To Grow Or Not To Grow

     With Spring here, and temperatures rising, a common sight to see at your local homebrew shop is hop rhizomes for sale.  Many shops will provide a pretty solid selection of rhizomes to choose from, and the thought is downright enticing.  If your going to make your own beer, would it not be unseverably cool to have grown the hops used in it.  It is awesome to grow your own hops, but like anything else it has its downfalls.

     One disclaimer I will give is that they will not do as well in pots as they do in well-dug, deep soil.  The root structures are extensive, and need somewhere to go.  If your planting Cascade hops (which I recommend) don't worry about frost much after the first year, they are quite resilient.

     Three years ago I planted hop rhizomes for Cascade, Nugget, Willamette, and Chinook hops.  Each plant had variable results for me.  

     First a little background: I have a degree in turfgrass management.  In case you have no idea what that means; it means I took plant science classes and the gist of these classes had to do with keeping plants alive.  I also grow lots of vegetables and fruits in my home garden.  Prior to planting, I read up on growing hops on the internet.  I even consulted the section on growing your own hops in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, by the father of American homebrewing: Charlie Papazian.  So needless to say, shovel in one hand, pint in the other, I was prepared.

     One of the most important things about growing hops is that the first year, you will not be harvesting a whole lot of them.  Not to worry, hops are perennial (they come back every year) and need to establish an extensive root system to take in nutrients and produce the flower cones that we boil in our beer.  If you choose to grow them, be patient.  Don't expect to be brewing with exclusively your own hops the first year.  

     My first year went as follows:

     The Cascade hops, a North American hop variety, they grew like weeds.  The vine was almost uncanny to watch, as it easily grew about a foot a day.  I barely had to water them after they were well established.  I watered them about once a week in a summer with slightly above average temperatures, and little rainfall.  By the end of the season I had roughly 5 ounces of fresh, good-looking Cascade hops.  The second year, the vine grew so vigorously, that my pole couldn't hold them.  It broke in a wind storm; which cost me a lot of potential hops.  The majority did survive though.  

     The Nugget vine also did well.  Not quite as well, but I harvested a couple ounces.  The Nugget vine also kept to that foot per day guideline.  The second year was much the same, but more bountiful.

     The Willamette vine grew, but not nearly as quickly as the other two.  It was slow out of the gate and only produced about 12 total hops the first year.  The second year was far better, I harvested about three ounces off of it.  I actually have a surplus, being as I don't use a lot of them in recipes.  (Speaking of: if anyone has a particularly tasty beer recipe with lots of Willamette, I would love the recipe, I'm getting itchy to brew again.)

     The Chinook hops were a failure.  Not suprising; they do better in hotter and drier climates than the Mid-Atlantic region.  They grew, but the vine looked very weak and spindly by comparison.  A lone hop shaking limply from the top of the vine.  Pathetic.  They are also very sensitive to frost.  I ended up digging the plant out after the first year, replacing it with another Cascade.

     All-in-all, the experience was decidedly awesome.  When I used the hops, my batches tasted as good as those using store bought whole hops.  However, harvesting hops is not very fun after the first time you do it.  It may just be me, but the sticky-ness of the vines and leaves made me really itchy.  Wear long sleeves.  Also, if you are scared of heights, vines can grow about 20 feet into the air.  The cones are not all ready at the same time, ruling out the possibility of chopping the whole vine down to harvest.  You will have to be comfortable standing on the "Do Not Stand Above Here" step of the ladder and picking hops.  The Cascade and Nugget vines became so productive, I actually couldn't use all of the hops I harvested before they became freezer burnt.  Additionally, with the cost of one-ounce bags of hops topping out at around three dollars, you aren't going to be saving lots of money, unless you plant a lot and have a lot of free time.

     For these reasons; and a need for more garden space, I dug up my vines last fall.  Granted, after I move and have a larger yard, I will plant more.  Still, there is no doubt that professional hop growers can probably provide you with a more consistent and high quality hop supply than you can grow on your own.  The choice is up to you.  If you want to plant them, it can be fun and you will have a giddy sense of pride when you try your first beer that contains your little hop babies.  Brew it up.

Hi, my Name is _______ and I Have A Brewing Addiction

    

Every homebrewer I have spoken to has had this problem at one time or another.  It happens to the best of us.  You are at your friendly neighborhood homebrew shop or cruising Northern Brewer's website and you come to the realization you are completely going overboard.  This usually happens after I have already brought everything up to the counter.

     What started off as a quick run to the brew shop for a list of ingredients more often than not goes horribly wrong.  I suffer from kid in a candy shop syndrome.  Perhaps you do too.  As long as you are not brutally plagued with ADD and horrible money-management skills you at least have what was on your list of ingredients.  I am often not so lucky, as I am plagued with both.

     Nothing is worse for your homebrewing addiction than a little extra money, such as tax return cash, and a little extra time.  This is where trouble begins.  Recently, what was meant to be a grain, hops, yeast, sugar run for me went horribly wrong.  I got my ingredients, thankfully.  However, I also managed to hopelessly purchase the following: First I became enthralled by a White House Honey Porter, which I am convinced was a rouse to hook any history buff/homebrewer within eyeshot or earshot.  Then I found myself buying orange bottle caps, you know for next season's pumpkin ale.  I bought a new hydrometer, remembering I had just broken mine (yet again).  Apparently I should have just gone without, because I broke the new one the next day.

     In addition to those purchases, while looking through the hop fridge, I picked four bags of hops, in addition to the ones in my recipe.  You know, for future batches, right.  Getting home I realized I have a serious hop problem.  I had an additional 12.25 ounces of assorted hops in the fridge and freezer.  I like hoppy beer, but seriously what is wrong with me.

     Also, I had asked about East Coast Yeast which I have become a huge fan of.  Everything I have fermented with their products has come out delicious.  Unfortunately, they had some on hand so of course I had to buy a bottle.

     Quickly, I realized this problem had only begun.  I now had three batches of beer to make.  Not necessarily a bad situation, after all why do we all brew in the first place.  "We like it, right."  Being a father of two and having my brewery stuff stored in a crampy apartment, my brewing equipment suffered the worst of it.  With nowhere safe to dry my equipment, it gets abused.  Why do kids like dropping oversized items into glass carboys anyway?  Regardless, I managed to brew three batches of beer, brewing each whenever the primary fermenter became available.  I actually had to drink a decent amount of it to bottle the third batch, so as not to incur more expenses on buying more bottles.

     By the time I bottled the third batch, I found myself getting burnt out.  I usually don't brew batches in succession.  Quite honestly, if I could hire someone to clean and sanitize my equipment for me, I would brew weekly.  Then, I got an idea:

     How about a spring-cleaning beer?

     If you are like me and buy too much at the homebrew shop, when you realize your ingredient stockpile is getting a little less fresh, make a spring cleaning beer.  Inventory your stockpile of hops, yeast, and grains and just invent a beer out of it.  Worst case scenario its mediocre, if you put some thought into it.  Best case scenario, it is awesome.

     However, this only works if you don't need to go get more stuff from the brew shop.  I will make an exception, if you need grains.  I don't usually get more grain than needed for the current batch.  It also only works if the ingredients are likely to sit around, becoming stale or freezer burnt or dried out.  It's worth a try and you will feed the brewing monkey on your back in the process.

    
 

Four Days In Hell: A Renter's Terror. PART 1

The following is a true story.  Due to a certain amount of mental anguish, there are aspects of the story I don't remember or have blocked out to maintain whatever sanity I have left.  Enjoy.  


 "Whoever coined the phrase "let the buyer beware" was probably bleeding from the asshole. " George Carlin

     Moving is more often than not a traumatic experience.  Sometimes it's even worse.  Before my family and I lived at our current address, we lived around the corner in a one-bedroom apartment.  It was a wonderful and extremely sunny apartment with nine windows crammed into a living room/kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom.  If you are ever looking for an awesome apartment for  two people, this is your place.  Obviously this is not the story of living in that apartment.  This is the story of the ungodly hell-hole we lived in for four days while my wife was pregnant with our second son .

     It starts off with my wife (Sara) and I realizing a couple of things.  First, we realized that with what I was getting paid; things were going to be pretty tight financially.  Second, we realized that Sara was pregnant, which was planned, however not particularly well-planned.  Our apartment was also getting too small for our current family, being as our son Johnny was turning two soon and needed more space than the corner of a living room.  So, we set out on a mission to find a new apartment.  

     We looked around for a couple of months, finding tons of places smaller than our current apartment.  Most of them smaller versions of our current place with a wall constructed through the one bedroom to act as a two-bedroom.  Some places were nice enough, but those places wanted a credit check, and with our 300-level credit score they were in absolutely no hurry to help us out.  We were well into the Christmas season now, which would have caused most people to stop looking till after the holiday, but we were stubborn.  We didn't want to move in the dead of winter, it might snow or something.  The baby was due at the end of March.

     Then we found it.  Sara was looking on craigslist, and found what sounded like pure gold.  It was a two-bedroom apartment, in the town next to our wonderfully sunny, yet small and cramped apartment.  It was only $800 a month, which was a comparative bargain.  We instantly chalked it up as a great prospect and called to go see it.  

     We couldn't meet up with the landlord until that evening, which I wasn't crazy about, but whatever.  We had my mom watch Johnny while Sara and I went to go check out the place.  It was off of a major roadway, down a dirt path.  My car didn't really appreciate the wobbly-ness of the dirt path, but I convinced myself it would be fine, and to stop being so skeptical.  Well, it was dark..  Very dark.  There are no street lamps on dirt roads.  Another couple was sitting in the driveway, waiting.  I felt threatened.  

     Five minutes later a BMW pulled into the driveway, and out stepped a small older lady.  We figured this to be the landlord and got out of the car to meet her.  She looked like a modern day, more pleasant, monotone hair-colored version of Cruella De Vil.  She seemed quite nice.  She let both us and the other couple into the house.  It was really old, and really huge. 

     Sara and I immediately loved it.  It was about two times the size of our apartment, for a lot less money.  Win-win situation.  There were two other units on the other side, one upstairs, which was also for rent.  Note to anyone renting: two vacancies at the same time should always raise an alarm.  Especially if the third unit is occupied by one person.  Sara and I were in a frenzy three minutes into looking at the apartment, afraid that the other couple looking at the apartment would beat us to the punch.  I still haven't figured out if this was a sneaky trick by the landlord or what, but I will never know.

     About ten minutes later, a third prospective renter showed up to look at the place.  Survival mode kicked in and I started getting really stupid.  I started jabbering at the landlord about how Sara and I REALLY LOVED the place, and how I loved old houses and all manner of stupidity.  The landlord said she liked us.  We dove right in and said we could drop the security deposit off at her house the next day.

   Well, we got the house, even though the other couple wanted it too.  I remember the landlord remarking that the other couple wanted a copy of the lease for their lawyer to go over.  In hindsight, this would have been a great idea, except for the fact we had no lawyer.  As young and stupid as we were desperate, Sara and I found the hand-written, one-page lease we had just signed with our new landlord perfectly acceptable and quite honestly, refreshing in a dispense with the formalities kind of way.

     We were going to move in on a friday, in about a week.  Sara was six months pregnant.  This was going to be interesting.  Both my parents and my in-laws chipped in to help make this happen.  I decided it would be nice to rent a carpet cleaner and clean all of the carpets, before we moved in.  What a nice guy, right.  

     Driving up to the entrance, I got my first glimpse of the house in daylight.  The road and our driveway were very unfinished.  Potholes filled with mud, dotted the dirt and gravel road the whole way up.  The driveway was no better, except grass was growing through the drivewat gravel.  Looking off to the right I realized the next door neighbor was the outdoor equivalent of a hoarder.  Two RV campers, in terrible shape, acted as a gateway to piles of scrap metal.  Old washers, dryers, refrigerators and torn apart vehicles dotted the landscape.  Old lawn tractors, flipped over were piled in the middle of the yard as if a shrine to John Deere.  Then I saw it, my new neighbor had a friggin airplane fusilage laying in between the trees.  It looked like it had been there for some time.

     What a mess I had just gotten myself into.  The other neighboring house looked vacant.  An industrial garage stood next to my new building.  Landscaping trucks were parked outside of the garage.  What had once been a small bush, had now taken over the entire front yard from what must have been a quarter century of neglect.  The place looked like something out of Deliverance or Gummo.  I was now officially embarassed to let anyone see our new family home.  

     I cleaned the carpets, sobbing like a little girl the whole way through.  I officially felt as if I had failed in life.  This place was that bad.  This is the place you go when society has thrown you out.  As if the general atmosphere of my new white trash-chic apartment weren't enough, when the carpet dried something was amiss.  The entire house suddenly wreaked of cat piss, and there was a white mold-like film had appeared on the carpets.  My heart sank and I immediately felt a year or five slip off of my life-span.  

     I called the landlord.  The landlord was in Florida.  She planned on being in Florida for the next three months.  Happy happy.  Joy Joy!!  (Enjoy my security deposit, ok?)  Well, Ms. De Vil informed me that her daughter's husband would come and take a look at the situation for me.  I waited for the son-in-law De Vil at the house for an hour and a half, stewing about what had just happened.  I had shampooed half a dozen rugs in the past years of renting with no issue.  

     He pulled up in a beat-to-hell Chevy pickup, wearing waterproof-camo-galoshes, a camo Carhartt jacket, and a humongous frown.  A Pissed-off puss.  He emanated annoyance.  He walked in, looked at the carpets, then knelt down and played carpet whisperer.  He ran his hand over the powdery substance.  He bent down over the carpet, putting his nose an inch from the carpet itself.  I am completely serious.  The entire place smelled heavily of cat piss, to the point it made you uncomfortable.  He then gave me the theory that the prior tenant had cats and that she sprinkled carpet fresh all over the carpets to make it smell nice.  Right.  I suppose it was cat-piss scented carpet fresh.  Right then and there I almost asked for my security deposit back.  I felt like I had no choice, this was already a very bad experience.

     Despite the setback, we were very very desperate to find somewhere to live.  We needed this place, we had to come up with a solution.  We were running out of time before the new baby, and Sara's family had specifically come to town to help us move.  I needed the help, anyone who has ever moved with a pregnant woman, knows they can't do much.  We were in between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  

     I called Miss De Vil on the phone to talk to her about a possible solution.  I told her I would like to leave my obligation and get my security deposit back.  I told her I felt she had cheated me (not in a very nice way either).  I told her this wasn't working out.  I told her she was making my family's christmas stressful.  She cried.  She told me about her dead husband, who had handled everything with the property before two months ago when he died.  Obviously, her christmas wasn't going to be so good either.  Well, although it shouldn't have, it made me feel bad.  I resolved that if she would replace all of the carpets at her expense, I would live there.  I thought I had won.  A huge place to live with brand new carpets for $800 a month, not too shabby.

     Well, the day we moved in we had a snow storm coming, a direct sign from God that moving into this place was going to be the mistake of a lifetime.  Ignorantly, we got everything moved in, then it started snowing.  

     The snow seemed almost peaceful, we had gotten done moving in and a beautiful snow had started cascading down, maybe things wouldn't be so bad.  My new neighbor's junkyard/backyard managed to looked almost intriguing with a fresh coat of snow covering it.   Maybe all of the bad stuff was over.  Sitting in my doom palace, with its nice new carpets, I couldn't help but think of The Shining as a Jack Nicholson-like stare washed over my face.

Four Days in Hell: A Renter's Terror. PART 2

     After a meal of pizza and beer I sat down for awhile, and had a second beer, trying to relax.  My spirits lifted.  The carpets were nice.  There was some serious space here.  It was dark and I didn't have to look out the windows at the dirt road or the ugly industrial style garage.  At about 10PM a loud car horn startled me out of my car, almost spilling the beer I had just cracked open.  The honk didn't stop.  A beat up Red Chevy Cavalier was in the driveway, laying on the horn, with its lights and wipers on.  It dawned on me that our cars were blocking the driveway.  Ooops.  The Cavalier was still laying on its horn.  How fucking rude.  I got my shoes on, while my father-in-law did the same, getting ready to move the cars for this wonderful person.  The horn stopped, then immediately picked back up again.

     I came outside looking annoyed, staring down the Cavalier.  There was a girl behind the wheel, I motioned my arms up in a what gives sort of fashion.  She opened her window enough to yell, "MOVE YOUR CARS, I CAN'T GET OUT!!"  Her rudeness had taken me off guard.  "Okay, you could've just knocked on the door, you know."  We moved the cars, she sped past.  We went inside, and had a conversation about how rude the first encounter with what was probably our new neighbor had just went.  We all spent the rest of the night relaxing, then went to sleep.

     I woke up at 2:07AM to the notoriously panic-inducing fast-paced beep of a car alarm.  The blinking of headlights illuminated the room, emphasizing the panic.  I got up out of bed, and dashed over to the window to see what was going on, praying that nothing was happening to my car.  Looking outside I saw the same red, beat up Cavalier, blinking and honking out the familiar car alarm anthem.  That must be my neighbor again.  Twenty minutes passed, the alarm was still going strong.  Johnny had woken up.  Everyone in the house was up.  That noise is annoying and panicky for any amount of time.  Twenty minutes is torturous.

    The car alarm went off for an hour and twenty minutes.  I couldn't understand what was going on, or why my new neighbor seemed not to be bothered by this.  Eventually it stopped In the morning, there was about six inches of snow on the ground.  I was quickly beginning to notice that the "road" leading up to our driveway was completely unplowed.  The half moon driveway twisting around the front of our house was also not plowed.  The driveway I was fine with.  I could understand having to shovel the driveway.  The road was a quarter-mile long.

     I heard noise out in the entranceway, so I opened the door to meet my neighbor.  Whoever the rude, battle ax may be.  She had that look that screamed of an alcohol or drug problem, she seemed to be nursing a hangover, severe withdrawal, or the worst case of PMS ever.  She stared at me, I looked back.  She was a spitting image of the Wicked Witch of the West on a drug bender.  The only thing lacking was the outfit and the whole green skin thing.  Two german sherpherds barked and jumped toward her door as I opened my own.  Christ, is there no end to this?  "Hi, I'm John your new neighbor."  I said, holding out a hand.  She regarded my hand and then proceeded to give me a sloppy dead-fish handshake.

     Surly McDrugwitch was standing in front of me, leaning her weight onto one leg impatiently.  I felt the sudden urge to yell at her.  Not only had been rude as hell about the cars while we were in the process of moving in, she had left her car alarm going off in the middle of the night.  I hadn't even known her 24 hours yet.  But then realized I might have to deal with her awhile and held back.

"Hey, there was a car alarm going off for awhile last night.  Did you hear it by chance?"
     I inquired, trying to sound polite.
"Oh? No I wasn't here."the witch remarked.
"Oh, it was that Cavalier outside, must of been the upstairs people."
      I back peddled.  Even though I knew it was her car, and the other people hadn't moved in yet.
"That's my car." annoyance added an air of evil to her voice.
"Hey, by the way, I'm sorry for blocking the driveway last night, we were moving in and needed to get in and out."
"Your supposed to park on the grass on the side of your place." the eternal wench replied.
      The dogs were trying to push their snouts between the crack in the door, they seemed angry.
"They aren't happy.  The dogs had all of that room to play around when your place was vacant.  Now they have to stay in just my place."
     I saw red for a moment.  This woman was letting her dogs run around and play in my apartment?    "Was that door locked when you moved in? I might have forgotten to lock it when I got my dogs out.  They are usually real sweeties, they must be mad at you."
     Hold on a second.  This woman has a key to my place.  What is going on here?
"Oh, you have a key?  Do you think I could get it?"
     This conversation was getting worse and worse by the moment.  She was noticeably offended.
"Yeah, I'll just uh, have to find it first."
     I could tell by her response we were not going to be friendly, and she wasn't giving the key to me.    "No rush, just whenever you get a chance."  The witch was already on her way back inside her door.  "It was nice to meet you." I said to her back, as she slammed her door.

     Later in the day we went to Home Depot to procure a couple of things to make our apartment more liveable, blinds, contact paper, switch plate covers.  There were a couple of switch plates that looked ugly, windows needed to be covered, things like that.  Plows had cleared some of the snow on the dirt road out front, but for obvious reasons hadn't cleared it all.  A huge pile of snow was built up at the end of our driveway.  Getting out was a challenge, but the car made it.

     Coming back from the Depot, we found it a little challenging (to say the least) to get back in.  The hill at the beginning of the dirt road had become a slushy, muddy impassable mess.  We made three attempts to climb the hill before succeeding.  After doing some work, I got hungry and decided to go get us a pizza.

     Driving to the bottom of the driveway, I lost my momentum.  The Jetta's tires spun and slid on the snow and ice.  I backed up, tried again.  Same results.  My pulse began to quicken.  I tried to back up, only sliding sideways on the ice in the process.  I tried going forward.  The sound of spinning made my teeth clench.  I got out of the car to try and see what was stopping me.  A huge pile of snow had formed in front of my car.  The front bumper had acted as a sort of snow plow.  I was very hangry.  Starvation and anger is a very dangerous combo for me.  I walked back up the driveway to get a snow shovel.  Walking back down I slipped and fell on a patch of ice.  My tailbone hit the ground with a crunching thud.  Pain shot up my spine.  I dug at the car in a frenzied fashion, trying to create traction under a wheel, until I was very winded (about 2 minutes).

     Then, the shovel snapped at where the plastic meets the handle.  In anger I pitched it into the overgrown bush out front.  I got back into the car, seeing if I was free.  The car wasn't doing anything except spinning tires.  For three minutes I floored it, seeing red, the tires spinning in a gripless limbo.  I punched the insides of the car, throwing a tantrum that would put any toddler in America to shame.  I punched the steering wheel, the VW symbol in the center dented badly.  I punched the seat vigorously about ten times.  I elbowed the window, luckily not breaking it.  I punched the ceiling.  I punched the built in sunglasses case in the ceiling, it cracked sending both pairs of sunglasses and plastic shrapnel into my lap.  I couldn't breathe.  Panic had taken over.  Never in my life had I felt such a sheer sense of panic.

     After about ten minutes of staring defeatedly at the dirt road ahead, stuck in the snow, I tried one more time.  God had mercy on me and let me go.  The car moved, I got the pizza.

Four Days in Hell: A Renter's Terror. PART 3

     Sara was in total nesting mode.  She was non-stop trying to get things in order, so that our rushed disaster of a house would be ready by Christmas, which was now three days away.  I left for work that morning with the house in total disarray, and came home to a heart-warming suprise.  I walked in and the entire living room and kitchen were unpacked and set up.  We wouldn't have to eat anymore take out, and I could sit and watch TV and relax, theoretically.  The best part is that, she had taken down our Christmas Tree at the apartment we had just moved out of, and set it up completely at our new address.

     I am a Christmas junkie.  Seeing the tree set up and decorated in our new apartment softened my hardened, stressed out heart and made me focus on happy thoughts.  It was nice.  The washer had broken sometime during the day, but I was desensitized to it.  I wrote it off as okay because a broken washer is the sort of thing you could actually expect out of a new rental.  I think just the sight of the christmas tree made it okay.

     With a new outlook on things, thanks to a home-cooked meal and holiday cheer, we started making our home more homey.  My pregnant wife got the idea to change a few switch plate covers.  She changed the one on the light switch, because the old one had more switch plate holes than switches, which looked awful and trashy.  Also, you could see the guts of the switch, god forbid Johnny stuck his finger in it.  Then right before she started on the next one, I told her that I would do it.  Quite honestly I was very uncomfortable with my wife (unborn child in tow) playing with anything related to the electrical components of an 1800s house.

     The outlet was not your usual outlet.  It looked to be an ancient version of a high voltage air conditioner outlet.  It was big and circular with three weird holes around the border.  The thought of my son crawling around with it exposed frightened me.  I was going to put solid plate over it, closing it off.

     I did not go to electrician school, but I knew enough to know that there was little risk of shock, if any, by changing a switch plate.  The switch plate is not part of the electrical circuit of any electrical outlet.    In this case, I was dreadfully wrong.  I unscrewed the first screw on the plate.  No problem.  I unscrewed the second screw.  Then, I went to grab the screw so it wouldn't fall.  When I touched the screw, which had been right there sticking out of the bottom of the switch plate since we had moved in, blue electrical fire shot out from where my fingers had made contact.  Immediately I felt almost stuck to it.  Blue sparks and flame was all I could see.  It was happening in slow motion.  I jumped back, smoke billowing from the tips of my fingers.

     The entire apartment smelled of current and charred flesh.  A metallic, electrical taste permeated my senses.  Burnt flesh smells terrible.  I got up.  Moving quickly across the room, shaking my arm around. Sara and my brother-in-law Chris were staring at me, a terrified expression etched on both of their faces.  They asked me questions, I can't tell you any of my answers.  Sara pointed down at my arm.  It was twitching and shaking a little, involuntarily.  My thumb and forefinger were charred completely black.  It looked terrible.  Looking at my mangled hand, I feared that both of the fingers were fried crispy.

     I called the landlord to inform her that there was something seriously wrong with the electrical in her building, being as the screw that kept the switch plate over the outlet was also part of a live circuit.  I was probably a little rude about the situation, not suprisingly.  Then, I was off to the hospital.  The fingers throbbed, not with pain but with an odd feeling.

     My brother-in-law stayed at the death trap house with a sleeping Johnny, while Sara drove me to the hospital.  I won't get into it too much, but I will tell you two highlights.  First, scrubbing a burn with a bristle brush makes you see white with pain.  Second, if I was left-handed the current could have travelled up to my heart and given me a heart attack.  I got back from the hospital at about three in the morning.  Now your playing with power.  I spent the next four weeks bandaged up.

     I woke up the next morning to a phone call.  It was the landlord's attorney.  Smelling a lawsuit as much as I had smelled my own flesh burning the previous night, Cruella De Vil had called her attorney for damage control.  The attorney, who seemed rather nice, explained to me that the house had issues and that apparently it had been unspoken that repairs on the house were expected to be performed by the tenant at the cost of the tenant.  "Well, that would have been nice to know beforehand, because I would have never moved into this hellhole if I had." I replied.  He then intimated to me that he felt his client had rather naively gotten into this and thought she had handled everything very foolishly.

     He babbled a little more, then got to the point, if I was uncomfortable with the arrangement, perhaps it'd be better if I moved on.  "Quite honestly, I don't want to spend another moment here, my only concern is my security deposit and first month's rent." I replied.  "I will make sure you get that money back, if that suits you." the attorney stated.  "Also, I now need to find a place to live two days before Christmas, tell your client thank you very much for ruining my family's Christmas." I said somberly before hanging up.

     The electrician who came to check out the outlet found out that the outlet was actually on a different circuit from everything else in our house.  The circuit breaker was actually in our awful neighbors unit, which I am sure is up to code.  I called our previous landlord, being as I had not yet handed over the keys to our place, and asked if we could move back into our old place.  He had luckily not rented it out yet, so at least we had somewhere to go.  Friends of mine were already telling me how I should definitely sue Cruella.  Honestly it was tempting, but I also felt partly to blame.  In hindsight, I knew I should have known it was a bad idea.  We had been desperate and in a hurry.  Two things you should never be when shopping for a house or an apartment.

     We had wasted lots of time and effort.  Three nights of moving and unpacking, cleaning, putting up blinds, which I would now be returning.  The most demoralizing things was taking down the christmas tree and moving it again.  Thank God the tree was fake, or we would have worn it down to kindling otherwise.  Not to mention, two of my fingers were in full-on burn dressing and bandages.

     Thanks to an email to some very awesome friends, within a day we had a lot of moving help, and we were back in our old apartment by Christmas Eve day.  Granted, we had our Christmas among boxes, but at least we were out of that God foresaken place.  Cleaning up the evil apartment I was tempted to vandalize it, until I remembered I was still waiting to get my security deposit back.  We were going away shortly after Christmas so I had to harrass the De Vil's attorney to get my check quickly, but I got all of my money back.  Luckily the electrical burn healed completely, with no nerve damage.  There are no real signs of it anymore, the scar healed well.

     Two months later, we found our current apartment and moved in with a little time to spare to get ready for the baby.  Needless to say, we were much more thorough in looking for apartments from that day forward.  We even used a realtor.  My second son, Tommy was born on April Fools Day and luckily he never had to directly deal with that hellacious experience.  Hopefully Johnny doesn't remember anything about the place either.  Looking at pictures a year or two later, I noticed that both Sara and I look noticeably older in photos taken days before the moving debacle versus pictures taken during Christmas time of that year.  I still wake up in a full panic from bad dreams of being electrocuted.  I also developed a not so healthy fear of electricity from that day forward.

  

  

Fat Camp Parents Turned Politicians

How America's Obsession with Healthy Lifestyles and Smart Snacking is Ruining our Fun Level.

     Honestly, enough with the governing of our eating habits.  If you are too daft to know what's good and bad for you, you have much larger problems than your diet or lack thereof.  Did it ever occur to Michelle Obama or any of these health crusaders that perhaps I don't care to know how many calories are in a Shamrock Shake, donut, meal at a restaurant, or greasy fast food burger?  Sometimes people want to splurge and eat stuff that's bad for them, can't they just enjoy it, please.  The next person who feels the need to inform me about how bad Coca Cola is for me, I'm going to shake the rest of the bottle up and send a geyser of delicious, godly fizz directly into their face.  Coke is perhaps the greatest beverage ever created.  Focus on something else, please.

     Thanks to government officials posing as over-protective parents, I now have to be uber-conscious of such trivial crap as how many calories a rushed fast-food meal contains, and feel guilty for drinking more than eight ounces of soda.  We can't seem to do anything about any of our other societal ills: our lackluster economy, drug addiction, drunk driving, immigration, threats of nuclear war; why not focus on the obesity epidemic.  Epidemic sounds more immediate too.  

     Here's an idea, do something about student loans.  Except, let's call it the student loan crisis.  It is a legitimate problem.  Nobody from this generation is going to be buying anything even remotely soon; the majority of them are in a Draino-gargling amount of debt from student loans.  According to a USA Today article: nationally, student debt has surpassed $1 Trillion, yet nobody has really said much about it.  

     I can't even go out to dinner and enjoy it anymore.  I went to On the Border for lunch with my wife awhile ago.  There is a breakdown of the caloric content of EVERYTHING on the menu.  Instead of having something awesome and delicious as a special occasion, I sat there nervously scanning over the entire menu, trying to find something under 780 calories.  What a drag.  I couldn't help it, I ended up with a boring salad.  Eeecchhh.  I was going to get the Ultimate Fajita, it would have been epic.  While the calorie listing had its intended effect, it was soul-crushing.  After shoveling down my salad, I had the audacity to look at the dessert menu.  Looking at the dessert menu, I realized the healthiest dessert is 700 extra calories.  The numbers stood staring at me, as if to say "shovel it on fatty."  Needless to say, I passed on the dessert.  It was a cheap bill, but that wasn't my mission.

     Don't get me wrong.  I was never under the impression that restaurants specialized in low-calorie yet tasty cuisine.  I don't expect, nor want them to.  I was perfectly happy being blissfully ignorant to the caloric content of the average restaurant menu.  Going out to eat at a restaurant, is a special thing to do with someone else in order to sit back and relax.

     Not to mention, this must hurt business.  With a teetering economy, do we really need to give people reasons not to spend money at restaurants.  In addition, more often than not, the lower calorie items on a menu are the salads and appetizers; generally cheaper than anything else on the menu.  So now, instead of the restaurant making the $20 average on a meal, they just sold an $8 appetizer as a meal.   

     Mayor Michael Bloomberg's failed soda ban is the worst of all.  The ban, which was touted as "arbitrary and capricious" prior to being shot down, would have banned the sale of 16 ounce drinks which have more than 25 calories per ounce.  It would have crippled businesses and restaurants, who make boatloads of money on drink sales.  I know that you could get a diet soda, but have you tasted one.  It's reminiscent of dirt when compared to a real soda.  

     Seriously, this is what the mayor of New York City has to do?  What's next, three drink a night maximums at NYC bars?  One candy bar a week limit?  Not to mention, it is frivolous.  I am sure you could still purchase a two liter bottle of soda at a supermarket.  Even a dunce could figure out that buying two eight ounce bottles equals the golden number 16.  God forbid I might buy a 12-pack I might be doing hard time for that one.  I didn't know that our "free country" was cutting us off at one eight-ounce soda a day.  

     By the way, a 150 lb. person burns 63 calories per hour of sleep.  That same person can burn about 300 calories in an hour of walking.  If your a real go-getter, 30 minutes of low impact aerobic exercise will knock off 207 calories.  Is it really that big of a deal if you consume some calories?  After all, you can burn off a "controversial" 16-ounce Coke by sleeping for four hours.  Does our fetish with calorie counting seem a little ridiculous?

     Now, I don't mean to sound insensitive, after all, we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic.  Obesity EPIDEMIC, huh?  That really says something for what we perceive as a problem.  What a bizarre epidemic to have.  There are children dying every hour of every day of starvation, and we are fighting the good fight here in the USA to end the War on Over-Eating.  If the biggest epidemic in your country is obesity, I think its time to shut up.  

     

Once, Twice, Three Times a Dunce

     I received a weird gift last weekend.  I was over at my Mom and Dad's house eating dinner with my wife and kids on Sunday.  Well, my Mom has been going through the attic.  Shortly after we finished eating, my Mom mentioned Precious Moments figures my Grandmother had gotten for my sister and I.

     While a lot of you who know what Precious Moments are may be cringing, I have to admit they are adorable, nauseatingly sentimental, generally owned exclusively by moms and grandmas, but adorably cute none-the-less.  They are ceramic figurines that generally depict big-headed, ultra cute, cartoonish children in all manner of over-the-top cuteness.  The perfect mother's day present (if your looking for ideas).

     Anyway my Mom mentioned that my Grandma (who had worked at Hallmark in the early 90s, where Precious Moments are generally sold) had bought a bunch of them for my sister and I when we were kids.  A few seconds later she came into the room with a little box.  I opened the box, to see a figure of a little cartoonish boy, sitting on a stool, wearing a dunce cap.  I immediately remembered something from kindergarten:

     One day, when I was roughly the same age as my older son I got a bright idea.  It was one of those boring days, when there is a lot of busy work handed out.  It was a day when my class had a substitute teacher.  I was in kindergarten, so this was the first substitute teacher I had ever had.  Quite honestly I thought she was rather awful.  She had an extremely nasally voice, was wearing what appeared to be nurses scrubs, and generally had a rotten disposition.  Everything she said sounded unpleasant.  I disliked her instantly.

     This was bad news.  I was usually a really shy child, some of my first memories were of clinging to my mom's leg and using her to hide behind when unfamiliar people so much as breathed near me.  Well, my distaste for this woman, who had apparently taken my awesome goofball teacher, Mr. Tolbert, away from me, led me into mischief.

     Busy work for kindergarteners is generally coloring, today was no different.  The entire class was coloring, while the intruder was at Mr. Tolbert's desk reading a newspaper, and ignoring the entire class.  Suddenly I got an absolutely brilliant idea.  Examining my stock of crayons, I realized they would fit almost perfectly into each of my nostrils.  BRILLIANT!  I readied the green and yellow crayons (typical colors of snot, good choice I thought), then called some attention.

     My friend Jacob was at the other end of the large table, minding his own business and coloring.  He would get a kick out of this.  "HEY JACOB, WATCH THIS!!"  I yelled in his general direction.  Then I quickly jammed the crayons into my nostrils and then shook my head around a little, rolling my eyes.  In milliseconds most of the class was in stitches.  I had called Jacob, but the entire class had answered.  It was great.

     Almost instantly the trespassing pig was on me.  She had a tight grip on my arm, and was lifting me out of my seat.  The crayons had fallen out of my nose and broken on the floor.  I was still laughing.  So was a majority of the class.  She was not.  She seemed genuinely offended and upset.  I bet Mr. Tolbert would have laughed.  She had put me in a chair in the corner of the room.  Then, she made her first real attempt at actually teaching the class.  "Attention class, John is being a DUNCE, so now he has to sit in the DUNCE chair.  We don't stick crayons in our noses, do we?"  The sub made a dunce cap out of a large sheet of paper and put it on my head.  DUNCE was scribbled down the side in red correcting marker.

     The whole class was staring in my direction, no one was laughing anymore.  Humiliation was flooding all of the good, fun-loving feelings of a second ago and drowning them.  I had gone from happy to really embarassed within seconds.  Not to mention, I had no clue at all what a dunce was, apparently me.  I got the impression I was in a lot of trouble.

     The day rolled on, I got to go back to my seat.  Becky whispered "Are you okay, you had to sit in the dunce chair?"  "Yeah" I replied.  I didn't know how to feel about it, I just knew it meant I was punished.  When my Mom picked me up from school I didn't say anything.  I thought I would be in big trouble.  The substitute had seemed really mad.

     When I got home I immediately went outside to play because I didn't want to confess the crayon incident.  I was outside for a while, then my Mom called me inside.  "OH NO!  She asked if my teacher had made me sit in the dunce chair.  I told her what happened, expecting yelling and punishment.  Well, my Mom smiled and told me the teacher shouldn't have done that.  My Mom told me that my classmates Paul and Robbie, who were twins and enormous momma's boys at that, (if your reading, sorry, you probably overcame that) had told their mom what happened, and their mom had called the school to complain about the substitute.  Apparently dunce chairs and dunce caps were considered archaic and cruel in the 1990s.  Go figure.

     The puritanical punisher never worked in the Milford School District ever again, which isn't a particularly big bridge to burn, about three schools total.  If you lash out at a kindergartener by utilizing a pre-1950s punishment method perhaps you shouldn't be teaching kids, even as a substitute.

     My grandma apparently had found the dunce chair incident really funny and cute, enough so to capture it with a ceramic figure.  Although my grandma passed away in 1993, it was like I had just received a gift from her.  It was friggin heart-warming.  The day after opening the dunce, I was at the playground with my kids.  As I came screaming down the swirly tunnel slide head first after my boys, to a cadre of frowning, judgemental parents I felt sheepish.  Then I saw the boys smiling back at me, laughing like hyenas, and I realized things don't change much.

The Old Boy and the Tranny

or Why One-Man Pub Crawls are a Bad Idea

     About 8 years ago, when I was living in Philadelphia, things hardly ever got boring.  There was always something to do.  Perhaps this is why I couldn't really hold a job for the first four years or so that I was there.  It seemed like there was always way better things to be doing than working on anything.  This also applied to studying and homework.  Granted I pulled off grades mediocre enough not to be asked to leave, but that's not saying much.
 
     I only became able to keep a job and get motivated to finish school after two things happened.  First, my parents stopped paying my rent.  Yes, I know its sad, and I actually used to lie to people about it (if your reading, sorry); but Mommy and Daddy payed their 21-year-old man-child's rent for him.  Second, I met my wife, who (A) didn't find my parents paying my rent to be much of a turn-on, and (B) would become preggers with my son.  Well, let's just say I need pressure to get motivated.

     Well, now I am going to tell you a story about before I had my shit together .  I was working at Starbuck's on 4th and South St in the Summer of 2006.  Not for long mind you, about 1 month.  (I got fired about two weeks after this story.)  My roommates were in Europe, I was holding down the fort in South Philly, somewhere by Pat's and Geno's.

     Anyway, I got off work at about 7:00pm and decided to hit up a few bars, after all it was payday and an empty apartment quite honestly sucks 80% of the time.  So, I started off across the street from my place of employment, had a beer and a shot of whiskey.  Then, feeling the urge to be somewhere a little less in the eye of my employer, I walked about four blocks and started a personal pub crawl at the upper end of South Street, where the bars start.  It was a good time, nothing too out of hand at first.  Also, being as I was going into all of these bars on my lonesome, I didn't want to stay in any very long.

     I tried to stick to a "one drink done in a blink" mantra.  I felt awkward about bar-hopping alone in daylight, also I wasn't smooth, so it was a quiet and contemplative pub crawl.  Well, there is a lot of bars on that street.  I stopped at most of them.

     Suddenly, I realized it was dark.  Very dark.  I pulled out my phone to get a handle on the time.  Unfortunately, my eyes weren't working and for some reason there were three screens staring back at me, all of them written in what looked to be some illegible form of Vietnamese.  Darn.  Although it was a weeknight, it was very dead.  It had to be late.  Everything looked to be closed or in some form of closing.  If you are unfamiliar with South street, it is a pretty happening place.  Things don't really shut down there until about 2 in the morning, regardless of the day of the week.  I suddenly realized that I was holding a pint glass from the last bar I was in.  Ooops.  Hopefully they have extras.

     I walked to the corner, still holding the drink in my hand, and stared up at the street sign to get a handle on which way was home.  To say the street sign was hard to read would be an understatement.  Between my swaying and trying to light a cigarette it just wasn't clear enough to read.  Eventually I got it figured out by closing one eye and opening and closing it slowly.  "Sixth" I said aloud, congratulating myself.  I figured I could walk straight down till I hit my street and then double back.  I got this.  Like I've never walked by myself plastered before.  Pffftt!!

     So, I stumbled and weaved back and forth working my way back toward home, in need of rest and water.  The pub crawl had snuck up on me.  In retrospect, it now seemed like a good idea to have eaten dinner.  I finished the last of my drink and set the pint glass down on someone's stoop, then knocked it over, shattering it on the stoop instead.  "Sorry," I shouted, walking away.

     A couple of minutes after my half-hearted apology I started to hear an echo.  Not loud, pleasantly soft.    Must be my feet, i thought.  Looking down at my feet, I realized I was wearing Birkenstocks, not the type of shoe to make an echo really.  This sounded a lot more like high heels.  The sound was much louder now, and much more rhythmic,  whatever was making that noise was quickly gaining on me.

     Being as heels are generally worn by women, I wasn't particularly alarmed.  After all, perhaps in my relaxed and drunken state I had made a real impression on some girl, and she was now running to catch up with me.  Weirder things could happen, right?

     The pounding of the high heels was slowing down now, she must be approaching me.  Wouldn't want to look creepy now, would we?  Running up on sloppy useless drunks with rent-paying deficiencies is not in this year.  Suddenly the loud high heel popped into my peripheral vision.  I had somewhat snapped out of my sloppy state, trying to keep my inebriated guard up.  Now a leg was in my peripheral.  A very chunky, very dark and fish-netted leg.  Ohh dear.  A big gal, huh?

     Suddenly, I felt the urge to quicken my pace.  Something was off, fear was rearing its head.  Before I had a chance to see my high-heeled predator, I knew I was doomed.  Memories of the broken glass on the stoop made a lump form in my throat.

     "Lookin for a date?" a throaty voice questioned.  Tranny.  I knew it.  I didn't even have to look.  Although trannies ARE extremely entertaining to look at, and not very threatening either.  "No, thank you." I replied.  It moved in closer, and started throwing a big sweaty intimidating arm around my neck.  I moved out of reach, quickly, stumbling into a car but still walking quickly.  "Oh, calm down baby.  I ain't hurtin ya!"  remarked the drag queen.  It's tone of voice sounded hurt and offended.  That's the last thing I need, an emotionally imbalanced queen following me home.

     I ventured a look, and immediately wished I hadn't.  It was hideous.  He was black, with a blond wig, a smattering of facial hair, no noticeable makeup, and wearing sunglasses at two in the morning.  Fabulous.  On his bosom, which was very well endowed, he wore a gold rhinestone tube top.  The skirt was extremely short and patent-leather.  Yikes.  One thing I was thankful for was that, my shock level had rendered me completely sober for the time being.

     Approaching a street sign, I noticed I was almost home.  Good.  I started feeling for my keys, half to get them ready, half to use as a potential weapon in case this one wanted to rape me.  "Where we goin?" my prospective date said, trying to sound smooth.  A flutter of pity arose.  He is awkward too.  Worse yet, he was under the illusion that I wanted to play, or that I was drunk enough to convince.  My heart was racing.  What if he follows me to my door.  The idea of turning my back on this character was turning my guts to lava.

     I could see my front door up the street.  I prayed for it to be unlocked and ajar so I could sneak in quickly.  It wouldn't be.  I was basically at a run by how long and frantic my my strides had become.  I was ready to vomit from the excitement.  Before I knew it I was up on my stoop, jamming the key in the lock, meanwhile not taking my eyes off the threatening transvestite.  I imagined that this was how girls feel a lot of the time.  The tranny was at the bottom of my stoop, looking up at me, a devious cheshire cat grin from ear-to-ear.  He is going to rape me.  Damn me for getting so drunk.  The key turned in the lock, it was unlocked.  I was ready to slam a Birkenstock-ed foot into his jugular if he moved onto the first step.  I got behind the screen door, closing it.  Just then, it happened....

"AHHH, WELL, FUCK YOU THEN BABY!!!!" he yelled in an almost good-hearted manner, while he simultaneously pulled up his patent-leather skirt to expose what was underneath it, sans underwear.  He held his skirt up for what seemed like an eternity, gyrating at me while grunting.  I recoiled in horror, and yelled a long stream of curses, slamming my door and locking all four pad locks.

     I spent the next hour curled up in a ball, trying to find a happy place.  The next morning I vowed never to get drunk and walk home alone in Philly again.  I didn't for about two weeks.  I have since moved away from Philadelphia, not for fear of a repeat of that incident.  I miss how much fun it was there, and the unpredictability of it, however there are just some things I guess you will never miss.  

Monorails, Meltdowns, and Mickey Mouse.. Oh my...

 Parenting Can be Magically Disgusting

    About this time last year my family and I went to Walt Disney World.  At the time my younger son, Tommy was about 2, and my older son Johnny was about 3.  Well, after an excruciatingly long 18 hour non-stop, white-knuckled, all-night drive we were finally there.  The all-night drive is never a bad idea if you want to save money on a hotel, and makes sense if you are with like-minded individuals who plan on sleeping a lot when you finally reach your destination.  It IS a terrible idea, if you plan on hanging out with a toddler and a preschooler at a hotel pool.

     Well, luckily our in-laws were meeting us at the pool, my usefulness as a parent was in question and honestly lackluster at best.  My head was pounding.  All of the coffee and 5 hour energy I had shoved down my throat through the night had rendered me as tweaky as any crackhead from my old neighborhood.  I felt like total hell.

     After relaxing, coming down off my caffeine/vitamin induced rage, I was finally beginning to enjoy my vacation.  Things were beginning to go well.  I went to sleep.

     Well, the next day we were going to the Magic Kingdom.  I was as giddy as the boys, possibly even more so.  As an adult, I understand you are supposed to lose some of your excitement for things like this, but I hadn't been there since kindergarten.  You see, as a kid my family didn't travel much.  I mean my aunt, uncle and cousins lived in Orlando for christsake.  We only visited them once.  LAME!  I was bugging out with pure joy.  It reminded me of those kids you see who live their lives deprived of candy, chips or anything that's not wholesome, nutritious, and comprised of at least 70 percent kale.  I was like one of those kids drinking a coke and eating a Snickers bar for the first time.

     My kids were excited, but in a different way.  We were waiting for the monorail.  First off, a little background.  My kids both love trains, not in a normal way either.  They are obsessed with them.  They have a four foot by two foot bin filled to the brim with wooden railroad track pieces and buildings.  In a pinch, we could probably pawn all of it and have enough to cover rent (the spoils of being both sides of the family's first grandkids).  When we are driving to the toy store, they become more excited about the railroad crossing sign they see out the window on the way there, than anything they see in the store.  The older one dances around and flails his arms when in the presence of a train.  They LOVE trains, got it?

     Well, the monorail did not go over so well.  It's presence caused an immediate bad jolt.  Tommy (the younger) was in the grips of fear and panic.  Johnny was already denying that he was even going to go on it in a whiny sing-song squeek.  "Nooo, I don't wanna to go on that.  Nooo, I don't wanna go on that."  After the gate opened, signaling that the other people had gotten off and we were ready to board, Johnny planted his feet, ready to create a scene.  he had decided now was as good a time as any to test my parenting skills in front of this vast cross section of other parents from all walks of life.  It was getting ugly quick.

     When one kid starts a full-on meltdown, the other catches the virus like wildfire.  We were right in the middle of a friggin episode.  Luckily Tommy was in a stroller, he is a captive audience.  I picked up Johnny, dragging him on.  Tommy flailed while my wife wrestled the stroller onto the monorail to Disney.  I would love to tell you that this was the end of the issue.  It wasn't.

     We were jammed into the monorail car with a large, a little too perfect-looking to be for real, goody-little-two-shoes type of family.  Tommy was crying so piercingly that an outsider would be tempted to examine his fingers and toes for fear that one or five had been lopped off in the monorail door.  Then it happened, Tommy's throat revolted.  Suddenly a geyser of vomit was spewing out of Tommy's mouth like a bad luck oil strike.  Before my eyes puke splattered all over Tommy, his jeans, the monorail floor, and the metal handrail in front of him.

     It happened in fast motion, hardly even a millisecond.  The aftermath was worse.  Quickly the smell completely permeated the entire monorail car.  The goody-little-two-shoes family starred on in complete shock and horror.  They would never fully recover from this one.  The fear etched on the two pig-tailed girl's faces was honestly priceless.  A part of my rapidly down-spiraling mental state nearly started cackling in their face.  Scanning over the rest of their faces, I saw various levels of disgust.  The young boy had a sickly look on his face, his slightly puffed out cheeks telling me all I needed to know about the swallowing motion of his throat.  The grandmother was staring vacantly into the distance, trying to consciously forget the memory through not processing it.

     It was at this moment that Johnny finally weighed in on the commotion.  "Tommy puked!!!" Johnny yelled, pointing at the vomit flowing across the monorail floor.  My mother-in-law was frantically trying to clean the copious amount of vomit off the handrail, Tommy, and the floor with about 7 Starbucks napkins she had nestled in her purse for emergencies.  Good effort, although a mop and an entire roll of paper towels may not have cleaned this mess up well enough.  The smell was becoming increasingly unbearable by the minute.  It was early in the ride.

     After the absolute peak of horrible kid behavior, both Johnny and Tommy were cool calm and collected.  The following ten minutes of the ride were smelly and silent.  A lot of looking at my feet, and tons of good-natured reflection.  Just as the smell in the monorail was reaching panic status we got to the ticket booths.  I didn't have the guts to venture another look at the suffering goody-two-shoes family.  They knew we were sorry.

     The rest of the night was magical, seriously.  My initial reaction had been to bail out of the day, catch the first monorail back, and try again the next day.  It would have been a mistake.  It turned out we had one of the best times our collective family has had to date, during that week.  We went back again the following November, even though we couldn't afford it.  We had a great time again.   I guess it just goes to show that no matter how terribly things can be going, sometimes if you stick it out you can turn things around completely.  Also, I am eternally grateful we didn't see that poor family we shared the monorail car with again.

Sensational Non-News

March 6, 2013

What's to Report?

By: John Kafader

     There is such a thing as knowing too much for our own good, and guess what, WE ARE THERE.  I used to watch the news a lot.  I used to read a lot of newspapers.  I still watch the news and read newspapers, but sometimes it becomes a little less than enjoyable.  I blame it on a lot of things, or rather a lot of little things.  We are so submersed in media nowadays that it has become mind-numbing to keep up with the news.  With the 24-hour news cycle and all of the wasted effort of finding things to constantly report on, we are running out of things to say. 

     It is sad.  There is simply not that much going on sometimes and all of these news outlets are left with nothing to do but stories that don't honestly matter to anyone.  Half of the daily news stories aren't even anything of substance.  Take an inventory of the next newspaper/ radio news update/ TV news broadcast you read, watch, or hear.  How important was it.  Honestly?

     Do you care if three people were shot in the Middle East this afternoon?  Even if they were government officials?  Sad but true, I wish it wasn't, but it is.  Here's a question for you: When was the last day that no one met an untimely death in the Middle East anyway?  I think it was the day before Christ died.

    Perhaps the worst offender of all is weather forecasting.  First off, it is all scientifically based guess work.  They have a good idea, but nothing is solid.  With global warming (which I am tired of hearing about) we are obsessed with every little thing the earth does naturally.  Because we've had a couple of hurricanes in the past few years, you would think as every storm moves in, the apocalypse is upon us.  What was once rain showers with winds of 20+ mph is now referred to as Winter Storm Saturn.  Sounds much scarier right?   While the "storms wrath"(actual quote from weather.com, check it out)  is upon us, I will be battening down the hatches here in Hopewell, the bunker is ready.

    Do you care if a dog attacked a little girl in Wisconsin, and now the dog might just have to be put to sleep?  Dogs die and get put to sleep everyday in every city in America.  Also, everyday someone gets attacked by a dog.  Heck, when I was a kid I think I got attacked by my family dog every other week.  No one was there to report it.  Eventually we put him to sleep, or as my parents told me they gave him to a nice old couple.  Yes, it is sad and scary for the little girl, but honestly she will pull through.  She will live to see another day.  Is this cause for a national news story, or are we perhaps running out of things to cover.

     

     One more for good measure, I may lose some of you on this one.  I honestly don't need to know what the president is up to on a daily basis.  Quite honestly I think this is where some of our country's hatred of politicians has come from.  We know too much about the man.  Not just Obama, either.  The only time I need to know what the President is up to, is when he does something pertaining to the presidential job description (if there is one); or when he has done something horribly wrong (Watergate?).  That's it.  The president is not supposed to be a celebrity, nor is his wife.  We are in the presidential business too much.  We weren't busy exposing Kennedy (may he rest in peace) for the philanderer he was, were we?  He was doing Marilyn Monroe for christ sake.  The modern day press would have had a news-gasm  with that one.  Then, decades later we nearly crucify Bill Clinton for coping a blowjob for a chubby intern.  God forbid we had the 24-hour news cycle in the 1700s.  Nobody would have trusted the founding fathers for a fortnight.   

     

     These are just examples.  Believe me, I could go on for days and days.  Now, wait a minute, I am not trying to expose news outlets for broadcasting total crap.  I am just saying it has gotten out of hand.  Once upon a time news stories were written and reported and then that was it, until something else happened.  We have become totally obsessed with keeping up to date, to the point of nausea.

     We have become a bunch of knowledge-obsessed people.  This within itself is not bad, but it has become so frivolous that its no fun anymore.  We know too much for our own good.  So, next time your watching coverage of  Category 1 Tropical Storm Jeff or find yourself reading about the Twizzler shortage in Muncie, do yourself a favor and go do something fun instead.

  

Death and Taxes

February 14, 2013

Death and Taxes

By: John Kafader 

            Only two things in life are certain as someone once said: Death and Taxes.  In addition to being certain, they are also one of the most confusing things the average American tackles on a yearly basis.  While doing my taxes recently, my mind began to wander.  Who can honestly say that they fully comprehend the highly legal and mind-numbingly wordy manner in which these tax documents are worded? 

            I don’t proclaim to be the smartest man on earth, I don’t even aspire to be in the running, but I have a college education.  I am a writer.  I also read voraciously.  Yet, when I go to do my taxes, I can’t help but get the feeling I am in danger of accidentally committing tax fraud. 

            About one third of the language would not make any sense to your average American (the people who actually do their own taxes), and after an hour or three you find yourself caring less and less, merely trying to get to the end and get the thing filed.

            Asking a bunch of co-workers a bunch of questions about what certain tax lingo meant, no one was really in any hurry to answer my questions.  For instance, a gold star goes to whoever can tell me accurately and confidently the answer to any of the following:

-  What is an ordinary dividend?

 -  Is an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) just an over-the-top word way of                        saying SSN (Social Security Number)?

-  Would you bet your life (or even just half of your little toe) that your tax return was 100% accurate?

           

            The tax code is out of hand.  Apparently even the professionals can’t get it right.  In 2006, the Government Accountability Office secretly submitted 19 tax returns to commercial tax preparers. All the completed returns had errors, the GAO found, and several overlooked common deductions.  With this kind of track record, anyone doing their taxes is most likely making errors; errors that either cost them money, or errors that can count as tax fraud.

           Utilizing such overly wordy language and such technical speech the average American needs to acquire help from either a tax professional or tax software to confidently complete their tax preparation.  "The tax laws have changed so quickly and become so confusing that it's very difficult for the average person to do their own taxes," says Cynthia Jeanguenat, an enrolled agent in Virginia Beach.

            To have an accountant do your taxes or not?  Millions of Americans either pay their accountant, a lawyer, or visit a storefront tax preparation business such as: H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt.  This is the most thorough way of ensuring that you get the beefiest return or have to pay the least amount of taxes.  These people need to stay current and read up on the overly complicated tax code, although this does not guarantee tax perfection.  Not to mention, tax professionals can come with a hefty price tag.

            Tax preparation done by a professional can cost an average of $130 for a federal and state return with no itemized deductions.  A federal and state return with itemized deductions costs an average of $229, according to the National Society of Accountants.  It can become a gamble whether you think you will find everything the accountant would have.  I always tell myself the accountant may have found me another $300 or so, but I just saved that doing my own tax prep. 

            Software tax prep usually costs significantly less.  Tax software costs run somewhere between free and $30, a fraction of the cost of professional tax preparation.  Although, with the software the only one to decipher the complexity of the tax code language is yourself, and you will second guess yourself.

            Tax preparation is soul-crushingly tedious process, especially when done in your free time.  The IRS estimated that the average taxpayer needed 22 hours to do his or her 2011 tax return.   It takes longer if you have a more complicated return, around 32 hours.  It is even complicated to tell if you have a more complicated return.  Unless you spend even more time looking into it, how would you know whether it would be beneficial for you to itemize your deductions?  I’m sure I am not the only one doing their taxes for the first time that spent hours sifting through page after page trying to find something to itemize. 

            How many people are actually doing their own taxes?  Well, quite a few from what I understand.  While 64% of Americans who filed their taxes electronically had them done by a tax professional, many Americans do their own taxes through a computer program or website.  This is the way I do my tax return.  Taxact.com, HRblock.com, Turbotax and TaxCut are all services and computer programs specializing in tax preparation. 

            DIY tax programs for the computer are really becoming more of the norm recently.  According to a USA Today article, H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, the nation’s largest tax preparation firms, reported sharp drops in business last year, while Turbotax, the largest provider of tax software saw a 10% rise in sales during the same time period.  They are widely used, although without an actual accountant, there will be numerous situations in which the majority of Americans will either have to search for further meaning or interpretation of what they see on the page.  It can quickly become overwhelming. 

            Why is tax language so confusing?  I have a theory.  Tax language is written by people who went to school to understand what this language meant.  I feel that a certain amount of this language is based on job security.  If this language were to be stated in a clear and concise manner without confusing terminology, these guys would be out of a job. 

            Also, confusing tax language leaves room for loopholes.  Nobody wants to get in trouble for tax fraud; it carries hefty penalties.   Confusing language is meant to scare people out of attempting to claim money they are owed.  I am sure you have all done it. You are on section 22 of your 1040 and you don’t know whether your perfunctory liturgical stipend (okay so that might not actually exist, it’s a scenario for Christ sake) is or isn’t tax deductible.  Scenarios of audit letters burn through your subsconscious.  After twenty moments of reading the help section on Tax Act, you have just been frightened out of it; you don’t claim it. 

            In the United Kingdom taxes are done quite differently.  I read in a USA Today article that:

“Taxpayers receive an annual tax statement, based on information the government has about their wages and other sources of income. Those who agree with the information simply sign the form and send it back. President Obama raised the idea of giving taxpayers a "pre-filled return" during the 2008 campaign.

            So, I think it is fair to say that taxes are one of several aspects of our system that are working on a lean mixture of common sense.  While other models may exist, I am sure they have the shortcomings as well.  However, in my research I found a couple of safeguards I would like to share with you:

1.  Jeff Schnepper, author of How to Pay Zero Taxes suggests in his MSN Money article: “If you choose to do your own taxes, consult with a good tax professional at least once every three to five years - - just to find out if your missing anything.”  Many tax professionals take a look at your previous two years of tax filing, for things you have missed.  H&R Block actually states this in their commercials.

2.  Software can come in handy, it is cheap (relatively) and guides you through the process by asking questions and gives descriptions of where numbers can be found on your W2.  You will still have questions though, unless you are smarter than I am, or perhaps you just have an easier tax return.

3.  Suck it up and pay someone.  If you own a business or rental property, usually it might be a good idea to have someone do your tax preparation.  There are many facets to the taxes associated with business and property and they are ever- changing.  At least talk to someone.