Tag Archives: Pushing Buttons

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

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June 11, 2012 · 0:00

Birthday Party Blasts!

Sigh.  The guilt.  The knot in my stomach.  The heartache of knowing that I am an inadequate mother.

No, I didn’t forget my child on the roof of the car.  I did not sell him into child pornography or child slavery.  I did not force him to converse with me only in Pig-Latin so that his classmates would laugh at him when he started school.

Nope.  I failed in a much more important way.

Birthday parties.

Maybe it is just that I became a parent too soon.  Maybe there is still time to discover a spacial anomaly that will allow us to remedy the situation.  So that we could once again hold our heads high with the other parents who hosted birthday parties for their equally indulged children. Sigh.

We had fun.  Or so I thought.

When Jacob was young, we had a swimming pool.  And so we had lovely gatherings for dozens of friends with everybody in the pool.  I was young enough then to even appear in front of my friends in a bathing suit.

As he aged, we progressed to other types of parties.  We had one at an indoor playground with tunnels and ball pits and slides and pizza.  We did bowling and laser tag.  All with pizza.

It’s true that unlike a classmate of Jacob’s in 1st grade we did not hold his 7th birthday party in one of the fanciest hotels in Geneva, Switzerland, as did one of his classmates.  It was quite a doo, actually, with waitresses in little French maid outfits carrying silver trays full of, yeah, pizza.  (I’ve always wondered where they’ll hold her wedding.)  But Jacob is a boy, and didn’t care a hoot about fancy-schmancy.

Once we had Jacob’s birthday party at a skateboard rink; helmets and pads were required.  We indulgent parents want to keep everybody safe, and bubble wrap tends to be somewhat suffocating.  We served Pizza, natch.

We only had one real disaster.  And that was when the day before Jacob’s 13th birthday party, which had been postponed, John was called out of the country for an emergency meeting.  Jacob has never recovered.  “Dad missed my 13th Birthday Party,” he sniffed, just this evening.

I thought that was the worst possible child’s birthday fiasco imaginable in an age where parties aren’t done at home, and really all parents need to do is write a check.  It’s hard to go too wrong unless the check bounces.

I thought that until today, anyway.

That’s when I learned that there is a whole new type of kids birthday party that will, well, blow away the competition!  And we missed it.  Sigh.  We were simply born too soon.

And, of course, as in so very many things, Texas is leading the way.  You see, a Texas gun range will be hosting birthday parties for children as young as 8 years old!

“I don’t know whether anyone has ever tried this before,” said David Prince, who is building the indoor gun range.

Personally, I myself, cannot imagine why no one has ever thought of arming children with lethal weapons, filling them with soda and candy and pizza and letting them go at it.  What could be more fun?

Mr. Prince did mention that lots of staff will be around to “help parents supervise.”  Boy, that’s a relief.

Because supervising kids parties isn’t really as easy as it sounds.  That bowling party Jacob had when he was 8?  There were heavy balls falling too close to kids feet, there were shoe rentals (and the fact 8 year olds never know their size) the drinks and snacks to be ordered and kept off the special floor.  It’s complicated.

“We’re not just going to have kids running around waving loaded guns and shooting at piñatas,” said Prince, an accountant and gun enthusiast.

Yup, staff assistance will be available.  This is handy, natch, when lethal weapons are involved; I’d say it’s worth at least an extra $5, easy.  Perhaps an extra $20 if no one dies. 

But you know, I imagine that the release form will be a bit intimidating for the parents who actually like their kids:

Yes, I agree to hold Bubba’s Bullet and Billet harmless, in the event that someone blows my 8-year-old child’s head off.

Nevertheless, I think that it’s good to know that entrepreneurs are developing better ways for parents to get a bang for their birthday bucks.

I just hope the staff is good at distinguishing between pizza stains and blood.

72 Comments

Filed under Conspicuous consumption, Gun control, Health and Medicine, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Stupidity

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May 20, 2012 · 0:00

A Love (?) Story

When I tell this story, I always have to put in a disclaimer.  Sort of like Dickens at the beginning of A Christmas Carol, when he says

“it must be understood that Marley was dead, otherwise nothing strange and wonderful could have happened.”

In this case, it must be understood that I was really, really nice to everyone.  Promise me you’ll remember that.

Once upon a time, I had a job at a law school.  The most fun job I’ve ever had.  I was the administrative assistant to a student organization, the BSA.  The Boy Scouts of America, law school chapter.  The BSA members were 2nd and 3rd year students who did a lot to make the first year students happier during their (relatively miserable and difficult) first year.  They did orientation, taught legal writing, answered questions on where to go, what to do.  The office was large, with comfy chairs and a couch, a full free coffee pot.  A good, friendly place to hang out.  The members did, and so did a core of 1st years who, naturally, tried to become members for their 2nd and 3rd years.

It was a wonderful job.  Basically I answered questions and was nice to people.  Always.  A smile on my face, a laugh, a soft shoulder when needed.  It was easy to be nice in such a fun job.

Substantively, I had to know what was going on in the members various activities, because I was the one in the office when the 1st year students had questions.  I had to know what was going on to give the  answers.  Because that was my job.  The BSA members were all nice.  Except Monte.  He wasn’t.  He was a jerk.  Totally uncooperative.  He deserved that name.

Monte was in charge of a very important program that was one of two mandatory moot court programs for all 1st year students.  Essentially, it’s where they learned how to present and argue a case.  A whole case.  They write the briefs and argued the case in front of a panel of judges.

The students had a million questions, and they were also apprehensive, because it was so important.  But Monte was in charge and wouldn’t let me know what was going on.  He wouldn’t answer my questions.  He wouldn’t keep me informed or involved.  I invariably had no answer to give to the poor student who really needed one.

Now, it might surprise you to know this, but I really hate to look stupid.  So one day I’d had enough of being unable to help, unable to answer questions I was supposed to answer.  Unable to do my job.  So I took Monte into the back room and politely explained in the nicest possible way, why he had to do things my way.

He responded “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”  And he left.

Me, except I’m blond. And in color.

To this very day I have never been so mad at anyone.

I went back to my desk fuming, steam coming out of my ears, angry tears, the works.  As I stood there, shaking mad, a tall, blond 1st year student entered the office, came up to me and said – oh I don’t remember what he said.  But it was a question about that program.  Monte’s program.

“I DON’T KNOW.  YOU WILL HAVE TO ASK MONTE WHO IS A COMPLETE JERK!” I screamed at the tall, completely innocent blond guy.

He stood there, put his hands on his hips, shook his head and left the office.  He never returned.

I remember it clearly.  Well, except all I can see in my memory is the outline of a faceless blond guy, shaking his head, clearly thinking “what a bitch she is not very nice.”

John did not propose then and there.

In fact, we didn’t ever cross paths again that we know about during the two years we were there together.  We met again through a guy I was dating who worked with John.  Years after I broke up with the other guy, John asked me out after we met up again at a party.

Whenever someone asks us the “how did you two meet?” question, well, I make sure I tell the story.  Because John claims I fired nuclear weapons at him, which, I think you will agree, is a slight exaggeration.  And it makes me look bad.

Really, I didn’t shoot at him.

But hey, my husband can never claim that he didn’t know I could be a bitch.  And that has been worth its weight in gold (or nukes) for almost 26 years.

*    *    *

I wrote this up after Arindam, of Being Arindam suggested I do it.  And because there is nothing I like to do more than humiliate myself.  Publicly.

116 Comments

Filed under Awards, Family, Humor, Law

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May 16, 2012 · 0:00

No, Google, No!

I am what I am because of Google.  Really.

B.G. — Before Google, I was just a regular person.  I knew how to research, knew what books were, where to find them, how to answer certain questions from them.  There were computers, but they were really more for word processing.

Finding out stuff on the internets was just staring, at least for me, fresh from an 8 year “mommy break.”  There were things called “search engines.”  There was “Yahoo” (always a stupid name).  There was “Web Crawler” (Eewwww.  Will I get dirty?)  There was “Ask Jeeves” (for what, I often wondered — a shrimp fork?  A finger bowl?).  But none of these engines had much horsepower.

And then came Google.  And like Athena, the Greek Goddess of wisdom, Google gave me all knowledge — all I had to do was ask.

At my last job in a large international bureaucracy, someone told me about Google in 1999.  I don’t know when you learned about it, but it was news to me.

It took me a while to share.

Now, I wasn’t really greedy.  But suddenly I could find out stuff that made me look brilliant.

Who is the newly appointed Health Minister of Bangladesh?

Who is in charge of HIV research in Thailand?

What was the name of Myanmar before it was Myanmar?  (OK, my bosses knew that one and I didn’t —  but I could pretend I did, which is just as effective with the right snide look on your face.  Google made us geographically challenged Americans look awesome.)

Before I let on, everybody thought I was amazing.  (It’s a good feeling.)

Eventually I shared my secret.  But they already thought I was brilliant.  I just had to keep up the ruse.  Which is way easier than starting from scratch.

So imagine my dismay when I received the following headline in an email message that popped onto my office computer screen when I had a tight deadline:

Google revamps search, tries to think more like a person

Which person are they going to think like?  Will I like what they think?  What if they think like George W. Bush?  Elizabeth Hasselback?  Judge Judy?  Someone else with neither brains, nor heart nor soul? What if Google thinks like John Boehner — shallow and obtuse and tearful?

Google, please don’t change.  You know if you do this, you’ll take another little piece of my heart.

67 Comments

Filed under Humor, Technology

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May 11, 2012 · 0:00

Word Press, Quit Messin’ With Us

It’s been a fun week, now, hasn’t it, Word Press.

You did some really good things this week, like Fresh Pressin’ two of my favorite bloggers, Darla at She’s A Maineiac and Nancy at NotQuiteOld.

And, through Fresh Pressed (which I don’t usually bother with), I stumbled onto a woman who is stomping in my old stomping grounds and blogging about it at The Adventures of Miss Widget.  She has some great pictures of towns and vineyards near Geneva, Switzerland.

But

You knew it was coming.  There is always a “but.”

But automatically subscribing me to every comment on every blog I comment on, well that was nasty.  Of course, it did give me inspiration for my entry into K8did’s first round in her 7 Deadly Sins contest:   Gluttony.

But then it got worse.

Because today I found out that nobody was writing anything.  Nope.  My Fiftyfourandahalf@gmail.com email address was empty when I woke up and it continues to be empty.  Because instead of sending me emails when my bloggin’ buddies post, and when I want to read the comments of folks commenting on some, but not all, well, Word Press, you aren’t doing that any more.

We all have our own preferences, styles and management techniques for reading, commenting, reading comments, etc.  Can we please just keep our own preferences instead of yours?

Let me say this simply:

Word Press, Quit Messing With Us.

63 Comments

Filed under Stupidity, Technology, Word Press

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