What the ?

On 1/30/2011, the local newspaper,(St. Paul Pioneer Press) published an editorial titled "For tight times, trim the size of state workforce."

The editorial extols the proposed legislation put forth by Republican State Rep. Keith Downey. The legislation calls for the elimination of 15% of the state workforce over four years. In the editorials own words, "The state of Minnesota employs about 34,000 people (not including those at our colleges), roughly the same number as 10 years ago."

Not exactly expanding the work force to handle the problems arising with the 10 year increase in population & the needs of the taxpayers. Mn population according to 2010 U S Census: 5.3 M.
34,000 employees to provided service to 5.3 M via DOT, DNR, Revenue, Veterans Affairs etc.

The editorial goes on to say "The legislation Downey proposes would give the governor various tools — from attrition and early retirements to wage freezes and layoffs — to trim the size and cost of the state workforce."


I have a partisan concern regarding this solution as my wife is a current state employee. Before you start to piss & moan about that, some facts.

The missus has not had an increase in wages (other then COL) for 7 years. She, amongst others were denied early retirement the last time it was offered as being to essential to the workforce. She will retire on her own volition within 2 years.
She currently oversees a division that brings tens of million of dollars into the state coffers annually.

Again the editorial. "It also would adjust wages in the public sector to match those of similar duties in the private sector, and give bonuses to state employees who find ways to save the state money."

The state has continually under paid their workers vs. the private sector for decades. They constantly lose the young & innovative to the private sector for that very reason.

As to the bonuses proposed for employees for cost saving ideas,
a little flashback story.

I last worked as a state employee 30+ years ago. I came up with an idea on my own to change part of a current system as I saw the waste & hated doing that aspect of my job. There had to be a better way. That idea was projected to save millions & save time processing income tax returns. I believe that change is still in effect today.
My bonus was a hearty thank you letter & a certificate of appreciation from the then Governor. I was so excited that I almost injured myself in my sprint to the waste basket to toss the useless documents.
Do you think anything will change.

The editorial goes on."Downey's proposal would save big money over time, though it would not create a windfall of immediate savings. Some of what he proposes has upfront costs."

If you are trying to help balance the budget, & the bill proposed will offer no immediate savings & will increase current costs, it seems that only one conclusion can be drawn from it.

Union busting.

Conspiracy fun facts:
The Pioneer Press is owned by Denver based Media News Group, nationally known as anti union. The National Labor Relations Board has numerously cited Media News Group for what can at best be described as questionable business practices with unions & their workers.

The state workers union traditionally donates to the Democratic party. It also endorses Democratic candidates. Does it seem at all partisan that this legislation is proposed by a Republican who represents one of the richest districts in the state, or that it is wholeheartedly endorsed by a newspaper owned by an anti union
corporation.

There are ways to help balance the current budget by reducing the number of big money management in the state(some is outsourced, i.e. consultants). Reduce the size of the legislature & temporarily, their wages. Eliminate the Per Diem cost to the legislators. They are only in session 120 days of the year. If you want to use cuts to the state workforce to reduce costs, isn't it only appropriate to ask the same of the legislators?

In keeping with the times, it looks as if the working middle class will continue to shrink in size, & those that temporarily survive will take it up the rectum once more form Corporate America & the government.

Dateline: Your World & Welcome To It

In regards to the Tucson shooting.
Can Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly just zip it, close their respective pie holes, put a lid on it?
What the hell is wrong with you asswipes?
Whether rightie or leftie, this is not the time to try & score points on this horrendous event.
Look up the definition of decency & have someone explain it to you.
JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

JESUS H. CHRIST.
Will someone just nuke the planet now. We have officially lost all sense of humanity.

Hey, Arthur C. Clarke, I got your 2010 right here.

On a purely personal front, 2010 can kiss my big fat wrinkled white ass & good riddance.
The missus almost assumed room temperature (died) following routine surgery to have an ovarian cyst removed. OOPS. I've had elbow surgery to repair an entrapped ulna nerve. Total numbness & partial paralysis in left hand for 4+ months. You gotta love the hoops the insurance companies make you jump through before you can get the obvious taken care of. Recovering nicely now. Thank you Dr. Christina Ward. Forced into taking early retirement via Social Security to keep income coming in. Hence the term income. Nice economy & job market. Buried under 17.3" of snow two days ago with Arctic cold temperature following. Christ, winter is getting harder to abide as the years pile up. Truly a really eventful horseshit year on the medical side of things.

I've become more cynical (didn't think that was possible) & disgusted with mans continued inhumanity to man. Wake up assholes. We're all in this sinking ship of life together.

On the plus side... still have a roof over our heads. The dog is still alive (going on 13+ yrs.) The daughter & her husband are doing relatively well. Reconnected with some childhood (teenage) friends. Although some things are best not remembered. And I wish they wouldn't.
Putting everything into some sort of perspective, not the best of times, but still we survive.
With that in mind & apart from all that humans try to do to make the world uninhabitable, I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas & peace. Come on God, hit me with your best shot. See you next year.

Webb's Best

A couple of posts previously I touted what I considered the best comedy show of OTR, Fibber McGee & Molly.
This trip down the OTR highway, I'd like to take everyone to the best detective show.
OK, maybe not the best plot wise or longest running, but certainly the most unusual.
"Pat Novak For Hire."
This little gem starred Jack Webb. The Pat Novak series with Webb lasted only nineteen episodes. It ran from February through June of 1949.
The basic premise concerned Novak who owned a legitimate boat charter service in San Francisco trying to economically survive. Due to continued lack of business, Novak would hire out doing odd jobs. Most of the odd jobs, were shady & involved tough guys & dangerous dames & always led to murder, which of course, Novak would get the blame. It co-starred Raymond Burr as Police Inspector Hellman, a belligerent cop who really hated Novak & only wanted to either lock him up or send him to the electric chair, regardless as to what the evidence revealed. Burr was about 8 years from starring as Perry Mason on TV.
It is best known among its fans for being fast paced with plenty of action. The finest thing about Pat Novak For Hire was the rapid fire one liners amongst the characters, & the hard boiled narrative . Here are some examples of that dialog.

"Around here a set of morals won't cause any more stir than Mother's Day in an orphanage."
"She was at least 50, because you can't get that ugly without years of practice."
"I better have a drink first. There's an ugly taste in my mouth. I think it's saliva."
"She sauntered in, moving slowly from side to side like 118 pounds of warm smoke."
"You can't afford to have them start laughing at you. People will get the idea it's your face."
"She was kind of pretty, except you could see somebody had used her badly, like a dictionary in a stupid family."
"Somebody had gone duck hunting in the middle of his back."
"I began to think about the .32 caliber pistol. It's a woman's weapon--well, that doesn't prove anything, so's a bread knife if she's in a bad mood."
"You're always in trouble, Patsy. You're a child of adversity, a son of scorn. The fates spit in your eye, and you try to retaliate, but the wind's always blowing in the wrong direction."
"You'd like to fight for some strange fantastic cause, wouldn't you, Patsy? But you can't find anybody your size. Men are too small, and the gods are too big."
"Did your friend get his face at a fire sale too."
"The street was as deserted as a warm bottle of beer."
"I looked up the only honest guy I know, an ex-doctor and a boozer by the name of Jocko Madigan, a good guy, but to him a hangover is the price of being sober."
"When she opened the door, I found out what the right kind of breakfast food'll do. She was wearing a slack suit without much slack."
"My head must have looked like a jackpot--everyone in town was hitting it."
"She had nice hair, and the dress helped too. It was dark blue and had a v-neck, but the designer believed in big letters."
"She was a real pretty nurse, if you like pure mammal."
"She looked real good sitting there in a white crepe dress. It was one of those tight fitting babies that made a bathing suit look like a toga."
"She was in her 30s and pushing 40 hard enough to bruise it."
"I rent boats and do anything else that goes with a weak will and a strong stomach."

Of course Jack Webb went on to bigger things as director & star of Dragnet, both on radio & TV. He also was the creative force behind such TV shows like "Emergency" & "Adam 12". An interesting post script. When Webb died in 1982, he was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, and was given a funeral with full police honors. On Webb's death Chief Daryl Gates announced that badge number 714 which was used by his Joe Friday character in Dragnet would be retired. Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles ordered all flags lowered to half-staff in Webb's honor for a day.

What a whacky night

The spouse & I had just drifted off to sleep when a loud pounding on our door, coupled with the dog barking woke us up.
Going downstairs to see what idiot was banging on our door at that time of night, I damn near crapped pants when there appeared at the door a beefy policeman telling us that there was a "SWAT situation" & we would have to evacuate our home.
Well it turns out that one of our townhouse neighbors had caused a ruckus & the cops were called to his home. (Details are sketchy as I don't know what exactly prompted the call to the cops, or who initiated the call. More info awaits when more neighbors return.) After evacuating, the missus , dog & I settled into the family car down the block to wait out the event. We later did find out the the loony when confronted by the police had threatened to blow himself up. That alone was the reason for the evacuation.
From the safety our the car we watched some text book operations. Townhouse surrounded by minimum 20 cops/SWAT team.(just in the front) Street cordoned off, armored vehicles, sniper rifles. Like living a Bruce Willis movie. The whole operation from evacuation to the all clear (they busted the moron) took about 4 1/2 - 5 hours. They even had a police chaplain present.
After the nut job threatened to blow himself up, the police cut the natural gas supply to minimize any potential damage to neighboring townhomes (ours included).
Xcel Energy had to come out to relight the water heaters & the furnaces after the all clear was given. A great time was had by all except the dumbass loony.
Now a bit of background of crazy boy.
We, and not just the wife & I, but the entire six unit townhome in which we live, plus the surrounding townhome residents,(that's in excess of nine families) have tried for over 10 years to bring about some sort of involvement by the local authorities over the actions of the guy.

Drug dealer (medium to big depending on time of year) Dealing drugs out in the open parking lot around small kids. So many customers, it looked at times like a McDonalds drivethru. Cops could do nothing unless they eye witnessed. We had video tapes of deal going down etc. Not good enough.

One of his roommates accidently shot him in the stomach.

Mutiple police calls for disturbing the peace,fist fights etc.

Outstanding warrants.

Harboring a fugitive. That was a hoot to see 15+ squad cars from Maplewood Mn, St. Paul Mn & the Mn State Highway Patrol & Ramsey County Sheriff converge in the parking lot. All police advancing with guns drawn toward this bozos townhome.

His crackhead buddies tried to break into his next door neighbor's unit while she was home with her kid. Cops called. Crackheads split before cops arrived.

There are more, but you get the idea.
Reprehensible does not quite do justice to describe this guy.


We have tried to have his townhome unit declared uninhabitable by the city as he has trashed the inside. (broken furniture thrown outside & inside, wallpaper ripped off the wall, hanging in shreds, garbage & trash piled in living room. etc.)
Can't wait for the Hazmat team to show up today since the cops were inside his house after his arrest& saw the living conditions.

So all is well. Bad boy taken away. I'm sure there is some heavy duty psycho evaluation coming up. Not to mention,long term jail time if found competent.
And how was your day?
Book Em Danno!

79 Wistful Vista

I'm a fan of OTR (Old Time Radio.) Being of the age in the 1950's, I was lucky enough to be able to listen to some of the best shows first hand during the waning years for this type of program. With the advent of television, what is now called OTR was soon replaced with music, news & local programming with an occasional network show thrown in.
My interest in OTR was rekindled in the late 60's when I came across some old vinyl (33 1/3) records the featured the adventures of "The Shadow". This soon evolved into a search for other programs, which luckily were starting to become part of the nostalgia craze. More & more companies were reissuing these programs on vinyl & cassettes.

I started to collect shows like "The Lone Ranger", "Jack Benny", "Dragnet", "Gunsmoke" & more. Thanks to MP3's, I now have in excess of 3,000+ episodes. I am by no standard considered a serious collector, I leave that to those who have tens of thousands of episodes. After decades of listening (I can't fall asleep without listening to the OTR mp3's), I have opined that of all the shows that I have heard, (and some of them do not hold up or are just plain dreadful), the best & most timeless is "Fibber McGee & Molly".

Fibber McGee & Molly ran from 1935 - 1959. It was sponsored for the majority of its run by Johnson Wax. The show was rated #1 or #2 throughout the 1940's. It is honored
with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Fibber McGee & Molly was also the first radio show to spin off two of their supporting characters into their own shows.
("The Great Gildersleeve" & "Beulah").
The premise of F&M was what is now standard for sitcoms. The blowhard bumbling husband, the long suffering understanding wife who could put the spouse in his place with one withering word.
Beyond the simplistic story line, Fibber & Molly was quite topical for its time. Many episodes centered around the home front during WW II. Plots involved Red Cross & scrap drives. The importance of voting etc. McGee always trying to ingratiate himself in to the current event. His ego was boundless. He could do everything better than anyone on the planet. Foot in mouth was his basic dilemma. Fibber preceded Ozzie Nelson of Ozzie & Harriet fame as never working for a living.

Featured in the best supporting cast in radio were Bill Thompson(The Old Timer,Wallace Wimple plus multiple roles.) He was second only to Mel Blanc for versatility. Gale Gordon (Mayor LaTivia) Gordon is best known for his roles as Osgood Conklin on Our Miss Brooks & Mr. Mooney on various versions of The Lucy Show. Arthur Q. Bryan (Doctor Gamble) Bryan also supplied the voice of Elmer Fudd for Warner Bros. cartoons. Bea Benaderet (Millicent Carstairs) Benaderet went on to play Blanche Morton on Burns & Allen and Kate Bradley on Petticoat Junction,both on TV. She also provided the voice of Betty Rubble on The Flinstones.
Fibber & Molly was one of the first shows to work the sponsors commercials into the action. Harlow Wilcox was the announcer & pitchman. Wilcox was one of the busiest announcers in all of radio. Amos N' Andy & Suspense are just a few of his credits. Music during the golden years of Fibber & Molly was provided by Billy Mills Orchestra, a very tight band with a somewhat Latin influence in later years. These guys could cook. Vocals were performed by The King's Men lead by Ken Darby. Darby became a conductor & composer who won 3 Academy Awards & 1 Grammy. He also co-wrote
"Love Me Tender" for Elvis. Obviously, the most talented group of performers from top to bottom, in all of show biz history.

Often uttered by Molly in response to a terrible pun issued by Fibber was what became a catch phrase even to this day, "T'ain't funny, McGee". Contrary to those classic words, it was & is, Damn hilarious McGee.

Your pardon please

I have been remiss in tending to this blog. What began as a semi-egotistical bit of whimsy has unfortunately become too often, a showcase for personal histrionics.
A very dear friend, & sometime follower of this blog told me that I seem so angry in my postings.
The original intent of this blog was to show the absurdities in the world around us & to comment upon the same, hopefully with a bit of humor. There is certainly a profusion the ludicrous around us today. The last thing that is needed in these cheerless & inflamed times is a third rate hack as myself to add "fuel to the fire."
Yes, there are enough events in the world, especially in the political arena to make anyone become another Charles Whitman. The time has come for me to dial it down.
Occasionally, I will rant on about some jackhole who in my opinion has crossed the line of civility. However, I plan in the future to limit these outbursts to a minimum & return to be the sarcastically humorous SOB that has become my trademark & hopefully endeared me to my family & friends. I will periodically toss in a joke, no matter how much in poor taste it may seem,& completely unrelated just to make someone smile. Thank you for your indulgence.