gas into my respiratory tract at twice the rate. If my alveoli hadn't been enduring the equivalent of a Dutch Oven I'd have offered a few choice words. Instead, I'm forced to resort to this forum. So Betty, consider yourself ridiculed and derided.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Nerd Test

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings...

Told you it was a nerd test. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, we're overeducated. If you don't know who Ozymandias is you can look here.

Ares

Enlarged Stupid

The last thing I want is for this space to be the home of the perpetually indignant. That said, I came across this piece in the Wall Street Journal and couldn't resist a trip to the soap box.

At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.

In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation.

Wow. It's takes a special kind of suspension of reality and belief to convince yourself this won't backfire. Best case scenario: It ends up screwing your company into the ground. Worst case scenario: Crap like this brings down government intervention on a scale not previously envisioned by anyone. Or we could go big picture and look at this in a historical context. The last time corporate America treated it's employees with this kind of contempt was the first quarter of the twentieth century. How did that work out for them?

I finished The Fourth Turning a few weeks ago. Its a bit of a diffuse read, but the very short version of their thesis is that American history moves in waves. About every 80 to 100 years it goes really sideways and gets stretched to the breaking point. Do the math: Revolution & Continental Congress, Civil War, Great Depression, 2000 to ..... One of the big reasons the authors attribute to the above timespan is that everyone that was alive during the previous rupture is dead, so no one remembers how much it sucked. Scary thing about the book is it was written in 1997 and some of their short term predictions have pretty much come to pass. Things like this WSJ fiddling-while-Rome-burns article looks like another log on the coming fire.

Ares

Another Signpost

Local teenagers from the Hey Al Dubat area of Fallujah, Iraq, hang out during the afternoon near a Kentucky Fried Chicken July 16. Since the opening nearly seven months ago, the business has flourished and attracts many customers in the nearby area. (Official Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Chris T. Mann)

Just in case you needed another indicator that it's just about over but the shouting, there's now a KFC in Fallujah of all places. You know, the Fallujah where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was sawing off heads a few years ago. The Fallujah of Operation Phantom Fury infamy. The Fallujah where they executed, burned and strung up 4 contractors from a bridge, then danced in the streets. Bing West talks about Fallujah's reputation within Iraq in No True Glory. It was a nasty place even by Iraqi standards; their version of New Jersey. A lot of Saddam's thugs were drawn from there. And now they've got original or extra crispy with teenagers hanging around in front. Screw the political benchmarks. When Iraq gets its first indoor mall, compete with teenagers hanging around all day, it's time to bring the boys home.

One final thought. The picture below is from inside the Fallujah KFC.

A friend of mine went to Detroit a few years back looking at medical schools. He told me while he was there he went to a KFC in a really bad, "Oh Shit" part of town. This particular KFC had Plexiglas pass-throughs at the counter because the neighborhood was so bad. So using the KFC metrics, Fallujah is now safer the Detroit was 10 years ago. I'm gonna start selling "US out of Detroit" bumperstickers and declare a quagmire. Then again, calling Detroit a quagmire is redundant.

Ares

Marmot Monday