This is Jack Waldhelm. He was one of my journalism mentors. A great man.

Now, maybe it's just me, but these cotton swabs can't be that good.

Won all 4 victories on King mode with the Romans on CivRev.

Our resident 8-yr-old made this for me. Best bday card ever.

Denna & I got this @waterloorecords in Austin during ACL 2008. Love it!

It was hard to walk into the funeral home to see Joe, the war vet I met over a year ago. He looked so still. I haven't been to many funerals in my life. Some I've stayed away from and others I missed. Joe looked very peaceful. I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but I almost waited for him to wake up and smile at everyone.

I must admit, for not having known him well, I felt so much grief. Which just goes to show you that anyone you meet can affect your life in ways you'll never thought of or fully understand. I knelt at his coffin and said a short prayer. His portrait from his Army days was displayed next to the coffin. He was a strapping guy.

There weren't many visitors to the viewing. The majority of them were friends and his only blood relative was his son, Michael. I guess at 93, most of your friends have gone before you. What was most important was that those people who loved him best were there to say goodbye.

Tomorrow is the burial. The last burial I went to was my uncle Raul. I had to travel back to my home town for that funeral. But before he died, I was able to speak to him over the phone. My Mom prompted me to call him and tell him that I'd be coming home and that we should plan a fishing trip. My uncle was very excited at the prospect of taking me fishing and said he'd have a fishing pole ready for me. I didn't get to take that rip as he died before I could come home.

In college, there was this advertising manager at my college paper, Jack. Jack was a big dude, over six feet tall. He had this commanding voice and a very direct demeanor that sometimes left you in shock. Like when I was training to design. I would fly that computer like Fats Waller flew his piano. Suddenly, Jack would scream, "Boy, slow down. You're gonna mess up." Jack would use one of those old, wooden rules with the metal guide on one side to measure things on the screen when at 100% magnitude. They tell you NEVER to do that because, like in side mirrors in cars, "Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear." You can't trust anything you see on the monitor, no matter how good or properly balanced it is. Jack would NEVER get a measurement wrong. He and I grew to become great friends. He even started to like some of the same music I did. Once, while playing an Eagles tape, he asked me to make him a copy of mine because he really liked it. Jack contracted cancer just before I left Del Mar College for Texas A&I in Kingsville. And one day, at school, a mutual friend came to tell me he had died. I found out later that Jack thought well of me. Often. His wife told me that on more than one occasion he spoke of this really great kid at the paper. We established a scholarship at Del Mar for Jack. And each time I was invited to introduce the scholarship, I cried. Every time. I never got to give Jack that tape.

Even though Joe was a new friend, the imprint of his life will have a place in mine.

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In about 15 days I'll turn 37. Distant seem the days when I would burn the candle at both ends. The bottom of a beer mug was all to familiar. I remember being 10 or 11 years old in Corpus. Going home from elementary with my cello on the bus. Then high school driving my Dad's 1981, lima bean green Buick Electra. That car was built like a tank.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I bring up age because of the passing of someone I only met almost a year ago. His name was Joe, a 93 year old man who's greatest passion, it seemed to me, was eating. The times I'd see him, he always had himself a two-piece & a biscuit. He talked about his meals very fondly. He was a kind man, I thought. We had a few conversations here and there at birthday parties or at his home. I should explain that Joe was the companion of a close friend. I would rather not say much more about her, but that. Moving on.

I didn't know Joe like I would have liked. But everyone always spoke and thought well of him. One afternoon, I was told something about Joe that just blew me away. Apparently, Joe was in WWII. Landed in Normandy. Without a weapon. When deployed to Omaha beach, his superiors informed him that he would not be given a weapon, but instead, he would collect it from the beachhead from any one of the dead soldiers that came before him. He was a radio operator and a Sergeant. And he went undercover in a German concentration camp that also held American prisoners. I'm actually in the process right now of trying to look him up on the Web.

You would never tell it from looking at him. You'd never know Joe was a war hero. And I say that not trying to be patronizing or with any hint of cynicism. He had two children; a boy & a girl. He'd been married before he met my friend. And I thought it was something that he learned to square dance so he could dance with my friend. There's a ton I don't know about him, but that I'm looking forward to finding out.

Joe was born in 1916. Monet painted 'Water Lilies' that year. Paris is bombed by the Germans in The Great War, World War I. The Chicago Cubs played their first game at was is now Wrigley Field (it was called Weeghman Park then). The Saturday Evening Post published its first Normal Rockwell cover. And President Woodrow Wilson sent some 12,000 U.S. troops to the Mexican border to chase down Pancho Villa. We should all be so lucky as to live 93 years. I'd trade any fame or fortune for that kind of time.

And this brings me back to 37. I think I was a little bit bitter a day ago when I Tweeted in anger. I was pissed because the Express-News had cut me and the subsequent loss of income has put me in a corner several times since. Hey, I'm still angry about that, but with Joe's passing, it kind of put things into perspective for me.

After a year in exile from my own home, I've returned. New furniture and fresh paint have turned the house around. And much like the house, Denna has turned my life around. And while I still don't have a job, I have my health. I have Denna & Thomas in my life and that makes me so happy. I'm making movies. I'm living my life the way I was supposed to. And even though I'll be 37, I'm doing pretty well.

Joe was lucky to live through Omaha beach to make it to the ripe old age of 93. I think he enjoyed his food so much because every day after the war was a gift. And in his senior years he learned to love life and everything it had to offer. Especially a two-piece and a biscuit.

-30-

I'll be back with a new post soon stay tuned.

-30-

I've been working in journalism since I was in college back in 1993. I started out as a reporter, but eventually found my niche in design. My mentors, Dr. Manuel Flores & Jack Waldhelm, brought me in from the rain one afternoon after they saw me walking across the campus looking dejected. I don't clearly remember what was going on in my life at that time, but I know Manuel & Jack both saved my life that day.

After that day, things weren't the same for me. The lost and angst-ridden high school graduate who couldn't decide what he wanted to do with his life finally found a purpose. I hadn't yet found myself, the person I wanted to be, but I had found out what that person- whoever he might be -wanted to do with his life. I wanted to design newspages. And I did. Well. I was part of a weekly college newspaper that one year decimated the major university dailies. Division I newspapers are now all daily papers, but back in my day, we were one of the few weeklies who could go head to head with any Texas university daily and win.

I was in heaven. I mean, there I was, doing what I loved and doing it well. I worked hard and partied harder. And with each passing day I grew to realize that all the art classes I'd ever taken, all the drawing and sketching, all the visually oriented things that struck my fancy all could be used in my chosen career. I even took side jobs and did them for free- that's how much I loved what I did back then.

My first job in design was working for an ad agency in Corpus Christi. I was an assistant production designer who worked mostly at night. The job was great, but our boss was a bit...intense. While I got to do lots of interesting things, the job came with a rather sharp and pointy thorn that eventually drove the creative director away and later me. I worked freelance during that time and got a few gigs doing posters and corporate ID. Eventually, I moved on to working for a Naval museum, the U.S.S. Lexington Museum on the Bay, for a couple of years. I also worked in ad composing at the Caller-Times for a few months, in tandem with the Lex job. I almost burned myself out doing that, but it was great money while I did it. Eventually I left the ad composing job, then later left the Lex for a job at a print shop. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but after a few months, they cut me loose.

I went on unemployment for a while, not knowing what I should do. My exit from the Caller-Times wasn't good and it prevented me from getting hired on there for some time. After taking some temp work and trying once again to get on with the Corpus paper, I decided that maybe what I needed to do was find a place to start new.

Eventually, I moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where I would land a copy editing/design job with a medium circulation paper. It was a great job and I made some of my closest friends while I was there.

After a year or so, thee paper in Fort Smith started to go through some managerial changes that would eventually land me in hot water. Maybe I was just too combative with the new regime, but after a few scrapes with the "design coordinator," I began to realize that my job might be in jeopardy. So I started to look for a new job and found it in the form of a Spanish-language paper that was about to launch in San Antonio, Texas. They offered me great money. Three days after I announced I was quitting, I was in San Antonio and on the job.

The first few months in that job were hard. Long hours and lots of work, but it was rewarding because it was a new publication. We were creating something from scratch and it was something revolutionary. Everyone who worked there agreed- it was a labor of love. But after the first year, the company lost its funding and I almost lost my job. It would be another tense year before a second round of layoffs would come and I would be given my release.

I was angry, mildly heartbroken, but anxious to find another newspaper job in the city. I applied at several places before making into the Express-News. It was just the break I had been looking for. I felt my skills were getting a little stale and I needed to get reinvigorated. It did the trick. For a while. But the young man who would do his job for free was long gone. Replaced by a cynical designer who didn't care about the art and only the money. There had been so many little things about the business that I hadn't anticipated. It sure didn't help my self-esteem any. I had started to shoot independent film, a long standing passion of mine, and was starting to come into my own. With three films under my belt, I felt good about myself again. And slowly, I realized that my time in newspapers would most likely be drawing to a close. I was plotting to get out. I wasn't sure how or when or how, but I wanted out.

I would be moved all over at the Express-News. I was doing the business section when I started, moved onto sports for a time and then to news. My final move would land me in the company's Latino-centric, weekly publication, which I had been hoping to work on someday. It came at the right time and helped put me in a better frame of mind career-wise. I started to feel good about the job again, about my skills, about my career. I began to think about ways of improving my skill set and began to really get myself into a proper mindset to be as effective as I could be. And while I had plotted to get out of the business, each day that I walked by the press I would once again be reminded how much I loved it. I think maybe I romanticized it all so much that when the bottom fell out again, so did my heart.

I arrived at work almost two weeks ago to find that a large chunk of the editorial team had been layed off. It was a slaughter. They said it was a 15% cut in the workforce. I think it was more than what they said. Regardless, I was called into talk to the design director and the deputy design director where I was informed that I had been given my release. The business had been in a state of flux for quite some time and with other papers all over the country either folding or slashing their staffs, ours was no different.

I won't lie. I cried in that office, in front of my boss and the deputy. I had taken a 50 caliber round to the chest and the round broke my heart into a thousand little pieces so jagged and tiny that I couldn't put it back together. I put my sunglasses on and walked to my car, fighting back tears which would eventually flow the minute I sat down and closed the door. At home, in my girlfriend's arms, I cried some more. From time to time now, my eyes well up with tears that I fight back or wipe away before anyone can notice. I'm not sad about losing my job. I've lost jobs before. I'm sad because a decision was made for me the day they let me go- I would leave the business. Forever.

Before I moved to Arkansas, I was made editor of the college paper that I had worked on, on and off, throughout the years. I was only editor for one semester before leaving, but I remember thinking back then, "This what I love. This is who I am." I love the newspaper business. In Fort Smith, we had to drive over to the press to check the edition for head busts or mistakes. The last line of defense. I remember that sometimes I would get there and it was still being printed. I remember standing at the doorway to the press room, watching the spool of newsprint fly through the rollers and get inked. I remember the smell of the ink and the paper. The way it was still damp when they handed you the copy fresh off the press. I remember the staff at RUMBO, the Spanish-language daily, hustling and working in that big newsroom at our downtown office. The phones were ringing and people typed furiously on their machines, cranking out stories. I remember, way back in my formative college years, how tensions would run high between reporters, photographers and editors and we would yell at each other and call ourselves names and be angry with one another. But by the end of the night, we would be at a bar, enjoying a beer and laughing about the entire day. I remember the feeling of looking at my work, on the printed page, and realizing that, for better or worse, this was my life. And I loved it.

I was hoping that my new place at the paper would allow me to revitalize my career goals. But I think in the back of my mind, my love for the business had started to fade. I had even told a few people that from time to time. Each time someone would say to me, "Don't give up on it." And for as much as I loved it, each day that a paper would close or some company layed off a bunch of people, I lost a little more love for the business.

So here I am now. Waiting for my last day. I am still heartbroken over having to go. Day by day, I was starting to see major improvements in my work and I was feeling good about my path. But now, I have to focus on using what I've learned in order to get myself into a new line or work.

I'm not scared or worried about the future. I know my future will be full of really great things. And much like the life I had before the newspaper business, I await the new challenges and new experiences with great anticipation. I saw a post about a major player in the design universe at Newsweek taking a buyout. And something he said has really suck with me:

"I defined myself by the job. Now, just gonna start looking for a new definition."

I realized, just now, that I will never stop loving this business. Never. I'm just gonna have to love my next gig with the same kind of passion.

Good luck to all my friends in the business. Good luck to all the reporters, photographers, copy editors, designers and illustrators out there who are still in the business. And to those of you who are young and idealistic and want to be in the business, just makes sure you love it.

-30-

Well, here we are now in 2009. One more year until my 20th high school reunion, which I will most likely count myself out of. I have no desire to go back to that shit.

A new year means new movies to make, goals to achieve, books to read, concerts to see and movies to watch.

I don't usually set any kind of resolutions on New Year's, but this year I've just resolved to be a better person. A better man.

I'm in a great place in my life. My job is good. I feel complete, which is something that I hadn't felt in a long time. I think that the changes I made to my life had to be made. I lied to myself about where I was and about where my life was going. And in the process, I not only lost my direction in my family life, but in my personal life too. Over the course of the last few months, I've been able to really find myself and feel more secure about who I am, where I'm going and who I want by my side.

Its weird to be posting again after so long. I've wanted to come on here and spill my guts, but it just didn't feel right.

Work
I'm a 9 to 6 worker now. A daywalker. I have evenings free and weekends off. My work is now in a better place too. I've started to really retool my craft and find myself designing some really great pages. And it helps that I have an entire week to mull my stuff over. Reminds me of being at the ad agency years ago. Except without all the crying from our boss and the uncashable paychecks.

I also get to review DVDs and have a blog I share with a coworker. We both do it for free, working only to keep the movies we review. Actually, we review the extras- the special features. And we don't always get the ones we want, but most often, we get a good selection. Its hard work. Much harder than I had anticipated it would be. I guess I always took a critic's job for granted and now I do it so often that I feel better about my writing. I try to write with a tongue-in-cheek style that's funny and informative.

Home
I've gone down to visit with the family in Corpus Christi. I was there for Christmas with Denna. It was a good time. Got to see my dog, Domino. I miss that goofy, fat bastard. We were only there for a few days, part of which my brother was there for too.

My folks finally finished the kitchen they had started on all those years ago. New stove hood, new sinks and granite counter tops. They're in the market for a new fridge and dishwasher to complete the room.

Movies
I've kind of been out of the scene since last summer. I feel like I should be back with greater force, but right now things are tight monetarily. I've got to projects that I'm gonna need a little funding for, so I'll have to save and scrape what I can. Which will mean that I won't be able to shoot anytime soon.

Life
Denna and I are doing great. Better than great. Its not always easy. We have our rough patches from time to time, but we're learning to talk about things and to be as open and receptive to everything. Its sometimes difficult for the both of us to come clean about stuff, but in the end, we're better for it. I'm determined not to make the same mistakes I made before. She is too. Which is really lending itself for lots of good communication. We aren't perfect, nor do we wish to be. We just want to get it right.

There's a lot more to tell. And the year has just begun. I have lots of great feelings about this year. I think its going to be a great one.

Cheers and good tidings to all!

-30-

...a new Christmas album!!!

Hey. Well, its been since August since I posted, so says Blogger. So here I am again.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I began to realize that it won't be Christmas until I hit everyone with the NEW Christmas album.

Last year, I posted a link for everyone to download their own, but this year, I plan to send it out, via mail. Why via mail? Because it's kind of a special album for me this year. There have been lots of changes in my life and I thought I would take the album back to its roots, if it ever had any.

I haven't decided whether or not I will make this a double album yet, but I know that I want it to remain eclectic and fun. And I promise to make it playable for all ages. I think in the last few years I've added some tracks that have been, shall we say, strange.

So, if you want one, time for you to give up your address. If you know my email or have any way to get in touch with me, send me your physical address and you'll find a nice surprise come the first week of December.

I'll be back with more post very soon.

-30-

I guess I've always had a vivid imagination. The kind that tends to run away with me when I give something a little too much room to get a good stride.

I'd left the subject of 9/11 behind me. I've watched all the movies, read all the materials and jumped to all the same conclusions. It all seemed so plausible. I mean, how can so many people make the same wrong conclusions, right?

But I left it all behind after I read a column in the New York Times that said we should let 9/11 go. That it was over. That we should mourn no more.

I think we were all New Yorkers that day. Maybe those New Yorkers who were there that day disagree, but it hurt the same way watching it on T.V. that it did standing in the shadows of those two big monuments to American freedom and ingenuity. It all hurt the same. I was angry for a long time. I cried a lot. I wanted to find answers. All I found were more questions.

Countless shows and articles and movies worked only to keep the fire lit in my belly about 9/11.

Sometimes, I really do believe what the 9/11 Commission report found. I believe it was a group of highly organized terrorist with a grudge to bear on America. I believe that because we grew too confident in our industrial and military might, we grew blind to the aggression that our American egos had stoked abroad. I believe that we're not as smart as we once thought we were and that we're not the only ones willing to do what it takes to make a point.

I want to believe.
I want to believe that our government didn't have anything to do with it.
I want to believe that we were attacked because we are arrogant, fat, unethical.
I want to believe.
But I can't. I can't wrap my head around those concepts.

What do I do? What do we all do?

-30-

I've been away for a while now. Lots has happened. LOTS.

Stay tuned for more.

-30-

I was just reading about how the Florida senate is in the midst of passing a law that would effectively prohibit teens in school from wearing their pants down around their crotch. For a second, I thought, "Hell yeah!" Then I back tracked.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I can't stand that shit. I absolutely hate it. Get a fucking belt! Or pants that fit. What's the point of constantly having to A) pull your pants up to your crotch or B) have to keep your hand on the front of your pants to keep them up?

I'm not saying that I'm the model of ultimate fashion. I dress like a fucking slob and I know it. And I'm sure lots of people see me, especially those who see me day in and day out, and say, "Christ, look at the fat guy. Doesn't he own anything other than Levi's or black t-shirts? Get a real wardrobe, you dumbass!" And I'm sure the kids who are wearing those baggy ass pants say the same thing I'd say to someone who said that to me. "Fuck off, I'll wear what I wanna wear."

I like to rant and rave. A lot. Probably more than I should. Especially about shit like this. I mean, it's not my life they're leading out there. Its their lives. And if they wanna walk around looking like morons, like me, they can do it till the cows come home. And as long as they choose to do it, I'll keep railing against them.

Sure, I can justify my fashion atrocities. I can justify them all day long. I tell people one thing all the time when they ask me about my black shirts and blue jeans. I tell them about how Albert Einstein had the exact same pair of clothes for each day of the week and told people that he did so because it was one less thing he had to think about each day. Then I found this:

I heard that Albert Einstein wore the exact same thing every day. Is that true?

Another story about Einstein that is highly exaggerated but has some basis in reality concerns his clothing. Many say that Einstein wore the same thing every day and had a closet full of the exact same suit, shirts, ties, and shoes. This isn't true, especially when Einstein's second wife, Elsa, was alive. Elsa took a firm hand when it came to her husband's appearance, and pictures of the two of them touring everything from Japan to the American Southwest show Einstein in beautiful silk vests, and dapper neckwear -- as well as in a kimono and an American Indian headdress. But after Elsa passed away and Einstein spent his last 20 years as a professor emeritus at Princeton, his clothing did become more, er, irregular. He openly disliked wearing a suit and while already legendary for often going sockless, now he wore sandals. Perhaps the most common pictures of Einstein from that time show him happily shuffling around his Princeton study wearing a big gray sweatshirt. Luckily for Einstein, his life coincided with the invention of the cotton sweatshirt -- for he was enamored of the soft warm comfortable garment.

So that shoots my rationale in the foot. Lops it right off, actually. I guess I do it because I'm lazy. I like black. I like Levi's. I'm a creature of fucking habit. I own slacks and nice shirts. I use to wear them often. Now, if I do, people wonder if I've just been to church or why I'm so "dressed up". Regardless, it's how I enjoy dressing. I've been in a funk for sometime. I think that's part of it too. There's a lot of things I could say to justify it. But at the end of the day, if this is what I want to do, that's what I'll do.

So back to the saggy pants. I could see, simply by watching a lot of these kids walk around with their underwear hanging out, that, while it seems like a cool fashion statement, it is just irrational. I mean, if your wallet is in your back pocket and your back pocket is down near your calves, what the fuck is that? And how are girls going to say, "Damn, look at him. I can see most of his underwear. That's hot?" But then I'm not their age anymore and I have absolutely no clue what girls that age think. I've even heard that they make pants with the underwear attached and set above the pants, so's to save the user the trouble of having to pull them down. Can you believe that?

I guess this rant boils down to one thing: there are things that the government can tell us we should do and the things they have no right to enforce. Personal freedoms. Our right of expression. Yeah, that's traveling on the razor's edge. I mean, we get into all kinds of messes when we take that stance. But in an age where our government is dawning the mask of "Big Brother" and we are constantly in jeopardy of losing our personal freedoms for the sake of some bureaucrat or some conservatives' ideal of what is good and right, what are we to do?

Leave the kids alone. Just like they left us alone. And how they left our parents alone. Once we start to cross that line, to infringe on a freedom as basic as what we're allowed to wear, the only place we have to go is to that place that, as Americans, we've railed against our whole lives.

-30-

Waiting on my pages today, I find myself on one of my favorite sites, Neatorama, and discover one of my favorite childhood characters, Cookie Monster. And he's being interviewed on NPR.

Cookie Monster "In Character" Make sure you watch the video interview!

I don't know what it is about that Muppet, but he still makes me laugh. I recall so many wonderful days laughing my ass off in front of the televsion when I was a kid. Something about him still manages to tickle my inner child. I loved being a kid.

If you ever watched Sesame Street, you know what I'm talking about. As I read the posting, this made me smile:

"It was later, on a Muppet game show, that the cookie-fixated creature we know emerged, Oz says. The winning contestant was offered the chance to choose a prize: a vacation, a new house, $10,000 cash, or a cookie. He chose the cookie — and the Cookie Monster was born.

"As opposed to many of us who need many things to try and make us happy, he only needs one thing, and that's a cookie," Oz says. "That is his one obsession, and he's insatiable."

Mmmm, cookie.

-30-

No, this won't be a blog about John Woo's 1997 adventure flick starring John Travolta and Nick Cage.

It's going to be about the events of the last few days in 2007.

I was running late for work last Sunday. When I drove up to the office, I was looking for a parking space nearest the employee entrance. Figured it would save some time. I found a space across the street from the building, nearest the press. Its just a skip and a jump to the entrance. No money in the meters on Sundays! Woo Hoo!

Later that night I returned to find that some had smashed out my passenger's side window and RIPPED out the dashboard portion of my truck to relieve me of my car stereo.

The newspaper office, it seems, borders on a rough side of town. A side of town that is conveniently near an area where homeless people and naredowells typically tend to hang out. And as it happens, there's also a bit of a rough neighborhood on the other side of I-37, which also runs near our office. Given that information, we tend to experience a lot of break-ins year round.

I'd never been broken into. I've only heard it happen to dozens of people around the building. The circumstances steaming from the fact that we don't really have a single, monitored company lot. We're forced to park in these pay lots that are scattered all over the place. Only on weekends to do have the availability of parking in a single lot which is monitored by the company security officers. They do a good job and are always around to lend a hand, but their reach only extends so far.

I had parked next to a building, where at night, it gets a little dark. And I should have known better. I've been nervous about parking ANYWHERE other than the company lot on weekends, Hell, any day. But given that I was running late, I figured I'd keep the car close. Apparently, it wasn't close enough.

The thieves bashed out the passenger's side window, spilling glass all over the front seat and the foot well. They tried to use part of a Philips head screw driver (just the shaft, sans the handle) to unscrew the plate that covers the radio and also houses the air conditioner controls, the cigarette lighter and the air vents. When it proved to be too much work, they just jammed the screwdriver into the first available opening and RIPPED OUT the covering to access the stereo. Chunks of it remain, along with the screws they could have easily removed to access it. Having done that they CAREFULLY removed my stereo, making sure to keep all the necessary wires in tact.

I'm only speculating, mind you, since all I found upon inspection was the ripped out dash, the partial screw driver and the mounds of glass. Here's a photo of what I found.

The aftermath.

Our security personnel were as helpful as they could be given that it didn't happen on company property. They even took pictures for me so I could have for insurance purposes. The police showed up and took my report too. They told me I could call the CSI's to come and dust for finger prints, but that it would take about 2 hours or so for them to arrive. Probably shorthanded, I imagine. And really, what kind of manpower are they going to employ for a stolen car stereo?

I should mention one thing that's going to make me look like a fucking idiot. My car stereo was the kind that has one of those removable face plates that render the stereo useless when not attached. Did I remove it that night? No. Had I previously? Yes. Have I been eating paint chips and did they cause me to have a momentary lapse of reason for me to have left it on? Its possible. Of the hundred or so times that I've parked in different areas near the building, I always knew I was taking a risk by not removing it. And given the randomness of the act, I guess I also got a little complacent, thinking it might never happen to me. But it did.

I also knew that by not parking in the company lot, which is available to regular employees ONLY on weekends, I would be at greater risk of having something like this happen to me.

And being that this is I Rant Therefore I Rave, I shall now up the rant.

I shouldn't have to say it, but I'm pissed. Really pissed. For a couple of reasons.

For starters, I'm a little strapped for cash right now. So there's absolutely no way that I'm going to spend the over $200 it's going to take to have someone come out and replace it. More like over $300. I don't want to have to put the trash bag over the door and duct tape it. I'm just not going to. Not just because it's ghetto, but because I won't be able to see out of it and it's going to make that incessant flapping noise when I drive. So I'll just layer on the jackets, put on the gloves and go about my business. Until it rains. Christ.

What really gets my goat is the police presence down here is just a fucking joke. How so, do you ask? Well, let's try this. Several weeks back, I'm coming to work and I park at a meter. It was 10 minutes till 6 pm, the cut off for all meters downtown. After 6 pm, parking is free. My guess is that there are these roving bands of meter maids who have nothing better to do than to hand out citations for something as petty as 10 MINUTES. By the time I remembered that I hadn't put money in the meter, I returned to my car to find A CITATION had been neatly placed under my windshield wiper. Yet as soon as 6 pm rolls around, the police presence grinds to a nearly silent halt. I say nearly silent because if it weren't for the fact that we're about two blocks from the Alamo, we probably wouldn't see them at all. And they guard the Alamo like someone was going to run off with it.

That being said, if they guard that fucking landmark so freaking well, couldn't they send a little help our way to curb the constant rash of break-ins? And if they're going to be as tyrannical about parking meters, shouldn't that reflect itself in making sure that the people who PAY TAXES into law enforcement and city affairs get some justice when some idiots like the ones who have broken into our cars do so?

I'm not counting on ever seeing my stereo again and, frankly, on anyone ever being caught for that same crime. In fact, I'd be surprised if anything is done to curb the break-ins. Just this morning I saw another pile of broken glass in the pay parking lot I stashed the car in. There are piles of glass all over the place, in and around the areas by the office.

I think I have to take my case to a higher authority. Maybe the publisher of the paper or some city official. Someone has to do something.

-30-

Well, here we are in 2008. Wow. 2008. Two more years and we'll be in Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: The Year We Make Contact, sans all the advanced technology and communication with an extra terrestrial intelligence.

Still, I think 2008 is going to be a great year. I can feel it in my bones. Now, don't get me wrong. Its going to be filled with plenty of challenges and, sometimes, strife. What makes a difference is how you deal with it all. I spent a lot of time last year not dealing with challenges in the right manner. I'm getting to old to continually dodge shit. I can be a kid at heart and an adult in mind, right?

I hope 2008 is ready for me.

-30-

So I stopped at WalMart last night to pick up some cereal, milk and toilet paper. Its always a gamble going in after 11 pm. They never have enough lanes open and you end up standing in line for 20 or 30 minutes.

I didn't bother looking around to see if that was the case when I walked in. I just went and got my items and then made my way to the register. And of course, there would be three lanes open, all with gobs and gobs of people in them, each of them with a dozen or so items.

The lane where you can buy cigarettes is usually for people with 10 items or less, so I went over and stood in line.

Immediately, I noticed something. I noticed the half dozen or so workers huddled together in front of the Customer Service center, which is closed after 9 pm, I think. They just stood there, talking and pointing at shit. Enter: Exhibit A.

Standing around.

Now, you'll notice that there's a guy leaning on a shopping cart. This guy works there. A few minutes later, as the lines persist, that same group suddenly starts to move. I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was taking pictures or if they just decided to move so's not to attract too much attention. Regardless, they scattered like roaches when the lights come on.

Now I'd have just let it rest there, but then the morons did something dumber. The opened another register. But it wasn't for the customers. It was for the guy leaning on the cart. Apparently, he had some movies or video games he wanted to buy. They didn't even turn on the lane light so's not to attract too much attention. But I was still snapping way. Enter: Exhibit B.

Open lane and being watched.

By now, they clearly noticed I was taking pictures. If you look at the two women on the left, they're looking right at me. The register on the right, 14, is being used to ring up employees. No sooner did I snap the picture than one of the two women watching me walk over to register 14, say something to the cashier and then come over to the lane I was in and asked:

"Are you buying tabacco?" she asked.
"No." several of us reply.
"Then you can check out here." she said pointing to register 14.

Like I said, I have no idea if it was the fact that I was taking pictures or what, but come on! You have a line of people who have four items at best and we all gotta be standing around for 20 minutes to get our 4 items? Shit...

-30-