Some of My Rare & Unique Talents

Some of My Rare & Unique Talents
This is a reprint from my MySpace profile page

Being able to see that being fired can some times be a very good thing, especially when the act of the ax is performed by clueless young punk kids, where at least one of them was a natural blonde and you aren't too sure about the other one.


Being able to lose my wife's $1.50 worth of jello. There may always be room for jello, but it isn't always safe around me.


Being able to pick out an Elton John song at extremely low volume, in a very brief time period, in a crowded noisy restaurant.


Being able to peel citrus fruit to a single piece and then reconstruct the hollow orange orb to fool future unsuspecting failed fruit finders.


Being able to confound and confuse supposedly trained professional psychiatric personnel into thinking that I think that my fiction is reality. Snicker snicker snicker. Hey, are you idiots reading this again?


Being able to make a water faucet dripping noise with my moist lips

sorry, those are the only six I can think of at the moment

A Stranger Part of This Economic Depression

Category: Writing and Life

This piece is in two parts, a fictional then non-fictional section, in that order.

WWSD - What Would Steven Do?

A semi-prerequisite for reading the fictional part is to understand, and more importantly, enjoy the logic & wisdom of the comedian Steven Wright of Near Boston MA and to read it to yourself using his voice. It helps. I tried to base this piece around the principle of 'WWSWW' -'What Would Steven Wright Write'. I had originally planned to use WWSD but if you are from Western Watertown South Dakota, you might have been confused. I am not talking about you. Besides, I have never been to Western Watertown South Dakota and would hate to have them mad at me.

Begin Fiction

One day I noticed that the there was a tiny little strange man leaving my bedroom. I asked him who he was and he would not tell me his name. So he is still a stranger to me. I asked him what he was doing in my house. And he said that my wife was renting the bottom right drawer of her bedroom dresser to him and that is where he lives. I found this hard to believe, but then realized he was about the right size if you squeezed him in there just right. When I was looking for one of my "lost" Sony objects the other day I noticed that that drawer was empty and I remembered about how large it was. I asked him how much she was charging him to stay in her drawer. He said $20. At first I didn't believe him, but then he showed me that he had $77 and said, "Before I paid my rent I had $97 dollars". That seemed pretty solid evidence to me.

I tried several ways to get him to leave. I drilled a hole in the wall on the north side of the bedroom from the livingroom and then on into the bottom right dresser drawer. Then I purchased a new long round piece of wood to poke him to try to make him leave. But this didn't seem to bother him.

I guess we could use the money so I am going to leave him alone.

The End (of the Fictional Section)


When I went to pick up my wife later in the day (yesterday) I told her about this story that I wrote about her and the little man and the rent and the poking through the wall. She had a v(e)(a)ried bizarre look on her face but didn't object to me publishing the story. She is kind of used to my stories by now. I used the word 'v(e)(a)ried' instead of 'very' because there were 'varying' amounts of 'very' bizarre on her face as I told her my story. She wished that I would write a story about going out to P___ P___ (part of the former name of my former employer) and picketing against them for stealing our bonus and firing me. And take the dog with me for protection. She told me to make a big giant sign (like homeless people have) to ask all the people who got their bonus for the year 2008 to give us a little piece of theirs that belongs to us. Put on the sign that we are destitute, then she laughed. (Hah! we are pretty far from destitute) Of course I don't know for sure whether I am getting my bonus or not, it is my understanding that it was announced several days ago and is being sent to current employees and I have been told through the grape vine when it is supposed to arrive. BUT I was informed at the meeting when I got fired (on Jan 27th 2009) that in order to receive the bonus for the year 2008 that you had to be an employee on the day in 2009 that it was announced. (Now bear in mind that that does not make any sense to me.) The bonus for 2008 is based on the performance of the company, the employees and their work units toward safety, production and profits during the year 2008. AND I was an employee during that entire year. So we'll just have to wait and see. I told her I could calculate an approximate amount of money each remaining employee could send me knowing what my bonus should have been and then put that on my sign. And I could put up one of those gigantic posters of a thermometer like they use for United Way contributions to show how close they are getting to their goal. If you would like my address, to mail your contribution, I am pretty sure that the Human Resources department still has it. Thanks.

Or just send me the same amount that the little stranger in the drawer pays every month.

The End (of the Non-Fictional Section)


Reference to Steven Wright: Wikipedia Article

Update:

Contributions Received: $0.00

Number of Contributors: 0

Number of Potential Contributors who just want to silence me with their "gift out of the kindness of their hearts if I will just shut up and go away and quit bothering them forever because I have shown them their error and exposed the evil of their ways that they are dirty rotten scoundrels & thieves and it makes you wonder if their mothers knows what they REALLY do for a livin' and they think I might be foolish enough to accept their lousy stinkin' offer": 1

Ernest Goes Postal Twice in One Day with Three People

I had an interesting trip to the post office yesterday, just the very trip after leaving my house and before actually entering the post office. And then I went to the post office again later in the day to mail more things.

But back to my first postal journey of the day, the funny one with two parts and three people. On the way to the post office I saw two young women running in the neighborhood a couple blocks from my house. I slowed down and asked them how far they were jogging during the nice cold morning and they replied that they were running 3 miles. So I did the math right fast and told them I was too busy to exercise today and asked them if they could run 4½ to do my running for me as well, to which they laughed and agreed to do. And then as I drove away I told them “I can feel your burn!” to which they laughed again.

When I got to the post office I was almost ready to open the front door when out popped the "old" man (last name T____s) who runs the greenhouse downtown and used to have the one on the west side of Borger. And just as I was about to greet him and grab the door in baton-style-relay-race from him, he blurts out, “Fine” and I go to ask him how he is doing and then he just cracks up laughing when he realizes what he had done. He tells me that he didn’t even say 'hello' first but just said “Fine” as the answer to the question I was fixing to ask him. I told him that was okay, because this time of year I am usually asking him every time I see him if he has any tomatoes yet. So I suggested to him that the next time he sees me to just let his primary response be, “Hell NO, I don’t have any tomatoes yet !!!” even if he does have tomato plants in stock, and of course, he just loved that idea and cracked up laughing all over again.

Then I got my mail.
The End.

No bullets.
No real anger.
No guns.

Just the way real postal is s'posed to be.

Ooops, I just now realized I forgot to ask him if he had any tomato plants in stock.

At least I got my exercise in today, all 3 smiles, I mean, miles.

I Spy A Monster!!!

I was wandering looking for jobs and spent some time at monsterDOTcom. Just before heading to bed I typed in "spy" for job search and left the location blank - it returned 13 matches! And then I saw this was just for the US of A. So I searched in 'Russian Federation' - no jobs available. I couldn't figure out how to search the entire planet for 'spy' jobs.

Canada - 7
UK - 0 - Obviously there are no 'James Bond' openings
Vatican City - 0 - Obviously the "RoCat" Church isn't hiring either.

My Entries for the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

More information about the BLFC can be found at this link: Contest

My Entry for 2009:

An oval near translucent opalesque wafer thin bar of Zest soap slipped from my hand during my shower sticking to my abdomen hairs right above my belly button and looking down I felt the same joy mother kangaroos feel when their young make that arduous journey after 31 days of gestation and climb to the pouch using only slightly developed forelimbs.

Update 2009.03.10
2nd Entry:

From the wikipedia article on "Opiod Receptor": 'an IUPHAR subcommittee^[11][12]has recommended that appropriate terminology for the 3 classical (μ, δ, κ) receptors, and the non-classical (nociceptin) receptor, should be MOP, DOP, KOP and NOP respectively', which I remember fondly as 'MOPsie, DOPsie, KOPsie and NOPsie Cotton Tales' from my earlier days at the magnet school from our biochem lectures of Dr. Pedro Cotton.

(Wikipedia material used with permission granted by the GNU Free Documentation License)

From Pa to Ma: Put In Some Cinema to Get Rid of Insomnia

I walk into my house from the office at around 1:30 AM. My wife complains that she can not go to sleep - something ongoing and difficult for several weeks due to the big major "things" happening in and around her. I tell her that she needs to stop watching NCIS and the Food Channel as an aid to go to sleep by and instead watch a movie. I go to sleep.

The next day I am driving her to work, and she suddenly remarks, "You know, I did just what you told me to do last night - I put "The American President" in the DVD player and I do not remember seeing ANY of the movie, just the opening credits. And then I slept all night"

Sorry Michael Douglas, I bet you didn't realize that you could work better than sleeping pills for some people. I wonder what would happen if you became a spokesman for Sominex®? Would people watching the TV commercials just slip off into a coma?

Take two previews and call me in the morning.

Terror Infirma

Terror Infirma

I thought my inner core was cracked. 

Then I found out it was really molten. 

Iron. 

Molten iron. 

And spinning. 

And HUGE. 

And it was creating a magnetic field that caused beautiful glowing lights dancing at my feet and head. 

Cool. 

I noticed my glowing feet and head were cool. 

Then I woke up. 

Oh, I was dreaming I was the earth. 

Again.

POETRY LINK: The Next Poem in My Blog

The Scareworm ©

I have invented something new for my garden. Building on the previous design concept of the scarecrow to frighten away birds, I have designed a similar device to frighten worms. The Scareworm ©.

It consists of capturing a tomato worm and putting him/her in a clear plastic seal-able bottle. Then hang the bottle over the tomato plants from the top of the tomato wire cage.

It serves several purposes:

a) It irritates the captured worm inside the bottle who can see but not munch a bunch of leaves all around it
b) It will make other worms think twice about hanging around my place
c) It will serve as a target reminder for the young mountain gorilla while he is in training

In case you are confused about the gorilla, a few days ago on Saturday I posted this notice for help in my garden:

Wanted: Actively seeking the services of a young trainable mountain gorilla. Must be willing to pick tomato worms. Eating worms would be considered a benefit with pay adjusted accordingly. Willing to share 10% of tomato crop and 15% of the leaves. Microsoft Office Suite skills a plus; Fortran and COBOL programming experience a definite plus. Seasonal work. Online resumes only, please. Must love dogs.


I am not actually saying I put up a Scareworm © in my garden, I just invented it.

Invention Link: The Next Invention in My Blog

My New TV Food Woman: Bye-Bye Martha, Helloooo Ina !!!

Sorry, Martha Stewart, we're (well, okay, it's just me) going to have to let you go. You have been replaced with another cuter TV food person.

Ina.
Ina Garten
The Barefoot Contessa.
On the Food Network.

She is really fun to watch, especially in 1/4 speed playback from my DVR. I had to find someone totally unobtainable (TV Celebrity) to tease my wife about leaving her for, and Martha just wasn't a credible choice anymore after several years of serving admirably in this role. And I even hung with you through your prison years, sigh.

Good-bye, M.S.

And Ina just smiles so much more.
And freckles.
And giggles.
Oh, my.

Barefoot Contessa

Cyb-organized

I think I want to invent a phone feature that just lets me point my cell phone in the direction of where I think someone is (who is in my directory) and then it displays an ordered list, i.e. based on most recently called people to pick from (options, etc). Then after I get that stage accomplished, I will make it so that all I have to do is look in the right direction to pick someone. Cyb-organ-eyes-'d.
I am not sure what the cost per unit would be approximately in large volume for the electronic compass and then it would need the programming and dynamic updates of all the people on your list as to the nearest cell tower they were operating from, so that is kind of the big picture/overall approach of my idea.


Invention Link: The Next Invention in My Blog

Laughter Slaughters Laughterers

Laughter

One of my favorite periods of hysterical laughter in other people occurred in the summer of 1978 at Falls Creek church camp, in Okie-lahoma. Three of the campers of our local Texan group were dying of laughter - and I don't know why, I missed the opening salvos. I just remember the depth and length of their inane agony and inability to even stand up or stop. But we have managed to stay in touch and now 31 years later 2 of the 3 are my friends in Facebook and the 3rd one outside of FaBo is my longest penpal of 10 years. And one of them is a professional entertainer & speaker who makes a living with laughter. That should really be the ultimate business goal for myself.

Small town.
Small world.
Big giggles

Semi-Dried Gravy As An Art Medium

I had noticed several months ago that the gravy dried out faster on the edges of my pan, and that if the gravy stayed in the pan for a considerable length of time, that it would just peel right off the Teflon surface probably in excess of probably 99% if you catch it at just the right degree of dryness. The other day I was making some gravy in a pan that had ridges across the bottom, and after most of the gravy was consumed, it still left just enough gravy "connected" - still in liquid form - to form a contiguous mass but still have gaps for the holes of the "grill mark grid".

My first attempt at making a piece of dried gravy sculpture resulted in broken pieces. I decided to let it go several days to get really dry, and then work backwards with varying the drying time. So I had to hide that particular pan away from my wife or my housekeeper. So after 4 days, the side was too dry and removed with some difficulty and was too brittle. I was able to remove it completely from the pan without too much damage, but then decided to put it back to start shooting some pictures of it. When it landed back in the pan it broke apart into several pieces. So, 4 days appears to be too long. I will get some bacon cooking soon to get a fresh batch of gravy going and try for a shorter time period. I plan on draping the next trial piece on something, and also go for a smooth bottom pan as well. I think the 4 day test piece would have made an interesting wind chime maybe if it had a tough transparent coating spray to give it some support. So I am off to the hardware store to ask if they have anything that would work as an SRGRS - Semi Rigid Gravy Reinforcing Spray.

Update: The smooth pan really isn't smooth - it has a surface similar to a golf ball, so once the gravy dries on this surface, an interesting "inverse FLAT golf ball surface" will result.

Pans: QVC Cook's Essentials Hardcoat Enamel II 2pc SquareSkillets, Press
Part number K7585

Notice to Strawberry Twizzler Addicts with Poor Math Skills: WMT is Not Your Friend

Current mood: ninja

The pricing for strawberry flavored Twizzlers® candy at Wal-Mart doesn't seem to follow the "If The Package Gets Bigger, Its Cheaper by The Serving" logic. You can buy the same product in 5 different sizes ranging from 4 pound tubs down to tiny packages of assorted flavors contained in a colossal 60 oz Snack Mix bag. 4 lbs - $6.97 2 lbs - $2.88 1 lbs - $1.68 5 oz - $1.00 60 oz - $7.64 But these were the prices I found in Amarillo on Wednesday at a superstore and I thought that the prices here in Borger were different, especially the 2 pound size - hmm, I will try to get that confirmed later today. Just doing a little mental math of 5 x 12 = 60, the 5 oz is a 12 to 7.64 ratio times more expensive, BUT this article is about strawberry flavored Twizzlers, and meant as a help to their addicts, so if you were going to throw all the other flavors away in the 60 oz size that were not strawberry, or give them to OFA's (other flavored addicts), and I have no idea of the mix/ratio of the candy in the 60 oz assortment bag, (sorry, I didn't take the time to rip a bag apart in the store and count, or better yet, do 6 bags and get a better statistical view, larger population, ran-dumb-ness - "Clean up on aisle 5!"). So the 5 oz size beats the 60 oz on a price per ounce basis using some fuzzy logic. Now onto the 1,2 & 4 pound size comparison, easy math. 2.88 is less than 2 x 1.68 = 3.36 when comparing 2 versus 1 pounds, so 2 wins that round. Next, 2 x 2.88 = 5.76 is less than 6.97 when comparing the 2 versus 4 pounds, so 2 pound wins again! So far, 2 pounds looks the best, with more math later today and some sneaky foolishness about serving size. .............more to come, stay tuned! "Twizzlers" is a product of Y&S Candies, Inc, a part of The Hershey Company of Hershey Pa since 1977. The trademark(s) appear to be actively held by: HERSHEY CHOCOLATE & CONFECTIONERY CORPORATION CORPORATION DELAWARE 4860 Robb Street, Suite 204 Wheat Ridge COLORADO 80033

How I Will Know: Ab-Do-Wo-men

Current mood:Just Listening To My Heater

Feb 6^th, 2009

How will I know when my wife is well from her big bad incision and abdominal revision?


I have several ways of monitoring her level at achieving success at lap happiness (and less pain duress). The best one is : She will resume singing the opening theme song of the sitcom 'The Big Bang Theory' on CBS evening television.

Feb 10^th, 2009

Yea!! She resumed singing the theme song from ‘The Big Bang Theory’ - she is getting well! We have proof! She was laughing so hard last night that she was hurting herself.

(So I wrote this poem to celebrate my wife’s pain)

Ab-Do-Wo-Men

When do men hurt your fem abdomen

. . . but still you hang around for more?

and its just a touch of that good warm kinda of pain,

the kind that only makes you sore.

Its when TV sitcom geeky men do and say

those absurd & funny, silly-silly things,

that almost send you laughing from chair to floor,

that results in abdo-women wiggle giggle strain,

(but still you just gotta hang around for more)

So the success of all our abdominal medical procedures will
involve a period of induced absurd silly stress,

which can be measured & monitored in the following manner

of tele-visual & chronological progress:

Is the patient able to watch a complete episode of the

odd ill-logical science goofiness,

called the 'The Big Bang Theory', on Monday eve, over on
their channel called CBS?

POETRY LINK: the next poem in my blog ...

"Is Stan Back from Uzbekistan?" - The Saga of an Exotic Pet Broker in the Middle East

This is the rough draft of a poem I started early this morning.

Give the Uzi back to Stan so he can safely go backpack through the peaks of Pakistan, searching for strange and many a wonderful pet, things our customers are unlikely to forget. But knowing him from previous trips, and how his brain has been known for its “skips” like that trip one time, he wound where? We found him crashed in a pub of Tashkent in The Republic of Uzbekistan, singing on and on cheery bar songs about Norm and Cliff and confused them with hiking trips he had taken in his youth near the French Normandy cliffs.

And if he loses his visa, and has to pay, that might not teach him a lesson or it possibly may.

And if he gets lost in Turkmenistan, then send again in our Armenian men from the home office of Turkey to find Stan our man, and remind him again to stick to his agenda: ‘Find Exotics For Us Plan', please Stan.

But don’t be surprised if he gets lost again, and if Stan’s ‘mental compass’ fails in a forest, and there's no one there to hear our man, when he fails, when he falls or even if he calls, will there be a hero for our Stan man?

And if Stan again gets another dog in Afghanistan, smuggled in from the East of Iran from a clandestine not-so-sure he’s was such a reputable man, who tells our Stan, “Oh, you’re a big canine fan, and Poochie is the finest Afgan best-friend-of-man”, and he hounds Stan until he not only buys just one pooch Afgan (that's really a French poodle with big aft gams) that strangely resembles a wooly on-steroids baby lamb, (baa-ark!), but the seller misunderstood the Stan order as “Okay, nine is fine” and then suddenly everyone hears our German friend Stan the Shepard arrive on the unloading dock with a flock of dog-sheep-dogs, just please, just please don’t have any one back at the exotic pet store roar, “oh, man, oh, man, he’s flocked up again!” as that will just confuse and anger many a man, and especially the Sultan, the top guy on that eastern tip of Arabia, known as Oman.

POETRY LINK: the next poem in my blog ...

The Thoughts From A Week Minded Person

My aunt was wondering where everyone was (online) and mentioned it must be a busy day.

I was the first one to respond to her "chat" request, and I told her just a few minutes later that I had just got up from a nap, after all, it was Sunday afternoon with a tiny amount of rain and a chill in the air, I am old and retired, stayed up to late and really just tired, but it has been nice February weather, too.

Then she asked me if I had my days and nights mixed up, to which I responded,

No, here they are from the beginning of the week in the proper order using a 'Mon' comes first in the manner of a European calendar.

• Monday
• Monnight
• Tuesday
• Tuesnight
• Wednesday
• Wednesnight
• Thursday
• Thursnight
• Friday
• Frinight
• Saturday
• Satrunight
• Sunday
• Sunnight

Now I am just waiting for someone to notice the "typo" I inserted on 'Satrunight'. It actually isn't a typo, for I was using the 'T9EAb' built in dictionary of my mobile internet device, and as soon as you key in the first five letters on the numeric keypad 7-2-8-8-7 the device thinks you are trying to spell the word 'Saturday' and displays 'Satur'. And I was using that feature to spell all the names except I wanted to insert a typo in a strategic place, preferably not at the end of the list, or close to the top, and not on a 'day' word, but rather a 'night' word, which are really my invention as far as this story goes, so is it really a typo? No, so as I was typing the list I could see that 'Satur' was perfect as an optical-linguistical-mental endurance test. It has the u and r right next to each other and both consist of a curved piece and straight piece, with the straight sides of the letters right next to each other in the "ur" order, and "ru" isn't a whole lot different. It would have been nice to have an Arial font, too, instead of a Times New Roman, to help blend into the background. Beggars can't be choosers though. Wait, yes they can, they can choose to not beg then they are no longer beggars, but negotiators. "Say buddy, can I negotiate with you over about a loan to help fund an overseas relief program dedicated to helping underpriviledged coffee growers in South America?" instead of, "Say buddy, do you have $5 so I could get a caramel macchiato with whippied cream at Starbucks?"

So hopefully my aunt doesn't have a MySpace account and come over here and read this before I can get a interesting response to my list. So all the people who are common to me, between MySpace and Facebook, "Shhhh! - don't tell her, its our little secret"

;)

I almost forgot one thing. Yesterday (?) I created a new word 'typoing' completely by accident, it was a typo as I really meant to type the word 'typing' while I was typing a letter to a friend. SO now she has challenged me to try to use that new word often enough so that it eventually becomes part of the standard lexicon and gets put in the Merriam-Webster dictionary within 5 years. Hmm, I have bossy demanding friend, huh? (Don't worry she will read this and giggle. Hopefully it is like that one time where she read a funny thing of mine - 'Hall's Mental Liftus' - and a carrot of her split pea soup went up her nose. That was cool - here I am making women choke and cough and sputter from thousands of miles away over on the East coast of the United States of A-miracle)I know, I know, she is just trying to make me famous. But its Sunday and I wanted to sleep a bunch and its raining and blah blah blah blah BLAH blah blah. Blah. So I need to get everyone to start using 'typoing' really often as needed in the proper context and get her goal for me accomplished. That's what younger pseudo-twin sisters are mainly good for anyway, isn't it?

Tachy-See Driver

It always makes for an interesting beginning of a journey when the driver of the car (for the first time) mistakes the tachometer for the speedometer. On Main Street. Right as a parade is starting. Right past a cop. Zoom, zoom, zoom. Memories of Shattuck, Oklahoma and A Quick Bu-ick. I giggle. Now. And Then.

The ironically funnier part of the story is that the 'tachy'-see driver was asked by his father to drive in his place for safety reasons for the return trip home from Shattuck. The evening was beginning and there wasn't enough light for the vision impaired father to see adequately (and who shouldn't even be driving, period). The son likes to place secondary blame on the odoriferous contents emanating from the nearby tobacco spittoon of the parental unit, clouding his thought processes and sensory perceptions.

Super Sized Bowl of Eggnog Irritation Day

My Thoughts On A Cold Winter Evening
After Having My Son Stolen From Me
By The Federal Government
of
The United States of America

Out of all the people in the United States who have the control of what their eye-balls get to see on TV (for instance, old people in rest homes and tiny children may not get a choice), I am probably one outta the extremely small group of 14 to 17 people of the 300 plus million who live in our entire country who didn’t watch BOTH the Presidential EggNogIrritation© AND the Final Football Game of the Season (you can’t really say year because pro football is stretched across two separate calendar years), The supersized bowl of hype. I did record the game on DVR so I can go back and watch the commercials. So be sure not to tell me who won the game, as I have not got around to seeing the game or commercials yet. I have been busy.

How could Barack Obama even claim to be the president of the U.S. of A.? He didn’t create an election controversy like the last two prez elections, which I, along with everyone else, figured they must have changed the rules on how you become president. I didn’t bother to watch the Eggnogg Irritation because a piece of the Federal Government had already got around to stealing something very precious to me, my younger son in the cult referred to as the United States Army, which I will refer to as “U-Swarmy”®, who is now off in Georgia somewhere at this moment in “basic straining”® learning to be violent and kill people and get paid to let people yell at him and learn to enjoy those things to some degree. Hmm, somehow I think I tried to make his childhood a LiTTLE different than that...(I think I remember telling him that I loved him practically every chance I could, practically every day, practically every time we spoke, and said 'good-byes')...And now several days later I find out about an absurd by-the-minute additional cost. The part on my most recent phone bill, a section of MCI charges, shows where he tried to make contact a few times with the worst possible telecommunication equipment known to man that is still actively hooked up and running. I’m thinking, are they using telephone equipment down in Georgia held over from the days of Andy Griffith in Mayberry or possibly the style used by Oliver Douglas when he climbed the pole outside his house in Green Acres? (No offense to the good, fine people of Georgia, except those tiny few who are in charge of this particular phone-y-quipment.)


Note: some private information hid from view - all other information is (charges and times) exact and is tied to the bill of my private phone number which can not be deciphered from the above information.

If you look at this bill carefully you can see that these phone calls, a total of $143.41 for 58 minutes come out to a little more than $2 a minute. They were placed by my younger son who is away at basic training for the United States Army. That amounts to about a tenth of his monthly salary. The sound quality of these calls was ridiculously poor. We couldn't hear each other very well for the vast majority of calls. And then we get this bill in the mail yesterday for this amount, and after reading it, I suddenly remembered that he started using another form of payment in order to be able to call cell phones, and I see on that card another AT&T charge for $20.26. I can not see the number of minutes, but I do know the destination phone number (its a number in my cell) and the origination number is simply an 800 number, with an "NJ" at the end of the credit card line entry. So most likely that was a single phone call from my son to someone important. But still it was twenty dollars for an unknown length of time. Just curious. Hopefully the sound quality was better than the tin can and a string MCI mess that we endured. MCI sure knows how to put the mess in message.

Here is a suggestion to the U.S.Army: Skype - put it on a computer, and let people make personal phone calls for 2 cents a minute to anywhere in the United States OR FREE!!, yes free, if its a computer-to-computer, Skype user to Skype user. It is bad enough that the Federal Government stole my son from me and isolated him away like a d@mn religious cult in their basic straining and proved again how "family oriented" they are NOT and I just now, almost a month later, finally received a mailing address for him. I have no convenient way of talking to him, or the other direction at this point in his training. So I have a huge stack of letters to send to him and a few other things to share. Oh, and I need to get his address to a close friend in Afghanistan, someone who wants to encourage him to hang in there and make it though basic straining. But I am tired now, it has been a long hard felt-like-more-than-one-day day, so I'll come back tomorrow and look for typos and I think I duplicated some things etc, and there are probably typos and I think I duplicated some things etc.

My Modified Army Slow-Gun

“You May Have Raised Your Son or Daughter Wrong; We’ll Make Them Army Wrong”®

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