Wait! I can explain. This really is a picture of a grammar book and, yes, I was reading it. It is English grammar written by that Englishman Lynn Quitman Troyka. From one of the northern burroughs, probably. It follows that I’ve got it because I’m a writer, but that is wrong. The book is hilarious. It is filled with tons of examples of bad writing. Not as bad as your average MS [Microsoft] user manual, but at least you have the knowledge you are reading intentional errors.
One passage that got me was about bomb shelters. If I was a redneck, I’d be against helping anyone, but in fact, I am a strong advocate of individual responsibility and freedom. That is, everyone who feels others should be helped must be unrestricted in doing so. But only insofar as he cannot compel another to do the same.I once worked at a place where, every year, the buzzards would come around. They would be wearing a suit and tie, pretending to be a supervisor. They always came early on payday with the same envelopes, printed with your name and address culled from the company employment files without your consent. They would loudly point out who, in your department, gave the most last year. Whatever you gave, they wrote next to your name on their clipboard. If you gave zero, they wrote zero next to your name. A redneck forces personal beliefs upon others. Now, tell me, who is the redneck?
What about the bomb shelter? I knew you’d ask. I found out that one of the reasons people quit installing them was over legal issues of whether the owners could deny access to “desperate neighbors”. To me, the arch-proponent of the right to own private property for personal use, that was shocking. Of course you had that right, even the right to kill in self-defense and, if any survived, the right to sue them afterward for putting you in that position. It is your bomb shelter, your food and your family. Nobody else’s need could ever supersede that. Or so I thought. Ha – but I’m not a redneck because I sided with family. Gotcha!
All this meshes with my philosophy of privacy. The best choice is to keep all preparations out of the public eye. I realize in the computer era, it is increasingly impossible to keep information private, but with a few simple safeguards, you can easily ensure complete secrecy over any surpluses you accumulate. Trust me, I live by that tenet. What’s more, I have the financial equivalent of several damn good bomb shelters. See that brick that holds my door open? It is only painted red.
This is a shot of what I might call Pipe Art. Not to be confused with an eyesore, this is often the result when you don’t “stay friends” with the local building inspectors. I could not find anything that identified the purpose. Is it a water supply? Steam? I mean, they would put not tubes carrying flammable material right where the first drunk would careen into them. Would they?I see that the people who are sharing Limewire music on the ‘Net don’t seem to represent the Jimmy Durante crowd. On behalf of a client, I went looking for one of his tunes. Consider that I didn’t even know he could sing. The idea was to find potential backing tracks for an excellent round of dog hairpiece pictures that came in since last week. The camera quality is excellent and looks expensive.
On the way back, I stopped over at the Gomez residence. Finally AOL has admitted there is an issue with their email. Over the previous weeks I’ve been getting calls about a server problem. No, not the old problem where they have oversubscribed and cannot handle their peak periods, but an error code generated by their system. It finally happened when I was there to see it and instantly I knew it was their equipment.
Not that it was easy to get through. They have a department that is run like the phone company. First, they put you on with the robot for four to six minutes. Actually, I don’t mind this part because the robot knows at least as much as the average person. Then a flunky gets on the line to baby-talk you for ten minutes before transferring you up a level. During the eight-minute wait, a certain percentage of the calls get dropped. Finally, I did burn through and I found both the problem and the fix.
The AOL home page is incompatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera browsers in some configurations. You have to open the AOL home page with the newest AOL browser, called AOL9.0VR (if you must know, “Vista Ready”). The problem is that you can open your email account, but the folders with all your email are not in the navigation column. No, not the one where there is nothing in the folder, but the folders themselves are not there. What did I say about hiring people under 30?
The real beef is why they make thousands of callers go through the drill. I understand bureaucracy and the story that it once took 116 years to have a roof tile replaced on a French church. I also understand they could put another simple menu choice on their recording and eliminate the majority of calls over known issues. Then, would they have that extra opportunity to thank you for using AOL and check the spelling of your last name up to four times?
Roland, my French next-door neighbor put in a patch of concrete. I can’t figure out why he went through all that trouble. It was a dead spot in the yard between two rocks. Not a pathway or parking spot, not a patio or a shady spot. I figure some people just get the urge to pour and finish cement. I drank an orange banana smoothie and watched from inside my air-conditioned office. He does good work. So do I: one ripe banana, two squeezed oranges, 12 oz of diet lemon lime, a scoop on powdered milk, some pineapple flavoring, a scoop of malt and four ice cubes. One hundred sixty calories.
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