How Many Sandwiches?

How many sandwiches can I eat before I die from eating them? That's what I would like to know.

I was working a late trip this past weekend. I would get up. Have something that resembled breakfast and then go to the airport, have lunch...a sandwich....and then on one of the stops, run to somewhere in the airport and get another sandwich for dinner. I'm sick of sandwiches. I think I've been sandwiched poisoned. No more sandwiches. No more yanky my wanky, the donger need food! (from sixteen candles of course).

Now, our washing machine has been broken now for 2 weeks. The machine needs a part that they can't seem to find. I found it on line in 8.43 seconds and could have it FEDEXed and in my hot little hands the next day. They were incapable of such radical thinking. So today is the glorious day when "they" will come with said part and put it in the magical machine. Have you been to a Laundromat lately? Fun. So I'm now calling the washer fixers on the phone. The recording says, " this number is busy, for a charge of $2 we will try to call the number for 30 minutes". What? $2? It used to be 35 cents. This is a machine doing this. Is somebody really going to pay $2 for the phone company to do this? I want my washer fixed.

George Gets It

How prophetic.

I used to believe in what I was told about America. Work hard, blah blah blah. But now I'm with George Carlin. My eyes are fully open. It took 30 years of pay cuts, losing my pension and I'm sure when my USAF pension is due they'll take that too...but I finally get it. Like he says, you and I ain't part of the club.

Las Vegas

Saturday night in Las Vegas and......

there is no one here.

The place is empty. Empty for Las Vegas. And there are so many of these new high rise condo buildings that are also.....empty.

We walked down to the new Encore hotel last night and at 6pm there was no one at the front desk checking in. No one. No one in the driveway and no one in the restraunts. Very strange. The casino had a few people in there and the slots machines were set to not pay out even one quarter. They do have very nice public restrooms. The sister hotel Wynn cost $2.7 billion to build. This probably cost at least that much. Wynn is a nut for attention to detail. I am too to some degree especially if I spent $2.7 billion on a hotel. Well in the restrooms, the tile was pretty but the tile work was pretty ugly. For $2.7 million they can't get someone who knows how to lay tile properly? Maybe that's a lost art. I sure couldn't do it.

The only places somewhat busy were the really tacky casinos still left on the strip like Slots O Fun. The place is a real dump but it was packed. $5 blackjack where the Wynn minimum was $25. The Wynn high roller tables were $500 for blackjack and they were empty. Hello, we're in a recession and it's probably not too cool to wear your AIG T Shirt and sit at the $500 table.

I contributed my $70 to the local economy. Gotta save Vegas.

Zenith

At this exact moment I am staying in a ultra-luxury layover hotel watching a small Zenith TV. By the way, the hotel is one of these where either the heat is on or the A/C. Whenever the powers that be decide that it is warm enough outside, they go downstairs and throw some enormous lever to turn the A/C on throughout the hotel. They haven't done that yet. The heat is still on. At least I can open my window.

So back to the TV. Is Zenith still in business? This TV has to be 20 years old. It needs to come with special eye glasses so I can at least see some of the blurry images. The TV is a dead giveaway on what kind of hotel you're in. Last night I was channel flipping and came across Greta Van Somebody interviewing Newt Gingrich and his 6th wife. On this small ancient TV he didn't look as evil as he would with an HD TV. You couldn't even see the horns. Newt and his wife, that he looks at like he's never had relations with her....he looks really sexually constipated,.....made a movie about Ronald Reagan. They pray for the day of low low taxes and blah blah blah. Hello? 11 trillion dollar debt.

Time to go to work. Hate to leave this room and this TV.

Be Very Happy

If you're not flying right now, be very very happy.

The weather around the country has been dog doo. And it's really messed up the airline system. There is nothing more frustrating for the air traveller than bad weather mayhem.

I'm out flying now and on day one of the trip we were scheduled for a 9 hour layover. Just barely over the minimum. Unfortunately, we arrived to our layover airport 2 hours late. Now our layover is 7 hours which ain't enough. So we have an office called crew tracking and they handle all crew disasters...well not disasters, although it could be disasters but more like crew messes. They moved our departure time to be 1:15 late. We arrived at 11:30pm and were going to leave at 8:30am. Of course none of the passengers knew this. They got up a 5am or whenever to catch their early flight. They arrive at the airport to find out that the flight is delayed over an hour. Why? So the pilots can get their sleep.

When we are in the cockpit getting ready, every once in a while someone would stick their head in and say, "did you get enough sleep?". By the tone, I don't really think they were concerned for my welfare. I wouldn't respond. I just drooled slightly and waved the crash axe wildly in the air. That usually calms passengers down a bit.

So in 3 hours we will fly east for more weather fun. It doesn't look good today. And it really doesn't look good if you're a passenger. I feel your pain.

If you're not flying today....be very happy.

Slavery

I think we're all slaves in America.

When the pilgrims came over here 250 years ago or whenever, all you could see was land land land....no debt...only Indians to steal it from. So how in 250 years could man have screwed things up so bad?

Since we've given our country over to big money, big banks and the very very wealthy we've all become slaves. Most Americans have lots of credit card debt, car loans, big mortgage payments, student loans and every other kind of consumer debt. Even if you haven't bought into the consumerism plot the country has. Our national debt is $11 trillion dollars. When the pilgrims came we didn't owe nobody nothin. Now we owe somebody $11 trillion dollars? So even if your personal debt is zero, you as a citizen owe somebody $11 trillion dollars and that makes you somebody's you know what.

The last 30 years has been a carefully choreographed orgy of spending. And they really cranked it up in the last 8 years with the no interest loans and the no income verification loans. Did it make any sense to anyone that the credit card companies would send a $5000 new card to someone with bad credit? Or no job? I think this was all very well planned. A devious plot to bring us exactly where we are right now.

The "leaders" of our country are now engaged in much hand wringing. Instead of being able to run the country they are slaves to the masters of wall street. They have to give, aka loan, wall street trillions of dollars with no strings attached. When master says jump, you better jump. And the politicians are jumping like rabbits.

I don't think I like being a slave. I like being free and this is all starting to really make me very angry.

Dancing With The Stars

Dancing with the Stars really bothers me.

I don't get it. Millions of Americans do but I don't. And that is irritating to me.

Why don't I like it?

First The stars aren't stars. Most of the time I can't tell who the pro dancer is and who the "star" is. Like Steve-O from Jack Ass. Who is that? I do know who Steve from Apple Computer is. He is entertaining. Sort of. If you want to watch a fat billionaire dance.

Second. I don't know squat about dancing. Tonight they'll be dancing the foxtrot. Ok, what is that and what is it supposed to look like? So when I'm watching, which I just can't stomach so I don't watch, I don't know what I'm looking at. It all looks the same to me. Boring.


Third. If the star wins, so what? It's not like Suzie from Oklahoma is going to win a million dollars and it changes her life. These "stars" just go back into oblivion.

The theme music is annoying. The judges are very annoying and that midget who is the host is the most annoying.

When the judges speak, what the heck are they talking about?

Dancing with the Stars is the opposite of American Idol.

On Idol, I do know what good singing sounds like. I can relate to it. I could accurately judge American Idol. Almost anyone could. You know what good singing is.

I do like watching an unknown become a millionaire and hopefully a real "star".

But Dancing with the Stars completely blows my mind. Why do millions watch?

FEDEX Scare Tactics

I need to look on Amazon.com. There must be a book that all CEOs get when they are promoted that tells them how to behave as a CEO. FEDEX is threatening to cancel airplane orders if Congress passes a law making it easier to FEDEX employees to unionize. That must be in chapter 3 of the CEO book. They all use this tactic. If you don't do what we say then we will will retaliate by doing this. You will go to the naughty chair. If you do not agree to these low pay rates then we will not be able to buy the planes using your earnings. Instead of leading and running the company well, they use scare tactics to bludgeon the employees into submission.

Delta uses this in dealing with it's connection carriers. They will hold a carrot of X number of new airplanes if and only if the employee groups work for nothing. If the employees don't agree then Delta will go to another connection carrier that is willing to work for nothing. They pit one group against the other. With the FEDEX employees, they hold the carrot of an expanding company and advancement. But only if there is no union. And now they are going to threaten the government that they will cancel $3.75 billion worth of Boeing planes if the government doesn't do what they want. To the naughty chair with you Obama.

Southwest is the most heavily unionized airline in the country and they make money. Unions aren't the problem.

And why is this article written by someone in Bangalore? What's up with that? Outsourcing?


(Reuters) – FedEx Corp is threatening to cancel the purchase of billions of dollars worth of new Boeing Co cargo planes if Congress passes a law that would make it easier for unions to organize at the package-delivery company, the Wall Street Journal said.

FedEx may cancel plans to buy as many as 30 new Boeing planes should Congress pass a bill that would remove truck drivers, couriers and other employees at FedEx's Express unit from the jurisdiction of the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926, the paper cited the company spokesman as saying.

In January, FedEx said its express unit exercised options to buy 15 more Boeing 777 freighters, worth $3.75 billion at list prices.

However, the company deferred delivery of some of the planes as the U.S. economy faces a bleak outlook.

FedEx's actions raise the stakes in an increasingly bitter battle involving chief rival, United Parcel Service Inc, and the Teamsters union, which has been trying for years to organize at FedEx, the Journal said.

FedEx and Boeing could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters.

(Reporting by Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore)

AIG

Last week I watched a few minutes of the AIG hearings in Congress. The current CEO of AIG is much nicer than I would be. This guy came out of retirement and is working at his job for $1/year. He started in September. He said he did it to serve his country. That might be a stretch. The guy that is in Afghanistan right now up to his eyeballs in mud and has bad guys shooting at him....he's serving his country.

The Congressmen were really raking him over the coals. They were furious over AIG employees getting $165 million in bonuses. I would have said...hello....I wasn't the CEO when all of this happened. He did say that just not very forcefully. He sounded like a lawyer. And secondly, there were contracts to honor. Very simple. It's a contract and unless it's unlawful, you honor a contract. It's amazing to me that members of Congress would suggest to a CEO that he break a legally binding contract just because they don't like it. That's something one would expect from an airline CEO.

SO if I were the AIG CEO I would have told the Congressmen exactly what they could do with their CEO job and gone back into hiding. Who needs that? This guy did nothing wrong. The congressmen just love to get on TV and sound so pious and righteous. They are just as guilty as everybody else. They are clueless. Why is there all of this hysteria after the fact? Doesn't anybody ever know what is going on in the present?

And these aren't bonuses for performance anyway. They are retention bonuses. The congress acts like they've never heard of it. This has been going on forever. Delta did it for years. When we were taking pay cuts and Delta wasn't do so well, the fat cats were getting millions. Why? Because to retain this extraordinary talent, they had to receive the bonuses. Duh?

If I got one of those bonuses, there is no way I would give it back. A contract is a contract. It's chump change. We're getting all worked up over $165 million. Please.

Now the cool thing that Congress did is that they are going to tax those bonuses at 90%. That is awesome. There is the solution. That is very sneaky. I like it.

Too Much

Obama had a news conference gain last night. Completely wiped out American Idol again. Why doesn't he just book Tuesday nights from now on I can proactively get the Sorry board out and entertain myself. Oh for the good old days when Bush was hiding in the private quarters, choking on pretzels and Cheney was torturing people at will. Those were the days. The stock market was up, my house was worth alot more. Maybe we should begin a vigorous torturing program again.

Usually when there is a Presidential news conference I pay attention. I am always bored stiff but I watch. Not last night. I can't take any more Obama. Dude. Go do whatever it is you have to do to fix our country. Go work it out with Congress. I don't need the Obama hour every Tuesday. Or you on Jay Leno or 60 minutes or Oprah or whatever else you have cooked up. Go act like the President. An update every once in a while is OK but this is just too much.

News Flash.

Yesterday, a guy came to the house to take the front doors away to be refinished. They are a mess. I tried to do it last year with not so good results. I am mechanical moron. Anyway, now to the good part.

Before he told me all of this he asked if I work for the government. He knows that they are out to get him and soon. I guess he thought I could be one of them. Well I am, just not the them that he thinks. This guy said that in September, the US Government was going to close all of the banks and issue food and gas coupons to everyone. Hmmmm. I haven't heard that yet. And he goes to tea parties where they talk about marching to Washington and "burning it down". I asked him if he could postpone his Washington trip until he brings my doors back. He also gave me a 2 hour DVD called the Obama Deception. He said that after I view it....all would be clear to me. OK, but please bring my doors back Saturday, OK?

2012

I got a call from my bank saying that someone was using my Visa card to buy things on the Internet. The charges were only for $7....$4.50....$8.00. Weird. Especially since my Visa card is in a Tupperware container above the refrigerator and I never use it. At least the crook knew I didn't have any money.

So I get my brand new Visa card today and I'm activating it. It expires in 3/12. That does not compute in my brain. I know what 3/12 means but how long is that from now. 3/92 I could easily understand or 3/87. I remember those numbers but when the heck is 3/12? I had to consciously think....now what year is it now? Ok I think it's 09 so 3/12 means it's good for 3 more years...right? Right. Did I have this much trouble when it was 1982? I don't think so.

And why does spellcheck think that Internet is capitalized? Is it because Al Gore invented it?

Greed

Greed

noun: excessive or rapacious desire, esp. for wealth or possessions

AIG executives doling out $168 million dollars in bonus money.....let me know when I'm supposed to be shocked, OK?

I know that the taxpayers own 80% of the company and AIG received hundreds of billions of dollars from the USA. So what. That doesn't change the evil greedy minds of some of the people in the world. Especially those with a fancy business degree. My business degree is not fancy. I got it from a college that I think also doubled as a day care center....that might be why we had to take naps in the afternoon. It wasn't Harvard....let's leave it at that.

It's like when you join the military. Most guys probably don't have a thirst for killing and aren't killing machines. Kill anything that moves. When the Marines get done with you, all you want to do is kill kill kill. They have to make you that way. War sucks. No time to really debate the pros and cons of killing people when you're a Marine in the heat of battle. Fighter pilots are the same way. They weren't born arrogant pricks...at least I don't think so....the USAF pumps them up and makes them think they are the best and can take on any adversary. You need that kind of mindset to go fly an airplane where the "bad guys" are after you.

So now back to the AIG chumps. Human beings are sinful, greedy units. Most humans are, except for Benny Hinn, I think he really means well and if you will just plant a seed in his ministry I truly believe he will use it wisely. (Excuse me, I need to use the restroom). I'm back. When you go to Harvard Business School they teach you how special you are and how the world and AIG cannot do without you. Even though you screwed everything up, you need to be bonused to retain you. You're the best, who else would they get? You went to Harvard, remember? And since things are so screwed up, only someone from Harvard could possibly understand how someone from Harvard screwed things up so badly. See? So they need you to fix this and you need a bonus to stay around. The US population are just ignorant jealous buffoons who don't know anything. Did they go to Harvard? Didn't think so.

Delta's CEO awhile back was LEO, the CEO. Leo went to Harvard and he knew all of the sayings, slogans and tricks. While Delta was going down the tubes and the managers were getting bonuses, he would say that we had to give them bonuses to retain this fabulous talent. Same with Leo's pension. He set aside $65 million in a special account to make sure his pension was guaranteed while he took ours away. He said he had to stash the cash to protect his family. You would do the same, he said. And this AIG thing is just all of the same. Bernie Madoff's wife wants to keep her millions, AIG bonuses, etc etc etc. It's all greed. The people who are accountable are the ones in Congress. They're the ones who didn't regulate this correctly. But they knew. They all went to Harvard too. They leave public service and then go sell their influence to the highest bidder, make millions and then come right back to the gov'ment.

So the people need to rise up, get really angry and take back our government. Or they could just send us our marijuana and we wouldn't care.

Marijuana

Michael Phelps got caught smoking some marijuana. Or more accurately, there was a picture taken of Phelps where it appears that he is smoking pot. He has never admitted to doing so. Good boy. Maybe he's paid attention while watching Law and Order and Cops.

Phelps was on the Today show talking about it and then Larry King had on Stephen Baldwin, representing the Christian right and Rep. Ron Paul who supports legalizing pot.

If I were Matt Lauer, I would have refused to do the interview. It is so stupid. Who cares if Phelps smoked pot? Who cares if anyone smokes pot? The exact day I retire and the evil doers can't drug test me anymore, I am going to fire up a big marijuana thing or a stick or whatever you smoke it in. I'll have to do some research on the very best way to get high since I've never in my life smoked any substance. Ever. Even one cigarette. But I'm waiting. Marijuana, here I come.

The whole anti-drug, anti-marijuana debate is comical. Stephen Baldwin, who is a certified moron....(he showed Larry King the moron certificate he just got in the mail), said that if you legalized pot then kids would go on to stronger drugs. No they wouldn't. You only legalize it for adults. And kids can get pot now alot easier than they could if it was legalized. I have no idea where to buy weed. I guess you go drive to downtown somewhere and hold out a sign or something but I bet every 8th grader in America could get some dope in maybe, 30 seconds. So that argument is ridiculous. Doesn't even hold the water that I would need for my pot smoking pipe. Or bong. They use water right?

Why is OK for me to get high on alcohol, Xanax, Vicodin or any number of legal prescription drugs? I can go buy a bottle of Jack and be high as a kite in a very short while. Or I can tell my Dr. that I'm anxious and get some good old Xanax and be bombed. All legal. But smoke marijuana? To the slammer for you boy. That is insane.

And all of the hysteria the cops go through to catch people with pot. Such a waste of time. The last Cops I saw the kid actually used his brain. He got stopped for driving like a nut. The cop said you seem very nervous, what are you hiding? Nothing. Can I look in you car? No the kid said. Yeahhhh. He paid attention in civics class. No you may not search my car officer. The cop said OK, that's your right and said I'm going to get a drug dog then. Well then they handcuffed the kid for the "officer's protection", called for a drug dog that probably wasn't going to show up, (the cop never got a response from Martha in dispatch) and the kid crumbled and let the cop search his car. Even told him where the pot was. So off to jail goes the kid who drives like a mad man and oh by the way smokes a little weed. Thank goodness he's in jail. Cookoo.

I think Marijuana should be legalized. Now. I think it should be part of Obama's stimulus package. All Americans over 18 can, at their option, have high grade very potent marijuana shipped to their home every week. We would all be high, our anxiety would go down and we would feel better. We would start spending money again and poooof...there goes the recession or whatever we're in. We'd even get a waiver for airline pilots to get high. Only on their off days of course. Now that's what I call a stimulus package.

Why?

Why am I awake? Why did I wake up? Wy can't I sleep anymore?

My sleep is really messed up. I just had three days of pure hell...aka recurrent training. Boy that sucks. 3 days in a simulator that doesn't work at all like the real airplane with a mildly inept sim instructor so we can simulate what it's like in the real aircraft. Did I tell you it messed up my sleep?

Irving R. Levine

Where is Irving R. Levine when you need him?

A Strange Week

Bernie Madoff is in jail. That is a good thing. I wonder what it is like at 70 years of age to go from opulence to living in a cage 23 hours a day. The one hour he is let out of his cage they take him to a different cage for one hour. All by himself. How does your brain cope with that? I have no sympathy for him believe me, I'm just fascinated psychologically about how the human psyche would adapt to that. He has another dilemma too. He's got to figure out whether or not it's worth having someone visit because after each visit you get stripped searched. He'd have to get some paper out to work on that cost/benefit analysis.

My almost 96 year old Grandmother died a week ago. I was at my parents house for the entire week leading up to her death. The same thing happened with my Grandfather. Evidently it is my job to help you move on. That makes in one year, two pets and two Grandparents. Not necessarily in that order. My Grandmother was in hospice at my parents house so that was a good thing. Hospice has some very very good drugs. They don't put up with any nonsense. Liquid morphine, tranquilizer cream, all kinds of good stuff. You aren't going to suffer if they have any say in it.

My Grandmother was on this roller coaster. She would be good and then crash. 4 days before her death they couldn't even get a oxygen reading. The hospice nurse said it probably would be within 24 hours. The next day she's eating ice cream. So the guy I get my physical therapy from is an "energy healer". So I call him up and say what the heck is going on with Grandma. He said that Grandpa and her son have been standing there waiting to take her for 2 weeks but she won't go. She was afraid to leave my mom, her daughter. So I think, OK that makes sense. So when the caregiver went out for a smoke, me and Grandma had a talk. She was unconscious but I knew she could hear me. I told her that I knew what was going on. That Grandpa and your son have been here for two weeks to take you with them and you won't go because you are afraid of leaving Mom. I told her Mom was fine and it's OK and time to go. I also told her that since I was afraid of the dark, I would really appreciate it if we could do this during normal business hours and not at 3am. 6 hours later she was gone. That was at 10pm. I was upstairs when she passed and the caregiver called us and said to come down. About 5 minutes later I am with my Grandmother alone with the caregiver. Guess what happened? The power went out and I was in total pitch black darkness. The power came back on in about 1 minute but I got the message. Ha ha ha Grandma.

The day that she died I was with her almost continually the entire day. She was unconscious for most of it and the feeling I got was like when I was with my sister when she had her baby. It reminded me alot of the birth process. Not easy. Not always pretty. But kind of the same only with a reverse outcome. And then when she was dead it really helped me to see the dead body. I never thought that it would but it reminded me of a Cicada but one that had shed it's skin. Only the shell remained. And that wasn't in any way my Grandmother. She was long gone and in heaven.

Her last day on planet earth she told me that morning that she was going to heaven today. I said Oh, that's great. And because the last two weeks she had been seeing dead relatives I asked her,"Do you see your Mom and Dad?" No, she said, I'm not there yet! Like duh you moron. That was a funny moment.

So here's to a year with no more death. I'm all deathed out. I need a break.

What We Need

What we need in this country is lying.

We need a Minister of Propaganda.

The numbers on GDP growth came out at -6% or something like that and the stock market tanked. Again. Job losses reported, AIG in big trouble again, Citigroup even more screwed up....all this bad news is bad for the economy. We need good news. Big bold lies. And lots of them. Only good news would be reported. All bad news would be against the law. That would turn our economy around. Home sales are booming. Inventory is very low...better buy a house while you still can. And the job market? Those poor employers just can't find enough good qualified workers. Cars? Flying off the lot. All good news, all the time provided by the Ministry of Propaganda.

Now who could be the spokesmen for all of this cherry false news? Baghdad Bob comes to mind. He was brilliant. He stood there on camera and said the American infidels were being repelled at the border when we were actually raining bombs on his head and were about 1 block away. He would be a very good choice. Have they cut off his head yet? Maybe we can get in touch with him. This is important. Another good choice would be Liza Minnelli. She certainly is delusional. She married the most gay man alive, David Gest and anytime she is on Larry King she repeatedly says, "Oh everything is just beautiful Larry, thanks for asking." She's a flake but she might be able to pull it off. She's a great actress. We need someone of that caliber. It's for the good of the country.