Topic: Observe if you will....
Long and busy day today. No work as we were gone for a doctor appointment in the big city a couple of hours away. I'll work this weekend instead to make up the hours. This has nothing to do with my day but I just remembered a strange thing that people here do. When you live in the middle of nowhere, it becomes a regular event to drive long distances to shop. You city dwellers take for granted having a variety of stores to chose from. We have three big stores nearby (nearby being about 25 miles), Kmart, Walmart, and Shopko. Basically, the same store in three different styles and sizes with different brand names. Let me amend my thought, it's actually women who primarily make this journey. There are people here in Wakefield that will gladly drive an hour or more just to go to a town with a mall that has actual department stores. A food court is a treat. Women will spend hours shopping and window shopping, which is not strange. It's the fact that they will spend over two hours on the road just to do this. With gas in the $2.00 per gallon range now this seems a bit extreme to me. So be glad, city mice, that you have all this at your fingertips.

Speaking of gas, people complain so much about the price when only recently the price of 20 ounces of water from a convenience store cost about $1.80 at the register. I pay more for milk than I do for gas per gallon. I'm not saying I don't care about the price of gas, I do of course, I drive almost 50 miles a day to work and back, but I just have to put it in perspective.

I'm not happy about the price of milk either, by the way, but that hasn't made the news yet.

Have a good weekend.

-Wakefield

Random
Topic: Observe if you will....
I think you know that you've become a slave to the system when you start wishing you just had a bigger cubicle. I don't even have a cubicle, I have some sort of tri-icle, or tricle, I don't know what it's called. I thought of this as I was looking at my pictures that I have pinned to one of my three wall-type fabric-covered interlocking thingy-bobs that separate me from the person across from me and slightly from the person next to me. I looked at my pictures and thought how nice it would be to have those in frames, and have those frames on walls, and have walls, and a cubicle, some semblance of separation from the masses just like me...then my phone rang and it was back to work.

I've realized that there are only a few ways to really make a lot of money in the world. I mean a LOT of money, not just getting by. I don't count being born rich, that's obvious. Here are a few:

1)Of course, win the lottery
2)Invent something simple and cheap to make that everyone will want.
3)Invent something simple and cheap to make that the government will want.
4)Become a celebrity
5)Become a professional athlete in a POPULAR sport, Badminton Pro Circuit won't get you any bling bling, except in India maybe, I think they love badminton over there.
6)Become a successful criminal.
7)Go to college, get an MBA, know all the right people and become a CEO or something.

That's all I can think of at the moment. If you know more please feel free to add to the list. Also feel free to offer any of these opportunities to me, except being a criminal.


I can't keep my eyes open so that's going to have to do it for me tonight. Take Care.

-Wakefield

I got nothing
Why do I stay up so late?

The cop never got back to me about the car and I still haven't called about the garage door opener. Tomorrow is a busy day in a busy week so I don't know if I'll have time. Hope they don't smash it.

Big time cleaning weekend. Today I was out in the garage shoveling cat and dog poo and vomit after a winter of sick animals. I gotta go to bed, I'm being called. More soon. Night

-Wakefield

Tardy
I try not to be a very political blog but I just wanted to throw in a little current events commentary.

It seems that everyone has seen the pictures from the Iraq prison. My wife has been complaining about them being all over the place all day long on TV and it makes her sick to look at them. I barely watch television so I only saw a few pictures last night but not much. It does look pretty disturbing. Today I was listening to NPR's coverage of Rummy and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs testimony in the Senate and it was mildly interesting, especially with the protestors chiming in. What really annoyed me about that incident was that the morons at NPR covering the thing started talking as soon as the protester started yelling. They practically talked over the whole thing. It's as though they were saying, "Hey! We're trying to cover this event and all that`s happening, do you mind? Thank you." and then it was back to business. Hell, that was the only unpredictable thing in the whole testimony. Anyway, back to point.

I just wish someone would acknowledge the fact that if these pictures had never been taken and leaked this would not be half of the frenzy that it is. Now that they are out the point is moot but still, just say it. If there were no pictures it would just be rumor and small potatoes. The pictures make it real to Mr. And Mrs. Average-American. Think of all the other pictures that we never see.

Why didn't he tell Congress?!?

Why didn't my kid tell me he broke the light bulb in the garage? Why did he just clean up the mess and hope I wouldn't notice?

BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT TO GET IN TROUBLE! For crying out loud.

Anybody have any comments on this?

Enough with current events in the rest of the world. Back to Wakefield.
--------------------------------
I did not see any chickens today. Nor did I hear any. This concludes poultry report.

----------------------------

So about 10 months ago I sold my car to a guy for parts. He paid me $20.00 and came to my house and took it away. I couldn't find the title at the time and still can't but the car didn't run and it was going to be parted out so we weren't too concerned with it, the buyer and I.

Than about a week ago I'm at work and on my break and call home. My wife tells me that the Wakefield cop came by at 9pm looking for me. Apparently, my car had been found in another county in a gravel pit. Abandoned and smashed up, broken windows, the whole bit. They also thought it might have been set on fire, but this was later found to be untrue.

Since I never found the title, my name was still on the car so that's how they got to me. I called the other county's sheriff's department and told them the story and they wanted the name and phone number of the guy who I sold it to and I found it and gave it to them. I asked the investigator, a woman named Susan, what had been done to the car. She told me about how it had been beat up and apparently dragged around the gravel pit but it had not been burned. I asked if they had found anything inside the car and she said all they had found was broken glass and a garage door opener.

Shit! I thought. My garage door opener! I had looked all over the car for that thing, how could I have missed it? You see, when I bought this house the son of a gun I bought it from only gave me one garage door opener and said he'd get the other one to me (I have a 2-car garage). Well that never happened so all I had was one and now I find out it's in the car that's torn to pieces. So I asked the cop if I could have it back, that I'd been looking all over for it and she laughed and told me the name and number of the towing company that had the car. I haven't called them yet but I'm going to. It's almost an hour away so I have to figure out how to get it from them, if it's not been compacted into a metal cube with the rest of the car.

Have a good weekend!

Wakefield

Hello out there!
Topic: The Al Pacino Story
My first day in New York City was quite a day.
It was my Thanksgiving break and I only had a few days so instead of coming home from school I decided to go to New York. I stayed with a friend in the D.C. area for a couple of days and then his dad gave me a ride all the way up to the city. A couple who had come to my school to teach had offered to let me stay at their place when I got there.

I'm sure everyone is the same the first time they come to NYC, I was straining my neck looking out the window of the car as we entered the city. It was terrifying enough to ride in traffic for the first time in the city, even though my friend's dad had driven there before, but what made it worse was the fact that he was driving a Geo Metro. Every time we missed another car by a hair I had visions of being struck and the entire car flying through the air only to crash back to Earth and flatten like an accordion.

Amazingly, we made it to my friends' apartment and I was dropped off and away the Geo sped.

We ordered in Chinese. After that I fell asleep on their living room floor on some pillows amidst the sounds of the city.

The next day I was given a quick lesson in NYC behavior as my friend Alan took me for a walk around.

1) Walk aggressively.

2) Don't look up at the buildings.

3) Don't make eye contact with panhandlers; it's like asking for a tractor beam.

4) Always have at least $20 in cash with you.

The basics covered, I went out on my own.

Later I met up with my friends and we got ready to go to the theater. We were going to see Nathan Lane in previews of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. My friends knew some people in the show, and I was a Nathan Lane fan so we thought it would be fun.

It was amazing! The show was great. My first Broadway show.

After the show we went to Joe Allen, a restaurant in the theatre district. My friends wanted to show me where the bigshots spent their time as well as where the chorus drank and shot pool.

We sat down and I noticed B.D. Wong across the room as I was scanning for celebrities. I don't know what to reference, Father of the Bride II? Anyway, I think he was making eyes at me. As we looked around some more my friends commented that there were a lot of big names there. I didn't know half of the people they pointed out but they explained them to me.

Then Nathan Lane walked in. He was with a companion and they sat at a two-person table across the room. I switched chairs with one of my friends to observe his behavior. A few minutes passed, Karen Ziemba, Jackie Mason.

Our dessert came and then...Al Pacino walked in the door wearing a Yankees hat and a long black overcoat, shoulders hunched, a beautiful woman on either side of him. He came in, said hello to a few people, said hello to Nathan Lane and shook his hand and sat in the booth next to Nathan Lane's table. So essentially they had their backs to each other. By this time my friends had compiled a list of all the bigwigs that were there and had written it on my Playbill from Forum. The list was as follows:

Karen Ziemba, Marin Mazzi, John Herrera, Michael Rupert, Peter Neufeld, B.D. Wong, John Rubenstein, Barry Moss, Donna McKecknie, Jackie Mason, Nathan Lane and Al Pacino.

We finished out dessert and it was time to pay the bill. I was nervous. I wanted to say hello to Nathan Lane and my friends knew it and knew I was nervous. They said "Listen, we'll go pay and if you want to go say hello we'll be waiting outside, either way." They got up to leave. Moments later I got up...and went to Nathan Lane's table. He was chatting with his companion drinking Perrier from a bottle. I put my left hand on his shoulder and said, "Excuse me Mr. Lane."
"Yes?" He replied as his eyebrows rose to a point above his nose.
"It's my first day in New York and I saw your show tonight and thought you were fantastic."

"Well thank you very much."

And that was it. I lifted my hand off Nathan Lane's shoulder...

And then it happened.

I was raising my arm away from his shoulder and was looking toward the front door when I felt my hand strike something. I turned to look and then things started moving in slow motion.

I turned to see Al Pacino lurch forward in his seat as if he had been shot. I had struck him in the head with my hand!
Then, still in slow motion, I saw the Yankees hat start to fly off his head, his wild mane springing out from underneath.

The Yankees emblem stared up at me from the floor of Joe Allen. The room was silent. Time seemed to freeze, but only for a moment.

Then Academy Award winner Al Pacino spun his head around to look at me, right in the eyes. There was a pause. I looked from him to the hat on the floor. Suddenly I found my arm shooting out to point at the hat and heard myself saying,
"Hey! You dropped your cap-Pacino!"
I then ran from the room, out the door of Joe Allen, linked arms with my friends and hurried them down the street. Never looking back.

That was my first day in New York City.

Have a good week everybody.

Wakefield.

The Creeps
There's a guy training in with me for the past couple of days and he's starting to give me the creeps. He seems to be a nice enough guy but he makes me a little uncomfortable. He's sitting with me at my desk and I'm showing him how to run the computer programs and how to type in the info, what to say on the phone, etc. Today he sat with me for 5 hours.

What started to unnerve me was that I noticed he seemed to be imitating me. I found that when I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs, he would soon be doing it as well. When I leaned forward on the desk, he leaned forward, when I held my pen horizontally between my hands, he did the same. I noticed all this with my peripheral vision, you see, not trying to be too obvious.

Then he asked to use my hand sanitizer...

After he left I then had to sanitize my bottle of sanitizer with its own contents. That was yesterday.

Today it was slow as it got later and we were just sitting around, me wishing he'd go sit somewhere else, or go home, and him sitting there rubbing his eyes and tapping his foot, looking over his papers, being strange.

Then he asked if he could have some of my sunflower seeds...

I got up and started walking up and down the aisle, waiting, praying for time to speed up. Why didn't I just pour some out and give them to him? Why had I just said "I don't care, fine with me" and just let him reach right in?? I was just so stunned. And there he sat, like a 5 year old with his hand open, palm up, eating one at a time from the small pile in his hand, and silently cracking the shell and placing the spent shell in the garbage. One...at...a...time.
I don't even eat my sunflower seeds when someone is sitting with me!

You see, I'm not an anal retentive person, I'm not all germ-phobic, obsessive compulsive, but I work in an office. This office has lots of people who are not as good at washing their hands and covering their mouths as I am and I can't afford to get sick and miss work, so I have my hand sanitizer and I wipe down my desk, keyboard and phone every couple of days with a screen cleaning wipe which has alcohol in it. Unless of course, someone else has used my computer. In that case I wipe it down as soon as that person is out of sight.

Finally, it was time to go home, and I ran out the door. I left the sunflower seeds on my desk, I'll be throwing them away tomorrow. Must sleep. Going to the school in the morning. Looking forward to it. night

Wakefield

Garage Sales
I've decided that I am in support of City-Wide Garage Sales. I don't know who came up with it but it's an idea whose time has come. You see the whole town has a garage sale on one day and at every garage sale you can get a map of the town with all the other garage sales listed on it. You must have to pay a fee or something. There are a few people who take advantage of the system and have their garage sales on the same day but don't pay the fee. Oh well. It's a wonderful way for a small town like ours to get people to actually come here and buy our used chandeliers, sofas, children's videos and seed caps. The whole town can then also sit in lawn chairs and drink beer all day in the garage and use the sale as an excuse. Must have been a man who came up with the whole idea.

I conducted an interview today with a woman from Califoria. I asked her what some of her career goals are and she said "I'm deciding whether I want to become an ASE Certified Mechanic or go into early childhood education." That struck me as different. Not bold or open minded, but different.

It was a beautiful day today and while I was at work the family was outside cleaning up the yard. I'm tired as hell and have to go to bed. Not much Blog-o-tainment from me tonight. It took me a full minute just to write blog-o-tainment. Two minutes now. Night

Wakefield

More modesty needed with feminine fashions
Another nugget of wisdom from the local rag...


To The Editor:

When I see [sic] in church on Sunday morning, I am amazed how closely many young ladies' pants are tailored to the nth of an inch "above," with waistbands resting on hip and thigh.
This is a deliberate and immodest act of clothing themselves that requires a lot of any man's male graces.and is an act against their own feminine modesty. It is probably innocent. But it distracts one's attention from the Mass being offered by the Catholic Priest.
This feminine clothing style seduces a man's or anyone else's attention from the real reason we go to mass on Sunday: to rest and get a respite from the worldly cares.
This seduction of male altruism makes me nervous, especially in church. Any man with modicum of self-respect can make only so many excuses for the young ladies so attired.
When embarrassed, I begin to look upward and count the ceiling tile and start to talk under my breath or both at once. When my neck gets stiff from gazing upward, I then turn my attention to the floor, and I begin counting the grains of sand on the floor. To my surprise I see that there is only "one set of footprints in the sand."

James A. Lecher
Wakefield

Let us focus on the last paragraph in particular of this poor tormented man's letter. It begins "when embarrassed": what do you think that means? Let's see, he can't stop staring at the young ladies with their low cut pants and he gets "embarrassed". Hmm, what's another term for embarrassed...aroused? yes I think that's the catholic translation of embarrassed. Ashamed is also a synonym, I think. So he gets a little excited and has to look at the ceiling and talk under his breath? What does he say? A few hail mary's? Or maybe he is praying that he'll get in behind of one of those young ladies in the communion line, or that the priest won't ask them to "please rise" and find that he already has.

I'm afraid this poor fella will never realize the absolute nasty old buffoon he has made of himself with this letter. I think I might have to write the paper myself and tell them how I feel the same way...

TO THE EDITOR:

I must agree with Mr. Lecher on the point of women's fashions in the house of our Lord. Soon we will have to admit women to the priesthood and exchange their garments for two piece bikini's to compete! Terrible! How does Jesus expect me to concentrate when that Tammy Anderson won't stop swooshing her hair back from her face like a gol darn supermodel right out of the box! Why can't women dress more like the Virgin Mother? Nice long robes to cover the body. I'm no mooslem-lover (support out troops) but I tell you those Taliban might have been on to something with making their women cover up all the time! Heck, I could finally go to church and sleep in peace, not have to look at my shoes during communion, and it wouldn't stop there! I might even get some work done at the office!



Something tells me they would not get the joke.

Regards,

Wakefield

Quack
Today my son was taking care of one of the remaining dogs out in the front yard when he saw an old man walking down the street and behind him, about twenty yards, was a duck. No, not a chicken, a duck.

My son called to us and we went to the front and I looked out the window and my wife looked out the front door and the old man caught site of her and, from across the street, shouted
"What the heck is that!?" and pointed behind him. My wife replied "I think it belongs to the brown house on the corner there."

To which the man paused and pointed down the street and said, again shouting from across the street "Oh you think it belongs to the Viet Cong down there?!"

My wife paused, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle an incredulous laugh at the man announcing this to the entire street. She composed herself and told him that it belonged to the family on the OTHER corner, the one with the American flag hanging out front, but she didn't think that they were home. The old man nodded and kept going down the street.
Meanwhile, the duck's attention had been drawn to my wife talking out the door and my son standing on the front steps, and began to head toward our house. My wife and son came back inside, bringing the small "house dog" with them and my son went to the back of the house to observe the single living "outside dog" who was chained to a tree. My wife went on with whatever she was doing in the kitchen and I went back to my office. Not two minutes had passed before my son was calling again.
The duck had gone to our back yard and was chasing our dog around the tree it was tied to. The dog was frightened. Eventually the duck got our dog so wrapped up she caught her sizeable water tub on her chain and tipped it over. I think this was all part of the duck's master plan because after my son proceeded to refill the water tub the duck jumped in and began to bathe. Eventually it went on it's way, having gotten what it came for.

Our dog looked and must have felt so used.

This duck is a tame duck that lives on the corner and is owned, not by the VC, but by a white family that has lived here longer than us and speaks with no accent. We did not not file a report with the poultry police, but I'm sure somebody did, the way the citizens are on eggshells around here, ha ha. That old man looked scared enough...almost enough.

Wakefield

With a Capital T and that Rhymes With C and that stands for Chicken!
I should tell you that I live here in Wakefield, in the North Central part of the country. Wakefield has about 2,000 residents. We are part of that iconic rural America, filled with patriots and honest people who would give you the shirt off their backs. The kind of place you don't have to lock your doors at night and your neighbor looks out for you. I'm afraid to report that out here in fly-over land we are just as jaded, racist, cruel, dishonest, unfaithful and two-faced as any big city dwellers. One correct stereotype here in Wakefield is that many people in rural areas are not the brightest lights around. That much is true. There are some colossal morons in this town and in many others of its kind.
I think that there aren't, proportionally, any more stupid people here than in any major city but the difference is out here you don't need intelligence or competence to succeed. The vast majority of competent and intelligent individuals know better than to stick around places like Wakefield so the people who, in the city, would tell idiots "This is crap, get it out of here, are you serious with this?!" do not exist. It's the people who wouldn't survive as leaders elsewhere that run the small towns of America. They sell cars, publish newspapers, they run for Mayor. As a result we have gems like the following article, which reached my doorstep on Thursday in the weekly paper. I have changed some names, but this is an actual story from the newspaper. I didn't make this up:

Concerns aired about city chickens
The possibility that some Wakefield residents are illegally keeping chickens in residential basements and garages has city officials crying foul.

Janice Fellows told fellow council members Monday that she has had people tell her that they have heard chickens around town.

Mayor Stan Flatulenzo responded that he has seen chickens within city limits.

Fellows said that she is concerned because of the health risks that poultry-related diseases pose for humans. She asked Police Chief Ryan Folger what his department can do if someone sees or hears chickens within the city.

Folger said that he can knock on a door and ask the resident to remove the poultry, and issue a ticket for the ordinance violation if he sees the chicken. However, if the poultry is concealed on the property, perhaps in a basement or utility building, he would need to establish probable cause before seeking a search warrant. People reporting poultry violations would have to agree to be identified as witnesses in order to obtain the search warrant, the chief said, something that not all people are willing to do.

"If they (poultry) are indoors, what are you going to do?" said Flatulenzo. The mayor said that police need to do their best at enforcing the ordinance.
Fellows said that while she didn't want poultry to be kept in residential sheds and garages, she especially didn't want to see poultry moved inside houses, where they would be even more of a health hazard. County Community Health officials will be contacted about suspected cases of in-town poultry, council members decided.
For more on this story, please check this week's paper.


Can you believe this? I would love to see the Mayor at the next council meeting pounding his fist on the desk saying "Dammit, this is a serious PROBLEM! We have to put an end to the in-town poultry! By god I'm going to make it the goal of this administration for as long as I'm Mayor, to protect the City of Wakefield's residents against the health risks posed by IN-TOWN POULTRY!"
The truth is we have a large community of Hmong people in Wakefield. These are the people who are keeping chickens. I have not personally seen any chickens rampaging through town, as the Mayor has, nor have I heard any. I do hear some cows from time to time that live on the other side of the grain elevator downtown. I get the feeling that some white neighbors are calling the cops about the poultry in their Hmong neighbor's houses to give them trouble.
The way I see it, these people, in their homeland (Laos, I think)probably used to raise chickens all the time and slaughter them themselves without problem but now the city thinks they are all going to kill themselves with chickenshit and salmonella apparently. Who the hell keeps chickens for the fun of it? Let them have their chickens. I understand that having them in the house might be a bit much, as the droppings can release ammonia, but keep'em in a shed or garage or whatever.
I live on the south end of town and my kids' elementary school is on the north end, a total distance of maybe 1.5 miles, maybe, and it's a straight line, one street, the whole way. I take the kids to school and I drive straight through downtown on the same street and I'm closer to the aforementioned cow pasture than I am to the school! Nobody complains about hearing cows around town. A chicken walking around town doesn't bother me.
People who have them in their basements (which I don't believe)know what the risks are.

I wonder what the fine is? Buck? Buck buck?

That's it for tonight.
-Wakefield

The First
My first actual entry into this, a blog, was simply the letter "I". It was at the second following that keystroke that my son came in to tell me I had to come outside because something was wrong with one of our dogs. Something was indeed wrong, the dog was dead.
I had wanted to plan my whole first entry out in detail, start things off with a bang, be clever and witty and fill it with biting humor and sarcasm.
It's late now though, and I'm tired, and I have to get up early in the morning so I'm afraid this will have to do.
We think it's possible that one of our neighbors poisoned our dog. There's a cliffhanger for you. Whoever you are.

Wakefield