--- Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Massive

--- Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Massive sighs. Massive, massive sighs.
Oh well. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, right?
Hey, if nothing else it’s a testament to what America can do for a
guy. Here you have a man who has described himself as poor white trash
from Kentucky, who subsequently went to Hollywood, worked his ass off
and made himself a success. He’s gone off to France to live the good
life, eat cheese, drink wine and sniff the flowers in Provence. Hey,
good for him. He’s an American after all: we have a tendency to dream
big dreams. Who can blame him if that’s his dream? I can’t. I
wouldn’t mind living in the south of France, and other than the
language difficulties that would undoubtedly arise, it still sounds
pretty damn good to me. Well done, Johnny. Your talent has taken you
places. However, just remember, Johnny, as much as you think of your
home country as a “… dumb puppy that has big teeth…” we’re
also your main audience, as well. I don’t think Pirates of the Caribbean would have gone over quite so well had you said that while you were out promoting it here.
It’s always a mistake to underestimate your audience’s level of
intelligence. Stop underestimating mine, Johnny, by playing up to the
German media’s hate of the U.S. and subsequently assuming people here
in the states won’t find out about it. --- Yeah, but try telling them that.

{Insert Gomer Pyle voice here}

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

{Now switch over to an angry female voice}

Get rid of the IRS, give us a goddamn flat tax and be done with it already, would you?

--- “…I’m
not a coward; I’ve just never been tested. I’d like to think that
if I was I would pass. Look at the tested and think there but for the
grace go I. Might be a coward, I’m afraid of what I might find
out…”

-The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Impression That I Get
I’m a coward according to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I failed the
test. “There but for the grace go I” is a phrase that no longer
holds any sway in regards to me. Sigh. There’s no getting around it.
I am officially a squeaky, screechy, girly girl.
In the wee hours this morning, we had our first aviary experience in
the Cake Eater apartment. It still shouldn’t be so surprising to me
considering we have a fireplace, the chimney has no screens over it,
and nine times out of ten the flue is open, but I’d always thought
we’d get away without ever having a winged beast fly into the house.
Isn’t my naiveté charming? I always thought so. {You can insert your
snorts of delight at my idiocy here}
Granted, I’m not a stranger to birds and other outdoorsy creatures
getting into houses I’ve resided in. I grew up in a big old house
with a massive fireplace that separated our living room from our family
room. This was neat in itself because, when there was a fire lit, we
got to enjoy it from two different rooms. But, since it was a big
fireplace, it also had a big
chimney, that was, yes, you guessed it, unscreened. Fortunately,
however, I never was forced to deal with the occasional bird that would
fly in, looking for warmth. My mother invariably got this job and her
reaction to it was to call the Humane Society. They would come out,
trap whatever it was, and take it away and then we’d get to hear
about it when we got home from school, because, also fortunately, these
incidents always happened when we were gone. So, I always had a
secondhand experience with this sort of thing, and to be quite honest,
I never wanted to have it become firsthand knowledge. Not because I
despise outdoorsy creatures so much, (which I do, but that’s a whole
different story for a whole different day) but because, like the Mighty
Mighty Bosstones, I didn’t know if I would like what I would find out
about myself if I did. Well, I am innocent no longer. I know now. Shed
a tear for me when you find the time to close the window that’s
running the message boards you visit where you bleat on about
inconsequential stuff, like tips on where the prostitutes are in Grand Theft Auto.
About 12:30 or so this morning, I was in my usual spot on the sofa,
working on my manuscript, when I saw motion out of the corner of my
eye. Since the husband had already gone off to bed, I thought maybe
he’d woken up and had come out for some reason. Nope. I was wrong. I
turned my head and there was this bat
circling the airspace above the dining and living rooms, which are
barely separated by an archway. Now, the Cake Eater apartment is not a
large one. It’s roomy, yes, but you can’t really miss a bat
circling over your dining room table, like it’s a 747 just waiting
for permission from the tower to begin its descent. The apartment is
just not that big. Then, when it switched directions and looked like it
was coming in my direction, its wings gloriously outstretched in
mid-flap, I screeched in absolute panic. The screech then morphed into
the sound a stuck pig emits: a high pitched squeal that could be heard
for miles, I’m sure. Then, using incredible logic, I tried to go as low as I could
without moving all that much. I vaguely remembered something about bats
sensing motion, rather than seeing it, and I didn’t want it to come anywhere near me,
images of it landing on my head and crawling into my hair racing
grotesquely through my mind, so basically the best course of action I
could come up with in my panic was to try to crawl into the couch with
as little movement as possible, which, of course, didn’t work very
well.
The husband came out of the bedroom, wondering what all the racket was
about. “There’s a bat in here!” I yelped, still trying to go even
lower on the sofa without any discernable movement. I cannot tell you
how much I love this man. He was calm personified. “Ok, let me go get
some clothes on.” He then went back to the bedroom, and just as he
did, the bat completed its most recent loop of the dining and living
rooms and went back there with him. I held my breath and didn’t move.
What happened next was an auditory experience, because I sure as hell
wasn’t moving from my spot to see what was going on. (My chaise had
proven to be well out of range of this bat’s flight plan, and damnit,
I was staying put!) The husband said, “Damn!” in a mild tone of
voice. He opened and closed the linen closet, then turned on the office
light, which makes a rather distinctive sound when you flip the switch.
I then heard a thud and the husband came out with a folded up towel in
his hands a few seconds later. “You got him?” I gasped in awe.
“Yep.” Then he calmly walked over to the fireplace, the bat towel
in hand, and checked the flue. “Huh,” he commented eloquently, a
look of mild surprise on his handsome, cool-as-a-cucumber-in
the-face-of-a-bat-menace countenance. “It’s closed. There must be a
hole in there,” he sussed with a slight shrug of his broad,
bat-blasting shoulders. He then took the flying rodent outside and let
him go. He crawled back into bed and went back to reading his book,
completely undisturbed by the incident, whereas I sat up for another
hour and a half, waiting for my stomach to stop jumping around. As it
turns out, the husband hit the little bugger on the first try with the
towel. Then when Mr. Bat fell to the carpet in the office, stunned by
the blow, he threw the towel over the beast and wrapped him up in it.
Time of entire crisis: three minutes. Time to figure out that I’m a
squeaky, wussy, girly girl when there’s a flying rodent in the house:
three seconds. Germaine Greer can come over and shoot me now. I’m a
disgrace to my sex. Sigh. ---Beware of this company

Now, why should I beware
this company? you ask. Their website looks nice and professional. It
hits all the high points: experience, good customer service, dedication
to their task, a good product. Hey, there must be something good
there. Right?
WRONG!
It’s funny how word travels sometimes. Gossip floats here, there and
everywhere, and thanks to the Internet, it now can be a worldwide
pastime. This
is an example of how gossip can spread all the way from Spain to the
Twin Cities in the time it takes to blink an eye. A phone call to a
former customer to say, “Hey, check out my new company”
leads to a call to a friend, who then calls my husband. You’d think
this would be something coffee-klatch ladies would do, rather than men
and women who make their money in the new economy, but I suppose it’s
not much different in the scheme of things because it’s still
necessary to always be aware of people who will rip you off.
You’ll notice on the site there aren’t any names of people to
contact. They give out Yahoo messenger addresses so you can chat with them in real time,
as if this is the latest and greatest technological advance known to
mankind. They give out email addresses with no names attached. It’s custsvc,
instead. There’s a reason for this anonymity, and it’s not because
their organization is simply too large to put everyone’s name on the
website. It’s because this is a one-man-band type of operation and
he’s trying to convince you otherwise. Don’t trust him. Believe me,
the one man who’s behind the band is not someone who’s deserving of
your hard-earned money.
Well, what’s with all the barely-leashed animosity, Kathy? you ask.
Let me explain. The man behind this website is Tony Tanner. Now, to try
and strive for fairness, Tony is a very smart guy. He can program like
no one’s business, and he really is quite brilliant with all things
computer-y. I’m sure he’s quite good at calculus, but he cannot add
two and two and come up with four. His solution to the problem of two
plus two would be to never solve the damn problem and then hide in his
office and assume no one would challenge him on his refusal. My husband
used to work for Tony at a now-defunct company called Active Logic.
That little graphic of the computer with the slashing arrow on the 360
website used to be Active Logic’s logo. The husband was the head
strategy guy, hired on in 2000. His role in the company expanded over
the next ten months and when Active Logic needed new offices, the task
fell to the husband to put everything together for the move. He had to
find new office space, have it finished, procure new office furniture,
etc. A fairly large task, and one that he was willing to do because he
thought it was a great opportunity to show off Active Logic’s
success. Well, in the process of procuring a new office and its
accoutrements, the husband realized that things were not as they seemed
as far as the financial situation of the company was concerned. What
was presented to the husband as a fast growing company with too much
work and too few people to handle all of it, was in fact a company that
had dissatisfied customers, a shrinking client list, and most
importantly, owners who couldn’t balance a checkbook. Owners who were
robbing Peter to pay Paul. And much later, when he applied for
unemployment after the inevitable layoff, he found they hadn’t paid
the matching funds all employers have to pay on state and federal taxes
and had trouble procuring the unemployment as a result. To put it
quickly, Tony and his partner, had no idea how to run a business. Nor
would they accept help when offered, because that would mean revealing
their ignorance in business matters, and that they couldn’t have.
It’s a long, drawn out affair, but the result of the situation was
that my husband was laid-off via email by Mr. Tanner, saying they could no longer afford to pay his salary while we were on our vacation.
Tony and his former partner still owe the husband---and most of the
other former employees of Active Logic---money. The husband quickly
gave up any hope of recovering his lost wages, kept the laptop they’d
provided him in lieu of compensation and moved on. But Tony’s antics
have been a point of interest to us since this happened. Late last year
we’d heard that Active Logic, after many different incarnations, had
finally gone down the tubes for good and that Tony had hopped a plane
to Spain to be with a wife no one knew he had. I guess he’s still
there, trying this scam from the other side of the Atlantic. Don’t
give him any business. He’s not trustworthy. There’s always talk of
the Internet and its occupiers regulating things themselves. We don’t want any government here! Well, here’s my bid for regulation. Give this man money and you can kiss it goodbye. And if he tries to hire you, run the other way!