Tag Archives: Humor

July 17, 2012 · 0:00

Garbage In – Garbage Out

My bloggin’ buddie Ben Mitchell has done a series of posts that are really helpful for those awful doubts all of us who like to write have in spades. Ben’s latest post, My Writing is of the Highest Quality made me think of this story.

* * *

We’ve all had them. The Boss from Hell. Anna was mine.

Thirty years ago I worked for a woman who was known to swallow subordinates. People who worked for her often left the state just to get away from her. That’s how I got away, and I started a trend, actually.

Anna was smart, dedicated, a work-a-holic. She expected perfection. Documents were edited by four or five people, proofread by everyone from the most senior lawyer on down to the lowliest paralegal (me). Nothing could go out to our clients with a substantive mistake, a grammatical error, an incorrect comma or extra space between words. Worse, Anna didn’t mince words. She didn’t spare feelings. Working for Anna was a daily “sink or swim” situation. And she always seemed to want to fill your pockets with rocks.

Still, for me, the job was a gift. I had been working as a legal secretary, a job I hated. But, the head partner of the department thought I was funny (which as we all know correlates with being incredibly intelligent). So he offered me a promotion, asked if I would be interested in taking a job as a paralegal, a “professional.” I would be part of the team of professionals in the legislative and regulatory division of a law firm. I would learn all about Washington from the inside.

I would get paid less, work longer hours, and get no overtime. What a deal!

I snapped it up though. Because a big part of it was learning and the rest was writing. Writing boring, humorless stuff, yes. But writing is writing. And getting paid to write? Well, it doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

But Anna was unenthusiastic. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want to have someone else, even her boss, choose her assistant. But we were stuck with each other.

It took five years for her to laugh at one of my jokes. But I digress.

So I became a legislative assistant on environmental issues. My job was to analyze legislation, attend hearings, know what all the different Senators and Congressmen thought about legislation, predict what would happen to a bill. And I wrote memos to our clients to enlighten them.

But first they had to get past Anna. The clients, they were easy. The boss? She was damn hard.

She didn’t mince words. She tore apart sentences, decimated analyses. She always knew more about the issue and the Congress and what position each member was taking than I did. It was, well, challenging. And annoying. It was often hard not to collapse in angry tears.

But for the most part, I understood that I was getting the best training I could get. How many of you have had each and every word you wrote for 10 years brutally dissected? I did. And it was never pretty. But I learned.

Still, even a person like me who desperately needed that job has her limits. And I reached them when, during one period, Anna would inexplicably throw my draft memos back at me saying “WHAT IS GARBAGE???!!!” This question was not good for my ego.

I couldn’t quit, I needed the job. I couldn’t go over her head, because, well, I like to fight my own battles. But clearly, I needed to do something.

So I rooted around in the files until I found a memo Anna herself had written about one of my issues. It was years old, but the factual information was still spot on. I needed to change a couple of little things, the Senate Bill number, the names of a few of the Senators, and voila! Anna had written my memo for me.

When I gave it to her, Anna shouted “What is this GARBAGE?”

“Actually, Anna,” I responded, “You were so unhappy with my last memo that I got this old one out of the file. You wrote it; I just changed the bill number.”

Anna was silent for a minute and then said,

“Well, you write better than I do; I expected more of you.”

From that day on, she was respectful and pleasant. She learned that it was OK to laugh at my jokes and that I would still work hard, regardless.

* * *

The Boss from Hell. Anna was mine. Or was she the one that taught me the most? She certainly taught me more about writing than anyone else I’ve ever known. She taught me to be careful, to pay attention, to look at every word. So was she really the Boss from Hell, or the Editor from Heaven? I can never decide. Probably both.

But she is still my friend.

52 Comments

Filed under History, Humor, Writing

Tagged as Crazy people, Humor, Washington

July 13, 2012 · 0:00

Of Bards and Bains

You probably won’t be surprised to know that I am enjoying the news these past few days. Some of it anyway. I am fascinated by Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. I may even start to watch business news, CNBC. And pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Nah.

But tonight I tuned in to find out the scoop. The latest. The Dirt. And I heard a lot.

Mostly, the sound I heard was me screaming, though. Because in one of those efforts to present “both sides of the story,” MSNBC interviewed David Corn, the reporter who broke Mitt’s “When did he leave Bain Capital, and when did he know it” story. But, to keep the semblance of balance between the two sides, they also interviewed a total DWEEBE Republican by the name of Rick Tyler.

Rick worked for Newt Gingrich and was involved in Newt’s opposition research which took on Mitt’s record as head of Bain Capital. Now? Well, Rick has his talking points, and he’s going through them. On national TV. Whether he really understands them or not. And whether or not he can even read them correctly. Sadly, I got the distinct impression that there is quite a bit that Rick doesn’t understand. [We can start with the fact that during the GOP primaries he worked for a guy that everybody hated and hadn’t a snowball’s chance to win the nomination.]

OK, my problem? Rick kept insisting that all this talk about Bain Capital is:

“A lot to do about nothing.”

He said it with an air of intellectual superiority, as if he knew something that we did not.

Ummmm. He did not. He did not even know what we all know to be the correct name of that there Shakespeare play.

Remember, this guy is a Republican spokesman. Shouldn’t speaking be kinda his thing? By definition, shouldn’t he be able to quote from the Bible, from Machiavelli, from Shakespeare? Isn’t that what spokespeople do?

Now, I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Rick misspoke. Nope. Because he said it repeatedly.

Here’s the link to the segment: #48179609 [Sorry, no YouTube. This is the link to the piece — the offending language appears about 5 mins into the story.]

After the third time he announced that, for the world to pay attention to the whole Bain Capital “when did I leave and when did I know I was gone” thing was, “a lot to do about nothing,” well, the only thing I could hear was the sound of myself screaming at the TV. Sorry. Stupidity makes me shout.

At this moment in time, I don’t know what this Bain Capital story will amount to. Personally, I think it is very serious, because no matter which way you look at it, you really can’t say that it is “Much Ado About Nothing.” One way or another, Mitt Romney lied. Either he left in 1999 and lied to the State of Massachusetts about his residency when he was running for governor, or he left in 2002 and lied about the fact that he wasn’t in charge when all those nasty layoffs happened.

According to my mother, lies come back and bite you in the butt.

Maybe this time, even if you’re a Republican, those teeth are going to hurt.

52 Comments

Filed under Criminal Activity, Elections, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Stupidity, Voting

Tagged as Assholes, Humor, Politics, Pushing Buttons, Stupidity, Washington

July 5, 2012 · 0:00

The Years of Living Dangerously

Hey, let’s all live dangerously. What do you say?

Nope, I’m not talking bungee jumping.

Goooooooggggglllllllllleeeeeeeeeee Imageeeeeeeeeeee

Nope, I’m not talking sky diving.

Ahhhhhhhhh (Google again)

Nope, I am not even talking about driving down the I-95 corridor.

Nope.

I’m talking seriously daring as a group activity. Because now that it’s summertime, well, we all need to P-A-R-T-Y. And we need to do it all together. It’ll be a blast.

Here, you go first. Drive across this bridge.

Whittier Bridge on I-95 in Northern Mass. (Thanks Google)

It’s the twin of this bridge, and in roughly the same condition as this bridge was just before, well, you know.

Minnesota Bridge collapse. (Google Image)

Wouldn’t it be especially fun to drive across that? The adrenaline rush would be amazing. Especially when you drive across it real slow, with thousands of other similar thrill seekers. A hoot-and-a-half?

And you don’t need to just play on that bridge. Nope. A study published last year by Transportation for America found:

One in Nine Bridges in America “Structurally Deficient, Potentially Dangerous”

So chances are you won’t have to go too far to find a place to play this game. Here’s a link to a map that will show you where. We can get thrills every single day!

Across the country, there is the cry of “cut-cut-cut,” by which the town criers mean “gut-gut-gut.” And it is giving everyone in the country multiple opportunities to tempt fate. To see just how thoroughly we can decimate our services and our infrastructure before calamity strikes.

Who needs thrills from extreme sports when reality is always near?

Have you heard about what happened recently when reality struck in Colorado Springs, Colorado?

Colorado Springs is considered the “birthplace” of The Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country, in part spawning the Tea Party movement. It is also the home of “Focus on the Family,” you know, that bunch of progressives whose fearless leader claims “was the tea party before the tea party was cool.”

Last year, there was an election for the job of Colorado Springs Mayor. Nine candidates ran. Six of them signed Grover Norquist’s “no taxes” pledge. (The very same pledge that has stymied the U.S. Congress.) One candidate, Richard Skorman, didn’t sign the pledge. His reasoning?

“What if the city got hit by a major wildfire?”

But reasonableness and forward thinking no longer wins votes it seems.

Mr. Skorman lost, and the candidate who won, had signed Grover’s pledge. And “cut” was just what new Mayor Steve Bach did. They laid off policemen and firefighters. Sold assets. Cut-cut-cut-cut-cut. Yahoo!

Oh, but have you read the news lately? Well, it seems that the city of Colorado Springs got hit by a major wildfire! Who could have imagined that that would ever happen? I mean, it’s a freak occurrence, right? It never happens. Right? Who knew? Who could have predicted it?

Google Image

Now that the unimaginable has happened, well, they’ve called in the National Guard because, due to (1) the catastrophe, (2) the reduced police force; (3) the reduced firefighting resources; and (4) LOOTING, they need help. Yes, there aren’t enough firefighters to protect the town, folks are looting, and there aren’t enough police to handle the crimes.

Who would ever have guessed? Oh, yeah. One of the candidates guessed. My bad.

When did we become a country so unwilling to work together, to pool our resources to prevent problems and to tackle the unforeseen? When did paying your fare share become something that only fools and progressives do? When did working together to build a better country become something for patsies?

Oh yeah. 1980. I remember it well.

Remember? “The government IS the problem.”

There is real need to work together, chip in — in cash and sweat equity. That’s how America was built. That’s how it became a great nation. Because that’s what is really at stake in our political philosophy and the folks who are unwilling to pay more reasonable taxes (and by folks I mean the rich bastards who can afford to pay way more. I’m talking to you, Mitt and to your buddies).

Are we a country that builds or a country that crumbles. That collapses. That burns.

Elections matter.

68 Comments

Filed under Climate Change, Criminal Activity, Driving, Global Warming, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Real Estate, Taxes

Tagged as Assholes, Crap, Crazy people, GOP, Humor, Stupidity, Taxes, Tea Party

June 28, 2012 · 0:00

Heard on the Fly

You know how close I am to Washington, DC, don’t you? Yup, I’m right across the river — it’s right outside my window. So naturally, I have my finger on the very pulse of the Nation’s Capitol.

Sometimes, I have inside information.

Sometimes, I know what’s going to happen in advance.

Sometimes, I overhear the people at the heart of the day’s most important events.

That’s what happened this time. Yes, I knew what was coming. I just couldn’t tell you or I would have had to kill you. You know how that goes.

Because on March 28, 2012, moments after the end of the Supreme Court argument on the Affordable Care Act, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito came to my offices.

They flew in unexpectedly. Most of our staff members were surprised and watched them from a respectful distance. But not me.

Nope. I sucked up to them big time. I offered to let them pick my brain, so they let me in real close. Close enough to hear them discuss the oral argument and listen to their opinions. You know, the opinions on which so many people like me with chronic diseases depend.

Justice Scalia was the first to arrive.

Then, Justice Alito joined his colleague on the balcony.

And just like Alan Shore and Denny Craig on Boston Legal, Antonin and Sam just kicked back on the balcony and chatted about their day.

“Wasn’t that debate a hoot, A-man?” said Justice Alito “How we gonna vote?” Sam always defers to Scalia when figuring out how to think/vote.

“It was boring,” responded Scalia. “I hardly had any opportunities to show how brilliant I am. Three days of being just like everybody else. I don’t know how I managed. Besides,” Antonin added, “I decided to vote to repeal it before Congress even passed the law. Healthcare for everybody? Even for people who don’t have lifetime judicial appointments or coverage from serving in Congress? Yeah, right. Over my dead body.”

“Of course you’re right, pal,” responded Sam. “But do you think we’ll be able to get the chicks to go along with us?”

“What are you scarfing? Didn’t you hear those ‘girly-girls’ talking?” scoffed Scalia. “‘Chronic conditions,’ ‘Judicial activism’ ‘Medicaid expansion.’ Bah! They shouldn’t let chicks on the Court. Especially not these feminista types. They have no ‘judicial restraint.’ They shouldda all been Borked.”

“You got that right, A-Man. But I think we’re stuck with them for life.” The Justices were quiet for a moment, and then Alito expressed his deepest fear in a barely audible whisper: “I’m worried about the Chief, though. You think he’s with us on this one?”

“He is getting a bit uppity these days. Independent-minded. He won’t even let me peck at corpses first any more,” responded Scalia disdainfully.

“And what about Kennedy? He is so damn wishy-washy, you never know what he’s gonna do.”

“Oh, he’ll vote with me. With us. And Thomas will too, of course.”

“Uh, A-man? What if we lose?”

“We’ll hide behind our robes. And our awesome healthcare coverage. Oh, and our lifetime judicial appointments. And maybe we can get CNN to announce the decision our way.”

* * *

I am absolutely delighted that I had to rewrite this entire post, because the Supreme Court just voted 5-4 to uphold the Affordable Healthcare Act, even though it was way funnier when I expected the ACA to be overturned.

These two vultures, voted, as predicted, to overturn the law, and were joined by Justices Thomas (no surprise) and Kennedy (a surprise to me at least).

I post this in celebration. It is a victory for folks like me with chronic health conditions. It is a victory for everybody but the GOP, who was for the mandate before they were against it.

These photos of two black vultures/supreme court justices were actually taken at my company’s offices immediately following the oral arguments on the Affordable Health Act before the U.S. Supreme Court. Photoshop was not used. All photo credits belong to my friend and colleague, Ruby, and were used with her permission.

No vultures were harmed while creating this post.