Tiger hits every club in the bag and every bag in the club

The gg is back after a longer than intended Thanksgiving sabbatical. During my absence, I took note of several noteworthy developments on the national scene. The first two are related. First was the matter of the White House party crashers; and the second was Obama's decision to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. My reaction to these? Let's see now--how many Al Queda were involved in 9/11? Wasn't it about 16, all wearing business suits and wire-rim glasses? All it took was 16 in our own country to wreak that kind of havoc. So what good is 100,000 soldiers on the far side of the globe when it comes to trying to stop that? It doesn't make sense to the gg. And the party-crashing story proves that one or two people can get into the White House and wreak havoc there if they so chose. These two developments made the gg very grouchy!

The third development during my absence was Tiger Woods "transgressions." My reaction? It looks to the gg that Tiger not only hits every club in the bag but also hits every bag in the club!

Maybe it's the Lipitor clogging my arteries

The gg loves those instructions you get from the pharmacist when he or she fills your prescription. I usually get a kick in particular from those warnings about possible side effects. Today, I picked up a prescription for some creme or ointment to cure this terrible night-time itchy rash on the back of my legs and buttocks. The itch had gotten so bad,it was driving me crazy. The instructions that came with the creme/ointment contained the following (I swear):

"Why is it prescribed? For the treatment of Dermatitis,
Psoriasis and other itchy skin disorders.

"Possible side effects: Itching"

It goes on to give these usage instructions:

"Apply to Buttock Twice a Day for 2 Weeks."

It doesn't indicate which buttock, so the gg can only assume they mean that I should apply it to the itchy one.

This little bit of humor made my day and I couldn't resist sharing it with the readers. A few more instances like this and the gg might make it through a whole day without feeling grouchy. But, alas, it was not to be.

2012: The Movie, Not Sarah Palin

Sine he retired, the gg has been going to the movies fairly frequently. Before that, I rarely had the time. Any movie I watched was from home on DVD. Today, I was in Houston and had the chance to view the eagerly anticipated movie "2012" at Cinemark. No, it is not about Sarah Palin (although, being a disaster movie, one might say the two do have much in common). The gg is a long- time fan of disaster movies, going all the way back to the first of that genre, "Airport". I'll say unhesitatingly that "2012" is the absolute best I've ever seen. It puts all the others to shame, though I'd be the first to acknowledge the distinct advantage given it by virtue of all the modern advancements in visual graphics, etc. I won't reveal any of the story line but will leave that to the readers to see for themselves. Now you might have the impression that seeing this movie made me happy. Well, not quite, and here's why: advertised to begin at 12:00 noon, it didn't get underway until about 12:20 what with all the commercials and previews of future movies, some of them not scheduled until next summer. I could have spent that 20 minutes having a good lunch. Instead, I was stuck with my junior size bag of popcorn and a small coke which, even at the middle of the day, and with my senior discount, came to a whopping and ridiculous $8.00. Had "2012" not turned out to be the blockbuster it was, the gg would have left the theater in a really, really grouchy mood. As it was, I left only partially so.

Can Texas secede from Rick Perry?

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would just as soon not have to post on political issues. Problem is, the gg's governor, Rick Perry, continues to be an endless source of good material. Last week, governor Rick went ballistic on various proposals that would use Presidio, Texas as a sort of way station for the assembling and deportation of illegal immigrants caught crossing the border at other locations. Presidio was proposed for this purpose in order to prevent immigrants who otherwise would have been deported at the other border points where they had illegally entered in the first place from simply turning right around and re-crossing the border into the U.S. at that same point. Taking them to a central point like Presidio and deporting them from there would make it much less likely that they would attempt to re-enter the U.S. But Rick would have none of it. Sound hypocritical? Well...duh? No one in America has railed against illegal immigrants more stridently than Rick Perry. Yet,when a program surfaces that would deport at least some of them, the governor is opposed. The gg thinks Rick would like to have it both ways--on the one hand, he wants to be able to don his camoflauge pants and baseball cap and talk macho at tea party events across Texas (this, mind you, from someone who used to be a college cheerleader) about the evils of illegal immigration, but on the other hand he wants to preserve the dirty little secret that is well known in this state. What is that dirty little secret? Well, forget all that braggadacio from governor Perry about how well the Texas economy is doing despite the national recession. (It's actually true, but don't think for a minute it has anything to do with Rick Perry--in Texas, the governor has very little power to influence anything, much less the economy.) The dirty little secret is that the Texas economy is driven by small businesses whose success is dependent on the steady stream of cheap labor provided by illegal immigration. These days, governor Rick (the Breck boy?) will say and do most anything to keep the Breck girl, Kay Bailey Hutchison, from making inroads into conservative turf in Texas. Knowing that, the gg tries to ignore most of his rants and ravings. But some of them, including this latest, makes me so grouchy I wish my great state could secede from him.

Let Freedom Ring--and the Cash Register along with it

The gg really hates to post on politics, but today I was out in the car and made the mistake of tuning in briefly to the Sean Hannity show. If there is anything or anyone who can make me grouchy, it's Sean Hannity. The guy could deliver a simple weather report and just the sound of his voice would drive my grouch meter to never before experienced heights. Today, of course, Sean was focused on the Ft. Hood killings and the shooter Hasan. No need to wait for the facts--Sean has already labeled Hasan a "terrorist," so terrorist it is. But what really got my blood percolating through the old veins was that Sean proceeded to blame Obama for this dreadful act. Never mind reports that the FBI knew about Hasan as early as 2007 and that most of the communications with the Muslim cleric took place during 2008 (i.e. when Obama was still a U.S. Senator and one George W. Bush was President)--it's still Obama's fault pure and simple. The gg has no water to carry for Barack Obama. I like some of the things he has done and is doing, and I don't like some other things he has done and is doing. I suspect it will continue that way for me. I felt the same way about Presidents Bush, Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Barack Obama was elected as our President by a fairly significant margin. Contrary to his predecessor, he won not only the electoral vote but the popular vote as well. (One can only imagine what Hannity would be saying if Obama had had to resort to the Supreme Court to make him President.) The point is that elections have consequences and the consequence of the 2008 presidential election is that Barack Obama is now the President of the United States and, as such, deserves at least some modicum of respect (at least the same amount as Sean insisted was due to George W. Bush). Today, President Obama went to Fort Hood,visited with the families of the slain and wounded soldiers and delivered a fine speech at the memorial service for the soldiers. Had he not done that, Sean would have excoriated him unmercifully (which he proceeded to do anyway). In his speech, the President promised that justice would be meted out to the perpetrator, in the President's words "in this life and in the next life." The President spoke words with which all Americans should have been able to agee, notwithstanding their grievances--some petty and some real--with the President on other matters. But not Sean Hannity. No, something inside of Sean insists that, 24-7, he must loyally deceive, mislead, misrepresent, lie and hate this President and anyone else who doesn't share the Hannity world view. Sean and others like him talk a lot about rights and freedom. When it comes to the rights of others, they have a history of insisting that with every right and freedom comes a corresponding responsibility. Except that, in their own case, they don't seem to live by that mantra. If they did, they would realize that their right and freedom to go on the radio every day and spew forth their hate and intolerance would get them imprisoned in many other countries, and even beheaded in some. So you would think that in exchange for this unique right and freedom they have they would at least be humbled enough to see fit to exercise the responsibility to tell the whole truth, to not mislead and deceive their audience, to not lie and to not incite hatred (among other things). So on this day-- even if only this day--I held out some hope that even Sean Hannity could find common ground with President Obama's remarks at Fort Hood. But again, I came away disappointed. To his unsuspecting audience (and I believe most of them truly are unsuspecting), he led them to believe that everything known about the perpetrator Hasan came to light since Obama has been President and that Obama alone is responsibe for the political correctness that caused it to be suppressed. (But one shouldn't be surprised by this tactic. After all, to hear Sean tell it, the bank bailouts were begun by Obama,not Bush). You have to wonder about the psyche of a guy who makes his living (and a damn good one at that)deceiving, misleading, misrepresenting and lying on the radio and on TV every day and night (at least Rush doesn't have a nightly TV show). How do you live with yourself? Sean likes his callers to refer to him as a "great American." He may well be one. But in the gg's book, a "great American" is not someone who despises everthing there is about the President of the United States--yes, HIS President--and is not someone who resorts to lies, deceit, innuendo and misrepresentation to undermine him at every turn. "Great Un-American" would be a more accurate moniker for Sean. Frankly, I've grown weary of all this right-left, red state-blue state divide in our country. Sean plays that for all it's worth, but I think it's driving us into a hell-hole. Now that I've said all that you probably think I'm no longer grouchy. You would be wrong. But I do feel much better, thank you.

If they want you to take the same pill twice, why do they give you so many to begin with?

The gg knows he's a tad behind in his posting schedule, but I've been a bit under the weather the past week. But not to worry, being sick affords lots of opportunities for grouchiness. For starters, there's that small print on the pill bottles. It seems to me that with an aging population, most prescriptions these days are written for us geezers, the age group most likely to be visually challenged to begin with. And yet the pharmacists seem to be in a race to see who can use the smallest font on their pill bottle instructions. When I was finally able to make out the fine print on my latest pill bottle, I found these instructions to be amusing enough to at least offset some of my grouchiness: "Take one pill twice daily." I don't know about the rest of you, but that sounds like a dang good trick to me. I guess one best leave it to the good old imagination to figure out the best (only?) way to take that pill once, retrieve it and swallow it again later in the day. And then finally there is the problem with opening the pill bottle. I usually keep a set of tools and a blow torch handy for opening cans, jars, etc. around my house and now it looks like I'm going to have to use the full arsenal to open my pill bottles. All of this because some low-life nincompoop decided some years ago it would be cool to spike a bottle of Tylenol on the drugstore shelf. This was enough to send my blood pressure and grouch meter skyrocketing again simultaneously.

We can only hope their arithmetic is better than their grammar

The gg has spent today dealing with some IRS forms. That's always a sure-fire way to make a grouch even grouchier. But there was a particular statement on one of the forms that got my attention and actually made me chuckle. It read like this: "I understand that both myself and my spouse must sign below." Since your gg is a purist when it comes to use of the King's English, I knew I had my posting for today. One can only hope that the person at IRS who penned that sentence is not also responsible for the arithmetic involved in handling our tax returns.

While I'm on the subject of the IRS, here's something else that peeves me. Have you ever had the experience of trying to fold and shove a fistfull of forms into one of the teeny-weeny letter-size envelopes the IRS provides in its mailings? Surely you know what I'm talking about. I had that experience today. After much frustration (and, of course, grouching), I finally wound up throwing their envelope away and using an oversize envelope of my own. If that's not frustrating, the gg doesn't know what is.

And in addition to providing us with large enough envelopes to hold all the forms, etc. they insist we send them, don't you think the least they could do is to pay the postage. Think about it--we pay them all that money (up to 39% of our income in some cases) and they make us pay the postage for the privilege of sending it to them. Now I'm really grouchy. So grouchy that I'm thinking about running for Congress on that platform alone.

Next thing you know they'll offer oil changes

Today, I went into a Walgreen's to by some Advil. I wandered up and down, back and forth, from aisle to aisle looking at shelves stocked with toys, hardware, auto parts and even groceries. Finally I found the pain relievers on a shelf in the far end of the store. After that, I had intended to self-test my blood pressure at one of those machines they have in the store but I was so grouchy by then I figured my blood pressure reading would have caused the machine to explode. Remember when drug stores were just that--drug stores? When that was all they sold? Oh, maybe you could buy a greeting card, a package of gum and a box of chocolates, or other "notions" as they called them back then. But everything else was drugs. Today, it's like drugs are an afterthought. The drugstore has become a toy store, hardware store,grocery store and photo studio all rolled into one. And it seems the two biggest chains--Walgreen's and CVS--are in a fight to the finish to show which can be the least like a drugstore. I say a plague on both their houses--I'll start buying my Advil at Jiffy-Lube!

Rush Limbaugh IS O.J. Simpson

The gg rarely listens to Rush Limbaugh but today I needed some entertainment while driving so I tuned in to the El-Rushbo to find him playing tapes from a speech given by the long-since defamed Jeremiah Wright, President Obama's former long-time pastor. He even re-played the same tapes that were used to try to tie Obama to Pastor Wright in last year's presidential campaign. Today Rush tried again to tie the two together, but it was what he said at the end of his tape-playing that made me really grouchy. (Don't be misled, fellow geezeres: I was as appalled by the rantings of Jeremiah Wright as anyone, just not sure you can rightfully hang that around Obama.) Rush said: "My friends, this proves that Barack Obama IS Jeremiah Wright!" He then went to a commercial and lo and behold he ran an ad from one of his sponsors known as "Legal Zoom". Ironically, Legal Zoom was founded by the famed criminal defense attorney, Robert Shapiro, who just so happens to be the same Robert Shapiro who ran O.J. Simpson's defense team. So if President Obama IS Jeremiah Wright vicariously by virtue of their association, as Rush said today,then that must also mean that Rush Limbaugh IS O.J. Simpson vicariously by virtue of Rush's association with Robert Shapiro, O.J.'s attorney. Just a thought.

Daylight Saving Time: How can you fall back when you're bent over?

Get ready all you fellow geezers out there in Geezerdom--time to set those clocks back. Or is it forward? I never can remember. Let's see now--isn't it "spring forward, fall back? Problem for me is, I had a football coach back in high school who would always admonish us running backs when we were tackled to "fall forward". I've always remembered that. But what difference does it make anyway? Either way, for the next month, I'm going to be either an hour early or hour late to wherever I'm going. Good thing I don't need to go anywhere. I can just stay home and grouch about how silly the whole notion of daylight saving time is. Whoever came up with such a thing anyway? I'd like to shake his hand while strangling him with the other. All I know is I need to spend the next hour looking for all the user manuals to the oven clock, the bedroom alarm clock and the clock in my car. Then I'll need to find some teenager to decipher the instructions. And for what good purpose? What's the use of Daylight Saving Time anyway? Is it just so we can see when we're on our way to work instead of when we're on our way home from work? What difference does that make to a retired geezer--a very grouchy geezer?

Baseball: America's Past(bed)time

I tried watching the first game of Yanks-Phils World Series tonight and fell asleep during the 7th inning. What little of the game I was actually able to stay awake and watch was marred by cold drizzle (temperature at "new" Yankee Stadium was 51 degrees). Wonder what would the baseball gods would have done if the Rockies had made it to the WS? Sometimes I think baseball has lost its mind. Here it is October 28 and the WS is just now starting! It used to be played the first week in October. For the first time in history, there will be World Series games in November. And why can't the games start earlier so that young kids can watch the games as well as the geezer crowd. We geezers are the game's most loyal fan base and the young kids are its only hope for the future. And yet the games are scheduled at times when few from those groups can watch and enjoy them. When I was a kid, the WS games were all played in the afternoons. Sometimes we kids were even allowed to stay home from school in the afternoons and watch the games. I'll never forget watching the infamous Don Larsen perfect game in the 1956 series while home from 8th grade.
Why if Casey Stengel were managing the Yankees in this day and age, he'd probably have fallen asleep before I did tonight--in the dugout! Baseball needs to get its act together and correct this situation. Until they do, I'm going to be one grouchy old fan.

Happy Hallowchristmas

Well, here we are only in October, we haven't even gotten to Halloween, and the GG has noticed that some business establishments have already started to put out their Christmas decorations. It seems to the GG that this is happening earlier and earlier with each passing year. What the heck is going on? GG loves to watch old movies where the father and the son hitch up the horse and wagon about 2 days before Christmas and go get the Christmas tree. Then they bring it home and the whole family decorates it on Christmas eve. Whatever happened to those days? The only things that peeves your GG more than having to contend with Chirstmas in October is folks who leave their Christmas decorations up until after Easter. If it were up to me, there would be a fine assessed for each day decorations are left up beyond,say, January 1 and a surtax on the value of any decorations put out before, say, December 15. All our seasonal traditions and holidays now seem to overlap each other. Next week will be November, which judging by October and Christmas will mean it's time to start getting ready for Valentine's Day. All of this makes me very grouchy.

Yes we have no prunes

Thursdays are grocery-shopping days in the GG household and today was no exception. We do ours at the HEB in the bigger town nearby because Mrs. GG insists the prices there are less than in the local grocery in our own little town. She isn't deterred in the least when I argue that the cost of gasoline offsets any savings in grocery costs. I think I embarrassed her today by asking anyone within listening range where the prunes were. I'm talking about the prunes that used to be in among the fruits in the grocery aisle; the kind you would cook on the stove and then refrigerate. As I child, I remember that there were always prunes in the refrigerator and how much I loved them. Since then, the only time I've had prunes were on the trips back home in my early adulthood, when my mother and grandmother and aunt always saw to it that the refrig would be stocked with plenty of prunes. Little did I know that no longer do people eat prunes, at least not the kind you cook on the stove and then refrigerate. I learned that today from the amused responses I received from the folks around me in the grocery store when I naively wandered around in the fresh fruit section inquiring about the whereabouts of the prunes. So now I add prunes to my growing list of things that were an integral part of my early life but have now gone by the wayside. You'd think with an aging population, prunes would have made a comeback. Maybe I'll start one. For now, thinking about a life without prunes makes me very grouchy.

Tell the guy in the striped shirt to take his yellow flag and stick it..........

The Grouchy Geezer loves to watch football on TV, but lately it seems like more and more games are decided by an official's unnecessary and untimely call. The scenario usually goes like this: I'm rooting for Team A. Team B is trailing by a touchdown or less and takes possession of the ball deep in its own territory with only a couple minutes left on the clock. Team B's QB starts to heave long Hail Mary passes downfield. Invariably, on third down and long, just when it looks like Team A's safety or cornerback has made a brilliant defensive play to break up the pass, the field judge throws a flag signalling pass interference. Yes, that's it--I'm talking about the dreaded PI. (I call them that for shorthand because they usually do really PIss me off.) Too often, the result is that Team B gets a fresh set of downs and goes on to tie or win the game. All because of an official's questionable call. I don't mind when there is obvious and flagrant PI. But why does the official have to inject himself into the game in that manner when the penalty isn't obvious? If I were a coach, I'd pass on every down because I could depend on an official to call PI on the other team's defensive backs at least on every third play, whether justified or not. I wonder what football would be like if they were to do away with the rules about pass interference, holding, illegal use of the hands, etc.and let the players grab and hold and use their hands however they wish--within reason, of course. It'd no doubt change the way the game is played. But it might keep us grouches from getting POed over the PIs!

Health (S)care--Is Grouchiness a pre-existing condition?

The more I hear and read about the various health (s)care reform proposals, the grouchier I get. On one side, we seem to have those who don't want any reform at all. These are people who trust insurance companies and don't trust the government. They go around uttering phrases like "government takeover," "socialized medicine," etc. These tend to be people who think the answer to everything that ails us is a tax cut and that government should limit itself to fighting our wars (and lots of them). On the other side, we have those who favor reform. These are folks who don't trust insurance companies and trust the government to make things better. These folks tend to believe that the answer to everything that ails us is a new tax or tax increase or selling bonds to the Chinese, or both.


The first group thinks it's just fine that the insurance industry, like major league baseball, enjoys an exemption from the anti-trust laws that allows them to collude to set prices and split up markets. To them, if Uncle Ned or Aunt Martha can't purchase insurance or if their insurance is cancelled because they filed a claim, that's just the American free enterprise system at work. And if they want to use the money they save from denying coverage to Martha and Ned to help pay for million dollar bonuses to their executives, why that's just the free market system at work. Any attempt by government to rein in these practices is automatically broad-brushed as "government intervention in the free market economy," or "socialized medicine." (These folks usually aren't amused when you remind them that Medicare and Medicaid are immensely popular government-run programs.)

The second group thinks a major, comprehensive overhaul of the entire system is required all at once to reform the system, no matter that such reform will cost upwards of a trillion dollars. They assume the insurance companies will simply "eat" the profits they will lose by being forced to insure Ned and Martha and won't pass those costs on to the rest of us in the insurance pool. Not only that, but such things as malpractice litigation reform and allowing people to buy insurance across state lines are off the table. A better solution for them is to have a "government option" to compete with the insurance companies. (These folks usually aren't amused when you remind them of the cost to taxpayers and/or the increase in the already ballooned deficit that many predict will result from their proposal.)


So where does The Grouchy Geezer come down? As usual, somewhere around the middle. Before becoming The Grouchy Geezer, I spent my career in the public utility industry. A public utility is nothing more than a private business regulated by the federal government. To me, health care should be reformed along those same lines, with insurance companies being regulated by the federal government in terms of the types of policies they could offer or be required to offer and their premium charges. The premium charges would be high enough to allow the companies to recover their costs and earn a fair and reasonable return for the risk they take. This would look something like "Medicare for all" but would remain in the hands of the private insurance industry, though subject to regulation by the federal government. There might be other alternatives I could live with. But most of what I have seen and heard so far from both sides makes me very very grouchy and even downright sick.

If only John Crapper could see this

Missus GG and I stayed at a brand new Drury Inn in San Antonio over the weekend. Whenever I travel, the first thing I check out in a room is the air conditioning and the plumbing fixtures so I will know how to use them. The john in our bathroom was unlike anything anything I've ever seen. I know the john-makers are doing everything possible to help us conserve water, but this one was over the top. Instead of the usual flush handle, it had two buttons, one marked "Liquid" and the other marked "Solid". I guess that's self-explanatory. But I couldn't help wondering what button, if any, one should push if one was afflicted with, say, diarrhea. Or if one were to confuse "liquid" with "solid" what the result would be, e.g., would the toilet police come to the door? I wondered what John Crapper would think about this latest tweak to his invention. I wonder if it would make him grouchy as it did me?

I'm amazed when I think of all the advancements made in science, technology, medicine and communications over the course of my adult life. We've landed men on the moon several times and sent probes and orbiters to other bodies in the solar system. The Hubble telescope has unlocked the very secrets of the universe and allowed astronomers to see almost all the way back to the beginning of time, to the Big Bang. Physicists have discovered tiny particles within the atom never before know to exist and which have unlocked the mystery of matter. In fact, they have now discovered something known as anti-matter. Microbiologists have found parts of the human cell--DNA--never before known to exist and which has unlocked the mystery of the origin of life. Advances and discoveries in the medical field have produced a host of new life saving and life enhancing drugs. The invention and perfection of the microchip has allowed us to store a whole library of information on something no larger than a pinhead and, together with the invention of the internet, has revolutionized the way we gather, store and disseminate information and data and the way we transact commerce. Most all of us now use devices small enough to wear on our hips or carry in our purses that allow us to communicate with each other orally, textually or pictorially. Oh, and don't forget the Ziplock bag!

But in the midst of all these grand and glorious advancements, I can't help but ask why it is, if we can do all these things, nobody can make a gas-powered weedeater and chain saw that can be started without pulling 10 times on a piece of rope.

Mrs. GG and I live just down the street from the county fairgrounds in our little Texas town. The street makes a 90 degree turn right right where our house is. Each night of the fair features a country-western band and lots and lots of beer. On each of three successive nights this past week, I found out that beer, pickup trucks and 90 degree street turns are not a good mix. Those trucks found their way into our yard and landscape on each occasion, doing considerable damage. Needless to say, this caused me to be much grouchier than normal.