Funny’s 37th Law of Inevitability: The older you get, the faster time passes.
Illustration: Up at 4:30 a.m. Twenty minutes later, it’s 6:30 and I’m late getting out the door.
funny
These People Would Lead America?
News report:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican congressman from Florida turned to email on Tuesday to call a Democratic colleague from the state “vile, despicable and cowardly” after she called into question his stance on Medicare during the debate over a spending cap and balanced budget bill before the House.
Rep. Allen West, a first-term Republican from south Florida, wasn’t shy about his online outburst. He sent his peppery email to numerous lawmakers as well as his target, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
The subject line of the email: “Unprofessional and Inappropriate Sophomoric Behavior from Wasserman Schultz.”
The e-mail said: “Look, Debbie, I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up.”
Associated Press
July 19, 2011
And what did the virago say that triggered this spray of rabid slaver?
About West’s support of the Republicans’ “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan, she observed, “The gentleman from Florida, who represents thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, as do I, is supportive of this plan that would increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries. Unbelievable from a member from south Florida.”
And there we have it. This is what’s wrong with the extreme right wing of the Republican party: they are not leaders.
It’s hard to say what they are (at least, while remaining more or less polite). But leaders, they are not.
A personal attack in place of a reasoned argument on issues is what we call an ad hominem fallacy. It is a flaw in logical thinking. It is not leadership.
Unleashing language like “vile, despicable and cowardly” is the abusive behavior of a bully. It is not leadership.
Demanding that a person who disagrees with you, however blandly, sit down and shut up is hectoring and bullying. It is not leadership.
Have Americans become so inured to the loud-mouthed meanness that substitutes for discourse on national talk radio that we actually think this is discourse? It’s not.
It’s a lot of things. It’s rude. It’s stupid. It’s ignorant. It’s vile. It’s unprofessional. It’s despicable. It’s vicious. It’s shallow. But it’s not discourse.
It’s meanness. It’s bullying. It’s intimidation. But it’s not leadership.
Another Shafting for Adjuncts, Comin’ Our Way
We’re told, through a listserv published for community college district adjuncts, that the policy for adjunct faculty is to be rabidly enforced. We are NOT TO BE TEACHING more than three sections a semester.
Interestingly, that appears to include summer sessions. That is, your summer session time is counted in to your academic-year teaching hours, somehow, through the magic of accounting sleight-of-hand. You get a few extra hours beyond 20 per week per semester, but that would allow you to take on only one course in the summer. If you teach any more than that (this summer, I have two), you will be forced into the state pension plan, in which there is no chance you will ever become vested (you have to work for the State of Arizona or Maricopa County for 10 years to become vested!).
Your “contribution” to the state pension plan is 11.13%. In other words, if you dare to take on one course too many, if you perform any substitute teaching, or if you serve on any committees, you get an 11.3% pay cut. Thus your unpenalizable salary is kept rigidly low, and you are smartly punished if you make a mistake.
Now… Each time a contract ends—which happens at the end of each term—you are considered “terminated” from state service. Therefore, you can fill out forms and jump through hoops and demand that the “contribution” be refunded to you.
Thus it’s not exactly a pay cut.
It’s less of a pay cut if you’re over 57½, because once you’ve reached the age at which you’re permitted to take drawdowns from tax-deferred savings, you may take out the money without a penalty from the feds.
If you’re too young to take out money from a tax-deferred plan, then the only way to hang on to what you’ve earned is to roll it over into an IRA.
Well, of course…you wouldn’t be working for $2,400 a semester if you didn’t need the cash flow, and need it in a big way. So what this amounts to is a nice little shafting and another tool to keep adjuncts down.
Since I can get the money back at the end of each semester, it won’t much matter to me. As long as my chair can get away with it, I’ll take on two summer courses and just let the SOBs confiscate 11.13% of my pay; then take it back when I’m “terminated” at the end of each semester. For me, it will just mean another helping of bureaucratic hassle.
It still will provide enough to pay my share of the mortgage on the downtown house, plus a few extra dollars to help make ends meet. I sure could do without having to fill out more forms and argue with more bureaucrats, though. Gawd, how I hate that!
Planning for Emergency Expenditures
Sometimes you feel like you can’t win for losin’. You just get to the point where you think you’ve got the finances under control, you figure you can finally cope, and wham! Another annoying little surprise whaps you upside the head.
Just got my first summer paycheck—about $600 net for the first week of teaching. It’s not much, but it’s one heckuva lot better than nothing.
Some time ago I estimated that I’d net about $3600 from the two sections I’m teaching this summer. Six hundred of that would go to help cover the June through August utility bills, which I expected to soar because I made the conscious decision to set the thermostat at a comfortable level now that a tiny bit of income is flowing in over the 115-degree summer. The rest, about three grand, would be folded back into the mid-term survival fund, putting off the date I’ll have to draw down retirement investments by about three months.
Things look a shade better than planned: if the $600 is for one week, as appears to be the case according to the PeopleSoft statement, then the 2½ more paychecks they’ll owe me this summer should net just about $3,000. However, thanks to the new AC unit, the June utility bill did not exceed my regular monthly budget—although it remains to be seen what will happen when the July bill comes in next month. But even one month of not having to pay astronomical power and water bills preserves some of that $600.
So. I’m thinking, wow! What to do with this vast lucre?
Could I (can you imagine?) actually spend it on something I’d like to have or do? I would so much like to take my dear and constant friends, La Maya and La Bethulia, out for a wonderful dinner on the town. But I can barely take myself out to dinner at Taco Bell, much less treat friends to a gourmet feast at the Barrio Cafe. I still need clothes. The Sanitas clogs I bought a year or so ago and wear constantly are about shot—they really need replacing. Six hundred bucks might allow me to do all three of those things!
Well. No.
Harvey’s still not working. That’ll be another $90 for further repairs, bringing the total cost to get him running to about half the cost of a new Hayward pool cleaner.
And then, to frost the cake, the pool system is sucking air from somewhere during its shut-down time. When it comes on after having rested overnight, great bubbles of air belch out of the inlets.
That, my friends, is what we call “not a good sign.” Very possibly…indeed, the operative term is “probably”…there’s a leak in the plumbing somewhere.
Don’t even ask how much that’s going to cost to fix. Just say good-bye to the $600, and then some.
Yes, I do have an emergency fund. As we know, each month we should put a few bucks aside for these little contingencies, and I have the credit union automatically transfer two hundred bucks a month into said fund; anything left at the end of a month also goes into that emergency account. Problem is, the contingencies have been coming hot and heavy, and every one of them has cost a helluva lot more than $200: the dental bills; the car repair; the shingles shot that wasn’t covered by Medigap or Medicare; the doctor’s visit that wasn’t covered by Medigap or Medicare; and on and on. Each cost ran significantly more than the $200 monthly deposit.
This means the emergency fund has steadily been shrinking. There’s only about $1,700 left in there. It may not be enough to cover the cost of pool repairs, if the problem is what I fear it is. That means yet another big bill will have to be paid from mid-term survival savings. Instead of extending the time I can live on the survival fund as summer pay goes into it, that pot may actually shrink because of this month’s adventures. And the extra income earned from working like an animal all summer won’t help.
{moan} Remember that 20-hour day?
Well, I have a strategy, though a half-baked one.
One of the things that’s given to crapping out when I least need yet another unplanned bill (which is just about any time, come to think of it) is Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner.
Leslie’s has a perennial “sale” on those things, which is to say that their regular price is about $75 less than you’d pay if you ordered it online. Tax on the retail price would be about $33, leaving one with a small saving if one bought the critter there.
I’m thinking I should buy a new pool cleaner, using survival savings for the purpose (since I’ll have to rob that fund anyway for the upcoming gouges). Then go ahead and get Harvey fixed, too. This would give me two of these gadgets that function.
So, if one of them dies at a moment when I can’t afford a repair bill, it won’t matter. I can attach the other one and let it run until I can afford to get the invalid fixed.
This would give me a little more control over the surprise bills. Not much, of course, but some.
LOL! By that logic, I could control car repair bills by spending 20 grand on a new car and keeping the Dog Chariot as a back-up vehicle. Must hurry out and buy one.
Seriously: Do you have a strategy to deal with unexpected costs when the costs exceed the amount you can afford to set aside in your emergency fund?
Image: Hyundai Santa Fe. IFCAR. Public Domain.
Is She Gone?
OMG! I think the German shepherd lady just moved out!
Not for certain yet… It was on the late side of mid-afternoon when I drove into the neighborhood and spotted a BIG-a$$ Bekins truck parked out in front of the house where the late, great crime occurred. Whichever way the movers were going, they were about done, and so there was no action. So I couldn’t see whether they were carrying things in or out. But because several brand-new, unused boxes were leaning against the front of the house, my guess is she’s moving out and those were boxes she was returning to Bekins. Or boxes the movers were going to use to pack up her stuff.
A bright red FOR RENT sign was stuck in the front yard. Why would the landlord have a for-rent notice out there if the tenants were moving in?
Cruised by the house a couple of times, as unobtrusively as possible, which wasn’t very. Came home, put the groceries away, let the dog out, changed my clothes, idled a few minutes away. Then I rode my bike down there, through the 109-degree heat, to see if a slower, closer look would resolve the question.
By then, the truck had left. It looked like the house was vacant! Of course, I was afraid to charge right up to the front windows and peer in. But I do think SHE’S GONE!!!!!!!
I’ll drive by there tonight after dark. If there’s no light in there, then maybe I’ll be emboldened to barge up and look in the windows tomorrow.
Wow! How awesome would that be, if she really were gone?
Cassie and I would get our favorite evening walk route back. It’s the best after-dark doggie-walk trail through the neighborhood, because it doesn’t go near the park, which isn’t very safe at night, and because it doesn’t cross the main north-south feeder street, taking us further afield than one would like to be on foot at 10 or 11 p.m. This route passes several really beautiful homes, borders a horse property where the burros come up and kiss Cassie on the nose, and goes through a lush, quiet neighborhood full of mature trees and cool, irrigated lawns. All these things make it the closest desirable place to walk, day or night.
I haven’t taken Cassie back there, of course, and was resolved never to walk anywhere near that house again. That meant we couldn’t go into that part of the neighborhood at all, since we have to pass that house to get into the enclave to the south of it.
LOL! She must have called the landlord, told him there was a crazy woman in the area, and demanded to be let out of the lease. Heeeeeee!
Whatever: good riddance. Now we’re free to walk anywhere in the neighborhood we please.
Update
Bicycling past the house early Sunday morning, I saw a vehicle parked in the driveway. Damn! She must have been moving in, not out. Doesn’t matter, I guess…Cassie now refuses to walk in a southerly direction from our house, anyway.
Images:
German shepherd dog. Ameliorate! at en.wikipedia. Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Pmuths1956. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
My Daddy’s Diet
In the past two and a half weeks, I’ve lost an amazing eight pounds.
Did standing up for the daily eight to ten hours of computer work do the trick? I kinda doubt it. No visible change had happened after a week of that stuff.
Did knocking off the sauce (again :roll:) make it happen? Not likely. About once every six months I jump back on the wagon for a few weeks, and it never changes the scale reading. Besides, I don’t think one or two glasses of wine, beer, or bourbon and water really is that far over the top.
The weight loss has occurred, in fact, over just the past week or so, after I decided to experiment with my daddy’s favorite folk diet: cut out all starch.
By “starch,” he meant bread, potatoes, rice, cereals, and pasta.
LOL! In the good old days, they didn’t eat much of what we would call “pasta.” It would never have crossed my parents’ minds to serve a big bowl of spaghetti topped with fresh chopped tomatoes, basil, and shredded Parmesan. Spaghetti, to their generation of Americans, was some kind of ethnic food that entailed a full day of simmering a gloppy red sauce. Macaroni was served with cheddar cheese and white sauce. And noodles were to be smothered in rich beef, pork, or chicken gravy, preferably with cream added.
Yum. If it were just a little cooler (say, about 50 degrees cooler…) I sure could do with some of my mother’s beef strogonoff over noodles.
Well, anyway. As soon as I quit eating “starch,” the weight started to drop.
We could say this is a modified Atkins diet. Actual, real Atkins, it is not. On My Daddy’s Diet, you’re allowed to eat anything you want except “starch” and desserts loaded with refined sugar (pie and cake, for example, would be nixed, but plain strawberries or peaches would be OK). Atkins wants you to stay off sweet, juicy, delicious fruits (at least at the outset) and certain kinds of veggies dubbed too high in carbs.
Sorry, Dr. A, but I wasn’t about to let the candy-sweet watermelon and the Costco flat of astonishing peaches in the fridge go to waste. So I’ve been blithely scarfing down two or three peaches a day, and as much as a quarter of a watermelon.
And I still lost weight!
Atkins also wants you to kick not just your alcohol habit but your caffeine habit: he theorized that caffeine somehow interfered with your metabolism. Right, sure. Life’s miserable enough without a bourbon and water in the afternoon. I’ll be darned if I’m doing without my morning coffee and my all-day iced tea supply. Matter of fact, as we scribble I’m swilling down coffee with élan.
And I still lost weight!
Hot dang.
Daddy’s scheme allows you to eat pretty well, without making you feel unduly deprived. Come to think of it, I don’t feel in any way deprived…now and again I push away from the table feeling I ate altogether too much. It’s just a matter of finding something unstarchy to substitute for your favorite cereal and potato products. For me, it’s been lettuce, lots of lettuce. Cabbage is good, too.
Breakfast looked a little problematic. Though I don’t eat much cereal (hate the processed stuff, and am not crazy about gooey cooked cereal), I’ve long been in the habit of fixing two pieces of bacon, two slices of toast, and about a gallon (so it seemed!) of orange juice frappéed with frozen strawberries.
I substituted a couple of sweet, flavorful tomatoey Campari tomatoes for the toast. With so much fruit in the house, often I’ve scarfed down a large peach or slab of melon in place of the juice, which itself consists of one large glass of OJ blended with about four large berries and a drop of vanilla extract. There’s been plenty of fruit at breakfast: a few days I’ve had a peach and watermelon!
When I took it into my little pea brain to cook up a stir-fry, I was given pause. After all, isn’t the whole point of stir-fry to eat the rice soaked in soy sauce? Well, it was late at night and I sure didn’t feel like making a green salad, which didn’t sound very good with stir-fry, anyway, so I just added lots of veggies and tried it sans rice. It was delicious! It didn’t need rice at all to be highly wonderful. What’s an Asian word for sans?
{chortle!} I figure the initial poundage drop is the loss of bloat from drinking one or two bourbons and water a day. I rarely drink more than two, and they’re pretty watered-down, but still…they are alcohol, which when you come down to it is just another sugar, only even less benign than the white granulated stuff. The pot belly is still there, though the love handles are noticeably reduced.
Exercise? Not hardly! It’s been too hot to poke one’s nose outside the door this past month. By 10:00 p.m., when it’s marginally cool enough to walk around and the pavement won’t burn Cassie’s feet, I’m usually just too pooped to do much other than drag into bed.
This morning when I woke up at 5:00, though, it was an unheard-of seventy-five degrees out there! A brilliant full moon hovered over the western horizon like a hallucinatory alabaster plate floating in the sky.
Grabbed the dog and made a tour of the neighborhood (as far from the German shepherd hosts as possible). After we returned and Cassie was fed, it was still cool enough for me to pump up the bicycle tires and ride all over Richistan, just to the east of us. Then plunged in the pool before breakfast.
So I got a little exercise, certainly nothing very vigorous but better than nothing. And it’s not likely to happen again soon, because the brief cold snap we’re having is supposed to dissipate today.
But it’s only a little after nine, all that activity has been activated, the plants are watered, all the laundry is done, and the sheets are on the line. Dang! Not a bad kick-off for the day.
I’d like to lose another eight or ten pounds. Even though I’m back in the “normal” BMI range, which I’d managed to edge above, I believe about 140 is more like “normal” for a woman my height and age. What I hope to do is get down to 135, so that during the times of day when one weighs out at one’s heaviest, the scale would never read more than about 140. And if that actually comes to pass, which would surprise me, I think the only way to maintain it will be to stay off the sauce permanently and after this to refrain from dumping vast mounds of spaghetti on my plate.
Welp, speaking of mounds, a pile of student papers awaits. And so, to work…
Image: From a photo by Aoife of box of pareve Pillsbury pancake mix marketed in Israel. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.