Assorted Garbage!

A clear sign the apocalypse is upon us - Halloween costumes for your pets.

The recent elections showed how important the economy will be. Despite the blatherings from the administration about the recession being over voters think not. 2010 will be change once again if unemployment is hovering around 10%. Real unemployment/underemployment is now at 17.5%.

Amazing how many CFO bloggers have their own private invitation only requirements. Can’t control the debate your run and hide and whine like a spoiled child not getting a candy bar. I guess when the going gets tough you hide in a secret room or have everyone register.

“Mumbles” Menino won for mayor of Boston - probably because after five elections he’s shaken the hand of every voter at least once.

The Middleboro BOS is clarking around with retirees. There is one thing a politician does not mess with and that is seniors. They have time on their hands, are organized, vote, and will put pressure on family members.

Health care for illegal aliens? Many legals cannot get adequate coverage.

Those NWA pilots were asleep. Playing on their scheduling computer? No clarking way!

Rhode Island School Of Design has a great museum.

Bumpkin will be at the Flat Iron for 11/21 and this will be as exciting as an appointment at a proctologist or dentist for a root canal. No…seriously….go!

The Flat Iron has an almost weekly influx of folk music and the one thing I don’t understand is why they all dress like bums. I mean I dress like a bum so I know it when I see it. Usually scruffy hair or beard go with it - ladies excluded on the beard. Torn jeans and a flannel shirt. Rock musicians are the same way. Back in the day remember when they wore suits and ties? I think the late Robert Palmer was the last one I saw that had on a suit.

I’ve always considered ties plain stupid. What is their purpose? Really none but decoration. I did some research at the Clark Library and it looks like it was the end result of a war. A heroic regiment had some colorful kerchiefs around their neck and it eventually ended up with ties. Like I saw once how intelligent is it to start the day with a noose around your neck?

Blogger Shark (AKA-BS). Am I allowed to register for your site? Will I be approved? Is this like a credit card where I get this stuff that says congratulations you have been pre-approved?

My wife just spend more money to alter another feral cat that resides in our backyard. This brings the total to four and there are now seven cats. Since this is a public forum I will resist as best I can what my “humane” solution would be.

11/04/2009 - The Day MLB Died

This was no “victory” as the result of astute management skills but simply the end result of the single most gluttonous expenditure excess of the free agent era. An expenditure of $420,000,000 for three players whose combined yearly salary exceeds the payroll of many teams shows the inequities that exist in the current system. The reality is that no other team in the playoffs could have done this. Some may not have been able to sign any one of the three.

With NY we are not discussing figures that have other teams close or - pardon the pun - in the same ballpark. The discrepancies are huge percentage wise and also growth wise. NY is far from “build out” while other teams are approaching it. Other teams could certainly do what NY did if they could. The reality is they can’t - not the Red Sox. Not The Dodgers. No one else can approach the revenue stream to match NY.

When you consider payroll as a percentage of revenue there is nothing exceptionally unusual about what NY spends until you examine the extent of those revenues. The research on payroll and revenue is available with a simple search and I and others have posted it many times. Can Pittsburgh, Kansas City or Cleveland compete at a consistently high level in that type of economic marketplace? Can those teams afford the FA mistake and still be competitive? Occasionally a team will rise to the top but it will be short term since it is extremely difficult to maintain a high level of performance without a high level of revenue. The sustainability just is not there.

Now occasionally a team will make a short term burst and attempt to “buy” a championship which I believe Arizona and Miami did recently. Neither team had that financial sustainability so eventually fire sales resulted. You cannot spend more than you bring in without dire consequences.

Baseball teams are a franchise and like any other franchise they have competition among themselves and mutual collective interest. What is best for our business as a whole? In my opinion that collective interest is best protected by a hard cap. Let true management skill, coaching, astute use of FA talent and player development be the key ingredient and not the ability to overwhelm everyone with dollar signs. I guess to NY fans there is glory in the ability to have their team write a check. The sad thing is they can continue to do it on the same scale driving prices up for everyone until eventually only a few teams are viable.

CFO! Deval! Water Bills! Schools!

Deval “One And Out (I hope)” Patrick has managed to address an exceedingly difficult budget situation by not attacking education and local aide in his recent cuts. No matter where you cut someone will be impacted and it seems that invariably it is those who are most vulnerable. Deval had a profile in courage moment with his cuts but somehow I feel that he wished he could do some real line item work with some of the more entrenched bureaucrats.

H1N1 is starting to look like Katrina.

The Macarena has been the most popular one hit wonder in music history.

Congressman Lee Terry is one sharp conservative.

How come when I ask from an item at the deli it always seems to be a “little bit over.”


I have certainly had my fun with CFO over the months and the reasons have been beaten to death, but they did show at the State House and went through the routine of trying to get the message across with a stacked deck (pun intended). I actually support their efforts in this region since I am a NIMBY but I do not support their efforts to block casino gaming. That is the old you can support the message but not the messenger. Now I guess old BS (how appropriate) will say that is being a hypocrite. Can’t argue with that. Polls continue to show that my position is somewhat prevalent - give us slots but in your neighborhood and not mine.

The recent spike in water bills will have to be explained to me in great detail so that will have to be a Suo assignment or anyone else who feels capable. I know expenses are up but usage is way down and that creates a deficit. Somehow I still feel that many of us are being punished for conserving. Now they speak of a spike in chemicals but doesn’t less usage mean a decrease in usage in that area? Color me confused. Remember that once you pass age 65 you are eligible for a senior discount.

I just love the idea of prop 2 and ½ and worked hard to have it implemented. I remember doing the CFO et al thing and going to hearings and being a pest to legislators to try a get a piece of legislation that would be better than California’s Prop 13. IMO it has worked up to expectations. That brings us to Middleboro for April of 2010.

The schools will need help according to superintendent Bob Sullivan and I have to agree. Passing an override is difficult in the best of times and this will be the worse of times. As a former educator I have seen waste and can pinpoint areas where the axe could fall without a significant disruption of services. Not this time. The bone is now shinning through and money is needed and fast. My wife - The Lovely Cynthia - has subbed in Middleboro and is impressed with the schools she has worked at - Burkland and Goode. Just today she had a class of twenty-eight third grade students with the usual mix you get in a class of that size. In teaching size does make a difference especially with the variety of learning styles, abilities, behaviors and undiagnosed and diagnosed special needs. Getting an override passed will be a daunting task and right now I say it will be defeated.

Ghosts! Terrorists! Toxic! Other Garbage!

A new movie called “Paranormal” has surfaced. This is probably an extenuation of the ghost hunting brigade that seems to have infected some of the TV channels and, of course, the collective “hunters” searching around our beloved Town Hall. This type of absurd silliness occurs every decade or so and gives the gullible and those whose idea of scientific reasoning is seeing how long they can look at the sun without glasses something to ponder. They probably get lost in a corn maze of two stalks. Hey, didn’t you folks grow up with Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye? Get a life and some science.

Deval Patrick has been an outspoken supporter of the union battle going on with the Hyatt Hotel in Boston. A great position since the Hyatt Corporation has run roughshod over their housekeepers but in a BB type contradiction Patrick took $3,000 in political contributions from the same company.

What would happen if CFO held a State House rally and no one came? Never mind…that’s already happened.

Do you think our local “Billy Flynn” will every get around to updating his profile on his web site? So much for legal details.

JP has a new site called Middleboro Remembers and it is a master work of cut and paste for the anti casino segment. Plenty of “data” that was supplied by - no doubt - the number crunchers at Clark, CT University. I’d love to see someone with time on their hands (not me) sift through all the “data” supplied by both sides and find out what was legit. Remember - you can be anti and unenrolled in an "organization."

I am amazed that some posts are not questioned on a certain site and one appears on this sidebar. That has never been addressed as far as I know. Shameful.

A local terrorist in training has been in the news lately and I hold no sympathy. I readily admit my prejudices regarding Muslims from both first hand experience and that of being wary of any religious zealot or zealots.

Toxic seems to be of focus on BB’s mind and like I have said before the reason why the CFO types hate it is lack of their own personal control over the site. They love to manage the news and the debate.

Fox News - Flame Wars - Baseball - Clyde

Found it rather interesting that the WOW Administration is after Fox News. That pesky little First Amendment thing just seems to rankle the current leader of the free world but this just makes me wonder if Fox is onto something to raise such ire. IMHO the news outlets have clearly demonstrated their particular preferences by the way they mange and present the “news.” Reminds me that The Eagles were onto something with the clever tune “Dirty Laundry.”

Suo has made some interesting broadsides on the “Self Proclaimed Greatest Blog In Middleboro” - AKA- SPGBIM. Try making an anagram out of that! I gotta give Suo some level of victory on points with his glib responses, lack of deflection and verbose (got that word from Suo’s thesaurus) comments. Been a bad week for BB having to write that Ghost Busters column and then getting haunted by Suo/Dal/Lincoln/GreenSchool.

Baseball season ended a week or so ago with the pitiful demise of the Red Sox. Out with a whimper. At least I was out of state at the time and did not get to see the last embarrassing disaster. Just don’t have the Yankees win number twenty-seven.

Clyde made my phony column and Limo had a great quote from Clyde regarding personal information being posted by anti’s. They just don’t get it.

Going To The Dogs

We have two dogs that control our household - one is a simple mutt and the other is a designer dog - A Golden Doodle. Now these dogs are fairly discipline and have been to obedience school so they do listen but you never know. But now I have no worries since locally we now have the Ace Ventura of the legal profession to get the pups off if ever they get collared (pun intended) by Jayson. No need to flea (pun intended)to Bridgewater for our local Billy Fallon will handle the situation with rolled up paper - legal, of course. My concern is if there is a fire hydrant in front of the office? Is a 20 pound bag of Kibbles and Bits a good enough retainer?

I know some say the BOS is going to the dogs but I didn’t know it was contagious so that former members also went to the dogs - at least as clients. I imagine Billy Flynn will soon have velvet pictures of dogs playing poker festooning his office for the new client base. Always toss the client a bone - good for business. Now I also heard that President WOW’s peeps have been patrolling humble old Middleboro just checking out our legal beagle since the First Dog has had some “issues” and WOW is in the market for experienced legal counsel for the pooch. Dog eat dog that legal profession.

I don't want a casino here in the land of third rate dips**ts but I do support a casino or plural in Massachusetts. I'd like to see it a tribal one but one that could somehow be inclusive for the various tribes. Good luck with that. I’m also in favor of slots at the tracks now that dog racing is coming to an end. Wonder why those mutts didn’t get some local legal representation to save their jobs?

Padre Island is a great beach area since it is not very congested thanks to strict development standards. Really only one hotel directly on the beach and the one we stayed at was just across the street from the beach. For city life the island is part of Corpus Christi and the core city is about ten miles away. CC is a bit bigger than Providence to give you scale.

Texas also has no helmet law for motorcycles and I always wondered why that exists? BB (Big Brother not Bumpkin) is all intrusive in our lives so one would suspect they’d protect us from ourselves. To me it is common sense to wear one and one time many years ago it saved my life or from being in a vegetative state - although some will claim I am. I wore one before it was the law.

CFO And Other Stuff

I have been blasting away at CFO and will do so - again - with this post. I really get tired of the one trick pony act that seems to permeate the organization. This is an all or nothing approach and it is best exemplified by how they take particular pride in how they comment on legislators who are pro gaming. Plenty of clever nicknames such as “slots” for those who have the audacity not to see the wisdom CFO is willing to dispense. I try to look at the body of work that any legislator is involved with such as a Marc Pacheco or a Steve Canessa or even a Dan Bosley who represents one of the more outspoken legislative anti’s. Is it worth making your decision on a political figure based solely on one issue? To me it is not and is one of the benchmarks I look for when I use the term “zealots.”

The value of the double check. We’ll be going to Texas for a little over a week and one place we visit is Padre Island. I made a slightly different reservation this time but something was bothering me so I double checked. I had made it for a hotel on South Padre Island or about 200 miles further south from where we should be. WTC (What The Clark). I went back and checked the listings for the area since there are three hotels on the beach - Holiday Inn, Comfort Suites and Hawthorne Suites. I had made a reservation at a “new” Best Western on the beach that had somehow been included in the listings for Padre Island so I can slide some of the blame elsewhere. This could have been a real nightmare. Canceled and booked at Hawthorne.

I like Zombie movies probably because it reminds me so much of certain fellow bloggers. Dawn Of The Dead was the first one I really enjoyed as it was nicely done in black and white with a Black guy as the “hero.” Interesting concept for 1967. I went to see Zombieland and it was great. Gore to delight one and all and if you are a fan of Bill Murray the film is a must see.

CPA is still in the Bumpkin target area but Mark is - IMHO - beating a dead horse at this point. Not going to happened locally. This is not representative of my feelings but of local reality.

Had a slight ache in a tooth when cold hit in so I checked it out. This was a molar and the Clarkin’ thing was a dark shade of purple and so was part of the gum. WTC! Panic time! All signs pointed to root canal and a possible crown. Yikes! I’m a retired senior on a simple pension! My dentist was not available but someone at the office checked it out and the tooth appeared healthy. To comfort my doubts they immediately hooked me up with a root canal specialist and ran be through the paces with several exotic tests and all is - I hope -OK. Turns out the discoloration is just seepage from a filling under a crown and the tenderness is reflective of some pitting on the filling which will need to be replaced in a year or so. But this leads to another thought and that is the value of relationships in any business.

I have been going to my dentist for 35 years and they saw me within a few hours. They also made the connections with a specialist who saw me within an hour. I am going to Texas for a week and the specialist said if I have any problems give her (another crack in the glass ceiling) a call and she and the others she work with have connections everywhere and they’ll get it taken care of. I also have to see my doctor about a minor ear condition and that appointment was also done for when I wanted it - actually the next day. Would and will I get the same level of care under a national health insurance? Why doesn’t Medicare cover dental work?

Well - off to Texas. Red Sox get to the next round.