Maybe Trucking

            My financial advisor, Titus Boogerworth, called with excitement in his voice to tell me he had placed nearly half of my vast fortune in a new venture.  I can smell a cloud of sarcasm when it wells up like that into a thunderhead and darkens my day.

            “Let’s see,” I retorted, “that would be roughly $48 dollars if I read my last statement correctly.  Why is that exciting?”

            “It’s a great investment,” he continued, ignoring my rude interruption.  “Why, in a matter of months, you’ll need a two wheel cart to move all your money around!  You’re gonna make loan sharks jealous!”

            “Not really even wanting to be noticed by loan sharks, Titus,” I offered.  “What exactly is this A+ investment you’ve found?”

            “It’s Maybe Trucking!  You’re gonna be a rich…

            “See here, Boogerworth,” I snapped (48 bucks is a lot of money).  “It’s maybe trucking?  What else might it be, maybe?  Maybe coin laundries?  Maybe vending machines?”

            “No! It’s trucking.  The owner is my cousin, Fersher Maybe.”  At this point, Titus just faded.  In a tired voice, he said, “Read about it in the trades,” and the signal died like a dropped call.

            I searched out a copy of Cookin’ And Bookin’, the go-to weekly for shippers and truckers.  When I saw the quarter page ad for my new investment, I knew Titus had done it to me again.  I sank into granny low:

Around The World

Around The Clock

Around The Time You Need It

Fersher Maybe

Seems Like Home

            Home, where the heart is, feels either more, or less comfortable based on the surroundings we experienced at a particularly pleasant time in our lives (my theory).  After 1900 until mid century, many middle class city kids grew up in modest single-family dwellings with sizable yards and plenty of trees.  If you ask them what feels like home, those who had a carefree childhood will tell you it’s a house with a nice yard and some trees.  Maybe one with a fireplace.  And a family pet. 

            These predispositions toward places that remind us of happy times affect our choice of homes or the architectural features with which we surround ourselves as adults.  If you grew up happy in a house with a fireplace, you value having a fireplace.  Do you remember a Christmas tree brightly lit in front of a multi-paned picture window?  Does that feature in a prospective home appeal to you?  An extra lot, or a particular view?  A certain kind of tree, or trees generally?  A terrace or a screened porch?  Lots of neighbors, or not very many?  Your subconscious mind is leading you to remembered happiness.

            Of course, happiness comes from within.  True happiness does not come from things.  It’s a function of attitude and losing one’s self in work that brings joy or in service to others.  It is a function of love.  Still, around here we think that surrounding yourself with what provides these elements of comfort can make you really feel at home.      

           

The Fox And The Moonbeams

            The Affordable Care Act is not the cause of our country’s economic difficulty.  That’s just a foxy lie--a diversion—even though many believe it to be true.  Most of the negative impact of the ACA so far, is in the imaginations of naysayers, manipulators, and their victims who, like all of us, can be financially hurt by legislators.  So audience-jerking TV producers ply us with imaginative horror stories having no basis in fact.  By the light of the moon, some of this scat looks real.  Apples-to-apples, the only thing caused by the ACA (Obamacare) is thousands more people having health insurance that was previously unaffordable. 

            This doesn’t mean employers and insurers will not try to cheat the employees and clients they already insure, and blame it on Obamacare.  I’ll bet lots of these purveyors are telling horror stories and planning to cut their own costs at others’ expense by altering what they already provide.  Some insurers are baiting people out of the junk insurance they had, into slicker swindles.  Sly. 

            Improvements are surely needed to the ACA, to insure fairness.  For instance, many seem to agree that the tax on medical devices should be eliminated.  On another front, nobody should have their annual premiums go up $5000 and their deductible double.  Perhaps that scenario is imaginary, or perhaps it reflects a threatened withdrawal of employer-paid benefits.  The fox is among us gleaming in the moonbeams, so around here, we believe the old saying should now read:”Don’t trust, but verify!” 

They Love To Do A Little Side Step

Big government didn’t cause the ‘Great Recession,’ but big government legislators are anchor-dragging and slowing America’s recovery.  It’s politics.  (The President isn’t nice to them, doesn’t like them very much, and thinks it’s a waste of time to talk to them.  I’m with him, along with 90% of Americans.) 

Legislators naturally point away from their own presence in the problem: “It’s this President’s lack of leadership,” or “Obamacare,” or “the National Debt,” or “runaway spending” (authorized by legislators!), or “Socialism,” or “Islamic thinking,” or everybody’s favorite, “The federal government is too big.”  Admit it, if you’ve been listening you’ve heard all of these before.  You probably recognize them as excuses.

To legislators goes the blame for failing to adequately minimize the impact of, and speed recovery from ‘The Great Recession.’  Legislators who short-sheeted the TARP, reducing its effectiveness.  Who failed on the budget and gave us “The Sequester” with all its human suffering.  Who are so bent on sticking it to America’s hungry and needy that after a year, they still can’t agree on a farm bill.  Who play chicken with debt ceiling deadlines, and have utterly failed to create the jobs that suffering Americans need.  It is legislators who are starving our economy to feed the golden idol of austerity.

             Around here, we think the problem is good-hearted, patriotic, well-meaning, legislators, who happen to have been wrong about nearly everything since 2009.  Either that, or mean-spirited, anchor-dragging obstructionists—not the size of government, or any of those other excuses.

A Good Memory Is A Good Friend

            You can expect too much from people, but the irony can’t be missed: the Representatives dedicated to saving America money, and their outside agitator, precipitated a government shutdown, right here in the fall of 2013, that cost Americans billions of dollars and over 120,000 jobs.  Whew!  They deserve a reward!  A notice posted everywhere in our country would be nice.  A simple document that says:

WANTED

Every Rep who opposed

A clean C.R.

For Cheating America

In it’s time of need

REWARD

For throwing these

Bums our of office

            On the other hand, that would be crass.  Better we should just quietly remember what was done to us, indeed what has been done to us for years, and resolve to recruit and support sensible adults in the next election.  Not the unassuming, smiling liars; not the self-aggrandizing, bellowing heroes; not the self-appointed saviors of “our way of life,” nor those who demand unearned respect, and not the three-day-work-week-wonders, or the “my-way-or-the-highway” road hogs.

            If your Representative did not vote, BEFORE the shutdown, for a clean continuing resolution to fund the government, he or she is partly responsible for the expensive damage done to all Americans.  For nearly one million furloughed employees.  For reduced economic activity.  For lost jobs that we needed.  For the damage done to democracy.  For failing to carry out the Constitutional duty of the House with alacrity.  And for soiling the effectiveness of representative government.  Around here we think it’s fair to expect voters to remember. 

Swearing In Doctor Fleet

            “Doctor,” I gasped, when he finally entered the room, “I can’t control my @#$%^&* words.  I keep saying *&^% or some other @#$%^&* swear word.  I’m a *%#-of-a-^$@*% if I know what’s happening!

            “If you’re going to talk like that, you’d better be drunk,” he snarled. “I’ll get you another cheap domestic beer for $18.”

            “I haven’t been drinking! I @#$%^&* can’t help this.  Do something!

            “Your sincerity amazes.  Let’s have a look!”  He shined that *^$-%&#%*$ bright light in my eyes, nose and ears, grabbed my neck as if to choke me, and stuck one of those popsicle-sticks-on-steroids in my mouth.  “Say ‘ahhh’,” he intoned.  Twenty @#$%^&* minutes later he removed the ^$@! stick, stared at it in disgust and threw it away.  “Mouthwash not one of your things, ehh?!”

            “@#$% mouthwash, Doc.  What’s going on?!”

            “You have a rare condition known as non-Tourette’s-exclamatory-linguitis.”

“@#$%^&*-a, Doc, and ‘puer est agricola’.  Say that in English!”

“Right, Latin-master!  Your brain prevents you from saying a pleasant word.  Say ‘thank you’.”

“@#$% you!”

“See?  You can’t do it.  It’s treatable, but it’s so entertaining I hate to interfere.  Come with me on my rounds!”

“Doc!”

“O.K.  I’ll give you a shot to counteract it and some pills to keep it away.”  He grinned and plunged me with some Amazon basin bile.

“Thank you,” I said, surprised at the welcome absence of obscenity. 

“Always a pleasure seeing you,” he said, slamming the door.

“You forgot to say ‘suffer’,” I muttered, “…seeing you suffer!”ou have a rare condition known as 'hh?!"and threw it away.my neck as if to choke me.  And finally, he stuck one of those popsic