Thursday I noticed a little discomfort in my left ear.  I figured it was the early stages of something that I usually get during this time of year, so I let it go.

Friday my left ear was bothering me and painful, but I just looked past it and took Tylenol and beer.

Saturday morning my ear hurt a shit-ton.  I decided that it would be in my best interest to see my doctor and find out what had caused the escalating problem in my ear.

I hit a fairly crowded office and waited a good while to see Dr. John, the guy that fixed FrankenToe last summer.

He had a look, said that the eardrum was perforated (which I knew and told him), and that there was some “blockage” that was impeding his view and that an Ear, Nose and Throat guy would have to remove it.  He said that it wasn’t ruptured because “If you can hear out of it, the eardrum is still intact.” 

In the meantime, I got a shot of Toridol, some antibiotics, a steroid and some Lortab.  Yay me.

When I got up this morning, I thought that someone had pushed an ice pick into my ear canal.  Oh, and I couldn’t hear.   Which means the eardrum had ruptured. 

My day was spent in dark isolation in the basement.  The wife kept the kids occupado while I shuddered from the pain.  I sweated from the pain.  It was as bad as I remember the cardiac ICU after my bypass when I couldn’t have anything for pain for a good while.  It was excrutating.

We shared a laugh.  It was nice.

If you’ve ever actually had an ear problem / infection / whatever as an adult, you know it’s one of the more painful things you can have.

Why?

Because you can’t do anything to or for it. 

If you have a sprained ankle you can elevate it, ice it, etc.  If you burn your hand you can treat it with some salves or, if you had my dad as a dad, a handful of butter.

But ear problems are different.  They grow inward, so the worse they get the deeper into your brain they go.

The pain got worse and worse until, at around 3:30, I said “Fuck it.  I’m going to the doctor.  This is horrible.”

I saw the same Dr. John and nurse Heather (who yesterday gave me a job lead with her husband’s company) today.  They didn’t hit me for the co-pay, they rushed me in, he had a look, gave me the number for his favorite ENT guy and asked “How many Lortab have you had today…BE HONEST.”

I replied “I’m fine with honest.  I had one at 8:30am, one at 9:30am, one at 1pm, and I currently have one in my pocket.  They’re not helping like I’d like.”

So he writes me an Rx for some stronger stuff and says that if I can’t get in to the ENT to call him and HE’D get me in to see the guy. 

Good stuff.

Oh, and while we were discussing Lortab usage, I said “Would it make me the worst Doc Shopper ever if I came to the same one two days in a row for pain meds?” 

We both laughed, but then he said “If I thought you were doing that, I’d have thrown you out of here.”  Awesome.

So I got my fancier Lortabs, but I’m miserable.  This thing hurts as bad as anything I can remember.  And the combination of that pain AND the sensation of feeling every heartbeat in your ear and it’s painful all day for three full days is nearly too much to ask.

So keep your fingers crossed kiddies.  I’m hitting the ENT at 8am and I’m gonna make up stuff I have until they agree to see me.

I’ll keep you posted.

Hugs,

FRT

p.s. The oscars would have trouble sucking more even though I think Martin and Baldwin are good…

We also had something we needed notarized, so I told the wife just to head to the Cock n’ Balls Bank (formerly a BB&T branch) that is about half a mile from Two and Three’s school. 

Having not showered yet and having not shaved in nearly two weeks, I looked like a hobo.  But no big deal I figured.  Many people of means go to the bank dressed like bums.

We walked in and had several kindly folks stand up and ask if they could help us.  I replied “Yes ma’am.  We need to get this document notarized.”

She looked at me like I had just farted.  Then she asked, “Are you a customer of ours?”

“No we are not,” I answered, and that was when the bell in my head sounded.

She explained that she couldn’t notarize anything for us, but we were welcome to go to the postal hut across the street or the Kroger customer service desk.

We told her “Thanks anyway,” and headed for the car and to our own bank’s branch which is about 1.3 miles south of the Cock n’ Balls Bank.  Not really a big deal.

But as we walked out of  our own bank’s branch, I looked at GBD and said “You know, that’s really pretty stupid.  The not notarizing for people that aren’t customers.”

We both said that although we understood WHY they thought that was a good idea, we both agreed that it was dumb, short-sighted and ultimately just bad business.

Here’s a little business lesson from dear old FRT that I started speaking to folks about over ten years ago, and especially to my mother in law who, at the time, had not yet retired from a VERY large mobile carrier.  And although it was about the cell phone industry, it applies to nearly every business in the world.

Back when only ten percent of the nation’s population had cell phones, the big emerging profit opportunity was new business.  Every company offered amazing deals to new customers, and especially good deals if they left their old carrier and joined up with the deal-offering company.

One day when my contract was up, I asked my carrier at that time if they had any offers I could use that were similar to the new customer discounts.

“No,” they told me.  (And this is where  I almost freaked).  “You’re already a customer.  Those discounts are only for new customers.”

I replied “But isn’t me signing a new contract the same as being a new customer?”

“Not according to how the finance folks do forecasts and quotas, no.”

So here we have an industry (much like the cable, natural gas, and insurance industries), where all of the focus was on getting new customers instead of keeping current ones.

I would ask anyone that would listen (even if they didn’t care), “but what happens when everyone has a cell phone or cable television or natural gas?  At some point, the people that will drive the business are the current customers.  I know it’s not as sexy as ‘new business,’ but it’s pretty cheap to keep people rather than having to beg and bribe them to come from somewhere else.  And when that time comes, the ‘current’ customers you’ve ignored for so long aren’t going to be so forgiving of you neglecting them.”

In  these days of razor thin margins and very stiff competition in all areas of business and commerce, it’s the little things that make the difference.  Whether it be satisfying a current customer or helping a non-customer that might become a customer one day, no company can or should be comfortable saying no to almost anything.

Would I have become a customer of Cock n’ Balls Bank if that lady had notarized my stuff or even charged me to notarize it?  I doubt it.  But I can’t say for sure.

But will I become a customer of theirs now based on them not going one inch out of there way to help someone that COULD have been a customer?  Absolutely not.  I will not be their customer because I don’t like doing business with companies that are so dumb and / or short-sighted as that.

First I’d like to say that you shouldn’t judge me.  It’s not like I’m sleeping til noon, eating bon-bons in bed and watching Oprah.  I eat bon-bons on the couch and Oprah’s not on until 4pm.

I’d also like to thank my wife who, when I find myself being horrifically unproductive or drinking in the middle of the afternoon will say “Hey, just remember you’re getting paid for that.”  That’s love right there my friends.

To catch you up, this is how my week has been so far.

Monday:

Up at 6:30 to wake, feed and generally wrangle all three kids.  Got the eldest to the bus stop, then home to the other two that GBD had fed and dressed. 

Next it was take the other two to school.  A neighbor mom saw me in the car and said “Awww.  You came along to drop them off too?  You’re daddy of the year.”

I replied “Not even close.  It’s my first day of unemployment.”

I think it was about then that she realized she’d eaten a turd sandwich.  LOL

Then it was off to the Krogers for supplies, followed by lunch with Thing One at ten fucking thirty in the morning. 

Seriously?  Lunch at 10:30am?  Did I miss the part where my kid’s enrolled in an Amish school?  When’s the butter churning and barn-raising?

So we waited for Zaxby’s to open, hit the school and I got the “opportunity” to try something that the school attempted to pass off as cheesy pizza crust with marinara sauce. 

I’ve always been a fan of school lunches.  Very few of them bother me.  That said, I’m pretty sure that the cheese bread marinara combo they offered was as close to eating a tampon as you could get.

Then it was home for about 90 minute before we had to go back and get Things Two and Three. 

Home.  Sofa.  Team UmiZoomy trance.

Thing One came home from school and we started our new process of doing homework, which is sitting in the quiet basement with our back to daddy’s game of NCAA football 2010 and with no other kids present.  Amazingly enough, the homework was completed correctly AND in record time.  Yay me.

Fast forward to 7:30 and the usual bed and kid wrangling time again, and by 8pm, I was back in front of Intervention whilst the wife and her chick friends watched in total awe as the Bachelor selected the 7.5 that was obviously a party whore over the 9.5 that wasn’t. 

Imagine that?

Tuesday

No school for the two younger Things on Tuesday and Thursday, so this would be a test.  But not a complete test as it literally snowed the entire day, which made for at least slightly distracted children.

No big news from Tuesday except that our friend Rolf, who was going on a ski trip, dropped off his white MALE schnoodle (schnauzer-poodle) puppy named SNOWBALL to stay with us until Saturday or so.

The dog is cute.  The kids are I-N-S-A-N-E over him and are thus driving him insane.  Everyone in the house (except me) is talking in that super duper high-pitched voice used only for puppies and babies.  I’m pretty sure the dog is already deaf and I know I’m in trouble as I’ve caught a trickle of blood falling from inside my left ear.

Wednesday

 Wednesday started off bad (or so I thought).  I was mad that our county was the only one in the area NOT closed due to the snow.  My wife was kind enough to point out how shitty it would be to have all three kids fighting over, squealing for and chasing the dog all over the house all day.  Well played, dear.  Well played.

The afternoon brought more homework, some piddling around with the reloading of my iPod and homework with Thing One. 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I’ve applied for about a dozen jobs and am now waited somewhat patiently for the call extolling my virtues followed by the ludicrously awesome pay grade. 

So far, the kids are enjoying the dog, fighting over who the dog will sleep with, and arguing over the dog. 

Good times.

Thursday

Today was going to be tough I figured, given that it was the first day where two kids AND Snowball would be here together.  All. Day. Long.

It took us until exactly 11:15 this morning to realize that if we, the kids and the dog were to survive, we needed to go to Walmart.  We got the kids Happy Meals complete with their iCarly computer pad thingies, and they were giddy. 

I now sit downstairs contemplating an afternoon of kids fighting over dogs, cokes, toys, who’s petting the dog, who got to pet the dog last, etc.

We’ve already told the girls that if they’ll stay in their beds the whole night for the rest of the week (two whole days) that they can have a “sleepover” with mommy and Snowball in Thing One’s room.  Hooray for left out daddy!

FWIW, I’m working on getting a sleep UNDER mommy planned as well.

Happy Survivor day everybody. 

FRT

But since I am so committed to you, my readers, I’ve decided to throw together a few short rants, and the first is Facebook related.

If you play Facebook games like me (Mafia Wars, Mob Wars, Farmville, Farm Town, etc.), it’s important to understand that you’re a dork.  I know I am.

If you don’t play these games but are friends with those that do, you also know that we are dorks.

But to get upset about getting our updates, requests, etc., is just plain silly.  If you don’t want to receive these nerdy notices but don’t want to unfriend us, just do this:

Hover your mouse over the very offensive notification and you’ll see a box that says "HIDE."

Click that and you will see this dialog:

But you’ll see it clearer.  It says you can hide the person, hide the app or cancel.  So just click "hide the app" and be done with it.  Don’t bother joining groups like "I don’t give a crap about your farm, mob, mafia, pet shop" and such.

Recently the state of Georgia enacted a new "Super Speeder law."  Basically it states the following:

"The Super Speeder legislation will increase fines to decrease trauma-causing behavior. Driving over 85 mph or more anywhere in Georgia and 75 mph or more on a two lane road will be classified as a "super speeding" offense, adding an additional fine of $200, which will be administered by the Georgia Department of Driver Services."

On the surface this sounds like an awesome idea.  But it’s not.  it’s a lazy way to collect more money from motorists.  Instead of being the guy that gives you a ticket for going 64 in a 55 in the Perimeter, they’ll just wait around to hit the guys doing 85 in a 65 and give them a huge fine.  It’s like the guy that waits around to sell the one super tricked out Corvette Z06 instead of trying to move five Chevy Malibu.  Or is that Malibi?  I’m not sure.

But the bigger issue here is the source of my rant.  Speeding. Or should I say, how dumb speeding is and that all people that speed regularly deserve every ticket they get.

And when I say speeding, I’m not talking about the person driving 15mph over the speed limit on a 500 mile road trip where there’s a discernible benefit.  (Just so you know, driving 500 miles at 65mph would take 7.69 hours, while driving the same distance at 80mph would take 6.25 hours).

I’m talking about the ass-hat who is late for their job at Chili’s 6 miles from their house, so they drive 70 in a 45 to ensure that they’ll be less late.  I’m talking about the person that’s late for tennis so they drive 60 in a 35 thru a semi-residential area.

The fact is, you were late when you left, so putting yourself and me in danger to be slightly less late is stupid.

Further, the math alone says you’re being dumb, and that’s if you DON’T get pulled over by Johnny Law.  Don’t believe me?  Here.

If you drive 45 mph for 15 miles, it will take you 20 minutes to get there.  If you drive 65 for 15 miles, it will take you about 14 minutes.  That’s six whole minutes.  And since a traffic stop takes a good 15 minutes at best, your logic for speeding is flawed AND dumb.

Besides, couldn’t you just use your cell phone and call whomever / wherever you’re supposed to be and tell them you’re running late?  Wouldn’t that be easier, cheaper and smarter than driving over your head around people going 2/3 as fast as you?

Yours in math and logic,

FRT

As I was doing that, I remembered that some Security Updates from Microsoft had been downloaded yesterday at noon (Thanks guys that plan that stuff).  I remembered because, as soon as the download finishes, Windows prompts you to reboot every ten minutes until you do.

But I don’t like shutting everything down and rebooting in the middle of the day.  It takes a good 15 to 20 minutes.  So instead I clicked the "Reboot Later" button exactly 31 times before I left for the day.

Anyway, after I rebooted I logged in and, since it was gonna take 15 minutes to get logged in completely, I grabbed my keys and headed out to retrieve my beloved Carmex.

When the elevator got to the lobby and the door opened, I started walking out into said lobby.

At the same time, the building’s day porter and some woman with a briefcase on wheels both decided to enter the elevator at the same time.  SHOULDER TO SHOULDER!! Before I could get out!

This was a first for me.  I’d never been menage a blocked in the elevator.  My initial instinct was to kick one of them in the shins.  However, the day porter knows me and she might replace the toilet seat covers with tiny punji sticks which would make my day unpleasant.

And the woman, well she might have been from the G iant S nowball K ompany and I think kicking someone from there might lead to me being classified as no longer "in good standing" and thus voiding certain compensation I am awaiting.

And thirdly, the thought of kicking them both in the shins simultaneously seemed appealing, but ultimately made me think I’d look like a midget trying to kick himself in the head .

Oh, and a note here.  In an effort to be honest with you and myself, I have been thinking pretty deeply about why I don’t write like I used to write.

It turns out, the more stress and /or duress I’m under in my personal and / or professional life, the less my brain works towards coming up with asinine things to pretend to be mad about or amused by or to really be mad about or amused by.  (I know that sentence sucked.  I have neither the time nor the inclination to fix it.  Want it done better?  Talk to a Lit Graduate like LAB).

Suffice it to say that all of that changed last night while accidentally watching our pathetic local news .

If you didn’t click the link or read the story, here it is in a nutshell.

The Asian community (translation:  two angry Jesse Jackson-like neighborhood activists and race pimps) are upset because MARTA, our local pathetic rapid transit system, shows on its maps that the line that runs through Doraville and Chamblee is colored yellow and referred to in the recorded announcements as "The Yellow Line."

Never mind that the yellow line runs from Doraville to the airport south of town.  Never mind that the yellow line runs thru the blackest of black neighborhoods in our inner-city.  This is obviously a not so subtle example of MARTA officials being racist.  (He says yelling unintelligibly into a megaphone with five people standing behind him with pathetically spelled, hand-scrawled signs).

Let me say this to the "activists" out there.

Settle the fuck down.  Settle down and work on solving an actual problem instead of burning calories on shit like this.

"But FRT," you are saying to yourself.  "This is an obvious case of racism."

Not so fast.  Here’s a little history lesson.

MARTA’s rail system is horrid.  We’ve laughed at it for over 30 years.  It’s the most inconvenient transit system to use in the developed world.  That said, it’s laughably simple.  Here’s the deal.

MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority or, as suburban folks used to call it, Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta) has a logo.  And colors.  They’ve been here since forever.  Here it is:

You may notice that the colors in the logo are orange, yellow and blue.

When the rail system came into existence, there were two lines:  yellow and blue.  Yellow went north and south and blue went east to west.  Orange was left out, I assume, because it was very close to orange and stupid people would get confused and / or lost.

As the system laughably "expanded", including a split on the north end and the west end, new lines were added to the map.  They were green and red.  Again, orange was left out to avoid confusion.

Here’s the map as it stands today.

Further, the yellow and blue lines were setup MANY years ago.  I was in 6th grade or so in 1979 when they opened.  In the time since then, the communities of Doraville and especially Chamblee (or as it’s referred to now: Chambodia) have become the main areas where the Asians in this area choose to live.  It’s not really any different than Korea Town in LA or Little Italy in New York, except it’s just strip malls with nail salons and restaurants with signs I can’t read.

This is an example of the opposite of racism.  If these folks were so offended, why didn’t they start gathering on the blue or green lines?

Further, I haven’t heard any Irish people bitching about the Green Line.  And another question for me is why did the pussies at 11alive choose to post the MARTA map including ONLY the yellow line in its color and not the others?

Because that would have taken all the wind out of the reverse racists’ sails.  If you watched the news and saw a map with five different colored lines, you’d call this whole story bullshit.  And news people can’t fill thirty minutes with overt and obvious bullshit.  Unless you’re cable news.

And another thing.  It’s not like they referred to the North end of the yellow line as the slant line or the bad driver line or the good at math line.  It’s a color.  Shut the fuck up.

Yet another point not in your favor is WHY they use colors to mark the particular lines and routes.  It wasn’t to be racist.  It’s because so many people that use MARTA either can’t read English or can’t fucking read at all.  Do you think if they referred to the yellow line as the Ponce De Leon line and the blue line as the Magellan line things would be better?  Would the French and Spanish be offended?

My point is, it’s pathetic to think that the naming of the MARTA lines was subtly or overtly racist.  Primary colors were used, much like they are in other cities around the world.

You don’t have to look too hard to find racism in Atlanta, or any city for that matter, but going to these lengths to find it indicate that these Community Organizers (rabble-rousing douchebags) just wanted an entity with a perceived fat wallet to hit.

The good news is that the group has a solution.

"Do they want MARTA to change the name and color of the line?"

Nope.

They’ve suggested a sticker.  One that goes over every sticker and sign that says YELLOW.  Guess what it says?

GOLD.

That’s right peeps.  This horrifically painful example of gratuitous racism can be solved by calling yellow gold.

Sweet jesus.

I’ve got news for you jackasses.  MARTA has no wallet.  The people that run MARTA are as dumb and blind as the government, and that’s mostly because the local governments are HEAVILY involved in the operation of MARTA.  They suck at what they do worse than the post office.  And you "activists" are the MARTA of the Civil Rights "movement."

Sincerely,
FRT

This first one is President Lyndon Johnson talking with one of the Haggar brothers ordering some slacks .  It gets awesome around the 3:30 mark.  Can you imagine if our presidents these days made calls like this?  It’d be a better world I think.

The next one comes from a seemingly harmless public service announcement from the early 80’s I think.  It also spotlights the moment that Henry "The Fonz" Winkler’s career exploded in a ball of uncomfortable lingo.

Enjoy.

FRT

I was listening to The Regular Guys podcast this morning from yesterday’s show and was reminded of this story which, in turn, reminded me of another story.

(R) Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah has a bug up his ass about the Bowl Championship Series and how it may somehow violate anti-trust laws. The President has said on more than one occasion that he’s in favor of a playoff in college football.

Other members of congress have for years inquired about the validity of Major League Baseball’s anti-trust exemption.

If you don’t know what anti-trust laws are or what they mean or how they work, here’s a simple explanation.

We interrupt this blog to deliver this important message:

WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT ANTI-TRUST EXEMPTIONS, ANTI-TRUST LAWS AND PLAYOFFS?

Well, I care about the playoff part, but I don’t think there is a single member of the House or Senate that should burn one single calorie worrying about college football or steroids in baseball or any of that other shit.

Why?

Because our nation is on the brink of collapse.  It’s debt is now estimated at 15 Trillion Dollars, which is almost TWO BILLION DOLLARS MORE than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of said country.

That’s right.  At a time when we are about to slide as a nation to number two, three or worse on the planet from our role as Big Man On Campus and we are spiraling headlong and at light speed into the financial abyss, we have public servants and elected congressmen and congresswomen worrying about whether it’s fair for the NCAA to control how their championship works and whether MLB’s union is legal.

Really?  And for this these assholes get lifetime benefits for free, amnesty from 99.9% of their douchebaggy behavior?

I want to go to sleep at night knowing that the people on The Hill are burning the midnight oil trying to find a solution to our economic woes that doesn’t involve raising taxes, crushing small business and artificially propping up the economy by printing more worthless money.

Many of these folks have been in office for years, which means they lived thru the salad days of the Dot Com boom and all of the spoils that went with that.  They didn’t have to work too hard then and make tough decisions, but they do now.

In closing, I’d like to say to Mr. Hatch that my fellow citizens and I would appreciate it if he and his colleagues would spend a little less time worrying about why Utah keeps getting snubbed by the BCS (cough cough crappy conference and weak out of conference schedule) and a little more time trying to prevent the second depression in this nation’s short history.

Sincerely,

FRT

Then today, I heard a writer / podcaster that I enjoy say he had writer’s block.  When asked by the person he was interviewing what caused it, he said:

"Writer’s block comes from not writing every day."

So there you go. The answer to my writer’s block is writing every day.  Only not being able to write is what writer’s block is.

So I guess the point is that I need to make a point to sit down and write something every day, even if it’s horrible or not interesting.  (As if I could possibly do that). That, dear readers, is what I plan to do.  I may not post every day, but I plan to really try to write every day.  Maybe I need a suggestion box where my readers (LAB and Hoss and Madsapper are the only ones I know of ) give me ideas.  Just a topic or story or something and I can write about it.

So that’s it. Oh, and I plan to reduce my beginning sentences with the word "So" by at least 20 percent this year.

My gift to you.

Mazel tov.