Thank You For Your Service...unless..

As I get older I seem to accumulate a hell of a lot of pet peeves that seem to affect or bother no one else other than me. That’s why if there was ever a position that opened up to replace Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes, I’d be a good fit; but that’s a previous post. This post is about is thanking you for your service.

Growing up I don’t believe I had ever heard the phrase, “Thank you for your service,” until maybe a few years ago when some of us started to question why again were we fighting people in Iraq. It seemed to be the catch all phrase given by a grateful nation to the less than half of 1 percent of the country’s population that was actually doing the fighting in the Middle East. It seemed it was the right thing to say when you couldn’t really explain why so many people were coming back without a limb, or a functional mind or even their lives.

Many people say that we fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here. But the point of fact is we don’t fight “them” anywhere. We sit at home or drive our SUV’s to the mall or big box store to get our giant flat screen TVs to watch the “game” or the newest disposable computer to watch our porn over the net and then complain about the price of gas or levels of taxation. We are left then only with the ability to offer disingenuous platitudes of, “Thank you for your service,” to the extreme minority that actually do fight.

Why do I call it disingenuous, because of people like Rick Perry?



Governor Perry says that, regardless of whether it affects military effectiveness or not, if you don’t fit into his version of what armed forces personnel should be like, then you are a detriment to the country and its core beliefs. He equates openly gay soldiers with the lack of prayer in schools. It’s sort of like saying that women’s suffrage movement and their right to vote was responsible for the Great Depression. One really has nothing to do with the other but he doesn’t see it that way nor, I believe, do many other people.

So when Perry says, “Thank you for your service,” does he only mean it when he’s referring to straight people, Christian people, white people? I don’t know. My guess is that he doesn’t mean it to any people and that it’s just something to say without having to get into finding out about the person he’s saying to, or figuring out how he can make things better for that person. He says it and uses it like so many of us say it and use it now as a euphemism for convenience.

And that’s my pet peeve.

Tea for Two or Taxes?

I finished my taxes at about 12:30am on Wednesday night or Thursday morning the 16th if you want to get technical and work for the IRS. But I figure I had lived in the Hawaii instead of the east coast I would have still had a few hours to go before it was midnight so I think that will be my defense if I should hear anything like late filing fees or any nonsense like that.

Why was I so late? No real reason I suppose. I thought it would take about 20 minutes since I was using Turbo Tax but instead since I had nothing like the records I needed, ready or in front of me, so it took almost 2 hours with a short smoke break in between. I just need to be so much more organized in my life. I’m still looking for a credit card that I took out from wallet some time ago and have no idea where I put it. I would call the bank and tell them that it’s lost but since I seem to lose my credit cards or wallets every 18 months, they may decide not to send me another one. The card has been owned by Chase since the beginning of the year and looking at their website they don’t seem to be as friendly as when it was owned by Wamu, or Providian, or whoever owned it before those two. Where am I going with this?

Oh, when I was doing my taxes it finally hit me what all these Tea Parties that were being held in different places were about. It was tax day and people were protesting about the supposed increase in taxes that will be coming in the future due to the increase in government spending today. No taxation without representation. Folks were doing a present day version of the Boston Tea Party and not the afternoon tea parties they have under the rotunda of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philly. I will say, you have to wake up pretty damn early in the morning to slip one over on me, hee hee.

I am just so out of touch with things nowadays. Maybe it’s because I drink coffee like the girl below so I can’t relate.

I am a free man!

Alright just to please RunningMom. Apparently the the previous video of the Boy Wonder was offensive to some, so I have decided to move on and add more posts so that it will eventually disappear.

I had intended to write something about Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan, both of which passed away this week, or this weekend when we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. with a day of service and welcome the the first African American President as he takes office on Tuesday. I would something like a week in review. But there isn't much more that I could say that you haven't thought of or couldn't find out and read for yourselves. So just a note.

Most people will remember Mr. Montalban as Mr. Roarke, the nattily dressed host and may I say Architect of Hidden Dreams on the show Fantasy Island, or as one of the old MGM actors they called in when they needed a latin type and Cesar Romero wasn't available. But I have and always will remember him as one of the best science fiction villains that has ever graced the silver screen and the man who is probably responsible for the success of the most successful science fiction franchises ever, Khan. Without him there would never have been a 3rd or 4th or 9th Star Trek movie.

"He tasks me. He tasks me. I will chase him 'round de mooons of the Antares Nebula..." Which really isn't a direct or even correct quote from Khan on Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, but it's what I remember and it's what I think of and sometimes spit out when I get into that trekkie kind of mood and I'm surrounded by the right people, trek people. With all the sex and danger that he exhibited at age 61 when he did the movie, he has kept me going if only in the hope that maybe one day, some day I could be as smooth real life as he was on screen.

I think I was under 10 when I first saw The Prisoner and I didn't understand it then. Truth be told, when I saw the series being repeated on PBS about 10 years ago, I still didn't understand it. But at the show's opening, which is posted below, Patrick McGoohan runs around trying not to give up information about something and not willing to accept himself as just a number but instead claimed that he was a "free man." This also is something that I strive for, although it's kind of hard to try to do as in a few weeks from now I will be sending in my personal information on tax forms about how I live and what I do and get to be able to live that way and all with a big fat social security number on top.

Speaking of a free man or freedom itself, MLK, 'nuff said.

It can also be said that an Obama in the White House will be will be a direct result of the efforts for freedom that the good reverend Dr. King gave his life for, as did so many others from the march from slavery to the March on Washington DC and beyond. And this is the part where you come in. This is the part where I realize that there is nothing I can say or do that will lift this moment any higher or greater than it already is. This is the part that I will leave to the poets and the historians and to you to record and honor, this moment and this time.

On the way to DC

Taxes and the Procrastinator

I have been back in Jersey since Friday and I just can't seem to get my ass up and motivated about anything. I promised myself that I would do my taxes as soon as I got back.


It doesn't ever take long, maybe an hour an hour and a half at the most. Nowadays I use TurboTax or some other website (I'm loyal to no one when it comes to taking my money) so I don't even have to think. But it's the 13th and still I haven't got around to it.

I'm not going to to say that when you look up the word procrastinator, my picture would be listed, it's not. But I should write a thesis about it. I have developed what some may call a disadvantage or con, into an art.

There is no feeling like running through an airport, bags in your hands with that crazed look hoping you wont receive a bullet to the left temple and having them slam that airplane door just as you board because you thought you had more time at the beach, bar or bed you just came from. Nothing tells you more that God is in his heaven than when you juggle so much in your life that you sometimes forget the things that are important, and then just when you are about to drop everything you do that spin on your heels, pull something up from where you don't know, and everything turns out well. Men breathe easier, old women stop clutching their pearls because you've come out on top once again.

Well as soon as I finish writing this, by the way I'm supposed to be writing at least 2 posts a week, 3 to make myself feel good, I will get online and start my 1040 forms. Although I may just go to the supermarket before then because there's nothing here that I want to eat and I didn't go yesterday because I was out with friends. Of course by the time that I get back and cook, John Adams on HBO will be on, I like those type of shows, so maybe I'll watch that and then do the taxes. Oh, I might finish the laundry that I started earlier today. There is nothing worse than going through the laundry basket looking for something to wear that no one will notice is dirty. That is, so I've heard, I've never done it myself of course (cough).