An Acquired Taste

When I was growing up there were 100 breweries in the city limits of Chicago. Oddly I didn’t care for the bitter taste. I had a too highly developed sweet tooth. It wasn’t until a summer day cutting our lawn did the moment arrive. To get a better idea of the circumstances you the ever interested read must know the following. My parent’s lot was ¾s of an acre; the front yard had a 14 degree pitch that dropping into an open ditch, 14 trees, humidity at 250%, air temp 95 degree. I drain Old Style in a single gulp

What the F!

If you don’t have the word, you can’t say the word. I grew up in a middle middle middle middle class family. All my mother’s family and my father’s family had been middle class for at least 300 years. It’s a good chance it goes back a 1000. I hadn’t heard a swear word or a word used to swear. When I finally heard them come spilling out of someone’s mouth it was a neighbor kid from Oklahoma. He had one serious drawl. In the 50s anyone with a drawl in Chicago was consider less then emulatible.  So I didn’t

Stumble upon

I figure there has to be about 1 million registered historians, and 10% will publish a book. That means there’s a good chance you or your father will end up with a one degree of separation from said book. There was a monster book called Organizational Man. In it was a section about corporate housing. The author picked Park Forest Condominiums to expand how the system worked. That was in the 50s by the 60s the plan totally fell apart and that was when my Dad started selling condos. In the 70s same condos went section-8. Never do future history

Sex Drug Roll and Rock

Though all those things were actually happening regularly in the heart of the Midwest, they weren’t happening for me. I needed a plan.  A simple plan. Santa Cruz, the mere mention congers up monumental levels of possilbites.  An open fire on the beach swigging down multiple Coors and puffin Maui Waui, a California girl and a sleep bag full of sand. Damn. Or I could get a job in the steel mills, raises 2.7 kids in a condo in Park Forest drive an 8 years old Duster….  A big silver bird deposited me in SJIA in the summer of 74

Just Turn it Off

About 15 years ago ABC ran a story on H-1B. It was a corp hack job showing happy productive French engineers milling about, while the anchor extolled how wonderful this program was for America. At that moment I heard the dog whistle: The good jobs in America aren’t for you. So I stopped watching network news. When the republican took the House I stopped all rss new feds, turned off Jon Stewart, and nearly never talk politics to my coworkers. Since I can’t directly change a god damn thing I’m taking myself off the grid. Cynical you say, no happier.

It’s Not a Bug it’s a Feature

You may have notices the small gaps in my posting. Well, It isn’t my fault. When I start to write in PST it’s a time of day we like to call DAY, but in kron server land it is already tomorrow. Well bit me. Not you the reader, no the unix batch file that isn’t connected to say THE SUN. Ok why the anger? When I was a child I didn’t get a pony or a Clarinet. I would have been the first Clarinet Cowboy, bigger then Gene Autry. By the way his real name was Orvon Grover.What a wuss.

Web 2.0

Its odd having a place that hasn’t been tramped by 10,000 feet. I can actually go to Twitter and get @mintisity. I can make a Facebook page for mintisity.  Oh ya there’s mintisity@gmail. I got this thing totally cross covered. Told Jim about all the social media hook ups, he said “until it’s obsolete.” Yup we’re just a large herd of cattle moving from one cyber pasture to the next. MySpace was the place, now it’s Facebook, next week FlashPit. The net is littered with the graveyards of long abandoned communities. Once there was a shining kingdom called Gopher Space.

Rats Nest

Mere mortals will plug anything into a computer. As wires increase the wires gets twisted at some point the brother-in law must come in and clean up the mess. Further every non-geek will put their computer wedged in a particle board deskett further wedged into a corner surround with S! Ok, hour and half on my knees back turned sideways. AND THIS is how you become a curmudgeon. I can not even hear my brain any more. Non stop female burbling. I’m just trying to get this post out before I lose my mind. Too late. Send in the clowns

Do you always want to hear the truth?

An AP wire photo showed dozens of doctors and nurses milling around outside a New York hospital, waiting. At nearly the same time in towns and cities all over America people were give their life blood, so it could be shiped to those in need. The raw truth of that moment is there would not be 1000s of wounded. In a major misstep blood banks told America they did not have the capacity to except their gift, to come back another day. They misunderstood the need of that gift and try to reroute it to suit their internal needs.  WRONG

To Laugh at a Funeral

On the third day after the fall of the towers a firm blanket of sorrow was settling in. It was like America forgot how to laugh. No one wanted to seem insensitive so for a time nothing was funny. Thoughts like a twin towers puzzles were not going to fly. I’m sure people were brimming with punch lines; you just didn’t dare let them escape into the open. This carpet groping for appropriateness opened the door to a truly dangerous lack of inspection. Those in power seized on this and in the name of grim rightness we went to war.